Glorious Saint Patrick

Saint Patrick is a figure about whom much has been written but very little is know—in other words most of the stories we tell about Patrick are more legend than history.   Indeed for several decades many historians disputed the historical reality of Patrick or thought he was a combination of several individual persons.

Christianity had come to Ireland before Patrick.  Possibly as early as the late third century monks from Egypt and Syria sought the greater solitude of islands on the western coast of Ireland.  In addition trade routes from both western Britain and northwestern Spain would have caused some Continental Christians to settle in Ireland.  Some scholars maintain that Christianity had, in fact, taken a strong hold in the southern parts of Ireland by the earl fifth century, decades before Patrick arrived.  By the third decade of the fifth century there were sufficient Christians in Ireland for Pope Celestine I to send his deacon, Palladius, as Bishop there.  Unfortunately Palladius ran afoul of the King of Leinster, the south-east portion of the country and was sent back to Britain, his mission unsuccessful.

Palladius cannot be blamed for his failure.  Christianity was not an easy match for Irish society.  In the first place, the Irish had no towns or cities and Christianity is essentially an urban religion, or at least is organized on an urban plan with dioceses and deaneries and such.  And where do you build your churches if you don’t have towns?   And your schools?

But the complexity grows beyond that.  The Irish are a tribal society.  Every person belonged to a clan and the head of the clan ruled supreme.  The clans themselves were united by blood and marriage into super-clans or tribes. The heads of the various clans and super-clans each claimed for himself the title “king.”  Over this myriad of families and clans were four regional kings: Munster, Leinster, Connaught, and Ulster.  And over the four great kings, was the High King who made his capital, such as it was for a somewhat migratory people, at the Hill of Tara. No king, even the High King, really had any authority (except possibly force) over another king    Every time you turn around you have to deal with a new king.  And if King A likes you, his enemy, King B won’t.   In other words, there was no political infrastructure. 

Irish religion, like that the ancient Britons, was Druidism which was a combination of magic and spiritism.  The Irish saw the sacred everywhere—in certain groves of trees, in mountains, in holy wells.  They were convinced they lived in a world inhabited by spirits—the spirits of the dead as well as the spirits of nature.   They did practice human sacrifice, though not on the extensive scale as the Aztecs and some other societies. 

Under Brehon Law, women were equal to men and wives could divorce their husbands.  The law was harsh in its punishments, especially for thievery.  There were ten different types of marriage recognized by Brehon Law, depending on the various social standings of the partners and most marriages were easily dissolvable

Patrick himself was from an upper-class Romano-British family, probably located on the south-west coast of Britain.   His father was Calpurnius, a deacon and Decurion in the Roman Army. His grandfather had been a priest.  Yet Patrick as a young boy showed little interest in religion and was somewhat of a wild teenager. 

We have two authentic sources for Patrick’s life—both written by him.  The first is his “Confessions,” which he wrote to answer charges against him by the British bishops who were upset that he would not accept their authority over him and the Irish Church.  (It was heavily a matter of the British bishops wanting to get “their share” of the tithes of the Irish Church).  Patrick was determined to maintain the independence of the Irish Church.  In part this determination was based on the fact that Patrick had to make a lot of “adjustments” to make Christianity adaptable to the peculiarities of Brehon Laws and customs, including turning a blind eye to some of the irregular customs surrounding marriage. 

The second and shorter document which can be considered is Patrick’s “Letter to Coroticus.”  Coroticus was a Christian British chieftain, who regularly ran pirate raids on the east coast of Ireland looking for booty and slaves.  In a recent raid, Coroticus’s soldiers had come across a band of Patrick’s newly baptized converts, raped and enslaved the women and children and killed the men “still in their baptismal garments.” Patrick excommunicated Coroticus and his soldiers which enraged the bishops of Britain who saw his actions overstepping onto their boundaries.  

