The John Paul Papacy, A Mixed Legacy III

I recently had a friend who reads this blog ask me about something that I had written in my first entry about the legacy of John Paul II and that is what is the connection between the more conservative bishops that were appointed to American sees during his pontificate and the establishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and the Holy See by the Reagan administration in 1984, so I want to revisit this topic in case I have not been clear.

There had been a long tradition of socially progressive bishops in the United States going back into the nineteenth century with such prelates as Cardinal James Gibbons, Archbishop John Ireland, and Bishop Dennis J. O’Connell.  They were succeeded in turn by other progressive leaders as Archbishop John T. McNicholas, O.P., Archbishop Bernard Sheil, and Bishop Francis Haas.  These were all men whose outlook had been shaped by Pope Leo XIII’s Encyclical Letter Rerum Novarum  and later by Pius XI’s Quadrigesimo Anno.   Furthermore, when Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the head of the ‘Holy Office’—today’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—came down heavy on American Jesuit John Courtney Murray, even conservative prelates, and especially Cardinal Francis Spellman of New York, came to the defense of Murray’s harmonization of Catholic tradition with the American socio-economic-political outlook.  Spellman went so far as to defy Ottaviani and bring Murray (whom Ottaviani had formally “silenced”) to the Second Vatican Council as his personal theological advisor.  In the years before and during the second Vatican Council we saw a blooming of a theologically and socially progressive hierarchy with men like Cardinal Albert Meyer, Cardinal Joseph Ritter, Cardinal John Carberry, Cardinal Lawrence Sheehan, and Cardinal John Dearden, to name only the top ranking.  And then there was the eccentric and indomitable Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston who was willing to overthrow just about everything and break any rule to make the world spin along more happily. Blessed be his memory!   Even men who could be quite authoritarian in the governance of their dioceses—Cardinal Patrick O’Boyle of Washington or Cardinal John Cody of Chicago—championed the cause of minorities, of the poor, and of labor.  It was not entirely a happy situation as men like Cardinal James Francis McIntyre of Los Angeles and Archbishop Thomas Toolen resisted the Civil Rights Movement in particular, but the tide was against them.  In the years after Vatican II positions in the American hierarchy were increasingly filled with talented men of vision—Bishops Howard Hubbard of Albany, Matthew Clark of Rochester, John L. May of Saint Louis, Paul John Hallinan of Atlanta, William Borders of Baltimore, Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, John R. Quinn of Oklahoma City and then San Francisco, and Roger Mahoney who would end up as Cardinal Archbishop of Los Angeles.  Many of these men—though not all—owed their advancement in part to Archbishop Jean Jadot, Apostolic Delegate to the United States from 1973-1980.   Jadot, a protégé of Cardinal Leo Suenens who had been a principal architect of the Second Vatican Council,  came from an aristocratic Belgian family and had exceptionally progressive views;  he significantly marked the American hierarchy by his choice of intelligent and articulate prelates who were committed to the social agenda laid out by Popes Leo XIII, Benedict XV, Pius XI, John XXIII, and Paul VI as well as by the Second Vatican Council.  Well, Suenens sowed the winds of change but it was Ronald Reagan who reaped the whirlwind.  In 1983 the American bishops—at that point a body heavily influenced, if not controlled, by Jadot protégés, published the Peace Pastoral: The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response.  It was a dramatic counter-voice to the ost-politik of President Reagan and virtually was a Catholic vote of no-confidence in Reagan foreign policy.  And that was only the one shoe.  The bishops were preparing a second pastoral letter that they would in fact issue in 1986: Economic Justice for All.   It would prove to be a critique of Republican economic theory that would clearly show that Reaganonmics is not compatible with Catholic magisterial teaching on distributive justice.   Meanwhile, Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle publicly declared that he would withhold half his taxes rather than allow money to go to the nuclear arms race.  This was a direct challenge to the Reagan administration. 

