Fractured Leadership in the Amerian Church -1

Francis Haas, 1889-1953, Bishop of

Grand Rapids who championed the

rights of the working classes

You might remember from earlier postings (particularly March 5, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17 and April 5, and 10) that there was a strong division in the American hierarchy at the end of the nineteenth century between the “American” party and the ultramontanes or Europeanists.  The Americanist party, led by Gibbons, Ireland, and O’Connell (of the North American College and later Richmond) wanted Catholicism in the United States to adapt itself to American cultural patterns.   In fact, the Americanists thought that the American experience of democratic government, freedom of religion, and social equality had something to teach the old European hierarchical, monarchical, and religiously bigoted nations.  Rome was not so sure.  Well—that isn’t the whole story.  Leo XIII was of two minds as we shall see in a minute.  More to the point of this entry, the Americanists  in pushing their agenda of how great American institutions are, got behind the labor unions and were very outspoken in defending the rights of the working class (largely Catholic and immigrant) from the machinations of the industrialists (largely Protestant and blue-blood).  The Ultramontanes, on the other hand—led by Corrigan and McQuaid, took up the cause of Capital and championed the Social and Political Establishment.  They were more than surprised—they were left naked out on a limb—when Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum and clearly outlined Church treaching on the rights of labor.   Of course, Leo would later write Testem Benevolentiae which did not retract any of the social program he had laid out in Rerum Novarum but which did make it clear that American ideas of democracy and religious freedom where not to be exported to fan the ideological flames European liberals, especially the French. 
     Through the course of the twentieth century the American hierarchy has usually been of two minds regarding social matters.  Gibbons and Ireland found their heirs in such liberal prelates as John McNicholas, (1877-1950) Francis Haas (1889-1953), Edward Mooney (1882-1958), Bernard Shiel (1888-1969) and Richard Cushing (1895-1970) to name the more prominent.   There were also Monsignors John Ryan (1868-1945), George Higgins (1916-2002), and Geno Baroni (1930-1984).  Somewhat behind the scenes and usually not recognized for their support of liberal social reform, should be mentioned Cardinals George Mundelein (1872-1939),  Francis Spellman (1889-1967) and Patrick O’Boyle (1896-1987).  A key to this list is to not confuse social liberals for theological liberals.  Many of these prelates, and the last three in particular, were anything but theological radicals but they were very effective in championing social reform in their day.  O'Boyle merits special note for his desegrating the Washington DC Catholic Institutions when he became the City's second Archbishop in 1948. 
     Corrigan and his party found their heirs as well.  Cardinals Glennon of Saint Louis (1862-1948) and McIntyre of Los Angeles  (1886-1979) along with Archbishop Thomas Toolen (1886-1976) were notorious opponents of social change in general and racial integration in particular.  William O’Connell (1859-1944) and Denis Dougherty (1865-1951) were champions of the old East Coast Establishment that had no room for “ill-bred paddies” like themselves.   Ironically, you can even move Spellman from the social progressives (which he was in general) and lump him with Corrigan’s heirs when it came to how he treated Archdiocesan employees who went out on strike—not holding himself to the same standards to which he held others.   But don't we all do that.
     By and large by the mid-twentieth century the American episcopacy was liberal on labor, cautious on civil rights, and staunchly opposed to the first signs of the sexual-revolution that would strike in the late ‘60’s.  In this they reflected the values of their flock which were still for the most part from labor rather than management.  When the Civil Rights movement picked up steam in the ‘60’s the Catholic Church was slow to get behind it—embarrassingly slow.  When the picture of the Greek Orthodox Primate, the should-be-sainted Archbishop Iakovos, appeared walking alongside Dr. Martin Luther King at Selma in 1965 some Catholic bishops finally woke up and realized that we had better stand with the righteous on that issue or we would be left on the moral low road.  As the anti-Vietnam War movement then gathered speed Catholic participation was all the more difficult because most bishops were terrified of the wrath of Francis, Cardinal Spellman, who was not only Archbishop of New York, but Archbishop for the American Military as well and who was not without influence in Rome.  His death in December 1967 paved the way for stronger hierarchical leadership in the anti-war movement.   Catholics, at least led by the hierarchy, were late in coming to both these causes, but come they did eventually. 
     The sexual revolution provided the greatest challenge to the leadership of the Church and it merits multiple entries of its own.  For this entry let us simply say that the American Bishops have stood consistently with conservative social values, reflecting the universal magisterium of the Church.  The early battles were about birth control with the 1968 Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae, but as the decades have passed the sexual revolution has become ever more complex  dealing with abortion, in-vitro fertilization, surrogate parenting, homosexual rights, transgender issues,  same-sex marriage, genetic engineering and dozens of wrinkles in each of these topics and more.  As if that was not complicated enough, the issue of Gender Roles is not confined to matters sexual but has raised serious issues both within the without the Church as the traditional roles assigned to women and to men are not so clearly delineated anymore. 
    Other challenges have risen as well with end-of-life issues involving nutrition and hydration protocols, brain-death, assisted suicide and a host of incredibly complex questions.    The growing international condemnation of the Death Penalty has demanded moral response from Church leadership—a response that is often muted, whispered, actually non-existent.  The excesses of American wars ranging from Vietnam down through our various covert and not-so-covert operations in Latin America and beyond to Iraq I and II, Afghanistan, and the war on terror have all cried for moral commentary.  Then there are environmental issues that have serious moral aspects and consequences.  I am sure that the bishops would love to return to the simple days of supporting the rights of labor but the moral complexity of our society requires serious study and clear teaching.  So where is it? and why is it so slow in coming?

