American Catholic Religious Thought: The Shaping Of A Theological & Social Tradition (Marquette Studies in Theology)

American Catholic Religious Thought The Shaping of a Theological & Social Tradition

American Catholic Religious Thought The Shaping of a Theological & Social Tradition Edited by

Patrick W. Carey

Marquette University Press 2004

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data American Catholic religious thought : the shaping of a theological and social tradition / edited by Patrick W. Carey.— 2nd ed. p. cm. — (Marquette studies in theology ; no. 44) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0-87462-696-X (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Catholic Church—United States—Doctrines. 2. Catholic Church—United States—Doctrines—History. 3. United States—Church history. I. Carey, Patrick W., 1940– II. Marquette studies in theology ; #44. BX1751.3.A48 2004 230’.273—dc22 2004015759 Permission is gratefully acknowledged to print “Civil Unity and Religious Integrity,” pages 45-78 from We Hold These Truths by John Courtney Murray (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1960). Sheed & Ward is an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Cover: Front and back cover artwork is from the Ade Bethune Collection, College of St. Catherine Library, St. Paul, MN 55105. Marquette University Press gratefully acknowledges permission from the College of St. Catherine Library to publish these two art works by Ade Bethune from The Ade Bethune Collection of her work housed there. The words “Christ the Workman,” which appear above the image in the original art, have been omitted from the image on the front cover in order to avoid their being taken as the title or subtitle of the book.

Contents Preface......................................................................................................9 Introduction ...........................................................................................11 Enlightenment Catholicism, 1784-1842 .............................................14 Romantic Catholicism, 1830-1888 .....................................................27 Vatican I and Papal Authority, 1869-1870 ..........................................40 Americanism, 1880-1900 ...................................................................48 Modernism and Progressivism, 1900-1920 .........................................55 Social Justice, 1840-1940....................................................................71 Neo-Thomism and Catholic Culture, 1920-1960 ...............................80 Part I: The Enlightenment, 1784-1842 Chapter One: John England Editorial Introduction.......................................................................103 Text ..................................................................................................105 Selected Bibliography ......................................................................142 Part II: Romantic Catholicism, 1830-1888 Chapter Two: Orestes A. Brownson Editorial Introduction.......................................................................147 Text ..................................................................................................149 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................176 Chapter Three: Isaac Thomas Hecker Editorial Introduction.......................................................................179 Text ..................................................................................................181 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................204 Part III: Vatican I and Papal Authority, 1869-1870 Chapter Four: Martin John Spalding Editorial Introduction.......................................................................209 Text ..................................................................................................210 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................235

6

American Catholic Religious Thought

Part IV. Americanism, 1880-1900 Chapter Five: John Ireland Editorial Introduction.......................................................................239 Text ..................................................................................................240 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................258 Part V. Modernism and Progressivism, 1900-1920 Chapter Six: John Montgomery Cooper Editorial Introduction.......................................................................261 Text ..................................................................................................262 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................270 Part VI. Social Justice, 1840-1940 Chapter Seven: John Hughes Editorial Introduction.......................................................................275 Text ..................................................................................................277 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................300 Chapter Eight: Catholicism and Slavery Editorial Introduction.......................................................................303 Texts .................................................................................................304 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................324 Chapter Nine: Edward McGlynn Editorial Introduction.......................................................................327 Text ..................................................................................................328 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................350 Chapter Ten: John Augustine Ryan Editorial Introduction.......................................................................353 Text ..................................................................................................355 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................370 Part VII: Neo-Thomism and Catholic Culture, 1920-1960 Chapter Eleven: John Stanislaus Zybura Editorial Introduction.......................................................................375

Contents

7

Text ..................................................................................................376 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................397 Chapter Twelve: Dorothy Day Editorial Introduction.......................................................................399 Texts .................................................................................................400 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................420 Chapter Thirteen: Dom Virgil Michel Editorial Introduction.......................................................................423 Text . ................................................................................................424 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................433 Chapter Fourteen: John Courtney Murray Editorial Introduction.......................................................................435 Text ..................................................................................................436 Selected Bibliography .......................................................................456 Index of Biblical References ..................................................................459 Index of Names and Subjects................................................................461

Preface American Catholic Religious Thought, originally published in 1987, has been revised and enlarged. I have selected new texts for John England and John Ryan, added two texts on American Catholic views of slavery, one from John Montgomery Cooper (on American Catholic progressivism), and one from John Stanislaus Zybura (on neo-scholasticism). I originally developed this anthology as a resource for a course I have been teaching on American Catholic life and thought. I prepared it to meet a need that no other book met. American Catholic life has been adequately presented in a number of histories of American Catholicism, but American Catholic religious thought has received very little attention. This text introduces students to the intellectual tradition that unfolded within American Catholic history. The book is divided into two major sections for easy use in a class. The first section contains a brief introduction that outlines the historical context for the selected documents that follow. The selected documents, representative of American Catholic thought at particular periods in its history, are preceded by a brief introduction to the author and text and are followed by a selected bibliography for further reading and research. For the most part I have preserved the texts as they were originally published, modernizing only the spellings and capitalizations. Scripture quotations remain as they were in the original texts, but I have cited biblical references according to contemporary abbreviations of the biblical books. I have also provided a few subdivision headings to make for easier reading. I have also put my own explanatory footnotes in brackets to distinguish my references from those of the various authors. I dedicate this text to the numerous graduate and undergraduate students who have taken my courses on the American Catholicism and who have contributed much to the creation of the work by their helpful evaluations and criticisms.

Introduction The charge has been made repeatedly that American Catholics, with a few rare exceptions, have failed to produce any creative and systematic theological response to their American environment.1 This generally accepted accusation no doubt has a good deal of truth. Such indictments, however, tend to overlook those few American Catholics who in fact responded to the wider currents of American thought, understood and explained their religious experiences in ways that reflected the general intellectual movements of their times, and creatively helped American Catholics identify themselves religiously in the world of American culture. One looks in vain in the major histories of American Catholicism, however, to discover what thought American Catholics did develop—whether creative or not. What is currently needed, therefore, is a study of the kind of religious thought that did evolve. Drawing attention to these patterns of thought will encourage, I hope, more analysis of this development. This introduction outlines developments in American Catholic thought from John Carroll’s (1735-1815) 1784 apologetical work, the first major American Catholic writing in defense of Catholicism, to the publication of John Courtney Murray’s We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (1960), the last major American Catholic apologetic prior to the Second Vatican Council. This text does not examine the American Catholic experiences at the 1

Thomas T. McAvoy, A History of the Catholic Church in the United States (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 75, 131; Idem “The Formation of the American Catholic Minority, 1820-1860,” The Review of Politics 10 (January, 1948): 13-34; Jay R Dolan, The Immigrant Church: New York’s Irish and German Catholics, 1815-1865 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), 88; Carl R. Fish, Rise of the Common Man (New York, 1927), 195; Walter Ong, Frontiers of American Catholicism (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 44; Thomas. F. O’Dea, American Catholic Dilemma (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1958), 83-84; John T Ellis, “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life,” Thought 30 (Autumn, 1955): 351-88.

12

American Catholic Religious Thought

Second Vatican Council (1962-65) nor the post-conciliar developments in religious thought within American Catholicism because an examination of them demands another volume. American Catholic thought, like other Christian thought in this country, has its deepest roots in the Christian experience of the Incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For almost twenty centuries, Christians have reflected upon the meaning of that experience and have tried to relate it to their lives in the worlds in which they lived. American Catholics from the eighteenth to the middle of the twentieth century have lived in both the world of post-Tridentine European Catholicism and in the world of American culture. American Catholic thought, therefore, has generally been a reflection upon the meaning of the Christ event within the context of European and American cultural and intellectual settings. Much American Catholic thought, it is true, was in continuity with European Catholic thought, but it was not a simple repetition of that thought. The American environment had its effect. In 1855, a German priest in Wisconsin noted: “All the resolutions made in Europe dissolve as soon as one feels the breezes of the American coastline; every tie, including the one with God, must be retied here and must undergo the American ‘probatum est’ [i.e., testing] before it can be said that it is secure.”2 American Puritanism and republicanism created an environment for Catholics that demanded, in terms of style and content, a religious response that had no effective European model. American Catholic problems were indeed different from those of European Catholicism, and American responses to those problems were not simply borrowed from European Catholicism. American Catholics were most certainly involved in the Protestant-Catholic polemics of the period after the Council of Trent (1545-63), but even in these controversies the situation in the United States made the rational defense of Catholicism specifically American. Their theological concerns, moreover, were not limited exclusively to internal Christian debates, but extended to the theological significance of peculiarly American issues: the compatibility of republicanism and Catholicism, religious 2

Quoted in Philip Gleason, The Conservative Reformers: German-American Catholics and the Social Order (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 21.

Introduction

13

liberty, separation of church and state, the nature of Christianity and the church in a pluralistic society, and the public responsibility of the church for issues of peace and justice in a capitalistic society. The Catholic experience of Christianity and the American experience mutually conditioned theological reflection upon these and related issues. The Catholic responses to these questions were to some extent attempts both to understand the ultimate significance of the American experience from the Catholic perspective and to interpret the meaning of Catholicism from the American perspective. As members of a minority religion, American Catholics were forced to reinterpret their understanding of Catholicism to meet the inherent challenges of a republican mentality and the overt charges of Nativist and Protestant polemics. As a result of this situation, American Catholic religious thought became primarily pastoral and apologetic (sometimes irenic and sometimes polemical). It was pastoral in the sense that it was chiefly concerned with identifying, defining and preserving for Catholics their religious identity in the midst of a voluntary and pluralistic religious country. It was apologetic in the sense that it tried to vindicate Catholicism in relation to the republican and Protestant tradition. This introduction argues that an American Catholic intellectual tradition did exist and that it was related to the intellectual currents of this country and to the larger historical tradition of Christianity. The purpose of this text, therefore, is to locate significant Catholic responses to American problems and to examine the American Catholic theological tradition in its historical setting. This text shows how Catholic writers have used the dominant climate of thought in the United States to further their own apologetical cause and to give Catholics a sense of their American as well as their Catholic identity. From 1784 until the Second Vatican Council Catholics have in turns appropriated elements of the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Liberalism, Social Christianity, Neo-Thomism and other currents in American and European thought in their attempts to relate their understanding of Christianity to the society in which they lived. The persons whose writings were selected for this anthology do not exactly reflect the dominant religious thought in the Catholic

14

American Catholic Religious Thought

community (theologians and opinion makers rarely do), but they do mirror some of the key religious, intellectual and social concerns of their age, and they do give a Catholic response to those concerns. I have chosen fourteen American Catholic writings on the grounds of the above criteria, but I am well aware that a number of others could have been selected as well.3 The principle of selection here is admittedly broad, but it is applied to single out some of the acknowledged leaders of American Catholic thought. Such a text could not have excluded, I believe, writings from John England, Orestes Brownson, Isaac Hecker, Martin John Spalding, John Ireland, John Hughes, Edward McGlynn, John Ryan, Dorothy Day, Virgil Michel and John Courtney Murray—i.e., the major articulators of Catholic concerns in the United States.

ENLIGHTENMENT CATHOLICISM, 1784-1842 It is a truism to say, as Walter Ong has noted, that “the United States was conceived and cradled in the age of Reason as no European country had ever been.”4 American Catholicism, one might with equal truth claim, was formed and developed within this same context. Although Catholics had a long history in America before the ratification of the United States Constitution, still they were not formed into an episcopally-organized church until 1789. During the pre-Civil War period, Catholics were a tiny minority of the population. Embattled from within over ethnic and ideological issues and attacked from without by the “Protestant Crusade,” they struggled to develop a form of Catholicism that would preserve ties with the European Catholic tradition and at the same time adapt Catholicism to American ways and patterns of thought that were significantly influenced by the Enlightenment. Thus, the initial formation of American Catholicism took place within the environment of the Enlightenment. Catholic relations to this American mentality were firmly rooted and developed from the 3

4

Some important shapers of Catholic opinion not included in the anthology are: John Carroll, Francis P. Kenrick, Peter R. Kenrick, John L. Spalding, James Cardinal Gibbons, Thomas Merton, Fulton J. Sheen, John LaFarge, Gustave Weigel. Ong, Frontiers, 116.

Introduction

15

time of John Carroll’s first major apologetical writing in 1784 until the death of John England (1842), the Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina (1820-42) and the last great American Catholic representative of the Enlightenment mentality. Although American Catholic apologists, like many of their American Protestant neighbors, were not totally identified with the Enlightenment mentality, they did appropriate Enlightenment values to present their understanding of the Christian tradition to the American people. In other words, I am arguing here that there was an American Catholic way of appropriating the Enlightenment. “The Enlightenment,” of course, is not easily defined and indeed had a variety of very different forms in Europe and in the United States. For purposes of this brief introduction, however, I am using the term Enlightenment and Enlightenment mentality to refer to that sweeping movement in European and American thought, particularly during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, that emphasized the following: the autonomy or semi-autonomy of the individual; a Newtonian conception of a harmonious, law-governed universe; the use of the empirical, experimental and inductive reason of Francis Bacon and John Locke in understanding that universe; the idea of historical progress; and the perfectibility of human persons. The American values of republicanism, religious liberty, separation of church and state, voluntaryism and denominationalism were products of this mentality. During the antebellum years, a number of American Protestants and Nativists charged that Catholicism was irreconcilable in practice and principle with these enlightened values of the day. Among other things, they maintained that Catholicism and American republicanism were historically, practically and theoretically incompatible. Catholics, they complained, were basically monarchists in their political theory as well as in their ecclesiology, opposed to religious liberty and separation of church and state. These opponents also asserted that Catholicism had no place for the individual, being an irrational religion based upon blind submission to an arbitrary teaching authority. American Catholics responded to these indictments by demonstrating through their apologetical writings and through the creation of some republicanlike ecclesiastical institutions that Catholicism was indeed compatible with Enlightenment values.

16

American Catholic Religious Thought

Like their European co-religionists who were educated in postTridentine scholasticism, like their American neighbors who had institutionalized the age of reason in their political constitutions, and like their American Protestant adversaries who were nurtured in Scottish Common Sense Philosophy,5 Carroll and England, the chief American Catholic apologists during the early national period, fit into the broad spectrum of the Enlightenment. They not only accepted much of the Enlightenment’s anthropology and political philosophy but also appealed to empirical reason and employed the inductive method to defend Catholic claims. They revealed their Enlightenment perspectives most clearly in their responses to Nativist and Protestant charges against the Catholic understanding of: (1) the state and society, (2) ecclesiastical government, and (3) the individual’s role within Catholicism. The Enlightenment understanding of the autonomous individual as one who possesses natural rights and a free conscience provided a foundation for an American Catholic understanding of the state and society. On the basis of this Enlightenment anthropology, Catholic apologists accepted a contractual or compact view of the state, and by articulating this perspective in their writings, they hoped to convince their opponents of their political republicanism and Americanism. Throughout the nineteenth century Catholics maintained that Catholicism and republicanism were compatible both in theory and in practice. Catholics were not, for example, theoretically opposed to a republican theory of the state, as some of their opponents maintained. According to Bishop England, one’s political theory was not a matter of revelation; Catholics, like other Christians, therefore, were free to accept any idea of government which the autonomous mind could devise. The Catholic Church itself had no teaching on the true nature of political government. Catholics, and Catholic theologians in particular, however, had constructed a variety of theories of the state—but they did so on the basis of natural reason, not on the basis of faith. Not only were Catholics free to develop political theory in 5

On this, see Sydney Ahlstrom, “The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology,” Church History 2 (September 1955), 257-72; E. Brooks Holifield, The Gentlemen Theologians: American Theology in Southern Culture 1795-1860 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1978), 110-55.

Introduction

17

accordance with perceived truth, but historically and practically they were at liberty to live in a variety of forms of government. In fact, the historian could easily discover that Catholics had initiated, lived under and supported numerous forms of government, among which were republican states. Although apologists made it clear that Catholics were free to accept any theory of government they found most reasonable, they were also careful to indicate that the theory American Catholics preferred was republican. John England, for example, tried to show that Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621), and Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) believed in some type of republican theory of government. At least, they all held that the people were the only legitimate source of all civil authority and government. England himself, like John Carroll before him, maintained a “social compact” theory of government.6 Popular sovereignty was the basis of England’s understanding of republicanism and he asserted that “no doctrine of CATHOLICISM” was opposed to this.7 Carroll’s and England’s understanding of popular sovereignty and their consciousness of the individual’s rights and freedom within society produced a constitutional view of the state. For them the powers of government were limited. The state had powers only to regulate public policy; it had no power, for example, to interfere in a person’s religious relations. The powers of the state, therefore, were not coterminous with the powers of society. Religious liberty was, thus, an individual’s and a community’s right, granted by nature, and not merely a governmental concession or grant. Since religious liberty was based on nature, it was universal in application.8

6

7

8

John Carroll’s acceptance of the civil contract theory is evident in his praise of Joseph Berington’s The State and Behavior of English Catholics and his approval of Arthur O’Leary’s works on toleration. On this, see Thomas O’Brien Hanley, ed., The John Carroll Papers, 3 vols. (Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), 1:148, 224-26. Hereafter JCP. United States Catholic Miscellany, January 28, 1824, and Ignatius A. Reynolds, ed., The Works of the Right Reverend John England, 5 vols. (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1849), 4:208. Carroll to Charles Plowden, February 24, 1790, JCP, 1:432.

18

American Catholic Religious Thought

Such a theory also implied an acceptance of the fact of religious pluralism in America. All individuals and all religions had the right to their own religious opinions, beliefs, communal structures and forms of worship. Such a state of religious pluralism could be recognized without destroying the social fabric and without admitting that all religions are theologically equal (i.e., religious indifferentism). Social or political unity did not depend, as some European Catholics believed, upon the acceptance of one religion in the state. Social and political unity depended rather upon the republican virtue of the people, i.e., according to John England, upon the people’s zeal for the common good.9 Religion, of course, was an essential component of society, in that it was one of the primary teachers and advocates of republican virtue. This did not imply, however, that all religions were theologically equal. John Carroll made a distinction between what he called “theological or religious intolerance, which is essential to true religion, and civil intolerance.”10 Civil intolerance, i.e., civil legislation against certain peoples because of their religious beliefs, was illegitimate because the state was incompetent in religious matters and could not impose any civil disabilities because of a person’s religious convictions. Theological intolerance was another matter. It did not affect one’s ability to live in political and civil harmony. To be theologically intolerant simply meant that every person had a perfect right to accept only those religious beliefs and institutions one considered most in conformity with the truth. Theological intolerance meant, for example, that Catholics could legitimately assert and believe that the Catholic Church was the only true church without ever imposing this belief upon others through political or civil measures. Theological intolerance also meant that one did not have to accept one’s neighbor’s religious truth claims and beliefs; one could, in fact, deny the grounds of those convictions without violating a neighbor’s political or civil rights to hold them. For Carroll and England, universal tolerance was the only effective way of achieving Christian unity. In fact, John Carroll argued that if universal tolerance could be preserved “America may come to exhibit a proof to the world, that general and equal toleration, by giving a 9 10

England, Works, 4:228. Carroll to John Troy, July 12, 1794, JCP, 2:121.

Introduction

19

free circulation to fair argument, is the most effectual method to bring all denominations of Christians to a unity of faith.”11 Religious beliefs, too, since they were voluntary, could be propagated solely by rational inquiry, free discussion, and religious persuasion. Religious beliefs could not be justly forced upon anyone. Here again, confidence in rational persuasion and voluntaryism reflected the faith of the Enlightenment. Religious liberty did not necessarily imply separation of church and state. Separation, however, was a cherished idea among a number of American Catholics. For Irish-American and Anglo-American Catholics who had, as John Carroll indicated, “smarted heretofore under the lash of an established church,” separation was the only just way to preserve religious liberties; Catholics, Carroll told one correspondent, should be “on our guard against every approach towards establishment [of religion in the United States].”12 Separation implied not only that the state had limited powers, but also that the church was limited in the political arena. The church’s powers were purely spiritual. John England, the primary Catholic apologist for separation in the early nineteenth century, wrote: “It is heresy in religion; it is an absurdity in politics to assert, that because a man possesses political power, therefore he possesses ecclesiastical jurisdiction: or that because he has spiritual power, he therefore has magisterial rights in the state. The doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church and the principles of the American Constitution are in unison upon this subject.”13 In another place England asserted that he was “convinced that a total separation from the temporal government is the most natural and safest state for the church in any place where it is not, as in the papal territory, a complete government of churchmen.”14 In the “papal territory” popular sovereignty had accepted the rule of churchmen and therefore that exception to the principle of separation was itself based upon a republican notion of government. 11 12

13 14

JCP, 1, 140. Carroll to Charles Plowden, February 27, 1785, JCP, 1:168; cf also Carroll to Andrew Nugent, July 18, 1786, JCP, 1:215. England, Works, 2:249. England, Works, 3:511.

20

American Catholic Religious Thought

The contractual view of a limited civil government had implications for an understanding of ecclesiastical polity. Ecclesiastical as well as civil government was limited and, in the view of some American Catholic apologists, ecclesiastical government should reflect the broadest possible participation of church members in areas that concerned them most directly. Throughout much of the nineteenth century some apologists attempted to show their Protestant and Nativist neighbors not only that American political republicanism and Catholicism were compatible, but also that Catholic ecclesiology possessed republican elements. This apologetic was carried out in two ways: first, by apologetical writings; second, by the organization of some republican-like ecclesiastical structures. Apologetical literature throughout the nineteenth century reveals a preoccupation with republicanism as a theological problem. Even within a defensive posture American Catholic apologists were acknowledging that the new historical and democratic consciousness of American culture presented a valid problem to Catholics. Catholics, they were implicitly acknowledging in their defenses, must come to theological terms with the experience of republicanism within the church. The Enlightenment anthropology and the social contract view of the state held by Catholic spokesmen like John Carroll and John England, when filtered through a Gallican ecclesiology and the Anglo-American constitutional experience of government, created a specifically American approach to ecclesiology. Within this political, philosophical, and theological framework these Catholics tried to create a new understanding of the individual’s relationship to the church (especially making more room for participation in the church’s life), to reconcile in a new way the local to the universal church, and to provide an apologetic that emphasized the republican aspects of the church’s history and structures. John Carroll, like John England after him, believed that in the United States the church should function in a way that was suitable to republican forms of government. On the local parish level this meant that members of a congregation had certain rights to control and manage ecclesiastical temporalities. In fact, when Carroll was superior of the American missions he told the lay trustees of St. Peter’s congregation in New York City that “Whenever [canonical] parishes

Introduction

21

are established no doubt, a proper regard, and such as is suitable to our government, will be had to the rights of the congregation in the mode of election and presentation of pastors: and even now I shall ever pay to their wishes every deference consistent with the general welfare of Religion.”15 Although Carroll acknowledged the right of the congregation to nominate a pastor, he became skeptical about the practical possibility of such a practice in the United States after he experienced a number of hostilities in parishes that demanded the right. Later in his career, he opposed a type of lay participation which he called “ecclesiastical democracy,” i.e., “an overbearing interference of the people, in the appointment of pastors.”16 Such a practice he repeatedly identified with “Presbyterianism,” or “Congregational Presbyterianism.” He did, however, accept lay participation in the local congregations as long as the involvement did not make the pastor a “victim of the most capricious despotism.”17 Thus, allowing lay participation, he also tried to protect the rights and freedoms of the clergy, as well as the prerogatives of the episcopacy in the exercise of ecclesiastical government. His attempts to balance the rights and duties of all members in the administration of the Catholic Church in the United States reflected, of course, the influence of republicanism upon his ecclesiology. John England made similar, but more explicit, attempts by establishing a constitutional form of ecclesiastical government for his diocese.18 Carroll perceived that republican government in the United States would have “necessary effects”19 upon ecclesiastical structures and therefore sought the appointment of a bishop to restrain the inevitable desires for lay and clerical independence and participation in 15

16

17 18

19

January 24, 1786, JCP, 1:204; cf. also Peter K. Guilday, The Life and Times of John Carroll, Archbishop of Baltimore, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Newman, 1922), 1:265, where Guilday has “representation” for “presentation.” Carroll to Trustees of St. Mary’s, Philadelphia, August 16, 1814, JCP, 3:290; cf. also Carroll to Troy, July 12, 1794, JCP, 2:120-21. Carroll to Andrew Nugent, January 17, 1786, JCP, 1:201. England, Works, 5:91-105; cf. also Patrick Carey, An Immigrant Bishop: John England’s Adaptation of Irish Catholicism to American Republicanism (Yonkers, New York: U.S. Catholic Historical Society, 1982), 111-28; 149-60. Carroll to Don Diego de Gardoqui, April 19, 1788, JCP, 1:297.

