| This dissertation examines the political thought of six Roman Catholic Americans—John Carroll, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Mathew Carey, William Gaston, Robert Walsh, and Charles Gayarré—in the period 1776–1895. American Catholics have often felt tension between their loyalty to an authoritarian and hierarchical Church on the one hand and their devotion to decentralized and democratic political institutions on the other. Blending perfect obedience to Church authority in religious matters with individual autonomy in the political realm has proved to be a thorny undertaking, one made all the more difficult by the suspicion in which Catholics have traditionally been held by Christians of the Reformed sects. The six men in this study were able to fuse their religious and political principles, thereby achieving what might be called the “Catholic-republican synthesis.”... |