This split between the Catholic Church in the United States and Reagan policy—both regarding the Arms Race and Economics—threatened to undermine the joint efforts of John Paul and Ronald Reagan to destroy the hegemony of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe.  To keep abreast in the Arms Race, the Soviet Union had to pour its resources unstintingly into military expenditures with no room for developing a consumer economy.  Reagan and his advisors counted on this “breaking the bank” and on it fomenting unrest among the unhappy citizenries of Eastern Europe.  Meanwhile, for his part, the Pope was brandishing the sword of Polish nationalism and egging the population of his homeland on to demand a better life than the Polish government or its Soviet overseers could provide.  Marxisim in Eastern Europe was fighting a war on two fronts.  And it worked.  Poland fell and the dominoes followed.  But that was not until 1989.  In 1984 Ronald Reagan still had to figure out how to hold it together.  He did not want to fight a war on two fronts also—Communism in Eastern Europe and Catholics at home. 

The Holy See had long wanted full diplomatic relations with the Holy See.  When the Popes lost their temporal power in 1870, several predominately Catholic nations maintained ambassadorial ties.  The United States did not. In fact, Congress by law prohibited such diplomatic relations.  In the years between the loss of the Papal States and the restoration of Sovereignty with the Lateran Treaty, more nations gradually began to exchange ambassadors with the Holy See.  Each ambassador gave the Holy See more prestige and credibility in international affairs.  During World War II, President Roosevelt, unable to name an ambassador, sent Myron Taylor as a “personal representative” to the Vatican.  The Vatican proved to be a very important diplomatic post during World War II as representatives from various sides were posted there and it was one of the best—if not the best—channels of communication.  Nevertheless, the outcry from America Protestant groups about any sort of American governmental presences—no matter how unofficial—was so strong that it would not be possible for many years yet to have official ties at the ambassador level.  Periodically Presidents sent “personal representatives” but there was no standing mission.   By 1980 most world powers had established full diplomatic relations with the Papacy, but the Holy See always wanted the prestige of American recognition.  Ronald Reagan gave this in 1984.  As a Protestant himself, and as a not particularly religious man, he was in a good position to do so, but there was still a considerable public outcry and several legal challenges.  Nevertheless, President Reagan appointed William A. Wilson first ambassador to the Holy See.  He served until 1986 when he was succeeded by Frank Shakespeare. 

 “Nothing gets you  nothing” as Monsieur Thénardier likes to sing and while there is no public record of a deal, there is a definite change in the type of priest appointed to the episcopacy during and after the Reagan years.  The concerns moved from issues of social justice, peace, the economy, and the environment to more “in house” matters.  A nominee for the miter—or having a miter, for advancement—had to be explicitly opposed to the ordination of women.  He had to have not blotted his copybook on contraception.  He had to be clear on the Church’s teaching about abortion and same-sex relationships.  There is nothing wrong with making sure that a candidate for bishop adheres to Church teaching, but what was curious is that there were no such litmus tests when it came to the Church teaching on war, on capital punishment, on economic justice.  There was lots of wiggle room there.   The ‘80’ and ‘90’s saw the American hierarchy change drastically in its outlook.  They became far more establishment, some not bothering to conceal their open and uncritical preference for the Republican Party and its policies.  Meanwhile, priests, religious, and laity who were involved in the areas of maintaining Church teaching on social justice—labor relations, health issues, immigration and migrants, against the death-penalty, civil rights—found themselves unsupported by many of their bishops and priests.

The Pope Francis sort of bishop whose priority is the poor was becoming virtually unknown in the United States.  Prelates like Raymond Burke, Robert Morlino, Robert Finn, Edward Slattery, Michael Sheridan, Thomas Olmstead, Frank Dewane became more and more the face of the American Church.  Decked out in pre-conciliar finery and extending their beringed episcopal paw to be slobbered over by the faithful as they proceeded to the altar for a retro-Mass,  they were the epitome of the Tea Party at prayer. 

