The Origins of Radical Catholicism XX: La Vie du Pére Hecker and papal condemnation

There were other things happening at the same time as the Americanist crisis and the Apostolic Letter, Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae of Leo XIII condemning what he saw as “Americanism.”  Again, remember that what rang the alarm bell was the Book La Vie du Pére Hecker which was a translation of Walter Elliott CSP’s biography of the founder of the Paulists, Issac Hecker.  Some claim that if Vatican Officials had read the original work in English all would have been well—that the “heresy” existed only in the minds of those who had read the French translation which was biased towards certain issues current in the French Church. 

A French priest, the Abbé Charles Maignen who was an ardent opponent of French Republicanism even after Leo XIII had given his approval to the Third Republic, wrote a critique of La Vie du Pére Hecker, entitled:  Le Pére Hecker,est-il un saint? In order to appreciate what happened next one needs to refer to French Politics in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.  I had dealt with this in two earlier blogs (April 1 and 2, 2011).  While the majority of French voters wanted to restore the monarchy, they were divided on which branch of Bourbon family should be restored—one representing a restoration of pre-revolutionary Absolute Monarchy, the other of the Constitutionalist Monarchy of 1848.  Their inability to agree led to the formation of what was to be a temporary republic—it lasted seventy years.  The die-hard conservatives—to which party Maignen belonged—were absolutely opposed to the Republic and were appalled that Leo XIII had not only given his approval to it but had a policy of ralliement, calling the French to not only accept the republic but actively participate in it.  Maignen saw the influence of the United States and its republic behind this Vatican move away from monarchism.  Cardinal Richard of Paris, supporting the Republic and Leo’s stance towards it, refused to give Maignen’s book the imprimatur.  Richard was not supportive of Klein and his endorsement of Americanist principles in La Vie du Pére Hecker, but he was concerned that Maignen’s book had attacked not only papally approved Republicanism but liberal members of the American hierarchy, notably Gibbons, Ireland, and Keane. 

Maignen did not let the Cardinal’s refusal of the imprimatur stop him.  He managed to arrange to have Alberto Lepidi, OP, the Pope’s official theologian grant the imprimatur.  This created the impression that Leo had himself given permission for the book to be printed.  Cardinal Rampolla, the Secretary of State, denied that the Pope had even known of Lepidi’s imprimatur, much less authorized it.  Salvatore Brandi, SJ, editor of La Civilità Cattolica (a semi-official Vatican newspaper) and rabid foe of Gibbons and the liberals, claimed that the pope had explicitly authorized it.  It was the typical Vatican Curial Keystone Cops drill, then as now, when no one knows who is in charge and everyone is claiming authority while no one will take responsibility.  Part of the complexity was Maignen had the help of Georges Périès, a canon law professor who had been dismissed from the faculty at Catholic University and who had an implacable personal hatred for Gibbons and Ireland, in arranging for Lepidi to grant the imprimatur.  Ireland, never one to back down from a brawl, claimed that he, Gibbons, and the others whom Maignen had attacked were the loyalists and reminded Rampolla that  Maignen was the one who opposed Leo’s policies towards the French Republic.  Archbishop Messmer of Milwaukee—a foe of Ireland’s over the school and German language issues—arrived in Rome for his ad liminia and told the pope that Ireland and some other American bishops did indeed hold the heterodox positions Maignen had attributed to them.  There was so much personal animosity, both among the American bishops and between the Americans and the Europeans that the bottom-line truth is hard to discover.  But there was a lot at stake in this fight and in the end the liberals—that is to say, the Americanists—would lose the battle.  That battle. There would be more.  And speaking of battles, we still need to look at the Spanish American War and how that affected the Vatican and Testem Benevolentiae.  Also keep Maignen and the French Monarchists in mind as they will surface again with Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and the Restorationists after Vatican II.  The war never ends, the battles go on even today!
the image today are some of the French Crown Jewels

