The video below boasts, “America loves Italy” and features a Fiat car driving through American towns with Italian names.
If that is the case then America loves Catholicism even more, since thousands of towns and places are named for Catholic saints, themes, and objects. Consider the following:
In California: San Diego, San Miguel, San Francisco, San Bernadino, San Clemente, San Luis Obispo, San Jose, San Rafael, Santa Maria, Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles (aka Nuestra Senora de los Angeles de la Porciuncula), Santa Cruz, Santa Clarita, Sacramento, San Joaquin Valley, San Gabriel Mountains
In Texas: Corpus Christi, San Antonio
In Florida: St. Augustine, St. Petersburg, Port St. Lucie, Santa Rosa Island, St. George Island, Port St. Joe.
And these are just three states! The map at the upper right (which you can click to enlarge) shows thousands of cities, towns, and places named for saints and things Catholic.
What’s in a name? Usually history, honor, and respect. If so, then Catholicism has left its mark on this country whether the secularists like it or not. I wonder when and if they will sue to remove these sorts of names as St Petersburg, Russia once became Leningrad.
Meanwhile, let me borrow the video’s claim and say, “America loves Catholicism!”
Blessings,
Canada may be Saint Central, every street or town in Canada may be Catholic – lol’s 🙂
At Facebook one time, I was at a/the Bible page (maybe Millions of Likes), and there was maybe an Atheist or someone from Christ Church, New Zealand — and I was like, your from a place called Christ Church, and you don’t believe in Church or something, was kind of bold it may of been.
Maybe a year or less after that there was a pretty serious Earthquake in Christ Church, New Zealand it may of been — wonder if it brought sense to the person —
Shalom/Pax
All it really proves is that Catholicism played a pivotal role in the founding of this nation. Revisionist history instituted by secular activist, educators, lawyers, politicians and judges will vilify that vestige in due time. There is also in a town named Uncertain,Texas, on Caddo Lake, which is the only natural large body fresh water lake in Texas. I think the Catholic Diocese of Washington D.C. should start a petition to have the name, Washington D.C. changed to St. Jude. It sounds so fitting being he is the patron saint of lost causes
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Love it! We are here to stay 🙂 I love living in California. Every place just about worth visiting here has its shrine. When i was very young i thought God made California for Catholics LOL!
Hi Candida, glad to know another cali native on the blog. yay!!
Im closest to Mission San Juan Capistrano. Where the sparrows
fly to every Spring.
i would not recommend such a proud display which may serve to fuel atheist secularists even more to work toward what you prophesy here. Disagreement does not always entail disrespect; it may actually entail misunderstanding, wounds, ignorance, and so on. Our reaction to it can fuel what we don’t like or reverse what we don’t like.
That stated, it would be foolish for people to erase names simply because they are Catholic…the precedent could then be applied to any sort of prejudice such as Native American names, Puritan names, cities named after men who fought for the Union or the Confederacy or who ignorantly owned slaves or who established the Whig Party or who was a Quaker, anyone a person wants to make disappear… and so on. Let us not build ourselves up as the only sociological target…to do so makes us a bigger target than we would be otherwise. Right?
Erasing a name is more about hiding realities and dismissing wisdom (as many have done in trying to dismantle moral codes and so on)…sort of like dumb armadillos or ostriches that bury their heads but leave their bodies exposed when hiding. Likewise, removing a name does not remove the reality of history or the mass of wisdom which has developed over time…Still there, name or no name…if the name can be removed, it can later be reapplied.
Nothing triumphalistic. This is light-hearted. I am well aware that the Atheists may well attempt this. But they are not reading me and surely depending on me to come up with ideas for them. They are already full of “ideas”
I know. Thank you for your kind response.
Also, the names are more correctly historically associated with Spain, and not Italy. The architecture of the missions in California is not Italian is it?
Let’s not forget the names of the states “Maryland” and “Virginia.” (Yes, I know there were other reasons for these names, but still….)
