Date of Award

10-16-2023

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

History

First Advisor

Patricia Mooney-Melvin

Abstract

American Catholics throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries advocated for a canonized American. To promote a candidate, organizers of canonization causes collected objects related to the person’s life and curated exhibits to educate Catholics about the candidate. American shrines became intertwined with creating museums or heritage tourism sites for Catholics to encounter their faith and learn about their place within the nation’s history. This dissertation argues that shrines create an American Catholic public memory by interpreting the lives of saints and potential saints through the American past, situating themselves into a national story, and reproducing a saint’s memory for future generations. It relies heavily on memory studies, public history, and material culture as a theoretical basis for understanding each site. Five individuals and their corresponding sites form the core of this study’s research. The National Shrine of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini demonstrates how American Catholics navigated local and national history to commemorate the nation’s first canonized citizen. In Emmitsburg, Maryland, the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton became a heritage tourism destination and further legitimized an American Catholic memory. The National Shrine of Saint John Neumann in Philadelphia, PA, exemplifies the role of material culture in forming memory. The last chapter examines two individuals on the path to sainthood, Blessed Solanus Casey and Venerable Fulton Sheen. The Solanus Casey Center in Detroit, MI, remembers Casey by embracing a unified collective memory rooted in an ecumenical understanding of American Catholic history. However, Sheen’s disputed memory shows how creating a national Catholic memory involves forgetting individual narratives through the history of two sites dedicated to Sheen, one in El Paso, IL, and the other in Peoria, IL. These shrine complexes provide spaces for American Catholics to negotiate the meaning of those two identities.

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