As the United States Catholic population boomed between 1890 and 1920, national Catholic institutions evolved  to address their needs. A key player in these developments was the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Initially established in 1917 to coordinate Catholic activities related to the First World War, the National Catholic War Council evolved into the National Read More

Catholic University’s Special Collections Department has a vast quantity of documents which encompass the sentiment of Anti-Catholicism in America that spans from colonial times to the dawn of the twenty-first century. Our rare books collection includes eighteenth century works such as Letter from a Romish Priest in Canada to one who was taken captive in Read More

Patrick Henry Callahan was a model businessman, political activist, stubborn Prohibitionist, and tireless Catholic apologist of the Progressive and New Deal era. He hobnobbed with the rich and powerful, including celebrated evangelist Billy Sunday (1862-1935), acerbic journalist H. L. Mencken, and populist orator and progressive politician William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925). Nevertheless, Callahan was also a Read More

“The need of the Catholic Social worker no one will question. There should be no question of the need of the TRAINED social worker. Social Service is today a PROFESSION.  Motive and intention can inspire—but without KNOWLEDGE they can never achieve.” National Catholic School of Social Service pamphlet, 1932 In researching the history of the Read More

The mixed legacy of heroic sacrifice and bitter division of the American Civil War continues to permeate popular culture and political discourse. As a growing minority in the 1860s, making up about ten percent of the United States population concentrated in the north, Catholics were embedded in this conflict. Their relatively unknown story was recently Read More

In his 1977 hit single ‘Heroes,’ David Bowie sang “We can be heroes, just for one day…We can be heroes, forever and ever.” He may just as well have been referring to the ‘Catholic Heroes of the World War‘, whose valor was chronicled in the American Catholic press, 1929-1933. This now obscure paean to Catholic Read More

Imagine you purchased a box of used books and found buried within a tattered satchel dating from the First World War. What would you do with it? This scenario played in the summer of 2016, when a thrift store benefiting an Alabama-based women’s shelter contacted the CUA Archives. Hidden within a box of cookbooks – Read More

Author Katherine Santa Ana served as Graduate Library Pre-Professional (GLP), 2015-2017. This year marks the centenary of the United States entering the “war to end all wars.” Here at the American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, our collections preserve the World War I stories of many men and women through the papers, photographs, Read More

The decisive entry of the United States of America into the calamitous First World War on April 6, 1917 joining Britain and France against Imperial Germany was a momentous event in the history of the American Catholic Church. Making up about seventeen percent of the American population, Catholic support of the war effort was a Read More

June 6, 1875, is the birthday of the widely influential New York City born John Burke, a Catholic University of America (CUA) educated priest (.S.T.B. 1899; S.T.L., 1901) of the Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle, a religious community known as the Paulists. Burke saw a convergence of both American and Catholic values that Read More