When Bishops Were Apostles

The Cathedral in Bardstown, Kentucky built by

Bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget

Well, Queen Elizabeth visits Pope Francis today and I guess some more of the traditional protocol is being swept aside to make this meeting more personal than formal—it reminds me that we need to get back to the history of the Church of England.  But first I want to look at some of the historical perspectives about the housing of American bishops.
I guess we could start with John Carroll—the first American bishop.  The Carrolls were a very wealthy Maryland Planter family—though not by the Carroll connection  but through John’s mother, Eleanor Darnall.  John Carroll was a cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and allegedly the wealthiest man in the colonies.  It seems that Charles and John were related not through the Carroll bloodline (and Carroll money) but through the Darnall family—John’s mother being a Darnall and Charles’ grandmother being a Darnall.  John’s father, Daniel Carroll, was not part of the family of Charles Carroll, Charles the Settler, who came to Maryland in 1688 and who became one of the colony’s first families.  Daniel, father of the future bishop, was an Irish immigrant while most historians claim the Charles the Settler came from England.   In other words, while John Carroll’s family was wealthy, it was not the Carroll wealth that established them.  Carroll entered the Society of Jesus at the age of 18 and in the course of his training took a vow of poverty.  Of course Jesuit poverty has never been Franciscan poverty and Franciscan poverty has never—or rarely—reduced its men to indigence.   Jesuits have always had the insight to realize that you can’t let poverty get in the way of mission, and in the Americas the Jesuits led lives of the planter class from which they came and among whom they ministered in their Maryland foundations.   The Jesuits were suppressed in 1773 and Carroll and his fellow members of the Society of Jesus then became secular priests under the jurisdiction of the Vicar Apostolic of the London region—the leading English Catholic prelate.  Independence in 1776 left them somewhat jurisdictionally adrift.    The Maryland clergy—all former Jesuits—still had strong ties to one another and indeed functioned as if they were still Jesuits.  With Vatican permission they elected Carroll in 1784 as “Superior of the Mission.”  There was a reluctance among the clergy to introduce bishops in the United States as the newly republican nation had a fear of monarchy and monarchial institutions; in both Anglican England and Catholic France bishops were seen as part of the royal establishment.   Carroll’s rabid support for the new nation and its republican ideals however, gradually allayed that fear.  Moreover the Episcopal Church introduced bishops in 1783 without much reaction.  In 1789  Pius VI permitted the American clergy to elect a bishop and by a vote of 24-2 Carroll was elected.  (It would be interesting to know who, other than Carroll himself, did not vote for him.)   Carroll went to England for episcopal consecration the following year.  He served as Bishop of Baltimore until 1810 when Baltimore was raised to an Archdiocese and Carroll an Archbishop.  He died December 3, 1815. 
John Carroll owned an estate in what is now the Tenleytown area of Washington DC.  His mother owned a huge estate in Rock Creek reaching up into what is today Silver Spring.  His brother, Daniel, owned an estate that included what is today Capitol Hill.  They each maintained a chapel on their estate and several DC parishes can trace their origins back to these chapels. 
While he owned an estate in what is today the District of Columbia, Carroll lived in his See city, Baltimore where he maintained a genteel but discreet household.  It was not an elaborate episcopal court on the European model, but the residence of an American gentleman of modest means.  He had two servants—one free, one a slave.  (His will freed the slave with a generous bequest for his support.)  Carroll avoided the European prelatial style, eschewing episcopal robes except for Church ceremonial and regularly appearing in lay clothing in dark colors.  (This was the custom of the American and English Catholic clergy at the time).  Much of his life was inconvenienced by the need for travel, especially to settle disputes with lay trustees in New York and Philadelphia.  Travel was as loathsome for the well-to-do as it was for the working class with long days in crowded stage coaches and nights in horrid inns, two and three to a bed.  Carroll, in true Jesuit style (though he never re-entered the Society after its reestablishment in 1814) kept focused on his mission rather than on his comfort.  He died at age 80 in 1815.
In 1808 Boston was made a diocese and John-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus was named Bishop; New York was made a diocese with the Dominican Richard Luke Concanen as bishop; Philadelphia was made a diocese with the Franciscan Michael Francis Egan named bishop; and Bardstown Kentucky was named a diocese with Benedict Joseph Flaget as its first bishop. 
