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? 

Curioser and Curioser

The curious graves at Jamestown

Curious events were made public this past week.  Two years ago, archeologists exploring the remains of the English settlement at Jamestown (Virginia) which had been founded in 1607, discovered four graves beneath what had once been the chancel (altar area) of the colony’s Anglican church.  Continued excavation and research these past two years identified the remains as those of the Reverend Robert Hunt, Anglican priest of the colony; Sir Ferdinando Wainman; Captain Gabriel Archer; and Captain William West.  The position of the graves within the church indicates the high status of the four men, but what has captured attention of historians is that in Captain Archer’s grave a small silver box, apparently containing the relics of a saint (or saints) was found.  This is extraordinary given that the Church of England—the Church to which the colonists have always been thought to belong—was in an extreme Puritan phase at the time and would have abhorred the idea of any Anglican having such a papist trinket.  Now Captain Archer’s parents, John Archer Sr. and Eleanor Frewin from Mountnessing in Essex, England were known to be Recusants (secret Catholics), so was their son also a Roman Catholic?  Secret, of course, as it was highly illegal to be a Catholic in England—or England’s colonies—especially in those days after the Gunpowder Plot.    Nevertheless, if Archer were secretly a Catholic he wasn’t alone.  George Kendall, a member of the Colony’s Council was secretly a Catholic and George Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland and at times Governor of the Colony came from a family that had largely remained Catholic (though secretly) after the Reformation.  (Kendall was apprehended and executed as a spy, presumably for Catholic Spain.) Was there then a secret Catholic congregation in the settlement?

Well there is not sufficient evidence to affirm or deny an underground Catholic Church in Jamestown, but there are some interesting things to consider.   The first thing to consider is that the reliquary was placed atop the coffin and not within it.  Had Archer been Catholic and were there surviving co-religionists in the colony at the time of his death, is it likely that that the reliquary would have been buried with Archer?  It seems more likely that it would have been passed over to remaining members of the covert community for veneration.  It certainly would have been a precious object from a religious point of view and I do not think would have been abandoned to the grave unless there was a secondary reason.  Secondly, if surviving Catholics had intended to bury the relic with Archer for some reason or other, they more likely would have put the reliquary in the coffin and not atop it in the grave.  (The archeological evidence is that the reliquary was found resting on a piece of coffin material which means it would have been on the coffin in the grave and not within.

Now here is the more curious thing.  Archer’s body, like that of the Reverend Mr. Hunt, was buried with its head towards the east.  In Catholic tradition, the bodies of the Laity are buried facing East, that is feet to the East—the direction from which Christ will appear at the Last Judgment so that in the resurrection they will rise facing Christ; but the bodies of the clergy are buried with the heads to the East—that is the body itself is facing West—since 1 Corinthians say that the dead will be raised in their proper rank and the clergy, ranking first, will appear coming with Christ while the mere laity will have to wait their turn with everything for the common folk sort of pall mall.   Regardless what we today might think of this distinction, this is how it was done in the Catholic Church at the time these graves were dug, and for centuries before.  Mr. Hunt, of course, was not a Catholic priest but it is not unreasonable that the practice of burying the clergy with their heads to the East had yet survived in the Church of England.  What is surprising is that Captain Archer was buried in the same clerical position while Sir Ferdinando and Captain West were buried in the normal position of the laity. Some have opined that perhaps Archer was not only a secret papist but a secret papist priest. 

It is unlikely that he was a priest as he was married—though his wife had not come with him to Virginia—and even more conclusive is that there is no record of his having gone to the continent for training as a priest.  Nevertheless his having this reliquary is strange, particularly so as Catholic priests would have had just such a reliquary to use as a portable altar for the celebration of Mass.  In penal times—and later as a somewhat normal occurrence while travelling—a priest would have such a reliquary to slip beneath the tablecloth on the table where he was celebrating Mass.  Burying the object beneath the chancel floor would permit later priests—should any covertly visit the colony—to celebrate the Eucharist on a table, even a Protestant Communion Table, positioned over the grave. 

