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. 

The Origins of Radical Catholicism XVIII: American Fuel on a French Fire, part 2

The proverbial spit hit the fan in 1897 when the Abbé Felix Klein published (at the urging of the Count de Chambrol, the leader of France’s néo-chrétien movement) a French translation of an American book, The Life of Father Hecker by Father Walter Elliott of the Congregation of Saint Paul the Apostle, commonly known as the Paulists.  The Paulists are a congregation of priests founded by Issac Thomas Hecker.  Hecker was born and raised Protestant in New York City and he converted to Catholicism at age 25.  He entered the Redemptorist Order—at that time a predominately German society that had established itself in the United States to serve the German immigrant communities and to evangelize Protestants in an effort to convert them to Catholicism.  Among the early American Redemptorists, indeed the superior of the Redemptorists in America when Hecker was ordained, was Czech-born Saint John Neumann.   Neumann is a saint, but Hecker and other American Redemptorists found their congregation’s methods too “old school,” that is European, and so they withdrew (not without some underhanded opposition) and with the permission of the Holy See established a new congregation, The Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle. 

The issues that drove them to establish this new society were several, but two of them are particularly worth noting.  The first is that they had a significantly different approach to Protestantism than the Redemptorists (of the time) and other European Catholics.  Instead of seeing Protestants as being in blind error and heresy, they believed that the various denominations and sects that directly or indirectly dated back to the Reformation had in fact preserved much Catholic Truth and were Catholicism to be presented to Protestant audiences as a fulfilment of what they already believed and treasured many Protestants would become Catholics.  Indeed, the (comparatively) vast numbers of Protestants—Anglican/Episcopalians in particular—who had become Catholics during the Oxford Movement and Romantic Revival of the nineteenth century bore this out. Many of these converts saw themselves recovering their own ancient heritage rather than renouncing heresies.  Unfortunately this positivist approach did not correspond to the Roman view of Reformation history.  An Italian priest, the Canon Salvatore di Bartolo had written The Criterions of Catholic Truth making just this point that Catholicism and Protestantism shared much common tradition and faith.  DiBartolo’s book was condemned by the Holy Office of Roman Inquisition in 1891.   At the time of Hecker and the Paulists, however, Rome was not giving what was happening in America much consideration.  Di Bartolo and his ideas had to be condemned; Hecker and his ideas—well America and its Catholicism were more of a phantasm for the Roman Curia than a nation, a culture, and a Church to be taken seriously. That would soon change however and Rome would sound the fire alarm about American style Catholicism. 

 The second point was, strictly speaking, not a matter of doctrine but of discipline—though with doctrinal overtones (as we shall see).  Hecker and his fellow Paulists did not choose to have their congregation take the traditional vows of religion.   Their society was more interested in its mission than its structure: structure was to serve mission.  But the Church was not prepared for this innovation.  Again, Hecker and his followers were in America and little of what happened in America preoccupied the Roman officials (o for those golden halcyon days  to return!) but should those ideas come to Europe...  Well, then they would have to be stamped out.

Well, those ideas did come to Europe and it rang the Vatican fire-bell for the American Church.    In 1897 a French translation of Elliott’s Life of Father Hecker was published and the French translation proved to be every bit more popular than the original had been in America.  Part of this was the French edition  was, like the upcoming liturgical revisions, not an honest translation.  No translation ever is.  Tradure est tradere.  To translate is to betray.  Klein and his buddies were of the French Liberal tradition that supported the Third French Republic and Republicanism in particular.  They believed that the Church should adapt itself to the modern world and La Vie du Pére Hecker was a medium for their message.  Here we have a rapprochement with Protestantism and the incipient ecumenicalism that implies; we see that religious vows are passé, the mission of the Church demands an activism—the contemplative life and virtues are out of step.  We have Republicanism and the idealization of the Democratic.  And we have Roman officials having apoplectic seizures all over the corridors of the Apostolic Palace.  

Americans are no good at languages.  (Those who speak three languages are tri-lingual; two languages are bi-lingual; one Language, American.)  The Italians, on the other hand, are marvellous at every language but one—English.  Most Italians are polyglots—they might speak Chinese, Arabic, and Swahili, but few ever get English.  (This is in part the problem with this new liturgical translation that is coming out for our use this autumn.  Most of the Roman officials lack the ability to know what a faithful English translation is and confuse literalism for accuracy.  Dio mio!)  The Hecker biography drew no attention until it was published in a language the Curia could read—Klein’s French edition.  But that French edition was not a faithful translation of the English original—it was deliberately skewed to support the bias of the French liberals.  Yet there is nothing like a good fire drill and the Klein translation had everybody from the pope on down the lowliest housemaid-nun running up the scala santa through the Vatican corridors and down the scala regia screaming fuoco! fuoco!  (yes, I know the scala santa is not in the Vatican but over near San Giovanni in Laterano, but let’s just pretend for the sake of the imagery.)   Of course the idea wasn’t to put out a fire but to start one—for burning the Americans at the stake. 
The image today is Father Hecker, founder of the Paulists, the Missionary Society of Saint Paul the Apostle, 
There probably won"t be an entry tommorow.  Lent is a time that i seem to be up to my neck in lectures and workshops--but i will do my best to have an entry for you on Monday    Buona Dominica a tutti.