Each of these new bishops was an interesting person, but my favorite is Lefebvre de Cheverus.  A newly ordained priest, he fled France during the Revolution and was a penniless émigré  in London, but when offered financial help he replied:  “The little I have will suffice until I learn something of the language. Once acquainted with that, I can earn my living by manual labor, if necessary".  At the urging of a former seminary professor on the behest of Bishop Carroll, Lefebvre de Cheverus came to the United States in 1796 and worked among the Native American and French-speaking Catholics of Maine.  In a 1798 Yellow Fever epidemic in Boston he so distinguished himself in his work among the sick and dying, that it was largely by subscription of Boston Protestants (never known to be friendly to Catholics) that he was able to build the Church of the Holy Cross.  Among the subscribers was President John Adams.  Named bishop in 1808 and consecrated in 1810 by Carroll, he remained in Boston until 1823 when Louis XVIII recalled him to France and named him Bishop of Montauban.  His American experience suited him well to build bridges of cooperation with the significant Protestant population  in his new see and among whom he was well respected.  He was named Archbishop of Bordeaux in 1826 and received the Cardinal’s hat shortly before his death in 1836.  In his American years Lefebvre de Cheverus worked hard, risked his life in ministry to the victims of plague, and lived in New England austerity.  Holding a French see, and especially after being named a Cardinal, required a certain amount of public display but even here Lefebvre de Cheverus kept things as plain as he could.  His willingness to support himself as a young priest by manual labor marked his character and he never betrayed it. 
Bishop Concanen never took up residence in his See, New York.  Living in Rome at the time of his nomination and consecration, the Napoleonic Wars made travel to America impossible.  Concanen had been very interested in the Dominican foundation in Kentucky and was anxious to see the faith spread in the new Republic, but died only two years after his nomination and before travel to the United States was possible.  (He actually had been picked up by a French blockade and detained in French-controlled Naples as a British subject—a horrid but true indignity for an Irishman.)  His successor, also an Irish Dominican, John Connolly arrived in New York in 1815.  His diocese—the entire State of New York and large sections of New Jersey had four priests, 3 churches, and 15,000 Catholics.  It was a mission challenge to a bishop who himself had to get into the saddle or onto the stage-coach to go out and minister to a far flung flock. 
Egan of Philadelphia was also an Irishman, but a Franciscan.  Like Concanen and Connolly he had lived and worked in Rome but came to Pennsylvania in 1802.  He deeply impressed Carroll by his hard work and competence.  Philadelphia was made a diocese in 1808 and Egan named bishop, but the same blockades that had prevented Concanen from reaching New York prevented the papal bulls authorizing the episcopal consecration of Lefebvre de Cheverus, Egan and Flaget from reaching American until 1810.  His diocese was Pennsylvania, Delaware, and southern New Jersey.  There was a (relatively) strong Catholic presence in Philadelphia but the settling of western Pennsylvania was a real challenge to the Church.  Many European clergy—especially Irish and German—who were not happy at home simply came to America without authorization and set up shop without consulting the local bishop.  Among the rogue priests doing his own thing in Appalachia was the famous Russian Prince Augustine Demetrius Gallitzin.  Many of these men, especially Gallitzin, were good men and good priests, but resentful of episcopal authority.  Egan had a particular headache with battles with trustees, ethnic squabbles (mostly Irish/German), and free-lancing priests.  Egan was constantly travelling through his diocese trying to bring order to it.  He died at 53, only four years after his consecration as bishop. 
Benedict Joseph Flaget, a French Sulpician, fled the Revolution and came to America in 1792.  Bishop Carroll sent him out to what is today Vincennes Indiana.  He established the first school and first library in the territory as well as building a church.  He was particularly successful in his work among the Native Americans for whom he provided medical help as well as Christian catechesis.  Recalled to Baltimore, he was a professor at Georgetown.  After an unsuccessful mission to Cuba, he returned to Georgetown.  In 1808 the Diocese of Bardstown was formed comprising what is today ten states west of the Alleghenies and east of the Mississippi. His diocese has subsequently been divided—and subdivided—into what are today 35 dioceses.  Flaget was named bishop, but went to Europe to try to have the appointment reversed.  Unsuccessful, he was consecrated by John Carroll on November 4, 1810 along with Lefebvre de Chevrus and Egan.  For his immense diocese he had seven priests.  He served until his death in 1850—long after Carroll, Concannen, Egan, and Lefebvre de Chevrus had died.  He introduced three congregations of religious sisters to his diocese along with four congregations of priests and brothers.  He brought the Trappists from France to establish the abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemane and he built the lovely—and very American—Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Bardstown.  He resigned the See in 1833, only to be reappointed at the insistence of the clergy and laity.  Like Cheverus in Boston, Flaget risked his life and health in the 1833 cholera epidemic which won him great respect among Catholics and non-Catholics alike.  
None of these were men who provided for themselves but all had a passion for the mission of the Church.  Even though each of them—Flaget, Lefebvre de Cheverus, Concannen, Connolly, Egan, and Carroll—would have had experience of the European model of prince-bishops who lived in palaces and were surrounded by liveried servants and purple-belly-banded clerics, and associated only with la crème de la crème of society, they rejected the European model and embraced an evangelical episcopacy shaped by the pastoral needs of those entrusted to them.  Bishops they were, but priests first and priests shaped by the apostolic model of mission-driven evangelists.  Those were the good old days—not the years before the Council when prelates like Spellman and MacIntyre and Curley and Dougherty and O’Connell “ruled the roost” in their silk frocks and from their splendid homes.   

