The Maryland Catholic Tradition: Ahead of its Time

Bishop John Carroll

I have made several entries on the style of Catholicism in colonial and early Republican Maryland and how much it has in common with modern Catholic practice.  Churches were plain and without much decoration—the Cathedral in Baltimore not even having statues.  While the Mass was in Latin (despite Bishop Carroll’s desire for it to be in the vernacular), Carroll and other clergy had translated much of the sacramental ritual from Latin into English.  Despite Roman prohibitions on ecumenism, American Catholics were used to cooperating with their Protestant countrymen and even worshipping with them on occasion. Churches usually had lay trustees—something that would cause Carroll and other bishops enough headaches that they would eventually do away with them.  (Bishop John England of Charleston, on the other hand, wrote a Constitution for his diocese and had an annual convention of lay and clergy to help in the decision making.)  Carroll had been elected bishop by the clergy and he hoped that Rome would permit future bishops to be elected as well.  (Rome did not permit.)  Carroll and other clergy routinely wore lay clothing, albeit in dark colors, while on the street.  When Carroll brought the first religious women to the United States—four Carmelite cloistered nuns from the Netherlands (three of whom were Maryland natives) they arrived in secular dress and resumed their habit only when they were ensconced in their monastery at Port Tobacco.  Several years later when he asked Elizabeth Ann Seton, a widowed convert from Episcopalianism, to organize an American religious sisterhood based on Vincent dePaul’s Daughters of Charity, it was decided that they would wear the plain black dress and bonnet of widows rather than the cornettes of their French counterparts or the more traditional wimple and veil of nuns.    Carroll, his priests, and the American faithful had no qualms of “fitting in”—indeed that was their goal.  They saw no reason why they had to stand aside from their countrymen believing that Americanism and Catholicism were perfectly compatible. The Catholic faith was to be packaged in American homespun rather than European brocade. 
     Maryland Catholics would never have worked their way into the untenable position of the Leesburg Knights of Columbus who insisted on a religious display on the Courthouse lawn only to find that their campaign opened the door to atheist displays that mocked not only Catholicism but faith itself.  In Carroll’s day Catholicism was known for what it stood for; today Catholicism is too often better known for what it is against.  Evangelism doesn’t work when the message is what we are against.  

Apostles of Charity

Saint Vincent de Paul
model of Christian Charity

Yesterday I had some thoughts pertaining to Saint Vincent de Paul because of the homily at mass that triggered me to reflect on Paul VI’s great line that if you want peace work for justice and Mother Teresa’s equally important insight that justice is founded on charity.    But as the day went on my thoughts turned from Saint Vincent de Paul and the work he did in Paris to the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.  I haven’t heard of the Saint Vincent de Paul society for years, but I remember that when I was young it was one of the key societies in our parish and I believe most parishes.  My grandfather, an immigrant from Ireland, was devoted to the Society and every Monday evening was out at Church with the other men who belonged.   I sort of recall that the Holy Name Society—to which my father belonged—was for younger men and the old men of the parish all belonged to the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.  That may explain why one doesn’t hear of them anymore.  A society that becomes an old men’s club (or old women’s club) is doomed to extinction—something to which religious communities today had better pay attention.
      Frédéric Ozanam is generally credited with beginning the society and in the strictest sense of the matter, he should be so credited.  However there was a Daughter of Charity, Sister Rosalie Rendu, who worked among the poor of Paris in the cities slums and it was Sister Rosalie who guided Ozanam and his associates in the project of organizing poor relief in Paris.  At the time (1833)  Frédéric Ozanam was a young man of only twenty years of age studying in Paris!  He would go on to become a noted lawyer and a professor at the Sorbonne and was beatified by John Paul II in 1997.  His family were of Jewish origin and he was actually born in Milan.  Ozanam and his fellow students organized the Conference of Charity to help the poor of Paris.  The Society really understood the mission of Vincent de Paul and continued the work he had begun of motivating the urban bourgeois of looking with compassionate interest on the poor who so often were not only suffering materially but also spiritually as too often the Church was doing far too little for their needs.  The French Church of the nineteenth century was linked inextricably to the moneyed classes—blue-blood and Bourgeoisie — and too often indifferent to the needs of the poor.  Clergy and many Religious were not interested in serving the poor.  The Catholic Church in France had become like the State Church of England—the ‘Conservatives at prayer.’  But at least in England one had the Methodists and the Baptists to keep the Gospel giving hope to those at the bottom of the social heap; in France they were left without any real access to faith. 
     Oznam and his associates, at the urging of Sister Rosalie and in the example of Vincent de Paul went into the homes of the poor and discovered what they needed—medical care, food, clothing, schooling for their children—and worked to provide it for them.  They did this on a one-to-one basis—not as some sort of charitable program but as a fraternal relationship with the poor.  And they used the relationships that developed not merely to provide material needs but to catechize the poor and reconcile tens of thousands to the Church.  They stood godfather to infants and sponsor to those being confirmed.  They provided wedding dinners and trousseaus for those wishing to marry.  They pleaded with the Jesuits and the de la Salle Brothers and the Madames of the Sacred Heart to take the children of the poor into their schools and give them an education.  Too often charity means writing a check but these men knew that true charity is always one to one.  True charity is far more than giving, it is a relationship.  In this way they anticipated the theology of Solidarity long before the writings of John Paul II.
    The Society spread from Paris to other French towns and cities and then across the channel to England and Wales in 1844.   Shortly thereafter it came to the United States, a country in which many of the Catholics were immigrant and poor.  But no one is ever more dedicated to helping the poor than those who are themselves poor.  The Saint Vincent de Pal Society  has always been part of the Vincentian Family, like the Daughters of Charity, the Vincentian Priests and Brothers (also known as the Congregation of the Mission, or in Europe, the Lazarists), The Ladies of Charity, and the Sisters of Charity of the Seton heritage.  Non-Catholics may join and many have come into the Church through their cooperation with the Saint Vincent de Paul Society.  Today the Saint Vincent de Paul Society comprises almost a million members in over a hundred and thirty countries!  I don’t know why we don’t hear more of them here in the United States—or at least in the part of our nation where I live.  There is as much a need as ever for such an organization today when so many in our nation are without work.  When countless immigrants are being lost to the faith because the institutional Church is not capable of supporting sufficient ministries to Hispanic and Pacific Rim Americans and when many parishes—and parish priests—see liturgies and catechetics for Hispanics, Haitians, Vietnamese, and other immigrant Catholics an inconvenience.  And it is not only the immigrants, or the Catholics, for that matter who need to be on the helped end of a helping relationship.  Our “new translation” or restored communion rails or keeping women out of the sanctuary is not the greatest need of the American Church today—fulfilling the Gospel of Christ to bring Good News to the Poor is, always has been, and will be forever our first priority if we are to truly be the Church of Jesus Christ.       

