Jay P. Dolan (March 17, 1936 – May 7, 2023) was an American historian and former Catholic priest who specialized in the history of Catholicism in the United States.
He spent almost his entire career at the University of Notre Dame (1971–2003), where he founded and directed the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism.
The primary narrative context is in fact the developing, indigenous democratic culture in the United States since the end of the American Revolution, and the entry of an apparently foreign Roman Catholicism into this largely Protestant republic, an entry that was not always so easy, nor so acceptable to the majority of an oftentimes apprehensive native population.
[3] According to Martin E. Marty:In any evaluation of the generation that furthered the study of American Catholic history toward the turn of the millennium, Dolan has been a leader recognized across the map of the profession and beyond it.
His writing, his teaching, his service as president of the two main associations in our craft, and his pioneering work at the Cushwa Center poised him well for his central role.