Freedom From Religion and Freedom of Religion II

The Coronation of Napoleon, December 2, 1804

The new American Republic in its 1789 first amendment to the Constitution (ratified in 1791) forbad Congress either to establish (a) religion in law or to prohibit its free exercise.  It was a moderate step away from the time-honored practice of European States that recognized either Catholicism or one or another of the Protestant Churches as the official religion of that particular state.  A more radical approach to altering the relationship of Church and State emerged under the various governments of the French Revolution.  In 1790 the French Government, technically still the monarchy but controlled by revolutionary forces in the National Constituent Assembly, required the clergy to swear an oath of allegiance to the new Constitution.  It also required that pastors and bishops be elected by their respective constituencies.  This did not meet with papal approval, needless to say, and clergy who refused the oath (as many did) were subject to fines, imprisonment, and death.  In 1792 the National Assembly, contrary to Catholic belief, legalized divorce and that civil legalization that contradicted the canon law actually was the initial step in separating civil law from Religious doctrine.  The Government also took the responsibility of registering births, marriages, and deaths from the Church thus making baptism and church-marriage unnecessary for those who chose not to practice Catholicism.   This was just the first step in changing the status of the Church and just weeks later a virulent persecution of the clergy and religious began.  This was followed in the first months of 1793 with a spate of “dechristianization” laws which attempted to remove not only Catholicism but all Christian influence on French culture.  The Gregorian Calendar introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 (the calendar we use today in America and most of the world) was abolished in favor of a Republican Calendar with ten day weeks—eliminating any Sunday of Christian worship.  Towns with religious names such as Saint-Antoine or Saint Tropez received new names.  The Deistic “Cult of the Supreme Being” was designed to replace Christianity.  It was forbidden to ring church bells or display the cross and of course there were no religious festivals.  Cathedrals and churches were, for the most part, turned over to secular use or left abandoned. Abbeys and convents were most often destroyed and left in ruins.  Despite the high and mighty language of the Revolution about “the rights of man,” there was no religious liberty, neither for the Churches nor for the individual believer.  Slowly, however, after 1795 while public worship was proscribed the private practice of Christian faith—Protestant or Catholic—was, in fact, tolerated although clergy were still often imprisoned or sent to French penal colonies in the Caribbean. Religion was banished from public life but permitted in private.   With the accession of Napoleon in 1799 the religious situation improved as Napoleon, no believer himself, realized he could use an alliance with the Church to consolidate his political and imperial ambitions.  Pius VII was coerced into crowning Napoleon as Emperor of the French at a Pontifical Mass in Notre Dame Cathedral Paris on December 2^nd 1804.  Actually, Napoleon crowned himself—having taken the crown from the Pope’s hands and placed it on his own head before turning and crowning his wife (at the time), Josephine. 

     In the course of their revolution, the French had conquered what is today Belgium and the Netherlands, as well as most of modern Germany.  They also had seized Italy and Spain where they established satellite states under Bonaparte siblings or allies.  Although Sweden was never part of this empire, one of Napoleon’s top generals, Jean- Baptiste Bernadotte was elected King by the Swedish Riksdag (Parliament).  Bernadotte briefly was allied to Napoleonic France but he was no fool and disentangled himself from that alliance when it was clear that Napoleon would not prevail.  Wherever Napoleon held power, however, he established religious liberty giving Catholics, Protestants, and Jews freedom of worship. 

       When Napoleon fell in 1815 the restored European monarchs, including Pope Pius VII, were determined to undo as much as they could of the French Revolutionary influence on European societies.  Religious freedom was among the first things to go.  Outright persecution of religious minorities was difficult to reestablish but limits were put on Catholics and Catholicism in Protestant lands and on Protestants and Protestantism in Catholic countries.  The Catholic Church insisted, for the most part without success, on religious liberty for its adherents in Protestant lands but vehemently opposed Protestant rights in Catholic countries.  The Papal States certainly did not practice religious liberty.  Certain limited freedoms were extended to Jews though they were required to live in the Ghetto until 1882—twelve years after the Kingdom of Italy had taken political control of Rome from the popes.  What liberties Roman Jews had came at the price of various taxes and duties. As difficult as the Jews had it, Protestants had a much more difficult time.  Protestant worship was forbidden in Papal Rome and no Protestant churches could be constructed within the walls of the city.  The Papacy did not approve of religious toleration when it came to “heretics.”  It was only with the fall of Papal Rome and its incorporation into the Kingdom of Italy in 1870 that Protestants acquired the right to worship in Rome and the surrounding area.  As the papacy did not recognize the authority of the Italian monarchy over formerly Papal territory, neither did they accept freedom of religion in the once Papal dominions.   American ex-President Theodore Roosevelt declined an invitation to meet Pius X during a trip to Rome in 1910 because one of the papal conditions on the visit was that the President, an Episcopalian, could not attend a Protestant Church during his visit.  (There were other conditions as well that Roosevelt chose not to meet.) 

