Old School

De mortuis nihil nisi bonum (of the dead, [speak] nothing unless it is good) has always been one of my favorite Latin aphorisms but it would put us historians out of business.  It would also permit the ideologues to totally distort the truth about the past, something that a wide variety of the krazy spectrum—from the ‘Tea-Party’ folk in politics to the Latin Massers in the Church—do well enough already with their various rewrites of history, secular and religious.

And today Cardinal Edward Egan, former Archbishop of New York, is laid to rest.  The television is replete with a variety of people ranging from the policeman who stands in front of the Cardinal’s residence on Madison Avenue to a Knight of Malta resplendent in the cowl of his Order saying what a warm and kind man His late Eminence was.  De mortuis nihil nisi bounum is about selective memory.  History needs to be more rounded.

There are good things one could say about the Cardinal. Edward Egan was not a bad man and even if he were, everyone has something good that can be said about them.   His family testified to his love for them and his love for the people of New York.  Love he may have had but he certainly was not one to emote in public or even show affection.   He certainly was there for the people of New York in the aftermath of 9/11 and, while not a warm man, he was dutiful in personally performing the funeral rites of many and visiting many more in hospitals.   

He was a great money man.  And despite all our liberal “disdain” of filthy lucre, the fact is the Church needs money to accomplish its mission.  On the one hand, Cardinal Egan was a great fund-raiser and, on the other, he could tighten a budget in a way that Scott Walker could only envy—and, unfortunately, too often with the same amount of human suffering of which the good Governor is proud of in the great State of Denial, I mean Wisconsin.  Egan was more successful in reaching solvency for the Diocese of Bridgeport when he was bishop there than he was in New York, but New York’s problems were much greater and, on the bottom line, he didn’t do bad for New York from the fiscal perspective.  He was slow to close underpeopled churches which has left headaches for his successor but which somewhat modulated his unpopularity among those parishioners whose churches he kept open. 

He also was a staunch promoter of priestly vocations though the quality of men he attracted to his seminary and the “reforms” he enacted at the seminary in Yonkers (Saint Joseph’s, Dunwoodie) are not universally admired.  One would have to say that the Jury is still out on those questions.  He certainly didn’t anticipate the “Francis Model,” though the worst system will still produce some good priests and the best system some rotten apples.  He also missed Francis’ boat when it came to providing a retirement residence; let’s just say that it wasn’t a downward move when the left the official Archbishop’s residence on Madison Avenue for his new retirement digs. 

He was a staunch defender of the unborn but also a proponent of interpreting canon 915 to exclude those in public life who saw their public duties differently.  He instructed then Mayor Rudolf Giuliani not to receive Holy Communion and was furious when the Mayor received Communion at Pope Benedict’s New York Mass in April 2008, issuing a public rebuke of the Mayor over the matter. 

Both as Bishop of Bridgeport and Archbishop of New York, Egan had somewhat of a checkered history when it came to the issues of reporting clerical sexual abuse.  His position in Bridgeport was that there should be an internal hearing to determine the credibility of the accusation before the individual was reported to the civil authorities lest the priest be the victim of unfounded allegations.  Priests were grateful for this protection from potentially false or ill-motivated claims but it was in violation of the civil law.  In 2002 he gave an apology saying: "If in hindsight we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry."  However he was later to retract this apology saying “I never should have said that…I don’t think we did anything wrong.”  

In New York the Cardinal lost the confidence of many of his priests and an anonymous letter from the priests was circulated, published, and sent on to Rome saying “During the last six years, the Cardinal’s relations with the Priests of New York have been defined by dishonesty, deception, disinterest and disregard.”  The writers of the letter said they had to remain anonymous, at least as regards the published letter, because of Egan’s “vindictive” nature. 

Cardinal Egan’s episcopacy needs be measured by the fact that like so many of the Bishops appointed during the John Paul years, he was the wrong sort of man to be a bishop.  Like his best friend and soul-mate, John Richard Keating, a fellow Chicagoan and fellow Canon Lawyer, Egan had the heart of a bureaucrat, not a shepherd.  The Church needs bureaucrats; it is—among other things—a bureaucracy.  But it is not at its heart a bureaucracy and it shouldn’t have bureaucrats at its heart—that is, in the ministry and office of Bishop.  This isn’t to say that Edward Egan wasn’t a good man, or even—in his own way and according to his own gifts—a good priest.  He just wasn’t what the Church needs.  Conservative though he was, he was no right-winger.  He had no interest in validating the “Old Rites,” but then he had little or no interest in the “New Rite” either.  The slovenliness of his funeral rites were appropriate to his own liturgical style.  He was a lawyer, a money-man, a person dedicated to making the system run as efficiently as possible.  He did that well and as I wrote above, we need those sort of persons around—on the chancery staff—but not necessarily among the ordained and certainly not with miter and crosier.  John Paul gave us some good bishops but mostly corporation men like Egan.  Benedict gave us brighter men, men who could think, but not necessarily braver men or holier men.  Benedict’s bishops (for the most part), like those of his predecessor, were climbers.  Every so often an O’Malley or a Curlin or a Morneau got snuck in, but over the last thirty-five years for the most part we got our Cordileone and Lori and Finn and Morlino and Dewayne.  It will take some time to clear them out and hopefully we will in the future receive more bishops like Blase Cupich or Christopher Coyne or Robert McElroy.  In the meantime, eternal rest to Edward Egan.  He may not have been the best we could have hoped for, but neither was he the worst.  While I am not an admirer, I did think that singing the Dies Irae as he was carried to his crypt was more than a bit harsh.  He was as good a man as he was able.  God be good to him. God be good to us all.  