Thoughts for the Feast of Monsieur Vincent

Ah, the old days when we knew what it was to be
Catholic

Today is the Feast of Saint Vincent de Paul, founder of the Daughters of Charity (the nuns who used to wear those incredible white winged bonnets before Vatican II came along and stole all the fun out of religion) and the Vincentians—known more formally as the Congregation of the Mission and—outside the United States—called the “Lazarists.”  (I always wondered how they got the name “Lazarists” and then I found out that they are called Lazarists because when they were founded in the seventeenth century they had taken over the old Augustinian Priory of Saint Lazarus in Paris.)  In any event, I went to Mass this morning with the Daughters of Charity (minus the winged bonnets and, for the most part, not wearing the Christian Dior designed habit that replaced the old coif and blue-gray gown) and heard the gospel of the Beatitudes which is proper to the feast.  The homilist, referring to the first reading “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those heralding the gospel of peace” (Isaiah 52:7, what a great scripture), reminded us of the saying of Paul VI: If you want peace, work for justice.  He then went on to say, quoting Mother Theresa, that if you want justice, seek charity since justice—God’s Justice (not ours which is retributive justice)—is the product of charity.  He defined justice not as “fairness” (“life is not fair nor is it meant to be” he declared) but as the virtue of seeing that God’s Will is carried out in as that each is given possession of that which God has willed for him or her.  That is an interesting concept, certainly not one that we usually hear in our contemporary world.   Conservatives, or self-proclaimed conservatives at least, speak of justice as pay-back.  The pseudo-“evangelicals” also fall into this retributive theory.  Liberals, on the other hand, keep confusing justice with some sort of egalitarian fairness—the naïve assumption that everybody should enjoy the same mindless middle-class comfort-bubble in which they have been raised.  The first idea (that God’s Justice is retributive Justice) is repugnant to the foundations of Christian orthodoxy while the second is just plain stupid.  If wealth was doled out equally to all within ten years or so we would be right back where we are today.  The trouble with liberalism is that liberals don’t believe in original sin.  Neo-Cons not only believe in original sin, they make it work for them—voila, Reaganomics and its fruit—Enron and associates, the Savings and Loans Debacle, Halliburton-Iraq, and the world economic implosion of 2008.  But I stray.  Back to the homily.  To summarize to this point: Peace is founded on Justice, Justice is built on Charity.  He then went on to say that charity is not handing out goodies to those in need or even appreciating my neighbor for his good qualities or in spite of his bad.  Charity is the love that fills the heart of God and we are called to the love of God which makes God’s love our own so that we can love others with the love that fills the heart of God.  He quoted John of the Cross about transformative union or something—the idea being that prayer brings us to love God in such a way that our union with God empowers us to love others with the same love that God has for them.  Boy, talk about not believing in original sin; can you even conceive of loving with the love that fills the heart of God? It sort of blows one away.   Why don’t we get this stuff in Sunday Sermons instead of the thoughtless crap about “try to be a better person” or why “only men can be priests” or “Catholicism is the only true religion”?  I tell you, it would be a lot easier to believe that the Catholic Church is the Church of Jesus Christ if we got a little more John of the Cross and a little less “Foxe News Catholicism” on Sunday morning.  In fact, I would be happy with a  little more Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.   It all boils down to the old chestnut:  “By this will all know that you are my disciple: that you have love, one for another.”  Hmmm.  Ya think that might be the key?          