A few years ago I had a chance to sit and visit with Thomas Gumbleton, retired auxiliary of Detroit.  Bishop Gumbleton is the “last of the lefties”—named a bishop in the heady days after Vatican II and always an outspoken voice crying for Peace and for Justice, he was a thorn in the side of Presidents and Popes alike.  That is what prophets do.  I asked Bishop Gumbleton why there had been such a shift in the way the hierarchy saw things.  He didn’t follow my suspicions of a symbiotic relationship between John Paul’s papacy and Ronald Reagan’s administration.  His explanation was more simple.  He said “In my day, we bishops came from families where our fathers were bricklayers, or worked in a factory, or carried the mail.  Today, my brother bishops’ fathers were Doctors or Lawyers, or Businessmen.  They were raised to think that way.  That is the way their fathers thought.”  Ockham’s razor says that we should accept the simpler explanation and that would be Bishop Gumbleton’s.  Who am I to argue with Ockham, I am—after all—a medievalist.  But I still say, that we got the John Paul Bishops as part of an understanding between the Reagan White House and the Holy See to reach their mutual goal of bringing down the “Evil Empire.”   There are too many fingerprints to think the demise of American Catholic Progressivism was a natural death.  The Good News is, of course, that our whole Christian Faith is based on Resurrection and it does seem that we might be in store for a better cut of Episcopal Leadership.  As they like to say at those Tridentine Masses, Oremus.  

The Silencing of the Shepherds 2

Cardinal Bernard Law, former Archbishop

of Boston.  Cardinal Law was made a bishop

under Paul VI but achieved his powerful

status in the reign of John Paul II where he

served as "kingmaker" of American Bishops.

