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Voluntaryism: An Irish Catholic Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Patrick Carey
Patrick Carey
Affiliation:
assistant professor of theology in Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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Extract

Oscar Handlin noted some years ago that most immigrants to the United States found the voluntary practices of American religious institutions “unfamilar and disturbing.” This was not the case with the Irish Catholic immigrants in this country. They had little difficulty adjusting to these practices in America since they had developed them in Ireland before coming to the United States. Thus, many American Irish Catholics viewed voluntaryism not as a uniquely Protestant or American experience; they saw it as part of their Irish Catholic tradition.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 1979, pp. 49 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1979

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References

1. Handlin, Oscar, The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migration that made the American People (Boston, 1951), p. 126.Google Scholar

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3. Ibid., p. 69.

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49. Ibid., 5:421.

50. Ibid., 4:334.

51. Ibid., 1:435–436. England's ideas on freedom within the church were realized in his diocese, but not in many other dioceses at the time.

52. Ibid., 2:81; 1:166, 249.

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55. Ibid., 2:82.