Religion

If you know anything about American history, you know the country was founded on the principle of religious tolerance. If you're more advanced, you know it depended on which religion.

Strange as it may seem today, it was illegal to practice Catholicism in Massachusetts until 1780, and the first public Mass wasn’t celebrated until eight years later. However, by 1808, so much progress had been made that Pope Pius VII created the Diocese of Boston, which then encompassed all of New England. The community continued to grow throughout the 19th century, and by the early 1900s was a significant part of the Boston community, greatly bolstered by the waves of Irish and Italian Catholics immigrating in the US. The Catholic community had come of age, from newcomers with customs often perceived as strange, to being ever present at public events and in local, state, and national politics. This book traces the evolution of the Catholic community and its relationship with the larger Boston community, from its very humble beginnings in the 18th century through the death of influential Cardinal Richard J. Cushing in 1970.

Through captivating images and narrative, read why the historic St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church has endured for 150 years as a source of service and faith-based community in the small town of Marion, Massachusetts.

St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church was founded in 1871, when Adm. Andrew Harwood decided to retire in Marion, Massachusetts, and fulfill a promise that he had made to the archangel Gabriel after surviving a fierce storm at sea. Initially a church for Marion’s summer residents, it became a year-round church in 1896. In 1899, the national press corps lined up outside the church to glimpse the wedding of the country’s most famous journalist, Richard Harding Davis, to artist Cecil Clark. Beginning in 1913, the chapel was enhanced with 11 stained-glass windows designed for the church by Charles J. Connick, the most famous American stained-glass artist of the 20th century. The church was later expanded after the acquisition of adjacent land and the construction of a parish hall, church school buildings, and a new sanctuary. In the 1950s, the church began having full-time rectors. Today, the church has 300 family members on its rolls and will celebrate 150 years in 2021. Judith Westlund Rosbe, a local author, historian, and past president and treasurer of the Sippican Historical Society, has been a resident of Marion since 1977. She is the parish historian of St. Gabriel’s Episcopal Church and has been a member of the board of directors of the Sippican Historical Society since 1978. This is her sixth local history book about Marion.