With his promotion from Bridgeport to Baltimore, William ("Deli Bill") Lori ascends to the aboriginal episcopal see in the U.S., the chair first occupied by John Carroll, a member of Maryland's founding Catholic family and the man who effectively established the Catholic Church in the country. According to the profile by RNS' David Gibson, Lori is an avid reader of history, so he can be expected to be boning up on his Carroll, and so should we--given that the new archbishop, as head of the USCCB's ad hoc committee on religious liberty, is currently playing a more prominent role than any Roman hierarch on the national scene other than Cardinal T. Dolan, the USCCB's boss of bosses.
For the latest take on Carroll's approach to Catholicism in America, I'd suggest "John Carroll and the Origins of an American Catholic Church, 1783–1815" by Arizona State history professor Catherine O'Donnell, which appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly last year (available on JStor if you have access). Trained and living as a Jesuit in Europe for 25 years, Carroll returned to America in 1773 after Pope Clement XIV suppressed the order. In 1788, Rome gave permission for the American clergy to elect a bishop, and Carroll was elected the following year. As O'Donnell sees it, he simultaneously contrived to hold at a bay the Vatican, which he didn't trust; establish control over his far-flung and independent-minded clergy; and make a place for his church in a country that had placed all religions on an equal footing but where anti-Catholic prejudice remained substantial.
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