Breaking the Race Barrier in 19th century Catholicism

It is Black History Month and this might be a good time to tell the story of the Healy family from Jones County, Georgia, who were able, though somewhat disingenuously, to break through the Race barrier. They are often considered to be examples of nineteenth-century African-Americans who managed to rise to prominence—in the Church, in Education, and in the Military. Their father was Irish and free; their mother, mixed race and slave. Their success is mitigated by the fact that they passed for white, presented themselves (and thought of themselves) as Irish-Americans. Nevertheless, their remarkable achievements demonstrate how People of Color were held back by white prejudice and not by any intellectual or moral deficiency as so often was ascribed to them by the dominant white culture.
The story of the Healys begins when Michael Morris Healy came to Georgia from County Roscommon in Ireland in 1818 and bought a farm near Macon, in Jones County Georgia which he eventually expanded into a 1500 acre plantation. Healy’s family had been farmers in Ireland and Roscommon has some of the best farmland in the Island, but the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw the Roman Catholic middle class being ever more gradually squeezed out by the “Ascendancy” (The Irish playwright Brendan Behan defined the Ascendancy as “A Protestant with a horse” but it refers to the Anglo-Irish Protestant gentry who had built an economic monopoly in Dublin and other cities and who, in the rural areas, by enclosing the land were driving the native Irish into tenancy.) Like many Irish who were finding themselves economically squeezed and politically frustrated by the inability of Ireland to regain its independence from England, life in America offered great possibilities. Michael Healy eventually acquired approximately fifty slaves to farm his vast estate and he took one of these, Mary Eliza Clark (sometimes Smith) as his wife. Mixed race marriage, master and slave, was not uncommon among the Irish immigrants to the Southern States and while it could not be legally recognized—the miscegenation laws prohibited it—it was not regarded as concubinage. Healy was not a devout Catholic but he treated his wife, Mary Eliza, as a wife and they had ten children, nine of whom survived. The problem was that as children of an African-American mother, although probably mixed-race herself, the children were also considered to be black and Georgia law prohibited the education of blacks, slave or free. Michael Healy no more intended to treat his children as slaves than he did his wife, and he sent his children North for their education. The girls went to convent schools in French Canada where all three girls ended up becoming nuns. One of them, Eliza—known in religion as Sister Mary Magdalene—was recognized for her financial and administrative talents and went on to become superior of her order’s convent schools in Vermont and then in Staten Island, New York. Another. Martha, left the convent after eight years and moved to Boston where several of her siblings lived. She later married.
The older sons were sent to a Quaker School in Long Island and then a second Quaker institution in New Jersey, but when their father had a chance meeting with John Bernard Fitzpatrick, the Bishop of Boston, and Fitzpatrick told him about the newly opened Jesuit College of the Holy Cross in Worcester—a school that took boys as young as grammar school age—Healy sent his sons there.
The eldest Healy child was James Augustine, born the year following his parents’ establishing their household. Transferring to Holy Cross from a Quaker school in New Jersey, James was valedictorian for the first graduating class of the new college. Unable to enter the Jesuits because the seminary was in Maryland, a slave State, and he--being of mixed-race lineage--would not be accepted there, he went with Bishop Fitzpatrick’s encouragement to seminary in Montreal from where he later transferred to the Seminary of Saint Sulpice in Paris, one of the most distinguished educational faculties for Catholic clergy in the world. His original intent was to become a Sulpician himself and follow an academic career as a seminary professor, but he changed his minded in favor of pastoral ministry. He was ordained in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1854, the first Black American to be ordained a Catholic priest, and returned to Boston where he had a number of assignments. Bishop Fitzpatrick seemed to have a particular interest in advancing Healy’s career and he was named pastor of Saint James the Greater in Boston, at the time the largest parish in the diocese. He was not only a successful administrator—a gift that seems to have run in the family—but a notable public speaker. He played a crucial role in the rise of the Boston Irish as a political force in the city and the State balancing out, and indeed replacing, the old Yankee (and anti-Catholic) upper crust who had controlled Massachusetts since the days of the Pilgrims and the Puritans. While Bishop Fitzpatrick was aware of Healy’s mixed race ancestry, most Bostonians were not. He presented himself as an Irish American. This was true for the Healy children in general—they passed for white and while Church officials knew their backgrounds it would have been impossible for them to achieve the social and ecclesial positions they did if their interracial background was publicly known. In 