22

American Catholic Religious Thought

the church. But, because of the republican atmosphere and the fear of foreign intervention in American affairs, he and other clerics wanted the bishop to be elected by the members of the American clergy. After Rome approved his election to the episcopacy he tried to keep from the public the fact that the Bull erecting Baltimore as a diocese stipulated that the clerical right to elect an American bishop was restricted to the first election; other bishops were not to be elected by the American clergy.20 Thereafter, Carroll protested against the restriction to his friends and asserted that even though he opposed Ecclesiastical democracy (of the kind condemned by John Milner21), “yet I wish sincerely, that Bishops may be elected, at this distance from Rome, by a select body of clergy, constituting, as it were, a Cathedral chapter. Otherwise, we never shall be viewed kindly by our government here, and discontents, even amongst our own clergy, will break out.”22 In 1783, even before Carroll had become superior of the American missions, he created a “Constitution of the Clergy” for the explicit purpose of protecting ex-Jesuits’ property rights, i.e., to protect their lands from being expropriated by the government or confiscated by the Roman Congregation Propaganda Fide. The proposal for the corporation23 reveals a number of American republican preoccupations: it provides for structure and accountability regarding property rights; it authorizes a system of checks and balances of powers among the clergy over use of property; it makes a clear distinction between the temporal and spiritual powers within the clerical community, explicitly denying that a bishop or pope have a just claim to the exJesuits’ “temporal possessions”; nor did they have any powers to “invest any persons with the administration of them”; it stipulated that the temporal administration of ex-Jesuit properties was to be conducted by the common consent of the clergy; it explicitly acknowledged 20 21

22

Carroll to Charles Plowden, September 2, 1790, JCP, 1:454. John Milner (1752-1826) was Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District (1803-26) who opposed an elective episcopate advocated by some English Catholics. Between 1787 and 1793 he became the foremost English Catholic spokesman for a non-elective ecclesiastical hierarchy as his two books during the period indicate: The Divine Right of Episcopacy (London: J. R Coghlan, 1791) and Ecclesiastical Democracy Detected (London, 1792). Carroll to Charles Plowden, December 22, 1791-91, JCP, 1:548; cf. also Carroll to Leonardo Antonelli, April 23, 1792, JCP, 2:32.

Introduction

23

that the body of clergy was to be governed by the rule of law and not by individual whim. Even in the area of ecclesiastical, as opposed to purely temporal, administration, Carroll believed that the ex-Jesuits needed a new form of government that would restrain the powers of the religious superior, as the former Jesuit Constitutions had done.24 The “Constitution of the Clergy,” formed between June 27, 1783 and October 11, 1784, reflected many of these republican ideals for the administration of the church.25 The concern for a constitutional balance of powers within the church and for wider participation in the actual government of ecclesiastical temporalities was manifested in a variety of other ways during the national period. Lay and clerical trustees of various congregations articulated this republican mentality during the troubles of trusteeism (1785-1860).26 Although the lay trustees failed to create any permanent structures of lay and clerical participation in the American church, they did reflect the influence of the Enlightenment upon the American Catholic population. Not until after the Second Vatican Council (1965) would American Catholics again try to structure parishes and dioceses on a participatory basis. Another manifestation of the influence of the Enlightenment upon ecclesiology is evident in the conciliar form of government that was established in the United States as a direct response to the tensions of trusteeism, to the need for order and structure, and to the American political and ecclesiastical forms of government. Undoubtedly the use of episcopal councils to govern the church was an ancient Christian practice, but it can be and has been appropriated to affirm a variety of different approaches to the exercise of authority in the course of Christian history. It can be and has been used, for example, both to restrict and to reinforce or enlarge ecclesiastical authority. During the 23 24 25 26

JCP, 1:59-63. Carroll to Charles Plowden, February 20, 1782, JCP, 1:66. JCP, 1:71-76. Patrick Carey, “The Laity’s Understanding of the Trustee System, 17851855,” Catholic Historical Review 64 (July, 1978): 357-77; idem, “Republicanism Within American Catholicism, 1785-1860,” Journal of the Early Republic 3 (Winter, 1983): 413-38; idem, People, Priests and Prelates: Ecclesiastical Democracy and the Tensions of Trusteeism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1987).

24

American Catholic Religious Thought

period of the American Catholic Enlightenment, Carroll and England perceived the conciliar exercise of government, among other things, as an attempt to define and limit ecclesiastical authority. Although the episcopal conciliarism that did emerge after 1829 excluded the participation of the laity and the clergy in ecclesiastical decision making, it did reflect an accommodation to the American republican experience.27 During the nineteenth century, this conciliar form of government also tried to balance the roles of the episcopacy and the papacy in the church. It did not separate the roles as sharply as did Gallicanism (i.e., the movement in France that supported national ecclesiastical freedoms, emphasized episcopal rights, and maintained considerable independence from Roman and Papal legislation and jurisdiction), nor did it collapse the roles as did Ultramontanism (i.e., the European Catholic movement that stressed the rights and juridical powers of the pope over those of the local or national bishops). The constitutionalism that was part of the American way of life influenced the bishops in their attempts to preserve a sense of local identity and autonomy without denying or confusing the connection between local and universal jurisdiction in the church. The conciliar form of government revealed a conciliar theology of the church that was modified and conditioned by the experience of American republican values. In fact, in the early nineteenth century in particular, the conciliar understanding of the church, filtered through the British and American constitutional experience of government, gave many Catholic apologists a theological basis for their claims that republicanism and Catholicism were theoretically as well as practically compatible in the United States. Thus the American Catholic approach to ecclesiology in practice as well as in theory differed greatly from either the purely Gallican or Ultramontane practices in Europe. The constitutionalism inherent in conciliar understandings of the church and the American theory of government combined to create a particular American Catholic 27

Patrick Carey, An Immigrant Bishop, 141-48; James Hennesey, “Papacy and Episcopacy in 18th and 19th Century American Catholic Thought,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 77 (1966): 175-89; Gerald P. Fogarty, “Church Councils in the United States and American Legal Institutions,” Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum 4 (1972): 83-105.

Introduction

25

ecclesiology. The episcopal councils in the early nineteenth century, their successors in the three plenary Councils of Baltimore, the organization of the National Catholic Welfare Council (later referred to as “Conference”) during the First World War and its twentieth-century successors, are the more permanent manifestations of American Catholic ecclesiological structures that have accommodated themselves some what to American republican ideals of government. The Enlightenment anthropology that underlay Carroll’s and England’s understandings of the state and the church was also responsible for their respect for the individual’s conscience in matters of belief within Catholicism. A good Catholic was a reasonable Catholic and one who was Catholic by rational conviction, not merely cultural association. Such an emphasis upon the individual and reason also grounded their attempts to demonstrate the reasonableness of Catholicism and its claims to be the true Christian Church. Both apologists emphasized the role and capacity of the individual’s reason in religion as well as in politics. An individual was obliged through rational inquiry and critical examination, not merely through education, “to exert himself for the discovery of truth” and to submit only to truthful and reasonable authority. Even in the realm of revealed religion, reason was capable of uncovering the “fact” of supernatural revelation and the factual existence, structure and authority of the Catholic Church. By using the general laws of historical evidence (i.e., by examining the various witnesses, documents, monuments, artifacts, miracles and prophecies of history) reason could adequately demonstrate the fact of revelation and the Catholic Church’s authoritative magisterium. This theological or apologetical method, John England repeatedly said, was not metaphysical speculation; it was inductive, reasonable and scientific. Although revealed religion disclosed a knowledge of God that reason alone could not discern, nonetheless revelation itself was not contrary to reason. No one, therefore, was bound to accept revelation “without such evidence as will be sufficient to satisfy the mind.”28 Miracles and prophecies, in particular, were sufficient evidence that God had revealed himself, thus establishing the authenticity of the Scriptures and of Jesus’ mission to establish his church. Since rational investigation of the historical record demonstrated adequately that God 28

England, Works, 4:174, 175; cf also JCP, 1:83.

26

American Catholic Religious Thought

had established the Catholic Church as the authentic interpreter of his word, submission to Catholic teachings was not an irrational act. Thus, Catholicism could be considered a reasonable religion since it demanded reasons for the very acceptance of the possibility of belief and historical proofs for the authority of the Catholic Church. Although reason provided grounds for belief, it was not itself the basis of faith. According to John England, “Faith is, then, the belief upon the authority of God, of what reason cannot by its own force discover.” Reason, thus, was not superior to faith, nor was it the ultimate judge of what should be believed within Christianity. Once a person had discovered the Catholic Church as the only true infallible guide to revealed religion, reason ceased to be the primary agency of understanding. Faith, or belief upon the testimony of God, took over where reason left off. Reason could indeed establish grounds for credibility but it could not itself produce faith. Faith was still a gift of God; but it was not an abject slavery of the mind nor an irrational assent to unintelligible propositions; it was an acceptance of truths based upon God’s testimony which human reason could not itself discover. Reason and faith, therefore, were not two opposing avenues to truth. Upon “patient inquiry,” reason and faith “will always be found mutually to aid each other.”29 This rationalistic, individualistic, objective and extrinsic view of revelation as intellectual propositions led to an almost exclusive emphasis upon faith as an intellectual assent to the doctrinal propositions derived from revelation but defined and articulated by the ecclesiastical magisterium. This Catholic apologetical stress upon the question of the church (corresponding to the equally extrinsic and rationalistic Protestant emphasis upon the question of the Bible) as the infallible guide made Carroll’s and England’s apologetics what Orestes A. Brownson would call a “method of authority.”30 That is, apologetics became a means of ascertaining through the inductive method the facticity of God’s revelation and thereby the supernatural character of ecclesiastical authority. All other theological questions, therefore, depended upon the correct understanding of this “rule of faith.” This emphasis upon 29 30

England, Works, 1:17, 89; 4:176. Henry F. Brownson, ed., The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, 20 vols. (Detroit: T. Nourse, 1882-87), 12:466-67.

Introduction

27

the reasonableness of faith (which, in fact, many times made reason the bar for revelation) not only reflected a theological continuity with European Catholic responses to deism but also appealed to the basic Enlightenment values in American society and established a common ground of discussion with those Protestants who had taken up the Scottish Common Sense Philosophy. The entire purpose of this approach, of course, was to reveal Catholicism as the reasonable form of Christianity. Submission to the church’s teachings, therefore, was perceived as a rational and not a blind obedience.

ROMANTIC CATHOLICISM, 1830-1888 The early national period’s emphasis on reason endured throughout much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholicism. This fact alone led Walter Ong to note that “the American Catholic has been exceedingly slow to register the romantic emphasis. He has in many ways reacted more slowly than the European Catholic because of his American rationalism and more slowly than other Americans because of his Catholic rationalism.”31 This judgment needs to be modified by what I argue took place in American Catholicism in the middle of the nineteenth century, from the establishment of the Provincial Councils of Baltimore in 1829 to the death of Isaac Thomas Hecker in 1888. During this period, changes in institutional structures and shifts in patterns of thought occurred that reflected what could be called the romantic impulse. Romanticism is most certainly difficult to define with any precision because the movement poured itself into a variety of different political, intellectual and religious orientations, liberal as well as conservative, Protestant as well as Catholic, American as well as European. In fact, the argument over whether or not there is anything that can be designated romanticism and precisely what might constitute the romantic temperament has been going on for years. Nonetheless, like a number of historians, I find the term useful, even though not always very precise, for describing some of the shifts in consciousness that were taking place in American Catholic apologetics and theology 31

Ong, Frontiers, 117.

28

American Catholic Religious Thought

during the middle of the nineteenth century. I am using the term here to characterize that movement in thought and culture that viewed the universe as a comprehensive harmonious synthesis of the infinite and the finite. The divine is at the core of all reality and manifested itself in and through all created existences. For Catholic romantic theologians and apologists, this view of the universe revealed a more harmonious relationship between grace and nature than had been realized in the previous age’s excessively rationalistic separation of the two. The romantic theologians reemphasized the doctrine of the Incarnation and placed it at the center of their understanding of nature, history, the church and society. For the romantic, the infinite was present in every period of history as well as in nature. Thus, history was conceived in terms of its organic continuity and development. Every age had its own uniqueness, intrinsic significance, characteristic excellence, and its own contribution to make to the richness and progress of humanity. The infinite manifested itself in particular communities as well as in historical epochs. Such an emphasis gave rise to an appreciation of the spirit of different nationalities and to an organic view of the church. Within Catholicism this stress upon the organic unity of the church led to a reassertion of authoritative ecclesiastical structures as primary means and symbolic representations of that unity. The rise of neo-ultramontanism was a significant part of the romantic movement. Among other things, it was a reaction to Gallicanism, Josephism and other forms of ecclesiastical individualism and localism which had failed to preserve a sense of the church’s organic and universal unity. This organic totality of infinite life with which the romantics felt themselves to be one was apprehended, in this post-Kantian age, by intuition and feeling rather than analytic reason. Thus, romanticism, especially within European Catholicism, was a movement that emphasized the doctrine of the Incarnation, reasserted an organic understanding of nature, history, tradition and authority, restored intuition and feeling to theology and piety, and reacted to the excesses of the rationalism, moralism, individualism and ecclesiastical nationalism of the previous age.32 32

Descriptions of the elements of romanticism vary. I have taken some of the above characteristics of Catholic romanticism from Roger Aubert, “The

Introduction

29

What was happening in European Catholic romanticism was likewise occurring here and there in American Catholicism. For the most part, American Catholics did not develop any systematic romantic theology, but they did selectively appropriate some romantic impulses in three areas of ecclesiastical life during the middle of the nineteenth century: ecclesiastical polity, piety and apologetics. The gradual change from Enlightenment to romantic emphases is evident first of all in the changing practices and perceptions of ecclesiastical polity and in a new stress placed upon the papal role in the church. In the section on Vatican I, I discuss the American Catholic understandings of the role of the papacy in the church. Here I outline briefly the shifts in the understanding of ecclesiastical polity. Increasingly after the First Council of Baltimore in 1829, the American bishops effectively reasserted the episcopal structure of the American church at the national level in reaction to the congregationalism of trusteeism and in opposition to prior American Catholic apologetical attempts to explain Catholicism as a quasi-republican system of government. In fact, episcopal conciliarism represented in the United States what neo-ultramontanism represented in Europe—i.e., a centralization of authority in the church. In Europe, neo-ultramontanism was, among other things, a reaction to ecclesiastical nationalism and Catholic pluralism; in the United States, episcopal conciliarism was, among Complex Revival of Religious Studies,” The Church Between Revolution and Restoration, Vol. 7, History of the Church, ed. Hubert Jedin and John Dolan (New York: Crossroad, 1981), 240-57. For other descriptions of romanticism, see Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 583-632; Paul Tillich, Perspectives on 19th and 20th Century Protestant Theology (New York: Harper and Row, Publisher, 1967), 71-135; Jacques Barzun, Classic, Romantic and Modern (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975); Alexander Dru, The Contribution of German Catholicism (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1963), 27-92; James Hastings Nichols, Romanticism in American Theology: Nevin and Schaff at Mercersburg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); Harold P. Simonson, Radical Discontinuities: American Romanticism and Christian Consciousness (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1983); Robert Gleckner and Gerald Enscoe, eds., Romanticism: Points of View (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1962).

30

American Catholic Religious Thought

other things, a reaction to the congregationalism and divisiveness of trusteeism. Some American bishops also tried to strengthen the episcopal structure of the local diocesan church after the First Provincial Council of Baltimore. Bishop John Hughes (1797-1864), for example, represented a Catholic reaction to what he perceived to be excessive individualism within American Catholicism. When Hughes assumed the episcopal reigns of the Diocese of New York in 1840, he believed that the time had come for the American Catholic Church “to return to the ordinary and regular discipline of the Church.”33 For too long, he asserted, American Catholicism had appropriated elements of republicanism and individualism that were inconsistent with universal Catholic discipline and church order. The trustee form of local church government, in particular, was nothing but a capitulation to Protestant ideals. If the Catholic Church was to be in continuity with its true past, it had to reassert the episcopal monarchy of the Roman Church. In the realm of piety, the “Catholic Revival” of the middle of the nineteenth century also revealed the romantic impulse. That revival was an attempt to overthrow the cold rationalism of Enlightenment piety, or, as some would have it, to make American Catholics active participants in the total sacramental life of the church, i.e., a practice that many American Catholics prior to the 1830s had not experienced regularly. The renewal of what Jay P. Dolan has called “sacramental evangelicalism”34 was an attempt to balance or synthesize the personal and individualistic experience of conversion with the communal and sacramental identification, thereby strengthening the converts’ ties with the institutional church. Ann Taves, too, has argued that the popular devotional life of the American Catholic, as was revealed in the various prayer books published during the period, emphasized the miraculous and promoted an emotional awareness of the life of Christianity in its various forms. This revival of piety resurrected a variety of personal devotions, including those to the Eucharist, Mary and the saints. Eventually Rome standardized these religious devo33

34

John Hughes, Pastoral Letter of the Right Rev. Dr. Hughes to the Clergy and Laity of the Diocese of New York (New York: George Mitchel, 1842), 5. Jay P. Dolan, Catholic Revivalism: The American Experience 1830-1900 (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), xvii.

Introduction

31

tions, thereby enhancing uniformity of those religious practices which emphasized what was uniquely Catholic and reinforced ties to the church.35 The romantic emphases, evident in American Catholic polity and piety, are most clearly reflected in the area of apologetics. Although American Catholic apologists throughout the nineteenth century continued to use the historical and rationalistic apologetics of the Enlightenment era, they also increasingly appropriated elements of romantic thought in their attempts to vindicate Catholicism in American culture. Orestes A. Brownson, Isaac Hecker and a few others in a variety of ways and with different degrees of sophistication represented the romantic strain in Catholic apologetics and helped to transform American Catholic consciousness. They read Vicomte Francois René Chateaubriand (1768-1848), Joseph-Marie Comte de Maistre (17531821), Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829), Johann Adam Möhler (1796-1838) and other European Catholic romantics as well as the American Transcendentalists. Such reading and the American experience combined to produce new ways of perceiving and defending Catholicism within American culture. With the exception of Brownson, Catholic apologists in the United States reflected neither the learning nor the depth of the Europeans or the American Transcendentalists, but their apologetics did reveal a shift from the rational, objective and individualistic concerns of the Enlightenment to the intuitive, subjective and organic concerns of romanticism. The romantic apologetic had two major emphases. First, the romantic rehabilitated the organic value of tradition and history, emphasizing the internal and corresponding external continuity of Catholicism. These apologists presented Catholicism, therefore, as the guarantor of high culture and the primary agent for the development of Western civilization. A theology of the Incarnation was at the heart of this apologetic. Second, some of the more philosophically oriented romantic apologists emphasized the fact of consciousness as the starting point for doing theology and apologetics. These tried to restore intuition and 35

Ann Taves, The Household of Faith: Roman Catholic Devotions in MidNineteenth-Century America (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986).

32

American Catholic Religious Thought

religious subjectivity to theology and apologetics while simultaneously preserving the objective grounds for the subjective religious experience. In other words, these romantics sought to synthesize, balance and correlate the subjective individual religious experiences and the objective communal religious experiences. Bishops John Hughes and Martin John Spalding, neither one of whom were romantics, represent transition figures in the American Catholic movement toward a new apologetic. Although these bishops, like other American Catholic apologists during the period, still tried to demonstrate the Catholic Church’s apostolicity by logic and objective historical sources, nevertheless they increasingly accentuated the historical and cultural effects of Catholicism upon the development of Western civilization. The American Catholic apologetical emphases upon the cultural effects of Catholicism was to a large extent a response to François Guizot’s Histoire générale de la civilization en Europe (1828) and Jaime Balmes’ critique of Guizot in Protestantism and Catholicity Compared in Their Effects on the Civilization of Europe (1840), a text that was translated from the Spanish and published numerous times in the United States during the nineteenth century.36 This shift from a static preoccupation with the church’s nature and structure to a dynamic concern with its mission in society reveals an affiliation with some romantic concerns of the ages. A number of John Hughes’ attempts to vindicate Catholicism reflected an interpretation of history that tended to idealize pre-Reformation Christendom.37 A doctrine of the Incarnation informs Hughes’ understanding of history. 36

37

For the new emphasis on the historically beneficial cultural effects of Catholicism, see David Schimpf, “Martin John Spalding’s ‘Apocalyptical Use of History in the Social Setting of the Mid-Nineteenth Century American Catholic Community,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 96 (March-December 1986): 19-34. See, e.g., the following lectures in Lawrence Kehoe, ed., Complete Works of the Most Reverend John Hughes, D.D., Archbishop of New York; Comprising His Sermons, Letters, Lectures, Speeches etc., 2 vols. (New York: Kehoe, 1865): “Influence of Christianity upon Civilization,” 1:351-70; “The Influence of Christianity on Social Servitude,” 1:371-85; “The Mixture of Civil and Ecclesiastical Power in the Middle Ages,” 1:417-36; “The Importance of a Christian Basis for the Science of Political Economy,” 1:513-34; “The

Introduction

33

And the great idea of the great lever which Christianity presented for the elevation of the human race, was the doctrine that the Divine Son became man, and in becoming man elevated human nature by its union with the divine nature in the same person! This is the origin; and if you start from the fountain and behold these waters of regeneration bursting forth from their primitive source, and watch them as they meandered and divided, now into one stream of benevolence, now into another, now into the improvement of legislation, now into the mitigation of the civil condition of the slave, and as they passed from nation to nation, and age to age, you will see in all their branches this power and efficacy, because God had ennobled humanity by the “Word” being “made Flesh and dwelling amongst men.”38

Through the Incarnation, a new force, impulse, or principle had been released in history and had in a variety of ways transformed human culture. The gradual development of Western civilization, of course, was an indirect and secondary, not a direct and primary result of the Incarnation. The regeneration of the human heart was primary. Through this renewal, however, “a principle was planted in the heart—it is a conviction—a religious conviction—it is a sentiment” that gradually leavened the whole mass. This would eventually create social regeneration. According to Hughes, all cultural and moral progress “is the result of some latent principle, deeply, though perhaps silently working in the mass of the people, which thus finds a vent and a medium of expression.” The improvement of industry, the amelioration of the social conditions of humankind, the evolution of human rights, the development of representative and deliberative political assemblies, the institution of the common law, and the elevation of women, for example, were all signs of the impact of the Christian spirit upon Western civilization.39 Martin Spalding was also interested in the historical influence of Catholicism upon the development of Western culture. Using the

38 39

Church and the World,” 2:69-86; “The Decline of Protestantism and Its Causes,” 2:87-102; “The Catholic Chapter in the History of the United States,” 2:102-21. Hughes, Works, 1:354. Ibid., 352-53., 430, 359, 362-63, 386; 11, 119.

