Foundations of the Anglican Church C

Old Ship Meeting House in Hingham

MA, an example of Puritan worship

space.

Robert Browne (c1555-1633) had studied at Cambridge where he fell under Puritan influence.  He served as a Lecturer at Saint Mary’s Church, Islington—at the time a wealthy suburb of London and today right smack in the middle of London.  A Lecturer was a lay preacher—a man with sufficient theological education to preach but not ordained.  Lecturers were very popular among the Puritan segment of the Church of England which stressed preaching, while the Episcopal faction generally preferred to limit preaching to those in Holy Orders and so tie it closer to formal worship.  It should be pointed out that the clergy of the Church of England, even before the Reformation, were all University men, educated at either Oxford or Cambridge.  Cambridge had always been the more theologically radical and what one might today call “low Church.”   Browne returned to Cambridge after several years at Saint Mary’s Islington and was encouraged to take Holy Orders, but shortly after ordination gave up hope that the Church of England could be reformed from within.  He attempted to set up a separatist congregation at Norwich—that is an independent congregation not under the bishop but ruled by its own members—and was arrested for doing so.  Powerful family connections won him his freedom but not tolerance of his ambitions for a separate Church. He and his followers moved to Middleburg in the Netherlands where they could form an independent congregation.  Browne and others like him believed that the Churches of the New Testament were such independent congregations, each having their own pastor and each being self-governing.  Browne was reacting against two things: the authority of the State over the Church and its policies (remember, the Church of England was a State Church and thus governed by Parliament) and an established hierarchy in which bishops had authority over a number of congregations, thus usurping the authority of the congregation’s local pastor.  Browne’s understanding of primitive Church governance was a bit naively romantic, but at the same time was closer to the post-Apostolic Church of the 2^nd and 3^rd centuries than the diocesan authority structures of either contemporary Catholicism of Anglicanism. 

In any event, Browne soon gave up on his separatist notions and returned to the Church of England which he served as headmaster of several schools and rector of Achurch in Northamptonshire.  (Achurch is the name of the parish.)  He died within the Anglican Communion though he had founded the separatist movement.  

Richard Clyfton was an Anglican priest of the Puritan faction appointed to the Church of All Saints, Babworth.  Despite his holding a benefice in the Church of England, he followed Browne and became a Separatist.  Among the members of his congregation which met at Scrooby Manor was William Bradford who was one of the leaders of the Pilgrim emigration to Massachusetts Bay. 

While the Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth were Separatists and rejected the authority of the Church of England—both its bishops and its supervision by Parliament—the majority of settlers in Massachusetts Bay Colony were Puritans who in the 1620’s and 30’s still considered themselves members of the Church of England.  However as under James, and even more under his son, Charles I, (reigned from 1625 until his execution in 1649), the Church of England moved increasingly away from the Calvinist/Puritan ideals towards a recovery of its Catholic liturgical heritage and Arminian doctrine; consequently the co-existence of the Puritan faction and the Episcopal faction in the same Church of England became more and more strained.  In the New England colonies there were no bishops and no royal officials who could insist on worship conforming to the Book of Common Prayer.  Ministers and Congregations were free to do more or less as they wished, while back in England non-conformity was dealt with with an increasing severity.  It was only a matter of time until the tension between the two factions would set off an explosion that would shatter the Church of England.  And it would do more than that, it would bring down the monarchy. 

I think this is a particularly important period for us to look at.  Increasingly since the Second Vatican Council the Catholic Church, at least in the English speaking world (and too a lesser extent in France and Germany) has also seen a division between two distinct visions of Church.  This is not totally new, at least here in the United States where the recusant tradition of the old Maryland Catholics gave a markedly different Catholicism than the immigrant tradition brought over from France during the French Revolution and later from the German, Italian, and Eastern European Catholics who settled here in the 19^th century.  The different Episcopal styles of Ambrose Maréchal and John England in the early 19^th century or the conflicts between Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Corrigan in the late 19^th century witness to two distinct—and to some extent incompatible—ecclesiologies in American Catholicism.  Today we see the Church of Cardinals Burke and Archbishop Cordileone and Bishop Finn and its very different style than the Church of Cardinal O’Malley and Archbishop Cupich.   Like the Church of England in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries we can live together in the same broad communion, but how far will this last without breaking?  Certainly Burke or O’Malley or Cordileone or Finn or Cupich will never break bonds with Peter in Rome and thus with one another, but there is a rising tension among priests and peoples that might easily snap the cords, each accusing those of the other side of betraying the tradition.  As a historian I think that not only is schism a possibility but that it is all but inevitable unless we are willing to allow for a pluriformity of Catholicisms in which legitimate differences of discipline and even doctrine are respected.  A rigid uniformity, on the other hand, will be very detrimental to the future of the Church.  

When Bishops Forgot They Were Called To Be Apostles cont.

