Historians are fond of looking back over the panorama of the past and writing about periods of cultural change that altered the continuity of history. The age of discovery and the rise of the city are phrases that describe such pivotal epochs. These are not Madison Avenue-inspired book titles, but legitimate interpretative descriptions of past ages that provide a key to understanding the development of American civilization. Although the history of American Catholicism does not lend itself to such epochal descriptions, interpretative concepts are applicable in this area of study as well and they can provide useful keys to the analysis of the past.

Twenty years ago Jerald Brauer wrote an essay on the writing of American church history entitled, “Changing Perspectives on Religion in America.” In this essay he noted that “change in perspective marks the writing of the history of religion in America.” After discussing the work of Robert Baird and William Warren Sweet, the two historians whose perspectives most influenced the writing of American church history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries respectively, Brauer then directed his attention to a third and new perspective. This new perspective had developed in the post-World War II era and was the result of the work of Sidney E. Mead, Sydney E. Ahlstrom, Winthrop S. Hudson, and others. Brauer described the new perspective by pointing out how it differed from the work of Sweet. It was clear to Brauer, however, that no one historian or school of historians had yet emerged whose perspective was able to dominate the landscape in the manner that Baird and Sweet had. There really was no new single perspective, but a variety of approaches and interpretations. In other words, in the late 1960s the discipline of American church history was in a state of flux, and “a number of young historians” were, in Brauer's words, “anxious to develop a new perspective through which to view the development and nature of Christianity in America.”

By studying the parish mission under the rubric of revivalism the author claims that revival religion enjoyed widespread popularity in the American Catholic community in the second half of the nineteenth century. This conservative tradition had a wider appeal and exerted a greater influence among the bulk of Catholics than the liberal progressive gospel of Americanization.

The parish mission had its roots in Europe and was introduced to the U. S. by various religious orders, the Redemptorists and Jesuits in particular. By comparing the parish mission with Protestant revivals the term Catholic revivalism emerges as the most apt description for the religion fostered at the mission.

To illustrate the meaning of revival religion among Catholics the author studies handbooks for Catholic revivals, sermons of mission preachers and newspaper accounts of the mission. In particular he concentrates on the sermons of Redemptorist and Paulist preachers. From these sources the article argues that Catholics were being nurtured in an evangelical piety that stressed individual conversion; the preachers proclaimed a theology of individualism that was rooted in the theme of repentance and pressed upon the people in an urgent, emotion-filled manner. The moral qualities of right behavior were also stressed and chief among these was the spirit of temperance. A notable difference from Protestant revivalism was the Catholic emphasis on the sacrament of penance in the personal experience of conversion. Catholic revivals encouraged a sacramental evangelicalism that emerged as a major motivating force in the religion of American Catholics in the nineteenth century.

In the 1860s Walt Whitman described New York as a “city of spires and masts” with “the flags of all nations … duly lowered at sunset.” To this celebrator or urban life New York was a “city of the world! For all races are here; all the lands of the earth make contributions here.” The cosmopolitan character of New York was especially reflected in the city's Roman Catholic community. In the words of John Hughes, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York at mid-century, his “people were composed of representatives from almost all nations.” There were Italian and French Catholics, German and Irish Catholics as well as white and black American-born Catholics. And if one looked long enough, he would come across Catholic merchants from Spain and Catholic chefs from Switzerland. But within this polyglot community the two most significant ethnic groups in ante-bellum New York were the Irish and German immigrants.