34

American Catholic Religious Thought

philosophy of Friedrich von Schlegel, “that master spirit of the present age,” Spalding argued that Catholic Christianity, under Divine Providence, provided the regenerative impulse and ultimate meaning for the advancement of humanity in universal history. Divine Providence, made manifest in Catholicism, was continually directing the course of history to enable free men to realize most fully the aspiration of a human nature “stamped originally with the image of God.”40 The Catholic spirit brought art, literature, and education to Western civilization and, therefore, the Catholic Church was indeed the mother of true progress and liberty. For Hughes and Spalding, the gradual unfolding of Western culture took place through the offices of the pre-Reformation church which had gradually integrated the Christian spirit into all areas of life. Increasingly, Hughes and other mid-nineteenth-century Catholic apologists presented the medieval church, and the papacy in particular, as the friend of the poor and the oppressed, and the institutional barrier against political and economic tyranny. God had a predilection for the weak and the outcasts of society and the institutional church put that preference into practice. Such an idealized view of the pre-Reformation church provided Hughes with a model for criticizing the defects of the modern world and for blaming the evils of contemporary society upon the effects of the Protestant Reformation. The Protestant principle of justification by faith alone, in Hughes’ judgment, was responsible for divisiveness in Christianity and for selfish capitalistic theories and practices. When the unity of the medieval church was broken, these twin evils of the modern world were inevitable.41 Although Hughes’ use of the idealized past provided grounds for criticizing contemporary values, it offered no realistic solutions to contemporary religious and economic problems. But to criticize these romantics and their interpretations of history as idealized and unrealistic (which they were) would miss the point they were trying to make in their apologetics. Their semi-apocalyptic interpretation of history which made Protestantism ultimately responsible for the evils in society and church and Catholicism the ultimate and continuous 40

41

“The Dogma of an All-Ruling Providence Confirmed by History,” The Religious Cabinet 1 (May, 1842): 257-68. Hughes, Works,1:513-34.

Introduction

35

source of divine good held out hope to a poor, oppressed and persecuted people and gave them a sense of history that would ultimately work out in their favor. This romanticized and apocalyptic view of the past was really a hopeful view of the future for those who were suffering in the present. We do not understand the apologetic if we interpret it only as idealized and unrealistic, just as we might miss the point of St. John’s Apocalypse if we interpreted it without considering the persecuted community it was intended to encourage. Even though Hughes and Spalding had appropriated a romanticized and apocalyptic approach to history in their apologetics, neither was self-consciously romantic and neither had explicitly criticized the weaknesses of the older rationalistic apologetic. This was not the case with the converts Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker. They self-consciously dialogued with philosophical idealism and the romantic movement and tried to transform the older apologetical method. Brownson in particular integrated the impulses of romanticism into his theological thought patterns more systematically and more consistently than any other American Catholic thinker of the period. Throughout his Universalist-Unitarian period (1826-44) he was influenced at first by the rationalism of the Scottish Common Sense school of thought and then by the romanticism and transcendentalism of the French romantics and eclectics. During his Catholic period (1844-76), although he continued to accept the insights of romanticism, he tried to steer his theological train between the excesses of Romanticism and Enlightenment Scottish Realism. Like the romantics, he emphasized the unity but not identity of grace and nature, the organic nature of history and the church, and intuition in the human knowledge of God. Unlike some romantics, he rejected both the superficial attempts of some of his fellow Catholics to restore medieval Christendom and the “excessive” subjectivism of the Transcendentalists and their “pantheistic” synthesis of the finite and the infinite. Like the Scottish Realists, he upheld reason’s capacity to reach the truth and to discover an objective order. He criticized, however, their overly objective, external, historical and rationalistic apologetics. Throughout his Universalist-Unitarian period, Brownson had searched for a philosophical and theological concept that could resolve the intellectual problems he gradually uncovered in the thought of

36

American Catholic Religious Thought

some contemporary American and European philosophies and theologies. At one time, like some others, he had believed that every human person had an inherent religious sentiment and therefore religious experience was universally possible as long as individuals discovered within themselves the grounds of their religious experience. He very quickly began to question this position, however. He asked himself. Does what I experience really correspond to anything real outside of myself? The problem of reconciling the relationship between subjective experience and objective reality (on the levels of epistemology, ontology and theology), i.e., the problem of the post-Kantian world, would be a primary intellectual concern for him for much of his life. The problem, of course, appeared in a variety of forms. How does one preserve the distinction and simultaneously save the union that exist between apparent contradictions in human life: i.e., between the infinite and the finite, grace and nature, object and subject, revelation and reason, liberty and authority, progress and stability, church and state? During his Unitarian days, after reading Victor Cousin, Benjamin Constant, and the French Saint-Simonian, Pierre Leroux, Brownson uncovered a fundamental theological concept that could synthesize as well as distinguish the above polarities—i.e., a doctrine of life by communion which he appropriated from the thought of Pierre Leroux. This doctrine not only synthesized the objectivist concerns of the Enlightenment with the immanent and subjective concerns of romanticism, but it also removed many of his intellectual difficulties with Catholicism, eventually enabling him to become a Catholic. Although he did not consistently articulate this doctrine after his conversion, he did hold onto it “with variations, either consciously or unconsciously for the remainder of his life.”42 The point of departure for Brownson’s doctrine of life by communion was in human consciousness where the self ’s recognition of itself and the non-self existed in indissoluble unity. In fact, for Brownson, one starts the quest for understanding from a unity that already exists and discovers both subject and object in the unity of thought and life. Just as no thought is possible without the prior synthetic presence of subject 42

Leonard Gilhooley, Contradiction and Dilemma; Orestes Brownson and the American Idea (New York: Fordham University Press, 1972), 79.

Introduction

37

and object, so also no act of life is possible without that indissoluble unity. For Brownson, to live is to manifest. This means that life itself is defined as the interaction or intershock of the me with the not me. “Man lives and can only live by communion with what is not himself.”43 That which provides for the unity of as well as the distinction between subject and object in thought and life is, Brownson eventually discovered, the divine creative act. Thus, for Brownson the doctrine of life by communion was ultimately grounded in the divine creative act whereby God is “immanent as first cause in all creatures and in every act of every creature.”44 This act is the “great dialectical principle, “the medium of the dialectical harmony of God and man, grace and nature, revelation and reason, the spiritual and the material.”45 Through the medium of God’s creative act, human beings live by communion with God, other humans and nature, giving rise to three institutions: religion or the church, society or the state, and property.46 Although Brownson’s doctrine of life by communion, grounded as it was in the divine creative act, provided some objective grounds for knowledge of God as cause, and explained how sin could be transmitted from one generation to another and how human persons could influence one another, it could not explain how God could intervene in the historical process. To explain God’s historical interventions Brownson had recourse to the doctrine of providence. His doctrine of providence complimented his doctrine of the divine creative act and gave him an intelligible explanation for the possibility of the Incarnation, tradition and the Catholic Church. When God created Adam, Brownson held, he created him to live under a supernatural providence. God revealed to Adam from the beginning that there was an order of life above our natural human life and this primitive revelation was communicated to the entire human community through tradition. This primitive revelation contained intimations of a God-man as a fact that was to take place or that had 43 44

45 46

Brownson, Works, 5:130. The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny (Detroit: H. R Brownson, 1895), 67. Brownson, Works, 12:479. The American Republic, 47, 68, 77, 46.

38

American Catholic Religious Thought

already taken place. This primitive revelation, though at times obscured and latent, reached all the sons and daughters of Adam.47 This primitive revelation was awakened and kept alive from time to time by God’s special free interventions into human history. The actual Incarnation, then, was the fullest manifestation of God’s providential care for people and the primary means through which God established a union between the human and the divine, thus raising and elevating humankind to a new level of divine life. Christ communicated his life immediately and directly to his apostles and disciples and through communion with them this life was transmitted to others in the church. The church became then the visible manifestation of this divine life, and thus the divine life in the church was authenticated not by some arbitrary and extrinsic act of authority or history, but by an internal principle of tradition that was itself the Incarnate Word. Union with this divine internal tradition in the church was not automatic, however, but was realized through a subjective conversion. Still, it was the action of the object, i.e., the divine presence of Christ in the communion of the Church, that made possible the subject’s act of conversion. This doctrine of communion eventually made it possible for Brownson to see the Catholic Church as the visible continuation of the Incarnation. Ten years after his conversion to Catholicism, he began to argue that this doctrine of life by communion could provide Catholics with a new apologetic because it represented the generative principle of Catholicism and was able to embrace all truth in its unity and universality. The older method was unconvincing because it relied almost exclusively upon authority, logic and motives of credibility that were drawn from the external facts of history. The doctrine of life by communion offered Protestants an explanation of the internal principle that held together the various expressions of Catholicism.48 This new apologetic put Brownson in the romantic camp. Isaac Hecker, Brownson’s disciple, also reflected the romantic influence in his apologetical emphases.49 Hecker’s apologetical method was 47 48 49

Brownson, Works, 12:101. Ibid., 12:465-96. For an excellent study of the influence of romanticism upon Hecker’s thought, see William LeRoy Portier, “Providential Nation: An Historical

Introduction

39

an attempt to synthesize or harmonize the inner, subjective religious yearnings and aspirations of the individual and the human community with their outward and objective revelations and realizations. The theological point de départ for Hecker was no longer reason, authority, or history, as it was for scholastic apologetics, but the religious wants, needs, and experiences of the individual. Hecker was primarily concerned with the “instincts” and “aspirations” of human nature. The subjective “Questions of the Soul,” according to Hecker, found their response in objective revelation located in the sacramental experiences of Catholicism. Thus, Hecker tried to correlate the subjective quest for meaning with the objective revelation in the church. In fact, the quest, implanted by God, was itself a revelation of the nature and destiny of man. For Hecker, as for Brownson, no dichotomy existed between subject and object. One could not, however, collapse the two and destroy the distinction, as some Transcendentalists were wont to do. “In the production of life, subject necessarily connotes object and is correlative with it. Oneness is barrenness.”50 The age as well as the individual was yearning for some kind of fulfillment. The instincts and aspirations of the age revealed for Hecker a cultural movement toward Catholicism. Transcendentalism, the Brook Farm experience, Fruitlands, Valle Crucis, and other American religious and social quests proved to Hecker that leading Americans, those on the cutting edge of the future, were articulating the inadequacies of Protestantism and reflecting the needs of modern persons for more spiritually satisfying experiences and answers to the basic problems of humankind. To Hecker the Holy Spirit was working within individual persons and within American culture leading them and it toward the revelations of the Holy Spirit within the Catholic Church. Thus, Hecker correlated the subjective inclinations with their objective and sacramental realizations. The Holy Spirit speaking within corresponded to the Holy Spirit coming from without. The subjective and incarnational elan of romanticism was thereby combined with the objective preoccupations

50

Theological Study of Isaac Hecker’s Americanism” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, 1980). Isaac T Hecker, “Dr. Brownson’s Road to the Church,” Catholic World 66 (October, 1887): 6.

40

American Catholic Religious Thought

of the Enlightenment. His apologetical emphasis, however, was placed upon the subject rather than the object, as the starting point for any analysis of the religious dimension of life.

VATICAN I AND PAPAL AUTHORITY, 1869-1870 American Catholics, whether influenced more by the Enlightenment or by romanticism, repeatedly had to answer American Nativist and Protestant charges against the papacy. Popes were indicted for immorality, interference in purely political affairs, and religious despotism in their claims to primacy of honor and jurisdiction. The papal office was monarchical, the Nativists also charged, and therefore contrary to republicanism. American Catholics, therefore, could not logically nor consistently maintain a double allegiance—one to a foreign papal monarch and another to the American republican government. While responding to these and other charges, American Catholic apologists developed two schools of thought on the nature of the papacy and the extent of papal power and authority. The two schools of thought resemble, although they are not to be equated with, the Gallican and ultramontane positions on the papacy that were current in European Catholicism prior to Vatican I. In Europe, Catholics had for centuries debated the problem of the precise locus of ultimate teaching authority in the church. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, some (the conciliarists) argued that ultimate ecclesiastical authority resided in the universal council; others (the ultramontanists) held that the pope possessed such authority. The seventeenth-century Gallicans and their subsequent followers, successors to the conciliarists, upheld the authority of the national church and the national episcopacy; the ultramontanes and neo-ultramontanes of the nineteenth century favored the centralization of ecclesiastical authority in the papacy and fought vigorously against the conciliarist and Gallican. The Gallicans seemed to have had momentum on their side until the French Revolution. After the Revolution, because of the devastation of the Gallican Church, the impetus shifted to the ultramontanes, culminating in the definition of papal infallibility at Vatican I (1869-70).

Introduction

41

Prior to Vatican I, American Catholic positions on the locus of ecclesiastical authority were neither as sharply debated nor as much a reaction to the French Revolution as were those in Europe. The two major European positions certainly influenced the formulation of American perspectives on the papacy, but the American experiences of nativism, republicanism, separation of church and state, and the episcopal conciliar form of American ecclesiastical government after 1829 significantly altered those two traditional approaches to the papacy. The two major pre-Vatican I American perspectives on the papacy, therefore, reflect much more the American than the European circumstances. The American constitutional view of the state and the experience of the separation of Church and state clearly separated the American from the European perception of the papacy. Although the American Catholics were divided in their assessment of papal powers, they were united in their acceptance of the papacy as the purely spiritual center and symbol of Catholic unity. They agreed among themselves upon papal primacy of honor and jurisdiction within the universal church and asserted that the popes had no divinely-instituted temporal authority or mission. They were also united in their strongly expressed affections of loyalty to the persons of the oppressed pontiffs (e.g., Pius VI, Pius VII, and Pius IX). The permanence, constancy and spiritual independence of the papacy in opposition to oppression from the French Directory and Napoleon became a rallying cause for many American Catholics who felt similarly oppressed.51 Under the unanimous expressions of affection for and loyalty to the papacy, however, lay two divided positions on papal authority. The first school of thought, the Enlightenment or episcopal school, represented by Bishops John Carroll, John England, Peter Richard Kenrick (1806-96) and others, balanced the primacy of the papacy with the rights, prerogatives and powers of the national episcopacy. 51

See, e.g., John England, Cork Mercantile Chronicle, April 18, 1814; John Carroll, “Pastoral on the Restoration of Pius VII,” JCP, 3:279-84; Ambrose Maréchal, Pastoral Letter to the Roman Catholics of Norfolk (Baltimore, 1819), 44-47; Martin J. Spalding, The Evidences of Catholicity: A Series of Lectures, Delivered in the Cathedral of Louisville, 6th ed. (Baltimore: J. Murphy, 1876), 474.

42

American Catholic Religious Thought

Influenced by the Enlightenment, constitutionalism, conciliarism and a form of Gallicanism that was filtered through the British and American constitutional experience, they emphasized the constitutional limits of papal prerogatives in matters of jurisdiction and teaching. This school also denied that papal infallibility was Catholic teaching; it was a theological opinion, but one, they believed, not well grounded in Scripture or tradition. The church was indeed infallible, but that infallibility was located in the college of bishops united with the pope. England expressed this collegial perception of the episcopacy in his Diocesan Constitution: “We [i.e., Catholics] believe and acknowledge the majority of the bishops of the church, who are successors of the apostles, in union with their head aforesaid [the pope], to be an ecclesiastical tribunal appointed by our Lord Jesus Christ to decide by his authority, with infallible certainty of truth, in all controversies of doctrine, and to testify truly to us those things which have been revealed by God and man. We also recognize and acknowledge in that same tribunal full power and authority, by the same divine institution, to regulate and to ordain the general ecclesiastical discipline of the whole Church of Christ.”52 The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 1866 agreed with this general description of the locus of full authority in the Catholic Church, although the council preferred to use the term “inerrancy” rather than infallibility to describe the nature of that authority.53 Many in the conciliar school were ardent Americanists and republicans in politics. They repeatedly asserted, against the Nativists, therefore, that every well-ordered republican society demanded a central authority. The papacy represented in the spiritual order what the American presidency represented in the political order—i.e., an office unifying the community, and directing the decision-making powers of the community. As the president was the head of the federation of states, so the pope was the head of the federation of dioceses.54 Thus, the pope’s position as the symbol of unity, and his office as president of the episcopacy made him more a constitutionally-restrained governor 52 53

England, Works, 5:96. Concilii plenarii Baltimorensis II, in ecclesia metropolitana Baltimorensi a die vii ad diem xxi octobris MCCCLXVI habiti, et a Sede Apostolica recogniti, acta et decreta (Baltimore, 1868), 41.

Introduction

43

than an absolute monarch. His powers were purely spiritual; he had no temporal authority granted to him by revelation. Thus, American Catholic allegiance to the papacy was no threat to Americanism. Catholics could be as American in their political allegiance as any other religious persons. The conciliar school’s approach to the papacy was more than simply a theological defense of the nature and function of the papal office in the church. It was also, maybe even primarily, an apologetic for Catholic Americanism and Catholic republicanism. During the First Vatican Council, Peter Richard Kenrick, the Archbishop of St. Louis, expressed the conciliar position in opposition to the infallibilist forces. Prior to the council he neither felt the need nor had the opportunity to discuss the issue of papal infallibility, but during the council he asserted that the doctrine was not definable because the evidence of Scripture and tradition was either silent on or opposed to the doctrine. He argued against a definition of the doctrine, furthermore, because of his understanding of a council’s role in the church. A council’s task was to witness to the faith of the church and not to debate theological opinions. Papal infallibility was a legitimate theological opinion, but, in Kenrick’s view, it was not a part of the church’s faith communicated from the beginning. He was against the definition, moreover, because he saw such a definition as a fundamental threat to the divine right of the episcopacy and the episcopal order in the church. Such a definition, he feared, would reduce the bishops to being simply vicars of the pope, making them dependent upon the pope rather than the Holy Spirit for their offices. Kenrick also feared that if the doctrine were defined there would be no way of setting limits to papal authority nor of establishing conditions for the exercise of this infallibility. The potential evil consequences of such an absolutism argued against the definition. He also opposed the definition for practical reasons. Such a definition would frighten Protestants and confirm their gravest fears about Catholicism. It would make liars, too, of those English and Irish Catholics who for centuries swore on oath that the doctrine of papal infallibility was not a part of Catholic faith or tradition.55 54 55

England, Works, 5:92. Peter Richard Kenrick, Concio in Concilio Vaticano habenda et non habita (Naples: Typis Fratrum de Angelis, 1870); English translation in Raymond

44

American Catholic Religious Thought

Kenrick left Rome before the First Vatican Council voted in favor of the definition of papal infallibility. Although he eventually accepted the Vatican Council’s teaching on papal infallibility, he never formally rejected his original objections to the definition. He submitted to the definition on the grounds that the church’s collective wisdom was superior to that of the individual and on the grounds that Christian doctrine can and does develop within the Christian tradition. Kenrick was in the minority in the 1870s. The wave of the future was not with the former conciliarist positions. Vatican I represented the victory of the neo-ultramontane school which had been developing since the French Revolution. In the United States, this second school of thought, the romantic or neo-ultramontane school, was represented by Bishops Francis Patrick Kenrick and Martin John Spalding, Francis X. Weninger, and Orestes A. Brownson. These shared many of the views of the Enlightenment school, but emphasized the extension, rather than the limits, of papal prerogatives in matters of jurisdiction and teaching. These apologists believed that papal infallibility, in particular, was a legitimate Catholic theological opinion and advocated it as an authentic Catholic position grounded in Scripture and tradition. They were also careful to point out the interdependence of spiritual and temporal affairs, rather than stressing their separation. In the midst of the Oxford movement in England and the United States, Francis Patrick Kenrick, Bishop of Philadelphia, wrote the first American treatise on the papacy, The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated (1845). Although this work was intended as an historical justification of the primacy and not a detailed nor precise canonical or scholastic explanation of papal powers, nonetheless it did acknowledge that papal infallibility was in accord “with ancient tradition.”56 Martin John Spalding, educated like Kenrick in Rome, also believed that “Though not an article of faith, it [papal infallibility] is, however, the general belief among Catholics: and I myself am inclined strongly to advocate its soundness, chiefly on account of the intimate connection

56

J. Clancy, “American Prelates in the Vatican Council,” Historical Records and Studies 28 (1937): 93-131. Kenrick, The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated (4th rev. ed.; Baltimore: John Murphy, 1855), 230, 223.

Introduction

45

between the Pontiff and the Church.”57 Brownson, too, was a strong advocate of papal infallibility. He saw the doctrine as a clear manifestation of the superiority of the spiritual to the temporal. Catholics were not obliged to believe it as a doctrine of faith, although he himself believed the doctrine to be “the sounder theological opinion.”58 In 1862, he asserted that “the pope is infallible ex cathedra, that is, with the church, and the church is infallible with the pope, though neither is infallible without the other.” As an individual, however, the pope does not in his private capacity possess the prerogative.59 The neo-ultramontane school believed, in the words of Orestes Brownson, that the American conciliarists (Gallicans, in his view) had attempted to “restrict the Papal power as much as possible” and that in doing so they had conceded “far more to Protestant prejudice and cant than is necessary.”60 In a republican country, Francis Patrick Kenrick noted, people are “naturally prejudiced against an authority which resembles a monarchy.”61 The theologians of this school, therefore, sought to reassert against the stream of American “prejudices” the authority of the church and the fullness of papal powers. The true question for this school was not “whether the Papacy be or be not compatible with republican government, but, whether it be or be not founded in divine right.”62 Once it was clearly established by Scripture and tradition that the papacy was founded in divine right 57

58

59

60

61 62

M. J. Spalding, Lectures on the Evidences of Catholicity (4th ed.; Baltimore: John Murphy, 1870), 263-68; see also Thomas Spalding, Martin John Spalding: American Churchman (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1973), 283-325, for Spalding’s participation at Vatican I, 473. Brownson, “Conversations on Liberalism and the Church,” Works, 13:13. Ibid., 12:490-91; for Brownson’s view of the papacy, see Thomas R. Ryan, “Brownson on the Papacy,” American Ecclesiastical Review 112 (1946): 114-22. Brownson’s review of Kenrick’s The Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated (1845) in Brownson’s Quarterly Review 7 (April, 1845): 264. Kenrick, The Primacy (1855), 19. Brownson’s Quarterly Review 7 (April, 1845): 264; cf. also Kenrick, The Primacy, 20.