Cardinal O'Connell's mansion in Brighton MA

News accounts say that Archbishop Myers is going to be presented with a petition of 17,000 people—not all from the Newark Archdiocese—to sell his retirement home to which he has been adding a 3,000 square foot addition at the projected final cost of a million dollars.  (The $500,000 construction cost covers neither the architectural fees nor the furnishings and landscaping.)  Personally, I think it is all a tempest in a teapot.  I can’t say that I am disappointed in the Archbishop for providing himself with such a lovely home; when it comes to evangelical values, my expectations of His Grace of Newark—and of most of his fellows on the Episcopal Bench—are low.  There is, as I am pointing out in this series, a long established precedence of the hierarchy fulfilling their role as “princes of the Church” rather than as worthy successors to the Apostles.  Of course Christ had Apostles and Disciples, not princes—but it has never stopped the Church hierarchy from improving on Christ’s original design. 
I debated a bit on including Archbishop Corrigan in this series as his fault was not so much the personal extravagance of  a Myers or a Gregory, as it was overlooking the material needs of his faithful in order to “fit in” with the WASP establishment of Upper-Crust New Yorkers.  I must admit—in full disclosure—that I have always detested Corrigan for his role in the McGlynn case and his opposition to the liberal policies of Gibbons, Ireland and the other Americanists.  So let the reader be aware of my biases and make the necessary corrections in his or her mind. 
While Corrigan lived comfortably in his Fifth-Avenue mini-mansion (mini, that is, compared to the Villard mansion across Park Avenue or the Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Astor, Frick or other Robber Baron establishments), there was a new breed of bishops coming along that would not settle for the comparative modesty of the Cardinal’s House adjoining the Cathedral. 
Now before I get into our next targeted prince-bishop, let me—again in the interest of full disclosure—admit that despite a total lack of interest in sports in general and baseball in particular, I am a New York Yankee fan and the reason that I am so passionately enamored of the Bronx Bombers (a team that I hated in the days of the Brooklyn Dodgers—and yes, I am that old) is not about the Yankees but because I hate the Boston Red Sox.   And the reason that I hate the Red Sox has nothing to do with them personally (individually or collectively), but that I hate everything about Boston.  And the reason that I hate everything about Boston—a city I have been to only three times in my three-score plus years—is that I once had a boss from Boston and he was TLGC (The Lowest of God’s Creatures).   I mean this guy was a lazy, self-indulgent, arrogant, narcissistic, lying, stealing sack of shi*.    (Yes, I am in touch with my feelings.)  And I tend to associate this worthless personality with Bostonians because X was not alone in his sociopathic temperament but shared it with the prelate who was possibly the slimiest American ever to wear a miter.
William Henry O’Connell was actually born in Lowell Massachusetts in 1859 to John and Bridget O’Connell.  His father died while he was still a child and the family had financial distress.  William was not much given to the athletic side of life but excelled at music and was an accomplished pianist.  He went to study under the Sulpicians at St. Charles College in Ellicott City Maryland.  The Sulpicians—and this is important for later on in his story—deemed him unfit for the priesthood and sent him packing.  He continued his studies under the Jesuits at Boston College where he excelled in both the sciences and in philosophy.  Taking up studies again for the priesthood he went to the North American College where he could avoid the Sulpicians who at that time ran the Boston Archdiocesan Seminary. O’Connell was ordained in 1884 in Rome by Lucido Cardinal Parocchi and then returned to Boston.  He was a priest in the Boston Archdiocese only ten years before returning to Rome as the Rector of his Alma Mater, the North American College.  In 1901 he was consecrated in Rome to be Bishop of Portland Maine.
It is very interesting to note the consecrators for this episcopal ordination.  The principal consecrator was Cardinal Satolli who had been the first Apostolic Delegate to the United States.  The co-consecrators were Archbishops Edmund Stonor and Rafael Merry del Val.  Satolli was a natural choice given his American experience.  Stonor, an Englishman from an old recusant family, was chaplain in Rome to various groups.  But it is Merry del Val who gives us the curious link to O’Connell’s rise. 
Rafael Merry del Val was born in 1865 in London where his father, the Marquis Merry del Val, was secretary to the Spanish Embassy.   His blood line was intriguing—with English, Scots, Dutch, and Irish progenitors.  In fact the “Merry” in the Merry del Val name and marquisal title was a legacy of his Irish ancestors who had settled in Seville at a time that many noble Irish had fled their native land as a result of a failed rebellion against the English.  Merry del Val thrived on his English connections and even after the family returned to Spain in 1878 continued much of his education in Britain.  He was a trusted advisor to Leo XIII and a member of the Papal Household.  He was on the 1896 commission that advised Leo to issue the Bull, Apostolicae Curae, declaring Anglican Orders invalid.  He served as one of the Papal delegation to England for the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902.  (The diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the English Crown in the 19^th century are a fascinating topic that I would love to explore at some point.) 
Merry del Val’s influence would rise with the election of Pius X in 1903.  Merry del Val had been secretary of the Conclave that elected Pius and he seems to have played a strong role in the defeat of the expected choice, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla del Tindaro.   Pius, a man who knew he was inexperienced in the matters of world diplomacy, was exceptionally dependent on Merry del Val who as papal Secretary of State was almost a “shadow pope.”  O’Connell hitched his wagon to this rising star.
The friendship between Merry del Val—an aristocrat’s aristocrat—and the vulgar but affected son of Lowell textile factory worker is hard to explain.  They were totally “chalk and cheese” as the Irish say.  Merry del Val was cultured, understated, and while having an iron fist invariably kept it in its velvet glove.  He maneuvered this diplomatically so that you didn’t realize he had stabbed you in the back until you read your obituary in the Times.  O’Connell on the other hand was—despite his skills with the piano—crude, outspoken, openly vicious and retributive.  Merry del Val hid his ambition within the folds of his superb competence.  O’Connell was shameless in seeking advancement and using power with a vengeance to keep others from challenging his position.  What they did have in common was membership in what today is referred to as the Vatican’s “Lavender Mafia.” 
In 1906, at the urging of Merry del Val, O’Connell was designated as coadjutor and successor to Archbishop John Williams of Boston.  Williams had the courtesy of dying just over a year later and so giving O’Connell free rein (or, in this case, reign). 
Henry Morton Robinson wrote the 1950 novel, The Cardinal, with an auxiliary character, Lawrence Cardinal Glennon, being based on William O’Connell.  (In the 1963 film version, Glennon was played by the famous director, John Huston.)  The Glennon character is a bit of a curmudgeon but an honorable man none the less.  That is one of the things that makes The Cardinal pure fiction.
In 1927 O’Connell built for himself a huge (33,000 square feet) four-story Italianate villa on the grounds of Saint John’s Seminary in Brighton, just outside Boston.  This remained the home of his successors until sold, along with an adjoining 28 acres, by Cardinal Sean O’Malley to settle law-suits against the Archdiocese incurred by his predecessor, Cardinal Bernard Law, for clerical sexual abuse issues.    
Unlike Corrigan and his contemporaries, O’Connell was not trying to crack the fortifications of the old WASP social network.  O’Connell saw that the rise of the middle class and the burden of income and estate taxes were leveling the playing field.  He had nothing but contempt for the old Boston Brahmins.  With John  (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald and James M. Curley as mayors, the Back Bay Irish Catholics now held Boston.  O’Connell proudly crowed: “The Puritan has passed; the Catholic remains. 
Ella B. Eades, a Boston Brahmin who converted to Catholicism and served in Rome as secretary to Cardinal Simeoni, prefect for the Congregation of the Propagation of the Faith and who holds the distinction of perhaps having the most viperish tongue in Vatican history—a honor among honors—hated O’Connell and had this to say about him:
“Monsignor Pomposity…is so invariably rude, ill-bred, and disobliging…I suppose he does not know better, being low-born and common, pitch-forked, suddenly to a position which has turned his head. Like all ill-bred Paddies, I am not, in his eyes, sufficiently rich, or fashionable to be treated with even ordinary courtesy.”
More on this Prince of the Church in the next posting. 