     As a result of its intransience on the matter of religious freedom, Rome did not know what to do with the American constitutional policy of Separation of Church and State.  American Catholics, for the most part, accepted the American position without reservation.  Indeed most probably supported it with the enthusiasm with which they embraced life in the American Republic.  Rome chose to ignore the American Constitutional requirement of separation of Church and State as they chose to ignore the reality of republican government.  European prelates found freedom of conscience and republicanism to be too reminiscent of the debacle of the French Revolution.  Yet the Holy See did not want to imperil the health and safety of the Catholic Church which was thriving in the American Republic under the constitutional principle of Separation of Church and State.  It was agreed by Roman officials that American Catholics could live with the Separation of Church and State until such time that Catholics gained the political majority.  At that time they would be bound by Church authority to establish Catholicism as the State Religion in the United States and limit, if not absolutely proscribe, Protestant worship. 

New Translation of the Mass--A Mixed Reivew

Mass in the Grotto at Lourdes, always a simple,
straightforward, faith-filled, and prayerful experience

I had been planning on returning to the theme of the Gregorian Reform of the 11^th century as we still have considerable material there to look at, but the last several days I attended a workshop on the upcoming implementation of the new Roman Missal, famous (or infamous) for its revised translation of the Latin Prayers.  I have not been a fan of this new translation.  I  believe that the principles for translation laid out in Liturgiam Authenticam are flawed.  Anyone who speaks several languages (which admittedly excludes most Americans) knows that you cannot translate directly from one language to another.  Each language has its own idioms that are woven into its daily use and which the language into which an idea is being translated becomes confused by these idioms which make no sense in the new language.  As an example: I remember once saying in Italian to some European friends of mine: “well, that’s a horse of a different color.”  They stared at me blankly.   What did horses have to do with the subject at hand?  Of course, the liturgical texts are not replete with idioms (ah, but the scriptural texts, especially the New Testament ones, are).  Another problem is syntax.  I remember from Latin III (I go all the way through Latin VI) doing Cicero.  What a nightmare.  That boy could talk.  I remember one sentence, I think it was in the Catilinarian addresses, that had 105 words in fourteen separate phrases.  I would hate to have had to diagram that sentence.  Latin and English are constructed very differently and it is not easy to be faithful to the syntax and still have good English.  I was pleased to note, however, that in the collects and prayers which the presenter showed us, the final product was actually quite beautifully translated—very rich in its language and elegant in its construction.  I hope these examples are typical and not exceptions to the Rule.  I was actually somewhat soothed after the presentations.  Then we had Mass using the new translation and it all fell apart.  The Presider used Eucharistic Prayer III and it was horrendous—clumsy, almost impossible to render intelligibly much less prayerfully. 
     I intend over the next few months, interspersed with entries on the various Church Reforms in History—the Gregorian, Innocentian, Protestant, etc.—to do a number of postings on the upcoming liturgical revisions.  But what struck me most about this workshop—not only from the presenter but from a number of officially produced videos featuring Bishop Arthur Serratelli who chairs the Committee on the Liturgy for the American Bishops Conference, but also Monsignor James Moroney from the Federation of Diocesan Liturgy Committees, is that the emphasis is definitely on ritual/text rather than on a prayerful celebration.  These texts will be very difficult to pray, especially aloud.  They do not facilitate one’s entering into the deepest chambers of one’s heart and expressing what is found there.  The Presider will have difficulty in moving beyond an externalized fixation on the words; the congregants will have difficulty in absorbing the words much less in allowing the words to move the individual to prayerful attention (I won’t say recollection).   That is unfortunate as the texts, at least the ones we were shown, are deeply beautiful and rich but it would take a Shakespearean elocutionist to say them with any measure of poise.  It may be that the texts are too rich to use in vocal prayer.  I will need to look at Eucharistic Prayer III in more detail to see what caused it to come across as somewhat of a hodgepodge (to use an American idiom rather than the Irish: a dog’s dinner) of so many disparate elements.               
     English, at least American English, is a clean and simple language.   We tend to favor short sentences and we are sparing—perhaps too sparing—on both poetical imagery and literary (in this case scriptural) illusions.  We pray openly and frankly.  I agree that we need to use an elevated tone of language—but we are not given to the verbal baroque.  Read Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Lincoln’s addresses at Gettysburg or his second inaugural, Franklin Roosevelt “Day that will go down in infamy,” or John Kennedy’s address to the Houston Ministerium or his Inaugural Address.  Our English is short, crisp, current. That is how we know how to speak.  For that matter, read Winston Churchill’s addresses to the British Nation during World War II and you will find that same terse and to the point language.  It is eminently suited for prayer—and for those with the mindset of English speakers, far more suited than the courtly baroque of the new translation.  For those for whom prayer is words and pomp  and taking a stance before God, it might work.   For those for whom prayer is standing in the Presence of God, naked in one’s own truth with open heart and open hands—this ain’t going to cut it.  The very blessing of this new translation is its curse.  It will make our ritual less bland but I fear it will make our prayer more stilted           

