How early American Catholics justified secularism and overcame suspicions of disloyalty, transforming ideas of religious liberty in the process.

In colonial America, Catholics were presumed dangerous until proven loyal. Yet Catholics went on to sign the Declaration of Independence and helped to finalize the First Amendment to the Constitution. What explains this remarkable transformation? Michael Breidenbach shows how Catholic leaders emphasized their church’s own traditions—rather than Enlightenment liberalism—to secure the religious liberty that enabled their incorporation in American life.

Catholics responded to charges of disloyalty by denying papal infallibility and the pope’s authority to intervene in civil affairs. Rome staunchly rejected such dissent, but reform-minded Catholics justified their stance by looking to conciliarism, an intellectual tradition rooted in medieval Catholic thought yet compatible with a republican view of temporal independence and church–state separation. Drawing on new archival material, Breidenbach finds that early American Catholic leaders, including Maryland founder Cecil Calvert and members of the prominent Carroll family, relied on the conciliarist tradition to help institute religious toleration, including the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649.

The critical role of Catholics in establishing American church–state separation enjoins us to revise not only our sense of who the American founders were, but also our understanding of the sources of secularism. Church–state separation in America, generally understood as the product of a Protestant-driven Enlightenment, was in key respects derived from Catholic thinking. Our Dear-Bought Liberty therefore offers a dramatic departure from received wisdom, suggesting that religious liberty in America was not bestowed by liberal consensus but partly defined through the ingenuity of a persecuted minority.

"An impressive work of historical scholarship that makes a persuasive case for the importance of American Catholics in the story of American religious liberty…Breidenbach has broken new ground." - National Review

"An original, provocative contribution to the study of U.S. Catholic history." - First Things

"The definitive treatment of the Catholic quest for religious toleration in America…An excellent work that should be read by anyone interested in church–state relations in early America." - Law & Liberty

"[A] superb study of American attitudes toward Catholicism in the founding era." - Claremont Review of Books

"Can Catholics be Americans?…Breidenbach offers a persuasive account of how Catholics have wrestled with this question since the earliest days of the Maryland Colony. In so doing, he exhumes treasures of great significance for our own time…Opens up new vistas on the history of religion in the American colonies." - America

"One of the most comprehensive and well-researched histories of American colonial Catholicism of our generation…A triumph of academic scholarship yet also a pleasure to read…Rich in its account of how Catholics contributed to the American tradition of religious liberty." - Public Discourse

"[An] important new book…Required reading for anyone who wants to delve deeply into the American founding and how it came to achieve the constitutional separation of church and state that has so shaped our culture and society. Breidenbach’s achievement is large." - National Catholic Reporter

"An essential corrective to the dominant narratives of early American church/state separation. By integrating Maryland Catholics and conciliarism into this history, [this book] demonstrates that early American secularism took root not only in republican ideology and Protestantism, but also in a Catholic political theology that, against Protestant assumptions and accusations, defined the colonial-era American Catholic experience. May it inspire further inclusive rethinking of American secularism’s origins." - Early American Literature

"A valuable reconstruction of a hitherto poorly understood dimension of American religious liberty." - Journal of Church and State

"Breidenbach has gifted us with a synthesis of years of research into early modern Anglo-American Catholicism…He revises, definitively, the picture of Catholic involvement in the forging of religious liberty in America, from ideals to rhetoric to actual laws." - Newman Studies Journal

"Breidenbach’s history of Catholics in early America provides a much more nuanced and insightful treatment of the relationship between the American constitutional order and the Catholic faith as understood by prominent Catholics who took part in the Founding." - Interpretation

"This volume is a challenging and welcome exploration of the relationship between American and Catholic principles around the time of the American Founding, which itself is a contemporary example of a perennial question regarding faith and culture. As Breidenbach ably demonstrates, Catholics did participate in the creation of the American republic and its commitment to human freedom and human flourishing; they were not simply a convenient foil against which the new regime might define itself." - Touchstone