Do you think the USA would be a different country if instead of a being colonized by protestants would have been colonized by Catholics? And how?

19 comments

1. how will this affect the 4 for $4 wendy’s deal?

2. The most likely possibility, that I am pulling from my rear end, is that we’d be similar to Quebec and be speaking French. I say that because, presumably, the Anglophone settlers in North America didn’t displace the French Catholics in this timeline.

3. Well…big chunks of what’s now the US were Spanish colonies that were quite catholic and we took over quite a bit more catholic heavy territory from Mexico.

   So if you don’t get tunnel vision on the first 13 it absolutely was colonized by catholics, just not ALL of it.

4. My state was first colonized by the French (including Jesuits).

5. That all depends on if England and Scotland stays catholic in this timeline, since if that’s the case the affects on world history would be incredibly drastic. A variety of the same mechanisms that influenced how the English colonized the Americas would still be around, so it would a still happen, but a large chunk of society would change noticeably. No puritans means New England would be settled differently, there wouldn’t have been a situation like Pennsylvania with complete religious toleration, and the Americas would be significantly more catholic (excluding the populations of the Dutch and Nordic colonies). A large number of Protestant denominations developed in England and the anglosphere, so without a Protestant US then the entire religious landscape of the world would be noticing different.

6. Probably won’t have risen to superpower otherwise, or it would’ve happened later. That Protestant work ethic and the fact that Usury isn’t a sin in Protestantism isn’t to be underestimated.

7. Look at California and Texas and Louisiana !!

8. Having the US founded as a Catholic colony would require rewriting our entire history all the way back to Jamestown. Considering British Catholicism was not a dominant political force, that would mean one of the mainland European powers would have to be the ones doing the colonizing. At that point almost anything is possible. Hitler might even get into art school in this scenario.

9. Alternate history is inherently iffy, by definition.

   Still, there’s a certain, definite anti-Catholic strain to American history that would pretty much have to change or be removed for this one to make any sense.

10. Maryland was originally founded by Catholics. The Catholic Church was at one point the largest slaver holder in MD, and used the sale of slaves to found [Georgetown University](https://www.npr.org/2023/06/13/1181767635/the-272-catholic-church-rachel-swarns-slavery-georgetown).

    So I think slavery might have been worse had the original 13 colonies been colonized by Catholics.

11. I’m certain there would be some significant differences. But I think the biggest differences would be due to the culture of whatever country (Italy, Spain, Ireland, etc) led the colonization as opposed to England.

12. Do people outside the US not realize how many Catholics live here and how influential the Church has been? Remember when Pope John Paul II died? It was like half of the country stopped functioning for a couple days.

    Possibly bias perspective as someone born and raised Catholic.

13. Absolutely. How different would depend on who was doing the colonizing. If Spain or France would have focused on NA particularly as settlement colonies instead of economic it would be a lot different than if England/UK would have sent their Catholic dissenters to NA instead of their Protestant ones. And if a Catholic Native American population would have thrown off their colonial oppressors it would have been more different still.

14. Florida, Louisiana, and Texas (among others) were colonized by Catholics.

15. I’d imagine I’d be writing this in Spanish.

16. I guess everywhere would be Maryland?

17. Solo mira debajo de este país y así sabrás cómo sería este mundo ucrónico.

    La Escuela de Salamanca y sus catedráticos como Francisco Suárez y Francisco de Vitoria, las Leyes de Indias en especial su rectificación con las Leyes Nuevas creadas por la Junta de Burgos, la reproducción de la metrópoli en los territorios conquistados fundando ciudades y en ellas creando universidades que tuvieron alumnos indios y negros, creando además iglesias, puertos, calles, casas de la moneda, imprentas, misiones, etc.

    La creación de gramáticas y diccionarios para las lenguas amerindias, el otorgarle almas a los indios, el mestizaje cultural y sexual entre los tres pilares de la Hispanidad y la Iberofonía (lo ibérico-católico, lo amerindio y lo africano) reconociendo así el matrimonio interracial, el reconocimiento de los títulos de la nobleza india por los reyes españoles, la real cédula de Carlos IV que relgamentaba la esclavitud y el trato de esclavos, la emancipación de los negros de colonias anglosajonas y holandesas que se refugiaban en el Imperio español, y muchísimo más…

    todo lo antedicho demuestra que la Catolicidad y el Imperio español, siendo la Hispanidad una ecúmene cultural y civilización católica influida por el pensamiento humanista del realismo aristotélico-tomista, es más generadora.

18. I guess the French might have been able to pull that off, had they bothered.

    So we’d be jumbo Quebec, basically.

19. The US’s original religious makeup was largely representative of the religious chaos that existed in England and what would later become Germany. In order to re-write the US’s religious history, you’d have to rewrite English and German religious history, too, and that would really change things.