46

American Catholic Religious Thought

then it could logically be maintained that the papacy “is supreme over whatever is founded only in human right.”63 For Kenrick, who was not particularly concerned with outlining the precise prerogatives of papal authority, it was “difficult to assign precise limits to a power which must be adapted to the exigencies of the church in an endless variety of circumstances.”64 Thus, this school repeatedly asserted the superiority of the spiritual over the temporal, without maintaining that the church could interfere directly in political affairs. The church’s non-interference in political affairs, however, was conditional. The church teaches obedience to all lawfully constituted political authority, but if a government would issue “laws contrary to the principles of eternal justice,” it would negate the limits of its power and could not receive obedience from religious persons. The church, in such a case, would not contravene its powers by releasing its subjects from obedience to such laws.65 Temporal and spiritual matters are so often “mixed up in this life, and all here is so subordinated to the great ends of our existence hereafter, that it is not in all cases easy to draw the line, nor prudent to be over-particular in saying where the spiritual authority begins or ends.”66 This school was careful to assert the independence of the church from political authority, while at the same time reaffirming the superiority of spiritual over temporal authority. Such a position did not, these apologists pointed out, violate the American separation of church and state. American Catholics, for example, could believe in papal supremacy and papal infallibility without denying the separation of church and state, because that supremacy and authority governed ecclesiastical affairs and the ultimate religious ends of humanity, not political policies unrelated to those ends. Bishops from the United States brought their divided opinions to Rome in 1869 and 1870 in response to Pope Pius IX’s convocation of 63 64 65

66 67

Brownson’s Quarterly Review 7 (April, 1845): 264. Kenrick, The Primacy, 224. M. J. Spalding, “Pastoral ... on Papal Infallibility,” in General Evidences, 473. Brownson’s Quarterly Review 7 (April, 1845): 266. James J. Hennesey, The First Council of the Vatican: The American Experience (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963), 281-82.

Introduction

47

the First Vatican Council. Of the forty-eight American bishops and one abbot who participated in the council, about seven consistently either spoke out, signed petitions, or wrote against the proposed dogma of papal infallibility; about four were vocally and articulately in favor of it. At the end of the discussion, twenty-four American bishops and the one abbot voted in favor of the definition, one, Edward Fitzgerald, Bishop of Little Rock, Arkansas, voted against it, and twenty-two had left Rome before the vote, either because they could not for personal reasons remain in Rome any longer or because they did not wish to vote against a position that was obviously favored by the majority of bishops.67 The final vote on July 18, 1870 was five hundred and thirty-three for papal infallibility and two against it. Thus, the pope, as head of the church, was declared to possess the charismatic gift of infallibility when he explicitly defined matters of faith and morals for the entire church to believe. After the definition was promulgated, all the American bishops, even those formerly opposed to the definition, formally accepted it. The submissions, however, were not the same.68 The American infallibilists as well as the former anti-infallibilists, once they returned to the United States, interpreted the dogma of papal infallibility in a moderate way, indicating the limits as well as the extent of the papal powers.69 Apologists like Brownson continued to advance the doctrine and Hecker saw the definition as the culmination of the church’s efforts since the Protestant Reformation and especially since the French Revolution to reassert the authoritative powers of the church. Now that such a definition was accomplished, the Catholic Church, which had been excessively preoccupied with issues of authority for three centuries, could begin to reassert the importance of the Holy Spirit in the interior life of the individual. In fact, the definition of Vatican I had “prepared the way for the faithful to follow, with greater safety and liberty, the 68

69

On this see Gerald Fogarty, “Archbishop Peter Kenrick’s Submission to Papal Infallibility,” Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 16 (1978): 205-23. M. J. Spalding, General Evidences, 450-53; cf. also Edward McGlynn, “The Bugbear of Vaticanism,” American Catholic Quarterly Review 1 (January, 1876): 96.

48

American Catholic Religious Thought

inspirations of the Holy Spirit.”70 The coming centuries, in Hecker’s opinion, would pay increasing attention to the internal dimensions of the Christian life, as the former centuries had paid considerable attention to external authority within the Christian community. Hecker’s interpretation of Vatican I indicated how some Catholics could enter into the optimism of the late nineteenth century without denying the teachings of Vatican I. In fact, some, like Hecker, would see Vatican I as a turning point in the history of Catholicism. The Holy Spirit was preparing the church for new options in the future.

AMERICANISM, 1880-1900 By the late nineteenth century the Catholic community was by far the largest single denomination in the United States and well institutionalized from coast to coast. From 1880 until the 1920s, the community experienced wave after wave of new immigrants, reinforcing the image of the church’s foreignness. The new immigration, moreover, increased the internal ethnic dissensions and intensified the external Nativist attacks. The Catholic community not only experienced its own tensions but also lived in the midst of a Protestant community that was encountering a series of its own conflicts. The challenge of evolutionary theories and the new sciences to traditional religious perspectives, the battles between the liberal theologians and their conservative or fundamentalist opponents, the awareness of social and economic inequalities—such difficulties within the Protestant community also affected the American Catholic community. The general cultural optimism and the developing awareness of America’s destiny in world affairs, moreover, influenced those Catholics who identified themselves with American ideals. According to Walter Ong, “there was a time at the turn of the century when Catholic consciousness in America seemed on the point of taking explicit intellectual cognizance of the forward-looking habits 70

I. T. Hecker, “An Exposition of the Church in View of Recent Difficulties and Controversies and the Present Needs of the Age,” Catholic World 21 (April-September, 1875): 125.

Introduction

49

endemic in the American state of mind.”71 American Catholics, of course, had previously in the nineteenth century taken “explicit intellectual cognizance” of the American mentality. In fact, the previous romantic consciousness—which had reasserted and reformulated the doctrine of the Incarnation and Providence, renewed the organic and providential view of history, the church, and society, and stressed the role of the Holy Spirit in individual religious experiences—laid a foundation for later American Catholic religious developments. At the end of the century, this consciousness produced two related but distinct movements: Americanism and modernism. The Americanists (e.g., Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, Archbishop John Keane of Dubuque, Bishop Dennis O’Connell of Richmond, and a few Sulpician clerics) tried to create a rapprochement between Catholicism and contemporary American life. These liberal Catholics accommodated themselves, in particular, to the American zeitgeist. In a practical-pastoral and non-systematic way, the Americanists accepted an optimistic and evolutionary world view, a cultural and religious immanentism, an ecumenical spirit, and a religious concern for the economic problems created by industrial expansion. The Americanist Catholic responses to the spirit of the times developed not only within the context of the Leonine papacy (1878-1903), which many Catholic liberals at first interpreted as a papacy in support of modern movements, but also within the context of the perennial Nativist attacks upon Catholicism as foreign to intellectual freedoms and the American way of life. The Americanist enthusiasm for the age was certainly not shared by all American Catholics. Those who generally opposed the Americanist programs (e.g., Archbishop Michael Corrigan of New York, Bishop Bernard McQuaid of Rochester, Bishop Frederick Katzer of Milwaukee, and many Jesuit and German clergy) were much more critical than the Americanists of American values and had a more conservative approach to accommodation. Most of these conservative Catholics saw the liberal mentality and programs as threats to the integrity of Catholic authority, the certainty of Catholic doctrine, and the unity of the American Catholic Church, and as capitulations to the secularism and naturalism of the times. They frequently quoted Pope Pius IX’s 71

Ong, Frontiers, 125.

50

American Catholic Religious Thought

and the First Vatican Council’s declarations against liberalism in their criticisms of liberal Catholic attempts to reconcile the church and the age. They criticized in particular the liberals’ one-dimensional view of Americanism, their excessive nationalism, cultural chauvinism, and their tendencies toward rationalism, egalitarianism, progressivism, ecumenism and socialism. In cultural matters, they charged, the Americanists were chauvinists and in theology the modernists were minimizers. Because the conservatives valued diversity within American Catholic unity and because they wanted to protect the value of the particular in culture (against what they considered the leveling and universalizing tendencies of the Americanists), they advocated an ecclesiastical program of gradual assimilation for the new immigrants. The conservatives, moreover, criticized liberalism in theology, because the liberals, using the scientific methods, social sciences and biblical criticism, tended “to limit and reduce the authority of the magisterium of the Church as far as possible.”72 The liberals in the United States, by capitulating to the spirit of the times, had sacrificed Catholic truth, “usually under the mask of an exaggerated patriotism.”73 The authority and doctrine of the Catholic Church had to be repeatedly reasserted, especially in times when such authority was rejected outside the Church and attenuated within. The liberals, in the midst of their conflict with the conservatives, led a movement to reconcile Catholicism and American ideals. These men wanted Catholicism to shed its foreign cultural identifications, to enter into the spirit of American institutions, to be a leader in the advancement of research and modern scientific learning, to become the visible foundation of American democracy, to further America’s role in leading the world toward greater liberty and justice, and to cooperate with other religious bodies in solving the contemporary social and economic problems. The Americanists’ vision of American Catholicism and their practical programs for relating Catholicism to American ideals were not established upon any systematic theological 72

73

Joseph Schroder, “Theological Minimizing and Its Latest Defender,” American Ecclesiastical Review 5 (July, 1891): 56. Salvatore Brandi, “Touchstone of Catholicity,” American Ecclesiastical Review 6 (February, 1892): 89-90.

Introduction

51

foundations. Their periodic speeches and addresses, however, reveal their acceptance of five themes that dominated the liberal spirit of the age: (1) a quasi-immanentist or incarnational view of the natural order; (2) a corresponding perception of the Christian’s inherent responsibilities for that order; (3) an equally corresponding willingness to accommodate to the spirit of the times; (4) a providential, but also evolutionary or developmental understanding of human history; (5) an openness to the use of the new sciences within religion and theology. Their enthusiasm and optimism for the age prepared the ground for more systematic modernist attempts to use the new sciences in theology. A quasi-immanentist understanding of the relationship of the sacred to the secular lay behind the Americanist call for Catholics to identify themselves with American ideals and institutions. Although the Americanists emphasized repeatedly the interdependence of the natural and the supernatural, they never collapsed the distinction between the two. Nature and grace could not be separated. The age and the church alike pulsated with God’s presence. The God of nature worked in the one and the God of supernatural revelation worked in the other. In its depths, the age was instinct with Christian emotions and it only waited for contact with Christ’s Church to acknowledge itself Christian. Grace built upon nature, they would say, and therefore the Catholic Church must be concerned with the natural as the womb of the supernatural. This meant that Catholicism could not be a solely sanctuary religion—a religion exclusively concerned with the future world beyond death, a world divorced from temporal concerns. The Church, and therefore the Catholic, could not be only concerned with salvation in the future because the Church was “the source of salvation to men in their present as well as in their future life.” The Catholic Church could not separate or distinguish too radically “the interests and the work of the Church from those of society.” Jesus himself went about preaching the Kingdom of God, and for him that meant that “Nothing that was of the welfare of man in this present life was alien to his love and power.” The church’s primary work, like that of Christ, was “to bring souls to God,” “but simultaneously with this there went always the work of stripping, as far as it was possible, of ignorance and pain, the natural life of humanity, and promoting

52

American Catholic Religious Thought

it by most efficient aid to ascents toward higher planes of intellectual light and material well-being.”74 The Americanist believed that Christians had an inherent responsibility for the natural order because that order was not removed from the order of grace. For Archbishop John Ireland, as for other Americanists, salvation was a present as well as a future work. This meant that the church should first humanize and civilize before it could effectively and efficiently Christianize. Thus, the liberals called for the church to become well acquainted with the modern spirit, with its research, knowledge, and science. If the Church were responsible for the betterment of human society, it would have to acquire the secular tools that would enable it to contribute to the liberation of human beings from poverty, ignorance and injustice. Catholics were called to enter the contemporary world in order to preserve what was good in it (e.g., American democratic traditions in social and economic as well as in political life) and to remove the obstacles (i.e., ignorance and poverty) to the fullest realization of these American values. Although this twofold mission belonged primarily to the Catholic Church because its spiritual and infallible authority provided certain moral guidance to its people, nonetheless it should also share this mission with other American Christians. Ecumenical cooperation in social betterment could certainly be achieved “without the smallest peril to one’s particular religious faith.” If religion was to be in the forefront of human progress, then, according to John Ireland, American Catholics should also encourage a fair exchange of religious ideas. Catholics, for example, need not fear such an exchange at the World’s Parliament of Religion in Chicago in 1893 because “Truth is not timid, and upon an occasion so great and important should not truth court publicity, in order to be better known and better loved?”75 Bishop John Keane agreed with Ireland’s estimate of the Parliament, maintaining that “it is only by a friendly and brotherly comparison of convictions that reasonable men can ever come to an agreement about the all-important truths which are the foundation of religion.”76 74

75 76

John Ireland, The Church and Modern Society (New York: D. H. McBride and Co., 1903), vii, viii, xii, xiii, xiv. Ibid., xxi, 149. Quoted by M. V. Gannon, “Before and After Modernism: The Intellectual Isolation of the American Priest,” in John T Ellis, ed., The Catholic Priest

Introduction

53

Ecumenical dialogue and cooperation, thus, was another aspect of the Americanist program. The Americanist willingness to accommodate Catholicism to the spirit of the modern world was itself based upon an understanding of the world as the arena of God’s saving activity. This did not mean that the church must conform to the age, but it did mean that God was present in the world and therefore the church had something to learn from the world. The church needed to learn the wants of the modern world and needed to adapt the church’s mission to meet those aspirations. The church was, after all, a mixture of the temporal and the eternal, the changeable and the permanent. Some accidentals in the church’s structure and mission could easily be modified and changed to meet modern needs. Like many of the romantics, the Americanists had a providential and organic view of history, but one that was significantly conditioned by the evolutionary mentality of the day. The impact of the evolutionary impulse is especially evident in the addresses and speeches of Archbishop John Ireland. The code words “progress,” “development,” “change,” “newness,” the “future,” “destiny,” and “mission” are frequently found in his attempts to reveal the Catholic Church as the agent of Western civilization and American Catholicism as the harbinger of modern developments. For him, as for a number of liberal Catholics, the United States and American Catholicism stood on the cutting edge of the future. Both had a God-given destiny to lead the modern world into a future of freedom and justice for all. He looked to the future rather than the past as the arena for the concentration of Catholic intellectual and social endeavors. His eager optimism, however, was at times an uncritical acceptance of the pulse of the times. As the world changes so also the church’s consciousness of itself and its teachings change. For Ireland, following perhaps John Henry Cardinal Newman’s view of the development of doctrine, the church has always brought out new interpretations of its principles, but they are new “only because the emergencies calling for them had not before arisen.”77 Although these ideas lay undeveloped in Ireland’s writings,

77

in the United States: Historical Investigations (Collegeville, Minnesota: St. John’s University Press, 1971), 325. Ireland, The Church and Modern Society, 409.

54

American Catholic Religious Thought

they do reveal an openness in his thought to the theological implications of change and evolution. Some of these implications would be developed in a more systematic fashion by John Zahm. The inevitable evolution of man and his “consciousness” of justice are hallmarks of Americanist optimism. Slowly ... but ceaselessly, humanity was moving forward, gaining age by age in consciousness of rights; this consciousness being ever quickened by the influence of the Christian religion, and in particular by its teachings on the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Towards the close of the eighteenth century the spirit of democracy was hovering over the nations seeking to incarnate itself in a people. . . . At that time ... the Republic of the United States of America rose into being and majesty.78

One element of the modern world that was clearly a manifestation of God’s work in the world was the development of American democracy. It was itself the result of an evolutionary process that was in its origins ultimately Christian. America, too, was the “highest billow in humanity’s evolution.” The Catholic Church should be especially conscious of the progress that had taken place in the United States because “Progress is the law of God’s creation.” The church, therefore, should be behind contemporary progressive democratic movements in economic as well as political life because those movements were basically Christian in their origins and ultimate destiny. The American Catholic Church, in particular, had also the special mission of carrying Catholic truth “on the wings of American influence” to the entire “universe.”79 Because the Americanists had an immanentist view of the natural order and a providential-developmental view of history, they called upon Catholics to enter into the intellectual and scientific developments of the modern age. The church, they repeatedly asserted, must use the modern sciences to understand better humanity and the world. Although they were not themselves capable of using the new sciences, they were open to their use and that openness to modern patterns of 78 79

Ibid., 188. Ibid., 408-409, 165, 380, 410, 411, 151, 152, 155, 76.

Introduction

55

thought prepared the way for modernist approaches within American Catholicism. For a variety of reasons, listed in the histories of Americanism,80 the dialogue between Catholics and America was “abruptly killed off ” by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Testem benevolentiae (1899), condemning Americanism. Many Catholic scholars in the 1950s would have agreed with Walter Ong that the letter “dealt a blow to American Catholic self-confidence from which the American Catholic mind has never effectively recovered.”81

MODERNISM AND PROGRESSIVISM, 1900-1920 The Americanists, though, had created a climate of opinion in American Catholicism that encouraged what some scholars have called modernism.82 American Catholicism did not produce anyone of the stature of the modernist Alfred Loisy, but at the end of the century it did produce a few scholars who could be called modernist or quasi-modernist if one accepts F. L. Cross’ definition of modernism as “a movement within the Roman Catholic Church which aimed at bringing the tradition of Catholic belief into closer relation with the modern outlook in philosophy, the historical and other sciences and social ideas.” Although the movement did not possess a shared vision, it was based upon at least three leading principles or ideas, according to Cross: (1) a critical approach to the Bible—i.e., the Bible was interpreted as the record of a real unfolding of divine truth in history; (2) an inclination to reject scholastic intellectualism in theology and to 80

81 82

The literature on Americanism is vast. Perhaps the two best comprehensive studies of Americanism, though dated, are Thomas T. McAvoy, The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895-1900 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1957) and Robert D. Cross, The Emergence of Liberal Catholicism in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958). For a late twentieth-century update on this historiography, see Philip Gleason, “The New Americanism in Catholic Historiography,” U. S. Catholic Historian 11 (Summer 1993):1-18. Ong, Frontiers, 125. The best single study of American Modernism is Scott Appebly’s “Church and Age Unite!” The Modernist Impulse in American Catholicism (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992).

56

American Catholic Religious Thought

subordinate doctrine to practice; (3) a teleological attitude to history, finding the meaning of the historic process in its issue rather than in its origins.83 The few modernists or quasi-modernists examined theoretically and systematically the problems created by the scientific method, evolutionary theories, and historical and biblical criticism. From about 1890 to 1907, they called for a greater use of the scientific method and the social sciences and advocated a more systematic appropriation of historical and biblical criticism in theology. A few historians and theologians have denied any connection between Americanism and modernism “either by way of cause or practical preface.” They maintain that Americanism was “largely devoid of theological content.”84 It is difficult to deny, however, that the Americanists were open to the theological implications of their programs. The very fact that they encouraged dialogue with modern research and science makes them at least unwitting forerunners of a modernist mentality. The American modernists and quasi-modernists called upon their fellow Catholics to investigate more systematically the theories of evolution, to use more effectively history and the social sciences in theological education, and to take a more historical-critical attitude to biblical research than they had in the past. John Zahm, a professor and scientist at the University of Notre Dame, was one of the first American Catholics to analyze systematically the evolutionary mentality of his day. Like many of the Americanists, among whom he had close associations, he was an optimist, but he was more conscious than they of the need to examine the evolutionary theories critically from a distinctly Catholic perspective. Like the British Catholic scientist St. George Mivart, Zahm did not accept the evolution of the human soul and the denial of purpose in the universe. He did accept the evolution 83

84

F. L. Cross, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 2nd ed., rev. (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), 926. See Gannon, “Before and After Modernism,” 337 and 376, n. 158 for a discussion of the literature on the connection between Americanism and Modernism; for a favorable interpretation of the connection, see M. M. Reher, “The Church and the Kingdom of God in America: The Ecclesiology of the Americanists” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Fordham University, 1972), 295.

Introduction

57

of the human body and developed a theistic view of evolution that he asserted was clearly compatible with the Catholic intellectual tradition. Once properly understood from the theistic perspective, evolutionary theory could supply new insights for Catholic theology. It could, in fact, provide additional support to the religious perspectives that the world had an ultimate purpose and unity, that man had ultimate dignity and was the “highest term of a long and majestic development,” and that God was immanent in the processes of history as well as transcendent to the entire development (in fact, the immanence of God in created works refuted the Deists of the Enlightenment who understood God to have withdrawn from the created world). Zahm also asserted that the “relations between the natural and the supernatural” are more harmonious than some perceive them to be. For Zahm, the world was “instinct with invitations to a higher life and a happier existence in the future.”85 The modernists not only reflected the evolutionary and incarnational impulses of the progressive theologies of the day, they also demanded more critical historical methods and prudent uses of higher biblical criticism. John Hogan, a priest and teacher at New Brighton Seminary outside of Boston and later professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., tried to lead American Catholic theology in the direction of historical theology. At least, he pointed to the inadequacy of basing all theological reflection upon “metaphysical principles.” “The modern tendency, it is true,” he wrote in 1898, “leads to the development of theology on the lines of history and philology, and its future as a living science is clearly in that direction.”86 Before the condemnation of modernism in 1907, a few American Catholic scholars were also engaged in the historical-critical study of the Bible. The New York Review and the Catholic University Bulletin raised the question of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch and some scholars asserted the “dominance of higher criticism over tradi85

86

John A. Zahm, Evolution and Dogma (reprint of 1895 ed.; with a new introduction by Ralph E. Weber; Hicksville, New York: Regina Press, 1975), 436, 435, 433, 437, 436. “Seminary and University Studies,” American Ecclesiastical Review 19 (1898): 366, n. 1.

58

American Catholic Religious Thought

tional views and opinions” regarding Mosaic authorship.87 Francis E. Gigot (1859-1920), professor of Scripture at St. Joseph’s Seminary (Dunwoodie, New York) and perhaps the “most advanced Catholic Scripture scholar in the American Church,” called upon Catholics to use higher criticism: “The time is gone when the questions involved in the higher criticism might be simply identified with rationalistic attacks upon the revealed word. Again, one can no longer afford to be ignorant of topics which, perhaps more than any others at present, engross the attention of the intellectual and religious world.”88 The budding interest in higher criticism came to a swift end with the encyclical Pascendi (1907), condemning modernism as the “synthesis of all errors.” The American responses to these condemnations depended, of course, upon one’s prior disposition regarding the Americanist and modernist mentality. One American Catholic critic in 1908, for example, asserted that Pascendi indeed described the modernist mentality to which a few American Catholics were “well-disposed.”89 Charles A. Briggs, Protestant professor of Scripture at Union Theological Seminary in New York, noted that after the encyclical “liberal Catholics” [i.e., Americanists] were being identified with modernists.90 John Ireland, perhaps smarting from Briggs’ comments, fired back that the encyclical condemned only those errors which the Catholic Church had always censured.91 Such sensitivity revealed the threat the encyclical posed in liberal Catholic quarters. When modernist tendencies came under suspicion in the papal encyclical, the American modernists, in the judgment of many his87

88

89

90

91

Bernard Noone, “American Catholic Periodicals and the Biblical Question, 1893-1908,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 89 (March-December, 1978): 85-109. “The Study of Sacred Scripture in Theological Seminaries,” American Ecclesiastical Review 23 (September, 1900): 234; quoted in Gannon, “Before and After Modernism,” 331. Anon., “Modernism in the Church in America,” American Ecclesiastical Review 38 (January, 1908): 2-3, 5-6. “The Encyclical Against Modernism,” North American Review 187 (February, 1908): 199, 204. “The Dogmatic Authority of the Papacy: The Encyclical on Modernism,” North American Review 187 (April, 1908): 494.