We are getting a bit ahead of our story, however.  Patrick as a youth of about 16 was kidnapped by Irish pirates, brought back to Ireland and sold into slavery.  He spent about seven years as a sheep-herder in Antrim, in the north of Ireland.  During the long, lonely nights on the Irish hillsides, he rediscovered his faith and developed a life of deep prayer.  One night he heard a voice: “Your ship is ready.”  Patrick, at great risk to his own life, escaped and traveled as a fugitive 200 miles to Wicklow where he was able to talk a group of sailors to take him back to Britain.  While home he had a vision of an Irishman saying: We appeal to you, holy youth, come and walk among us once more.”  Patrick felt a vocation to return to Ireland with the Christian faith. He studied under Saint Germanus of Auxerre and was eventually ordained.   Returning to Ireland Patrick did not have an easy time of it.  If his mission was to succeed he could not afford to tie himself into the clan system as being identified with one clan would alienated him from others and yet, without being part of the clan system, he had not patrons or protectors.  He also faced tremendous opposition from the druids who saw him destroying the old ways on which they depended.  At the same time the bishops of Britain were very jealous that he would not accept their oversight of the Irish Church.  They were more than suspicious of his accommodating Christianity to the Irish ways and customs. 

A major part of Patrick’s strategy in winning converts was his appeal to women.  Winning the mothers to the faith, guaranteed the children.  He also made a point of aiming for slaves and did much to better their lots.  By the end of his life vast numbers of the Irish had been Christianized but it was a somewhat unique version of Christianity, differing from nearby Romano-Britain and from Rome itself.  The Church in Ireland had a different way of calculating the date for Easter than that followed by the Roman Church, meaning that the actual dates varied from one another from year to year.  The Irish monks also did not shave the crown of their heads in tonsure, but everything forward from a line from ear to ear.  Most disconcerting to the Roman authorities, was that the Irish made their confession to priests privately rather than to the bishop and did not perform public penance but ironically it is the Irish, not the Roman form of the Sacrament of Penance that has survived.  Because the Irish did not have cities and towns, Patrick organized the Church in Ireland according to the clan system.  Each clan had its monastic establishments for men and for women.  The religious head of the family, directly under the family’s chieftain or king, was its Abbot.  The bishop was a mere functionary to ordain and perform those actions limited to bishops.  All jurisdiction was given to the Abbot.  At times, such in the case of Saint Brigid of Kildare, the Abbacy was held by a woman and thus a woman directed the Church in and among her clan.   Roman Law gave no legal recognition to women or their authority but Brehon Law had no scruples.   The Irish church was also pretty sloppy on its canon law of marriage, tolerating divorce in many cases and following the Brehon Law that accorded validity to marriages in respect to the ten different types of marriage recognized in the Brehon Law.

It was only in the twelfth century through the ecclesiastical services of Saint Lorcan O’Toole and the political skuldullgery of Stronbow, King Henry II, and Pope Adrian IV that the Irish Church was brought into conformity with and canonical union with the Church of Rome. 

Of Rainbow Shamrocks and Protestant Parades

Great parade yesterday up Fifth Avenue and past Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.  Cardinal Dolan was the Grand Marshal.  Previous Grand Marshals include Governor Al Smith, (first Catholic to run for President of the United States)1925; Mayor Jimmy Walker (1932); Mayor Robert Wagner (1954); Governor Hugh Carey (1976); Cardinal John J. O’Connor (1996); Maureen O’Hara (1999); and Cardinal Edward Egan (2002).   There was some controversy because for the first time in parade history a LGBT group, Out@NBCUniversal marched under their own banner.   (It would be naïve—at the least—to think this was the first time gays marched in the parade.)   While openly gay participation in the past has been blocked, Grand Marshal Cardinal Dolan made a point of saying that he thought it a wise decision to make the parade more “inclusive” and that he welcomed everyone.  The Krazies, of course, are furious but then anger is their mother’s milk. 