1875 Pope Pius IX named James Augustine Healy as the second bishop of Portland Maine. During his twenty-five year episcopate he opened 60 new parishes and almost 70 mission churches in his diocese. The Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire was founded, being split from Portland during his tenure. It would not be until the 1953 episcopal ordination of Joseph Oliver Bowers that the American Church would see another person of African descent ordained a bishop and Bishop Bowers, while he studied in the United States and spent part of his priestly ministry here, was neither native to the United States nor was he appointed to an American See, serving in Africa and in the Caribbean. (Incidentally as of today, Feburary 14th, 2011 Bishop Bowers is still alive and living in the Antilles at age 100) It would not be until 1965 when when an African American—Harold Robert Perry, SVD, would be consecrated as auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
Patrick Francis Healy transferred with his older brothers from the Quaker school they were attending in the mid-Atlantic States to the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA in 1844. Unlike his brother James Augustine, Patrick was able to enter the Society of Jesus upon graduation but the Jesuits avoided the problem of educating him in Maryland where he would have faced legal and social barriers by sending him to Europe for his training. He received the Doctorate from the university of Leuven (Louvain) in Belgium, being the first African-American to receive a doctorate. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1864 and returned to the United States in 1866, taking up a career as a professor of Philosophy at Georgetown College (now University). In 1874 Father Healy was named president of Georgetown College.
Healy is often called “the Second Founder of Georgetown University,” (the first being Archbishop John Carroll who established the school in 1788). And while Georgetown would officially be known as Georgetown College during (and long after) Healy’s tenure, it was he who first began reorganizing Georgetown on a university model by expanding the curriculum and structuring the relationship of the College Proper (Arts and Sciences) to the Medical School (established 1851) and the School of Law (established 1870). He also is responsible for the construction of the large and most distinctive building on campus, named after him, Healy Hall.
A third brother, Alexander Sherwood Healy, also became a priest. Like his older brothers, James and Patrick, he studied at Holy Cross and then went abroad for his seminary work, earning the doctorate in Canon Law in Paris where he studied at St. Sulpice—the same seminary where James had studied. In addition to Canon Law, he was a noted musicologist. Returning to the States he served as Rector at Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross. He died at the age of 39.
A Healy sibling who had a secular career in which he distinguished himself was Michael Augustine. Finding that seminary life was not for him as it had been for his brothers, he went to sea at age 16 working for the American East India Company. Ten years later he applied and was given a commission as a third lieutenant in the Revenue Cutter Service, the predecessor of the United States Coast Guard. His commission was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. When Secretary of State Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia, Michael Healy was stationed in the new territory. By 1880 he had attained the rank of captain and in 1882 was given the command of a ship—The USRC Thomas Corwin—the first African American to command a government vessel. However, like his brothers in the Church he considered himself and passed for Irish American. He served in Alaska until his retirement in 1904, dying later that year. He was well thought of for his integrity by the indigenous peoples of Alaska because of his scrupulously just treatment of them and for his innovative ideas such as introducing Siberian Reindeer as a source of food and clothing for the native people.
The other siblings were not as fortunate. Hugh Healy—who after his parents untimely deaths in 1850—journeyed south, risking his freedom, and brought the three youngest siblings still living in Georgia north, died at age 21 after a boating accident. Eugene, the youngest Healy child and orphaned when he was only two, was never particularly successful and was all but a stranger to the older brothers.
It would be encouraging if we could speak of the Healys as African-Americans who, mostly with help of the Church, broke the race barriers and achieved prominence for their contributions to American civil and religious life. Unfortunately that would be misleading as all the Healy children could—and did—pass for white. While never denying their mother and her mixed-race heritage, they left the South, went where they were not known, considered themselves Irish-American and were thought of by those who knew them to be white. Tragically it is probably the only way for those who lived in the United States—it may have been different for the two daughters who entered the convent in French Canada—to rise to the prominence they did. Even in the North the contributions they made would not have been accepted in the nineteenth century if it were known they were of mixed-race parentage. Nevertheless, to their credit, they did achieve remarkable success in their chosen fields.