Introduction

59

torians,92 quietly quit their endeavors to create a dialogue between theology and modern thought patterns and either pursued careers that were no threat to orthodoxy or, as in the case of two or three, left the Catholic Church. For a number of years, historians assert, the two encyclicals on Americanism and modernism had a negative effect upon the development of historical-critical methods in theology and Scripture studies. One historian has wryly observed, in fact, that with the condemnation of modernism, “original research became original sin.”93 Pascendi coming on the heals of Testem benevolentiae had, these historians argue, at least the temporary effect of halting even the inchoate dialogue between Catholic theology and the new sciences. The historical arguments on the negative effects of the two papal documents on American Catholic scholarship have some validity, but such arguments overlook the kind of creative scholarship that was indeed taking place during the progressive era (1900-1920), particularly at the Catholic University of America, the only research-oriented Catholic university at the time.94 Although not well known outside Catholic circles, most of these progressive-age scholars (born in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s) were clerical professors at the Catholic University who wanted to bring Catholic thinking into critical communion with modern scientific thought. They also helped to plant the seeds of and 92

93

94

On this, see my “After Testem Benevolentiae and Pascendi,” Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture 7 (1996):13-33. Gannon, “Before and After Modernism,” 350. Those critical methods in biblical studies were not repressed forever. In fact, in 1936, the American Catholic Biblical Association was founded, signaling a revival in American Catholic circles of a more critical approach to biblical studies. The new association was given positive reinforcement in 1943 with Pope Pius XII’s encyclical Divino afflante spiritu. After that period, a new generation of critical scholars arose in the persons of Raymond Brown, Dominic Crosson, Bruce Vawter, Roland Murphy, Myles Bourke, John L. McKenzie and a host of others who have made historical criticism a significant part of American Catholic seminary and university education. On Catholic biblical scholarship, see Gerald P. Fogarty, American Catholic Biblical Scholarship: A History from the Early Republic to Vatican II (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989). In what follows I am relying on my “After Testem Benevolentiae and Pascendi,” 13-33.

60

American Catholic Religious Thought

to organize the infrastructures of American Catholic intellectual life at the national level. The argument here is not that these post-Pascendi progressive-era intellectual movements were representative of American Catholic life and thought. They were not; they were minority movements, but in this they were analogous to movements prior to the papal interventions. Though Catholic scholarship did not develop in the areas of systematic theology and biblical studies during the period, it did mature in a number of other areas in congruence and dialogue with progressive-era thinking and scholarship. The post-Pascendi scholars at the Catholic University were not driven away from research-oriented scholarship nor did they give up on the need to create a dialogue between Catholic faith and modern scientific achievement. The seeds of scholarship that had been planted in them during the late nineteenth and early pre-Pascendi periods were beginning to develop in the first two decades of the twentieth century. These scholars had a threefold task before them. First, they had to develop their own intellectual disciplines. Second, most of them devoted much of their time and energy to building up national professional journals and associations that fostered their disciplines. Third, as intellectuals in the Church, they were frequently called upon to organize and serve upon various national ecclesiastical committees and institutions that contributed to the emergence of Catholicism into national public life. Their involvement in building up their disciplines and professions, as well as their participation and leadership in national Catholic institutions and committees diminished the time and energy they had for productive research and published scholarship. But, they did establish institutions that would serve Catholic scholarship in the twentieth century as Catholics gradually developed the resources that were necessary to foster genuine scholarship and research. Continuity of intellectual life and scholarship between the pre-Testem and the post-Pascendi periods is evident to some extent in the work of Henri Hyvernat (1858-1941) and Thomas J. Shahan (1857-1932). Hyvernat, a French-born scholar, was one of the first professors hired by the new Catholic University in 1889. He specialized in ancient Near Eastern studies, particularly in the ancient Christian Near East (e.g., Coptic, Syriac, and Arabic), and founded the Department of

Introduction

61

Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures at the Catholic University. Although rarely mentioned in the historical studies of this period, Hyvernat was a leading scholar at the University who in 1903 collaborated with J. B. Chabot in founding the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO), a multi-volume collection of Eastern Christian sources which intended to do for the early Syriac, Arabic, Coptic and Ethiopic Christian writings what Abbé Jacques Paul Migne had done for the Latin and Greek Christian writings in the mid nineteenth century. Hyvernat edited the Coptic volumes for the series until 1930. In 1912, following Pascendi, he was instrumental in getting the Catholic University of America to become with the Catholic University at Louvain a joint owner of the CSCO. Hyvernat also prepared and published a catalogue of Coptic manuscripts that J. P. Morgan had purchased and assembled. This was an element of positive scholarship that helped to provide the resources for the retrieval of the Christian tradition in the East, a movement that was only in the late twentieth century beginning to bear much fruit. Both before and after the condemnations, Hyvernat worked to sow the seeds of what would become a unique department of Eastern Christian Studies in the United States. This kind of scholarship, however, has not received the kind of press that counts much for intellectual work.95 Thomas Joseph Shahan was also a professor at the Catholic University who made some significant contributions to American Catholic scholarship before and after the papal condemnations. Shahan had studied church history and patrology with Adolph von Harnack at the University of Berlin (1889-91) and with Louis Duchesne at the Institut Catholique in Paris (1891) before joining the faculty at the Catholic University. Shahan’s primary interests were in research and publication, but he also became significantly involved in administration (rector of the Catholic University, 1909-28). Before 1908 he 95

On Hyvernat’s work see “The Pierpont Morgan Collection of Coptic Manuscripts,” Catholic University Bulletin 18 (February 1912):186-90; A. Vaschalde, “Historical Sketch of the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium,” Catholic University Bulletin 20 (March 1914):248-57; T. C. Petersen, “Professor Henry Hyvernat,” Catholic World 153 (September 1941):653-66, and especially Sidney Griffith and Monica Blanchard, “Henri Hyvernat (1858-1941) and the Beginning of Syriac Studies at the Catholic University of America,” ARAM 5 & 6 (1993-94):1-17.

62

American Catholic Religious Thought

published and translated six books on primitive Christianity, wrote numerous articles on the same subjects, became the founding editor of and contributor to the Catholic University Bulletin (1895-1909), and was an associate editor of the Catholic Encyclopedia (the first major cooperative intellectual endeavor in American Catholic history) for which he contributed over 200 articles and rewrote and translated more than 100 others.96 Shahan’s aspirations for research and scholarship were not killed off by the papal condemnations. If anything, those aspirations were smothered by administrative responsibilities and duties, as well as by the tasks of establishing some of the infrastructure of research and scholarship. Another element of intellectual continuity between the Americanist and post-Pascendi periods is evident in the students of pro-Americanist Thomas Joseph Bouquillon (1840-1902). A Belgian-born professor of moral theology at the Catholic University from 1889 to 1902,97 Bouquillon had a major influence upon his students William Kerby (1870-1936) and John A. Ryan (1865-1945). He encouraged both men to study the emerging social sciences, especially sociology and economics, to create a dialogue between the neo-scholastic tradition and modern scientific thought. Bouquillon saw the scholastic revival as a call to engage modern thought and to use what was good in it to foster faith and justice. To some extent he was following the first half of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni patris (1879) which focused upon the church’s traditional use of the so-called “spoils of the Egyptians,” i.e., the use of secular studies to enhance Christian life in the world.98 For him students needed to 96

97

98

On Shahan see, P. J. McCormick, “Bishop Shahan: American Catholic Educator,” Catholic Educational Review 30 (1932):257-65. C. Joseph Nuesse, “Thomas Joseph Bouquillon (1840-1902), Moral Theologian and Precursor of the Social Sciences in the Catholic University of America,” Catholic Historical Review 72 (October 1986):601-19. Abbé John Hogan, “Clerical Studies,” American Ecclesiastical Review 6 (February 1892):83-84, demonstrated how a number of late nineteenth century Catholic revisionists interpreted Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni patris when Hogan, like Leo XIII, indicated that the great fathers of the Church used secular studies in their theologies and possessed “great familiarity with the speculations of the period as well as careful dialectical training.” Bouquillon fostered this same spirit among his students.

Introduction

63

know contemporary social conditions as they were uncovered in the social sciences of the day in order to make practical applications of moral principles in the modern world. In 1895, under Bouquillon’s advice, Kerby went to Europe to study sociology with the intent of returning to the Catholic University to teach. For Kerby, all theological education needed to be informed by a study of the social conditions and structures that influenced all thought and life.99 From 1897 until his death in 1936, Kerby fostered an examination of the social dimensions of poverty and of spirituality as he attempted to make Catholics, and especially Catholic priests, aware of the social relations and forces under which they operated in the modern world. Like many progressives of the early twentieth century he was particularly aware that poverty itself was not just the result of individual sloth. There were social structures that were responsible for poverty and thus the necessity to provide an adequate scientific analysis of the causes of poverty so one could devise institutional and structural forces powerful enough to counter the sources of poverty. In 1900 Kerby asserted that priests and theological scholars needed to be aware of the social conditions that influenced their lives and those of their people. Even the study of the Bible required an awareness of the social environment in which the biblical message was communicated. “The personality of our Savior, the conditions in which He worked and which He tolerated, attitudes which He took, the processes and limitations which He recognized in supernatural life, the laws of social growth, individual man and social nature, human limitations and the historical interpretation of the Gospel, all these elements must be taken into account before we can safely claim to have understood the role of the Gospel in life and its relation to the problems of society.” For Kerby, “The theological sciences, as commonly taught in our seminaries, are not enough. The priest must know human society, its structures, laws, forces, and institutions; he must know also its history and its tendencies.” The spirit and method of theology and philosophy, as presently taught, were not “entirely in sympathy with the actual situation.” A more scientific method was necessary to give 99

On Kerby, see Timothy N. Dolan, “Prophet of a Better Hope: The Life and Work of Monsignor William Joseph Kerby,” M. A. Thesis, Catholic University of America, 1981.

64

American Catholic Religious Thought

theology a fuller appreciation of the actual circumstances of modern life. “Moral, religious, economic, political and social forces combine in producing the social phenomena which we study—no one-sided view of them is ever safe.” Thus, the social sciences must obtain “an integral position” within all theological education.”100 Kerby was a Catholic progressive not only in his confidence in scientific analysis as a solution to poverty and his conviction that sociological analysis could contribute to the understanding of the biblical message but also in his attempts at the national level to organize educational and social agencies to cope with modern problems caused by industrialization. His organization of the National Conference of Catholic Charities in 1910 was only one agency that demonstrated his concern for developing scientific analysis and bureaucratic organizations for the reform of the church’s approach to the industrial problems of the age. Kerby also used his understanding of sociology to foster a more sensitive Catholic perspective on the social conditions of the spiritual life. Bruce Lescher has shown clearly how Kerby sought to bridge a gap between social justice and spirituality and how he tried to make priests in particular aware of the social forces that shaped their selfconcepts and their spirituality.101 Through the Catholic University Bulletin, the American Ecclesiastical Review (which he edited from 1927 to 1936), and a number of published books, Kerby fostered a social consciousness, a confidence in scientific analysis, and a socially-rooted spirituality—all of which were elements of the zeitgeist of the progressive era. He sought to build bridges between the Catholic tradition and the progressive age. Ryan, too, was a Catholic progressive, but his field of scientific interest was the study of moral theology and empirical economics—an William J. Kerby, “The Priesthood and the Social Movement,” Catholic University Bulletin 6 (January, 1900), 18-28; also published in Aaron I. Abell, ed., American Catholic Thought on Social Questions (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1968), 271, 273, 274. 101 Bruce H. Lescher, “The Spiritual Life and Social Action in American Catholic Spirituality: William J. Kerby and Paul Hanly Furfey,” Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, 1990; and idem., “William J. Kerby: A Lost Voice in American Catholic Spirituality,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 102 (Spring 1991):1-16. 100

Introduction

65

issue that will be treated in greater detail below. For him the solution to the industrial problems lay in legislative measures that were built upon moral principles and a sound empirical understanding of the realities of economic life and thought in the United States. He called upon American Catholics and others to examine the moral implications of all economic activity. His study and his organizational efforts throughout his life were intended to apply scholastic moral theology, as he found it articulated in Rerum novarum, to an empirical investigation of economic life in the United States, and then to propose legislative measures that would reform American economic practices and foster human welfare. Like many other progressives he had confidence in empirical studies, legislative reforms, and moral improvement based upon education and knowledge. For him there was an integral moral relationship between the church and the modern scientific and legislative world. He, like Kerby, was not a Catholic separatist.102 Edward Pace (1861-1938) came to the Catholic University in 1891 as a professor of philosophy and empirical psychology and remained there until his death. He was a neo-Thomist philosopher who had studied experimental psychology at Leipzig under Wilhelm Wundt.103 Pace was interested in the relationship between Catholic thought and empirical psychology. He wanted the new developments in experimental psychology applied to methods of educating the young, believing that modern psychology had something to say to the field of Catholic education. Like a few other members of his generation he wanted to bring empirical science into harmony with philosophy and both science and philosophy into harmony with the teachings of the faith. But, he realized, that the search for the unity of truth underlying all science and philosophy and the harmonizing of these findings with the teachings of the faith would involve a constant “struggle.”104 On the progressive nature of Ryan’s intellectual and organizational work, see Joseph M. McShane’s “Sufficiently Radical.” Catholicism, Progressivism, and the Bishop’s Program of 1919 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986). 103 On Pace, see William P. Braun, “Monsignor Edward A. Pace, Educator and Philosopher,” Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1968. 104 Edward Pace, “St. Thomas and Modern Thought,” Catholic University Bulletin 2 (April 1896):193-94. 102

66

American Catholic Religious Thought

Like a number of other scholars of his generation he read Aeterni patris not just as an attempt to build up a Catholic philosophical apologetic that could meet the demands of the modern scientific age, but as a call for young Catholic scholars to become familiar with the developments in modern science and use what was good in them for the development of the Catholic tradition. He neither assaulted modern developments as did some of his anti-modernist Catholic contemporaries nor did he buy into the idea of inevitable progress as did some of his Americanist friends. Like many other Catholic University professors of the progressive generation, he tried to institutionalize at the national level the aspirations his generation had for educational, professional, and societal reform. He founded and became dean of the School of Philosophy (1895-1935), collaborated in establishing the School of Education (1909), co-edited the Catholic Educational Review (1911-36), promoted the creation of the National Catholic War Council (1917-20), established one of the first laboratories in the United States for the study of empirical psychology, and was an associate editor of The Catholic Encyclopedia. Thomas E. Shields (1862-1921) was another progressive age professor at the Catholic University (1902-21). He had obtained his doctorate at Johns Hopkins University (1895) where he had studied biology, physiology and experimental psychology.105 At the Catholic University he began to develop a Catholic philosophy of education that was clearly congruent with new developments in biology, the doctrine of evolution, and experimental psychology. His own view of education clearly fit into the progressive education movement in the United States, even though he was careful to reject the naturalistic assumptions that he perceived to be behind the developmentalist views of some American educators who were more influenced by Rousseau than they were by the gospel in their understanding of human nature and its destiny. Shields believed that Catholic educators must welcome “each truth that is brought to light by the various sciences which have for their object the formulations of the laws of the mind and of human development” but that those educators must always 105

On Shields, see Justine Ward, Thomas Edward Shields: Biologist, Psychologist, Educator (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1947).

Introduction

67

turn “to the Master Teacher for the principles which must govern all correct methods of teaching.”106 Shields not only developed a Catholic philosophy of education that was consistent with the advances of modern science, but he also (like so many professors of his generation) created institutions and launched a journal that helped to professionalize the study of education and improve Catholic educational institutions across the country. In 1909, he helped to establish Catholic University’s School of Education and in 1911 he founded the Sisters College to foster higher education among the nation’s women religious. He also became the founding editor of the Catholic Educational Review and established his own Catholic Educational Press for the publication and distribution of textbooks and studies on education. He was a doer as well as a progressive thinker. Another progressive-minded professor at the Catholic University was John Montgomery Cooper (1881-1949) who had received Roman doctorates in philosophy and theology in 1905. After his return to the United States he studied cultural anthropology and became something of an expert in it.107 Although he became known for his studies in cultural anthropology and for the establishment of the first Department of Anthropology at the Catholic University, he was also, as Pamela Young and others have demonstrated, the father of a “life-oriented” approach to theological education for undergraduate students. From 1909 until the late 1930s he initiated a new approach to theological education for undergraduate students that was in tune with many marks of the progressive education movement. His philosophy of theological education and his published textbooks demonstrated that he took into account modern developments in psychology and anthropology. Like Shields,108 Cooper emphasized the pragmatic-functional Thomas Shields, “Fundamental Principles in the Teaching of Religion,” Catholic Educational Review 1 (January-May 1911):340. 107 On Cooper, see William H. Russell, “John M. Cooper: Pioneer,” Catholic Educational Review 47 (1949):435-41, Pamela Young, “Theological Education in American Catholic Higher Education, 1939-1973,” Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 1995, 67-79, and Elizabeth McKeown, “From Pascendi to Primitive Man: The Apologetics and Anthropology of John Montgomery Cooper,” U.S. Catholic Historian 13 (Winter 1995): 1-22. 108 Thomas E. Shields, “The Method of Teaching Religion,” Catholic Education Association Bulletin 5 (November 1908):206. 106

68

American Catholic Religious Thought

value of Catholic dogmas. Dogma and doctrine, he believed, should be taught in such a way that it helped students shape their lives in terms of the love of God and neighbor. What dogmas do, therefore, was more important for teaching undergraduates than what they were as abstract systematic truths. “The important aim in our Catholic dogmatic teaching is not to turn out amateur theologians who can answer every definition in the advanced religion textbook, nor to turn out amateur apologists who can answer every question non-Catholic inquirers can put, but to turn out boys and girls who have gotten the habit of making doctrinal truths the vital motives for loving God and their neighbors.”109 Thomas Verner Moore (1877-1969), a Paulist and later a Benedictine, was a professor of psychology at the Catholic University (1910-47) who tried to discover congruencies between the fields of psychology, psychiatry and Christian spirituality. He had obtained his doctorate in psychology at the Catholic University (1903) under the direction of Edward Pace and later he studied with Wilhelm Wundt at Leipzig. He also received a doctorate in medicine from Johns Hopkins University (1913). In 1916, he founded the first psychiatric clinic at the Catholic University and throughout the progressive period he continued to develop the scientific tools that enabled him to create a dialogue between his Catholic faith and the emerging science of psychiatry.110 Most of his work on psychiatry and religion was published after his period of professional formation during the progressive era. Peter Guilday (1884-1947) obtained his doctorate in history at the Catholic University of Louvain and became a professor of church history at the Catholic University of America in 1914.111 He believed that the historical task should be governed by the contemporary canons of historical methodology which aimed at historical objectivity and honesty, but his own histories demonstrated clearly that his historical John M. Cooper, “The Dogmatic Content of the Advanced Religion Course,” Catholic Educational Review 21 (February 1923):80-88. 110 On Moore, see Benedict Neenan, Thomas Verner Moore: Psychiatrist, Educator and Monk (New York: Paulist Press, 2000). 111 On Guilday, see Henry Warner Bowden, Church History in an Age of Uncertainty: Historiographical Patterns in the United States, 1906-1990 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991):9-14. 109

Introduction

69

practice was also influenced by his apologetical concerns. His own research and publications (e.g., his lives of Bishops John Carroll and John England; and his history of the Baltimore Councils) intended to show the compatibility of Catholicism and the American democratic ethos in an age shaped to some extent internally by anti-modernism and externally by continuing anti-Catholicism. Although not selfconsciously attacking the negative effects of Testem and Pascendi, he did select topics for historical examination that clearly showed that Catholics, while critical of some elements of the American ethos, did resonant with the American political ideals of well-ordered liberty. Like others of his generation, he perceived the University as a research center, but he also fostered the institutional side of his profession not just his own research and publishing. He helped to plant the seeds of scholarly historical research at Catholic University, where he established seminars and directed numerous doctoral dissertations in the field of American Catholic history. He also founded the Catholic Historical Review (1915) for the dissemination of research, and the American Catholic Historical Association (1919) for the professional advancement of the field. There were indeed a few scholars who were beginning to establish a research-oriented scholarly tradition, but the single most significant scholarly achievement of the progressive age was the publication of the Catholic Encyclopedia (1907-1912), a compendium of the latest Catholic research, organized and edited by American Catholic scholars.112 The Encyclopedia was intended to highlight the Catholic contributions to scholarship and culture. Although apologetic in purpose, as almost all Catholic intellectual endeavors were during this period, the Encyclopedia gathered together scholars from around the world to cooperate in putting together a resource that lasted for half a century before a new edition was prepared in the late 1960s. In the post-Testem era this project was significant as a joint intellectual endeavor of Americanists and anti-Americanists, Catholics of a more liberal bent and those who were more conservative. What united them 112

For a good analysis of the significance of the Catholic Encyclopedia, see Margaret Mary Reher, Catholic Intellectual Life in America: A Historical Study of Persons and Movements (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1989):99-103.

American Catholic Religious Thought

70

was the desire to demonstrate Catholic scholarship. The five major editors of the project (Charles Herbermann, Condé Pallen, Thomas J. Shahan, Edward Pace, and John Wynne) aimed at providing an intellectually honest work. It was a major achievement of intellectual scholarship, collaboration, creative financing, and productive distribution. It absorbed the editors’ efforts for almost a decade while it was being produced. The prime mover behind the Encyclopedia was the Jesuit John Wynne, the past editor of The Sacred Heart Messenger, a Jesuit-organized popular publication fostering a revival of spirituality among Catholics. Wynne was, moreover, the brains behind another intellectual endeavor of the era, the establishment of the Jesuit-edited America (1909-) magazine. From the beginning Wynne intended it to be a weekly journal of Catholic opinion on a variety of national and cultural, rather than purely ecclesiastical, issues. Quoting Cardinal John Henry Newman in his opening editorial, Wynne called upon his fellow Catholics to take “an intelligent interest in public affairs, and not live as a class apart.”113 Coming on the heals of Pascendi, America was intended to be thoroughly orthodox, but it was an activist kind of orthodoxy that intended to apply Catholic principles to current problems in society and culture. In Wynne’s view it was intended to instigate a national Catholic intellectual conversation about public questions. America was not intended to be a creative or speculative intellectual journal, but a practical and public kind of intellectualism, concerned with applying Catholic principles to political and social concerns. It, too, was an intellectual and institutional achievement of the progressive era. One can argue that Testem and Pascendi did not totally shut down American Catholic attempts to bring Catholic patterns of thought into communion with modern scientific and cultural thinking, meager though they were both before and after the papal letters. The historical picture that is beginning to emerge in the study of the progressive era is that there was indeed a definite attempt to relate Catholic life, thought and institutions to modernity. No doubt the papal condemnations, especially Pascendi, halted developments in biblical studies and systematic theology, but they did not altogether cut off Catholic life and thought from developments in the modern world. Even the 113

America 1 (17 April 1909):5-6.

Introduction

71

neo-scholastic mentality could and did have built into it an element of dialogue with the modern scientific movements and some American Catholic thinkers of the progressive period read Leo XIII’s Aeterni patris as a call to appropriate the “spoils of the Egyptians” into scholastic thought so that that thought itself might be transformed and developed in accord with the modern mentality. That the practitioners of this progressive scholasticism were not altogether successful in these aims is no criticism of the aims themselves.

