AHC: Majority Catholic USA

Your challenge of you chose to accept it is with a POD no earlier than 1776 is to make the United States of America a majority-Roman Catholic nation by 2015. TTL's United States doesn't have to have the same territory as OTL's United States.
 
Early Confederacy - maybe 1830's Civil War with Calhoun? That leeches off a lot of Protestants. This is followed by Mexico getting the idiot ball and declaring war on the US later, and the USA gobbling up more territory than in OTL, with Mexican Catholics being predominant in it.

Then maybe a worse Italian unification war to bring more Italians into the US.

Might be enough for 50% Catholic.
 
Having Quebec being part of the USA from Day 1 would do a lot to help increase the number of Catholics, not least allow for more of Mexico to be annexed as well as Cuba.
 
It would help if the deluge of Syrian and Lebanese Christians that immigrated to Latin America in the nineteeth and twentieth century had instead picked the United States. It'd help for Spain to retain control of its colonial empire a bit longer as they were rather picky when it came to settlers.
 
It would help if the deluge of Syrian and Lebanese Christians that immigrated to Latin America in the nineteeth and twentieth century had instead picked the United States. It'd help for Spain to retain control of its colonial empire a bit longer as they were rather picky when it came to settlers.

Not quite, the US had a very open immigration policy before the Emergency Quota Act in 1921. As long as you were healthy and not Chinese, or an anarchist you could arrive in the US. Between 1893-1925 some 325,000 immigrants arrived in the U.S. from the Ottoman Empire and most were Lebanese, Syrian, Armenian or Greek since only 6,627 people listed Turkish as their mother tongue in the 1920 census. Argentina took another 367,000 between 1891 and 1920 and Brazil 130,000 between 1884 and 1933. Mexico took in over 100,000. These numbers together would be too small to have a significant effect on the religious character of the United States. Keep in mind that around 1/3 to 1/2 of the Syrians and Lebanese in all of the countries eventually returned home.

If you want to use immigration to achieve a Catholic majority, butterflying away WWI would be your best bet. Immigration Italians and Poles from Austria and Russia were increasing between in number before WWI along with smaller numbers of Slovaks, Lithuanians, Portuguese and Croats. Granted there was significatn return migration amongst all of these groups, but around half would remain permanently in the US. Irish immigration had peaked, but was also fairly steady as well, and without the war they could keep coming in large numbers.
 
Pardon my ignorance - was that not one of the reasons why the US stopped gobbling Mexican territory? To avoid strengthening the Catholic minority?

It was discussed but if you had a second Mexican-American War in the following decades or if the northern territories followed through on their idea of joining the US around the turn of the century it would be well after the worst of the anti-Catholic feelings but still at a time where the US was expansionist. There are a lot of other obstacles but it's a possibility I think is reasonable.
 
It would help if the deluge of Syrian and Lebanese Christians that immigrated to Latin America in the nineteeth and twentieth century had instead picked the United States. It'd help for Spain to retain control of its colonial empire a bit longer as they were rather picky when it came to settlers.
How many of those were actually 'Catholic', even including 'Eastern Catholics' such as the Maronites as well as any actual 'Roman' Catholics involved, rather than members of other churches instead?
 
Maybe the US incorporates the Phillippines as an official part of the US and makes them states because many who lived there were Catholic.
 
If the US attempted and somehow succeeded in taking large portions of south america after the wars of Independence, maybe. I've never been a big believer in America's capacity in the 19th century to treat Catholic's fairly, nor their power to oppress them.

With the US politically weak until the Civil War, the US lost its chance to add much of south America. Note that the US took half of Mexico's territory in 1846 but only 3% of its population, and most of that was probably indians.

Perhaps early political reform in Europe and Russia which allowed more Poles, Catholic Ukrainians, etc to immigrate.

I don't see all of this as likely.

Earlier mass immigration from Mexico, maybe? I majorly oppressive regime that wrecked the economy by 1860 and everyone wanted out?
 
