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| Bishop John England |
In
1827 Pope Pius VII divided the States of North and South Carolina and Georgia
from the Archdiocese of Baltimore and named an Irish priest from Cork, John
England, as its first bishop. England
was a gifted preacher and teacher as well as a budding ecumenicist who was able
to harmonize Protestant and Catholic elements in his native Ireland. England was consecrated bishop in September
1820 and refused to take the required oath of allegiance to the British Crown,
declaring that he would seek citizenship in the American Republic as soon as he
arrived. He embraced the American spirit
from the beginning. He wrote a constitution
for his diocese and annually held a convention of clergy and laity to advise
him in its administration. He also
instituted the first diocesan newspaper in the country. Charleston was a challenge as the diocese
held approximately eleven thousand souls—7500 in South Carolina, 3000 in
Georgia, and 500 in North Carolina. Many
of these were Irish immigrants and it was feared that without pastoral care
they would slip away from the Church into Protestantism. (And many in fact did.) He had few priests with which to cover the
widely scattered Catholic communities that comprised his flock. England was arduous in conducting regular
visitations of his diocese, travelling from town to town and preaching wherever
he could—in taverns, town halls, and
court houses. He himself was a
remarkable speaker and was often invited by Protestant clergy to preach in
their churches. In 1826 he became the
first Catholic clergyman to be invited to address Congress. Such a missionary life did not lend itself to
comfort much less to pomp and England seemed to have that Irish disdain for folderol. He reached
out to the African American population, bringing in the Sisters of Our Lady of
Mercy (not to be confused with the Sisters of Mercy) to run schools for both
children of the wealthy and African-American girls. The Ursulines later joined in the ministry of
the diocese as well. In pre-Civil War
Carolina, England took a very unpopular stand in the South, opposing nullification. Every Sunday he preached early Mass to the
African American community and preached to them again Sunday Afternoons at
Vespers. Unable to finance the work in
this diocese so large in size and small in numbers, Bishop England turned to
European sources and the Leopoldinen
Stiftung, an Austrian charity
established by Archbishop of Vienna Leopold Maximilian Graf (Count) von Firmian
in memory of and named after an Austrian Princess, Maria Leopoldina, who had
become Empress of Brazil but had died at age 29 in childbirth. England made a voyage to Europe in search of
funds in 1841 and exhausted himself travelling from place to place seeking any
help in funds or manpower. After a very
rough return voyage and extensive preaching in both Philadelphia and Baltimore,
he returned to Charleston only to collapse and die at the age of 56.
John
Neumann was born in what is now the Czech Republic but was then the Kingdom of
Bohemia in the Austrian Empire. His family
were ethnically German, not Czechs. He came
to the United States in 1835 in order to become a priest—there were so many
priests in his part of Bohemia that the Bishop would not ordain any more. Bishop John Dubois of New York ordained him
and sent him to work in what is now the area around Buffalo New York where he
was an avid circuit riding preacher, going from mission to mission. In 1840 he entered the Redemptorist Order, at
the time an all-German congregation, and professed his vows in 1842. Neumann was their first vocation in the
United States and within six years of his profession was chosen to be their
provincial. He became a naturalized
United States citizen in 1848 and four years later Pius IX named him Bishop of
Philadelphia. The diocese of Philadelphia was growing rapidly as immigrants fled civil unrest in Germany and Italy and famine in Ireland. Neumann opened a new parish at the rate of one a month. He also built the first Catholic School system in the United States—growing from one school in the diocese to over 200. Bishop Neumann, an immigrant himself, was sensitive to the plight of immigrants and opened national parishes where people could hear preaching in their own language and where the children could be educated bilingually. To aid in his educational program he brought the School Sisters of Notre Dame from Germany as well as organizing a new religious congregation, the Sisters of Saint Francis of Philadelphia. The Philadelphia congregation in turn founded Franciscan communities in Buffalo and Syracuse. He also supported the work of the Oblate Sisters of Providence who are a congregation of African American religious Sisters and whose work is among African Americans.
Neumann was noted for his austere personal frugality. His clothes were inevitable threadbare and when people would give him new clothing—they never gave him money as he would use it for the diocese and not himself—he would pass the clothing on to the priests of his diocese whose needs were even greater than his own. He wore out the soles of his shoes countless times, but would never buy a new pair. He died at age 48—collapsing in the street worn and exhausted. Neumann and England are two more examples of the early American bishops who were driven by mission and not by a personal need for power, recognition, pomp or wealth. This was the norm in the American Church up through the time of our Civil War—but things were to change and not change for the better.
