December 7, 2025

Dear Parishioners,

A couple weeks ago I gave a homily, “Church History Part III: The Church in America.” I’d like to repeat some of that here, for the Catholic Church in America embodies the line from Isaiah in our first reading this weekend: “a shoot shall sprout from the stump.” Catholicism in America was a shoot that has become a blossom.

Columbus brought Catholicism to the Americas at the end of the 15th Century. All of Europe was Catholic at the time. That would change 25 years later when Martin Luther sparked the Reformation and the birth of Protestantism. King Henry VIII of England, seventeen years later, broke off from the Catholic Church, creating the Church of England. England battled internally for the next century over whether the crown would be Catholic or Protestant, and eventually a group of English Christians, seeking a purer form of the faith (in their eyes), sailed to America to worship in their own way, landing at Plymouth on the Mayflower on December 21, 1620. The French had earlier established themselves in Canada in the early 1600s, and the Spanish had already been settling (what would become) Mexico, the southern United States, and California. So, the religious map of North America by the 18th Century, generally speaking, was French Catholicism in the north, English Protestantism in the American colonies, and Spanish Catholicism in the south.

There were, however, Catholics in the American colonies, an increasing number of them, in fact. Maryland was established as a Catholic haven, and eventually the first bishop named for the new United States was Bishop John Carroll of the newly erected diocese of Baltimore, the first diocese in the United States. This was thanks, in part, to the efforts of Benjamin Franklin who was friends with Fr. John Carroll and who petitioned the Vatican during his tenure in France to establish Catholicism more formally on the American continent. A second interesting sidebar: Bishop John Carroll’s cousin, Charles Carroll, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the bishop’s brother, Daniel Carroll, was a signer of the U.S. Constitution. So, one could argue it is in our Catholic-American roots to be patriotic.

The Vatican did not agree with this at first. The Church was skeptical of the American-Catholic project, mostly because it was skeptical of democracy, the freedom of religion, and the non-establishment clause (or, as we would later call it, the ‘separation of church and state’). The Vatican argued against ‘Americanism,’ which was the idea that one could be a Catholic whilst supporting those Constitutional values of the freedom of religion, etc. The Catholic Church always believed the Church should work hand-in-hand with the secular powers to help build the Kingdom; that the government should protect the Church and facilitate the encounter with Christ. Incidentally, following the American victories in the Barbary wars in North Africa in the early 1800s, Pope Pius VII said the United States “had done more for the cause of Christianity than the most powerful nations of Christendom have done for ages.”

The American bishops and other American Catholic theologians, such as Orestes Brownson, believed that the Church could remain separate from the government officially and still have an influence on the culture; that this was the better way, in fact, to bring people to Christ: not through government involvement, but through our own witness. Pope Leo XIII disagreed. He condemned Americanism in 1899.

One hundred years later at the Second Vatican Council, with the document Dignitatis Humanae, the Catholic Church would change its opinion and support the freedom of religion generated by the Americans. And sixty years later an American, Robert Prevost, would walk out onto the balcony at St. Peter’s Basilica as the first ever American pope, Leo XIV. Yes, the small shoot of American Catholicism blossomed into a flower for the universal Catholic Church.

We have prospered as a Church in America because of our focus on Jesus Christ. One of the first things Bishop John Carroll did when he became bishop was consecrate the United States to the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of the Immaculate Conception. December 8th is, thus, our country’s patronal feast day. Mary poured her life into her son and kept her gaze upon him, especially from the foot of the cross. As long as we as a nation stay close to Mary and embody her virtues, we will keep our focus on Christ, and we will not flee from the foot of the cross. And we will continue to be fruitful.

If, on the other hand, we demand to save our institutions and our pride just for the sake of saving them, like the bad thief from the cross who felt entitled to live, then we will perish. But if we let that go and desire to be remembered by Jesus when he comes into his kingdom, like the good thief, then we will live.

May our Church have that holy posture of humility. May we as individual Catholics, with our hearts united to Mary’s, look only to the face of Christ.

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Our Serving our Seniors (SOS) ministry will be holding another event this Friday, December 5th at 9am in the HFC. Breakfast will be served, along with some live Advent and Christmas music.

We will have a Family Mass this Sunday, December 7th at 10:30am in the HFC. That same day we will also have our usual Donut Sunday and New Parishioner Sign-up in the gym following the 9am and 10:30am Mass. This will also be the special St. Nick’s Party in the gym hosted by the SPC Women’s Club, featuring live music, gifts and games, and a special appearance by Santa.

Monday, December 8th is the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, a holy day of obligation. We will have Masses at 6:25am, 8:30am, 10am (school), 12pm, and 7pm.

Our Catechesis Program will be holding its annual Christmas Pageant on Tuesday, December 9th at 4pm in the upper church. The next day, Wednesday, our school will be holding an Advent Vespers Service in the evening.

Yours in Christ,

Fr. James Wallace