Ritual and Practice in the Maryland Catholic Community, 1634-1776

Abstract

Maryland is referred to as the cradle of Catholicity in this country. Founded by the Catholic Lord Baltimore in 1634, the colony distinguished itself from other British colonies with the promise of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. These policies enabled the Catholics who immigrated to Maryland to lay the foundations that the Catholic Church in the U.S. was built upon. While the political, social, and economic influences that shaped the develop ment of the Maryland Catholic community have been the subject of much study, what has been most visibly absent from many of these works is an examination of the com munity's religious practices. The fragmentary nature of surviving records has only allowed historians to reconstruct a partial and incomplete picture, leaving many ques tions unanswered as a result. That is until recently. The efforts of a diverse group of scholars, with backgrounds in U.S. church and social history, liturgy, and musicology, have identified new avenues of research that may finally allow us to recreate the con ditions that Catholics worshipped under during the colonial period.1 Related studies published on the English Catholic community, religion in England, and the Society of Jesus have also proved invaluable, providing a framework for identifying patterns of