I’m sure that the ACLU is hard at work to change the names.
Now, if only we could re-invigorate the Faith is these cities to give the true honor due these great Saints.
In Florida there is also the Town of Saint Leo. On June 4th, 1891, Saint Leo became a Town, making it the oldest incorporated municipality in Pasco County, Florida.
Pasco County is the county just north of the Tampa/St. Petersburg bay area.
The Town of St. Leo is also home to the only Benedictine abbey in Florida, Saint Leo Abbey.
Here in Arizona, there are surprisingly few towns with Catholic names, considering this was Spanish and Mexican land at one time. There’s Guadalupe, San Luis, St. John’s– and that’s about it. The Spanish established a few missions here, but all in all, the region was pretty sparsely populated during that time– unlike my birthplace, California.
It is truly amazing and clearly evident from the fact that so many places in the USA are named after Catolic Saints or Catholic beliefs -like “Corpus Chisti” that the Original Americans were God fearing, God loving and did everything in His name-so much that they said even on the Greenback “IN GOD WE TRUST”..The Settler American in his struggle to live looked upto God for everything. God too was perhaps happy and pleased with the love Americans had for Him then;and so He blessed America with prosperity.Now America and the Americans are materially prosperous.God is secondary.To many an American He is not there; to some -perhaps He is there,to a very few-He is everything.So, the President declares-America is a country of immigrants.With that he underscores the evil necessity of secularism-the living God is gone for now in the US.
America,You cannot change the Names of your places; but regretably your Christian character and values have changed.May the same God who made you prosperous, save your Faith in Him.May the living God be praised in America.
Thank you Monsignor. I wrote a column once on US Counties named after great Catholics. It is here http://catholicism.org/us-counties-named-after-catholics.html
Everyone knows that Protestants do not venerate saints. Nevertheless, sometimes they canonize their own by naming places after some local denizen that they feel deserves the title. At least five cities in the U.S.A. testify to the rather strange anomaly: St. Paul, Texas, is named after W.H. Paul; St. James, Missouri, is named after Thomas James; St. Thomas, Pennsylvania, is named after Thomas Campbell; St. Joe, Texas, is named after Joe Howell; and Saint Michael, Nebraska, is named after Mike Kyne. Catholics are not totally innocent in this regard: Saint Edward, Nebraska, is named after the uncanonized Catholic priest, Edward Serrels.
And I am from Calaveras County (the place called the “skull”), yet where I am, it looks like the Garden of Eden!
What’s in a name? Only God knows why.
Great post! I’ve always wanted to learn multiple languages so I have enjoyed reading your posts on your linguistic journey. I am native English speaker and had the good fortune of being raised bilingual with Spanish. That let me learn Portuguese much easier than other languages I have attempted (German and Mandarin). I think the whole debate about language difficulty is really a matter of where your starting point is. For a Western audience, which this blog is certainly addressed to, I think you make a valid point that learning a non-Western language such as Chinese (Mandarin, I’m assuming for spoken?) is more challenging than another Western language. However, I do wish that these types of comparisons would include the baseline for which they are made. I’m sure many of your readers understand the implicit assumption you are making that as an English speaker who had little or no exposure to non-Western languages prior to attempting to learn Mandarin this would be a more difficult task, however I think it is important to not perpetuate these universal stereotypes on language difficulty, precisely for the reasons you mentioned in your post about turning people off to studying Mandarin. So I hope that as you move through your journey you can be more explicit about the comparisons you are making and where your starting point is. I can also imagine it would be difficult to compare the learning process of a language after having learned a previously new language because you are now in a position with a greater set of skills and tools to improve your language learning ability, such as being able to pick up on subtleties of language grammar, and word elements. Also, one thing I found in learning new languages is how important the cultural context is for language, so I can see how learning in a country where it is spoken can really help to learn the language in ways that are difficult to replicate outside that experience. Best of luck on your journey, I look forward to reading more about your journey.