When Bishops Forgot They Were Called To Be Apostles

Archbishop Michael Augustine
Corrigan

Cardinal McCloskey built the elegant but not pretentious Cardinal’s residence on the corner of Madison Avenue and 50^th Street in New York.  McCloskey’s successor as Archbishop of New York, Michael Augustine Corrigan never was given the Cardinal’s Hat, but he maintained the princely life-style associated with that dignity.  Corrigan had been born in Newark NJ in 1839, the fifth of nine children of Thomas and Mary Corrigan.  His parents were Irish immigrants, but became comfortable financially through his father’s liquor business.  As his father was gifted in business, Michael was gifted intellectually and when he decided to study for the priesthood in the Diocese of Newark, he was sent to the newly opened North American College in Rome.  The NAC then occupied conventual buildings of the Dominican Priory at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva near the Pantheon.  (You can still see the faded lettering of the North American College over the doorway of the building in the Piazza Sopra Minerva.) Returning to the States with a Pontifical Degree in Theology, Corrigan was assigned to teach at the Newark Diocese’ Seton Hall College.  His contacts were wide and his rise was rapid.  He was named president of the College in 1869 and Bishop of Newark in 1872.  Corrigan succeded James Roosevelt Bayley as Bishop of Newark when Bayley went on to become Archbishop of Baltimore.  Bayley came from a very blue-blood Protestant family and had been ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church.  At age 28 he entered the Catholic Church and two years later was ordained to the Catholic priesthood.  His Roosevelt grandfather disinherited him from his considerable inheritance when he was ordained.  It should also be noted that he was the nephew of Saint Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, who herself had converted to Catholicism to the disgust of her family a generation and a half before.  In 1853 Bayley was consecrated the first bishop of Newark. 

Corrigan, the son of an Irish immigrant, had to follow in the footsteps of this aristocratic predecessor and he rose to the occasion.  For many of the Irish immigrants, and Corrigan was no exception, the rise from having pigs in the parlor to lace curtains on the windows was a quick and easy one.  They were not accepted by the old Yankee blue-bloods whose genteel ways they aped, but they held their heads high and flashed their money in a way the Irish call flahoolach.  The Catholic aristocracy, almost entirely Irish, was a closed circle and they rallied around their own.  Corrigan was one of them and their money helped expand parishes, schools, hospitals and other institutions of the rapidly growing immigrant Church. 
Corrigan was installed as Archbishop of New York and moved into McCloskey’s Mansion in 1885.  While Catholics were still not accepted in the “400,” Corrigan was anxious to win the favor of the WASP upper classes and embraced their political and economic philosophy—even though that meant not looking after the temporal interests of  his flock—all but of a few of whom were immigrant laborers of the poorest sort.  When Dr. Edward McGlynn, Pastor of Saint Stephens on East 28^th Street, a priest who was probably the most popular Catholic preacher in the City of New York, endorsed Henry George, the candidate of the United Labor Party and supported by the more radical and socialist elements of New York Politics, for mayor, Corrigan went wild and excommunicated McGlynn.  Despite his excommunication, the sympathy of the Catholic New Yorker-in-the-street went with McGlynn.  The immigrant New York faithful never warmed to their new Archbishop.  Moreover, Corrigan’s economic views put him in conflict with Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, a strong champion of the labor movement.  Gibbons had the Pope’s (Leo XIII) ear and while Corrigan may have defended the interests of the Protestant ascendancy, Gibbon’s influence probably cost Corrigan a Cardinal’s hat. Corrigan died in 1902 of pneumonia and is buried in the crypt of the Archbishop’s of New York in St Patrick’s Cathedral. 
 