I only watched the first half hour or so of the parade, but one curious factoid I heard implied it (wasn’t actually said) that this parade has always been a Catholic celebration.  The panel of NBC commentators were remarking on the history of the parade which originally was in lower Manhattan.  (In the eighteenth century today’s midtown site of the parade was nothing more than open fields and “truck gardens” that supplied the city with food.)  One of the commentators, admittedly I don’t remember who, remarked that this was because the Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral was in Greenwich Village.  Two problems.  The Old Saint Pat’s is not in the Village but on Mulberry Street in what would become Little Italy and is now Chinatown.  But the more egregious mistake is that while the parade dates back to 1762, the Cathedral was built only in 1809-1815.  You see, despite the implication—and the common historical misperception—the parade was not originally a Catholic sponsored event.  To the contrary: those who marched in the first parade of 1762 were all Protestants.  And such would have been the case for the first twenty or more years—it was a Protestant event.  In fact it was at least predominately a Protestant event well into the 19^th century.

The first Saint Patrick’s Day parade in New York was comprised of Irish soldiers in the British Army.  Until 1778 Catholics were prohibited from joining the army (and their commissioning as officers was even later).  In fact, while all other churches and religions, even Judaism, were legally tolerated, it was illegal to be a Catholic in New York until the 1777 State Constitution that marked independence from Great Britain. 

The 1737 Boston Saint Patrick’s Day Parade, generally considered the first in the colonies—and thus the oldest American Parade to honor Ireland’s national saint, was also comprised of Irish Protestants who had immigrated to Massachusetts.  Irish nationalism in the 18^th century—and the Saint Patrick Day Parades were celebrations of Irish Identity and Nationalism within the British Empire—was not a Catholic phenomenon but a Protestant one.  The Catholics had been so beaten down by the Penal Laws, and especially so in Ireland after the 1688 victory of William of Orange over the Catholic James II, in the British Empire that they were a political non-entity.  The principal advocates of Irish Nationalism from William Molyneaux to Jonathan Swift to Henry Grattan to Samuel Nielson to Wolfe Tone to Robert Emmet were all Protestants as would later be Charles Stewart Parnell, and literary figures W.B Yeats, Lady Gregory, and Seán O’Casey.  And the artist and indomitable Irish revolutionary, Baroness Markievicz, who advised her female admirers to: “Dress suitably in short skirts and strong boots, leave your jewels in the bank and buy a revolver,” was Protestant until she was in her 50’s when she was received into the Catholic Church. 

 Two of the first four Presidents of Ireland, Douglas Hyde and Erskine Childers were Protestants.  By no means has Irish Nationalism been a exclusively—or even predominately—Catholic phenomenon.

In those pre-Revolutionary (and Protestant) days in America, Saint Patrick’s Day was marked by the Irish in the larger colonial cities such as New York by dinners in the more elegant taverns such as Bolton and Sigel’s, now known as Fraunces Tavern.  For a day such as St. Patrick’s Day they would feast on oysters, lobster, turtle soup, cod, duck, goose, venison, and smoked hams.  Meats would be eaten roasted, or potted, or cooked in pasties—pies and hot-pockets.  Winter vegetables would include turnip, parsnips, carrots, squashes and winter cabbage.   Apples and pears conserved from the previous autumn would be pricey but available and a wide variety of summer fruits would have been put up into jams that might be served as is or used as fillings for pies.  Hard cider was the most common drink, but ales and beers would be common enough as well as rum imported from Jamaica and home-distilled whiskies.  Alcoholic beverages were drunk with no thought of moderation, especially for celebrations like today’s feast.  Desserts would include a variety of pies, sweetmeats (candied fruits), nuts, and boiled puddings such as whitepot, figgy pudding, or plum duff.  There were also such puddings as flummery, syllabub, and blancmange.  Celebrants would sit down to dinner midafternoon and the feast would last into the night or as long as the alcohol held out. 

