An Example of Evangelical Catholicism in Practice

Jesuits at the Court

of Akbar the Great

in the late 16th 

century

There was a good homily at Mass yesterday morning for the feast of Saint Ignatius Loyola.  The priest, retired military chaplain and former missionary up on the Peruvian Altiplano—a man of some truly wonderful experiences—praised the Jesuits.  Turns out that he, like I, is a product of Jesuit schooling, though he went first cabin: Georgetown and Fordham. 

What he praised the Society of Jesus for is that they are not afraid to ask “Why?”  They are always willing to question.  This is rooted in the spiritual experience of Ignatius himself.  Ignatius had not been an easy convert: it took God’s Grace a lot of effort to reel him in and land him in the net of the saved.  And once in Peter’s barque, Ignatius was not afraid to question the tried and the true and do things in new ways.  For example, his “Companions of Jesus” were the first religious community to reject the “choral office”—choosing rather the somewhat revolutionary (at the time) idea that they should say their daily offices privately and individually rather than sing or chant the prayers liturgically in the church. Also  Ignatius didn’t mark a distinctive habit for the men of his new Society to wear.  Normally they dressed like secular priests.  But when there was need for them to adopt lay clothing—such as for their missions in Elizabethan England or persecuted 20^th century Mexico—they had no trouble doing so.  Jesuit missionaries to China first took on the robes of Buddhist monks and then, when they realized that this strategy hadn’t been the best to gain them access to the influence where they could make converts, they switched to the dress of mandarin scholars.  They also began saying Mass in Mandarin three and a half centuries before Vatican II put the Mass in the language of the people.  (Mandarin wasn’t the language of the ordinary Chinese, but of the scholars—similar to the Latin of 17^th century Europe.)    And yes the Church had “condemned” the thought of Copernicus and Galileo—but that didn’t stop Jesuit scholars such as Christopher Clavius or Wenceslaus Kirwitzer from their studies of the skies.  (Actually the list of Jesuit Astronomers in the 16^th and 17^th centuries is amazing and even today it is one of the most widely practiced sciences among Jesuits.)  There are always Jesuits thinking outside the box: they are seismologists, molecular biologists, computer scientists, ornithologists, mathematicians, paleontologists, botanists, and zoologists.  Jesuits are and have been musicians, philologists, natural historians, medical doctors, physicists, playwrights, poets, and lawyers.  Jesuits have served in the United States Congress and other parliamentary bodies, served as ambassadors, government ministers, university presidents, editors, and on governmental panels.  They have also taught high-school freshmen basic masculine hygiene, worked as chaplains in emergency rooms and hospitals, been missionaries under the most difficult circumstances and served as parish priests.  They have been confessors and spiritual directors to popes, kings, queens, and scullery maids.  There have been more than a few saints among them and, as in all groups, their share of sinners.  They have given their lives for the faith at the hands of Elizabethan Protestants, the North American Iroquois, Soviet Atheists, and U.S. sponsored militias in Latin America. They are truly the most phenomenal group of religious to have served the Church through our two millennia of spreading the Gospel.  Though there have been several communities of women religious who have modeled themselves on the Jesuits, the Society acknowledges no female branch, never has, and claims it never will.  Though I supposed they should be brave enough to ask themselves the question they ask everyone else in authority: “why?”

When we talk about evangelical Catholicism, the Jesuits exemplify the model.  They are men profoundly rooted in the Word of God.  From their first days in the novitiate Jesuits are formed in the Spiritual Exercise of Saint Ignatius Loyola—a thirty day retreat in which the new disciple is led through profound meditation to reflect on his own sinfulness, the life and teaching of Jesus, the sufferings of Jesus, and the Resurrection of Jesus and the impact that Resurrection is meant to have on our lives.  Those spiritual exercises not only give shape to the Jesuit’s own spirituality but his life and ministry for others.  The challenge is how to take this personal encounter of Christ, an encounter rooted in the Word of God, and make it the very blood that flows through our veins. 

One thing Jesuits—collectively—are not known for and that is quality liturgy.  (One of my favorite axioms is: “As confused as a Jesuit in Holy Week.”)  This is somewhat unfair, as some Jesuit establishments are known for the excellence of their liturgies.  I think of Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown DC, for example.  But by and large Jesuits tend to be a bit “low Church.”  Nevertheless, while the liturgy may not the most exciting, the sacramental life is intense.  Jesuit parishes: Holy Trinity in DC, Saint Ignatius or Saint Francis Xavier in New York, Saint Ignatius in Chicago, Saint Louis University Church in Saint Louis, Saint Ignatius or Saint Agnes in San Fran, The Gesu in Milwaukee, Saint Ignatius (they keep using that name) in Boston—are life-filled and lively centers of Catholic life and worship.  People come to these churches, they hear the word of God preached, they are welcomed into the community of the Church, and brought into a deeper life in Christ. 

