Frontiers of Faith: Bringing Catholicism to the West in the Early Republic. By John R. Dichtl. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008. x, 240 pp. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-8131-2486-5.)

Abstract

In his study of Catholic development in the early American West, John R. Dichtl describes the challenges and tribulations of missionary efforts that seemed nearly hopeless in those early years. When John Carroll was named the United States' first Catholic bishop in Baltimore in 1789, thirty to thirty-five thousand Catholics were among the country's four million inhabitants. To serve them, there were only thirty-four priests; only a few could venture beyond the Appalachians to minister to the scattered settlements of Catholics there. Among those few, most were recent immigrant priests from Europe, including refugees from the French Revolution. A few proved to be “renegades,” more interested in entrepreneurial opportunities than in saving souls. Maintaining control of the wandering priests remained a problem even after Carroll established the first western diocese in 1808 in Bardstown, Kentucky. The bishop there, Benedict Joseph Flaget, was responsible for all the territory west of the Appalachians. To maintain discipline over the widely dispersed Catholics, the bishop invoked the authority of the Vatican, despite his desire to present a milder public face to the Protestant majority in the West.