{"id":656729,"date":"2026-05-21T16:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/656729\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T16:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T16:18:09","slug":"catholics-helped-shape-the-birth-of-the-united-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/656729\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholics Helped Shape the Birth of the United States"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"\"John Barry, a merchant-turned naval hero during the Revolutionary War, helped form the U.S. Navy in the nation\u2019s infancy. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)<\/p>\n

PROSPECT HEIGHTS \u2014 Despite being a small percentage of the population in the original 13 colonies, Catholics played a crucial role in the Revolutionary War and the birth of the new nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Catholics\u00a0comprised\u00a0less than 2% of the population,\u00a0yet there\u00a0were\u00a0heroes like Commodore John Barry,\u00a0a\u00a0naval commander who\u00a0helped win the war\u00a0and\u00a0was commissioned\u00a0as an\u00a0officer\u00a0in\u00a0the U.S. Navy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other prominent\u00a0Catholic figures from that era included\u00a0Gilbert du\u00a0Motier, more famously known as\u00a0Marquis de Lafayette; John Fitzgerald, General George Washington\u2019s aide-de-camp;\u00a0Thomas Fitzsimons, who was one of only two Catholics to sign the U.S. Constitution;\u00a0and Stephen Moylan, commander of the cavalry in the Continental Army and the first person credited with using the term United States of America.\u00a0<\/p>\n

RELATED: Sacred Heart Catholic Academy Alums Return for Bicentennial Time Capsule Unveiling in Queens<\/a><\/p>\n

Barry (1745-1803), who began each day at sea reading the bible,\u00a0was\u00a0known as \u201cThe Father of the American Navy.\u201d He was\u00a0named commander of the Continental Navy\u00a0in 1776\u00a0and won\u00a0many\u00a0naval battles during the war, including\u00a0the last\u00a0one\u00a0off\u00a0the\u00a0coast of Florida in 1783.\u00a0Washington\u00a0then\u00a0promoted him to the rank of commodore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Catholics were mistrusted in Colonial America, which made their contributions to the war\u00a0in the\u00a0early days of the nation\u00a0even more\u00a0remarkable,\u00a0said Christopher Milford, a professor of history at St. John\u2019s University<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority of the population was Protestant, which of course, came from England,\u201d Milford explained.\u00a0\u201cBritish American patriotism, as it was then understood, was deeply anti-Catholic.\u00a0Protestants were equated with\u00a0literacy and\u00a0progress,\u00a0and liberty.\u00a0Catholicism was equated with authority and lack of liberty.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, war can create unusual alliances.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1775, when Washington became commander-in-chief (of the Continental Army), it wasn\u2019t that he was in love with Catholics,\u201d\u00a0Milford said, \u201cbut he understood\u00a0that you had to have as big a tent as possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lafayette (1757-1834), who was\u00a0French, volunteered to join the Continental Army\u00a0in1776 at the tender age of 19.\u00a0He\u00a0commanded troops in the siege of Yorktown in\u00a01781, the last battle of the war.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

His\u00a0nationality is key to understanding the Catholic contribution to the war, Milford said. \u201cAmerica would have won the revolution eventually anyway, but\u00a0it won it as it did because we had French help. And 95% of those guys were Catholic,\u201d he\u00a0said.\u00a0\u201cWith the French Alliance, suddenly American officers\u00a0are fighting alongside French officers,\u00a0and while war can be a deeply divisive and nasty experience, it\u00a0can bring people together.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fitzgerald\u00a0(1751-1799), General George Washington\u2019s aide-de-camp, was\u00a0so trusted by\u00a0the\u00a0future president that he handed sensitive military communications.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moylan\u00a0(1737-1811),\u00a0who grew up in Ireland,\u00a0evaded\u00a0British laws that forbade\u00a0Catholics from\u00a0receiving\u00a0an education\u00a0by leaving his homeland to attend schools in\u00a0Paris.\u00a0In a letter he wrote in January of 1776, he used the term United States of America. It was the earliest known use of that phrase.\u00a0<\/p>\n

RELATED: How the Knights of Columbus Are Celebrating America\u2019s 250th Anniversary<\/a><\/p>\n

There are only two Catholic signatories to the Constitution. One of them\u00a0was\u00a0Thomas Fitzsimons\u00a0(1741-1811), who had fought in the war and represented Pennsylvania in the Constitutional Convention.\u00a0He was also a major financial supporter of St. Augustine Catholic Church in Philadelphia.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The distrust of Catholics\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0totally disappear. But the\u00a0camaraderie that stems from working for a common cause\u00a0\u2014 like giving birth to a new nation \u2014\u00a0was\u00a0a factor\u00a0in breaking religious barriers, Milford said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause everyone\u00a0was fighting\u00a0for the same cause,\u201d he said, \u201creligious differences get pushed to the background in a way they\u00a0weren\u2019t\u00a0during the run-up to the\u00a0war.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Barry, a merchant-turned naval hero during the Revolutionary War, helped form the U.S. Navy in the nation\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656730,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-656729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656729\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}