Today image is a photo of Patrick Francis Healy, SJ, President of Georgetown University from 1874 to 1882. Though I cannot find information on Georgetown's segregation policy at the time, I presume the university did not accept African-American students during his tenure. Presumking is always dangerous for historians and I would welcome further information.

Is Vatican II in Danger?-- III a closer look behind the scenes

Yesterday we spoke of how the ecumenical and inter-faith agenda of Vatican II has fared in the years since the Council. It might be important to clarify our terms. “Ecumenical” refers to relationships among Christian groups. “Inter-faith” refers to relationships among religious groups that do not share faith in Christ, or relationships between Christians and non-Christian religions. Thus Catholic-Presbyterian dialogues over worship, for example, would be Ecumenical. Catholic-Buddhist or Catholic-Jewish (or Muslim , Hindu etc.) dialogues or collaborative charities, or other efforts would be “Inter-faith.” We obviously have much more in common with other groups that profess faith in Jesus Christ as Son of God and Savior than we do with groups that may recognize him as a Prophet (Islam) or a Holy Man (Hinduism) or who see him as simply a historical or mythological figure. There is therefore a sort of hierarchy of relationships. We have more in common with Jews, for example, than other non-Christian religions as we see that we share with them the Revelation of the Law and the Prophets given to the People of Israel. We share with Jews—and Muslims—the Abrahamic faith in the One God which gives us a closer tie with Islam than with the non-Abrahamic faiths. But while we do not share the faith in the One God revealed to Abraham with Buddhists or Hindus or others there is much truth in the wide spectrum of Asian religions—and indeed many of the indigenous religions of the world and at Vatican II the Catholic Church explicitly acknowledges this truth and affirms that we Catholics do not reject any element of this truth. The Council Fathers declared
The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. (NA para2)
This statement is a bone of contention for many who reject—in whole or in part—the Second Vatican Council. In fact there are three decrees of the Council which are extremely contentious—and I am not counting the decree on the Liturgy among them. That is an entirely separate issue and not nearly as divisive—though it has been divisive enough—as the three I will mention. They are the Decree on Ecumenism (Unitatis Reintegratio), the Decree on Non-Christian Religions (Nostra Aetate), and the Decree on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae). Opponents of the Council claim that these decrees represent a total reversal of the Church’s doctrine from before Council. And they are correct. The second Vatican Council did a 180 degree about-face on what the Catholic Church had taught on Ecumenism, Non-Christian Religions, and Religious Liberty. Some of the opponents of the Council have gone so far as to claim that this reversal, as a rejection of previously defined magisterial teaching, is heresy and therefore the “popes” who have supported it (John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI) are—as heretics—barred from the papal office and that the Chair of Peter is and has been since the Council began—empty. They are called “sede-vacantists” which comes from the Latin for “empty chair” (sede vacante). They reject all and everything about the Second Vatican Council.
A slightly less extremist position are the followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. While they are known mostly for their rejection of the new Liturgy, the Archbishop’s major complaint about the Council was the same complaint of the sede-vacantists, namely that the those three conciliar documents represent a repudiation of doctrines taught by the Popes and Councils and held by the faithful before the Second Vatican Council. Particularly troubling to Archbishop Lefebvre was the Document on Religious Liberty. Lefebvre came from a family whose political (and religious) ties were to a faction in French politics that are dedicated to restoring the Monarchy and reversing the French Revolution. Ever since the nineteenth century there has been a small but dedicated ultra-Catholic faction in France that seeks to establish the ancien regime with its alliance of Throne and Altar. Americans are generally not aware of this but the Catholic Church taught—up until the Second Vatican Council—that the Union of (the Catholic) Church and State was the political ideal and that Catholics had a duty towards political action that would establish the Catholic Church as the official State Religion—with restrictions on and even prohibition of other religious groups—in whatever nation they lived. This doctrine was generally overlooked in the United States as it was on conflict with our Constitution but there are some extreme right-wing Catholics—mostly in the Sede Vacantist group—who do still teach it today. Solange Hertz would be one; Atila Sinke Guimarães is another. This school not only represents a renunciation of the Second Vatican Council, but of Western culture since the Enlightenment with its positive values (I for one do not think all the values of the Enlightenment are positive) of equality of persons under law, freedom of conscience, republican government and other elements that provided the founders of our nation with the foundational principles of the American Revolution and Constitution. We will touch on this topic in future blogs when we treat some of the reasons for Anti-Catholicism in American history. Those voices who, especially in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, claimed that Catholics could not be good Americans actually knew Church teaching better than most American Catholics who did not see a conflict between their Church and their loyalty to the United States—but all that is for the future.
While the Holy See does not take the Sede-Vacantists seriously—and for the most part they, like Mrs. Hertz and her friends—are people who have constructed a bit of psychotic bubble, a universe of alternative realities, both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have made serious overtures to the Lefebvrist camp. Indeed Pope Benedict has lifted the excommunication and received them back into the Church without clearing up the Lefebvrist dissent from the Council. This is problematic for a variety of reasons. First it legitimizes dissent from official Church teaching. Secondly it may require revisiting the Council and its decrees to try to find ways to accommodate the Lefebvrists. This may explain one of the reasons for a reinterpretation—usually claimed to be an “authentic interpretation” of the Conciliar Documents. If this is so it will open yet more issues for while the Lefebvrists are willing to tolerate the existence of the “new liturgy” as long as they don’t have to use it, they are quite firm on rejecting the doctrinal changes that have permitted Ecumenical and Inter-faith relationships to develop on any official level.
When one recalls the heady enthusiasm of the Coinciliar years, Ecumenism has been for the most part hugely disappointing. I don’t think that any of us expected that Inter-religious dialogue would progress beyond the point of mutual respect and collaboration in projects that better the lives of people both locally and around the globe. It still has the promise to do that and in the process we have learned about some common ground that has been mutually beneficial. This has not been without controversy, however, particularly in the area of the influence of Buddhist and Hindu meditation techniques. But we had great hopes for Ecumenism during and after the Council. Forty years ago many of us thought that by this time we would have come to the point of, if not corporate reunion, at least sacramental sharing. There are reasons why this has not happened and not all the blame goes on the Catholic side. As I had written previously, the decision by most Protestant and Anglican Churches in the favor of the ordination of women has been a huge stumbling block . Underneath the surface is also a very different theology of human sexuality, manifest not only in divergent views of homosexuality but in the role of sex in marriage. There is also a different anthropology that gives a different level of urgency to the abortion issue as well as questions of embryonic stem-cells, in-vitro fertilization, genetic engineering and other topics very pertinent to today’s world. But our mistake, I believe, in not making greater progress while there was still much consensus on these other issues, was that we did not talk frankly and openly about our different ecclesiologies and theologies of the Sacrament of Orders. We avoided the tough questions where feelings are sensitive. Now we have several more tough and sensitive questions and it will be all the more difficult to resolve them. Far from backing off from Ecumenical dialogues we need to sit down, indeed chain ourselves to the table, and examine all the neuralgic points in full detail, ready on both sides (or all sides) to listen and open to being convinced (note, I said open, not predetermined). We still need the polite gestures and cordial ceremonial gatherings but we also need “to talk turkey.” Reconciliation will never come about without honest, truthful, frank, conversation, indeed argument. Somewhere here I have passed from history-in-the-making to theological turf where I have sworn not to go, so better to end this here. Next installment of Vatican II—in Danger? will be on the liturgy but probably not for a few days. I want to cover the issues of the nuns on the battlefields of the Civil War first.

The image today is a Buddhist monk with some Catholic Sisters at the beatification of Mother Teresa of Calcutta in 2003