It was only in the 1820’s that Catholic Irish began to migrate to New York in significant numbers and the floodgates opened with the Great Famine after 1846.  The second half of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth were the high-water mark of Catholic Irish immigration.  The “established Irish,” Protestant and Catholic, did not particularly welcome the immigrants who were of much lower social and educational status.  The Catholics were embarrassed by their immigrant co-religionists and the Protestants disowned them completely thinking them to be superstitious savages. But the immigrants were quick to organize themselves in an effort to better themselves by mutual help.  Among their first acts was to organize a separate Saint Patrick’s Day Parade which they had done by 1858.  Immigrant Irish participation in the Northern cause of the American Civil War not only united the Irish among themselves but gave them a certain political clout in New York and other Northern cities.  By the end of the Civil War the New York Parade was firmly under the control of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, an immigrant association formed to fight the prejudices against (Irish) immigrants that had been strong in the decade immediately before the Civil War. From that time on the New York Saint Patrick’s Day Parade has been firmly in the hands of Irish Catholics, yet it has always been a civic parade and not a religious procession.  Never in its history has it been a religious procession and while there was an active policy of excluding groups identified with the LGBT movement these forty years and more since the gay liberation movement has appeared, the exclusion of LGBT marchers or groups certainly can’t be argued on religious grounds.  

Origins of Radical Catholicism II: The Father McGlynn Story, part I

Jeremiah Cummings was succeeded as pastor of Saint Stephen’s Parish in New York City by his hand-picked assistant pastor, Father Edward McGlynn (1837-1900) who is one of my favorite characters in the history of American Catholicism.  McGlynn was one of ten children of a young widow who had been left—fortunately—in comfortable circumstances by her Irish immigrant husband.  Archbishop John Hughes was a family friend and oversaw the education of the McGlynn children and when Edward expressed a desire to become a priest, he was sent to study in Rome.  McGlynn initially studied at the Urban College of the Propaganda, but when the Pontifical North American College opened in 1858 he transferred there earning doctorates in Theology and Philosophy.  He finished and was ordained a priest in 1860, returning to New York and becoming assistant priest to the progressive Reverend Thomas Farrell at Saint Joseph’s Church in Greenwich  Village.    Farrell was an abolitionist and had a particular concern for the social welfare of African Americans.  Normally a priest with McGlynn’s background would be expected to have a quick rise in the hierarchy and it would not have been unreasonable for McGlynn to foresee a career for himself as a bishop, perhaps even Archbishop of his native New York, but the influence of Farrell set him off on a different track where he became far too radicalized to ever advance in Church politics, even in a dawning era where a liberal party would emerge in the American hierarchy. 

McGlynn viewed pastoral work very widely—not just the narrow sacramental and educational ministries common to priests of the day, but concern for the social welfare of parishioners and non-parishioners as well—and he threw himself into parochial work to the degree that his health broke after only two years. He was given a recuperation period in Europe but he had drawn the attention of Father Cummings who,  asked the Archbishop McGlynn as his associate.  Cummings died and McGlynn succeeded him as pastor.    Under the tutelage of Farrell and Cummings McGlynn had developed some very strong ideas.   There was a circle of New York diocesan priests who were opposed to the “Europeanizing” of the Catholic Church in the United States.  They—like prominent converts Orestes Brownson and Issac Hecker—believed that the American political and social tradition was compatible with Catholicism and did not need to be abandoned for European models that would appear strange, and even dangerous, in the American Republic.  McGlynn was a strong advocate of Public School education and would not build a parochial school at St. Stephen’s.  Instead he became very interested in providing poor children with good vocational training.  Although Saint Stephen’s was a very fashionable Church drawing membership from the at the time small pool of well-to-do Catholics, McGlynn devoted both personal and parochial resources to ministries to the immigrant poor.  It was probably here where he became involved in the Irish Land league.   

