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.” 

A lull in Anti-Catholic America

Continuing with the theme of a history of Anti-Catholicism in America, Catholics in the newly independent nation fared quite well. While society in general and political power in particular remained in the hands of the old English-now-American gentry who were, with the exception of the Marylanders, all but universally Protestants of the Congregationalist or Unitarian types in New England or Episcopalians (New York, Virginia and the Southern States), Catholics had at least been given the freedom to build churches and openly practice their faith. Catholic communities sprang up in Boston, New York, and Charleston. Philadelphia had a Catholic community even before the Revolution and indeed the Continental Congress had, on at least one occasion, repaired to Old St. Joseph’s Church for public prayer. Catholicism was long accustomed to being publically acknowledged in Maryland. Moreover many Marylanders were among the most avid settlers pouring through the Cumberland Gap into the Ohio Valley settlements in what is now Kentucky. Indeed within eighteen years of John Carroll’s being named first Archbishop of Baltimore, his See would be named an archdiocese with four suffragens—Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Bardstown Kentucky. A few years later dioceses were created in Charleston, Richmond, and Cincinnati.
John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop, was well known to the leading figures in American politics. He was a Carroll, of the Maryland Carrols. His cousin Charles had signed the Declaration of Independence. Another member of the family was Daniel Carroll who served in Congress. Several Carrolls, including the Bishop’s Mother, Elizabeth Carroll, and the aforementioned Daniel Carroll, were among the landowners whose estates were purchased for the establishment of the new national Capital, Washington City, on the banks of the Potomac. Daniel Carroll was the owner of Jenkin’s Hill—the site that was picked for the new national Capitol and is now called Capitol Hil. John Carroll had served on a diplomatic mission to Canada with Benjamin Franklin and Franklin was among those who urged the Pope, Pius VI, to confirm Carroll’s election as first bishop in the nascent nation.
That is not to say, however, that Franklin or others—despite their regard for Carroll personally—held Catholicism in high esteem. Many of these founders including George Washington (though not Franklin) were free-masons and free-masonry was ardently opposed to traditional Christianity which they saw as intellectually incompatible with their enlightenment consecration to rationalism. Washington was a nominal Episcopalian—indeed a vestryman in his parish—but he attended church primarily to please his wife, and his participation in Christian worship was limited to attendance at Morning Prayer. Martha would stay for Holy Communion, but the General would leave church before the Communion Service began. From various comments he made, verbally or in writing, it is clear that Washington was not committed to the doctrine of Christ’s divinity and he saw religion’s main purpose as encouraging moral behavior among the less educated populace. This view was shared by Thomas Jefferson who himself might best be described as an Agnostic and who, while baptized an Anglican in infancy and buried according to the Anglican (or technically, Episcopalian) rites, saw Jesus as a great moral teacher and nothing else. Indeed, Jefferson went through his bible and sliced out all the miracle stories (including the Virgin Birth and Resurrection) and claims to Christ's divinity, leaving only the parables and moral teachings of Jesus. Jefferson did make several contributions towards the building of Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches because he saw them a offering good moral training to the yeoman farmers of Virginia whose political cause he championed. There is no record of him ever making a contribution towards the building of a Catholic church. (Washington, on the other hand, did make a contribution towards the building of Old Saint Mary’s in Alexandria, mostly because his much favored equerry, a Colonel John Fitzgerald, was among the sponsoring parishioners.) Jefferson and Franklin had served as envoys to the French Court and saw the unattractive side of European Catholicism with the great prelates of France living in lordly splendor at the expense of the underclasses and exerting great (and usually self-interested) influence over the King and his decisions. It did not leave them as admirers of Catholicism.
In the new republic Catholics tended to be Federalists—the party opposed to Jefferson and his “Republicans.” (This will get confusing, but the “Republican Party" of Jefferson is not related to today’s Republicans—indeed, to the contrary, they are the first generation of the modern Democrat party.)
Catholics in the new republic tended to be conservative and in favor of a strong central government. They were, for the most part, Maryland slave-holding gentry farmers. Also, after 1789 Jefferson and his followers were enamored—blindly so—of the French Revolution. The Revolution’s anti-Church fervor was very off-putting to Catholics who, though they might want to see a more democratic France did not think it worth the bloodshed of its king, so many priests and religious, and its many devout laity. Men like Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington were Gentlemen, however, and it was required of gentlemen to show tolerance if not respect; while there may not have been an enthusiasm for the Catholic Church there was no hint that Catholics should not take a full role in American public life.
Catholics for their part were making a contribution to the new republic. Elizabeth Ann Seton’s Sisterhood, the Sisters of Charity, was growing and its women undertook ministries both of education and nursing—needed services in the new nation that had not yet developed much of an infrastructure for these services to be provided at public expense. Only a few years after Elizabeth Seton’s Sisterhood, Catherine Spalding, a nineteen-year-old woman from an old Maryland family—and a family that would prove very prominent in the history of Catholic America—established the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in 1812. A laywomen, Teresa Lalor, opened a girl’s school on the campus of Georgetown College in 1799. The school drew young women from the best families—Catholic and Protestant—of the national capital. It was a tradition in the school's first two decades that the President of the United States attended the commencement and gave the girls their diplomas. Lalor and her companions had developed into a community of Visitation nuns by 1816. Ursuline nuns had come from Quebec and opened a convent and school in Charlestown, outside Boston. Like the Visitation in Georgetown, it drew young women from the best families and more Protestants than Catholics. This was an age of peace for the Church—but a peace that was not to last. Catholics had successfully integrated themselves into American society. They proved their loyalty to the Republic and their usefulness to the larger society. Their bishops and clergy showed themselves interested not in political clout but in building a Church that was anxious to show its gratitude for its freedom under the laws of the Republic by being the best and most loyal of citizens and making its contribution to a nation that was neither Catholic or Protestant, but granted freedom to all.

The image today is the Cathedral of Saint Joseph, Bardstown