Is Vatican II in danger? II ecumenism and inter-faith dialogue

Two years ago Herbert Chilstrom, the first and former presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, wrote an open letter to the clergy of the ELCA. His primary aim was to try to hold his denomination together in the face of an impending schism over deep divisions springing from sexuality issues, but in the course of his letter he wrote: “How long are we going to live with the illusion that Vatican II is alive and well in Roman Catholicism?” Bishop Chilstrom was referring both to a stalling—if not a chilling—of ecumenical relationships between the Catholic Church and other Christian groups and internal conflicts within the Catholic Church that indicate that the open and hopeful spirit that characterized the Catholic Church in the years during and immediately after the second Vatican Council has been replaced by a slow but determined return to preconciliar doctrines and disciplines. “The illusion that Vatican II is alive and well in Roman Catholicism” is an interesting comment from an outside observer. It is brutally frank, almost offensively so, and yet because it comes from someone outside the Catholic Church itself, it has, if not an objectivity of perspective at least a disinterested neutrality that an insider cannot make.
What are some of the signs that ecumenical and inter-religious relations have taken a step back from the heady days of the Council? The 2000 declaration of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Dominus Jesus, written by then prefect Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and approved by John Paul II sounded one alarm bell. Dominus Jesus declares that non-Catholic Christian churches that have not preserved a valid episcopate therefore do not possess a genuine and integral substance of the Eucharistic mystery and without the fullnes of the Eucharistic mystery they are not “Churches” in the proper theological sense. In fact, the Conciliar decree on Ecumenism, Unitatis Reintegratio had made the same distinction but does so in a more circumspect, even dialogical manner that invited response, conversation, argument, and dialogue. Moreover, the thirty-one years of ecumenical cordiality between John XXIII’s calling the Council explicitly to heal the divisions among Christians and the CDF issuing Dominus Jesus had created an atmosphere of open dialogue and mutual respect that the unilateral tone of Dominus Jesus undercut. The reaction from Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox officials was one of hurt and resentment. To be fair, however, the breakdown in dialogue—or perhaps better put as the dialogues are not officially terminated—the theological impasse resulted not only from the CDF document but also in great part from the decision of the majority of Churches in the Anglican Communion and the majority of Protestant Churches to ordain women to the priesthood and episcopacy or the equivalent offices. This made further dialogue, at least regarding sacramental reunion, appear pointless to the Catholic side of the discussion. Of course, dialogue does not need to have an identified point; a perceived impossibility of agreement might be reason to cease discussion in military and political circles, but there is never a reason for conversation among Christians to break down. Charity and Hope alone are sufficient reason.
It was not only Christians that were offended by Dominus Jesus. The same decree went on to declare non-Christians are seriously deficient in terms of access to the means of salvation in comparison with those who in the Church have the full means of salvation. Again, this does not substantially differ in essence from the decree on non-Christian religions, Nostra Aetate, but its tone of the CDF document is far more typical of the pre-Vatican II dogmatism than the conciliar decree which highlighted that all the great world religions contain elements of truth and that the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true that is held by these various religions. The exact words of Nostra Aetate are:
The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. (NA para2)
Despite reservations about religions other than Christianity, Pope John Paul had reached out to peoples of all religions and no religion in a way that built rapport and trust, empowering Catholics to work with people of good will in addressing many of the challenges which face the human family around the globe. Pope John Paul did not hesitate to join in prayer with representatives of all the various religions of the world. In 1986 and again in 2002 John Paul hosted interfaith assemblies in Assisi. The times of common prayer were very carefully structured to avoid giving the impression that Christians were joining in the worship of deities other than the One God who is recognized by the Abrahamic faiths and the interfaith services tended to be rituals of solidarity rather than actual worship. Nevertheless, then Cardinal Ratzinger made it known that he was uncomfortable with such gatherings and he avoided---I hesitate to say” refused” to attend though that was the impression at the time—the second of these meetings.
The situation is not entirely bleak. While there seems little thaw in the air with the Patriarchate of Moscow, and while the Orthodox Church in Greece is not about to let go of their traditional bias against Catholicism, the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople and the Papacy seem to be gradually becoming more trusting of one another. In one hopeful sign of the good will generated almost fifty years ago during the Council, Pope Benedict has recently announced a third meeting of religious leaders scheduled for this October (2011) in Assisi to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the first encounter. As Cardinal Ratzinger he had not been enthusiastic about these gatherings; it is very significant that now that he is Pope, he is convoking such a meeting, It must be said too that Benedict, always a gentleman, has cordially received various religious leaders at the Vatican and in 2007 did meet with a gathering of religious leaders, Christian and non-Christian, in an effort to discuss how religion might be used for reconciliation and non-violence rather than deepening the divisions in the human family. Nevertheless, the Pope’s own track record with ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue has been less than satisfactory. Anglicans have not been happy at his issuing procedures not only for individuals but for entire parishes and even dioceses to move their fold to the Catholic side. Of course, at least in the United States, far more Catholic clergy (and probably laity) have moved to the Anglican/Episcopalian bleachers than have come over to our team. Benedict’s 2006 lecture at the University of Regensburg deeply offended Muslims when he quoted Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos, as saying “show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” Similarly he offended many Jews when he permitted the restored Tridentine Good Friday Service to contain the traditional prayer for the conversion of “the perfidious Jews.” His reconciliation to the Church of Lefebvrist bishop Richard Williamson, a holocaust denier, also set back the Jewish-Catholic relationship.
Perhaps the saddest thing—and the most fatal—is not what has happened on the official level but the breakdown of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue on the local level. The various ecumenical and inter-faith prayer services seem to have mostly fallen into decline. One does not usually see the clergy in one’s town any longer sharing pulpits or teaching a Sunday School in one another’s churches. Monthly lunches may survive from place to place and friendships do form but over all the ecumenical and interfaith dialogue on the local level is a thing of the past. And now when we need it more than ever as America struggles to integrate a new and—to us—very foreign religious tradition, Islam, into our society.
To do a balance sheet on Ecumenical and Interfaith relations in the last two papacies, one would have to say that we are ahead of where we were before the Council started, and overall we accomplished much in the pontificate of Paul VI and the first half of the pontificate of John Paul II but there has been not only a slowing down but a loss of ground in ecumenical and interfaith collaboration and understanding in the last twenty years. It seems to be more than a loss of steam, a threat to any long-term project; there has been a change of tone away from the dialogic and while not in the preconciliar “unconditional surrender” attitude certainly one of (to paraphrase a current movie) “my game, my rules.”
Today's image: In England the Anglican Dean of York Minster incenses the relics of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux during an interfaith service in the Cathedral two years ago. Ecumenism may not be as healthy as it once was, but it is far from dead.