Origins of Radical Catholicism XIX: Testem Benevolentiae, Americanism Decried

We have seen that Roman officials had become quite sour on the state of the Church in America. Actually, they had long ignored the American Church and their indifference had unintentionally morphed into a benign neglect.  It was only about the time of the American Civil war or shortly thereafter that Rome took any active interest in what was happening in the Church in the United States (Gregory XVI’s condemnation of slavery and the slave trade with his Bull: In Supremo Apostolatus, had not been directed towards America in particular (though it met with mixed reaction by American Catholics) but towards the many nations that practiced slavery and/or were involved in the slave Trade.  Communication between Europe and North America was revolutionized by the Atlantic cable, permitting almost instantaneous exchanges of messages that had, up to that point, taken approximately three months to go back and forth across the ocean.  The revolution in ship building that substituted the steamship for the sailing vessel also cut the time for an actual letter to pass between Rome and the States by three quarters and even more.  Also to be considered is that with steamships came commodious travel and the number of Americans travelling abroad or the ease with which official papal representatives and unofficial Roman scouts could visit the States all revolutionized the relationship which Europe in general and Rome in particular developed with the American Republic.

Rome was not ready for shock which its encounter with American religious culture sent through the Vatican curial oligarchy.  Separation of Church and State violated Catholic political doctrine.  Monks running schools and parishes rather than spending their days in choral prayer and theological study was a deep break in tradition.  Nuns abandoning the cloister for the classroom or the hospital was even more revolutionary—and the battlefield nursing nuns were absolute scandal—who was watching over their virtue and enforcing their discipline?   Catholic clergy associating with their Protestant counterparts was a serious violation not only of canon law but of Catholic doctrine.  Clergy wearing anything other than their cassocks or religious habits smacked of Protestant, or even secularist, influence.  The Americans just were not doing things the way that they were to be done!

La Vie du Pére Hecker put the final nail in the American coffin.  Few, if any, Roman officials had read The Life of Father Hecker by Walter Elliott, a book in which Elliott wrote the biography of Issac Hecker, founder of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle, popularly known as the Paulists.   But a French translation by the Abbé Felix Klein sent Rome into a full-scale panic attack.  Klein had translated Elliott’s work with a bias towards the liberal ideology that was tearing the French Church into a liberal and conservative faction.  This French book set off a reaction in Rome that ended in January 1899 with Pope Leo XIII writing an encyclical  to the American Church entitled Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae: A Witness to Our Good Will.  It had a positive name—affirming the Pope’s good will to the Church in the United States—but it was more a severe admonishing of the American Church—or at least the American Church as seen by the Abbé Klein.  This is one of the questions that historians ask: Did “Americanism” exist anywhere except in the mind of those who read a French book?  Was Leo’s concern valid?

What was it that Leo condemned?  Here are the principle points.

1.     American particularism: Leo was concerned that the American Church saw itself as an unique situation that freed it from traditional Catholic doctrine and practice 

2.     American individualism: Leo saw the Americans as being too inclined to think individually rather than to submit to the corporate wisdom.  In other words, the Pope thought Americans saw the supremacy of the individual conscience over the faith of the community (which he would have expressed as “The Teaching of the Church.” 

3.     American selectivism: That the authority of the Church is not limited to its infallible pronouncements but must be accepted in toto.

4.     American Ecumenism: Leo thought that the American Catholics were not sufficiently distant from their Protestant neighbors and rejected the ideas of collaboration with non-Catholics, maintaining the idea that while individual Protestants may be in error but in good faith, Protestantism itself was inherently erroneous and has nothing to offer the Catholic Church.  

5.     American secularism libertarianism: Leo saw the fundamental American principle of the Separation of Church and State as contrary to Catholic Doctrine which at that time held that the State had the obligation to support the Catholic Church and its worship while suppressing all other religious bodies under the claim “error has no rights.”

6.     American indifferentism: Freedom of the Press: the Catholic Church (which had an “Index of Forbidden Books” did not believe that books expressing erroneous ideas should be freely distributed.

7.     American activism: Testem Benevolentiae Nostrae also thought that the Americans stressed the active virtues over the deeper spiritual virtues, not only leading to a stress on the apostolic life to the detriment and ignoring of the contemplative life, but also motivating laity and clergy alike to an activism that isn’t rooted in prayer.   

The story of Testem Benevolentiae is even a bit more complex however and there are a few things yet that we should look at as they are missing pieces of the puzzle.  One is American-Vatican tensions over the Spanish American War and the other is growing concern in the Vatican about Modernism.  We will look at those issues and also both consider whether Leo’s evaluation of the American Church was sound or not and to ask ourselves how much, if any, Americanism has survived.