You may remember (see entry for May 22^nd) that after the Americanist crisis of the late nineteenth century Rome instituted a deliberate policy of appointing Roman trained and oriented clergy to be bishops in the United States in a move to eradicate the Americanist ideals that shaped the Catholicism of Cardinal Gibbons and Archbishop Ireland.  Leo XIII and  his successor, Pius X were distrustful of such American ideas as democracy and the separation of Church and State and the Americanist situation had made them realize just how different the American mentality—Catholic and Protestant—was from the Roman mentality.  A similar reaction happened with the accession of John Paul II in 1978.  One of John Paul’s first major appointment shifts was in June of 1980, just about 20 months after beginning his papal reign, to remove the Apostolic Delegate in the United States, Archbishop Jean Jadot, a Belgian, to a desk-job in Rome.  Unlike most Apostolic Delegates, before and since, Jadot was never made a Cardinal—a sign of John Paul’s displeasure.  The (relatively) liberal hierarchy of the post-conciliar years was due heavily to Jadot’s influence.  Jadot was succeeded as Apostolic Delegate by Archbishop (later Cardinal) Pio Laghi who began replacing progressive American bishops with such stellar figures as Bernard Law in Boston, and John Joseph O’Conner in New York.  To be fair, Laghi also saw Joseph Bernardin appointed to Chicago and Roger Mahoney to Los Angeles.  He replaced the liberal Peter Gerety of Newark with Theodore McCarrick who was, at the time, seen as a strongly conservative prelate but who turned out to be one of the most talented members of the hierarchy (and, as a corollary to talent, one of the most Machiavellian).  Many of Laghi’s bishops were in fact good pastors and it was not “conservativism” per se that got them appointed but their unquestionable fidelity to Rome.  John Paul had no room for dissent.          
       To understand John Paul’s paranoia (and that is not too strong a word) about dissent one must remember his own experience in Poland.  Poland was the one Soviet satellite where the communist government had not been able to seriously damage the Catholic Church.  Unlike Hungary or Czechoslovakia, the Church in Poland remained strong and retained not only the loyalty but the active participation of the vast majority of the population.  Much like Nineteenth-century  Catholic Ireland where the Church grew and remained strong because to be a Catholic was a declaration of national pride in the face of an occupying Colonial Power that represented another religious tradition, the Poles stood strong in their Catholic faith and practice as a sign of nationalism and resistance to the officially atheistic philosophy of their Soviet-dominated government.  To be Polish was to be Catholic!  The cohesiveness of the Church and indeed its strength came from its rigid unity which the Communist regime could not crack.  And this unity was rooted in an unswerving loyalty and obedience, in public and in private—to the Primate, the long-suffering Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (+1981).  Pope Wojtyla, as he was often known both in Poland and Rome, understood Wyszynski’s lesson—if you want a Church strong enough to bring down Marxism and to confront the secularism of the West, you need a Church that moves in absolute unity and uniformity.  John Paul would not risk dissent and was rigid in crushing it.  In 1980 he demanded that all priests and religious withdraw from political office because he would not have the clergy in a position where they might have to disregard their ecclesiastical superiors to perform their civil obligations.  Sister Agnes Mansour, a Sister of Mercy, was ordered by the Vatican to resign from her post as the Director of Social Services for the State of Michigan.  She instead resigned from her religious order.  (The Sisters of Mercy never broke their ties with her and she lived and died within their community.)  Father Robert Drinan SJ, on the other hand, did resign his seat in Congress to comply with the Vatican Directives but he was a greater pain to the authority structures in the Church in his post-Congressional years than he had been serving in the halls of Congress.  