ABSTRACT
John Carroll and his fellow co-religionists understood that the very survival and growth of the Catholic Church in the United States depended upon its ability to accept, and become a part of the American way of life. In many ways Catholics labored to create an American Catholic Church. Most Catholics, and none more so than Carroll, favored the creation of an American, not an immigrant, Church. This demanded a willing acceptance of the political and religious systems of the United States, which Catholics were prepared to give for they saw no incompatibility between the ideas and institutions of America with Catholicism. American Catholics expressed their loyalty to republican government, civil liberty, and democracy. Catholics so accepted the principle of religious toleration and separation of church and state that they made it a fundamental cornerstone of the American Catholic Church. Carroll was, like most Catholics, caught between two cultures—the American and the Roman.