Origins of Radical Catholicism XXIII: Americanism, fact or fiction?

Was there in fact such a thing as Americanism—a “heresy” within the Church that subverted key Catholic doctrines—or, was “Americanism” something that existed only in the mind of those Roman officials who had read Felix Klein’s book, La Vie du Pére Hecker, and found themselves panicked and angered by the values Klein promoted but attributed to Hecker and other American religious thinkers?

Liberals—the intellectual or political descendents of Ireland, Gibbons, O’Connell, Keane and others—tend to deny the charge and claim that they stand in a tradition going back to Bishop John Carroll and his vision for the Catholic Church in the new American Republic.  They claim that while the American and Americanist worldview differed from that of European churchmen, they were orthodox in matters of doctrine and faithful in matters of ecclesiastical discipline.  Conservatives on the other hand—not only the heirs of Corrigan and the Germans, but the Roman Church of the Latter-Day Saints who in these post-Vatican II day rally around such Apostles and Prophets as Raymond Arroyo, “Father Z.”, Joseph Fessio, the Hitchcocks, et al see their foes as a modern day reincarnation of the old American liberal troublemakers and pray that Timothy Dolan won’t go the way of Joseph Bernadin and Roger Mahoney and channel the shades of Cardinal Gibbons or John Ireland.  So who is right?  Were Gibbons and crowd within our without the pale of orthodoxy?    

In its historical context, there certainly was such a thing as “Americanism” though I hesitate to call it a heresy.  It certainly was perceived as a heresy—and I believe that given its place in time it was correctly perceived as one.  There was an ecumenical espirit that contradicted Catholic doctrine as it was held in the 19^th century, although it would look pretty tame compared to official Church positions in this age of the Assisi Encounters and the post-conciliar popes welcoming religious leaders of every stripe at the Vatican.  The idea of the separation of Church and State—and indeed republicanism itself—was contrary to Catholic political theology of the late nineteenth century.  A third valid point (valid for the time and I think still valid today) is that America (whether Catholic or Protestant) then—and now—and always—has overvalued the active virtues and minimalized the interior or contemplative life.  I think too we did and still do place too much emphasis on individual inspiration rather than submission to the common faith and we permit individual inspiration to outweigh, not traditions, but Tradition.   On the other hand, I don’t think it bad—to the contrary I think it healthy—that America has some views that balance the Roman mentality.  I think the Catholic, i.e. universal, Church needs to draw its insights from the many sources of grace where the Spirit flows and not just from Rome’s tired old reservoir.  I think that perhaps what Rome fears from the American Church is that it does seem in these last few decades that a lot of people in Rome itself and around the Church are gradually succumbing to American ideas and values.  It wasn’t just that Paul VI got rid of the monarchical trappings of cardinal’s costumes with their long trains of scarlet silk (though some are trying to bring them back, most notably the American peacock, Raymond Burke) and it has been ages since some old bag with more money than God has been made a Papal Duchess, but that the Vatican has become a business with pricey gift-shops in the museums and a bank that hums with activity as nuns and abbots line up with librarians and bakers to make their deposits and withdrawals.  (If only someone would teach them about bank-cheques all our lives could be easier.)   Not everything American is good, but Americans are efficient and the Italians are not; I think the Church could stand some efficiency in administration.  The downside is that today’s Vatican is as secular as the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the government of Belgium. Romans, Americans, the French, the Chinese, the Kenyans—we live in a modern world and the powers that be in the Church need to make peace with that fact.  I am not saying that modernization is good or it’s bad, only pointing out that there is a significant paradigm shift and the Church must accommodate itself to it. 

What the late nineteenth-century Americanists wanted the Church to do was—and it was one of the things condemned by Pius IX in his Syllabus of Errors—was to make peace with the world in which it exists and not constantly bemoan the good old days when the world was run to suit the Church—and Churchmen.  That day is over and it won’t be coming back.  The Church needs to look for new models—paradigms of existence—that fit the reality of time and place.  Despite its somewhat whitewashed official histories, the Church was not always a Monarchy of Divine Right.  There even was a time, perhaps several times, when the Church understood it had come to serve the needs of sick, the poor, the disenfranchised—rather than to be served by rich and poor alike.   Maybe that time will come again.  I don’t think Gibbons necessarily saw the Church as a servant to the world, and Ireland, despite his liberal ideas, was as autocratic as any French King—but the Americanists did challenge the model of Church where all power came allegedly from God and then from those who were the Lord’s anointed down.  They pointed out that in addition to the Institution, the Church consisted of the poor and suffering who need the Church’s protection and help.  They refocused the vision—not the narcissistic vision of a Church that gazed in the mirror at its own bedazzling image—but the vision which Jesus outlined when he said he came to bring good news to the poor and to announce a year of God’s favour to all.  The Americans would not be the ones to get his message across to the contemporary world.  At Vatican II it would be the Europeans themselves who declaimed the fascination of the Church with clericalism, juridicism, and triumphalism.  But the Americans played a role in the late nineteenth century that would bear great fruit in the middle of the twentieth.    
The image today is the interior of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC

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

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

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

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

Origins of Radical Catholicism XIX: Testem Benevolentiae, Americanism Decried

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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