Origins of Radical Catholicism XXV: The Spanish-American War and the Vatican

“It’s just a little war—but it’s the only one we have” was the way that Theodore Roosevelt described the Spanish American War—and he should know: he led the famous Rough-Riders down San Juan Hill as part of America’s move to push Spain off the stage of history.  At the beginning of the nineteenth century Spain had an empire that spanned the globe: as great and far flung as Britain’s.  By the end of the century Spain’s ragged empire consisted only a few semi-neglected possessions.  Spain itself was spent, a has-been nation.  For the United States to pick a war with Spain was like the neighbourhood bully to push down an old lady and grab her purse with its few dollars, but that is what we did.

America was spoiling for war.  It was a time of “Manifest Destiny”—it was, we were telling ourselves—God’s plan that we bring civilization and Christianity to the rest of the world.  Civilization meant American ways and Christianity, of course, meant Protestantism.  And we wanted an opportunity to show Europe that we were ready to be a world power.  We had come of age.  Spain, for its part, did not want a war with America.  It knew it couldn’t win, but the United States was determined not to give it a choice.  The pickings were too easy; the fruit of empire hanging too low not to pluck it. 

The Holy See was not anxious for a war between Spain and the United States.   Spain was an old ally of the papacy—not always a faithful child—but an old ally none the less.  The Church knew that if America won the war and seized Spanish possessions—Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines—those lands would be opened up to American ways, and worse, to Protestant Missionaries.  Spain’s dominions had been Catholic for centuries.  Catholic hegemony would be lost, and in the mentality of the Church at that time, souls would be lost to the heresies the “evangelists” would bring.  Spain’s dominions had been Catholic for centuries. 
The American bishops, liberal and conservative, were Americans after all and their loyalty was divided.  The bishops felt that the Church in the United States was at a critical time and it would not be wise to oppose American policy despite the wishes of the Holy See.  The United States had been whipped into a war fury by newspaper magnates Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst and while Republican President McKinley was anxious to settle the issues with Spain—which were many and complex—by negotiation, the newspaper industry and the Democratic Party were hell-bent for leather on a war.    

Leo XIII tried to have Archbishop Ireland intervene with President McKinley—with whom Ireland was a friend—but he was unsuccessful.  This was not because McKinley wanted a war—unlike Teddy Roosevelt, McKinley did not—but because the tide of public opinion could not be resisted.  While most of the bishops chose neither to endorse the war nor pass on the Pope’s insistence that we not go to war (sound familiar—remember the American bishops not conveying to their congregants papal condemnation of the wars in Viet Nam and Iraq) Ireland, once we were in the war, was an outspoken advocate of the American cause.  This did not delight the Holy See and was probably one of several reasons why Ireland never got a red hat.   

This was not a good time for the Holy See and its relationship with the United States.  The Holy See was unhappy with the fact that they best they could do with Washington was to have an Apostolic Delegation.  It was very important for the papacy to have full diplomatic relations with nations in order to demonstrate to the Kingdom of Italy that while Italy has taken its land it could not take its Sovereign authority.   But anti-Catholicism was too strong in the American Republic to allow the Vatican this conceit.  It would only be in Reagan-John Paul exchange of tits for tats in their cooperative effort to bring down Marxism that the Delegation would be raised to an accredited embassy, a nunciature.    

The Holy See was increasingly frustrated with the American Church.  They were appalled at its openness to non-Catholics, they were fearful of its democratic heritage, and they did not understand why it was so unable to influence the society in which it was rooted.  The Holy See saw a potential for power in the American Church that it had not itself yet recognized.  While it may have been only a small fragment of the general population, it was the largest—and fastest growing—religious body in the United States.  Surely with the right sort of leadership it could leverage itself from its position in the shadows of American Presbyterianism, Methodism, and Episcopalianism into the  catbird seat of American public influence.  All it needed was the right leadership...hmmm.  we’ll have some fun with that  This has been a long and (mostly) unbroken run and I want to continue it in two directions--Americanism back to the time of John Carroll and earlier, and forward into the twentieth century.  I think we will be able to understand some of the things that are going on in the Church today if we look at the long tradition of American Catholicism.   But we do need a break.  I have some other entries prepared on a variety of subjects and then go back and tie up some issues we had started--Saint Peter's Basilica, for example--and maybe start some new ones.  So stay tuned. 
The image is Cardinal Gibbons greeting Theodore Roosevelt.