L
lisauze
Guest
You really need to brush up on you history. The lack of Catholics in the south has nothing to do with what you imply. First the majority of settlers that came to the American South were Catholics. Spanish priests were serving soldiers on what eventually became known as Parris Island, South Carolina, and Jesuits were working to convert Algonquian Indians along what was then called the “Ajacán Peninsula,” between the James and the York Rivers that empty into the Chesapeake Bay. Eventually however the Catholic became outnumbered by the English settlers and after the Calvert familys conversion to Anglicanism in order to retain the charter to Maryland Catholism declines further because to be English is to be Protestant. When the English first settled the Protestants made more of an effort to convert people then the Catholics. Later on as Catholics immigrated from countries like Poland, Ireland, Italy etc. they usually immigrated into Ellis Isle. Once in the United States the typically settles with others if there “kind” due to lack of finances and knowledge of culture. Also both Catholics and Protestant leaders did not like there congregations fraternizing with one another. The rabid anti-Catholicism of Protestant leaders like Parker, Beecher, Buchard, and Blanschard, but also to the religious and ethnic parochialism that was encouraged by Catholic leaders like Archbishop Hughes of New York and Archbishop Kenrick of Philadelphia. While it is true that Protestants did not want Catholics threatening their supposedly free and liberal society, it is also true that many Catholic clergy did not want their parishioners fraternizing too closely with dangerously individualistic Protestants.