Fully Instructed and Vehemently Influenced:
Catholic Preaching in Anglo-Colonial America

Joseph C. Linck
With a foreword by Robert Emmett Curran

Preaching held an important place in the life of colonial Anglo-America, and yet so far little has been written on the subject of 18th-century Catholic homiletics. It has widely been assumed that, in comparison to Protestant sermons, little relevant material survived from the labors of the Catholic missioners of the colonial era. An examination of the manuscripts preserved in the American Catholic Sermon Collection at Georgetown University, however, provides an opportunity to test this theory. Consisting of over 450 texts preached in Maryland and Pennsylvania from 1700 to 1801, the collection represents just a small part of the homiletic labors of over forty missionaries (mostly members of the Society of Jesus). This study is the fruit of an analysis of the sermon collection, and offers many insights into their originality, the sources used in their composition, their presentation of Catholic doctrine and practice, and their attitudes toward contemporary society. The sermons (and various sources on which they were based) are surprisingly uniform throughout the century, and highlight the enduring concern of the Jesuit homilists for the well-being of their flocks, who were seeking to live out their faith on the “frontier” of the New World, both geographically and religiously. They sought both to instruct their hearers in Catholic teaching, as well as influence them to live out this faith in an oft-times challenging cultural context. The homilists placed a strong emphasis on the communal dimension of the faith, and commented on domestic life, slavery, devotional practice, social mores, and relations with other denominations and civil authorities. This study, then, through an examination of the sermons, opens a window onto the religious life and practice of these little-known pioneers, whose quiet existence has previously offered precious little access.

Joseph C. Linck earned his Ph.D. in Church History from The Catholic University of America in 1995. He has published articles on the spirituality of Colonial Catholicism and the Catholic Church in Pennsylvania, and was editor of Building the Church in America (1999), issued in honor of the seventieth birthday of Msgr. Robert Trisco. Father Linck has served as a Lecturer in Church History at St. Vincent Seminary, in Latrobe, PA, as an Instructor at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, and as a Newman Chaplain at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently serving in parochial ministry in the Diocese of Bridgeport, CT.

Robert Emmett Curran is professor of history at Georgetown University. He is the author of numerous publications, including American Jesuit Spirituality: The Maryland Tradition, 1634-1900 (Paulist Press, 1988).

2001, 224 pp., 11 Illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-916101-40-4 (paper over board) $35.00