Nonetheless, it was clear in the John Paul years that there was to be no room for dissent from Church Authority.  In 2006 Cardinal Angelo Sodano retired as Vatican Secretary of State, a position he had held for sixteen years, serving under two popes: John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  The Foreign Ministers (Secretaries of State) of other European Governments hosted a luncheon in his honor as he was the longest serving Secretary of State among them.  When asked to what he attributed is long tenure he joked “There are advantages to working for a Totalitarian State.”  A  joke yes, but one which was funny only because it is true. 
     To see dissent as disloyalty is a dangerous to any leadership.  Dissent and disobedience are two different realities.  To close off dissent is to deprive leadership of voices they need to hear and monitor, not to punish but to be able to critique their own course.  There is such a thing as loyal dissent and within the Church there are many voices which have been silenced in fear of reprisal.  I recently read William L. Shirer’s work The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  (At a friend’s suggestion I had read Erik Larsen’s In the Garden of Beasts and as a historian it left me wanting to know much more in detail how the catastrophe of the Third Reich had come about.)  What struck me most in Shirer’s book was the absolute stifling of dissent by Hitler and his inner circle and how that dissent was to create a bubble of bogus realities around the Reich’s leadership.  This past week I had coffee with friends who are retired military and the discussion came to a comparison of Church and military leadership styles and these officers spoke of the importance of dissenting views having voice in successful military operations.  It is not healthy for us in the Church that responsible voices whether they be bishops, theologians, or competent clergy and laity cannot speak out freely critiquing policies set by a leadership that is not necessarily any more competent, educated, or informed. As Catholics we believe that the Holy Spirit speaks through the Pope, but we do not believe that the Holy Spirit (I will avoid the use of a pronoun) speaks through the Pope alone, much less than the monsignoral desk-jockeys that work down the hall and around the corner from him.  But even more serious for the good of the Church and of souls than sealing off prophetic voices that might raise the inspired cries of “yes, but…” is being left with a hierarchy that “loyalty” has reduced to mediocrity.  The atmosphere of blind allegiance has created a culture of codependence in which voices that were consecrated to be prophetic remain silent in the face of the gross injustices of our contemporary society.  Where are the voices to speak for the immigrant?  For the seniors who are in danger of losing their Medicare and Social Security? For the families who have lost their homes?  For the workers who have seen their jobs go overseas?   For the Earth that is being scourged  by the destruction of its resources, its air and its water?  We have a new translation for the Liturgy when what we need is a prophetic and evangelical message of what it means to be a Disciple of Jesus Christ in this world in which we live.  “What father among you,” Jesus said, “would give his children a stone when they ask for bread.”  And we are asking for bread and being given the stones of silence in the face of a rampant and increasing injustice in our society.  We cannot afford to have shepherds who do not raise a cry when the flock is being surrounded by wolves.  The silence of the hierarchy on any subjects other than protecting the right to life for the unborn and the insuring that the right to marriage is limited to heterosexuals implies that the other pressing issues facing us as Americans are without moral consequence and that is simply a flat out lie in itself.  We need the articulation of a consistent and comprehensive moral program for responsible citizenship even if it does mean that the American bishops risk losing the friendship of their political allies and their establishment pals.   

