The Problem With Francis; The Problem For Francis A Matter of Perspective

The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of men. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father and they have welcomed the news of salvation which is meant for every man. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds.

Hence this Second Vatican Council, having probed more profoundly into the mystery of the Church, now addresses itself without hesitation, not only to the sons of the Church and to all who invoke the name of Christ, but to the whole of humanity. For the council yearns to explain to everyone how it conceives of the presence and activity of the Church in the world of today.

Thus opens Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World issued by the Council Fathers of Vatican II and promulgated by Pope Paul VI on December 7, 1965.  The Church addresses itself not only to its own members, or even to all Christians, but to the entre human family and it does so in a dialogic manner.  The Church has picked up not only on our spiritual needs but on “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted.” The Church here approaches the world with a very different tone and a revised set of priorities than had been used at Vatican I or Trent or even in much of the papal magisterium of the previous centuries.  I say “much” because the amazing encyclicals Rerum Novarum of Leo XIII (1891) and Quadrigesimo Anno of Pius XI (1931) had made brave sallies into the practical world of everyday concerns regarding the rights of Labor and a just ordering of society, putting aside for the moment the more ethereal concerns of the what some might call the “purely spiritual.”  Even these encyclicals, however, were delivered in a magisterial tone where the respective popes intended to “set things right” by decree.  Gaudium et Spes took an entirely different approach, inviting the world beyond the Church to enter into a dialogue by which both the world and the Church can be enriched by a common exploration for the Truth.  Actually both tone and matter of Gaudium et Spes was to some degree anticipated in the Encyclicals of John XIII, namely Pacem in Terris and Mater et Magistra.

The entire tone of the Second Vatican Council was one of dialogue.  Nostra Aetate calls us into dialogue with non-Christian Religions. Unitatis Reintegratio establishes dialogue among the various branches of the Christian family.  Sacrocanctum Concilium calls for the various differing cultures of our human family to be integrated into our Roman Rite as a way of expanding our awareness of the broad diversity of cultures within our Catholic faith.  Christus Dominus calls for the Pope to act collegially and dialogically with his brother bishops in leading the Church.  Often our vision is so locked on the “trees”—the individual changes of Vatican II—that we fail to see the “forest”—the fundamentally different ecology of the Post-Vatican II Church. 

Unfortunately there was an attempt during the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI to soothe the nerves of those for whom this fundamental shift in the Church’s self-understanding was overwhelmingly threatening.  This shift led to what was called “the hermeneutic of continuity,” an attempt to blunt the Council Father’s vision but reinterpreting it in a more narrow context.  Certainly there is great continuity in the Church throughout its history and it has not been broken by the Second Vatican Council.  The immutable and eternal Truths of the Creed remain intact.  The basic nature of the Mass as a Sacrificial Banquet in which we are made present to and participant in the Death and Resurrection of the Lord remains.   The Pope is still infallible—in fact, under John Paul and with the articulation of Josef Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) there was even an extension of infallibility into the ordinary magisterium.  John Paul and Benedict often “talked the talk” of collegiality and dialogue, they fairly rarely “walked the walk.” There was a strong recentralization of authority in the Roman Curia with the consequent demission of the authority of the bishops, both collegially and individually.  The Ecumenical and Inter-religious dialogues have all but imploded.  The Liturgy, especially under Benedict, was returned to a European expression of faith.

All this is a bit of a background to Pope Francis and in particular to his visit to the United States.  It is becoming undeniably clear that there are two Churches in the United States. There is a majority Church which not only accepts the Council but is enthusiastic about the dialogical approach.  They want discussion about the issues of the day: climate change, immigration, income inequality, the death penalty.  They want a Church is that more inclusive and where there is honest dialogue between those of differing opinions.  They understand the moral underpinnings of the great social and economic challenges that face our nation and our world.  On the other hand there are those who want to go back to the Church of Gregory XVI (reigned 1831-1846) whose monastic background left him frightened, defensive, and condemnatory of the world around him.  (This was the Pope who condemned gas lighting and railways which he saw as dangerous innovations that threatened the existing social order by promoting the bourgeois class.)  These Catholics want the Church to retain its authoritative tone and to limit is voice to those issues which they perceive to belong to the “spiritual realm.”  Needless to say, they perceive Pope Francis’ speeches and actions during his American visit to threaten their entire understanding of the Church and its mission. 