SOCIAL JUSTICE, 1840-1940 Although many Americanists were aware of the need for a social justice in the United States that would reflect, in Ireland’s words, “the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man,” they did not develop any systematic analysis of justice in American society. Such an analysis, though, did arise during the late nineteenth century. Just as the so-called “Social Gospel” developed within the context of Protestant liberal theology, so also the Catholic “Search for Social Justice” originated within the context of Americanism and modernism and developed more fully during the early part of the twentieth century. The development of social Christianity was, of course, a response to industrialization, immigration and urbanization. In its Catholic form it also originated as a response to the evolution of European Catholic social thought (especially Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical on the conditions of labor, Rerum novarum, 1891) and the rise of socialistic tendencies in American labor movements. In the period before the Civil War, American Catholics—mostly poor, laboring class immigrants—were part of the “social problem” in American life. Catholic social thought during this period, therefore, concentrated upon their plight. They filled the cities with unemployment, crime, prostitution, orphans, disease and slum living. In the midst of these social disorders, American Catholic leaders, although primarily occupied with ecclesiastical expansion, helped to organize various Catholic charities, self-help programs, mutual aid societies and social institutions. Personal and communal charity, rather than social reform, was one adequate response to the social needs of the

American Catholic Religious Thought

72

age. Moral suasion through Catholic evangelicalism, too, was seen as a means of rectifying the social problems Catholics experienced. For many, the social problems in American society were individual and attitudinal. Catholic leaders criticized, in particular, American acquisitiveness, materialism, and the identification of poverty as sin. To counter these values, which had affected the immigrants as well as the native Americans, they preached individual repentance and spiritual reform. Restoration of personal piety, therefore, could solve the difficulties of the incipient industrial age. Although American Catholic leaders did not call for major social and economic reforms, a few did attack the laissez-faire economic theories and the excessive individualism of American society. According to Bishop John Hughes, for example, “the theoretical and practical, political economy of our age [1844] has encouraged and whetted the passion [of cupidity] instead of moderating and regulating its violence.”114 Hughes criticized the economic theory and practice that identified human beings with their material self-interests. The only proper way to understand human nature and destiny was through Christianity; such a perception would necessarily broaden the definition of human nature and thus subordinate material self-interests to the higher designs of human destiny. For Hughes, the ultimate source of the selfishness and individualism of incipient capitalism was Protestantism. Laissez-faire economic theories and practices that emphasized material self-interests exclusively had divorced revelation and ecclesiastical authority from economic life. Such theories were the inevitable result of the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone. This doctrine of justification removed the mediation of the church from the salvific process and freed political and economic works, in fact, all works, from their spiritual and ultimate relations. Thus, economic theory and practice became autonomous, thereby producing excessive individualism and consequent economic injustice. Justice and the communal sense could be restored, Hughes believed, by reintegrating a Christian anthropology into economic theory and by reviving the church’s role in regulating acquisitiveness. Precisely how this was to be accomplished Hughes did not reveal.115 114

Hughes, Works, 1:515.

115

Ibid., 1:513-34.

Introduction

73

American Catholics were more concerned with the social and economic issues that faced the immigrants than they were with the issues of slavery and consequently they paid little attention to the moral problem of the age. When Catholics did speak out on slavery, they seemed to reflect the divided mind of the larger American society. Some argued that slavery was compatible with Christian values; others asserted that it was a moral evil contrary to the norms of justice and equity; still others maintained that it was primarily a political problem that should be resolved by state legislatures and not Christian leaders. Most Catholic intellectuals, however, believed that there was nothing inherently sinful about slavery. During the Civil War, a verbal battle broke out in the Catholic journals and newspapers over the issue of slavery. Since the 1830s, Orestes A. Brownson had opposed slavery as immoral, but for a variety of reasons he had been reluctant to support the abolitionist movement prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. At the beginning of the War, however, he argued vigorously for an emancipation proclamation. For him, though, the abolition of Black slavery was necessary primarily as a war measure. Father Edward Purcell and Archbishop John Purcell of Cincinnati openly supported the end of slavery after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and claimed in the Catholic Telegraph that in its long history the Catholic Church had opposed slavery and, when it had the means, did whatever it could to eliminate it. Brownson and the Purcells were opposed by Archbishop Hughes and by the majority of Catholic newspapers, “successionist sheets” Brownson called them. During the war, these internal battles over the Catholic Church’s relation to slavery became quiet heated, particularly in the exchanges between Brownson and Hughes and between the editors of the New York Freeman’s Journal and the Catholic Telegraph.116 Although many antebellum Catholic attitudes to social problems continued on in the post-war years, a new awareness of the social situation gradually arose among some leading Catholic spokesmen 116

For Catholic views on slavery, see Madeleine Hooke Rice, American Catholic Opinion in the Slavery Controversy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944) and James Hennesey, American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 143-57.

74

American Catholic Religious Thought

and a few prophetic figures proposed new measures for social reform. In the 1870s, T. Wharton Collens, a New Orleans jurist, proposed the establishment of lay religious communities voluntarily devoted to poverty and to a communistic sharing of property.117 During these years, too, Catholics in large numbers were beginning to join trade unions and other labor unions. The cooperative principle was gradually accepted by laboring men, and a few Catholic leaders began to see the social problem in a new way. They began to interpret the social problems in terms of a faulty economic system rather than in the exclusive terms of individual moral corruption, and tried to shift Catholic energies away from the particular problems of the Catholic community toward the general welfare of American society. From 1880 to 1920, Catholics began to develop what Aaron Abell has called “social liberalism.”118 Such a program combined a crusade for social justice, cooperation with non-Catholics in solving social problems, and rapid Americanization of the new immigrants. Social liberalism manifested itself in a number of ways and helped prepare the American soil for the reception of Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum. James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, along with Bishops John Ireland and John Keane, defended the right of Catholics to organize and join labor unions in order to obtain justice from the industrialists. Father Edward McGlynn, a pastor in New York City, supported Henry George’s single tax theory as a means of solving the unequal distribution of the goods of creation. Americanists like Ireland, as we have seen, were fully behind the crusade for social justice. In 1889, for example, he called “the amelioration of the masses” one of the major needs of the age. The church had the primary responsibility to engage itself in this task. Like Father Edward McGlynn and many of the Protestant social gospelers, Ireland appealed to the popular cry of Christian social reformers. Amelioration of the masses has been, he said, “the constant aim of Christian charity; it is the practical application of the Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.” Until the laborers’ “material condition is improved, it “View of the Labor Movement,” Catholic World 10 (March, 1870): 784-98; excerpts reprinted in A. I. Abell, ed., American Catholic Thought, 72-90. 118 A. I.. Abell, ed., American Catholic Thought, xxiv. 117

Introduction

75

is futile to speak to them of supermaterial life and duties.” He called upon Catholics, therefore, to leave their sanctuaries and to become engaged in the struggle for economic justice because “Christ made the social question the basis of his ministry.”119 Rerum novarum represented a turning point in American Catholic thinking on the problems of the industrial order. Before it was published, Catholic thinkers had no consistent or systematic framework within which to speak about the social order. The encyclical discussed the social problems of the day within a neo-Thomistic philosophical framework. Leo XIII’s 1879 encyclical Aeterni patris had called for the revival of scholastic philosophy and the application of Thomistic philosophical principles to problems of modern science, culture and philosophy. Rerum novarum represented the attempt to apply Thomistic principles to the social problems and provided American Catholics with a philosophical framework within which to discuss American problems. Leo XIII’s Catholic solution to the social problem tried to steer a path between the Scylla of excessive individualism (capitalism) and the Charybdis of excessive conformity (socialism). Socialism, the most dangerous problem for Leo, magnified the role of the state in industrial life and provided no place for the rights of private property. Capitalism, or economic liberalism, on the other hand, rejected moral and political intervention in industry. It gave too much power to individuals and had no effective way of restraining greed. While it emphasized the rights of private property, it did not understand that property belongs first of all to God and is given for the benefit and use of all humankind. Leo’s solution to the economic problem was framed within the context of natural law and was based upon the nature and dignity of the individual person. He stressed two principles that came out of natural law: the inviolability of private property and the principle of subsidiarity. Every person has by nature the right to hold property as his/her own in “stable and permanent possession.” In the economic situation of the modern world this meant a just wage for the employee. And the just wage was to be determined not simply or solely by the free bargaining of working persons and their employers, but by a “dictate of nature more imperious and more ancient than any 119

Ireland, The Church and Modern Society, 85, 95-97.

76

American Catholic Religious Thought

bargain between man and man, that the remuneration must be enough to support the wage-earner in reasonable and frugal comfort.”120 In cases where employees and employers could not arrive at a just wage, recourse to the state was necessary. The state must step in to provide justice where classes of people might suffer injustice without such assistance. The church’s responsibility in helping to adjust the differences in society between working men and their employers was primarily accomplished by reminding each of duties to the other, especially the duties of justice and charity. A few American Catholics after 1891 responded to the pope’s encyclical by continuing to call for social reforms and social legislation. The Americanists, the Catholic lay congresses, individuals like John Zahm of Notre Dame and Humphrey Joseph Desmond of Milwaukee, the American Federation of Catholic Charities and other groups took up the call of the encyclical. No Catholic, however, was as systematic nor as creative as John Ryan in attempting to construct what Richard Ely called a “Catholic system of political economy.”121 From 1906, the date of his first major work on the topic, until his death in 1945, Ryan was the foremost Catholic systematic thinker on social problems. He used the papal encyclicals to develop his own theories of economic justice, but his emphases and methodology differed somewhat from the encyclical. He, like Leo XIII, emphasized the dignity of the individual, his natural rights to property, and his priority over the state; but Ryan stressed, more than Leo XIII, the limits of private property and used the positive science of economics to determine more precisely what a just wage might be in the actual circumstances of the American industrial society. For Ryan, the goods of creation exist for the use and benefit of all; this principle had a natural priority over the ownership and use of private property. Private property, moreover, was not in itself an inherent or intrinsic good, nor was it a metaphysical right (as the right to life and marriage). Under present economic conditions it was a social institution that provided for the public welfare and thus it was indirectly necessary for Rerum Novarum: Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII on the Condition of Labor, ed. Gerald C. Treacy, (New York: Paulist Press, 1939), 5, 6, 15, 28. 121 John Ryan, A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1906), xii. 120

Introduction

77

the individual’s benefit but ultimately subordinate to human welfare itself. Private property was still a natural right, but, unlike the right to life and to marriage, it was historically and culturally conditioned by circumstances conducive to individual and social welfare. Human welfare was the primary criterion for establishing the right of private property and for determining the morality of any social or economic system.122 Human welfare for Ryan was not an abstract or metaphysical principle of social justice; it was concrete, historical and pragmatic, referring to the “well-being of all persons, considered individually and socially.”123 It was to be measured by Ryan’s five canons for distributing the goods of the industrial order: i.e., equality, needs, efforts, productivity and scarcity. In the industrial system, furthermore, substantial human needs have a priority. One determined basic human needs inductively and empirically—primarily through the science of economics. This did not mean, of course, that the right to a living wage was a positive right. It was not; it was “individual, natural and absolute” because it was derived from the individual’s human dignity. The right was absolute in the sense that its validity was “not dependent on the will of anyone except the person” in whom it inheres. It was absolute, therefore, in existence, though not in extent. The right was certainly limited. The right “to liberty and property are not absolute in the sense that the individual may have as much of these goods as he pleases and do with them as he pleases, but inasmuch as within reasonable limits—which are always determined by the essential needs of personal development—these rights are sacred and inviolable.”124 The natural right to a living wage was always conditioned by history and the economic system. Thus, in order to determine the concrete nature of that right, one had to determine inductively the practical needs of individuals and families in their historical circumstances. The science of industrial or economic justice, therefore, was tentative, and always open to further progress. Practical moral problems of John Ryan, Distributive justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1927), 220-22. 123 Ibid., 220. 124 Ryan, A Living Wage, 43, 44, 45. 122

78

American Catholic Religious Thought

the industrial society could not be solved solely by recourse to abstract principles of philosophy or to generalized appeals to Scripture and theology. The ethicist had to know what public welfare meant in practice if he/she was going to solve existing social problems. Ryan used economics, therefore, to determine precisely what was possible and expedient in his moral theory of a just wage. This use of the inductive and empirical method made his natural law philosophy practical and useful in suggesting reforms for the industrial society. It also conditioned natural law theory historically and made it more open to the use of the inductive sciences than traditional applications of natural law, thereby creating what Leo XIII himself had called for in Aeterni patris, a dialogue between Thomistic or scholastic principles and the modern sciences. Ryan’s proposals for social reform, as articulated in A Living Wage (1906) and Distributive Justice (1916), found institutional expression in American Catholicism when the National Catholic Welfare Council, the national organization of the American Catholic hierarchy, published the “Bishops’ Program of Social Reconstruction,” written by Ryan, in 1919.”125 The “Bishops’ Program” called for social legislation to secure a living wage, just working conditions and hours, social security programs, unemployment insurance, and other specific economic reforms. Ryan was not the only significant American Catholic social thinker in the first half of the twentieth century, nor was his kind of mitigated capitalism (or democratic capitalism secured by state legislation) acceptable to every American Catholic social thinker. The German Central-Verein, the Catholic Worker Movement, Father Charles Coughlin and numerous other Catholics also read Rerum novarum and Quadragesimo anno (1931), but they appropriated and emphasized sides of papal social thought that Ryan had not stressed. After 1908, the German Central Verein, under the leadership of Frederick P. Kenkel, sought to establish social reforms on the basis of Catholic corporate structures. Using the principle of subsidiarity, the Verein emphasized the organic nature of the community, especially 125

John T. Ellis, ed., Documents of American Catholic History (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1962), 585-603.

Introduction

79

Catholic corporate communities, rather than the state, as the primary basis or agency of social reform. The church, rather than the state, could effectively teach social justice and organize, through its own divinely-established institutions, Christian agencies for social reform. Virgil Michel, the liturgical reformer, may also be classed with the Central Verein movement for social reform in that he saw the liturgy as the primary teacher and agency of Christian solidarity, and an efficient cause of social reconstruction. The liturgy was the celebration and realization of the organic structure of the church and society. It could make Christians socially conscious and activate them personally to respond to the economic and social needs of society. The Catholic Worker Movement, under the leadership of Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day, used the papal social encyclicals to buttress their philosophy of personalism and voluntary poverty as a means of social justice. Social reforms were of little value unless Christian individuals, obedient and committed to the transcendent demands of justice, personally touched the lives of individuals in real need. Charles E. Coughlin, the “radio priest” of the 1930s, asserted a different kind of social reform. For him, social injustices resulted primarily from financial and monetary disorders and not primarily from conflicts between employers and employees. Coughlin’s solution to the problem was nationalization of banking, credit, currency, power, light, oil, natural gas, and of all God-given natural resources—“ public necessities which by their very nature are too important to be held in the control of private individuals.”126 In the period after World War II, as Catholics were gradually moving into the middle and upper middle classes, emphasis in social thought was likewise gradually shifting from exclusively economic and industrial problems to the broader concerns of community living: housing, health, cultural improvements, peace and discrimination. Social justice issues would also no longer be narrowly American, but would consider the international effects of American economic and cultural relations, with a special attention to the problems of social justice in the third world. The pastoral letters of the American Catholic bishops on peace (1983) and economic justice (1986) revealed that the search for social 126

“The Coughlin Sixteen Points,” The Guildsman 3 (April, 1935): 10-11; reprinted in A. I. Abell, ed., American Catholic Thought, 407-08.

80

American Catholic Religious Thought

justice broadened considerably within the Catholic community in the late twentieth century and was much more clearly based upon biblical notions of peace and justice than upon natural law concepts.

NEO-THOMISM AND CATHOLIC CULTURE, 1920-1960 From the end of World War I to the presidential election of John F. Kennedy, a gradual shift was taking place in American Catholic life. Catholicism was transformed socially from an immigrant to an American Church. Catholics were gradually shedding some of their ethnic identity and becoming a part of the American mainstream. American legislation in the 1920s, of course, assisted this process by restricting the constant flow of immigrants. Throughout the period, therefore, Catholic ethnic consciousness was little by little decreasing as a means of defining one’s place in American society and Catholicism was beginning to replace ethnicity as a means of social differentiation in the pluralistic society. In the American sea of diversity, Catholicism became the integrating ship of individual and collective identity.127 The restriction of immigration helped to stabilize the development of Catholic institutions that continued to multiply. Now, however, that development was more and more controlled, especially in the large urban dioceses, by bureaucratic centralization, an imitation in part of American big business techniques.128 In the post-World War II era, moreover, American Catholics moved to the suburbs in large numbers, deepening the Americanization process as they left behind the urban ethnic centers. Throughout these years Catholic anti-Communism and the popular “Life-Is-Worth-Living” spirituality of prominent preachers like Fulton J. Sheen demonstrated anew the Americanism Will Herberg, Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1955). 128 See, e.g., Edward R. Kantowicz, “Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century American Catholicism,” Journal of American History 68 (June, 1981): 52-68; idem, Corporation Sole: Cardinal Mundelein and Chicago Catholicism (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). 127

Introduction

81

of Catholicism. Thus, American Catholics were beginning to experience the United States as homeland. Their minority feelings were progressively replaced and they were beginning to identify more and more with the American ethos. As American Catholics participated more fully in the economic, social and cultural mobility of the middle class and as they organized their multi-ethnic heritage into an American Catholic unity, Catholic philosophers and theologians began to articulate the ideological bases of that Catholic unity. The cultural and institutional movements toward religious solidarity were matched in philosophy and theology by an emphasis upon the integral nature of Catholicism. The Neo-Thomistic, liturgical and Catholic Worker movements of the 1920s and 1930s, for example, tried to create a Catholic culture in America. Although these three movements differed from each other in numerous ways, they all sought to redefine or restore the essential unity and integrity of the Catholic tradition. In one respect, these movements were implicitly, and many times explicitly, saying that American Catholics had lost or were losing a consciousness of their own uniqueness. Catholics, they pleaded, had to become more explicitly conscious of their own Catholic identity. The Neo-Thomistic revival reasserted the capacity of reason to comprehend reality, the unity and harmony of the world, the unicity of truth, the transcendental moral order of the universe, the certitude of faith, and the authority of the hierarchy to bring about a uniformity of doctrine and discipline within the Church. It provided Catholic intellectuals with an ideology that expressed the intelligibility of the world and the Catholic community’s optimism and Americanism at a time in American society when many prominent American intellectuals had denied that intelligibility and had become disillusioned with the optimism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.129 In some respects, the Neo-Thomistic revival was similar to Neo-Orthodoxy in American Protestantism. Both movements were a search for 129

The best historical work on Neo-Thomism in the United States from 1920 to 1940 is William M. Halsey, The Survival of Catholic Innocence (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980). Although I differ from some of Halsey’s interpretations, I am relying upon his work in much of what follows on Neo-Thomism.

82

American Catholic Religious Thought

the fundamental roots of their religious perspectives. As Neo-Orthodoxy was a return to the principles of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, so Neo-Thomism was a return to and reassertion of thirteenth-century Thomistic principles. Both movements, moreover, incorporated some of the liberalism of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American intellectual and cultural developments. Neo-Orthodoxy accepted the historical consciousness of the age, biblical criticism, social consciousness and the use of science in the theological enterprise. Neo-Thomism continued the optimism and Americanism of the previous age. Both movements, furthermore, were critical of their own age. Neo-Orthodoxy criticized nineteenth-century liberal theology and the progressive era for a naive optimism, belief in inevitable progress, and a capitulation to the scientific method as the starting point for theological reflection. Neo-Thomism criticized the age for its skepticism, irrationalism, disillusionment, individualistic capitalism, and totalitarian socialism. Thus, both movements were, to a certain extent, counter-cultural in their criticisms of the liberal American intellectuals’ assessments of the age. Fundamental differences, of course, separated the two movements. Some of the differences corresponded to the traditional post-Tridentine religious perspectives. The Neo-Orthodox, for example, relied more upon Scripture than natural law as a source of theological reflection. The Neo-Thomist had a more optimistic view of human nature and the capacities of human reason than did the Neo-Orthodox. Although the Neo-Thomistic revival had its roots in mid-nineteenth-century European Catholicism and was officially sanctioned and promulgated in Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni patris, nevertheless it did not reach the United States with any significant impact until the 1920s and 1930s. Before this period, it is true, a few Catholics were interested in at least a commentators’ Thomism. As early as 1869, for example, Camillo Mazzella, (1833-1900), professor of dogmatic theology at Woodstock Theological College in Maryland, published a few neo-scholastic theological textbooks, but they had little impact upon the Thomistic revival in this country. Mazzella’s form of scholasticism, in one recent authority’s opinion, did not have “any real understanding of modern science and culture,”130 and therefore could 130

Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for a Unitary Method (New York: The Seabury Press, 1977), 238.

Introduction

83

not show the relevance of Thomism for the modern world. In 1873, St. Louis University’s Philosophy Department also began to exhibit a neo- scholasticism that followed the Jesuit Francisco Suárez’s (15481617) commentaries, appropriations, and departures from Thomas Aquinas’ philosophy and theology, giving rise to what has been called Suárezianism. These two early attempts to revive scholasticism, however, had little immediate effect upon American Catholic intellectual life. Even after Aeterni patris, American Catholics were still not moved in the direction of neo-scholasticism. Some philosophers, like Edward A. Pace of the Catholic University in Washington, D. C., founded a philosophy department in 1895 upon Thomistic principles, but his efforts did not begin to show results until the 1920s. From the 1890s until the condemnation of modernism in 1907, American Catholics were less than enthusiastic about the revival of scholastic theology. In fact, as already indicated, those like John Zahm who did speak up about a revival of American Catholic intellectual life were more interested in meeting the theological questions raised by history and science than they were in reconstructing a scholastic synthesis. John B. Hogan, John Talbot Smith, and John Montgomery Cooper, too, were critical of the metaphysical speculations of scholastic thought. They wanted theology and philosophy to be presented historically and in dialogue with the empirical sciences. Increasingly, though, after 1907, Roman declarations and canonical legislation almost institutionalized Thomism as “the only proper mode of Catholic thought.” Pope Pius XII’s Humani generis (1950), like a number of previous papal encyclicals, made Thomism the “most authoritative expression of Catholic thought and a safe intellectual route to orthodoxy.”131 Early twentieth-century American Catholic receptivity to NeoThomistic patterns of thought was conditioned as much (if not more) by the changing social and cultural experiences within American Catholicism as by the papal declarations. After World War I, as they began to search for the intellectual unity of their Catholicism, American Catholics discovered that the Thomistic revival could provide them with an integral philosophy of life that could meet the demands of their social and cultural experiences. Gradually Neo-Thomism began to dominate Catholic seminaries, colleges and universities, so that by 131

Halsey, The Survival, 141-42.

84

American Catholic Religious Thought

the late 1950s over fifty percent of the philosophers in Catholic colleges and universities would identify themselves as Neo-Thomists. Although St. Thomas Aquinas was the unifying figure of the NeoThomistic movement, his thought flowered in a variety of ways in the United States as it had in Europe. The Neo-Thomistic movement was not monolithic. I believe that William Halsey’s otherwise excellent study of Neo-Thomism in his The Survival of Catholic Innocence has not given adequate attention to the varieties of Thomisms, either in Europe or in the United States. He presents neo-scholastic thought as a monolithic form of “common sense” philosophy. That was certainly one of its manifestations, but there were other more sophisticated forms of the movement. In its earliest forms, Neo-Thomism was simply a continuation of what Gerald McCool, has called a commentators’ Thomism, i.e., a continuation of the theologies of Cajetan or John of St. Thomas, the baroque commentators on St. Thomas’ theology.132 From the late 1930s through the 1950s, some American Catholics, following the lead of Jacques Maritain’s “strict-observance Thomism,” enriched and developed the commentators’ traditional Thomism, and others, following Etienne Gilson, began to approach St. Thomas historically in order to recover Thomas’ own philosophy and to discover the diversity of scholasticisms. Some American Catholics, too, sought not just a recovery of Thomistic principles but a creative application of those principles to modern problems. John Ryan, as we have already seen, and John Courtney Murray applied Thomistic principles to the problems of social justice and political theory in ways that significantly transformed the Thomistic tradition. Not until the late 1950s and early 1960s did American Catholics begin to examine still another form of the Thomistic tradition: i.e., the transcendental Thomism of Joseph Maréchal, Karl Rahner, and Bernard Lonergan.133 The “common sense” form of Neo-Thomism that developed in the early 1920s and continued through the 1930s found in St. Thomas the symbol of Christian rationalism. The followers and advocates of this Christian rationalism saw in St. Thomas’ theological and philosophical systems a uniquely Catholic contribution to the stability and rational 132

The commentators’ theologies were clearly distinguished from that of St. Thomas. On this, see McCool, Catholic Theology, 243-44.