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

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

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

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

Origins of Radical Catholicism

Several days ago I published a letter (in edited form) that I had received from a liberal voter-motivational group commenting on the issue in Wisconsin with the governor trying to take away collective bargaining rights from Wisconsin State employees.  I had always thought that American Catholics knew the tradition of Catholic teaching on social issues, and in particular the rights of labor to organize, but I am finding out that not everyone went to Catholic Schools as good as the one I went to back in the 50’s and early 60’s.  (I graduated 8^th grade three and a half months before Vatican II opened—so I qualify as a pre-Vatican II Catholic School grad.)  The nuns—the Sisters of Mercy—beat this labor union tradition into us and the good members of the Society of Jesus (these were their pre-liberal years—Father Arrupe, aka Bl. Pedro, was elected General when I was in High School) drove the tradition home as well, even though I was one of the few students to come to their fancy-schmancy school from a working class family.  So I think I will start a new strand on Catholics and Labor to share what the good sisters and fathers taught me. 

The nineteenth century was hardly a time when the Catholic Church espoused liberal principles.  At the close of the eighteenth century the Church got whacked up the side of the head by the French Revolution.  It was not pretty.  Across Europe, the Church lost huge amounts of property in the social reorganization effected by the Revolutionaries, not to mention the countless victims of the guillotine—priests, religious, bishops, and laity—during the more radical phases of the Revolution in France itself.  The chapter (dean and canons) of Notre Dame in Paris—before the Revolution one of the wealthiest Church institutions in Europe—were reduced to such poverty that they had to beg for brooms to clean the cathedral when it was reopened for Catholic Worship in 1801.  Pius VII came to the papal throne as a liberal but his arrest and detention (I won’t say imprisonment; it is too strong a word) in France by Napoleon moved him considerably to the right.  Gregory XVI (other than for his condemnation of slavery and the slave trade) was totally in favor of the ancien regime, and Pius IX, like Pius VII, began as a Liberal but the 1848 revolution that cause him to flee Rome left him an implacable conservative, indeed reactionary.  In other words this was a papacy that was firmly behind Tradition, Authority, and Property.  It has a justified paranoia about the liberté, égalité, fraternité of the Enlightenment and the Revolution it had brought about.  Its commitment to aristocracy, traditional social order and the rights and privileges thereof understood labor to be subordinate to capital while the middle and working classes (and, of course, the poor) were to be entrusted to the “protection” of the aristocracy.  The Church at this time also saw Monarchy as the divinely ordained social order and was highly suspicious of democracy which overturned the idea that authority is from God to his anointed and chosen rulers; Catholic thought rejected the idea of vox populi vox dei (the voice of the people is the voice of God).  This was not an atmosphere in which the rights of labor were about to flourish.

Americans, including Catholic Americans, tended to see things a bit differently.  American Catholics had supported democratic government from the time of our revolution which Catholics—then a minority religion located almost exclusively in Maryland and Pennsylvania—universally supported.  American Catholics had never supported Monarchy, which to them represented the repression of their faith as they knew only the British Crown which had so long put Catholics at legal disadvantage when they weren’t actually being persecuted.  A century of republican government had given American Catholics great confidence in the idea that political authority comes from God through the citizenry not directly to civil officials. Moreover, Catholic clergy—and even a few bishops—supported the rights of the working class out of a genuine pastoral concern.  After all, the vast majority of American Catholics in the late 19^th century were working class and immigrants in search of employment.  The economic-capital class who benefitted from the Industrial Revolution were overwhelming the old (and in the case of Andrew Carnegie and a few others, new) Protestant American aristocracy.  Let’s take a look at the example of one of the more forward looking priests of the period—the Reverend Jeremiah Cummings of Saint Stephen’s Church in New York. 

Cummings was an extremely talented man—a linguist, a musician, and a powerful orator.  He was a close friend of the literary convert to Catholicism (from Calvinism via Universalism), Orestes Brownson, and was himself a noted writer.  Sent to Rome by Bishop DuBois for his education and assigned to the Cathedral on his return, Cummings travelled in the best of circles and in 1848 when he established Saint Stephen’s Parish in what is now the Lower East Side he drew “the better sort” of people to the church by his gifts for preaching and good music.  At the same time, he was a noted social thinker whose “outside the box” ideas on everything from seminary education to social welfare stirred a considerable about of controversy.  Although educated in Rome, he was one of the earlier “Americanist” thinkers who wanted to adapt Catholicism to American political and social models without lessening the doctrinal stringency of the faith—indeed as an Americanist intellectual he and Browning and others—saw the Catholic doctrinal tradition to be just what America needed to give its democratic spirit the rich loam in which it could develop healthy intellectual roots that would guarantee its republican ideals a stable future.  People like Cummings, Browning, and Issac Hecker (another intellectual convert) were able to see the forest of Catholic culture through the trees of Catholic customs ((I won’t’ say traditions for fear of being misunderstood for Catholic Tradition).  They were often misunderstood (and still today often not appreciated) for their ability in forward thinking. Cummings’ keen awareness of American society and Catholic faith let him see (and write and preach) that new solutions to the problems of poverty needed to be found and he used his pulpit as a powerful tool to advance the cause of the working classes.  Saint Stephen’s became known not only for its beautiful music and elegant liturgy, but for social outreach to the immigrant and working poor.  More on this subject to follow—the famous Father McGlynn!!!
The image today is a portrait of the younger Father Issac Hecker, founder of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle, or Paulist Fathers