Is Vatican II in Danger? I

I want to introduce a new line of conversation here—and it reflects a topic that I have been hearing with increasing frequency over the past ten or more years, becoming so frequent that now not a week goes by that I don’t hear it discussed—“What’s going on with Vatican II? Are we going backwards?” Last week I had an opportunity to give a lecture I entitled “Is Vatican II in Danger?” To be honest, I had made a commitment for a talk in a parish and not given sufficient thought to a topic, so I pulled out a paper I had prepared for a more academic lecture last October and trimmed it down to a more popular audience. Both times I gave the talk the reaction from those present was: “I’ve seen things change over the past few years and I was wondering what was happening to the Church?” People had seen the same signs I referred to—signs that the Council was being “reinterpreted” or more bluntly was being dismantled under the guise of a more “authentic” interpretation.
One of the people I have been privileged to know in my lifetime was Archbishop Denis Hurley OMI, Archbishop emeritus of Durban, South Africa. I had met this feisty old gentleman at an annual conference we each attended in Rome and would look for him there each year. I would offer to carry his briefcase and vestment bag and help set him up for the concelebrated mass each day of the Conference. He was an incurable extrovert and recognizing that he had a fascinated audience in me, stuck by my side during these conferences, so that we often took our meals together and sat with each other for the talks. I was only too willing to run and get him a cup of tea and some biscuits at the breaks because the reward was some of the most fascinating stories about the life of a phenomenal man in the midst of the very controversial society (South Africa during and after Apartheid) and a Church that was at times supportive and at times resistant. The Archbishop told me stories about his conflicts with the white regime, about his participation the Second Vatican Council, and his relationships with a wide variety of people from Archbishop Tutu to the then Cardinal Ratzinger. The last time I saw the Archbishop was the end of January 2004 just two weeks before his death. His Grace was a feisty personality and not hesitant to speak his mind. That Tuesday morning when I came into the conference hall and sat next to him, without even saying “hello” he began—“well, I had a meeting with the Holy Father.” (This was just over a year before Pope John Paul II died.) “I said to him: Holy Father, I am an old man and we old men—you understand this, you’re only a few years younger than me—we old men sometimes have problems with our memory. But I distinctly remember: we had a Council. What did you do with it?” The Archbishop was concerned—I won’t say angry, that might be an interpretation—but concerned over issues such as the revision of the work of ICEL (International Commission on English in the Liturgy, a commission which he had chaired for many years.) He rarely criticized directly, most often using humor and incomplete sentences with significant glances to get his point across. I wish now that I had been a more conversant respondent, evoking more explicit statements from him, but if I had fished more eagerly for specifics he may not have been as free-spoken. As I said, I tended to listen and to laugh at his anecdotes, but up to his death he remained not only sharp but slightly acidic when he talked about—not the Church, but the ecclesial bureaucracy.
Let me share a letter that points out some of the reason that the late Archbishop may have been concerned. It is all over the internet and it is from Father Anthony Ruff, a monk of Saint John’s Abbey, Collegeville. Dom Anthony was very involved with the re-constituted ICEL and the production of the “new missal” that will be introduced this autumn. Read his explanation of why he is distancing himself from the missal. You will see another voice that is concerned that we are sliding back down the mountain from the goals that the Popes and Bishops of Vatican II set for us. This is an open letter to the American Bishops, Archbishops, and Cardinals. The fact that it is “open” means that Father wanted to share it with the whole Church and that is perhaps his principal point—the Church is not a body of bishops, it is the whole People of God and there must be mutual respect and accountability.

Your Eminences, Your Excellencies,
With a heavy heart, I have recently made a difficult decision concerning the new English missal. I have decided to withdraw from all my upcoming speaking engagements on the Roman Missal in dioceses across the United States. After talking with my confessor and much prayer, I have concluded that I cannot promote the new missal translation with integrity. I’m sure bishops want a speaker who can put the new missal in a positive light, and that would require me to say things I do not believe.
I love the Church, I love the sacred liturgy, I love chant in Latin and English, and I treasure being involved with all these as a monk and priest. It has been an honor to serve until recently as chairman of the music committee of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) that prepared all the chants for the new missal. But my involvement in that process, as well as my observation of the Holy See’s handling of scandal, has gradually opened my eyes to the deep problems in the structures of authority of our church.
The forthcoming missal is but a part of a larger pattern of top-down impositions by a central authority that does not consider itself accountable to the larger church. When I think of how secretive the translation process was, how little consultation was done with priests or laity, how the Holy See allowed a small group to hijack the translation at the final stage, how unsatisfactory the final text is, how this text was imposed on national conferences of bishops in violation of their legitimate episcopal authority, how much deception and mischief have marked this process—and then when I think of Our Lord’s teachings on service and love and unity…I weep.
I see a good deal of disillusionment with the Catholic Church among my friends and acquaintances. Some leave the Catholic Church out of conviction, some gradually drift away, some join other denominations, some remain Catholic with difficulty. My response is to stay in this church for life and do my best to serve her. This I hope to do by stating the truth as I see it, with charity and respect. I would be ready to participate in future liturgical projects under more favorable conditions.
I am sorry for the difficulties I am causing others by withdrawing, but I know this is the right thing to do. I will be praying for you and all leaders in our church.
Pax in Christo

“handling of the scandal” “secretive…process” “little consultation” “allowed a small group to hijack” “unsatisfactory” “was imposed” “violation of their legitimate episcopal authority” “deception and mischief” I am sure Dom Anthony is going to get nine kinds of hell—not from his Abbot or community—but from the very people he had served in his work on the liturgy for his frankness. Here we have someone saying “The emperor has no clothes!” This is the role of the Religious priest, brother or sister—to be prophetic, to raise their voice and start leaping around and pointing like a mad person announcing that the Emperor is walking down the street—thinking himself clad in magnificent cope and miter—but in fact quite nude.
History is not about the past. Those who study the past for its own sake are not historians, they are antiquarians. Antiquarianism is fun. You get to play dress up and pretend you live in some sanitized version of the days of Yore. History is using the past as a means of talking about the present and the future. It requires thought and analysis. In looking at “What is happening to Vatican II” we get to see history as it unfolds—a rare opportunity. I won’t be doing a steady diet of it. I have a lot more to say about the history of anti-Catholicism in the United States as well as the role of Religious Women—both in the Civil War and in the life of the Church in the States. I am anxious to get back and look at the development and construction of St Peter’s Basilica and I am trying to figure out how to approach a history of the Liturgy in the West. So this episode on Vatican II and whether or not it is in danger is only one topic but I think it will be an interesting one and probably take about a dozen postings over the next month. It is not as interesting as Whispers in the Loggia, but I bet it gets me “reported” to somebody or other. There is more than one wicked witch of the west and each has her flying monkeys.