Well, Back to Bill O'Connell and His Sad and Sordid Tale

Cardinal O'Connell enthroned
in state in his cathedral--
somewhat reminiscent of
Cardinal Burke's visits to the
"Canons" of Gricigliano

 

I have a tendency that some of my readers have let me know is most disconcerting—I break off in the middle of a topic to switch to an entirely new topic without any promise of returning to the original conversation.  I currently have doubled that in as that I left the “Revisioning God” series to take up “his Pomposity,” Cardinal O’Connell (with implications for Cardinal Burke) only to break off from the sordid story of that nasty prelate to talk of the political overtones in the historical development of the devotion for Christ the King.   And now a number of potential new topics have broken—Benedict’s admonition to the new Cardinals to forgo the temptations of power, the discovery of the presumed remains of Richard III and the question about which rites should be employed for his reinternment,  and a quote of Andrew Carnegie that I think has some interesting potential for understanding the anti-social justice prejudices of the Catholic Right.   But all that in time.  For now, back to our errant Cardinal of Boston—O’Connell that is, not Law.
One of my favorite stories about William O’Connell is that when he was a student studying for the priesthood he was expelled from Saint John’s Seminary by the Sulpician Fathers who ran the seminary and who found the young man “unfit” for the priesthood.  Perhaps they had uncovered his homosexuality that was to play a role in his later undoing—we don’t know the specifics of their reason for his expulsion.  Whatever the crisis, it didn’t derail his determination to become a priest.  In any event after having been expelled from Saint John’s he went on to study in Baltimore and then to the Pontifical North American College in Rome.  Years later when O’Connell returned to Boston as Archbishop, he had his ghoulish revenge on the Sulpicians.  He ordered them to leave the Archdiocese and to “take your dead with you,” requiring the Sulpicians to exhume their deceased confreres from their cemetery and move the bodies to rest elsewhere. 
Now I know Karma is not a Christian belief but sometimes you have to wonder.  O’Connell built a magnificent Italianate villa on the seminary grounds where he and his successors were to live in princely splendor.  His current successor, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, OFM Cap—a man of far more humble tastes as befits a son of Saint Francis—sold the palace to Boston College in order to pay some of the archdiocesan debts incurred in the sex-abuse scandal under his predecessor—and O’Connell’s successor but three, the disreputable Cardinal Bernard Law.  The problem arose of what to do with O’Connell’s remains which were interred in a mausoleum in the palace grounds.  (O’Connell had disdained the idea of being interred in a vault in the Cathedral as is the normal custom with a diocesan ordinary and wished to remain near his much-loved villa.)   Boston College, however, had no desire to have the remains of this prelate on campus.  The O’Connell family, challenged the removal but eventually had to accede and the dust and ashes that were once the mighty prelate have been moved to the adjoining grounds of Saint John’s Seminary. 
In popular lore, the Cardinal was depicted in the 1963 Otto Preminger film The Cardinal as Lawrence Cardinal Glennon by actor/director John Huston who played him as a gruff but benevolent pastoral prelate: such the license to depart from truth that is given to art.    
My favorite description of the Cardinal is that of the waspish Miss Ella B. Edes—an American old maid convert to Catholicism who had amazingly wormed her way into Vatican employment in the days when only men held access to such positions.  Edes was an agent of Archbishop Corrigan of New York, a figure who has always reminded me of Archbishop Lori even as O'Connell reminds me of Cardinal Burke.  I would love to know more about Ms. Edes as she seems to be a fascinating cross between a cobra and a comedienne whose drily venomous humor savaged some of the most prominent American Churchmen of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  Edes is the one who named O’Connell as “Monsignor Pomposity” and said of him:    
“Monsignor Pomposity…is so invariably rude, ill-bred, and disobliging…I suppose he does not know better, being low-born and common, pitch-forked, suddenly to a position which has turned his head.  Like all ill-bred Paddies, I am not, in his eyes, sufficiently rich, or fashionable to be treated with even ordinary courtesy.”  Well, as they say “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

An Old Wound Reopens

I mentioned in the previous post that there is a long tradition in America of two distinct parties within the Catholic Church.  I referred to them as two Churches and so they are in every sense except the strictly canonical.  At the end of the nineteenth century there was a major clash between these two factions as the “Americanist” party headed by Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore and Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul tried to check the influence of the German Bishops such as Heiss, Katzer and Messmer successively of Milwaukee, Krautbauer of Green Bay, and other German-born prelates who were anxious to preserve the distinct ethnic heritage of German Catholicism.  This Europeanist party was not strictly German by any means as it also included several ultramontane prelates such as Corrigan of New York and a generation later O’Connell of Boston –both of whom were anxious to be more Roman than the Pope.  (You might want to look at entries for March 10,11, 16, 17, 19,20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, April 2, 5, 10, 13, May 22, 2011,  January 5,6,7, 12,  and August 14, 2012 for more on this topic of American versus European influence on the American Church.)  

 By the middle of the twentieth century under the leadership of Cardinal Francis Spellman the two traditions had more or less melted into a distinctive American Catholicism that tended to be socially and politically conservative but post-ethnic culturally.  Catholics were mostly working class and so tended to be Democrats (but this was a time when the southern Dixiecrats were keeping the part from tilting too far to the left) and pro-Labor.  While there were still some ethnic parishes that preserved Old World devotions, Polish and Italian for the greater part, most Catholic parishes were pretty homogeneously bland American even as their parishioners had intermarried and lost much of their distinctive ethnic traits. 