Introduction

85

development of American society. Post-World War I America had, many Catholic intellectuals believed, “lost faith not only in religious beliefs, social customs, and moral certainties, but even in reason itself.” What the Thomistic tradition offered American Catholics was, in William Halsey’s opinion, “an almost Enlightenment fascination with reason and its powers of construction.”134 The modern world entertained a fundamental uncertainty with regard to the capacity of reason, the nature of the universe, and the values and meaning of human association. Catholics, under the influence of Thomism, began asserting an “every man’s” confidence in reason. Some of these Catholic philosophers were not bothered by the perplexities of the modern world. They could say, with John O. Riedl of Marquette University: “Scholastic philosophers are somewhat unique among present-day philosophers. They still believe in Truth, in reality, in God, in the power of human reason to know real things, in an immortal soul, an after life, and the power of man to guide his own destiny. Oddly enough, they based their belief in these fundamental verities on the authority of reason alone. . . . Outside scholasticism there seems to be nothing but intellectual chaos and despair.”135 For many of the “common sense” Thomists of the early 1920s and 1930s Thomism had demonstrated its “pliability” over the years by modifying and adjusting the accidents of the system to the “march of the physical sciences” and to the newer philosophies, but it had been “changed in no essential element from the splendid synthesis created by St. Thomas and his fellow-pioneers.” Thus, the movement “back to St. Thomas” was “not such a far cry after all, since his genius has lived an unbroken life to this day, safe like so many other worth-while On the different kinds of twentieth-century Neo-Thomism, see ibid., 25267, and Helen James John, The Thomist Spectrum (New York: Fordham University Press, 1966), and especially Gerald A. McCool, From Unity to Pluralism: The Internal Evolution of Thomism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989) and idem, The Neo-Thomists (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1994). 134 Robert J. Henle, “The New Scholasticism,” Thought 13 (September, 1938): 475, quoted in Halsey, The Survival, 17. 135 “Everyman’s Philosophy,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Society 11 (1935): 186-87, quoted in Halsey, The Survival, 148. 133

86

American Catholic Religious Thought

institutions in the Church’s protecting arms.”136 The unchanging nature of the Thomistic synthesis meant for some that “wisdom has been achieved by man.” Such attitudes had significant consequences for education whose primary purpose was to pass on this wisdom because the “humane use of the mind, the function proper to him as man, is contemplation and not research.... In sum, then, research cannot be the primary object of a Catholic graduate school, because it is at war with the whole Catholic life of the mind.”137 The “common sense” philosophy followed by many American Catholic philosophers and theologians may have provided American Catholicism with the intellectual foundations for their sense of Catholic unity and identity in an age of “intellectual chaos and despair,” but it did not creatively dialogue with the intellectual currents of the day (e.g., pragmatism, idealism, neo-orthodoxy) and thereby make their philosophy a partner in the intellectual discussions of the day. As early as 1921, Virgil Michel, like Orestes Brownson before him, had argued that the Neo-Thomistic revival would be ineffective if it disregarded contemporary patterns of thought. Neo-Thomism, he asserted, could not be developed in lonely isolation from modern philosophical movements. “If we refuse to see the standpoint of others, or ignore their sincerity, we are not only shutting off all possibility of assisting them, but we are actually building a wall around ourselves and closing to them all avenues of approach.” Catholic philosophy, if it were to communicate to those outside of Catholicism, had to appear “in a garb that is intelligible and acceptable to the outsiders” and to show “so much appreciation of other viewpoints that it does not repel those of other belief at first sight.”138 Michel’s advice was not heeded by many Catholic philosophers and theologians. Although many American Catholics popularized NeoThomism by making it a philosophy of common sense for everyman, J. Edward Coffey, “Classroom Disease and the Scholastic Prescription,” American Ecclesiastical Review 69 (July, 1923): 34. 137 George Bull, “The Function of a Catholic Graduate School,” Thought 13 (September, 1938): 368, 378, quoted in Gannon, “Before and After Modernism,” 358-59. 138 “The Mission of Catholic Thought,” American Catholic Quarterly Review 46 (1921): 662-63. 136

Introduction

87

some Catholics began to respond to the Thomistic revival in more sophisticated ways. Some followed Jacques Maritain and others Etienne Gilson in an attempt to articulate the values of Thomism for the modern era. The founding of the Modern Schoolman (1925), Thought (1926), The New Scholasticism (1927) and the American Catholic Philosophical Association (1927) signaled a more rigorous historical and philosophical study of scholasticism and Thomism. The historical recovery of Thomism, in particular, was advanced in many universities and colleges. Such was the case, for example, at Marquette University from 1925 to 1965. Under the leadership of John E. McCormick (1925-33) and Gerard Smith (1945-65), who had been educated at Toronto under Maritain and Gilson, Marquette’s Philosophy Department became a leader in the historical revival of Thomism. Edward Pace and others at the Catholic University of America continued in the 1920s and 1930s to read Aeterni patris as a call to bring Thomism into dialogue with modern empirical sciences and modern forms of philosophy. John Stanislaus Zybura saw assimilative powers in the revival and focused on what he called “Progressive Scholasticism.”139 These neo-scholastics were not naive realists or unguarded optimists whose confidence in reason reflected their refusal to engage the various post-Enlightenment (Kant, Marx, Freud, and James) critiques of reason’s capacities. Their reassertion of reason’s role in life was not that of the Enlightenment. Like Maritain, Gilson and their followers, they were part of a creative attempt to apply Thomism to modern problems. A few of these neo-scholastic thinkers from 1920 to 1960 utilized the neo-scholastic revival to address significant issues in American society. As we have already seen, Neo-Thomism supplied the natural law tradition for John Ryan’s social ethics; it also provided the intellectual foundations for John Courtney Murray’s understanding of churchstate relations and for Gustave Weigel’s approach to Christian unity. Murray’s position represents perhaps the most creative and explicit adaptation of the Thomistic tradition to American experiences. From the establishment of Theological Studies (1940), the first significant 139

See his translation of Gerardo Bruni’s Progressive Scholasticism (St. Louis and London: B. Herder, 1929).

88

American Catholic Religious Thought

American Catholic theological journal since the New York Review, to his death in 1967, John C. Murray developed a modern Catholic understanding of religious liberty that had a significant impact upon the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty. As European Catholic theologians during the 1940s and 1950s were developing a transcendental form of Thomism by a careful analysis of Thomistic principles in the light of modern philosophies, so Murray was developing an American Thomistic position on religious liberty by examining the Thomistic principles of natural law in the light of the American political experience and the political consciousness that had evolved during the previous two centuries in the Western world. His critical and historical interpretation of official magisterial pronouncements, moreover, demonstrated that the Catholic Church had its own internal intellectual resources for accepting the legitimate historical development of religious liberty. As European Transcendental Thomism came to terms with the subjectivity of the individual as it had been developing in modern philosophy and theology, so Murray’s Thomism came to terms with the evolving political consciousness of religious liberty and formulated a theory of church-state relations that met the practical and changing exigencies of modern society. From the time of John Carroll, American Catholic leaders had repeatedly supported religious liberty and the American constitutional provisions for the separation of church and state. The Catholic understanding of these positions, however, had never been clearly or theoretically articulated. The problem, of course, arose because of the various unions of church and state in European Catholic countries, the nineteenth-century papal declarations against religious liberty and separation, and John A. Ryan’s and Moorhouse Millar’s publication of The State and the Church (1922). Ryan asserted that in theory the state was obliged to support the one, true church, but in practice that obligation existed only in a Catholic state, not in the United States or in any other contemporary pluralistic state. It could happen in the United States, though, that non-Catholic sects would dissolve to such an extent that a political proscription of religion would become possible.140 140

John A. Ryan and Moorhouse F. X. Millar, The State and the Church (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 38, 39.

Introduction

89

Such a position not only created problems for Alfred Smith’s campaign for the presidency in 1928, but also contradicted the former American Catholic positions on the relationship of church and state and confirmed Protestant suspicions about Catholic designs upon America. Ryan’s position was similar to the so-called “thesis-hypothesis” theory that had developed in nineteenth-century European Catholicism. The thesis-hypothesis position, simply stated, asserted that the ideal relationship between the church and state was one of union (thesis), but given the present historical situation of religious pluralism a constitutional separation could be allowed in order to secure public peace (hypothesis). Between 1940 and the 1960s the theory was warmly debated in American Catholic theological circles. Murray and Joseph C. Fenton, professor of theology at the Catholic University and editor of the American Ecclesiastical Review, became the primary theological opponents and proponents of the theory. Murray presented the issue of religious liberty as a concrete, historical problem. For him, it was not first of all a metaphysical or abstract issue, as it was for advocates of the thesis-hypothesis position. His analysis of the problem began with a scrutiny of the historical situation, rather than with an examination of abstract principles. He noted first of all the historical growth of personal and political consciousness, and saw that “religious pluralism is theologically the human condition.” In other words, the historical fact of pluralism was itself theologically significant. The historical demands for political and religious freedoms, moreover, were expressions of the demands of “natural law in the present moment of history.”141 Religious liberty, for Murray, was primarily “a juridical or constitutional concept, which has foundations in theology, ethics, political philosophy, and jurisprudence.” Constitutionally, religious liberty guarantees freedom of conscience and freedom of religion. From a juridical perspective, freedom of conscience “is the human and civil right of the human person to immunity from all external coercion in his search for God, in the investigation of religious truth, in the acceptance or rejection of religious faith, in the living of his interior 141

The Problem of Religious Freedom (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1965), 109, 19.

90

American Catholic Religious Thought

religious or non religious life.142 Freedom of religion is a corporate or ecclesial, as well as an individual, freedom, entailing the right of religious association and expression. The problem of understanding this religious liberty in the contemporary world revolved around a proper understanding of the nature of the state and political government. Murray turned to natural law to uncover what he considered the truths of the political order—but natural law understood historically. Natural law advanced the “idea that government has a moral basis; that the universal moral law is the foundation of society; that the legal order of society—that is, the state—is subject to judgment by a law that is not statistical but inherent in the nature of man; that the eternal reason of God is the ultimate origin of all law.” These absolutes of the natural law, however, were always experienced amidst historical contingencies. Although history does not alter the natural law, it does change “human reality.” The “nature of man is an historical nature,” and to fail to understand that “history continually changes the community of mankind and alters the modes of communication between man and man” is to fail to understand the political order.143 The political consciousness of the civil and religious rights of human persons had been developing in the Western world for the past two centuries. The American understanding of the constitutional state with its acknowledgment of religious liberty was one of the chief products of this development. The American political consensus which produced the understanding of the constitutional state was derived from “ethical and political principles drawn from the tradition of natural law,” and this tradition had roots in the Catholic tradition.144 The natural law tradition in regard to political principles is constantly open to human development because history changes the “human reality.” Thus, one needs to pay close attention to the existing historical conditions to obtain a clear understanding of the state. Once Murray established the idea that religious liberty was a constitutional provision that reflected the developing political consciousness of the contemporary Western world, he tried to show that the Catholic Ibid., 20, 24. We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1964), 53, 116. 144 Ibid., 52. 142 143

Introduction

91

Church could and should endorse this development. Religious liberty could be confirmed, he argued, because it was recognized by natural reason, which had itself been developing on this issue over the centuries, and because it “represents a valid growth in the understanding of the [Catholic] tradition” itself.145 The Catholic tradition’s constant avowal of the distinction between the spiritual and temporal, of the superiority of the spiritual to the temporal, and its concern for the freedom of the church amid the vicissitudes of history provided the foundation for a Catholic ratification of religious liberty as a constitutional provision. When the Catholic Church creatively combined these elements in its own tradition with the church’s recent developing consciousness of human dignity and individual rights, clearly manifested in papal encyclicals since Leo XIII, it could certainly approve the modern constitutional development of religious liberty. To demonstrate this point, Murray critically examined and interpreted the recent papal teachings, showing that they revealed an evolving awareness and deepening consciousness of human dignity and the necessity of peace and justice in the social order. These developments corresponded to those in Western constitutional states where religious liberty was acknowledged. The evolving Catholic consciousness of the needs of the social order and the application of Catholic principles to that order could legitimately be extended to the political order where religious liberty was accepted as a reflection of the awareness of human dignity and of the need for justice and peace in society. In the midst of post-World War II Protestant-Catholic tensions, Murray hoped that his understanding of religious liberty would mitigate some of the Protestant and Jewish suspicions about Catholic treats to religious and civil liberties. A Catholic justification of religious liberty, he thought, might also lead to a much needed intercredal cooperation on issues of public welfare in the nation and in the international community. Despite these efforts the tensions between Protestants and Catholics and Jews continued into the 1950s and would be significantly decreased only during and after the Second Vatican Council. During the 1950s, though, a few other Catholic attempts to bring about a better understanding between Protestants and Catholics emerged. 145

Problem of Religious Freedom, 33.

92

American Catholic Religious Thought

Catholic theologians like George Tavard and Gustave Weigel became pioneers of a Catholic form of ecumenism prior to Vatican II.146 Weigel, like Murray, had been educated in the Neo-Thomistic tradition. He brought that tradition to an understanding of Christian unity. In 1948, Murray encouraged Weigel to begin studying and writing on Protestant-Catholic relations in the United States. He began doing so in the 1950s, encouraging the American Catholic community to learn more about Protestants and Protestant America. Weigel’s ecumenical goal was to move the churches closer to one another in preparation for some future day of convergence. Neither conversion nor compromise, however, was the means to the goal. The primary human means in the 1950s was mutual understanding. Thus, Weigel himself began to enter into theological dialogue with members of other Christian bodies as no other Catholic in the United States before him had done. Although Weigel engaged in numerous ecumenical exchanges, he was skeptical about the immediate possibilities of church unity because of the tremendous religious diversity in the United States, the fundamental differences in theology, the divergent understandings of Christian unity, and an indifference to the role of doctrine in many of the American Christian Churches. He argued, nevertheless, that Catholics should be actively involved in the ecumenical movement, even though it was Christ’s grace rather than human efforts that would eventually realize Christ’s own will that all be one. Weigel’s own efforts in the ecumenical dialogue before Vatican II were significant in that they laid the groundwork for the tremendous flowering of ecumenical activity after the Council. His own ecclesiology was still juridical, coming from his study of the scholastic theological manuals. Although his ecclesiology would be superseded by the council, his advanced ecumenical practices encouraged students who read his works in the 1950s to look more positively upon the religious traditions of their Protestant neighbors and to study them from their own sources. 146

For Weigel’s views, see Patrick W. Collins, Gustave Weigel, S.J.: A Pioneer of Reform (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1992); for Tavard, see Marc R. Alexander, Church and Ministry in the Works of G. H. Tavard (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1994).

Introduction

93 The Liturgical and Catholic Worker Movements

American Catholic religious thought from 1920 to 1960, although dominated by Neo-Thomism, developed other currents that were theologically significant for the Catholic community. The liturgical and Catholic Worker movements, although they too were influenced by Neo-Thomism, represented theological approaches to Christian life that were not evident in Neo-Thomism. The liturgical movement had its origins in European Catholicism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the 1920s the movement was sparked in the United States by those like Father William Busch of St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota, Virgil Michel of St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, Gerald Ellard of St. Louis University, and a host of others who read the publications of the European liturgists, were educated under them, or were immigrants who had already experienced the movement in Europe before coming to the United States. The American liturgical movement is important not only because it was eventually vindicated by the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy, but also because it, like Neo-Thomism, tried to create a Catholic culture in the United States. It reflected and incorporated, however, a number of theological emphases that quietly challenged the scholastic method of theology and the almost exclusive juridical ecclesiology within American Catholicism. The movement was not, as some had thought, a mere rearrangement of liturgical furniture, but a campaign to revive the liturgy as the indispensable source of the Christian life and the primary means for reviving the social consciousness of Catholics. Theologically, the movement focused upon the “Pauline doctrine of the mystical body of Christ,” making all Christians, in the words of Gerald Ellard, “realize that they are not merely members of one another, but severally the members of Christ, the fullness of Him, who is wholly fulfilled in them all.”147 The emphasis upon the church as the mystical body of Christ, an emphasis shared by a few American Catholic thinkers during the 1920s, reasserted the ecclesiological 147

“The Rebirth of Our Liturgical Life”, American Ecclesiastical Review 81 (July, 1929): 23.

94

American Catholic Religious Thought

concepts of interiority, organic communion and the priesthood of the faithful. In 1930, Michel, the founding editor of Orate Fratres (1926), the organ of the movement, argued that “polemical needs and historic conditions have led us to a somewhat one-sided emphasis of the nature of the church—not a denial of, but a neglect of emphasis on, her essential nature.” The liturgical movement was an attempt to restore a consciousness of the church’s inner divine life and thereby to subordinate its juridical aspects. Michel believed that the lost consciousness of the church as the mystical body of Christ coincided historically with the loss of the “liturgical sense.”148 Liturgical reformers in the United States, particularly Michel, also made a specifically American contribution to the movement. In the 1930s, after the promulgation of Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo anno (1931) and in the midst of the Depression, Michel began to advocate the inherent relationship of the liturgy, as the practical and visible expression of the mystical body, to social justice. The liturgy, he argued, could renew the social consciousness of Christians and thus inspire them to work for social justice in the world. As the movement developed from the 1930s to the 1960s, it also fostered and incorporated studies in positive theology, especially biblical research and historical theology. The renewal of biblical research, represented by the foundation of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly (1939), and the incipient interests in historical theology (especially in patristics and the study of the primitive church) enhanced the theological foundations of the movement and offered Catholics new ways of doing theology and religious education in the United States. To a certain extent, the liturgical movement resembled the “New Theology” developed in France with its campaign to “return to the sources.” The Catholic Worker movement, initiated by the lay Catholics Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day in the 1930s, reinforced many of the theological emphases of the liturgical movement, but is particularly important for drawing Catholic attention to Christian eschatological 148

“The True Christian Life,” American Ecclesiastical Review 82 (February, 1930): 135, 132.

Introduction

95

expectation and Christian personalism. The radical idea of the Worker movement, according to William Miller, the movement’s principal historian, is opposed to that liberalism that equates time with progress and progress with the observable and useful things “that brought men ease and power.” The movement was and is a return to the early Christian theme that Christ is at the center and core of all creation and history, and only in personally submitting to the Christ who is all in all will creation, history and humans find fulfillment. This Christian faith and hope is ultimately a rejection of that mentality which expects some kind of realization of human social fulfillment by technological and ideological change or manipulation.149 The true end and fulfillment of the Christian life is redeemed humanity. That end was of course realized in Christ and is now present in the mystical body of Christ, even though it is not completely realized in the present. The church’s mission, thus, is to make the promise of a redeemed humanity as practically present as is possible, given the sinful condition of humanity. The Worker challenged the church, in particular, to realize this eschatological goal in the present by making Christians more practically conscious of the evangelical demands of universal peace, justice and community. If Christian eschatological fulfillment was the vision behind the movement, Christian personalism was the means for realizing, if only partially, that vision in practical action. The movement is, thus, essentially an emphasis on a Christian practice that makes the mystical body a visible expression of the eschatological hope. Peter Maurin, the primary theorist of the movement, introduced Dorothy Day and others to the Christian Personalism of French philosophers like Emmanuel Mounier; the ideas of the Christian personalists became the fundamental ideological core of the movement.150 Christian personalism stressed each individual Christian’s responsibility to live out the faith by assisting one’s neighbor at a personal sacrifice. Personal holiness, grounded in the liturgy, expressed in practical action and dedicated to William Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (New York: Liveright, 1973), 3-4. 150 On Peter Maurin, see Marc H. Ellis, Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century (New York: Paulist Press, 1981) and Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love, 1723, 114-27, 201-16. 149

96

American Catholic Religious Thought

self-reform as a means of social regeneration was the hallmark of the Worker movement. Radical social change could never be accomplished without personal cooperation with supernatural grace and that always entailed moral regeneration manifested in voluntary poverty and the evangelical virtues of faith, love, and hope. The reformed Christian individual, rather than social legislation, was the primary key to a Christian society of love, justice and peace. Christian personalism stressed the active involvement of the laity in the Christian life. The demands of the evangelical virtues and the call of personal and social regeneration were universal; they belonged to the laity as well as to the clergy and religious. In the 1930s, the Worker, like the liturgical movement and Commonweal (1926) magazine, tried to raise the consciousness of the Catholic laity to their Christian responsibilities for a just society. At a time when many Catholics were calling for a more vigorous “lay apostolate” (i.e., lay participation in the mission of the hierarchy), these movements were asserting the personal and at times independent role of the laity in the regeneration of humanity and society. Lay participation in the Christian life, in the church and in society transcended the commonly-accepted definitions of the “lay apostolate.” The radical practice of Christian love was the core of Christian personalism. Transformed by divine grace, human beings were capable of carrying out the radicalism of Christian love and thereby sustaining the hope that Christ would be all in all. The experience and practice of love would itself be the assurance of the divine presence and promise. This kind of “love in action,” in the words of Dostoevsky’s Father Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov, frequently quoted by Dorothy Day, is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labor and fortitude and for some people, too, perhaps a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting further from your goal instead of nearer to it—at that very moment you will reach and behold clearly that miraculous

Introduction

97

power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.151

This kind of love in action is not cost efficient; it does not seek any immediate gratitude, reward or even practical effects. This kind of love characterized the Worker’s life style. The Worker’s goal, in William Miller’s words, “is not success in the world, as the world accounts success, but to establish the reality of the spirit in the world.”152 It is no wonder that such an approach to an integral Catholicism did not gain many adherents and has remained from the beginning to the present a minority movement within American Catholicism. But, like many movements within the church, this movement did and does give practical witness to the eschatological dimension of Christian life. Neo-Thomism, the liturgical and Catholic Worker movements, although different in a number of ways, fostered a vision of an integral Catholicism in the United States. All three movements were also extremely critical of what they saw as the intellectual chaos and despair of modern life, the individualism, materialism and secularism of American society, and the permeation of the church and its members with these values. As Catholics were moving into the mainstream of American life, therefore, these movements represented not only a criticism of American values but also a rejection of the direction many American Catholics were taking in their social and economic mobility. They were attempting to redefine the root and center of an integral Catholicism. The Christian rationalism of the thirteenth century, the liturgy, and Christian personalism were perceived as the vital sources of Catholic unity in the midst of tremendous American diversity. If ethnic Catholics were beginning to use Catholicism as a means of social identification, they needed to reflect more seriously on what it meant religiously.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. by Constance Garnett (New York: The Modern Library, 1950), 65, quoted in Catholic Worker (May 1939), 4. 152 Miller, A Harsh and Dreadful Love, 14-15. 151

98

American Catholic Religious Thought American Culture and Catholic Anti-Intellectualism

In the 1950s, as these movements for a more integral Catholicism were criticizing America and American Catholic values, another series of criticisms erupted within American Catholicism. This time the target was American Catholic anti-intellectualism. While some Protestants from neo-orthodox perspectives were attacking the “piety on the Potomac” and the “peace of mind” religious movements, Catholics were beginning to point out the failures of their own religious tradition to develop a creative intellectual and cultural life—a criticism formerly made by Nativists. The criticism broke out in John T. Ellis’ “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life.”153 This was followed in rapid succession by Walter J. Ong’s Frontiers of American Catholicism (1957), Gustave Weigel’s “American Catholic Intellectualist—A Theologian’s Reflection,”154 and Thomas E. O’Dea’s American Catholic Dilemma (1958). These writers castigated the Catholic schools and universities, among other institutions, for their sins against intellectualism. The criticisms themselves could be interpreted as signs of growing maturity, stability, and strength within the Catholic community. Ellis opened his attack by quoting the observation of Denis W. Brogan, professor of political science at the University of Cambridge: “In no Western society is the intellectual prestige of Catholicism lower than in the country where, in such aspects as wealth, members, and strength of organization, it is so powerful.”155 Ellis went on to point out some of the historical factors that curtailed creative intellectual and cultural developments in American Catholicism. Nativism, immigrant status, general American egalitarianism, lack of serious reading habits in the young, emphasis on material success in church and society, rote training in the seminaries, secondary and college education devoted to athleticism and vocationalism, schools perceived more as agents of moral development than as creative centers of thought—all of those factors helped to produce a ghetto mentality and intellectual narrowness, if not an anti-intellectualism. Walter Ong found the source of American Catholic intellectual lethargy in a constant return to the safe Thought 30 (Autumn, 1955): 353-86. Review of Politics 19 (July, 1957): 275-307. 155 Thought 30 (Autumn, 1955): 353. 153 154

Introduction

99

past of Europe for intellectual orthodoxy. Thomas F. O’Dea discovered the source of the failure in the fact that American Catholicism was a minority tradition that found it difficult to relate its distinctive religious and cultural traditions to the rapidly “changing patterns of a dominant non-Catholic culture.”156 These criticisms by respected Catholic intellectuals unwittingly prepared the ground for the barrage of self-criticism that would be unleashed during and after the Second Vatican Council. These criticisms and others that were taking place within neo- scholasticism also helped to break down the Thomistic synthesis that American Catholics had been trying to establish since the beginning of the 1920s.

