The American Catholic Almanac

When I first started reading The American Catholic Almanac, I was afraid that it might be boring because I link the term “almanac” with dull statistical facts, but this reference book is anything but boring.  Since I home school my kids, we know a fair amount about American Catholic history, so some of the stories and histories were familiar, but they were taken from such various personal perspectives that I found myself truly drawn into the story behind the history.

The American Catholic Almanac achieves several things at once.  First of all, it clearly outlines the enormous impact that Catholics have had on the United States both in helping to shape it and in surviving some of its more brutal policies.  Most of the people described are wonderful and supportive, but the authors, Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson, do not shy away from including some of histories and actions of the more unsavory Catholic figures and their grievous effects on this nation.

Secondly, I was reminded of the challenges that Catholic Americans have had to face throughout our history, in terms of persecution.  It seems hard to believe, educated as I was through a public school system which insisted that the United States was always the bastion of religious freedom, to realize how often Catholics were excluded from free expression of our faith and, in fact, severely penalized for simply being Catholic. Here is an untold story revealed.  It is one of both tragic suffering and heroic endurance.

Third, I have come to better appreciate the influence that the Catholic faith has had on the moral compass of Americans.  Famous and influential, as well as ordinary Catholic citizens, have had more than a marginal hand in forming the best aspects of our nation.  It was when certain Catholics decided that they needed to be more American than Catholic and separated their faith from their public duty that tragedy in the form of ill-advised and outright evil legislation was passed with little accountability from those who should have known better and acted differently.

I highly recommend The American Catholic Almanac to anyone who wants to understand our nation better and take a closer look at some of the heroic examples of selfless love which have helped to make this country truly great.