The Irish Land League was an organized attempt in Ireland to relieve the Irish peasantry from the burden of the often outrageous rents they had to pay the landlords—mostly British and Irish Protestant Ascendency—for the tenant farms they held.  This league was an eminently respectable organization benefitting the Irish Catholic peasantry but with the leadership coming primarily from the faction of the Anglo-Irish Protestant Ascendency that favored Irish independence.   It effectiveness was a huge threat to the Irish Status-Quo and the Irish bishops, always ready to accommodate their British Masters, opposed it, although much of the on-the-ground organization was provided by the country parish priests.  Incidentally, while the principal targets were the absentee Protestant British landlords, the first landlord to be hit by a rent strike was a wealthy Roman Catholic priest, Canon Burke of Knock (where, I presume coincidentally, the Blessed Virgin and assorted other heavenly types were allegedly appearing just about this time.  They were, by the way, appearing to the peasantry, not the Landlord-priest).  The Land league was strongly supported by Irish immigrant Catholics in the United States, Canada, and Australia and McGlynn became very involved in the cause.  The Cardinal MacCabe of Dublin and the Irish bishops, opposed to the league, communicated to their American counterparts that they should do their part to keep priests and the faithful from adding to the agitation.  To be fair, this was a very complex time in Irish history as not all the movements were dedicated to peaceful objectives and indeee d it was in the midst of this that the English chief secretary for Ireland, Lord Cavendish and the permanent Undersecretary, Thomas Henry Burke, were murdered at the viceroy’s lodge in Phoenix Park.  McGlynn however was not to be stopped in his publicly advocating support for the Irish tenant farmers and as he travelled around the North East speaking on behalf of the Land League he drew the wrath of a number of bishops.  More to come.    
The image today is Saint Stephen's Church (now known as Our Lady of the Scapular and Saint Stephen's) in New York City,

The Aftermath of the Charlestown Convent Burning

Looking through my notes several days ago, I realized that I had not posted my concluding blog on the Burning of the Charlestown Convent in 1834. As you remember a mob, enraged by anti-Catholic propaganda and rumors--and the growing number of Irish Catholic immigrants and how they were undermining the employment of local Protestant workmen--sacked and burned the Ursuline Convent School in Charlestown MA in August 1834. The story concludes (but the prejudice lived on as we have seen in Philadelphia and other cities). (For details, refer to the postings of January 26 and 27.)
The morning after the convent burning the mayor of Boston Theodore Lyman, convoked a public meeting at Fanueil Hall to discuss what that happened. The meeting adopted a resolution which mandated an investigation of the riot and events leading up to it. it also named member of an investigative committee. The meeting also resolved that the Diocese of Boston should be compensated for the loss of property and offered a reward to anyone providing information about who was responsible for this event The same day the selectmen of Charlestown convoked a public meeting and passed resolutions condemning the violence and setting up a Committee of Vigilance to investigate the affair and to solicit information about the perpetrators that would lead to their arrest and prosecution. These steps were a remarkably generous response to the convent burning and show that the more responsible citizens abhorred the sort of violence that the Charlestown Convent burning represented. Indeed the whole affair, including the relationship of the nuns with the Selectmen and Mr. Curry prior to the riot show that the more responsible sectors of society were not buying into Lyman Beecher’s pulpit pyrotechnics and the anti-Catholicism they represented.
The Catholics on their part kept a cool head about the whole event. Bishop Fenwick convoked a meeting of the Catholic citizens in the area and admonished them that any acts of vengeance would be incompatible with the “religion of Jesus Christ.” On behlf of the Catholic population, the Bishop thanked the Boston and Charlestown authorities for their stand against the violence and expressed his trust that the civil authorities would offer the protection and civil order that would insure this sort of event would not reoccur.
Despite the efforts of civic leaders to defuse the situation, the mob was again on the roll. That very night a mob assembled at the arsenal and moved off in the direction of the Cathedral. Fortunately the mayor had ordered police and military guards to be stationed at the Cathedral and the Catholic church in Charlestown as well as several civic buildings. Finding the Cathedral under guard, the crowd returned to the convent grounds which, curiously, had been left unguarded. The mob destroyed the grounds—tearing down fences and walls, uprooting shrubbery, ravaging the gardens and setting bonfires wherever they could.
In the end, the investigative committee met for three weeks and finally ordered thirteen arrests, eight for burglary or arson which were capital crimes. But that is not the end of the story. The Committee, the Selectmen, the Mayor were of one sort of Bostonian, but these thirteen alleged criminals were to be tried, as law requires, by their peers. All but one were acquitted even though the evidence against them in most cases was indisputable and indeed, the ringleader had admitted out of court, that he had played a pivotal role. The one person found guilty and condemned to life at hard labor, was a sixteen year old boy who had participated in burning books the night the convent sacked. At the request of a public petition signed by Bishop Fenwick and the Superior of the Charlestown Ursuline Sisters, the governor gave the boy a pardon,
The Charlestown Convent burning was early in the revival of anti-Catholicism. The 1840’s and 1850’s would be much more turbulent. The responsible action of the “better sort” of citizenry contrasted to the working class rioters indicates that—as is typical—prejudice generally exists among the less educated and those who feel themselves increasingly emarginated from society. But it is too simple to say that prejudice is limited to the underclass. History shows us something quite different. Lyman Beecher, one of the voices in Boston that was fanning the flames of anti-Catholicism, was a highly educated man with upper-class background. While a demagogue he may have been, a more astute analysis would see him as a man ahead of his time. Two decades after the convent burning some of the best names in the American Republic would be associated with rabid anti-Catholicism. As prejudice progresses it grows in respectability. The Jews in Germany would see this same progression from demagoguery to respectability with far more tragic results. Americans today should look carefully at how totally outrageous things that would once have been said only at White Supremacist rallies or American Nazi Party gatherings are said on cable networks and mainline political gatherings. This time it isn’t the Catholics, at least qua Catholics, who are the objects of vilification—but having been the victims of it in past history we certainly need to distance ourselves from it today.