Ultimately what is at stake from a theological perspective is our understanding of the Incarnation.  What does it mean for God to have become human in Christ Jesus?  An orthodox perspective sees that the Divine has entered directly into our human experience.  As such God has taken on himself the concerns of the human family as one of us.  There is nothing that does not fall under his reign or his benevolence—economics, politics, education, health, displacement of peoples from their homes, the protection of life at every stage—discipleship demands a response from us in this world and the Kingdom of God is seen as something that not only finds its realization in the eschaton but involves the transformation of this world by the grace of God. 

On the other hand, the attempts to limit the Church’s mission to the “purely spiritual” represent theologically a Nestorian position where God comes among us in human appearance but never truly embraces our humanity and makes it his own.  This scheme verges on Gnosticism in which the world is divided into the “sacred” and the “profane” and the Church’s only interest is with the “sacred.”  In such a scheme “salvation” is about the eternal reward of the soul in a post-apocalyptic heaven.   (The body gets to go along as a free ride in the Resurrection of the Dead, but the concern is the soul.)   This world and those who belong to it meet only judgment and destruction.  This scheme separates charity from justice, content that the poor and those on the margins of society receive the crumbs that fall from the tables of their betters.  The orthodox scheme realizes that without a determination for justice there is no true charity only condescension. 

The split between the two Churches in the United States grows stronger and stronger.  It isn’t a result of Vatican II, though I think Vatican II has to some extent crystalized it.   Years ago I approached the same issue from the perspective of the English Colonial Catholic Church and the Maryland Recusant Tradition as opposed to the European immigrant Church Tradition which challenged Colonial Catholicism in the early 19^th century and afterwards.  The conflict for the Church found its way into Vatican II.  There were many influences for reform and change, but there is no doubt that the universal Catholic Church was highly influenced at Vatican II by the distinctly American tradition as represented in the Decree on Religious Freedom and by a more communal and less hierarchical self-understanding.  To a notable extent the Universal Church was “Americanized” at the Council and the conflict continues today between those who want a monarchial and authoritarian Church and those whose vision is a more communal and dialogical Church.  In the end the Vatican II model will prevail both because its foundation was well laid at the Council and because the vast majority of Catholics worldwide have embraced it.  The question will be, how long can the two Churches co-exist in mutual recognition? 

America's Two Churches

Catholic Church, St. Mary's

City, Maryland in the simple

American Recusant style



In my courses on the history of the Catholic Church in the United States I show the students that there has existed two distinct Catholic Churches in the American Republic for two hundred years now.  One Catholic Church is represented by the colonial tradition brought by English Recusants to the Maryland colony with the Ark and the Dove in 1634.  Led by Jesuit Father Andrew White the Catholic settlers in Maryland brought the discreet Catholicism of Stuart England.  Due to the penal laws in England, it was a sober Catholicism where devotional life was centered in the family and devoid of the public spectacles of Continental Catholicism.  Its spirituality, impregnated with the heritage of its Jesuit chaplains, was centered about the person and life of Jesus Christ and it was a faith of spiritual reading and meditative prayer.   Its churches were simple and its liturgy plain in the recusant style.  This was the Catholicism of John Carroll and Leonard Neale.  It fit in well with the American Republic and its democratic traditions.  It was glad to be rid of monarchy and monarchial style—the Catholics universally supporting the War of Independence and embracing the new Republic.  Its new Cathedral in Baltimore, the Basilica of the Assumption designed in the neo-classic Federal Style by Benjamin Latrobe, was devoid of statues even of Christ and his Mother.  Its clergy, including Archbishop Carroll, wore simple clothes in the lay style but in black or darker shades and without ornamentation.  Its nuns—Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton’s Sisters of Charity, eschewed veils and wimples for the sober dress and bonnets characteristic of widows in the early nineteenth century.  