At the end of the day with the limited information that we have, this reliquary raises more questions than it gives answers but it may mean that much needs to be rethought concerning the state of religion in the Virginia Colony and also the degree of covert tolerance that may have existed among the colonists during a desperate period where their survival could not permit dissension within the community. 

One other curiosity which may indicate Archer being Catholic is that this skeleton seems to indicate that he was buried with his hands folded, a Catholic practice abandoned by the Puritans at the Reformation.  Mr. Hunt’s hands also appear to have been folded.   The other two skeletons appear to have their hands at their sides in the Puritan fashion. (I can only say appear as I am going on an examination of the photos, not a reading of the report.)  Hunt also was known to have been married so it seems unlikely that he was a secret priest, and being the clergy person for the colony it is unlikely that he would have been a secret Catholic.  So again, there are just more questions but it does seem that there was more to the Jamestown religious scene that we previously thought.  

Rebellious Catholics I

King James, target of The

Gunpowder Plot

There is a great podcast that I like very much called “Things You Missed in History Class” featuring Sarah Dowdey and Deblina Chakraborty.  (In the past hosts have included Jane McGrath and Candace Keener and perhaps others whose names I can’t find.)  This podcast is not about the history of the Church but of all sorts of historical topics and often our Catholic Church plays a role—sometimes favorable and sometimes not—in the stories they relate. 

What brings “Things You Missed in History Class” to mind is that I was listening to podcasts as over the hills and through the woods I went to Grandmother’s House for Christmas and they had an episode on Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot and I thought that might be interesting to do a posting on.