Initially most American Catholics adjusted well to the changes of the Second Vatican Council.  There was an enthusiasm for ecumenism and interreligious dialogues and churches (and synagogues) began holding joint services for such occasions as Thanksgiving.  Discussion groups began meeting in home to help Catholics get to know more about their non-Catholic neighbors and non-Catholics to come to understand better our beliefs and practices.     

The Liturgical changes were well accepted at first too.  People didn’t question the bishop or the priest—we were taught not to, but even more, the Liturgy was beginning to make sense to us.  We were no longer the passive by-standers but hearing the scriptures in our own languages and sharing in the prayers—and the initial feeble attempts to sing—pleased most of us.  There was pain sometimes when a statue grandpa had donated was removed from the Church or the sanctuary where we were married was changed around from the way it had been on that special day, but most of us were happy enough to see some life in old Mother Church.  Like a widow “of some years” who was suddenly taking an interest in her appearance again, the Church began looking better and better.  Granted some of the music was pretty awful at first—“here we are, all together, as we sing our song, joyfully….”  Frankly, there was a lot of crap but over time things got better.  And let’s be honest, the choirs hadn’t been doing Palestrina—at least with any success—in those years before the Council. 

I am not sure what happened but somewhere in the mid to late seventies a reaction began and then began to build up steam.  There had always been a handful of people who were very unhappy with the changes of Vatican II.  Some of these had drifted off into the schism of Archbishop Lefebvre—a French Prelate who rejected the Council and its liturgy.  Others had gone to even more radical groups who declared that Popes John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and II had all been false popes because of their “heresies.”  And there were those who just didn’t like the Council and either stopped attending Mass or found churches where the changes were minimal. 

Several movements sprang up calling for a restoration of the pre-conciliar liturgy at least as an option.  Others called for the conciliar liturgy to be revised along more traditional lines.  Pope John Paul gave a limited permission for the pre-conciliar liturgy to be celebrated again and later in his reign extended this permission further.  Pope Benedict has extended it further still.  While only a small minority—less than  5% of active Catholics—have embraced this return to the pre-conciliar liturgy, it has appealed to a disproportionate number of younger clergy.  And to a great extent it has opened up again the split between the Americanist party in the Church and the Europeanist party.  Some parishes have restored the elaborate outdoor processions for such occasions as Corpus Christi or rogation days.  They build churches in the neo-gothic or baroque styles.  Priests wear their soutanes and birettas and lacy cottas have replaced the more sober albs of the liturgical renewal.  Other parishes continue to build churches where that congregation is wrapped around the altar.  Contemporary Church music is sung rather than the Latin chants.  Social action committees and “small faith communities” are more likely to be seen than Legion of Mary praesidia and while groups of parishioners still gather for the rosary after morning Mass, the youth group gathers for Taizé prayer. The priest is “Father Bill” or may just “Bill” to most of his flock. Two churches once again.  But this difference is even more complex than it first appears.    



Let's Hear it for the Ladies (Again!)

Margaret Anna Cusack
in her days as a Sister
of Saint Joseph of Peace. 

