Of Wendy Wagner, Barack Obama, and Paula Deen

St Patrick's Church of Irleand (Anglican)

Cathedral, Dublin

I am anxious to get back to the issue of Anglican history but history happens faster than one can chronicle it and there are several items in the past week that I want to address before we go back to what I think will be the most fascinating chapter of Anglican history—the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Communion.  As we have seen the Church of England does not begin with Henry VIII but is an ancient institution going back to the Roman occupation of Britain, perhaps as early as the end of the first century in the common era.  And we have seen that the term “Anglican Church”—Ecclesia Anglicana in Latin—was used for at least three centuries before  Henry VIII ascended the throne.  But I digress.  I want to bring up the fabled bugaboo of the wing-nuts, the right wing wing nuts that is, President Obama.  The crazies are after him for “decrying” Catholic Schools in Ireland and calling for them to be abolished.  Of course, this has nothing to do with the facts, but then the crazies don’t need facts when they have opinions.  Just ask Wendy Wagner of Leesburg Virginia who says that she doesn’t hesitate to tell people how they need to think.  Ah yes—“don’t think for yourself—we’ll do your thinking for you.”  Whether is a dyspeptic matron from Loudon County or a corpulent Cardinal from Rome, no thank you.  God gave me a brain and I will think for myself.  It is I who will stand before the Judge of the Universe some day and be quizzed on my record; it is I who must make the decisions since it will be I who bear the responsibility.  But I digress.
When the President spoke in Belfast last Sunday, June 17^th, he said:

“There are still wounds [in Northern Ireland] that haven’t healed, and communities where tensions and mistrust hangs in the air.” … “If towns remain divided – if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs – if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.”

Northern Ireland has come a long way since President Clinton mediated the “Good Friday Peace Accords” of 1998.  Sectarian violence has receded and Catholics have been given a more proportionate share in the economy as well as government and social services.  But prejudice, anger, and hatred still simmer below the surface.  And the separate schools do not help but provide reinforcement for the stereotypes and intolerance that still run through Northern Ireland society. 

You will notice that the President challenged not Catholic Schools but sectarian schools—Catholic or Protestant—in Northern Ireland.  Don’t compare the situation in Ireland—North or South—to the American experience of Catholic Education.  The Republic of Ireland, which does not include the six counties of “Northern Ireland,” has an excellent system of public schools.  It does not have “parish schools” as we have had in the United States and what Catholic Schools there are, are what we would call “private schools”—rather upper crust and select—and inclusive of students from a variety of religious backgrounds.  Unlike American public schools, there is room for religion in the public school curriculum.  The vast majority of citizens in the Republic are Catholic.  Until the recent scandals the vast majority were devout Catholics.  But the Catholic Priest, Church of Ireland (Anglican) Minister, Methodist and Presbyterian Parson all have access to the school where their congregants study to teach religion to their respective students.  Such public schools put Catholic and Protestant youth on the same teams rather than pitting them against one another.  Friendships are formed across denominational lines.   And the political, social, and economic tensions that continue to divide the Catholic and Protectant communities in the North have long vanished in the South. 

It is a bit of a canard to go after President Obama for “attacking” Catholic Education when he did nothing of the kind.  But then the voices raised against him are the same voices that decry his administration’s lead on health care , immigration reform,  same-sex marriage,  and other contemporary issues. And the dissatisfaction with these policies more often than not is, like this flap over Northern Ireland, based on faulty facts and distorted simplifications.  It becomes obvious over a period of time that the problem is not the issues, but the man.  And what is there about the man that excites such anger?  Hmmm.  The answer is too obvious to name, is it not, Paula Deen?

The Origins of Radical Catholicism VII: The Fight for Catholic Schools part 2

Although the Catholic Bishops of the United States had supported parochial schools since the First Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1840, many parish priests and even a few bishops were entirely content with Catholics attending public schools.  Where bias against Catholics was non-existent or not particularly high, clergy could not see the problem with the public schools that priests and parents were having when anti-Catholics controlled the school boards.  In some places Catholics were excused from bible reading and prayers; in others their attendance was required despite the protests of parents and pastors. 

Probably the most outspoken Churchman in favor of the Public Schools was John Ireland (1838-1918).  Ireland was Irish born but his family had immigrated to the United States—to Saint Paul, Minnesota—when he was still a child.  Entering the seminary, Ireland was sent to France for his education.  This French education exposed him to the liberal strain of French Catholicism which made him suspicious of Rome.  Nevertheless, Ireland was made bishop coadjutor of St. Paul in 1875 and ordinary (bishop of the diocese) in 1884.  In 1888 St. Paul was raised to the status of an Archdiocese with Ireland as its first Archbishop.  Ireland favored public schools and allowed several parochial schools of his archdiocese to be sold to the State of Minnesota with priests and nuns as salaried teachers who taught religion only after regular school hours.  That arrangement would never stand in civil court today but it was a commodious arrangement for both Church and School Boards in several Minnesota towns of that time. 

There were probably several points of agenda beneath Ireland’s stance on Public Schools.  Ireland was a convinced liberal and an ardent Republican.  (Remember that in our last blog I had told you that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Republican Party was the Liberal Party.)  As part of his liberal and Republican stance, Ireland was opposed to foreign-language schools and wished to require English as the only language of instruction.  Ireland was opposed to Europeanization under any and all circumstances.  Immigrants were to be Americanized as soon as possible.   He saw these German (or other language) parochial schools as one of the forces that were preventing the new generation from becoming truly American. 

Ireland said in one speech:

"The public schools are our pride and glory.  The Republic of the United States has solemnly affirmed its resolve that within its borders no cloud of ignorance shall settle upon the minds of the children of its people. In furnishing the means to accomplish this result its generosity knows no limits.  The free school of America!  Withered be the hand raised in sign of its destruction." 

The Germans, for their part, had an ally in their cause for German language schools in Cardinal Melchers, the Archbishop of Cologne.  Melchers is himself a very complex figure but he had extreme credibility among the conservative forces of the Church in Europe—indeed among European Catholics in General.  He had been arrested by Bismark during the German Kulturkampf for his defense of the Catholic Church against Bismark’s secularist  and anti-Catholic administration and would have been deported to German territory in what is now Poland had he not instead fled to the Netherlands.   Consequently he had the status of a living martyr. 

Melchers, like many Germans both in Germany and the United States, saw the German population of the American Republic first and foremost as Germans, not as Americans.  One priest from Germany who came to America to minister to German immigrants wrote:  A German is a German although he has shaken off the dust of his fatherland and everywhere a true German longs for a greater Germany.  I am one of those who want to remain a German. This attitude was not in accord with Ireland’s integrationist philosophy and up and through World War I German Americans would be held suspect for their allegiance.  Melchers delated (made an official complaint) Ireland to Rome for his statement on Public Schools.   

Melchers had no right, of course, to interfere in matters outside his own diocese, but seeing the German Immigrants as Germans believed that he had jurisdiction over them or at least the responsibility of being a sort of “Cardinal-Protector” for them.  The interference of European bishops in American dioceses regarding matters of immigrants from their home countries and dioceses infuriated American bishops, but it betrayed a lack of clear understanding regarding Church authority.  

The image today is Cardinal Melchers, Archbishop of Cologne