With the waves of immigration that began coming after 1830, another Catholic Church took root in the United States.  Initially predominately German, it was soon supplemented by Italians and later by Poles and refugees from what was the Hapsburg Empire.  Here came the tradition of public processions in the streets and churches rich with stained glass and statuary.  Here came devotion to myriad saints from long ago and faraway places.  (The Irish—having lost their traditions after three centuries of English Persecution—mostly identified more with the old American/Recusant heritage.) This immigrant Catholicism and old American Catholicism barely recognized one another as sharing the same faith.  At first the American bishops tried to suppress the European Continental Catholicism or at least confine it to ethnic parishes but it was not to be contained.  After a period of time it divided along ethnic and more importantly along class lines with the older (and more upper-crust) American families preferring a more sober approach to their faith and the immigrant traditions and working classes liking the more colorful and distinctive expression of Catholicism.  This is far more simplistic than I would like it to be but one can only do so much in a blog entry. 

I think since the Second Vatican Council a second division has cut cross-wise through the American Church.  Again we have two churches.  We have a Church that looks to the past and cherishes the distinctiveness of Catholic identity with its rich ethnic heritage.  There is a strong move to build churches again in the baroque style, filled with color and stained glass and statues.  There is a desire for outdoor processions where priests show off their silk and brocade robes to our mundane world of jeans and sweatshirts.  There is a desire to restore the pomp and power that characterized the Church of the first half of the twentieth century.  I know I make relentless fun of Cardinal Burke and others for their long trains of silk and their fur wraps, but the desire is to hold on to the power that bishops and cardinals once had—and through them we as Church had—over politicians and newspapers for fear of alienating the masses of Catholics who were blindly loyal to their institutional leaders. We resent the loss of power and influence and even mistake this shift as “persecution” or impingements on religious freedom.  

On the other hand there are Catholics today who look not to this past—glorious as it was—but to the future and see the vocation of the Church to be for service.  Cardinal Dulles, in his book on the Catholicity of the Church, says that the first millennium of the Church was characterized by witness, the second by power and the third will be characterized by service.  There are those in the Church who are ready to renounce the drive for power and to move into this third millennium and take up the vocation of service.  They see the Church as here to be servant to the world and think that these signs of earthly power—the long robes, the kissing of hands and rings, the quasi-imperial edicts emitting from bishops like Fabian Bruskewitz, late of Lincoln, or Thomas Olmstead of Phoenix or Cardinal Burke, once of Saint Louis—are anachronisms that make the Church appear, well as the late Cardinal Martini said, 200 years out of date. 

Those who look to the future tend to identify more with the old American tradition; those who relish the past identify more with the immigrant tradition.  Both are Catholic.  Both are American.  But at times we look at one another and wonder how—and if—we are in the same Church at all.    



Biden Catholics and Ryan Catholics

Well, the choice of Paul Ryan for the Republican Vice-presidential nominee has thrown a barking dog in among the Catholic chickens.  Liberal Catholics are appalled; conservatives delighted.  Of course, at the present we have Catholics slated for the number 2 slot in both major parties, though—and I could be wrong—I don’t believe that I have heard that it is certain that President Obama is keeping Vice President Biden on the ticket.  There can always be a switch though Biden has certainly been a team-player—with a more than occasional foul, of course—with the President. 