I drove down to hear a talk by Sister Teresa Koernke IHM the other day—Sister Teresa is a theologian (Ph.D. Notre Dame) who teaches and lectures in various places around the United States and her focus is Eucharistic theology.  She is the sort of scholar that gives CDF a collective headache but who educated and thinking Catholics find stimulates not only ideas but prayerful reflection.  Her talk was on the Eucharist, or rather Eucharistic Celebrations, and how the liturgy can be manipulated in some ways that are very foreign to the gospel, precisely how they can be used to allow an individual, or a class of individuals, to hold power over others.  Now remember, and this is me writing, not Sister Teresa—I don’t want to put words into her mouth—but Jesus was not a fan of power.  In fact he warned his disciples to eschew it.  There is a difference between power and authority—authority is a charism which draws the listeners and makes them want to follow; power is manipulation that forces people to follow or obey.  In a side comment to her remarks on different “styles” of different priests and how they use or abuse their position to serve or to dominate—and again this is my assessment of Sister Teresa, not a direct quote (you may remember that old adage quidquid recipitur recipitur in modo recipientis recipitur, so this is my modo and not her quidquid)—Sister said what is driving the Vatican crazy about the LCWR is that the nuns have evolved a different model of authority for themselves and it is a model that undercuts the authority (or power) of the hierarchy.  Unlike the hierarchy who have become used to a model of downward decision making, the Sisters have evolved a process of decision making that is dialogical and brings obedience through consensus.  She didn’t say this, but it reminds me of some material I have read on feminine versus masculine ways of relating. 
       The Holy See is concerned about feminism in the ranks of Religious Women, but at the risk of being anachronistic, we have to say that Religious Life was always a place of refuge for women who weren’t about to subordinate themselves to male authority.   Back in the third and fourth centuries when those first monastics began to drift out to the desert and establish themselves as hermits or in small communities, people thought that this was fine for the guys but women were supposed to stay home under the authority of their husbands or fathers or older brothers.  It was much more difficult for women to uproot themselves and flee to the desert.  Those women who embraced the monastic life were rejecting the patriarchal structures of Roman society to live in all women communities led by women.  And just as the monks put themselves on the fringes not only of society but of the Church to escape the bishop’s authority, so too did the women monastics, choose life in the desert where they were free of clergy interference.  I am avoiding the words nuns here as these were really female monks.  Even linguistically—while English has a clear distinction between monk and nun, in Syriac, Greek, and Latin, (and most of the modern romance languages) the difference between the words for “monk” and “nun” are the same root with a gender-particular suffix.   Relationships with male monastic communities were lateral—interdependent—but not subordinate.  While the women monastics may have supplied the male monastics with cloth, wine, beer, garden and other domestic products, the male monastics seem to have often helped the women with heavier projects such as clearing land, construction of buildings, and the heavier farming as well as supplying priests to celebrate the liturgy for them.  Later, say eighth century through the High Middle Ages, there are examples of “double monasteries” of female and male monastics, but most often the superior of such a house was the Abbess, not a monk.  In fact, the more usual pattern was a small community of monks or canons attached to a monastery of nuns precisely to be the chaplain staff for the nuns. 
      By the Central Middle Ages there were abbeys where the Abbess was not only independent of the authority of the local bishop, but she herself exercised Episcopal authority over a quasi-diocese called an Abbey Nullius.  In such an arrangement, the Abbess was not, of course, the bishop, but she was the Ordinary of her quasi-diocese.  There might be any number of towns and even a hundred or more parish churches under her jurisdiction.  She confirmed the nomination of pastors (we need to do an entry on Advowsons and how pastors were appointed in the Middle Ages), gave dispensations, granted annulments, wrote dismissorial letters for ordinations, granted faculties to the clergy of her diocese just like any bishop.  She had to hire a bishop to come in for the ordinations and confirmations, of course, but she was the Ordinary.  As late as the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire (1806) there were over a hundred such jurisdictions ruled by Abbesses, though some had Protestantized at the Reformation.  (That is another entry we have to do—the survival of religious life in Lutheran territories.)   Some of these Abbacies lasted even longer—the Abbess of Los Hueglos in Spain, who was by right a Princess as well, lasted up until the time of Vatican II as head of her small diocese—down to twelve parishes if my memory serves me.        
        As religious life continued to evolve during the so called Counter-Reformation (I hate that term and would prefer to call it the Tridentine Reformation), women continued to create forms of religious life that exempted them from male control.  The most spectacular of these was Mary Ward who founded the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1609.  Modeled on the Jesuits, Mary and her sisters wore ordinary clothes, rejected most of the monastic practices that would have hindered them in their “underground” work in Protestant (and persecuting) England, and were self-governing.  Surprisingly enough, it wasn’t their freedom from hierarchical control that made Rome slow to confirm the work—it was their rejection of cloister which at that time was required for all religious women.  Cloister, by the way, was no indication of male supervision as the great reformer, Saint Teresa of Avila showed. Teresa too was a remarkably independent woman who played authorities—the Holy See, the Carmelite Order, the King—off one another in order to preserve the independence of her nuns.  Another woman of the time who founded a religious community that was structured to be self-governing was Saint Angela Merici whose Ursulines was autonomous communities working fully in the mission of the Church but in ways that they—not bishops or Curia—determined.  We could go on.  Jane Frances de Chantal worked very closely with Francis de Sales in the communities of the Visitandines they established but it was a collaborative work together and not one in which Francis dominated.  Likewise, Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac was a collaborative effort in establishing the Daughters of Charity, perhaps the most radically different form of religious life in the Church up until our own day.  Vincent’s guidance told the Daughters:  for a monastery, only the houses of the sick, for cell, a rented room, for chapel, the parish church, for cloister, the streets of the city, for enclosure, obedience, for grill, the fear of God, for veil, holy modesty.   What would Rome say about this today?  Hard to think that Rome was more open-minded in the 17th century than today but apparently it was.   
      And then there is the case of Saint Mary MacKillop in Australia and her Brown Joeys—the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart.  Mary actually incurred excommunication rather than subordinate her sisters to outside (i.e. male) authority.  A more tragic story is that of Margaret Anna Cusack, a convert to the Catholic Church and the famous “Nun of Kenmare.”  Having left the Poor Clares where she had been a famous writer, Cusack with the approbation of Leo XIII founded the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace.  But when Archbishop Corrigan of New York tried to force the Sisters in to subordination to his authority, she too was excommunicate and returned to the Anglican Church.  Corrigan was one of the most morally righteous but nevertheless  evil men to hold an American episcopate—and that is quite a distinction.  His sin was power and his example should be a warning to current hierarchs.  He was never given the red hat by Rome and his nemesis was Cardinal Gibbons who fought him tooth and nail precisely over the issue of whether authority in the Church should follow the European and monarchical model or the American and leadership model.  But all this is for other entries.  (Actually if you check the labels column you will see eight entries where I have written on Corrigan).   Those ladies from LCWR are more in our Catholic Tradition than the boys in Rome who want them to fall in line and be good little girls who do what they’re told.  Go nuns!

Origins of Radical Catholicism XVI: The Apostolic Delegation part 4

The Apostolic Delegation was established and Archbishop Satolli named Delegate on January 22, 1893.  This followed the presidential election of 1892 so as not to influence the outcome of the election, Republican incumbent Benjamin Harrison having invited Papal representation at the Columbian exhibition and thus having furnished the Holy See with an excuse for getting Satolli into the country.  Harrison lost his reelection bid, but the Vatican having sent a papal Ablegate to the States probably had little or no effect on his defeat.  There were other reasons having nothing to do with religion that Grover Cleveland and the Democrats retook the White House. 

