Pioneer Priests and Makeshift Altars

In this comprehensive history, Fr. Charles Connor details the life of Catholics in the American Colonies. It’s a tale that begins with the flight of English Catholics to religious freedom in Maryland in 1634, and continues through the post-Revolutionary period, by which time the constitutions of all but four of the first 13 states contained harsh anti-Catholic provisions.

Catholic readers will be proud to learn from these pages that despite almost two centuries of ever-more-intense religious persecutions and even harsher legal prohibitions, American Catholics in the colonies simply refused not to be Catholic.

These pages show that from the Jesuit manor houses that planted the seeds of faith in Maryland to the solitary missionary priests who evangelized the New York regions, Catholics kept the faith . . . even unto death.

Pioneer Priests and Makeshift Altars is indispensable reading for souls interested in the deep roots of Catholicism in America, and in the holy courage of scores of Catholics who kept remorseless forces from snuffing their faith out.