Right now, Catholics are the biggest denomination in the country, but they're only about 25% of the population because religion is so fragmented here. So you'd have to find some way to double the Catholic population or decrease the Protestant population. Some things that might help:

-Cuba and Puerto Rico as states adds about 15 million Catholics
-More French immigration, less German immigration
-The US annexes more Mexican territory after the Mexican-American War
-No Emergency Quota Act (in OTL, this blocked a lot of immigration from Catholic countries like Italy and Poland)
 

jahenders

Banned
Several possible PODs/contributors:
1) Spain sets up colonies where some/most of the English-based colonies are IOTL and expands them better. They eventually get conquered as colonies and become part of the US.

2) More of the English colonies are founded/funded by Catholic groups (like Maryland)

3) Quebec is conquered and becomes part of US

4) Higher Mexican population in the territories lost to the US in the Mexican-American War

5) US seizes more of Mexico in same ...

6) The Catholic Church launches a much more aggressive missionary effort amongst the Native Americans in the US

7) During the American Great Awakening, there is renewed interest in other existing churches (such as Catholicism) instead of primarily in new religious groups. That is, you have some protestants becoming Catholic instead of becoming Mormon, SDA, Shakers, etc.

The first two alone could make the difference in that there would almost certainly be less anti-Catholic tendencies and more of the later immigrants would remain Catholic.
 
Maybe the Quasi War becomes a becomes turns into a full blown war and the US goes to war with France and Spain and invades Louisiana, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Texas. The influence of the Cuban and Puerto Rican slave owners and the Tejanos makes the Southern Protestant aristocracy less Anti-Catholic. When America goes to war with Mexico over a border dispute and Mexico not recognizing Spain's hand over of Texas to the Americans, they end up taking Mexico north of the Tropic of Cancer. Later when William Walker is in Nicaragua he doesn't piss off Vanderbilt and manages to retain control of Nicaragua for a little longer. The larger number of slave states or at least potential slave states causes the issue over slavery to boil over and touch off an earlier Civil War. Walker being Walker joins the Confederacy. The US wins the American Civil War and acquires Nicaragua as a result. Maybe someone like Hannibal Hamlin is president during reconstruction and the ITTL counterpart of the Radical Republican's force a much harsher on the South and the ITTL counterpart of the Civil Rights Act of 1875 isn't found unconstitutional and extends voting legal rights of a lot of the disenfranchised Hispanics in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. As a result there are a myriad of black and Mestizo politicians in the South. The political conditions in these regions make them more inviting to Catholic immigration.

That probably doesn't get you to 50%, but its a larger Catholic population than OTL without adding all of Mexico which probably would have resulted in the US imploding.
 
Increasing Catholic immigration would only be part of it. Reducing attrition would be the other part. Catholics have consistently remained around 23-25% of the U.S. population for decades, even as there has been massive immigration from Latin America and the Philippines, which are predominantly Catholic. This is because even as these large numbers of Catholic immigrants are coming in, there have been comparable numbers of native-born Americans leaving the church.

There are many Americans today who have Catholic ancestors but aren't members of the church themselves, having either joined a different one or having become religiously unaffiliated. If you want a Catholic-majority U.S., you have to find a way for Catholicism to strengthen its appeal so that there isn't so much attrition.
 
Lets remember that the US is a plurality Catholic nation at the moment.

If you mean that Catholics outnumber the members of any *single* Protestant (or other) church, yes. But that proves very little, due to the great number of Protestant churches. Protestants still outnumber Catholics by more than 2-1. http://religions.pewforum.org/reports

Other do you mean Orthodox or other Eastern Christian churches?

Well (I'm a Dutch Roman Catholic) Catholics tend to stick together despite of some issues (doesn't mean there aren't disagreements), whereas Protestants tend to split far sooner and quickly. I guess a different attitude, also towards our religion (Christianity).

Catholic majority could eventually happen ITTL, if dominant Protestants secularize sooner than Catholics (which were longer second rate), which is what happened in the Netherlands; POD would be a more secular (European style) USA, like the oldest ally of the US France.
 
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