Satolli, had been lured out onto very thin ice by the liberal faction, most notably Monsignor Denis O’Connel and Archbishop John Ireland.    His lifting the excommunication of McGlynn (see blogs of March 9, 10, 11, and 12) not only had infuriated Corrigan but also Cardinal Mieczyslaw Ledóchowski, the new head of Propaganda Fide in Rome.   Ledóchowski, was a conservative and would have had far more sympathy with Corrigan, but he probably had not yet figured out the game that the liberals in America were playing with Corrigan.  As a “new kid” on the block and self-conscious of his authority, Ledóchowski, would have resented Satolli’s independence in acting without consulting him as Propaganda still had control over the American Church.  Furthermore, Ledóchowski,’s appointment to Propaganda Fide put tension between his congregation—Propaganda Fide—and the Secretariate of State and Cardinal Rampola.   Rampola had set a pro-French policy for the Church which is something we will talk about very soon.  Ledóchowski, was pro-German in his policies. Not a good mix.  Satolli, as a papal representative had been answerable to the Secretariat of State while the territory to which he was accredited, the United States, was under Propaganda Fide.  So in the background of the McGlynn affair was a turf war.  Satolli was going to lose whichever way he handled the McGlynn matter.  Moreover, while Satolli was—at least for the time being—in the paws of the liberals, Ledóchowski managed to secure the appointments of the number two and three members of the Apostolic Delegation for his loyalists which caused deep concern among the liberals.  Of course—and keep this in the mix—the fact that Leo’s esteem for Gibbons, at times it seems almost a blind esteem, gave the liberals some weight that even Ledóchowski had to consider.  And Corrigan, for some short-sighted reason, kept muddying the waters as his diocesan newspaper continued to print articles decrying the Delegation.  While Corrigan denied responsibility for these articles and complained the editor would not divulge the name(s) of the authors, the editor himself turned on Corrigan and sent Rome correspondence showing that Corrigan was indeed behind the anti-Delegation articles.  It was very foolish of Corrigan who never got the Cardinal’s hat either because Rome deemed him not sufficiently loyal or more than sufficiently stupid to trust him any further than they had already committed in naming him Archbishop of New York.  But then, to be fair, Corrigan had no right to expect a red hat as previously only one Archbishop of New York, his immediate predecessor, was so honored.  All his successors have been named Cardinals and it is presumable that the current Archbishop, Timothy Dolan, will be made a Cardinal when his predecessor turns 80 and can no longer vote in a conclave. 

The big mistake that led to a wedge between Satolli and the liberals came in the World Parliament of Religions in September 1893.  Rome had always forbidden Catholic Participation in any such ecumenical or inter-faith gathering, even if it did not involve prayer.  The American Archbishops, at the urging of Ireland, had decided to participate in this gathering, claiming that the opportunity of presenting Catholic Doctrine and Truth outweighed any danger of religious indifferentism (the idea that all religions are equally truthful and valid ways of approaching God).  The liberals—Keane, Gibbons, and Ireland—were all prominent participants.  Gibbons explained that the Church needed to stand with other religious leaders against the common enemies: “materialism, agnosticism, and atheism.” Rampola back in Rome was not impressed at this violation of Church policy though he communicated to Gibbons that Leo XIII recognized the “good intentions” of the Americans in participating.  Satolli, though he understood America and the American mind well, was still first and foremost a Roman and saw this as a breach of the stringent ban on any such pan-religious activities.  Ledóchowski, likewise, was totally appalled when he heard of it and communicated this to Satolli. This moved Satolli somewhat more to Ledóchowski’s camp.  Despite the earlier assurances that the American Church would be free of Propaganda Fide once a Delegation had been established, authority was split and Satolli had to answer to Ledóchowski regarding ecclesiastical matters and Rampola regarding political and diplomatic matters.  Given Ledóchowski’s conservativism, Satolli knew which way the wind was blowing and anxious to kiss and make up with Ledóchowski for the way he had handled the McGlynn absolution.  At the same time Satolii began to disengage himself from Gibbons, Ireland, and the liberals. 

There was one more nail in the coffin of the liberal’s hope for control of the Delegation.  During the World Parliament of Religions the Archbishops held a meeting and could not come to a consensus on the issue of secret societies and whether Catholics could belong to them.  Under consideration were specifically The Oddfellows and the Knights of Pythias.  The prelate’s failure to make an outright condemnation shocked Satolli as the Holy Office (today’s Congregation for the Doctine of the Faith) had been unambiguous in previous cases in condemning Secret Societies.  Satolli finally saw that the Americans were not given to be little ducklings in a tidy line behind the Roman hen.  For the most part, the old generation of bishops, liberals or conservatives, didn’t accommodate themselves to the authority of the new Delegation but Rome would soon begin appointing bishops who knew who the boss was.  Before we get there, however, we have some other issues to look at—notably the Americanist heresy and Rome’s alarm at the American understanding of Catholicism. 

Let me say that though I use a variety of sources in my research for this series, I am particularly indebted to Gerald P. Fogarty SJ and his The Vatican and the American Hierarchy 1870 to 1965.  I am so dependent on Fogarty’s work that I would be a plagiarist (at least) if I didn’t acknowledge it.  Today's image is the plaque on the front of the Basilica of the Portiuncula (Saint Mary of the Angels) in Assisi commemorating the two inter-faith meetings held their under the auspices of John Paul II.  Such meetings were once prohibited. 