I am obviously a super fan of the Society of Jesus and their contribution to the Church.  And delighted that we have a Jesuit Pope who is opening doors and windows and blowing the musty air out of the Church.  Ignatius’ motto was Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam—to the Greater Glory of God.  Well done good and faithful Jesuits!

Origins of Radical Catholicism XII: The German Question, part 2

Well, the Abbelen Memorial had no sooner been dealt with than the German Question was reopened by a devout German merchant, a layman, from Limburg by the name of Peter Paul Cahensly.  Now before we go into the Cahensly affair—which was far more extensive and with far greater consequences than the Abbelen memorial, we need to look at why “the German Question” was so politically sensitive.  It wasn’t simply a matter of providing pastoral care to the immigrant populations as both Father Abbelen and Herr Cahensly might protest.  It undermined both the authority of the bishops and the sovereignty of the American Republic. 

As mentioned in a previous blog, many of the immigrants identified more with their country of origin than with the new republic to which they had emigrated.  As you may remember from some of our blogs on anti-Catholicism, American nativism has always run strong, and the attempts of immigrant communities to preserve their languages, cultures, and even political ties to European homelands put the Church in an awkward position.  Ireland, O’Connell, Gibbons and the other Americanists were anxious to have the immigrants snap their ties to their European homelands as soon as possible precisely so that the Catholic Church in the United States would not be seen as a foreign entity but that its old and deep roots in Colonial and Revolutionary America would be the face that would show to fellow Americans who did not share the Catholic faith.   Abbelen, Cahensly, Archbishops Heiss and Katzer, Cardinal Melchers of Cologne, and others of the German party could not have cared less about those American roots.  As I quoted Father Cyrill Knoll in a previous blog:  A German is a German although he has shaken off the dust of his fatherland, and everywhere a true German longs for a greater Germany.  I am one of those who want to remain a German. 

This ethnocentric sentiment very much suited the foreign policy of the German Foreign Ministry.  World War I was almost twenty years away, but the lines were forming and Germany had allied itself with the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy in the Triple Alliance.  ((Italy would shift side before War came.)  Prussian foreign policy wanted to have a strong German community in the United States to prevent America from allying with its traditional friends, England and France.  The Catholic Church could be just the agency for keeping alive the ethnic pride of the German immigrants—and also those of the Austrian Empire and of Italy. 

Cahensly had founded the St. Raphaels-Verein to provide spiritual assistance to German communities in the United States.  Austrian, Belgian, and Italian chapters of this same association soon appeared and in 1883 a branch was founded in the United States.  An 1890 meeting in Lucerne of various national branches (but not including the American) formed a petition that repeated many of the demands of the Abbelen memorial—including provisions already granted Abbelen—including national parishes, guarantees of the rights of immigrant priests serving those parishes, rights to establish parochial schools where the children would be educated in their parents’ language.  It also wisely encouraged the foundation of fraternal and mutual-aid associations to lessen the threat of American secret associations (such as the Freemasons) and it called on the Holy See to establish seminaries to train priests to work among the immigrant populations of the United States.  All this the American Church could probably have worked with.  But it went further.  It called for the establishment of foreign-born hierarchies of bishops to oversee the various ethnic groups in America.  In other words, German (or Italian, or Polish, or whatever) Catholics would be removed from the jurisdiction of the local bishop and placed under a bishop of their own (I wont’ say nationality as these immigrants should have been becoming Americans) ethnic origin.  Needless to say the American bishops would have none of this.  The Gibbons party (the liberals) and the Corrigan party(the conservatives) might agree on very little but neither was willing to have their own Episcopal power in any way diminished. 

Cahensly was not to be dismissed out of hand however.  In putting his petition together, he had consulted with Papal Secretary of State Rampolla as well as Simeoni of Propaganda Fide and Cardinals Mazzella, Melchers, and Ledochowski.  The German and Austrian Foreign Ministers were very much in support of the plan (and why not?).  In the end, it was the Papal Secretary of State who saw how the plan could backfire vis a vis the resentment of the United States towards foreign interference in the appointment of bishops and the plan was rejected.  Rampolla (and most likely Leo XIII) saw how this would play into the hands of the Triple Alliance, an coalition that the papacy did not want to encourage.  Gibbons and the liberals wanted to use Cahensly’s injudicious proposal for their own aims however and were quick to let the Harrison administration in the White House how this attempt on American autonomy by establishing a foreign hierarchy in this country had been turned back.  President Harrison told the Cardinal that “foreign and unauthorized interference in American affairs cannot be looked on with indifference.” So Cahensly ended up strengthening the hand of the very people he saw as being problematic for the survival of the German Catholic heritage in its new setting.  Cahensly could do nothing about it.  But his friend, Cardinal Melchers of Cologne, could and Melchers was only more distrustful of American Catholicism and its Americanist bishops.  the image today is the sepulcher chapel from the Cathedral of Cologne in Germany

