University Pre-Law Advisor and Associate Professor of Political Science, Dr. Kevin Pybas, presented “The Disestablishment of the Catholic Church in Louisiana Territory” at the 2018 Summer Teachers Academy for the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy.
When the United States acquired Louisiana Territory in 1803, Roman Catholicism had been the established religion for over one hundred twenty years, under both French and Spanish rule. When the territory was transferred to the U.S., the Catholic establishment ceased to exist. Dr. Pybas examined the difficulties Catholic officials in the territory had in adjusting to the separation of church and state in a Protestant-majority country and that American (Protestant) civil authorities in the territory had in adapting to the prominence of Catholicism there.