I was away over the weekend and in my room at a beautiful retreat house in the mountains, was a copy of Catholic Digest.   I hadn’t seen this little magazine in years.  Someone had written to it asking about the possibility of the “Social Justice Catholic Church” being reunited to the “Orthodox Roman Catholic Church.”  The columnist responding made it clear that the “Social Justice Catholic Church” is and consistently has been well within the boundaries of the “Orthodox” Roman Catholic Church.  But the question was interesting because it shows how successful elements of the religious right have been in pushing those Catholics who support the very causes of social justice taught by the magisterium—opposition to the death penalty, rights of workers to organize, rights of access to education, health care, housing, and other necessities, human rights and freedoms (worship, speech, association, press), equal dignity of women, rights of women and children, rights of people to migrate—how Catholics supporting magisterial teaching have been emarginated within the Church by those whose politics ironically differ from magisterial principles.   For some who consider themselves to be “faithful Catholics” there are only two magisterial points that matter—opposition to abortion and to same-sex marriage.  They condemn “cafeteria Catholics” while they themselves hit only the coffee-bar of Catholic teaching. 

At the end of the day, one has to say that both Paul Ryan and Joe Biden are practicing Catholics.  Neither Paul Ryan nor Joe Biden are the Catholics they should be.  I am happy to see them both at communion on Sunday Mornings, I wish both of them would bring their religious faith more into their politics.  More to my concern, however, is that there are increasingly two Catholic Churches in this country.  There are historical reasons that go back a long way—actually into the early nineteenth century with the split between the old time Maryland Catholics whose heirs are today’s “liberals” (and Joe Biden Catholicism) and the “new immigrant Catholicism” of the 1840’s whose heirs are the “conservatives” (and Paul Ryan Catholicism.)  (See entries for January 21, 23, 26, 28, March 7, 9, 2011, January 6, 7, 2012)  When you know the history of the American Church you know that both groups have long and strong roots; the challenge today is to keep them together at the same altar sharing the One Bread of Christ’s One Body.

And For What Has Christ Come and for What Has He Died?

Is this why Christ died hanging on the cross or is this
about an ego having lost all touch with reality?