Fractured Leadership in the American Church-2



Catholic Participation in the Civil
Rights Movement was late in

starting but stronge once it had

begun.

In our previous blog I mentioned the wide areas of need for moral guidance and spiritual leadership that is needed today in the Catholic Church in the United States.  Modern Americans are faced with a huge spectrum of issues that have serious moral implications from the legal status of abortion and gay marriage to global warming and environmental issues to genetic engineering, economic justice and integrity, the death penalty, war and the armaments industry, AIDS prevention, Immigration Reform and countless other issues that we, as responsible citizens and faithful disciples of Jesus Christ must consider in choosing our national and state leadership.  And yet, despite the great need for both public discussion and clear teaching on a wide range of subjects, the hierarchy is effectively silent save on abortion and same-sex marriage.  Why? 
     In the heady years immediately after the Second Vatican Council the American bishops stepped up to the plate and addressed social issues.  Admittedly it took them some time to get traction—and to get over fear of Francis Spellman, the Cardinal Archbishop of New York and Military Ordinary whose right-wing hawkish views supporting the war in Vietnam were in direct conflict with the clearly articulated position of Pope Paul VI.  Spellman’s death in late 1967 freed the American hierarchy to take a more morally critical view of American Policy in Viet Nam and Catholic bishops, priests, nuns, and faithful became among the leaders of the Peace Movement.  Similarly with the Civil Rights Movement, Catholics had initially been slow to become involved as several leading prelates, notably Archbishop Thomas Toolen of Mobile and Cardinal Francis McIntyre of Los Angeles forbad their clergy to be involved in Civil Rights or even to speak on the issue but it had become clear by 1965 that Catholics could not sit on the sidelines while other Christians were working to overturn racist policies that were depriving Americans of color of basic human rights. Once involved Catholics moved into leadership position in both the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War Protest Movement. 
     The Catholic Church itself had taken a sharp turn towards social liberalism in the early 1960’s with Pope John XXIII’s encyclical letters Mater et Magistra (1961) and Pacem in Terris (1963).  In fact, beginning with Leo XIII’s 1891 Encyclical Rerum Novarum and Pius XI’s follow up Quadrigesimo Anno of 1931 the Catholic Church had surprised the socio-political establishment with its endorsement of liberal economic principles, but the pontificate of John XXIII and his convocation of the Second Vatican Council threw Catholic social liberalism into high-gear.  While Pius X and Benedict XV had made some efforts to steer the nations of Europe away from the horrors of World War I, the Catholic Church did not have a strong peace tradition in the first six decades of the twentieth century. Pius XI’s opposition to Communism pushed him into not collaboration but certainly accommodation with Mussolini.  While some individual bishops, even (and especially) inside Germany had spoken out against the injustices and mortal violence of Nazi policy towards Jews and other minorities, the Holy See had taken a very reserved and cautious—far too reserved and cautious it has turned out—policy towards the evils of the Third Reich.  Pius XII shared his predecessor’s repugnance of the Marxist dictatorships of Eastern Europe and in reaction—and from a fear of Marxism spreading in Latin America and Asia—was perhaps less critical of American foreign policy in the post-war years than he should have been.   John XXIII took a new and bolder tack.  He did not attack the West but he did lay down principles of a just society and outlined a vision of international peace that spared no party an evangelical criticism.  Capitalism and Marxism together, Western Democracies and Totalitarian Governments alike were chided for their political, economic, and military goals that fell short—far short—of sound moral principles.  In this new atmosphere the Pope called the Catholic Bishops of the World to meet and address the issues of the day. It was a Catholic Revolution.   Indeed, the Council turned traditional Catholicism upside-down in many respects and the decree Gaudium et Spes on the Church in the Modern World (1965) made it clear that the Church was no longer in an unquestioning alliance with the traditional power bases of Western Society.  It seemed as if the Church had waded into the modern world determined to meet it on new ground.    Thus it came as a bit of a shock to many when Paul VI—who had been one of the architects of this socially liberal Catholicism—rejected the majority report of his specially appointed study panel and reiterated the Church’s traditional opposition to artificial contraception in his 1968 Encyclical, Humanae Vitae.   
     While a number of Catholic hierarchies were critical of Humanae Vitae, the American bishops loyally supported the Pope.  Humanae Vitae is an immensely complicated subject and we will have to take a look at it in a series of entries just on that topic.  Personally I think it is a grave disservice to the complexity of the issues merely to dismiss it as "conservative.”     It did disappoint progressive Catholics, not only here but around the globe and a number of leading prelates, including Denis Hurley whose prophetic voice was the first Catholic prelate to speak out against Apartheid in his native South Africa, strongly signaled their disagreement.  His failure to endorse the encyclical cost Hurley a Cardinal’s cap which, in the broad overlook of history, was a failure to honor the Sacred College with the membership of an indefatigable moral leader rather than to deprive that moral leader of any honor.  In the United States, due to the imprudence of a number of prelates, particularly Patrick O’Boyle of Washington (who had been among the first bishops to champion racial integration) and James McNulty (the pathetically inept Bishop of Buffalo NY) dissent from this Encyclical unnecessarily became a cause célèbre and spun the Catholic Church in the United States into what has proved to be a tragic course of failed moral leadership.  Adhesion to the teaching of Humanae Vitae became for years the litmus test of Catholic orthodoxy not only for candidates for the episcopacy but for clergy and laity.  One priest wrote that one “could deny the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and the procession of the Holy Ghost and suffer no consequence but tell a woman that taking her pill was not endangering her eternal salvation and you would find yourself without a parish before nightfall.”  That was a bit of an overstatement, but only a bit. 
     Paul VI was not a vindictive man.  Far from it.  He was deeply hurt by the rejection he felt and the anger that was directed towards him by Catholics and non-Catholics alike over Humanae Vitae.  His successor, John Paul II, was a much stronger personality and saw the dangers of a divided hierarchy.  Pope Paul had appointed Belgian Archbishop Jean Jadot to serve as Apostolic Delegate (the Pope’s Representative to the American Hierarchy and Church) in Washington and as such Jadot had the opportunity to shape a hierarchy in this country to his way of thinking.  Jadot was a social liberal and saw that the nominations of many remarkably talented bishops-to-be were forwarded to Rome.  This paid off in the early eighties when the American bishops produced their two outstanding pastoral letters—one on war and peace and the other on Catholic principles of a just economy.  In the meantime, however, John Paul had ascended the papal throne and he decided that he wanted an American hierarchy on whom he could count for undivided loyalty to the agenda he was setting for his papacy.  He could not afford to have dissent and there would be a new breed of bishops.  More to come.    

