What does it mean to be a Catholic in America? How has this meaning changed from America’s founding to the present? In this course, we will explore the development of Catholic communities in America from early contacts between European and Native Americans through the massive influx of Catholic immigrants in the nineteenth century and the current crises of authority facing the church in the twenty first century. The result is not a singular story of churches and congregations spreading across the American landscape. American ideals of democracy, individualism, capitalism, and religious freedom have significantly influenced American Catholics’ understanding of the Roman Church and its place in the world. At the same time, Catholic women and men, religious and laity, brought distinct understandings of society and politics, poverty and suffering, ethnicity and family, and, indeed, sex and salvation, to bear on American society and culture. Using a variety of texts, ranging from personal narratives and sermons to film and literature, we will seek to understand the social, theological, and cultural tensions shaping the lives of American Catholics from various ethnic, geographic, and economic backgrounds. Through lively debate and discussion, we will question the ways Catholic beliefs and practices have rendered them, at various moments, insiders and outsiders in the development of the American nation.