 We have been talking about the Founding Fathers and if their support could be invoked for the United States being a “Christian Nation” or as Virginia Blogger Barbara Curtis of Mommy Life put it: a “Judeo Christian Nation.”  Ms. Curtis writes her blog on a variety of topics, some of which she actually seems to know something about.  American History, however, is a field in which she could afford to take a course or two at her local community college.  We have looked at founding fathers Jefferson, Franklin, John Adams, and George Washington whose public stances would not lend credence to her claims for our being a Christian Nation, or even a Judeo-Christian one.  On the other hand, Sam Adams—ironically one of the most radical of the Founding Fathers—and Catholic Charles Carroll, one of the most conservative, would probably support her claim.  Carroll’s cousin John, the first Catholic Bishop in the new American Republic, and the larger Maryland Catholic tradition is harder to read.  Maryland Catholics had a conservative view of society.  They were, for the most part, monied and landed people.  They belonged to the Federalist Party, suspicious of Jefferson’s Republicans—who, despite their name, are the forerunners of today’s Democrats.  They were not given to the religious skepticism of Franklin or Jefferson or even the discreet unorthodoxy of Washington.  Yet, having been a disadvantaged minority, they strongly favored religious liberty for all of whatever belief.  They did not agitate for Catholicism to be given a privileged position and no writing survives that would suggest that they saw Maryland or the new Republic as officially “Christian.”  On the other hand, there were in those days few who were not, at least in the broadest of the word “Christians.”  A synagogue for Baltimore would only be organized in the 1830’s.  Whatever their vision of the place of religion in society, Maryland Catholics probably would have held aloof from the Christmas crèche on the Loudon County Courthouse lawn that triggered Ms. Curtis’s pompous pronouncement.  Religion was not a public affair in the recusant tradition.  So we will go on to other founding fathers.  We still need to look at James Madison who is particularly key as he is the basic architect of the Constitution and we also want to look at his fellow Virginian, Patrick Henry who will round out the cast of characters.  But that is for tomorrow—or the next day or whenever I get around to it.   Today I want to share some reflections that the first reading at Mass this morning raised for me. 
     It was the story of Samuel and the Israelites squabbling over a monarchy. You know the story.  (Or, if you don’t, you can find it in 1 Samuel, chapter 8.)  The people of Israel decide that they want a king like other nations.  The people had decided that God wasn’t quite cutting it as king.  He isn’t visible enough in times of war.  They want the trappings of an earthly king.  Samuel warns them of the price: Kings require taxes and they live in palaces with servants.  Daughters will have to become ointment makers and cooks; sons will have to be footmen and soldiers.  The people are going to have to shell out to keep a king in style—you know: palaces, crowns, liveried servants, etc. 
      What struck me was—and this is one of the reasons that I write this blog—why isn’t Christ enough for us?  Why do we need Swiss Guards and Nuncios and Vatican dicasteries?  Why do we need monsignors in their purples and bishops with their miters, and Eminences and Excelencies, and the kissing of rings and the bending of knees?  Now I am not saying that we don’t need the Petrine Ministry and a worthy Servus Servorum Dei to fill it, or that we don’t need Pastors who have the heart of the Good Shepherd to lead the Church.  (And by Pastors here I mean bishops.)  I believe Christ established a community of his followers and that he commissioned the Twelve (or at least the Eleven who remained faithful) to guide it in faithfulness to the Good News of God’s Kingdom as he preached it.  And I am not a strict constructionist of the New Testament.  I am amused with some of my Campbellite friends who insist that if there is not an explicit warrant for something in the New Testament you can’t do it. (One friend of mine who is a Church of Christ Pastor makes me laugh when he says that his deacons won’t allow lighted candles on the communion table as there is no warrant for them in the New Testament but that they have no problem flipping on the light switch.)  But I do think at times, indeed often, that we Catholics have allowed the human trappings to overshadow and even usurp the precedence of the Divinely ordered mission of the Church.  I’m sorry but the preaching of Good News to the Poor, of granting sight to the blind, freedom to captives, and announcing a time of God’s Favor is why we are here not to conduct self-aggrandizing ceremonies that exalt one or another of us over others.  Now I know that I have said that I don’t intend to get into theology and that I want to stick right to history and that when you start talking about Christ and his intentions for his disciples you cross the line from history into theology and I know I have crossed that line, but don’t even tell me theologically that the Grace of God is given us for pompous ceremonial that may have been fitting for medieval princes but is totally out of place in a world where more than half the population has no or insufficient access to safe water, where millions of children have been orphaned by AIDS, where famine is rampant, and where 5% of the population controls 90% of the resources.  Far from being the light of the world, we run the risk of being a scandal when we are more concerned about the trappings of office than the mission given us by our Savior.  So history and theology meet where justice and peace kiss and history can help theology sort out what is essential and what is charade.

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.” 

Some Notes on Maryland Catholicism

A reconstruction of the Catholic Church
in Saint Mary's City, Maryland, as it
would have appeared c. 1680

Yesterday I made a reference to recusant Catholicism in regard to the Maryland Catholic experience and I have received a number of inquiries asking me to explain that further.  

