| Virtually nothing has been written about Florida Catholicism beyond 1870. Therefore this study imposes an organizational framework on a heretofore unexplored subject. The growth and development of Catholicism in South Florida (i.e., the lower sixteen counties of Florida which became the Diocese of Miami in 1958) from 1868-1968 is the subject matter under investigation. Growth and development is studied from many different aspects: social groupings such as priests, religious, and laity; organizational patterns such as parish-building, education, social services, personnel, ministry to blacks, ministry to Hispanics; leading individuals such as bishops, pastors, women religious, benefactors; structural development such as financing, recruitment, planning, and policy. The historical method used might be called a "synthetic approach" in that it views the totality of Catholicism as expressed in a specific place and time by investigating as many relevant constituent elements as possible in order to grasp the organic whole rather than just one or two segments.; The chronology of the dissertation is divided into the following parts: Chapter I--Frontier Catholicism (1565-1876); Chapter II--Pioneer Catholicism (1868-1914); Chapter III--Catholicism under Nativism and the "Tropical Depression" (1914-40); Chapter IV--Catholicism of Vision and Pragmatic Implementation (1940-58); Chapters V-IX--The Creation of the Miami Diocese, Catholicism of Cuban Exiles, Institutional Development, and the Culmination of an Era (1958-68). Arising from the life of the local Church, this chronology begins with Key West in 1868 when parochial life stabilized and Cuban immigrants arrived, and ends with the creation of the Archdiocese of Miami in 1968, a watershed year for South Florida Catholicism due to the upheavals in American culture, the "spiritual earthquake" created by Vatican Council II, and shifts germane to the Diocese of Miami. The major unifying element and identifying characteristic of the century studied was the missionary character of South Florida Catholicism.; Primary sources consulted include: contemporary books and articles, statistics, newspapers, anniversary souvenirs, manuscript material from thirty diocesan and religious archives, as well as fifty-nine interviews with those who had first-hand knowledge of the events related. |