The Origins of Radical Catholicism VI: The Church and Labor Unions part 2

The late nineteenth century saw the rise of Labor Unions as the working classes in the United States, Canada, Australia, and several European nations developed strategies to protect themselves against the exploitation that was making many of their employers rich.  Indeed American society had a numerically small but very wealthy upper class whose money was being made in industry, transportation, and exploitation of natural resources along with a moderately small middle class of professionals, a “survival class” of rural family farmers, and an immense poor class made of urban industrial workers.  When one sees the great mansions of Newport or the Philadelphia “Mainline” and contrasts them with the urban tenements that blighted so many American cities especially in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions, the discrepancy is truly shocking.  What is even more amazing  is that the urban poor accepted their situation with relative complacency while the rich ensconced themselves in their fashionable churches—mostly Episcopalian and Presbyterian—with nary a pang of conscience.  Christianity of every sort—Catholic and Protestant—simply did not question the existing social structures, and when clergymen did raise questions, as Father McGlynn had, they found themselves in very hot water indeed and from their bishops, not from outside the Church.  Even as the Irish bishops sided with the English landlords against their own poor faithful who were the tenant farmers on the English and Anglo-Irish estates, the majority of American bishops failed in their responsibility to look out for the temporal welfare of the vast majority—probably 80 percent—of their faithful.  Of course the majority of bishops, while coming from working class families—or like Dennis Dougherty who would become Archbishop of Philadelphia in 1918) had himself worked in the coal mines as a boy—were setting themselves up in fine mansions in the better neighborhoods of their See cities.  Labor Unions were seen to be socialist, even communist.  They threatened the rights of property.  The poor were to be the objects of charity not the reason for social reform. 

An exception to these establishment bishops was James Gibbons of Baltimore.  He was an unlikely exception in many ways.  He was every bit as much a prince-bishop as Corrigan was or O’Connell and Dougherty would be.   In fact, unlike a number of mitered pigs’ ears who fancied themselves to be silk purses, his manners were naturally genteel without being affected and he moved comfortably in the best circles.  The few other liberals in the hierarchy were not particularly interested in the issues of labor.  Of course Ireland was in the Midwest where most of his sheep were safely grazing on the farms of Minnesota.  O’Connell was still in Rome directing the seminarians at the North American.  Moore was in Florida—not an industrial area.  But when Archbishop Taschereau of Quebec attacked the Knights of Labor and declared its Catholic members excommunicate, Gibbons—like a mad dog awakened from his sleep by a trespassing cat—went straining at his chains to attack the Quebec prelate and let it be known that Knights of Labor in his diocese were perfectly free to continue as Catholics in good standing. 

Taschereau had no right, of course, to make rules for Catholics beyond his Archdiocese but he did not see himself as exercising a universal jurisdiction.  His ban was based on what he perceived to be the universal magisterium declared by popes and councils through the centuries that had defended the right of private property and condemned any form of socialism that threatened that right. 

Archbishops Taschereau and Gibbons received their red cardinalatial hats in the same 1886 consistory.  In fact they sailed over to Rome on the same ship.  They probably weren’t shipboard dinner partners as the atmosphere between them was rather chilly—or hot, depending on how you see things.  Taschereau’s complaints about Gibbons’ public disagreement led to the Pope’s taking the question to himself. 

Leo’s conclusion could clearly be foreseen--or so it was thought.  Leo was aristocratic and doctrinally quite conservative.  Taschereau was consistent with previous teaching.  It came as quite a shock, therefore when Leo published his encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891.  Leo did affirm the traditional right to private property and he condemned communism but he said that while the individual had the right to private property the state had the right to regulate it in the interest of the common good.  He also condemned unregulated capitalism.  And, most germane to Gibbon’s argument with Taschereau, he defended the rights of labor to organize.  He viewed the labor of the worker as a commodity that the worker brings to the production even as the owner provides the capital. 

This was a dramatic turn-about in Catholic social thought.  The economic and political establishment could no longer count on the Church’s unrestricted support.  Prelates like Corrigan of New York who had totally opposed the Church’s support of the working class were blindsided—it may be one of the reasons that Corrigan never got a Cardinal’s hat, the last Archbishop of New York to go so bareheaded to his crypt.  I think more important it secured the loyalty of the working class to the Church.  The workers knew that while their bishop and their employer might still enjoy a glass of port togehter on the terrace of one or the other's mansion,  the pope had blessed their struggle for a just wage.  But this wasn’t the end.  Nor is this the end of the thread on the Radicalization of Catholicism. 

