Pluralism and Syncretism

In the mid to late 1800’s, millions of Catholic immigrants began arriving in the United States. In 1815 there were only 80 Catholic Churches, 7 priests, and 70,000 Catholics, making Catholicism an extreme minority. However, by 1916 Catholics were a powerful force with 15.7 million members. The six largest Catholic immigration groups, referred to as the “Big Six” included Irish, German, Italian, Polish, French-Canadian, and Mexican Immigrants. Each immigrant group brought with them their own set of ideas on what it means to be a Catholic, and how best to practice Catholicism. For example, Irish Catholics held priests in high regard and paid a lot of respect and attention to them, whereas the Italian immigrants were very anti-clerical and didn’t respect or trust priests at all. Since the Irish were the first and most dominant group to arrive in America, most of the parishes that were established when other groups began to immigrate were Irish Catholic. Many of the other ethnic groups didn’t prefer or necessarily agree with the practices of the Irish Catholic church, so the church as a whole had to come up with a way that all of the different immigrant groups could be happy and be able to practice however they felt most comfortable doing. The church came up with two systems- the first was the territorial parish system. Under this system, a parish was placed in each distinct territory and if you lived in that territory, you must attend that territorial parish. This system failed because the different groups weren’t able to practice freely and they were forced to attend church with other ethnic groups that they didn’t necessarily agree with. This system was also dominated by Irish priests and services, and had very little diversity. So, a second system was invented where parishes were oriented around a particular ethnic group with a priest that that group chose, as long as that priest was approved by the bishop. So long as each group could raise the funds to build