The image today is the dome of St. Peter's taken from the Apostolic Palace

Catholics in the American Civil War: The South

Well, we looked at the contribution of the Yankee bishops to the War. While the Catholics in the Confederacy didn’t have any bishops like Leonidas Polk, the Episcopalian Bishop of Louisiana, who traded his pastoral staff for a rifle and took up arms—accepting commission as a General in the Confederate Army (he died at the 1864 battle of Pine Mountain, Georgia—killed by a Union Shell), they did have their share of loyal prelates.
Patrick Neeson Lynch (1817-1882) was bishop of Charleston South Carolina from 1857 until his death. In 1864 he was named ambassador of the Confederate States of America to the Papal States. The relationship of the Confederacy and the Papacy is somewhat confusing due in part to the difference of the Papal States as a political unit and the Holy See which has Diplomatic but not political status. As far as I can ascertain the Papal States gave diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy but the Papacy itself, the Holy See, did not. The Holy See may have felt some impossibility of recognizing the Confederacy—especially at this point of the war when slavery was a clearly identified issue—given the univocal condemnation of slavery by Gregory XVI in 1836 which punished with interdict anyone who supported slavery or the slave trade in any way or form. While this punishment seems never to have been invoked, and the Holy See certainly turned a blind eye to the problem of Catholics owning slaves and prelates condoning the practice, Lincoln by the Emancipation Proclamation, had maneuvered European nations into a very delicate position whereby support for the Confederacy implied a support of the slavery system. In the event, Pius only received Bishop Lynch in his capacity of a bishop and not as an ambassador. I will need to do considerable more research to fully appreciate the fine line that the Pope seemed to be drawing, but for the purposes of this blog about support for the Confederacy, we can simply say that Bishop Lynch accepted the position of ambassador from President Davis for the Confederate States.
The French born Jean-Marie Odin, Archbishop of New Orleans, was also a supporter of the Southern Cause in the War. Pius IX wrote Odin, as he had written Hughes in New York, to try to mediate a peace but neither Government was interested in papal mediation. Odin supported the Southern cause while, as so many, he protested that he abhorred slavery. To be fair to him not everyone who supported the Southern Cause supported Slavery any more than everyone who stood for the Union opposed it. There are Constitutional Questions, namely can a State secede from the Union into which it had freely entered? Another way of looking at it is are we “The United States” or “These United States”—in other words do the States surrender their sovereignty when they come into the Union. It was the Civil War that answered effectively a question Constitutional scholars had been debating without resolution. Archbishop Odin, like other supporters of the Confederacy, recognized sovereignty as lying with the States and saw the Union as a foreign aggressor. A “radical” priest in his Archdiocese, Father Claude Paschal Maistre, saw things very differently. Father Maistre, like the Archbishop, was French born. Unlike the Archbishop he had been to seminary in France and ordained there before coming to work in Louisiana. Arriving in 1857 in the Archdiocese of New Orleans he worked among the Afro-Creole population for whom he developed a great sympathy and an outrage at slavery. Maistre served as volunteer chaplain to three regiments of Black Native Guards. New Orleans, while a Confederate city, had fallen to Captain David G. Farragut’s Squadron and was occupied by Federal Troops from the end of April 1862. The Federal occupation force encouraged the formation of African-American Militia both to balance any organized rebel attempts at resistance and to humiliate the white citizenry by giving Black militia responsibility to keep order over them. Maistre’s relationship to this Militia did not endear him to the white community and put Odin under pressure to deal with this priest who was sympathetic to the cause of the Blacks.
Slavery was simply a social and economic fact of life in Louisiana at the outbreak of the Civil War. While the Archbishop may not have liked it, the vast majority of his clergy and laity not only accepted it as a fact of life, but depended on it in one way or another for their lifestyles and for their livelihood.

In 1862 Félix-Antoine-Philibert Dupanloup, Archbishop of Orleans in France, wrote a strong pastoral letter condemning slavery. In September 1863 President Lincoln published his preliminary draft of the Emancipation Proclamation and Maistre, whose views had been formed in part by Dupanloup’s letter, decided to “celebrate” Lincoln’s proclamation. He announced that as of January 1, 1863—the day the Emancipation Proclamation became effective—he would no longer maintain three separate sets of sacramental registers—the books that record baptisms, first-communions, confirmations, and weddings—as diocesan policy required separating whites, mixed-race, and blacks into separate archives, but would have one set of books for all and would enter names into the sacramental books regardless of race. In April he presided at a mass celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation and declaring in his sermon that the Proclamation was the first step towards equality of the races. This sent the white citizenry over the brink and Odin ordered Maistre out of his parish and to a monastery for penance. The Union Military Occupational Force, however, ordered Maistre to continue his pastoral work among the Blacks.
Now before we go further, Maistre—like most of us—was not a man of unquestionable integrity. There had been some financial improprieties while he was still in France. Moreover when he had first come to the United States he worked in the dioceses of Detroit and Chicago where there were rumors of some moral irregularities as well as doctrinal laxity and financial improprieties. Maistre was a financial wizard and while he was able to raise considerable funds for building a church for his parish and providing for a wide host of charities and benevolent societies it is not unreasonable to suspect that he may have profited personally as well. Moreover, Archbishop Odin and he had clashed over finances previously and the Archbishop ended up having to pay him several thousand dollars, Odin suspecting that Maistre had swindled him. In other words, Odin had a personal grudge against Maistre—and not without reason—and Maistre’s own soul seems to have been a bit of a checkerboard of sin and grace.
When Maistre did not leave the parish, Odin suspended him from priestly duties and put the parish under interdict. While the white parishioners fled, the Blacks did not. When the body of Andre Cailloux, a captain in the Native Guard who had died heroically in the battle of Port Hudson, was returned for burial in New Orleans, Maistre preached a moving eulogy to a crowd of ten thousand mourners—almost all African-American. We will treat more of Father Maistre in the future, but suffice it to note here that his identification with the Black community of New Orleans led to an irreconcilable breach with Odin, despite Maistre’s efforts to seek a reconciliation and restoration of his good standing. That came only after Odin’s death when the new Archbishop was able to regularize his situation. The episode gives a strong impression, and not unfounded, that Odin was anti-black rights and anti-Union.
The third, and final, prelate to mention is William Henry Elder, bishop of Natchez. Natchez was a Confederate stronghold and in some ways the heart of the “Gone with the Wind Society” of large antebellum plantations with hundreds of slaves, genteel southern ladies and gentlemen, and that life that was so refined on the surface and cruel beneath. The city surrendered to Captain David G. Farragut in May 1862, shortly after the Fall of New Orleans, but was not occupied by Union Troops until eleven months later. It was still later, in 1864, that the Union Military Commander ordered prayers in all the churches for the President of the United States. Bishop Elder refused. He actually wrote to Lincoln whose Secretary of War assured him he would have the order rescinded. Elder wrote a letter to Secretary Stanton thanking him and asking him to make sure the military commanders were notified. Apparently they were not, for the next two commanders both noted the order for prayers for the President were not being obeyed and the second of these, a General Mason Brayman—no friend of Catholics—had Bishop Elder jailed. He was released several weeks later under orders from the Department of War. Elder went on eventually become Archbishop of Cincinnati in 1880. As Elder was a native of Baltimore, it can be surmised that he was pro-South. His refusal to have prayers said for the President of the United States has been variously interpreted as being a question of Religious Freedom and as an act of resistance against the Union. It served to make many Northern Protestants suspicious of Catholic loyalties to the United States.
I think we are going to shift to a new—and somewhat current—topic: What has happened to Vatican II, or as I titled a lecture I gave a few weeks ago “Is Vatican II in danger.” However, we will keep this strand alive, returning to it in a few days to talk about the role of nuns in the Civil War and the role of Catholics in the Lincoln Assassination. And then too we have to get back eventually to some of our European topics and I particularly want to talk about the building of Saint Peter’s basilica.