The image today is Cardinal Gibbons  

The Origins of Radical Catholicism V: The Church and Labor Unions

Sorry for the break—I needed a few days to catch  up on my day job.  In the meantime, I had several emails asking me to continue with the theme of the radicalization of the American Church.  I had been thinking of returning to that series on the turning back the clock on Vatican II, but I will continue the story of how the Catholic Church in the United States became radicalized.    We finished with Father McGlynn, but not with the rest of the characters.

We will pick up the thread with a layman with some, for this time, radical views—just as radical as McGlynn—and that is Terrence Powderly.  Powderly was the son of Catholic Irish Immigrants who settled in Carbondale PA.  in 1874 he joined a labor union known as the Holy and Noble Order of the Knights of Labor.  The Knights were drawn from a wide variety of professions—not a single occupation—and they had borrowed some key organizational principles and rituals from the Masons.  Post Civil War America was enchanted by medieval images and rituals and the idea of Knights and secret rituals was a drawing card.  Nevertheless, the Knights of Labor began quickly to evolve from a fraternal society towards the more modern concept of a labor union.  With the collapse of the National Labor Union in 1873 many of its members migrated towards the Knights of Labor while others turned to the American Federation of Labor (AF of L).

Powderly joined the Knights of Labor in 1876 and by 1879 was “Grand Master Workman”—the head of the organization.  He remained in this position until 1893. It was a time of growth and victory for the organization.  The membership increased from ten thousand to seven hundred thousand  (some records claim up to a million).  This included 10,000 women and 50,000 African Americans.  Powderly’s vision was not only to protect (or actually to achieve) workers’ rights but  to unite all workers—skilled and unskilled—into a single organization to achieve social and economic reforms that were tilting the balance of power in favor of the big industrialists.   Powderly was advanced for his time, but he did have some chinks in his armor—while open to African American members, his union opposed Chinese immigration as they saw the Chinese migrants undermining the goals of the Knights by providing strike-breakers.

Now the Catholic Church was not in favor of Labor Unions.  European attempts to organize labor tended to have ties to secret organizations condemned by the Church as well as to express socialist ideas not compatible with Catholic doctrine about property.  In the nineteenth century the Catholic Church had a strong record of social and economic conservativism.  You have to remember how badly the Church was burned by the experience of the French Revolution.  Catholicism was very much on the side of the ancien regime.  Even the two popes who had come to Peter’s Chair as liberals (Pius VII and Pius IX) soon lost their enthusiasm for a new social order when they saw how it would undermine the authority (and wealth) of the Church.  The Church—like many people today—put its faith in charity, not justice and believed that the role of those with power and wealth was simply to provide for those who could not care for themselves.  Indeed many people in the nineteenth century felt that wealth was divinely ordained and that the “haves” had at God’s disposal and the poor—again at the disposal of God—had not.  One of my favorite examples of this is an old Anglican hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful.”

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

This song was written by Mrs. Cecil Frances Alexander, the wife of an Anglican Clergyman (later Bishop and Then Archbishop-Primate) at Markree Castle Sligo while visiting friends, Col and Mrs Edward Joshua Cooper (the seigneur and dame of the castle) in 1848.  It was the middle of the potato famine.  The people inside the Castle (the Alexanders and the Coopers) whose estate God supposedly had been ordered to being rich, were Anglicans.  The Poor at the gate—likewise ordered by divine will into poverty and famine—were Catholics.  For many people,  both then and now, the fellowship of class is stronger than the fellowship of the Gospel.  But I wander.  Perhaps even pontificate.  Back to the story.

As I wrote, the Catholic Church had opposed labor unions.   That is not to say that it endorsed child labor or unjust labor conditions—only that it thought reform should come about through the conversion of hearts rather than political or social organization.  As the Knights of Labor grew and began to spread internationally, Archbishop Taschereau of Quebec condemned the movement and put an excommunication on any Catholic who belonged. 

Our friend Cardinal Gibbons (then only an Archbishop) disagreed) and publically declared: "Archbishop Taschereau's condemnation of the Knights of Labor should not be taken as the sentiment of the church toward that organization.” Gibbons did not claim that Taschereau could not impose a ban Knights in his own Archdiocese, but he insisted Taschereau did not speak for the universal Church.  Taschereau insisted that he did.  In 1886 both men were named to the College of Cardinals and ironically sailed for Rome on the same ship.  Whatever the weather, it had to have been a stormy voyage but it would fall to the pope to decide the issue 

   the image today is Cardinal Taschereau of Quebec (1820-1898) who condemnation of the Knights of Labor led to a reversal of Church policy on labor unions