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"How ironic it would be if the “Christian house church” — that concept so dear to the antiquarianizing liturgical revolutionaries who took it as a pretext for their streamlined modern prayer-service — turned out to be the place where the Tridentine Mass in all its medieval and Baroque density, albeit in temporarily humble circumstances, survived the coming persecution of Catholics." New Liturgical Movement.

• Building Home Altar (New Liturgical Movement)
• Private Chapels brought to Light by Social Distancing (Liturgical Art Journal)
• Portable Altars in Malta (Liturgical Art Journal)
• The Domestic Church: The Catholic Home (The Fish Eater)
• A family realizes a longtime dream of a Home Chapel (Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis)

Catholic Persecution and Private Chapels in America

"It was to gain religious liberty that the pioneer Catholics of the old world left their comfortable homes in Europe to brave the unknown hardships of the new Province upon the shores of Maryland; which freedom of conscience they granted to all comers as far as was in their power. But they themselves met with intolerance when English rulers later came into power and sought to enforce the then bigoted laws of Great Britain.

Colonel Bernard U. Campbell in his “Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll” tells us that as late as 1758 an attempt was made to pass a bill to prevent the growth of Popery, by which priests were to be rendered incapable of holding any lands and forbidden to make any proselytes under penalty for high treason; and which further provided that no person educated at foreign Popish seminaries should be qualified to hold land or inherit any estate within the new province.

This bill, which did not pass, seems to have been aimed particularly at John Carroll, who later became the first Catholic Bishop of the New World; Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence; and Robert Brent, afterwards, first Mayor of Washington, who were all heirs to large estates in Maryland and at that time were boys being educated abroad at Catholic institutions.

Colonel Campbell further states that though this bill did not pass, the early Catholics were compelled to pay a land tax exactly double that exacted from others; that Catholic places of worship were forbidden and Catholic education not permitted; that Catholics were declared unfit to hold public office and that the Council even granted orders to take children away from the “pernicious contact of their Catholic parents.”

Nor did these days of intolerance pass until the Revolutionary period had broadened the minds of men and united all Americans in a more truly Christian spirit.

“In 1774 when the Reverend John Carroll returned to America, a priest, it is not believed,” says Colonel Campbell, “that there was a public. Catholic Church in all of Maryland.” “St. Peter's in Baltimore had been begun but never finished, being closed by the authorities.” And it was not until 1776 that the ban against public Catholic worship was removed.

It is not to be inferred from this, however, that Catholicity was crushed out, nor Catholic worship abolished. The well-to-do Catholics of that period had private chapels in their own homes upon their large estates and here the family and its many retainers, would gather for service whenever a faithful pastor came that way in the ministry of his duties. Of these early private chapels, in the vicinity of the present city of Washington are known to have been three: Queen's Chapel, a part of the large estate of Richard Queen, Esq., situated amid the wooded hills of Langdon; the Capitol Hill Chapel of Cern Abbey on the Duddington estate; and one in the manor house of Notley Young near the present corner of Tenth and G Streets S. W., where Father Devitt, Professor of History at Georgetown College says public Mass was first said in Washington, after it was permitted.

Father John Carroll finding this condition of catholicity in 1774 began his ministry from his own home near Rock Creek in the vicinity of Forest Glen. Here his zealous mother had maintained a small private chapel for her own family use and this was the nucleus of the present St. John's Church. After 1776, however, when the law against public Catholic worship was abolished, Father Carroll built an humble frame Church near his home, which was without doubt the first public Church in the vicinity of the District of Columbia. Father Carroll was ordained the first Catholic Bishop of the New World and was later made Archbishop. In 1789, Georgetown College was built with a small chapel attached, which in 1792 was superseded for public worship by Trinity Church, served by the same Jesuit Fathers."

Source: Records, Volume 23,Columbia Historical Society (Washington, D.C.)