      As we have mentioned in a number of blogs, Henry VIII broke the Church of England from communion with the Roman Papacy in 1536 (well, truthfully,  in a series of gradual steps from 1528 until 1536) but he changed neither doctrine nor liturgy, keeping the Anglican Church a sort of non-papal Catholicism.  It was his son Edward VI (1547-1553)—or actually Edward’s Regency Council—and his (Henry’s) daughter, Elizabeth (reigned 1558-1603) who made the Church of England Protestant.  Henry’s senior daughter Mary, (reigned 1553-1558) was a Catholic, restored Catholicism, and bitterly persecuted “the heretics” (aka Protestants).  Henry had also persecuted Protestants (even after his break with Rome) and also quite brutally, far more brutally than he executed several dozen Catholics who were beheaded for treason (i.e. denying his royal authority over the Church) rather than for religious reasons (where the punishment was burning at the stake which is what he usually did to Protestants).  Edward and Elizabeth were reluctant to use religion as a reason for execution, which is not to say that they were reluctant to execute, only that they wanted another reason than matters of conscience.  Their reigns were not particularly bloody, at least as far as religion went, and Elizabeth in particular was not anxious to interfere in the conscience issues of individuals.  That is not to say she didn’t do away with a number—and not a particularly small number—of Catholics, in the hundreds. It is only that they were imprisoned, tried, and put to death for treason.  You see, Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in 1570 (fair enough and about time for that matter) and he also absolved her subjects of their loyalty to her.  In other words, Catholics were told that they didn’t have to support Elizabeth as Queen.  This is because Elizabeth’s nearest kinsperson and heir to her throne, Mary  Queen of Scots, was a Catholic.  If the Catholics rose up and overthrew Elizabeth, England would have a Catholic Monarch again.  Pius liked that Reformation over.  But this put English Catholics in a terrible bind.  They could not be trusted to support the government.  You can imagine if Pope Benedict told modern American Catholics—“go ahead, overthrow your government,” what the outcome would be.  There were fears in American history, especially during the Know Nothing crisis of the 1850’s when many Americans believed precisely that: the Catholics would, as they grew in numbers, replace our Republican Government with a Catholic monarchy where Protestants would be persecuted.  (Check out blog entries for January 23, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, February 1, March 7—all 2011.) There are people today who believe that Muslims will take over and impose sharia law on the United States.  They want Islam to be illegal in our country.  They want Muslims deported.  They insist that all Muslims are anti-American terrorists.  This is the exact sort of paranoia that gripped England in the years after 1570.  It was complicated by the fact that French and especially Spanish diplomats were encouraging rebellion and providing funds to anti-Elizabeth cabals.  Could you trust Catholics?  Maybe you had Catholic friends.  They seemed like nice people, but could you trust them?  Elizabeth, to her credit didn’t over react despite much pressure from much of her Council.  Elizabeth herself had Catholics among her friends and confidants and she was no fanatic.  Priests—as agents of a foreign power (the Pope and the King of Spain) and those who sheltered priests were hunted out, imprisoned, most often tried and executed.  They were normally executed by hanging until almost dead, then being cut down and gutted while still (barely) alive and then—for good measure—dismembered.  This was the punishment for treason.  Ordinary lay Catholics were usually left alone except for those who sheltered or aided priests. 

       Most of the towns in England, and London in particular, had converted early to Protestantism but much of the rural population had remained Catholic.  In some very rural places, especially in the west and in the far north, Mass was still being said in the parish churches with neglectful sheriffs turning their heads.  Also while the middle class and the “new nobility” (those families raised to nobility by the Tudors in reward for service) were ardently Protestant, many of the “old nobility” (who tended to be anti-monarchy as they saw the London Government taking away many of their hereditary rights) remained Catholic.

      Thus English society under Elizabeth and then under the Stuarts, James I and Charles I, had considerable pockets of Catholicism.  Some wealthy families were even able to retain a Catholic chaplain under the guise of being a tutor to the family children.  As the years passed and especially after the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587, the laws were enforced less vigilantly and priests, if they were careful and especially if they were far from London, could discreetly minister to the great Catholic families and the tenants on their estates.   This isn’t to say that the persecution was over but only that the laws were not always enforced with vigor.  Nevertheless, Catholics could not have churches.  Mass was said in private homes—usually those of the wealthier upper classes who could pay the fines if caught and who had enough political pull to guarantee they were left alone.  Gone were the days when there could be processions in the streets or public devotions.  Catholic devotional life was centered in the family with prayers like the rosary.  There weren’t many statues and crosses—they were hard to come by and dead giveaways that the family was Catholic.   Devotional books of private prayers were popular and the writing of English monks and nuns on the Continent such as Dom Augustin Baker and Dame Gertrude More stressed deep personal prayer—even a tradition of contemplative prayer.  Thus English Catholicism in the seventeenth century became very different than Continental Catholicism.  It was far more restrained in its devotional life, more literate than emotional, Christocentric rather than focusing on saints and miracles.  This was the Catholicism brought to Maryland by the English colonists.  Priests usually wore lay clothes in subdued colors.  The liturgy was simple and without ornamentation as it would be celebrated in private homes.  Statues and devotional objects were rare.  (Bishop John Carroll put no statues in his Cathedral, the Basilica of the Assumption, when it was built.  It was only his French successor but two, Archbishop Ambrose Maréchal, that imported statues of Mary and Jesus from Europe.) The more exotic Catholicism that many of us who grew up before Vatican II remember came to America with the waves of immigrants from Germany and Italy in the mid and late nineteenth-century, but traditional American Catholicism bears greater resemblance to the post-Vatican II practices we know today

