Origins of Radical Catholicism XXIV: The Ultramontanes

On the morning of July 14, 1833, Anglican clergyman John Keble ascended the pulpit of Saint Mary’s—the university Church at Oxford and preached a sermon entitled “National Apostasy” that changed the course not only of Anglicanism but sent shock waves through every major Protestant denomination in Europe and North America as well as having a profound effect on Roman Catholicism.  Keble’s sermon, meant to mark the opening of the courts, did not reach its goal of calling England to account in protecting its established Church from outside forces determining its future but it did generate an about face in the Church of England as many bishops, priests, and laity began to see how far the philosophical rationalism and political liberalism had driven the Church from its evangelical mission.  Keble’s sermon is reckoned as the beginning of what is known as the Oxford Movement. 

Originally the Oxford movement was not a call for “smells and  bells” in Anglican worship but to return to the solid patristic tradition of classic Anglicanism, a tradition that had been largely abandoned during the Enlightenment and the successive Whig ministries in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England.   Doctrine requires discipline and is only for the energetic.  It was not long before the Oxford Movement—despite the best intentions of its leaders: Keble, Newman, Pusey and others—got caught up into a world of medieval restorationism as chasubles and incense and plainsong  and processions created a vortex in which English Protestantism was magically transformed into a non-papal Catholicism with all the pomp and ritual of its Continental model. 

This sudden burst of ritualism caught English Catholics by surprise.  Theirs had long since been a discreet Catholicism—a Catholicism of the home and domestic piety.  Due to the anti-Catholic legislation of the Elizabethan and Stuart eras English Catholicism had morphed into a religion without a public face—no processions, no capes or funny hats with pompoms, no roadside shrines.  It was a Catholicism of Mass in small out of the way chapels or drawing rooms of private (wealthy) Catholic citizens.  It was a religion of quiet prayers and spiritual reading.  It had a depth to it, but lacked the colour of Continental Catholicism and now was being outshown by its old and once-so-Calvinistic foe, the Church of England. 

This Catholic revival was very much influenced by the whole Romantic era and its rejection of the Enlightenment rationalism of the previous era.  Suddenly “Gothic” was all the rage and Pugin was building churches faster than bishops—Catholic and Anglican—could consecrate them.  Moreover, this Gothic revival spread from England to its very Protestant step-child, the United States and to the Episcopal Church where, especially in the North East, faux medieval and Catholic-wanna-be were all the rage.

As Anglicanism became more Catholic in its style, some Catholics thought that in order to distinguish themselves from the Anglican copycats, they should become more “Roman.”  Converts such as Henry Manning, the dour former archdeacon of Chichester, were determined to abandon the Gothic of Anglican Revival for the baroque Catholicism of Rome.  One simply could not be Roman enough.  This movement was called Ultramontanism, from the Latin for “beyond the mountains.”  It referred to those Catholics beyond the Alps who were more Roman than the Romans themselves. 

In the United States, many American Catholic clergy who rejected the Americanism of Gibbons and Ireland, began to embrace the Roman fashions.  American bishops began appearing more often in the elaborate court-dress of the papal household.   Papal honours were sought for clergy (monsignorates) and prominent laity (papal knighthoods).    Bishops applied to have certain churches designated as “basilicas.”  Prelates began to live like princes and lords of the Church, bishops having elegant mansions, monsignors having well staffed-and elegantly appointed rectories.  Some prelatial residences even featured throne rooms as did the palaces of Rome’s Black (papal) nobility with the throne turned to the wall until the day the Popes were returned to their rightful sovereignty as Kings of Rome.  This was not the Church of the democratic Maryland Gentleman, Archbishop John Carroll of Baltimore or the on-horseback circuit-riding bishop Edward Fenwick of Vincennes.   It is somewhat ludicrous to think of these sons of carpenters and brewers dressing in silk robes and wearing jewelled rings over begloved fingers as they paraded through the streets of a Midwest farm town or an east coast slum to confirm children whose parents’ pennies had built their cathedrals and bought their fur capes and silk trains.  At the time though it made sense.  It was a huge spit into the face of bland, Protestant, and supposedly egalitarian America as we proclaimed we are Catholic and we, despite our poverty and being outsiders, have something that you sons of the Puritans have not. 

