“Dolan will help readers come as close as possible to sensing what it must have been like to be involved in the brick and mortar, the rhetoric and reality, the sweat and dreams of life in those years.” — From the Foreward by Martin E. Marty

A view of urban Catholicism, The Immigrant Church focuses on the man in the pew and furnishes a comparison of Irish and German Catholic life in mid-nineteenth-century New York City. Nearly one-half of the city’s population in 1865 consisted of Irish and German Catholics. Singling out three parishes (one Irish, one German, and one a mixed group of Germans and Irish), Dolan examines the role of religion in strengthening group life in these ethnic communities, traces the development of the church in the city, and reveals the relationship between urban and church growth.

ISBN: 978-0-268-01151-2
238 pages
Publication Year: 1983

Jay P. Dolan is professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame, where he founded the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism in 1975 and was the director of the Center until 1993. He is the author of, among other books, _In Search of American Catholicism _(2002) and The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present, also published by the University of Notre Dame Press.

“This important and first-rate book . . . is social history at its best.” — Commonweal

“Fascinating reading for those interested in ethnicity, immigration, Catholicism, and religion. Indeed, it will make fascinating reading for anyone interested in understanding the heterogeneous but durable American republic. . . .” — Journal of American History

“It all makes for a fine introduction to the kind of church history that needs more doing: people-history.” — Church History

“A valuable and perceptive portrait of urban Catholicism based on wide research.” — Times Literary Supplement