Does Rome Have a Bias against America?

I received this email from a reader and promised to respond to it

Something just came to mind from reading your blog posts.  America magazine and even to some degree American Catholic (Franciscans out of Ohio) are panned by some as too liberal.  Are "America" and "American" charged words in Roman Catholicism?  Does having "America" in their names suggest an intentional desire to emphasize their ties to American Catholicism over European Catholicism?
Or am I just reading too much into that?  I can't think of a Catholic publication, radio program, etc. that people consider "conservative" here in the states that has "America" in its name.

This is a great question.  And in one word the answer is “yes.” 

In this blog I have a series on the history of the Catholic Church in the United States.   It is a topic I intend to return to—especially a more close examination of the history of the Church in the colonial and revolutionary period in which Catholicism in the British North American colonies and in the infant republic was stamped with a democratic character, an ecumenical openness, and a reluctance to exert power in political and social matters.  In case you haven’t noticed, that isn’t the contemporary Catholic take—either here in the U.S. from the Bishops or in Rome from the Holy See.  It was only at the turn of the nineteenth-twentieth centuries that Rome even began to notice that there was a Catholic Church in the United States and that it was quite different in character from the European model of Church.  Let me refer back to the entry of  April 13^th  2011 where I wrote:

The Holy See was increasingly frustrated with the American Church.  They were appalled at its openness to non-Catholics, they were fearful of its democratic heritage, and they did not understand why it was so unable to influence the society in which it was rooted.  The Holy See saw a potential for power in the American Church that it had not itself yet recognized.  While it may have been only a small fragment of the general population, it was the largest—and fastest growing—religious body in the United States.  Surely with the right sort of leadership it could leverage itself from its position in the shadows of American Presbyterianism, Methodism, and Episcopalianism into the  catbird seat of American public influence.  All it needed was the right leadership..

There was a definite change in leadership style in the American Church after 1900 and the appointment of William O’Connell at Archbishop of  Boston and his soon thereafter appointment to the College of Cardinals.  Over the years, and especially the mid-century period there was some backsliding into American oriented prelates being appointed from Rome.  While men like Mundelein and Spellman could not have been more loyal to Rome, they were also died-in-the wool Americans, particularly in the issue of separation of Church and State where they defended the American aberration from Roman Doctrine, and the American spirit began to revive.    During the papacy of Paul VI and especially the years that Jean Jadot was Apostolic Delegate this Americanism thrived.  In the 70’s and ’80’s there were appointed remarkable bishops that took Vatican II to the limits of its revolutionary doctrines—men like Cardinal Bernadin, Cardinal Shehan of Baltimore, Archbishop Hallinan, Bishop Clark of Rochester, Bishop Kenneth Untener of Saginaw, Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, Archbishop Roach of St. Paul, Archbishop Kelly of Louisville, Archbishop Hunthausen of Seattle, Archbishop Quinn of San Francisco, and many others.   The election of John Paul II, however, marked a sure but steady change of direction in the Church and under John Paul, and now with Pope Benedict, the first and all important characteristic for appointment to the hierarchy is an unquestioning loyalty to Rome.  Now, there is nothing wrong with this.  Indeed the unity of the Church requires that the various dioceses throughout the world, through their bishops, are firmly cemented in unity with the See of Peter.  But what is worth noting is that the emphasis that this is given; the loyalty and total obedience to every detail of the authority of the Holy See is a clear indication that Rome does not trust the American Church.  For a wider discussion of this topic, you might want to check the various blog entries under the labels “Americanism” and “American Catholics and Roman Catholics.”
The only thing I want to add to this, is that I am very familiar with Rome and the Curia Romana.  I have lived and worked in Rome for various periods totaling about ten years of my adult life.  I am normally in Rome two to four times a year.  I have many friends in Rome with whom I am in regular contact and who stay with me when in the States or whom I meet at various international meetings.  The vast majority of these friends are Italian and are connected in some way or other with international Catholicism.  Indeed, the vast majority are clergy, some holding Vatican posts. 

My experience is, and I will speak only from experience, that Curial officials, especially the Europeans in the Italians in particular, have strong cultural biases against America in the realms of culture, religious practice, and law.  They openly mock American culture in terms of art, music, literature, cuisine, education, and intellectual work. The Italians in particular tend to be very culturally isolated believing that there is nothing beyond the Alps that compares to anything Italian.  There is a strong degree of Racism, especially directed towards peoples of South-East Asia and Africa.   What is tragic about this is that Church attendance among American Catholics—while it could be better—is six times that of Italian Catholics.  There is no comparison t the financial support given the Church—both locally and to the Holy See—between American and Italian faithful.  For all the issues about celibacy, it is far better observed in the American Church than it is among Italian clergy.  The American Church has issues, but it is a far more vibrant Church than one finds anywhere in Western Europe.  Far from being a model for the Americans, the European Church—and the Italian Church in particular—has much it could learn from us (and from other national Churches around the world) and the tampering in American Church life by Rome is doing far more damage than help.  Indeed, the Curia should get the beam out of their own eye before they try to clear up the speck in ours.