Origins of Radical Catholicism XV: The Apostolic Delegation part 3

Monsignor Denis O’Connell and Archbishop Ireland did a masterful job in putting their foe, Archbishop Corrigan of New York—the leader of the Conservatives—in bad light for the arrival of the papal delegate, Archbishop Francesco Satolli.  O’Connell, traveling with Satolli, wrote Corrigan informing him that he and Archbishop Satolli would be arriving in New York on their way to the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago where Satolli would be representing the Holy Father at a Vatican Exhibit.  A letter obviously could travel no faster than the ship that carried it so it gave Corrigan no advance warning.  Nevertheless, Corrigan had heard rumors and tracked them down to learn that Satolli was coming and would be aboard the Majestic when it docked in New York on October 12 1892.  But Ireland had arranged a curve ball to Corrigan in case of just such an event.  As Satolli was coming to the exhibition at the invitation of the United States Government who was sponsoring the Columbian Exhibition, the Delegate was an official guest of the government and would be met by a Coast Guard cutter as the ship entered the harbor and conveyed privately to shore.  Try as he could, Corrigan could not get information regarding the cutter or its landing place.  Thus he was neither aboard the cutter nor at its dock to greet the Delegate.  The liberals leaked it to the press that this was a “snub” to the papal representative and so it was interpreted by all, including Satolli.  This was only the first step in the anti-Corrigan plan. 

Corrigan could not find the cutter or its dock, but he did know the date of arrival and he had arranged a dinner at his residence adjoining Saint Patrick’s Cathedral for the papal representative.  Under the circumstances the dinner was, shall we say, “strained.”  The next morning Satolli and O’Connell boarded a private railway car arranged for by Gibbons and travelled on to Baltimore where Gibbons welcomed the Delegate more appropriately.  He was taken to Washington where again there was a very gracious welcome by the Secretary of State on behalf of President Harrison who was absent tending to his dying wife. Satolli’s remarks, prepared by O’Connell, praised the American form of republican government and its freedom of Worship—this was a bit edgy for the time as we shall see in several future blogs about the situation in France and then later about an American Jesuit who would be removed from teaching these ideas at the Catholic University in Washington.  But for now, back to Satolli.   While in Washington the papal representative was taken to the new Catholic University where he was greeted by university officials and faculty.  Then on to Chicago with various stops along the way, all orchestrated by Archbishop Ireland who made sure that the Delegate was treated with great respect to contrast with Corrigan’s failures in New York.  Meanwhile, Denis O’Connell kept sending messages back to Cardinal Rampolla (the papal Secretary of State) in Rome about the warm welcomes extended to the papal representative and never mentioning Corrigan in his dispatches.   Then, somewhat ill-considered, Corrigan’s New York Catholic Newspaper published a diatribe against government collaboration with the Church in regards to education and Satolli, by now a convert to the liberal cause, cabled Rampolla himself about how injurious such criticism could be to the cause of the Church in the United States.  Corrigan was in deep, up to his ears and the liberals were enjoying every bit of it. 

Ireland next brought Archbishop Satolli to his diocese, Saint Paul Minnesota, to help him prepare for a meeting of the American Archbishops.  Ireland’s real agenda was to convince Satolli of Ireland’s program on “The Schools Issue.” Ireland had a fourteen point program in which he basically supported public school education over the parochial system advocated by most American bishops. Indeed the bishops had incorporated the idea that every parish should have its parochial school and parents should be obligated to send their children to these schools under penalty of being deprived of the sacraments as legislation at the Plenary Councils of Baltimore.  Ireland, on the other hand, had sold a number of Catholic Schools to the State of Minnesota which in turned hired the nuns and priests to teach in these now public schools, reserving religious education for Catholics until after normal school hours.  Ireland did a great sales job and Satolli endorsed the fourteen points at the subsequent meeting of the Archbishops.  The leading opponent to Ireland’s plan was, of course, Archbishop Corrigan of New York who now found himself more isolated than ever from Satolli. 

Satolli also polled the Archbishops on the suitability of establishing a permanent Apostolic Delegation in Washington.  Rome was determined to do so, but wanted it to be at the “request” of the American hierarchy.  Ireland was the only one of the Archbishops to vote in favor of the delegation.  Most of the others demurred claiming they needed to consult the suffragen bishops of their respective provinces. Even Gibbons did not speak in its behalf, but remained silent.  This was an orchestrated plan however.  Gibbons’ had not joined in the chorus against the delegation and his silence was explained as “fear” in face of the opposition and, given that he was the senior American Churchman, a reluctance of compromising himself in case he should be needed as mediator between opposing wings of the hierarchy.    Satolli was furious at the Archbishops for refusing to endorse the Delegation and he blamed Corrigan and the conservatives for the reluctance of the American hierarchy, cabling  Rampolla in Rome that the Holy See should just go ahead and establish the Delegation with or without the approval of the American hierarchy. 

Corrigan realized that he was being made a scapegoat both with Satolli and the Holy See and he begged O’Connell to smooth things out.  O’Connell told Corrigan not to worry, it was just a tempest in a teapot (idiomatic translation of the actual words which were incidente accidentale).  Well, if it were, O’Connell was making sure the winds blew strong in that teapot.  He wrote Rampolla telling the Cardinal that the pope needed to back up Satolli’s endorsement of Ireland’s fourteen points as well as the other liberal agenda to show that Satolli was speaking for the Holy See because the American Archbishops opposition to Satolli and his proposed Delegation was a contest between their authority and Roman authority.  Rome needed to bring the bishops into line.  This is so deliciously ironic that the conservatives found themselves out on a limb and the liberals looked like the loyalists.  Gibbons, Ireland, O’Connell, Keane and their party were having a field day and poor Satolli was being played like a puppet on strings and had no idea.  But such hubris leads to overconfidence and that brings us to a fall.  Stay tuned.  The image today is the Papal Nunciature in Washington DC, originally the Apostolic Delegation until the Holy See and the United States established formal diplomatic relations during the Reagan Administration.