The image today is a portrait of Bishop William Henry Elder, Bishop of Natchez Mississippi, who refused a military order to have prayers offered for the President of the United States during the city's occupation by federal troops

Catholics in the American Civil War: the North

While many Protestant denominations, Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians among them, broke apart over the issue of slavery or their respective regional alliances, common allegiance to Rome kept the Catholic Church united during the American Civil War. Nevertheless, while the Catholic Church remained intact, it certainly was not of one mind over the political issues of the day. As in the Protestant denominations, the Bishops—and presumably their clergy and laity—found their strongest allegiance to their particular region.

In the Union, the strongest Catholic voice supporting the Union was New York Archbishop John Hughes. Hughes was a close friend of and regular correspondent with Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward. While Seward was an Episcopalian, his prominence in New York politics—he had been Governor (1839-1842) and served New York in the United States Senate (1849-1861) led to contact with and then friendship with Hughes. In the Seward Home in Auburn NY, among the dignitaries whose portraits grace the hall and main stairway is Archbishop Hughes. One of the challenges facing the Union was raising troops—and keeping them—and the New York Irish were a valuable resource to the Union Army. Hughes played a leading role in the recruitment of Irish troops to the national cause. Lincoln invited Hughes to meet with him and his cabinet in October 1861—he wanted to offer Hughes an official position as Jefferson Davis was offering one to Bishop Lynch of Charleston. Hughes declined the office but agreed to visit Europe to explain the Union cause to the Pope and to the French Emperor, Napoleon III. Hughes hoped—in vain—to forestall a papal recognition of the Confederacy, but he had more success with the French Imperial Court which was also considering, along with Great Britain, in giving formal recognition to the Confederate government. Such diplomatic recognition would have given the Confederacy an internationally recognized legitimacy which the Union wanted, indeed needed, to prevent.
Another danger to the Union was a possibility that Britain would not only recognize the Confederacy but send troops to help the South defend itself against the North. Hughes was an inveterate Irishman, native to Ireland, and no friend of the British. He used his contacts in Ireland to make sure that the British understood that the Irish who had fought for the British crown in the Crimea and in India, would not fight against the United States. Moreover, Hughes recruited several Irish officers fighting in the papal armies—John Coppinger, Myles Keogh, Daniel Keily, and Joseph O’Keeffe—to come and fight in the Union Army. Coppinger would eventually attain the rank of General while Keogh would die with Custer at the Little Big Horn.
In the summer of 1863 New York was racked by draft riots. Four hundred and forty-three people were arrested, one hundred twenty eight were injured, and more than fifty were killed protesting the new draft laws designed to replenish the Union Armies as the war dragged on. These riots were the biggest demonstration of civil strife to date in the United States. Over a hundred buildings were burned to the ground and several hundred more were severely damaged. Much of the rioting was from the Irish immigrant community who had come here looking for work not for a war in which they, as recent immigrants, felt no compelling interest.
Hughes was already terminally ill (he would die the following January) but he called a rally at Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral where he declared “no blood of innocent martyrs, shed by Irish Catholics, has ever stained the soil of Ireland.” I am not quite sure how that was relevant to the issue, but it sufficed to quiet the populace and suppress the riots.
Other Yankee bishops did not achieve the national acclaim that Hughes did for their support of the war but the hierarchy in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States was solidly behind the Union cause. Bishop John Bernard Fitzpatrick of Boston made a trip to Europe during the war, ostensibly to Belgium for his health but seemingly also making political contacts on behalf of the Union Cause. The Border States were another issue. Archbishop Martin John Spalding of Louisville was a Confederate sympathizer and published a pro-Confederacy article in L’Osservatore Romano, the official press of the Holy See. The Archishops of Baltimore, Francis Patrick Kenrick, and Saint Louis, Peter Richard Kenrick, were brothers and they both headed dioceses where the Union cause was very unpopular and consequently they remained very non-committal about the political conflicts of the day which, under the circumstances, gave the appearance of being pro-Confederacy. This was probably not fair. Peter Richrd Kenrick—when the war was over—was an ardent supporter of the radical reconstruction severity designed to punish the former Confederate States.
The Bishops of Ohio and Indiana were not very enthusiastic about the war either. Ohio, and even more Indiana, were heavily rural states and while they were free states, the farmers in the southern part of Ohio and Indiana felt more in common with the rural south than the industrial north. Strong prejudice among the rural farmers against people of African descent did not serve to stir pro-Union loyalty either. Despite Archbishop Purcell’s support of the Union cause, the assembled bishops at a Provincial synod in Cincinatti in May 1861, a month after the war began, issued the following evasive statement.
It is not for us to enquire into the causes which have led to the present unhappy condition of affairs. This enquiry belongs more appropriately to those who are directly concerned in managing the affairs of the Republic. The spirit of the Catholic Church is eminently conservative, and while her ministers rightfully feel a deep and abiding interest in all that concerns the welfare of the country, they do not think it their province to enter into the political arena. They leave to the ministers of the human sects to discuss from their pulpits and in their ecclesiastical assemblies the exciting questions which lie at the basis of most of our present and prospective difficulties. Thus, while many of the sects have divided into hostile parties on an exciting political issue, the Catholic Church has carefully preserved her unity of spirit in the bond of peace, literally knowing no North, no South, no East, no West. Wherever Christ is to be preached and sinners to be saved, there she is found with ministrations of truth and mercy. She leaves the exciting question referred to previously where the inspired Apostle of the Gentiles left it, contenting herself, like him, with inculcating on all classes and grades of society the faithful discharge of the duties belonging to their respective states of life, knowing that they will all have to render a strict account to God for the deeds done in the flesh, that this life is short and transitory, and that eternity never ends. Beyond this point her ministers do not consider it their province to go, knowing well that they are the ministers of God, who is not a God of dissension, but of peace and love.
Had this wise and considerate line of conduct been generally followed throughout the country, we are convinced that much of the embittered feeling which now unfortunately exists, would have been obviated, and that brotherly love, the genuine offspring of true Christianity, instead of the fratricidal hatred which is opposed to its essential genius and spirit, would now bless our country, and bind together all our fellow-citizens in one harmonious brotherhood. May God, in his abounding mercy, grant that the sectarianism which divides and sows dissensions, may gradually yield to the Catholic spirit which breathes unity and love!
If it were not for a few jibes at their Protestant neighbors, this would seem an irenic statement but it is not consistent with the Catholic Church's support for American military policy in other wars--from the Revolution down to today's conflict in Afghanistan. Its failure to support the Union cause, despite the pious--indeed smarmy--words, was read as an endorsement of secession and its lack of patriotic commitment would never have come from John Hughes.