Guy Fawkes was only one, and actually the least important, of five plotters who hatched a plan to King James I of England, his son Prince of Wales Henry, and members of Parliament of both Lords and the Commons by detonating gunpowder they had stored in a cellar under the House of Lords.  The occasion would have been the State Opening of Parliament scheduled for November 5, 1605. 
Fawkes, Robert Catesby, Thomas Wintour, John Wright, and Thomas Percy—all Catholics—hatched the plot in their disappointment that King James had not lifted many of the restrictions and penalties imposed by the Crown and Parliament on Catholics during the reign of Queen Elizabeth.   When Elizabeth died in 1603 she was succeeded on the throne by her third cousin, James VI Stuart of Scotland. (James’ great-great grandparents were Elizabeth’s grandparents.  Henry VIII, Elizabeth’s Father was the brother of Margaret Tudor who had married James IV of Scotland, and they were the great-grandparents of  James VI.)  James’ Mother was Mary, Queen of Scots who was a devout Catholic and who, as Elizabeth’s nearest relative and heir, had been kept under arrest by Elizabeth and eventually executed for fear of a Catholic rebellion that would depose (and kill) Elizabeth and put Catholic Mary on the throne.  When his mother was beheaded at Fotheginghay Castle on Feburary 8^th 1587, James became the next in line for the English Crown.   (If you want to read a great piece of historical prose, read the introduction to Garrett Mattingly’s The Armada.  It tells the narrative of Mary’s execution and I think this is the best piece of historical prose in the English language.)   While his mother was Catholic and his wife, Anne of Denmark, was a convert to Catholicism who engineered the marriages of her sons to Catholic Princesses to secure a Catholic foothold in England, James himself was raised Protestant (Church of Scotland, Church of England) and was convinced in his Calvinist faith.  Nevertheless, he sent signals at his accession that he was to be tolerant of Catholics.  To gain Catholic support for his ascending the English throne, James had told the Earl of Northumberland—a prominent sympathizer with the Catholics and probably secretly a Catholic himself—that he would not persecute “any that would be quiet and give but an outward obedience to the law.”  This promise was probably made in good faith, but the Puritan faction in Parliament would have none of it and wanted in fact to strengthen the anti-popery laws.  The failure to offer relief to Catholics caused many in the Catholic party to turn from their support of James. The five plotters met on May 20, 1604 at the Duck and Drake Inn in the Strand (in London) to lay the foundation of their scheme; they swore an oath of secrecy and then, to seal the oath, received the Eucharist together.  The plotters used Thomas Percy’s position as a member of the Honorable Company of Gentlemen at Arms, (ironically) a bodyguard of the King, which gave him the prestige and rationale to rent a house within the precincts of the Palace of Westminster that adjoined the chamber in which the House of Lords met.  The house was owned by one John Whynniard.  The building included an “undercroft” (or semi-basement hall) that in fact was directly beneath the Lords’ Chamber.  The plotters devised a plan to secretly and by night move gunpowder into this crypt over a period of months and then detonate it when the King came for the ceremonial opening of Parliament.    Killing the King and the Crown Prince, the plotters planned to kidnap the King’s infant daughter, Elizabeth and make her Queen while she would be “guided” by a council of Catholic noblemen. 
Parliament was scheduled to convene in February 1605 but plague and other reasons caused the opening to be postponed several times until a final date of November 5 was chosen.   The delay gave the plotters time to gather more participants into their scheme but this may have worked against them as the larger the group became the more difficult confidentiality became to maintain.  Moreover the plotters were receiving conflicting advice from the clergy as to the morality of their plot, some priests encouraging them and others admonishing them against violence and treason.  By November the conspirators had stashed 36 barrels of gunpowder in the undercroft beneath the House of Lords.
A little more than a week before the scheduled date, Lord Monteagle received an anonymous letter, presumably from a friend among the conspirators, advising him to leave London and not attend the State Opening.  Monteagle was a Catholic sympathizer (and possibly himself secretly a Catholic) but he immediately handed the letter over to the Earl of Salisbury, head of James’ secret police.  Salisbury initially hesitated but then showed the letter to the King who ordered a search of the Houses of Parliament in which the cellars where the conspirators had hidden the gunpowder beneath piles of firewood were searched, but the firewood was not disturbed and the powder was not found.  A second more thorough search uncovered the gunpowder and Fawkes, who was guarding it, was arrested.  Other conspirators were rounded up but most had fled at word of Fawkes arrest.  Within days, a posse led by the sheriff of Worcester rounded up most of the conspirators in the Midlands.  In addition to the conspirators themselves many prominent Catholic nobility and gentry were arrested and interrogated.  In the end, Fawkes and Thomas Wintour, were executed by being hung, drawn, and quartered while Percy, Catesby, and Wright were killed while be taken by the Sheriff of Worcester’s posse. Later joiners to the plot Everard Digby, John Grant, Robert Wintour, Thomas Bates, Ambrose Rookwood, Stephen Littleton, Robert Keyes and Humphrey Littleton were all hung, drawn, and quartered.  Jesuit Father Henry Garnet who had been privy—at least to some degree—of the plot but had not endorsed it was also captured and executed. 
I think the interesting question the gunpowder plot raises is the use of violence for a just cause.   Catholics certainly had every justification in seeking relief from the civil and penal restrictions placed on them by Elizabeth and James.  Catholics could feel that they had been betrayed particularly by James who had given assurances of leaving them in peace in return for their support at his accession to the English throne but then reneged on his promises.  Given the state of constitutional development in England in the 17^th century there were no non-violent ways to bring about a change of government that would leave Catholics in peace.   Nevertheless, Church authorities both in England—Archpriest George Blackwell—and in Rome had told the clergy to instruct the faithful against any sort of civil disobedience. (The Archpriest was the papal appointee to oversee the Church in England which at this point had no bishops.)   Despite appeals to Pope Clement VIII to condemn rebellion against the Crown and Parliament, it was only after the Gunpowder Plot that Pope Paul V condemned the plot and admonished English Catholics to keep the peace.  This was somewhat of a reversal of earlier policies set when Pius V had excommunicated Elizabeth and relieved her Catholic subjects of their obedience to the Crown.  At the end of the day, one would have to say that the Church did not support the plot and the use of violence to bring about its freedom under James and that the plotters acted against Catholic principles. Also as none of those executed—with the possible exception of Father Garnett—were in any way executed for odium fidei (hatred of the faith), they cannot be considered martyrs but remain traitors to those loyal to the Crown and rebels to those who recognize the right of rebellion by those deprived of liberties. 

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.

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.”