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 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.