Today's image is the Revernd Lyman Beecher, a famous Boston Clergyman, who was notorious for his anti-Catholic preaching and writing that contributed to the anti-Catholicism of nineteenth century Boston.

Anti-Catholicism and American nativism

The favorable situation of Catholics in America began to change after the election of Andrew Jackson in 1828. Jackson represented “the new American.” The last president born in what had been the English colonies, Jackson was in many ways the first president with a true American identity. Jackson had been orphaned during the Revolution. Jackson's brother Hugh died of heat exhaustion fighting the British at the battle of Stono Ferry. The British army was savage in his native Carolina and captured Andrew and his surviving brother,Robert. A British officer struck Jackson, then a boy of fourteen, with his sword for refusing to polish his boots. Jackson bore the scars the rest of his life. Robert died of smallpox contracted while in captivity. His mother died shortly after nursing American soldier victims of cholrea. This left Jackson with a pathological hatred of the English. (Jackson's father had died before Jackson was born.) Given his background in rural poverty and lack of formal education, Jackson was without the intellectual and strong cultural ties to European society that his predecessors had. He was a self-made man who can hardly have been called scrupulous and his ethical/moral code was that of the American frontier. A brilliant general he had fought Native Americans, Spaniards, and most importantly at the Battle of New Orleans, the British.
Jackson made his fortune not in the tidal lands of the east, but in the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee. Though his background was Scotch Presbyterian, he was not a man of either notable piety or Christian morals, but he lived in the heartland of the Second Great Revival—the evangelical fervor that swept the frontier of the American Republic in the early decades of the nineteenth century.
When Jackson came to the presidency, one of the first things he did --new brooms always sweep clean—was to replace the long-standing civil servants of the federal administration with political appointees of his own choice, men who had supported his rise to power. We take this change –of-administration-change of-personnel for granted, but it was new with Jackson. “To the Victors belong the spoils,” he declared, giving the practice of political patronage the name “The Spoils System.” The men he brought in with him were, for the most part, men like himself from the Frontier and they were, of course, Protestants—chiefly Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians—most often with strong ties to the Second Great Revival. These were people who, for the most part, were suspicious of Catholics who with their rites and rituals all in an ancient and largely unintelligible language were definitely not Evangelicals and whom Evangelicals generally did not even consider to be Christians. This made a huge difference in the City of Washington. For several decades now the local population—heavily Catholic—had served the Federal Government and provided the leadership for the City. Catholic institutions—Georgetown College, Visitation Convent School, Gonzaga College—were part of the warp and woof of Washington life. Under the Jackson presidency Washington Catholics lost their ascendency and Catholic institutions too lost the prominence and influence they once had. That was fairly mild though compared to an overt prejudice developing across the Republic towards Catholics. Jackson was the typikon of the New American—American born and American bred with no ties to Europe. After Jefferson with his French cuisine and viniculture and elegant manners and the Madisons with Dolly’s taste for Parisian fashion and furniture, and the Anglophilia of the Adamses, Father and Son—here was the new American who wanted to be only that—American.