More on those wonderful ladies--what is the Vatican's problem?

I want to get away from the anti-Catholicism material for awhile. There is still much on that topic as we trace both the end of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century as well as some current aspects. This anti-Catholicism series seems rather popular, but there are other topics to talk about and I want to return—just for today—to the topic of the Vatican Investigation of American Nuns. Most Catholics don’t know enough about the history of religious life to be able to put the issues the investigation is pursuing in the proper context. Those of us “of a certain age” grew up with “nuns”—they taught us in school, nursed us in the local hospital, and we would see the in the street or shops with their long dresses that swept the floor and their modest veils that hid all but their face—and sometimes a good share of that. I did some earlier blogs (January 14 and 19) to explain the difference between “nuns” and “sisters.” The ladies we saw in the street or who taught us in school were not nuns at all, but sisters. And the origins of nuns and sisters is quite different—as is their role in the Church. I spent this past week in a monastery of nuns giving some talks. Some of those nuns had, earlier in their lives, been sisters. Nuns are contemplative religious, almost always living an “enclosed” (cloistered) life while sisters collaborate in the apostolic work of the Church in a wide variety of ministries. In one of the earlier blogs I mentioned the story of the remarkable English woman, Mary Ward, who in the height of Elizabethan England and its persecution of the Church, founded a community of women who did not wear a habit, were not bound to the traditional choral prayers in chapel, and whose mission, modeled on the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) and their work with young men, was to educate young women. This in a time, incidentally, when even women of the upper classes were not thought to need anything more I the way of education than reading and perhaps some penmanship, a smattering of French, some music, needlework, and how to administer a household.
Another religious community of sisters was founded just a few years later. Vincent de Paul was a pious French priest with an extraordinary compassion for the poor and suffering. This may have originated in his having been captured by Moorish pirates and forced into slavery for several years before he could escape. Monsieur Vincent traveled in some of the most exalted ecclesiastical and social circles of the day and was known for his deep spirituality and an outstanding ability to preach retreats. He avoided fame, however, and took a living in a rural parish far from Paris. In his love for the poor he organized confraternities of socially prominent women to help the poor and the sick. These women were called the “Ladies of Charity.” For most of these socialites work among the poor was a diversion more than an evangelical commitment. Their hearts were in the right place and they opened their purses, but in accord with the aristocratic tenor of 17th century France, tended to send their servants to do the actual hands-on care. Vincent met the wealthy and pious widow, Louise de Marillac sometime about 1625 and served as her spiritual director—mostly by letter as she lived in Paris and he in the rural parish of Châtillon-les-Dombes. But Vincent’s preaching and his fame as a spiritual director and a seminary administrator led to him being recalled to Paris. There he and Mde. de Marillac organized a group of poor girls into a community to serve the poor and sick. They began working at the Hotel-Dieu, the ancient hospital across the parvis from Notre Dame Cathedral. The community grew rapidly as it provided the sisters with both a mission and a deep spirituality. This spirituality, much like the one of Mother Theresa of Calcutta four centuries later—was eminently practical, uniting prayer and work, with the sisters being encouraged to see Christ in each of the poor they encountered. But Monsieur Vincent and Mde. de Marillac did not see these women as nuns. To avoid the canon law requiring enclosure, their vows were private “simple” (not Solemn Vows) vows, taken not for life but annually renewed. Contrasting their life with that of nuns, St. Vincent de Paul admonished them:
• 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 grille, the fear of God,
• for veil, holy modesty
Well, isn’t it just that attitude that gets Rome to conduct a visitation? How ironic. By the way, you may—if you are old enough—remember that until 1964 the Daughters of charity wore these distinctive white starched cornettes instead of a veil. Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillace had them in grey dresses (later blue-grey) with these white starched headpieces. At the time they were founded those white winged bonnets were the typical headwear of Parisian working-class and serving women, but as with so many “habits,” lay fashions changed and what once was ordinary lay dress became a distinctive habit. When the Sisters gave up the cornette in 1964 it was replaced by a simple (but elegant) blue dress and scarf-like cap designed by Christian Dior.

The image today is a photo of Daughters of Charity wearing the traditional French cornettes they wore until the mid-sixties.