American Catholics in the Civil War

Let’s take a look at the role of Catholics in the American Civil War. In the two decades before the war many of your large Protestant denominations (Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians) broke apart into Northern and Southern Churches. The issue, of course, was slavery, an issue that was dividing the country. As the abolitionist movement grew strong in the North and as the South became more and more defensive of its "pecuiliar institution," the unity of these denominations inevitably fractured—and would not be healed for decades. The Episcopal Church fared somewhat better, undergoing a “separation” rather than a division as the dioceses in the Confederacy organized themselves into “The Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America,” without undergoing any doctrinal or canonical division, retaining the same prayer-book while praying for different presidents and Congresses.. The Episcopal Church in the Confederate States, decidedly more "Low Church" in tradition than the more "High Church" North, had the distinction of a Bishop-General when Leonidas Polk, Bishop of Louisiana traded in his rochet and chimere for Confederate gray and accepted a commission in the Army as a General. Bishop Polk was killed in the battle of Pine Mountain Georgia by a Union shell in 1864. Division was not on the agenda for Lutherans either as most Lutherans, indeed almost all, lived in the Union and were either loyal to it or, especially the Scandinavians, were obliviously indifferent to the conflict which had no direct bearing on their rural farm life in Minnesotta and the Dakotas. (Lutherans were already fractured along ethnic lines—Swedes, Germans, Norwegians, Estonians, Danes, and their divisions were often as bitter as the North-South divisions tearing the country apart.)
For Catholics division or even separation was not a possibility as their common allegiance to the Papacy held them in communion—if not agreement—with one another. The Papacy itself had a rather ambigious record on the issue of slavery until Pope Gregory XVI in 1839 issued the bull Supremo Apostolatus which condemned both the institution of slavery and the slave trade. Not all Catholics rallied to the papal teaching. Catholic officials in the United States, Brazil, and other nations which still legalized slavery were not inclined to preach against slavery, Catholic slave owners—including the clergy—did not sell their slaves, much less emancipate them. (The American Jesuits had been ordered by Rome earlier in the century to get rid of their slaves and they did.) Perhaps one of the more embarrassing responses from a Catholic was that of Roger Taney, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court (and the only Catholic to serve in that position until the current Chief Justice, John Roberts). Taney was a devout Maryland Catholic. He had freed his own slaves and he “regretted” slavery. Nevertheless, he is responsible for the infamous Dred Scott decision declaring: “It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in regard to that unfortunate race which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and adopted; but the public history of every European nation displays it in a manner too plain to be mistaken. They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far unfit that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” He further declared that Blacks—free or slave—were not and could not be citizens and that Congress had not authority to regulate slavery in the territories. In terms of dissent from Church teaching, Taney’s action would be as if today Justice Roberts or any other Catholic Justice on the court ruled that neither the States separately nor the Federal Government collectively could limit access to abortion. It was a shocking contradiction to the magisterium yet Taney’s dissent from magisterial teaching was in no way punished by Church authorities of his day. This was despite Pope Gregory’s admonition in Supremo Apostolatus: "We further reprobate by our apostolic authority all the above described offences (slavery and the slave trade) as utterly unworthy the Christian name; and by the same authority we rigidly prohibit and interdict all and every individual, whether ecclesiastical or laical, from presuming to defend that commerce in negro servitude under any pretence or borrowed excuse. … or to teach or publish in any manner, publicly or privately, things contrary to the admonitions which we have given in these letters." Pretty clear, huh? By "interdict" Gregory meant of course that any one supporting slavery or the slave trade was to be denied the sacraments and other rites of the Church. It was never enforced against Mr. Justice Taney or any other person--official or citizen--as far as I know, Of course Pope Gregory also had written that race was not to be a barrier to Holy Orders, but no American seminary would accept an Afro-American candidate. It was only in 1886 that Augustus Tolton, the first African American ordinandus, was ordained to the priesthood and that was after being sent to Rome for his educaiton to get around the refusal of the American seminaries to admit him. (There is the case of the Healy brothers whose mixed race lineage allowed them to passé blanc. We will do a blog on them in the future.) Regardless of papal declaraitons, it would not be until the Civil Rights movement in the mid-twentieth century that most Catholic seminaries and religous orders would accept African-Americans and candidates. But Father Tolton is long after the Civil War and we have wandered too far--more to come when we get back to the topic of American Catholics in the Civil War.
The image today is Roger B, Taney, the first Catholic to serve as a justice of the United States Supreme Court and the first Catholic to serve as Chief Justice. He was appointed to the Court as Chief Justice and served from his appointment in 1836 until his death in 1864, He handed down the infamous Dred Scott decision which declared that slaves were property and Blacks, free or slave, could never be citizens.