The Catholic Refuge - Give No Offense

American Political History · Jun 25, 2021 · 13m · transcript

In November 1633, two ships slipped away from the English coast carrying the first settlers of Maryland — and three Catholic priests who had to be smuggled aboard, unsworn, after the King's officers forced the oath on everyone else. The colony founded so Catholics could worship in the open began by hiding its own clergy.

This is the story of the bargain at the heart of America's Catholic refuge. Lord Baltimore's written order that the Catholics do their faith "as privately as may be" and stay silent on religion — not generosity, but the survival math of a minority that owned a colony it would…