The core of this study is a series of confrontations between Catholic bishops and dissenters, both lay and clerical, that troubled Philadelphia Catholicism for more than three-quarters of a century. Rome and the New Republic boasts an innovative exploration of the complexity and dynamism of early American Catholicism will be a welcome addition to the fields of religious history, Catholic and immigrant studies, and Early American and antebellum history as well.

Rome and the New Republic traces the major ideological, institutional, and social imperatives that shaped Philadelphia's Catholic community in the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Dale B. Light presents a narrative account of the transformation of Philadelphia Catholicism that offers several fresh perspectives on Catholic development in the early decades of the Republic.

Author Dale B. Light sets the narrative against a broad background by relating the development of Philadelphia's Catholic community to events and transformations taking place in Pennsylvania, in the United States as a whole, and throughout Western culture. The core of this study is a series of confrontations between Catholic bishops and dissenters, both lay and clerical, that troubled Philadelphia Catholicism for more than three-quarters of a century. In the first part of the book Light traces the breakdown of the confessional community in the early decades of the Republic as institutional pluralism, ethnic animosities, social differentiation, and ideological disputes factionalized Philadelphia's growing Catholic population. He then goes on to reconsider a period of intense conflict in the 1820s-the years of the famous "Hogan Schism"-as a confrontation between modernist and traditionalist groups within Philadelphia Catholicism. In the final section Light describes how reforming ultramontane bishops and members of the middle classes gradually reconstructed the Catholic community in the decades before the Civil War.