The image today is Henry Cardinal Manning, convert from Anglicanism, Archbishop of Westminster, and leader of the English Ultramontanes. 

The Origins of Radical Catholicism IV-- The McGlynn Story part 4

Well McGlynn was absolved and Corrigan was beside himself with Fury.  What was even more aggravating to him was that Satolli brushed off  his protests saying that he (Corrigan) had never initiated a formal ecclesiastical trial of McGlynn and had abdicated the case to the Holy See, and he (Satolli) was authorized by the Holy See to handle the case so Corrigan had no right to be grieved that his, (Corrigan’s) prerogatives had been brushed aside.  Corrigan’s foes in the hierarchy—Gibbons, Ireland, Moore, and—in Rome—Dennis O’Connell who was Rector of the North American College were elbowing each other in glee at having pulled over this fast one on him, especially as it signified the power of their liberal (American) party over Corrigan’s Europeanist party. 

This might be time for a brief explanatory aside.  I have just said “Europeanist” faction.  A more precise word would be Ultramontane.  The Ultramontane faction was (and I think still is) a faction within the Church that rejects local custom and tradition in favor of the Roman—or what they perceive to be the Roman—custom.  “Perceive to be” is the crucial phrase.  Having lived in Rome a fair chunk of my life and being somewhat fluent in Italian, I have long noticed that sometimes the religious tourists—and in particular the Americans—are often more “Italian” than the Italians.  I always pointed out to my guests that when you see a priest in Rome wearing the soutane in the street nine times out of ten he will be an American; nine times out of the next ten, he is an American visitning
Rome (as opposed to living there).  When you see one wearing the saturno—the low-crowned round clerical hat—you can bet your rent that he is an American tourist (unless, of course, he is the famous “Father Z” who is neither fish nor fowl in terms of being a tourist or a Vatican pezzo grosso .  I do understand that he is fun to be with, however, and a charming dinner guest but we didn’t travel in the same circles during my time in Rome.  But I have strayed.  The Ultramontanes of the 19^th century were almost invariably Oxford Movement Anglicans who had swum the Tiber and were self-conscious of their English (heretical) roots.  Manning was one.  Newman was not.  But more on all that some other time.

Speaking of swimming the Tiber, McGlynn didn’t have to swim it exactly but he did need to cross back onto its sunnier bank.  The excommunication lifted he ultimately had to show up in Rome to be interviewed by the proper authorities to make sure his radical ideas about property had been duly adjusted to be in line with Church Teaching.   (The papal encyclical Rerum Novarum had shifted the ground somewhat in his favor.) He also had to make his personal submission to Pope Leo XIII who, making him out to be something akin to a dancing bear or some such curiosity was most anxious to see him.  McGlynn’s reluctance may have had something to do with unproved allegations of sexual misconduct—perhaps even an illegitimate child.  Historians quibble whether there was a basis for these charges or if it was the Corrigan party trying to discredit McGlynn, but the Roman authorities insisted they weren’t concerned about the allegations one way or the other.  In fact, Corrigan was nervous about how McGlynn’s time in Rome would go; it seems McGlynn had information about the New York Archdiocese that Corrigan was anxious not to have the tables turned on him.  The Archbishop sent his Italian secretary, Father Gherardo Ferrante over for damage control.  But in the event there was no great drama.   Like so many conflicts it ended not with a bang but a whimper.  For his audience with the Pope, McGlynn needed to borrow a cassock.  Father Frederick Rooker, vice-Rector of the North American College loaned him one.  (The Rector, Dennis O’Connell who from the shadows had played some significant role in McGlynn’s vindication and Corrigan’s defeat had fled Rome when McGlynn actually showed up and was visiting Protestant Norway.)  To judge just how petty some people are, Corrigan’s suffragen, Bishop McDonnell of Brooklyn, withdrew his students from the North American in protest over the loaning of a cassock to that rebellious McGlynn.   Well, that ends the saga of the Reverend Doctor Edward McGlynn; but Corrigan, Gibbons, Leo and others hall have further roles to play in the radicalization of the American Church.  But I think we will take a break for a few days and perhaps return to one of our unfinished strains.
The image today is Leo XIII