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. 

A fundamental American Prejudice: the roots of American Anti-Catholicism

Let’s look at the subject of anti-Catholicism in the United States today, following up on yesterday’s blog on President John Kennedy and his address as a candidate for office to the Houston Ministerium.

The roots of Anti-Catholicism in the American nation go back to the English Reformation and the pathological phobia that the Puritan wing of the Anglican Church had towards anything “Catholic.” The Anglican Church in the late sixteenth and until the mid-seventeenth century was an uneasy union of several disparate groups ranging from the conservative “high church” party with its Book of Common Prayer, much simplified and orderly rituals, and strong patristic theology to the radical Calvinist wing that wanted a complete break with England’s Catholic past. This later “low Church” wing included many similar but independent groups including the “Pilgrims” who settled Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620. The wider movement are often referred to as “Puritans” as they wished to “purify” the Church of England of any and every remnants of its Catholic past ranging from bishops to wedding rings. Through much of the period from 1558 when Elizabeth I ascended the throne until the restoration of the monarchy after the English Civil War in 1660, the radicals dominated the political scene in England and Catholics kept a low profile.
This ties in a bit to the blog I did on Mary Ward several days ago, but a particular type of Catholicism developed in England due to the dominance of the Puritan party and subsequent persecution of Catholicism—a persecution which waxed and waned over the years but which, even in its less virulent periods, required Catholics to be make themselves all but invisible. Formal religious life disappeared in England—it was impossible for monastic institutions to flourish under the restrictions on Catholicism. Mass was conducted—usually with some secrecy—in the homes of wealthy and even noble Catholic families. (The Dukes of Norfolk, the premier peers of the Realm, were one of the great families who had remained “in the old religion.”) The various European embassies in London had Catholic Chapels, and during the reigns of James I and Charles I, their queens-consort (Anne of Denmark and Henrietta Marie of France respectively) were Catholic and had their chapels and chaplains, but attending Catholic services in these London chapels was a bit dangerous for those who felt a (often prudent) need to conceal their Catholic identity. Consequent to these restrictions on public worship, many aspects of traditional piety—public processions, feast days, Sunday Vespers, Benediction—all but disappeared.
Catholics coming to the New World found that the colonies offered them no better a situation. Catholicism was outlawed in all of the colonies save Pennsylvania. Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York had particularly vitriolic laws proscribing the Catholic religion. Rhode Island proclaimed freedom of conscience for its residents but it is unclear if this extended to Catholics. Given that no Catholic community developed in colonial Rhode Island it seems that Catholics were unwilling to test the waters and see if the freedom of conscience applied to them. (A synagogue opened in Rhode Island,, the first in the colonies, only thirteen years before Independence.)
It was against this background that George Calvert, First Baron Baltimore, (an Irish title although the Calverts were Yorkshire folk) appealed to his friend King Charles I for a proprietary colony (a colony which belonged to him personally and in which he was supreme authority under the King—no accountability to Parliament (dominated by Puritan Church of England folk)—and was granted the land north of the Potomac River to the 40th parallel. Calvert was a Catholic and the arrangement permitted him to allow for Catholics to have freedom to practice their religion, creating the only place in the North American colonies outside Pennsylvania where Catholicsm could be legally maintained.