More Notes on Maryland Catholicism

The rebuilt Catholic "Chapel" on the site of
Saint Mary's City in Maryland

I mentioned yesterday that the traditional American Catholicism that is rooted in the Catholic experience of the Maryland colony is more like the post-conciliar Catholicism of today while our memories of the Church before Vatican II reflect the faith and practice of the immigrants that flooded the United States from 1840 until World War I.  I had a number of emails asking me to clarify.  “Surely,” one asked, “the Mass in colonical Maryland was in Latin, was it not?”   Another wrote: “In the picture of the Church in Saint Mary’s City that you posted on the web page, there was an altar rail and the altar seems to face the wall.”  So what do I mean when I maintain  that colonial and early United States Catholicism had  more in common with the Catholicism that we practice today than with the Church that those of us who grew up before Vatican II remember?  
      In the first place.  Yes, the Mass was celebrated in Latin in 1632 when The Ark and The Dove brought the first Catholic settlers.  And the Mass was in Latin in 1776 when Charles Carroll went up to Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence.  Father John Carroll who was to be our first bishop and other priests discussed Mass in English, but had no permission from Rome to implement their plan.  Without such permission, however, they did (on their own authority) put the Marriage Rite, the Baptism Rite, and parts of the funeral rite (though not the Requiem Mass) in English.  Some of the prayers for Confession were also put into English though not the formula of absolution.  And yes, the altars in the churches invariably faced the rear wall of the church as they did everywhere else except for some of the churches in Rome, most notably the papal basilicas, where they have always faced the people.  So what do I mean in comparing the recusant Catholicism of colonial Maryland with our Vatican II Catholicism today?
      Well there are several points.  Before we get to liturgical issues, I would like to look at ecumenism.  Two and a half centuries ago the Catholic Church was mortally opposed to what today we call ecumenism.  To put this in context we must remember that first of all the Catholic Church was opposed to democracy and taught that monarchy was the form of government most consistent with the law of God because it reflects the Divine Order of the Universe.  God has not established that his laws are determined by the consent of the governed and nations too should be ruled by monarchs who shape laws by decree so that the earthly realm will most resemble the heavenly realm.  (Believe it or not, there are still crackpots in the Church who agree with this.  Michael Voris of “Real Catholic TV” advocated this some time back on his internet-based television network.  The internet also has various blogs and webpages on the subject of Catholicism and Monarchy, and the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was not only a maintainer of the Traditional Pre-Conciliar Liturgy but politically an ardent Monarchist.      
      The Catholic Church not only supported Monarchy as the ideal form of government (thought it “tolerated” democratic republics such as the New United States) but also maintained as a matter of doctrine that although every political society was morally bound to permit the Catholic Church freedom of worship and unhindered participation in public life, that when Catholics became the political majority in a country they had to establish the Catholic Church as the official religion of the State and to put limitations on the practice of non-Catholic “cults” whether Christian or otherwise.   Furthermore the State was obligated to shape its laws according to Catholic morals and doctrines.  Divorce, for example, should not be legal, nor contraception in a Catholic State. The American principle of Separation of Church and State and its corollary of Freedom of Worship was something that could be tolerated until Catholics became the political majority in the United States.  As late as the mid 1950’s the Vatican silenced an American theologian, a Jesuit (who else?) at Catholic University in Washington DC and forbad him (his name, by the way, was John Courtney Murray) to teach, speak, or publish on the issue of Separation of Church and State.  At the Second Vatican Council, the Council did a 180 degree about-face with the decree Dignitatis Humanae asserting that every person was to be given the freedom of conscience in matters of religion.  Similarly until Vatican II, the Holy See had repeatedly condemned the Ecumenical Movement, most notably in the 1928 Encyclical of Pius XI, Mortalium Animos. 
      Interreligious cooperation of sort was prohibited and Catholics were not so much allowed as to say the Lord’s Prayer with Protestants.  As for cooperation with Jews—or Muslims—well, it was not even in the realm of possibility. 
But the American tradition was very different.   Catholics in the former English colonies knew what religious persecution was.  Even in Maryland—founded to be a refuge for Catholics from persecution in England, Catholics had been denied voting or public office since the beginning of the eighteenth century.  American Catholics universally supported the Revolution in hopes of attaining full rights as citizens.  Charles Carroll, the most politically prominent (and the wealthiest) of American Catholics spoke of the “rights of conscience,” to be among the “common rights of nature” granted not by government but inherent in human freedom and dignity.   Carroll’s cousin, Father John Carroll who was to become the first Catholic Bishop in the new nation, ardently supported the cause of Independence and, according to the website of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, defended the American principle of religious toleration despite its variance from traditional Catholic doctrine.  Moreover, Carroll was cordial and collaborative with the clergy of other denominations, respected by all and respecting all.  It was not uncommon in colonial and newly independent America for Protestant and Catholic clergy to cover the pastoral needs of each other’s widely scattered flocks.  Funerals in particular were handled by whatever clergy were available.  Father Gabriel Richard, a French émigré priest serving in Michigan territory before the War of 1812 even served for a time as the pastor of a Protestant congregation in addition to the pastoral work in his own parish.  Catholics and Protestants generally lived together not only peacefully but in mutual respect and cooperation.  Episcopalian George and Martha Washington were friends with such Catholic families as the Lees (the Maryland Lees, not the Virginia Lees—though themselves related, the Maryland Lees had become Catholic at some point) and the Digges.  As I mentioned in an earlier post (January 2, 2012), Washington supposedly gave the first contribution to the building of Saint Mary’s Catholic Church in Alexandria Virginia through the agency of his friend Col John Fitzgerald.  It was a world of civility and good relations that cut across religious lines two centuries before John XXIII saw Protestants not as heretics but as “separated brethren.” 

Catholics on the Courthouse Lawn

Charles Carroll
only Catholic signer
of the Declaration
of Independence

Well, as to our being a “Christian Nation” we have looked at a New England Congregationalist and a Unitarian, a Pennsylvania Deist usually mistaken for a Quaker, a Virginia Episcopalian (one of them; there are more and we will look at them), and a Virginia Deist.  What’s the tally?  John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington would probably not support the idea of an officially religious society.  Sam Adams, the only evangelical in the group we have looked at, well might have.  Now on to our fellow Catholics.  There were few Catholic in the New Republic at the time of our Independence and they were centered primarily in Maryland and Pennsylvania.  Maryland had been founded as a colony where Catholics could openly practice their faith, but in 1655, during Cromwell’s Puritan interregnum in England, a Puritan Army defeated Governor William Stone at the Battle of the Severn, and ended the control of the Lords Baltimore over the colony.  With the Puritans in charge, Catholicism was outlawed and the Catholic churches were burned.  In 1658 the 2^nd Lord Baltimore regained control and re-enacted the Toleration Act guaranteeing religious freedom in the colony.  Peace was somewhat short lived, however.  In 1689, after the defeat of Catholic King James II by his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange (the “better-half” of William and Mary), Maryland Puritans again rebelled against proprietary Government in Maryland and the Calvert family (the Lords Baltimore) lost power. With their fall Catholicism was again outlawed.  In 1704 the legislature passed “An Act to prevent the growth of Popery in this Province” which barred Catholics from public office.  It wasn’t as bad as it might have been, however, and Catholics (including the clergy who were all Jesuits) were tacitly permitted private chapels on their estates where they could worship discreetly.  In 1776 Charles Carroll, the patriarch of the vastly networked Carroll Family, was a Maryland Delegate to the Continental Congress and has the distinction of being the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.  Catholics understood from their experience in Britain, Ireland, and the colonies, how important it was for there to be religious freedom.  After 1689 Pennsylvania was the only colony where Catholics were given freedom to worship openly and Catholicism was actually illegal in most colonies including Virginia (where being a priest was a capital crime), New York, and Massachusetts.  In signing the Declaration of Independence, Carroll claimed that he was seeking: “not only our independence of England but the toleration of all sects professing the Christian religion and communicating to them all equal rights.”   Carroll, in the Recusant Tradition of English Catholicism, was not a man given to external pieties however.  In speaking of religion he also said: “I detest screwed up devotion, distorted faces, and grimace.”  But he added: “I equally abhor those, who laugh at all devotion, look upon our religion as a fiction, and its holy mysteries as the greatest absurdities.”  How would he feel about the brouhaha on the Leesburg Courthouse Lawn?   I think that final statement would be a strong indication that he would not support displays that attack religion but at the same time as a Marylander he would have seen no purpose in a public display of religious symbols either.  In colonial and Revolutionary War days in America, Catholics would have been the only religious groups displaying something such as a crèche or nativity scene.  We have seen in our earlier blogs about Anglicans that eighteenth-century Anglicans (and their American branch, Episcopalians) did not so much as display a cross on the communion table much less statutes on the lawn. Congregationalists (who once had made Christmas illegal), Reformed, Presbyterians, Mennonites, Baptists, and those new-fangled Methodists (who were just coming on the scene) would be even more appalled at such “popish” displays.  Lutherans had known some such customs in Germany and Scandinavia—though I don’t think crèches were common—but the trip across the Atlantic had pretty much purified them of what Catholic heritage had survived among European Lutherans.  Maryland Catholics, with their recusant traditions, were used to keeping religious practice out of the public square and confining it to chapel and home.  Personally, I would be pretty much in that Maryland Catholic tradition.  In the Church, in the home (and on their lawns)—let there be nativity scenes.  In the public square—well, I think trees and other symbols of the Winter Solstice festival are fine, but not religious symbols. 

Benjamin Franklin--A Most Unorthodox "Christian"

Onwards with the Judeo-Christian Nation issue to determine whether or not our American heritage is indeed, undisputedly as Ms Barbara Curtis of Mommy Blog asserts, a “Judeo-Christian nation.”  We looked at our colonial roots (December 15) which can give some affirmation to the idea and then to the Founding Fathers where the issue becomes more complicated.  We had two entries (December 16, 17) on Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the Declaration of Independence, as well as being the author of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom which, in turn, influenced the non-establishment clause of the Bill of Rights which lies at the heart of the problem of religious displays in public space.  Yesterday I tried to use the Tim Tebow phenomenon to illustrate the difference between government-space and public space as well as between religious holidays/symbols and cultural celebrations/symbols.  So now back to the Founding Fathers and we will look at Benjamin Franklin to see his religious convictions and what they might say about “Christian Nation.”  Franklin is usually identified as a Quaker but his roots, in fact, were Congregationalist and he was baptized as an infant at the Old South Meeting House in Boston.  His parents destined him for the clergy—a fate for which Benjamin would have been incalculably ill suited.  I don’t know that he ever affiliated with the Quakers—it seems unlikely as having fled to Philadelphia (the seat of American Quakerism) at age 17, then on to London for a brief period before returning to Philadelphia where he joined the Masons at the age of twenty-five and within four years was elected Grand Master of his Lodge.  Quakers eschewed secret societies and while Franklin dressed plain and lived frugally his ties to the Masons would indicate he had already become a rationalist rather than a believer when he settled in the City of Brotherly Love.  Indeed when Franklin wrote his autobiography in 1771 he identified himself as a Deist and claimed to have long been won to that philosophy.  Franklin was very interested in religion.  In 1774, when living in London as the agent of the Pennsylvania Colony, he was present at the founding meeting of Unitarianism.  A decade later while serving as ambassador to France, Franklin gave advice to the Papal Nuncio regarding administration of the Catholic Church in the newly independent United States.  Indeed Franklin recommended John Carroll as superior of the American Mission—the provisional administration of the Church until the establishment of a Catholic hierarchy in 1789.  Franklin had become acquainted with Carroll in 1776 when they journeyed together and with Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll (John’s cousin) to Canada to seek Canadian support for the Revolution.  Carroll, incidentally, was excommunicated for this act by the Bishop of Quebec, but he retained Franklin’s esteem.  Franklin, like so many liberals across the ages, was an elitist and while he admired Jesus as great moral teacher he favored organized religion principally because of its potential to shape the morals of the common people of which he did not consider himself one.  Not only did he not affiliate to any organized religion, but Franklin himself, while exalting moral behavior as the necessary foundation of any civilization, was no moral rigorist and always allowed himself considerable latitude in his personal life.  He was however, the consummate gentleman and charmed all, religious and agnostic alike.  John Adams said of him “The Catholics consider him almost a Catholic, The Church of England claimed him as one of them; the Presbyterians thought him half-a-Presbyterian and the Friends believe him a wet Quaker.” 

     In order to clarify Franklin’s religious stance we perhaps should briefly look at Freemasonry and also at Unitarianism and its relationship to orthodox Christianity and to Deism. 

      Freemasonry rose in Britain in the late 16^th and early 17^th centuries.  The oldest lodges were in Scotland but the movement seems to have travelled into the southern kingdom along with the Stuarts when in 1603 James VI of Scotland came to the English Throne as James I.  While the origins seem to have been a fraternal organization of artisans and craftsmen, from the very beginning there was an interest in scientific knowledge.  Indeed the Scots lodge at Kilwinning, considered to be the Mother or first lodge in Masonry, is spoken of in the 1559 Schaw Statutes: the warden of the lodge of Kilwinning …take trial of the art of memory and the science thereof, of every craftsman (fellowe of craft) and every apprentice according to the air of their vocations.”  William Schaw, by the way, was not only one of the leaders of the Kilwining Lodge but the “Master of Works” to King James VI of Scotland before his ascension to the English Throne.  This provides a possible link to the spread of Freemasonry from Scotland to England. 

     Scottish Freemasonry is linked to the (Protestant) Reformation in Scotland and while the Scots Reformation was Calvinistic many of its supporters were no more interested in Calvinism than Catholicism but only wanted the intellectual freedom that the break with Rome seemed to represent.  This is true in both Scotland and England where once papal authority was broken, the Church—now the Reformed Church—was never able to establish control over the belief of the citizenry.  The origins of the separation of Church and State are firmly rooted in the Reformation principles that each individual is the judge of his or her orthodoxy.  Freemasonry attracted inquiring minds that wanted to discuss matters of science, politics, morals, and natural religion without the dominance of hierarchy.  There are strong ties between Freemasonry and the Enlightenment.  While today many Masons are devout members of mainline Protestant Churches with an orthodox appreciation of the Christian doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity, that would not have been typical in the seventeenth and eighteenth century where Freemasonry was tied to rationalism and Deism—and even agnosticism. 

     Freemasonry requires the belief in a Supreme Being but as a matter of principle leaves that Supreme Being undefined.  There is also the reference to “Sacred Law.”  While in the United States this “volume of Sacred Law” is most commonly the King James Bible, it can be any religious or philosophical text depending on the makeup of the members.  Indeed in Lodges of mixed religious memberships—Christians, Hindus, Muslims—several “volumes of Sacred Law” might be displayed together.  In other words, religion is somewhat of whatever the individual decides to make it.  In a Christian context this not only produces a religious relativism, but it permits the Christian faith to be understood so broadly as to be without substance. In this system natural science rather than revealed truth is the basis of moral behavior and that would be perfectly consistent with the thought of not only of the Mason, Franklin, but the non-Mason Deist, Jefferson. It is not Christian doctrine however in which the teachings of Jesus are not only illustrative of good morals but their foundation.  Well, that is enough for today.  We will save Unitarianism for another day.  Suffice it to say that Franklin was very definitely post-Christian in his own beliefs but thought that organized religion was a good thing for shaping the moral character of individuals less sophisticated than himself and his fellow Deists.  I don’t think one could say that he supported the idea of a Christian Nation, one built on orthodox Christian (or Judeo-Christian) doctrine but while not practicing it himself, he did encourage formal religion for the common citizen.  It would be inconsistent with his thought, however, to claim that he would support special legal or societal status for one religion over another.