In reading many early Christian texts from and about Egypt, one is struck by the importance of space for the ascetic lifestyle. Whether it be Antony locked in his desert fortress, the tightly arranged cells of Kellia in the Apopthegmata Patrum, or the landscape of the desert in so much hagiographical literature, the space in which the early Christians practiced ascetic renunciation was as infused with as much meaning as the ascetic practices themselves. Since few texts with descriptions of early ascetic space survive, studies have been left largely to archaeologists and art historians, not historians of Christianity. Only a handful of ascetic authors from the fourth through sixth centuries wrote about the theological significance they found in the building of churches. These include the wealthy Latin patron Paulinus of Nola (Italy), two anonymous members of the Pachomian monasteries in Egypt, and the Egyptian archimandrite Shenoute. The churches built for each of these late antique communities held deep theological significance. They symbolized the ascetic endeavors undertaken at those communities. Since for each writer, the ascetic struggle was constituted in slightly different terms, with different goals, practices, and interpretations of those practices, so were the church buildings imbued with different meanings. Yet, in each case, the church held meaning beyond its mere walls. Each was constructed as much by a theology and a discourse of ascetic discipline as it was by wood, brick, and stone.

Martin Luther, writing in his Betbuchlein in 1522, declared:

Among the many harmful books and doctrines which are misleading and deceiving Christians and give rise to countless false beliefs, I regard the personal prayer books as by no means the least objectionable. They drub into the minds of simple people such a wretched counting up of sins and going to confession, such un-Christian tomfoolery about prayers to God and his saints! Moreover, these books are puffed up with promises of indulgences. … These books need a basic and thorough reformation if not total extermination.… But I just don't have the time to undertake such a reformation; it is too much for me alone.

Among the many changes brought about by the Reformation, perhaps one of the most obvious was the new image of the Protestant pastor. No longer was he set apart from his parishioners by the privileges of a separate estate or by the requirement of clerical celibacy. His most important functions were preaching and teaching, rather than the administration of the sacraments and other ecclesiastical ceremonies. Although there were clearly continuities between the duties performed by the late medieval priest and the new Protestant pastor, there was also a significant change in emphasis and in the expectations concerning the pastor's duties.

We, Lucifer, lord of darkness, ruler of deep sadness, emperor of the hellish cesspool, duke of the sulphuric waters, king of the cliff, and administrator of the hellish fire, to each and everyone in our realm, friends, bishops, prelates, cathedral canons, clergy, and all others of whatever dignity and the state you may be in: our greetings.

Many years ago John Higham identified a transition in American culture “from boundlessness to consolidation,” the beginnings of which could be traced to the 1850s. Among indications of a scaling back in the prevailing sense of unlimited openness were an incipient shift from romanticism to realism in the arts, and a movement toward tighter organization and centralization, often associated with the Civil War, which was already discernible in the prewar decade. In describing this shift, Higham said little about religion, observing only that the growth of professionalism reduced competition among Protestant denominations and “produced a more highly trained ministry, greater concern with the liturgical side of religion, and a decline of the crusading fervor of an earlier day.” Although he made no mention of American Catholicism, the concept of “boundlessness” seems sufficiently capacious to apply to the pioneering decades of Catholic development, and by midcentury a process of consolidation was definitely under way in that dimension of the national culture. My aim in this essay is to look more closely at boundlessness in one area of Catholic life and to call attention to a generational shift in outlook that accompanied the process of consolidation.

When Dwight L. Moody left his native town of Northfield, Massachusetts, for Boston in 1854, he was one among hundreds of young men flocking to urban centers in hopes of achieving greater prosperity and “success” in mercantile careers than their families had attained through agricultural pursuits or village commerce. This trend was part of a larger pattern of urban growth that began in the early nineteenth century, fueled by both foreign immigration and the expansion of industrial capitalism. In the decades prior to the Civil War, Boston's population expanded exponentially, reaching nearly 140,000 at the time of the 1850 census, a six-fold increase since 1800. Of this number, nearly one-half were of “foreign” birth or parentage, and an additional 25,000 were “Americans” who had migrated to Boston from rural New England and other areas of the United States. Only around 50,000—or 35 percent of the total population—had been born and raised in Boston. This rapid influx of newcomers to the city provoked growing concern among native Bostonians, as the presence of rural youths, Irish Catholics, and other “outsiders” began to challenge and transform traditional patterns of social, economic, political, and religious life.

Narratives about women and religion in Victorian and Edwardian society seldom addressed the world of the Catholic laity, leaving the impression that Catholics were unimportant in English history. Pushed into anonymity, they were easily misunderstood because of their religious sensibilities and loyalty to a church governed not from London but Rome. This was a church long subject to various forms of disability in England and with a membership of roughly 5 percent of the population around 1900. By then, objections to the Catholic Church as a foreign institution had lessened, but critics still labeled Catholics “a people apart,” viewing them as too disinterested in their neighbors' welfare to play a vital part in public life. So commonplace was this particular point of view that it obscured Catholic participation in social causes such as the hard fought campaign for women's suffrage. As often as journalists, suffragists, and members of Parliament debated enfranchisement in the years before and after the First World War, very little is known today about the role Catholics played in the struggle for women's rights.