There will have to be several posts about Maryland in the near future, but for the present suffice it to say that the Maryland Catholics were a wholly respectable lot. They tended to be English and Anglo-Irish Gentry who farmed large estates with labor supplied by African slaves. Like their counterparts in England and the Irish Pale, their Catholicism was somewhat private and discreet. Likewise, the German Catholics who settled in Pennsylvania tended to be rural farmers and unlike the German immigrants of the 19th century they adapted themselves rather quickly to American ways. The only priests available to them were Maryland Jesuits who came up into southern Pennsylvania and whose Catholicism was, again, discreet.
Catholicism tended to be practiced in the home, not in the public streets. Processions were not indulged in. The clergy wore no distinct dress, save for their clothing being of dark colors and devoid of superfluous ornamentation. There were no convents or monasteries. Mass was held in chapels or churches built in an American colonial style and free of much ornamentation except for an occasional oil painting, imported from Europe, behind the altar. Devotional life, consisting of private prayers, was a family activity. Bishop Richard Challoner’s (Challoner was one of the English Vicars Apostolic) book A Manual of Prayers, (published 1758) was a very popular source of devotion.
This discreet Catholicism helped Catholics “fit in.” Protestantism of a variety of stripes, while having a cultural dominance, was also a religion practiced within the walls of the Meeting House and the family home, though for different reasons. The unanimous support of the American Catholics for Independence in and after 1776 won them points among the citizenry of the new Republic and most of the anti-poprery legislation was gone by the end of the Revolution. Still the young Church proceeded carefully. They were hesitant about asking Rome for a hierarchy until the Protestant Episcopal Church had established a bishop in New York and in Virginia and Maryland Episcopalians were in the process of electing bishops. Bishops were seen as “European” and monarchical, but when there was no outcry over Episcopalian bishops, the American Catholics felt it safe to proceed and elected John Carroll, a member of a family that had been prominent in the Independence movement and who himself had served with Benjamin Franklin on an unsuccessful mission to Canada to ask the Canadians—Catholic and until recently French—to join with the thirteen southern colonies in breaking with Britain. Carroll, when a bishop, encouraged a convert from the Episcopal Church, the widowed Elizabeth Ann Seton, to establish an American community of the Daughters of Charity, French sisterhood. The American sisters dressed not in a traditional European style habit but in ordinary widow’s garb and became immensely well thought of by the Protestant population for the work they did among the poor and for the education of children. Carroll’s cathedral was in the American style, constructed by the same architect who had built the President’s mansion. To the American taste it had few ornaments—a successor had to purchase from Europe statues of the Blessed Virgin and Our Savior. Carroll, a humble man and devoted to republican principles, avoided the pomp of European bishops. His priests adapted many of the rites of the Church, especially the baptismal, marriage, and funeral rites, to the American situation, even celebrating them in English instead of Latin. Indeed Carroll and his priests discussed the desirability of the Mass itself being put into English, though the idea never advanced to the point of a proposal to Rome. The area around the national capital was strong Catholic territory with the old Catholic families like the Matthews, the Mudds, the Carrolls and others supplying many of the Civil Servants for the new city. All in all Catholics, a small proportion of the population, had won a place for their Church in America.
The Catholic population began to shift with a flood of immigration in the 1840’s. The middle-class educated Catholic, the German Farmer, and the Maryland Gentry were being replaced by a flood of poor and most often illiterate Irish. Germans and French and a trickle of Italians trying to escape the European turmoil of 1848 and its wave of revolutions comprised waves of non-English speaking immigrants who had strange customs and whose loyalty to the new Republic was uncertain. The tolerance for Catholicism faced its first serious challenge since the penal laws in the colonies. This will be continued in future postings.

Today's image is a portrait of Charles Carroll of Maryland, the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence.