Арканзас штаты католик діоцезінің тарихы

Latin Catholic ecclesiastical jurisdiction in Arkansas, USA

The Diocese of Little Rock (Dioecesis Petriculana) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or diocese of the Catholic Church for Arkansas in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. The Diocese of Little Rock was established on November 28, 1843. The seat of the diocese is the Cathedral of St. Andrew in Little Rock.

After the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the present day area of Arkansas was transferred from France to the United States. At that time, the area was part of the Diocese of Louisiana and the Two Floridas, a vast diocese covering most of the region. The US Government established the Arkansas Territory in 1819. The first Catholic missionary in Arkansas was the diocesan bishop, Louis Dubourg, who visited the Osage Nation in 1820. In 1826, the Arkansas area and the Indian Territory (present day Oklahoma) became part of the Diocese of St. Louis. Lazarist missionaries from Saint Mary's of the Barrens Seminary in Perryville, Missouri had started arriving in Arkansas in 1824 to minister to Native American converts and European settlers. Richard Bole established St. Mary's Mission near Pine Bluff. In 1836, Arkansas became a state. In 1838, Bole brought in five Sisters of Loretto from St. Geneviève, Missouri, who opened the first Catholic school in Arkansas.

In 1906, Pope Pius X named John B. Morris of the Diocese of Nashville as coadjutor bishop to assist Fitzgerald. He was the first native Tennessean to be elevated to the Catholic episcopacy. Upon the death of Fitzgerald in 1907, Morris automatically succeeded him as the third bishop of Little Rock. Morris opened Little Rock College for Boys in 1908 at a cost of $50,000. He also opened St. Joseph's Orphanage in North Little Rock, which was completed at a cost of $150,000 and placed under the care of the Benedictine Sisters, in 1910. He presided over the first diocesan synod in February 1909, and established the first school for Catholic teachers during the following June. That same year, he established the diocesan newspaper, The Southern Guardian. He founded a school for boys near Searcy under the care of Poor Brothers of St. Francis, as well as a school for delinquent girls run by the Good Shepherd Sisters in Hot Springs. He publicly condemned anti Semitism following the Kristallnacht attacks in Germany in November 1938. Although Fletcher in 1964 inaugurated the liturgical use of the vernacular in his diocese, as prescribed by the Second Vatican Council, he did not follow the council's advice on creating permanent deacons. Fletcher closed St. John Seminary in Little Rock in 1967 after some of its faculty publicly questioned the church's stance on birth control and papal infallibility. Fletcher retired as bishop of Little Rock in 1972. The next bishop of Little Rock was Andrew McDonald from the Diocese of Savannah, named by Pope Paul VI in 1972. McDonald instituted permanent deacons in the diocese, largely because of the shortage of priests. He established an anti abortion office in the diocesan curia and led the annual March for Life each January in Little Rock. He also ordained Arkansas's first Mexican born priest and deacon. In 2005, Sartain led more than 5,000 Catholics in a bilingual Eucharistic Congress. During his tenure, the Catholic population in Arkansas rose from 90,600 to over 107,000. Taylor that year became the first American bishop to join the social media website Facebook. In 2007, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican announced that six nuns in the diocese had been excommunicated for heresy, the first instances in diocese history. The women had refused to recant the doctrines of the Community of the Lady of All Nations (Army of Mary). The sect believed that its founder, Marie Paule Giguere, was the reincarnation of the Virgin Mary. Following the issuance of Pope Francis's July 2021 motu proprio Traditionis custodes, Taylor announced that the diocese would no long offer the Tridentine Mass at its parishes. Taylor permitted its continued celebration at two personal parishes operated by priests of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter.

In September 2018, the Diocese of Little Rock released a "preliminary" list of eight diocesan priests who were "credibly accused" of engaging in sex abuse of minors. Taylor acknowledged the history of abuse in the diocese and issued an apology. The list also contained the names of four additional priests transferred by other dioceses to Little Rock to avoid sexual abuse allegations. In August 2019, another alleged victim filed a lawsuit against the diocese and St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Tontitown. The plaintiff accused Joseph Correnti of sexual abuse between 1995 and 2002. Correnti killed himself in 2002.

In 2013, there were 6,913 students in Catholic schools in the Diocese of Little Rock. In the 1960s, there were 11,500 students in the diocese; this was the peak enrollment. During that decade, ten of the Catholic schools in the diocese were for black people. None of those schools remained open by 2013.