Up to this point Catholicism in the new nation had been culturally adapted to American society in the old Recusant tradition, but now waves of new immigrants were coming from Europe—from Ireland, France, and the various German principalities mostly, but also a small number of Italians.
There was a marked shift in the type of Irishman coming to America. Especially after the famine that struck Ireland with failure of the potato crop in 1845-1846, the Irish immigrants were not the Anglo-Irish gentry or Dublin Middle Class of previous migrations, but the poor dirt farmers fleeing starvation. Poor, uneducated, rough-mannered, given to drinking and brawling, many of these immigrants had little knowledge of proper English, Irish being their native tongue. Protestantism represented to them the English landlords whose tenants they had been and who were letting them starve while shipping their crops to England to feed the people there and they were not inclined to positive relations with American Protestants. Their Catholicism was a peasant faith, almost superstitious which made the Protestants, in turn, think of them as a semi-heathen people.
For their part, the Germans, French, and Italians were people fleeing the wave of revolutions that swept Europe in 1848. The Italians, like the Irish, were often relatively poor famers and of course, unlike the Irish, they were totally unfamiliar with the English language. Their faith was a colorful Mediterranean faith with a rich piety that was extremely foreign to the old WASP establishment. They knew little of the Bible—so important to the old Protestant Tradition—but much of Mary and Saints, so much of dubious credibility that they too appeared to the American eye more superstitious than Christian.
The French and Germans appeared somewhat better educated and more cultured, but they also brought with them a Catholicism as yet unknown in the American Republic. They expected to have their traditional devotions with processions—most notably the Corpus Christi Procession—in the streets. Statues and candles abounded in their churches. The Rosary was an ubiquitous public devotion—among the Italians and Irish as well—but its Marian connection scandalized their Protestant neighbors. German Catholics—like their Lutheran neighbors at home—had their Bibles and were great hymn singers but they also brought with them a distrust of Protestants with whom back in Germany there had often been conflict.
The Americans were also not sure what kind of citizens these foreigners would make. The Italians, French, and Germans had all come fleeing the revolutions sweeping Europe—including a revolution against the temporal authority of the Pope that had cause Pius IX to flee Rome. Catholics tended to be monarchists and were opposed to the Republican uprisings. Arriving in this country they not only want to practice their religion as it was practiced in their various homelands, but to maintain their native language. They rejected American public schools and organized parochial schools—sometimes against the will of the Bishop—where children would receive the education they would get in the “old country.” Isolating themselves into national enclaves slowed down their Americanization. The Germans in particular resisted being anything other than Germans. One immigrant priest wrote: “A German is a German, and although he has shaken off the dust of his fatherland everywhere a true German longs for a greater Germany. I am one of those who want to remain a German.” This pitted the immigrant population against the American establishment. It even divided the Catholics in the United States as the old Maryland/Kentucky Catholic families were almost as taken aback by European Catholicism and the attitudes of the immigrant Catholics as were their Protestant neighbours. In fact, in this conflict between American Catholicism and Immigrant Catholicism we can see the roots of much of the division in the Church today. More to come.

The image today are Irish refugees from the Potato famine of 1845-49.