CONCLUSION The Neo-Thomistic synthesis was of short duration. American Catholics prior to the 1920s were almost totally unaffected by it. American Catholic history shows, if one concentrates upon the writings of its major opinion makers, that American Catholic thought prior to Vatican II cannot be put into some kind of intellectual straightjacket called Post-Tridentine Catholicism. A number of intellectual changes and shifts of emphases existed amidst the fundamental ecclesiastical, sacramental and devotional unities. By experience as well as by intellectual culture American Catholic thinkers were not entirely out of contact with the modern world. Their intellectual world was not a ghetto world, as some would have us believe. Although American Catholic thinkers did indeed relate their understanding of Christianity to the larger currents of Western thought during the pre-Vatican II period, they developed few intellectual centers for a more systematic examination of their Catholic tradition within American society. Seminaries and the Graduate School of Theology at the Catholic University of America had been the primary source of theological education prior to Vatican II; gradually thereafter, the universities became the primary source for the theological education of lay men and women as well as clergy. Encouraged by the conciliar developments of Vatican II, greater contact with twentieth-century 156

T. O’Dea, American Catholic Dilemma, 76.

100

American Catholic Religious Thought

European, Catholic intellectual traditions, and the general mutations in American social consciousness, American Catholic thinkers began to establish graduate theological schools at their major universities (e.g., Marquette, Fordham, St. Louis, Notre Dame, Boston College). Catholic laity and clergy, educated at these schools, the European Catholic schools of theology, and the American Protestant and secular universities began to establish or strengthen departments of theology and religious studies at various Catholic and secular universities. The diversity of professional theological education, among other things, led almost inevitably toward a pluralism in theological perspectives in American Catholicism. The story of this late twentieth-century American Catholic development must be left for another volume.

Part I The Enlightenment, 1784-1842

1 ~ John England JOHN ENGLAND: ENLIGHTENMENT CATHOLICISM John England (1786-1842), first Catholic Bishop of Charleston South Carolina (1820-1842), was the most articulate and dynamic Catholic representative of the Enlightenment in the United States during the twenty-two years of his episcopate. Like Bishop John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, he advocated religious liberty, separation of Church and state, voluntaryism, and American republicanism. Unlike Carroll, he believed that the best way to destroy prejudice against Catholics in America was to demonstrate publicly and to argue articulately in the press and pulpit the compatibility of Catholicism and American Republicanism. England was born in Cork, Ireland, to Thomas England and Honora Lordan England. He studied at St. Patrick’s College, Carlow, Ireland (1803-08) in preparation for the priesthood. After ordination in 1808, he served in various pastoral capacities in the cities of Cork and Bandon (1808-20), and took an active role in the anti-veto resistance movement1 led by Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847). Influenced by the Enlightenment writings of Arthur O’Leary (1729-1802), he became 1

Periodically, from 1808 to1816, a number of Irish and English politicians (Catholics as well as Protestants) tried to obtain for the British Government the right to veto the nominations to Irish and English Catholic episcopal Sees. In exchange for the veto, the Catholics were to obtain emancipation and financial support for their church. Anti-vetoists resisted such attempts on the grounds that such a proposal would, among other things, unite church and state. On England’s involvement in this issue, see Peter Guilday, The Life and Times of John England, 2 vols. (New York, 1927), 1:98-124, and Patrick Carey, An Immigrant Bishop: John England’s Adaptation of Irish Catholicism to American Republicanism (New York, 1979), chps. 1 and 2, idem, “John England,” Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals Since 1770: 1770-1832, eds. J. O. Baylen and N. J. Gossman (New Jersey, 1977).

104

American Catholic Religious Thought

a forceful advocate of religious and civil liberty in Ireland, editing the Cork Mercantile Chronicle (1813-16), an organ of the anti-veto movement. In 1820, Irish clerics in Rome nominated England for the newly-established Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina. From 1820 to 1842 he served as Bishop of Charleston, establishing the first Catholic newspaper, the United States Catholic Miscellany, initiating a conciliar form of episcopal government in the United States, modeling his diocesan government after the Federal Constitution and the convention system of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and becoming the foremost apologist for American Catholicism. The following selection, A Discourse Before Congress (1826), reflects the influence of the Age of Reason upon England’s concept of religion and his general approach to apologetics. The speech was delivered in the presence of President John Quincy Adams and a “crowded assembly of Senators and Representatives.”2 A number of congressmen invited England to address the Congress because of an 1825 Christmas sermon he had preached in St. Patrick’s Church in Washington, D.C. The sermon was a veiled attack upon John Quincy Adams’ anti- Catholic remarks in an 1821 Fourth of July Oration. The point of Adams’ address was simply that Catholicism was responsible for a lack of religious freedom in the Western history. Adams contrasted the dark ages when Catholicism dominated with the bright age of religious freedom in the United States. He called Catholicism “that pretentious system of despotism and of superstition.” Under such a system human beings had no rights. By contrast, the religious Reformation of the sixteenth century brought about a “triumph of reason.” “Released from the manacles of ecclesiastical domination, the minds of men began to investigate the foundations of civil Government.”3 England’s oration before Congress attempted to demonstrate that reason had also triumphed in Catholicism. England argued, moreover, for the separation of spiritual and temporal powers in society, clearly distinguishing between historical practice and ecclesiastical doctrine.

****** 2 3

Guilday, England, II, 52. For Adams’ oration see Niles’ Register, 20 (July 21, 1821): 326-32.

1 ~ John England

105

TEXT A DISCOURSE BEFORE CONGRESS (January 8, 1826) Source: Ignatius Reynolds, ed., The Works of the Right Reverend John England, 5 vols. (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1849), 4:173-90. INTRODUCTION

MY BRETHREN: The peculiar circumstances in which I find myself placed in this respectable assemblage, are to me the cause of some embarrassment; for I look upon the situation in which I stand, to be one of extreme delicacy. I am the minister of a religion professed by a minority of our citizens; standing, by the permission of the pastor of a different communion, in accordance with the wish of some of my friends and their associates, members of the legislature of this nation, to address you upon the subject of religion. Whilst I know that I ought to speak freely, I also feel that I should avoid any unpleasant reference to those differences which exist between persons professing Christianity, except where the necessity of the case would demand such reference. And I am fully aware, that as I am the first clergyman of the church to which I belong, who has had the honor of addressing you from this chair, it must be generally expected that I would rather speak upon some of the peculiarities of my own faith, than content myself with giving a discourse upon any general topic, that as being common to all, would be to you matter of no special interest. But in order to arrive at the particular ground of this description, it will be necessary at first to examine the general principles of our religion; through these the avenue lies, and through that we must proceed. Upon those general principles, I presume, I shall be found to accord with the great bulk of my auditors; though I cannot hope that they will all agree with me in my details, or rather, in my conclusions. I shall then commence, by examining what religion is; that from this examination we may arrive at the proper place for making our further inquiry.

106

American Catholic Religious Thought GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF RELIGION

Religion is the homage which man owes to God. This, and this only, is religion; everything is embraced in this principle; no detail is excluded from this definition. Man’s duty to God is, then, religion. Thus, to know what man’s duty is, we are brought to examine his nature—that nature is two-fold—spiritual and corporeal—the spirit superior to the body, more perfect than the body: the first duty of a religious man is to worship God, who is a spirit, in spirit and in truth. But to know how this spiritual worship is to be paid by man to his Creator, we must learn of what man’s spirit consists, or rather we must see what faculties it embraces. The first faculty of the soul is the understanding, by which we discern truth from error. Man is bound to worship God by his faculties; his leading duty is, then, to worship God with his understanding; and the great province of the understanding being to discriminate between truth and error, man’s primary religious obligation is to labor for the discovery of truth, and to adhere to what he shall have thus discovered. Truth and falsehood are not, therefore, matters of indifference—man’s obligation is to adhere to truth, and to reject falsehood; the exertion of the understanding for this purpose is then our first, our highest duty: to neglect this is criminal. This investigation for the discovery of religious truth, is the duty of every human being; each person is bound to inquire to the best of his power; and he who neglects or overlooks his obligation is inexcusable. But it is not enough that the understanding is enlightened. It is not for the mere object of being acquainted with speculative truth, that he should inquire. The second faculty of the soul is the will: its determinations are formed with perfect freedom: generally upon the knowledge which has been acquired: hence, the discovery of truth should be pursued, for the purpose of regulating the determinations of the will; and the homage of this faculty is paid to the Creator, by continually determining to act according to the law of reason, as it has been discovered after sufficient inquiry. Moreover, we feel within ourselves, and all mankind testifies to a similar experience, that after such a result we do not always act as we have determined. The allurements of the world in which we live, mutual example, and a variety of affections, desires, and passions, interfere between the determinations of the will, and the carrying

1 ~ John England

107

of those resolutions into effect. But it is our duty to withstand those allurements not to be misled by example; to regulate our affections and desires, to keep our passions in subjection to our reasonable determinations, and thus to do in all things the perfect will of God, which must accord with the great rule of reason. Man is not wholly a spirit; he is also a material being; having a body, and living in a visible world, where his fellow creatures are also in bodily existence: he owes to his Creator external homage with that body, as well to pay to the author of his whole being the worship of all its parts, as to give evidence to others that will, at the same time, satisfy them of his acting with due respect to the Great Father of all, as also to excite his brethren to religion, by his own good example.—Pure, unbodied intelligences who worship before the throne of the Most High, in spirit and in truth, pay the homage of their whole being in mere spiritual adoration, because they are altogether and exclusively spiritual in their nature. Man, made less than the angels, bears about him a body which he has received from the Creator of his soul—the dissimilarity of their natures destroys the analogy by which it might be sought to establish, that his worship should he in all things similar to that paid by a spirit having no material parts joined in his nature. The plain result of these considerations must be, that it is our duty to exert our understanding for the discovery of truth, to frame the determination of our will according to ascertained truth, and to carry those determinations into effect, to bring our affections into accordance with reason, to keep our passions under proper restraint, and to pay to God external homage. This is what we call natural religion; for it is what nature and reason exhibit as our duty. If God never revealed his will to man, we should have those great principles only for our guidance to the fulfilment of our obligations to our Creator. But two questions naturally present themselves to us; did God ever make special communications to any of our race? And if he did, could such revelation destroy or weaken the force of the principles of natural religion? REVELATION

To the last question an immediate answer may be unhesitatingly given. No revelation made by God can destroy or weaken the force of those

108

American Catholic Religious Thought

principles. On the contrary, such revelation must not only be in accordance with them, but would tend rather to strengthen them, and to give more precision to their application. God, the eternal truth, cannot be inconsistent with himself. Truth cannot be contradictory to truth. Human reason is a spark emanating from the great fire of eternal truth; though extremely limited, yet it has proceeded from the infinite Deity: its slender ray may too often imperfectly exhibit what lies around us in the dark labyrinth through which we journey to the grave; and the same objects would be more fully exposed to view, and more distinctly understood, if the effulgence of the Godhead poured its brilliant flood around. The objects then, by either light, would still continue unchanged, though their appearance would in each case be materially altered. What human reason clearly and fully discovers cannot be known otherwise by the intelligence of God, and his testimony by revelation would still accord with his testimony by human reason; but too frequently we are disposed to conclude, that we are well acquainted with what we very imperfectly know, and we assert that reason testifies where it does not. Hence there is created an apparent conflict between what we say our reason testifies, and what we state that God reveals. But the great duties of natural religion are equally enforced by both. If we should find that God did make a revelation, there will not be anything found in that revelation to weaken the principles of natural religion. The first principle of each is, that man is obliged to exert himself for the discovery of truth. In a state of mere nature we would have only the testimony of our own reason; in a state of revelation we have the additional aid of the testimony of God. Although the one is more extensive and more perfect than the other, still there can be no conflict between them. Daily experience ought to convince us, how limited is our knowledge. Yet our pride urges us to think that we can be acquainted with even the secrets of the Godhead. We certainly are not, and cannot be bound to believe without such evidence as will be sufficient to satisfy the mind. That evidence must be the exhibition of truth to our own reason, or our perfect satisfaction that we receive the testimony of God. Without this evidence no man is bound to believe. The humblest individual who walks the earth has not been subjected by his Creator to any dominion which can enthral his intellect; he stands before his Maker

1 ~ John England

109

as independent in his mind as does the brightest intelligence which scans the perfections of the Deity, and glows in the raptures of his vision. It is true that we are made lower than the ministering spirits who surround the throne of heaven. Yet we are not made subject to them. Nor is any man’s mind made subject to his fellow man. But we all are upon this ground made originally equal; all bound to believe God when he speaks, all bound to admit his infinite knowledge, to testify to his unerring truth, and to pay the homage of our submission to his declaration. Every creature must bow every faculty before the Creator, but to the Creator alone. Thus we find the fundamental principles of revealed religion to be, that man is bound to pay to God the homage of his understanding by believing him when he makes a revelation. This belief is faith; that is, the belief upon the testimony of God, of truths or facts which unaided human reason could not discover. And since we should exert ourselves to discover truth, we cannot be excused from making the inquiry as to whether God made a revelation, and if he did what were his communications. Nor can it be to us a matter of indifference whether we take up truth or error for regulating the determinations of our will. If it was not beneath the dignity of God to stoop for the instruction of man, it cannot be a degradation for man to raise himself to learn from his Creator. It is his duty to learn and to obey. The view then given by us of revealed religion is that it consists in believing God when he teaches us, and in obeying him when he commands us, and of course adhering to his institutions.—Whatever is the necessary consequence of this great principle we say is religion. Anything which is not embraced in this, is not religion. It may be superstition, it may be fanaticism, it may be infidelity, it may be folly; but it is not religion.—Faith then is not folly, it is not abject slavery of the mind, it is not visionary fanaticism, it is not irrational assent to unintelligible propositions; but it is believing upon the testimony of God what human reason could not discover, but what a provident and wise Deity communicates for the information of our minds and the direction of our will. And surely there are a multitude of truths which are known to God, and whose discovery is yet beyond the reach of our limited faculties! We are surrounded by mysteries of nature; we observe innumerable facts, not one of which has yet been explained, and many of which

110

American Catholic Religious Thought

would be almost pronounced contradictions, although known to be in coexistence—man is himself a mystery to man—yet the God who formed his body, and created his soul, plainly sees and distinctly understands all the minute details of the wonderful machine of his body; and is well acquainted with his vital principle; the nature and essence of the soul are within his view. He is lifted above the heavens; his days are from eternity to eternity: he pervades all space; his eye beholds the worlds which roll in the firmament, and embraces the infinite void; all things which exist are exposed to his vision; whilst man, the diminutive speck upon a spot of creation, scarcely distinguishes the objects which dimly show within his confined horizon: shall he presume to say that nothing exists beyond the narrow precincts of his temporary prison? Or, if the God of heaven declares some of the riches which lie scattered through his works: if he vouchsafes to inform us of his own nature, or of ours, that our relations may be more specifically understood; our hopes more clearly founded; our zeal better excited; our determinations better regulated; and our acts be more suitably, and simply, and satisfactorily directed, shall stunted little man presume to say that perhaps he is deceived, because he has only the testimony of God, but not the testimony of his own reason? Does not his own reason tell him that God neither can be deceived, nor can he deceive his creatures? Thus his own reason informs man, that the testimony of God, making a revelation, is the very highest evidence of truth—the surest ground of certainty. It might sometimes happen, that what is found to have been testified by the Deity, contradicts what would appear, to some individuals, to have been ascertained by the process of their own reasoning. Our principle is plain; God cannot err, man frequently has erred, and is perpetually liable to mistake. If then, we have certain proof of the declaration of the Creator, there can be no difficulty in arriving at the reasonable, the practical, the correct result: that result is again our great principle—it is the duty of man to believe God when he testifies; and the simple inquiry will be regarding the question of fact, “has God testified.” If he has, our doubts must cease; our belief is demanded by reason and by religion. Indeed, they are never opposed to each other; upon patient inquiry they will always be found mutually to aid each other. The history of the world presents to us the exhibi-

1 ~ John England

111

tion of the weakness of the human mind—perpetually changing its theories; perpetually adding to its stock of information; frequently detecting its own mistakes; correcting its aberrations, and proving its imbecility, whilst it asserts its strength. The eternal God, infinite in his perfections, is always the same; in him there is no vicissitude; alone, changeless amidst a changing universe; his vesture and decoration he may change, but he is eternally the same, in his knowledge as in his truth: the heavens and the earth may pass away but his word cannot fail. TESTIMONY TO REVELATION

We are thus brought to the simple inquiry concerning the fact of a revelation. The truth of a fact must be always ascertained by testimony: that testimony must be such as ought to be sufficient to produce conviction of truth, before belief can be reasonably required. When that sufficient testimony has been adduced, to withhold belief would be unreasonable—unreasonable rejection of evidence, where there is no question as to the revelation of God, cannot be innocent. The refusal to examine is plainly against the first principle of religion; contrary to the plainest maxims of reason. A mistake honestly made is pardonable, but the rejection of evidence must be irreligious. In examining whether revelation has been actually made, we are met by a variety of preliminary difficulties, before we are permitted to enter upon the evidence of the fact; but I should hope that a few plain observations would easily remove them. As I give but a very imperfect outline of the ground of proof, respecting this head, my object being rather to hasten forward to some specialities regarding that particular church in which I have the honor of being a minister, than to dwell upon the general ground which is common to us all, they must be few. But there is a philosophy, which endeavors to stop our progress at this pass. Philosophy did I call it! No—I was wrong to dignify it with that appellation. It is a species of perplexing sophistry, which, clothing itself in the garb of rational inquiry, asks a thousand questions, to which neither itself nor philosophy can answer with satisfaction; they are questions which bewilder the mind, but cannot assist the understanding: they are fully sufficient to show the weakness of our reason, and to teach us to distrust ourselves because of

112

American Catholic Religious Thought

the imperfection of our faculties; but urged too far, they might force us to conclude that we should make no exertion, because we are not omnipotent; that we should make no inquiry, because cannot elucidate all that is dark; that we can have no certainty, because there are some cases of doubt; and that we have no information, because there is some knowledge beyond our reach. That certainly does not deserve the name of philosophy which would only fill the world with doubts, and conjectures, and probabilities, instead of knowledge of fact founded upon evidence of testimony. Sophistry, having led you from your plain path and bewildered you in a labyrinth, by turns smiles at your folly, sheds the tear of mocking condolence for your degradation, and sneers at your baffled efforts to extricate yourself; but calm and dignified philosophy unfolds to you the plain evidence of facts; and having fully established the truth of the fact, draws thence the irresistible conclusion: thus leading in a way in which even fools cannot err: this is the path of religion. I may be asked, when will man know that he has evidence of fact; and how shall he know it? There are some questions which are more plainly answered by our conviction, than by any induction. The feeling of the evidence is so strong, that we can by the very expression of the feeling, testify to others what they know, because they too feel as we do; and they know that we should, by any attempt at inductive proof, make perfectly obscure that which, without this effort, would be fully and confessedly evident. Ask me how I know that I have evidence of light being now diffused around me; how you have evidence that I now address you; how we all have evidence of our existence; who will undertake, by any process of reasoning, to produce a stronger feeling of conviction than exists by the very feeling of the evidence? Nor have we any form of expression, which would carry more conviction to the mind, than that which announces the feeling itself; each individual will know when that feeling exists within him. No speculation will aid him to the knowledge of the fact; and where the general testimony of mankind is given to the existence of this feeling, it cannot but have an intimate connection with truth. If it had not, the God who formed our nature, such as it is, would have placed us under a delusion from which we could not be extricated: and the assertion of this not only would destroy every criterion by which truth could be distinguished

1 ~ John England

113

from error, but would be blasphemy against the Creator of the universe. MIRACLES: EVIDENCE OF REVELATION

Let us come to view how we ascertain the fact of revelation. If there is any special work which is so peculiarly and exclusively that of an individual, as that it can be performed by no other, the fact of the existence of that work establishes the fact of his presence; and if his presence is a testimony by him of his concurrence in declarations then made, he is responsible for the truth of those declarations. We believe miracles to be works above the power of created beings, and requiring the immediate presence and agency of the divinity, and given by him as the proof of his commission to the individuals or societies whom he makes witnesses to men of truth revealed by him. The feeling of the miracle being evidence of his presence for this purpose, is so general, and its testimony so fully given by the human race, as well by their spontaneous declaration as by their whole course of conduct, that it would argue in our Creator himself a total disregard for man’s information, if he permitted its existence during so many centuries, and with such inevitable results, unless it were a criterion of truth. The same consequences would necessarily follow from a permission, on the part of God, of a general delusion of mankind as to the species of works that were miraculous. When the feeling generally existed, and was acted upon most extensively during a long series of ages, that works of a peculiar description were emphatically miracles, and that the performance of those miracles was an undoubted proof of God’s presence to uphold the truth of the declarations made in his name by the agents or the instruments used in these works: the Author of our nature would be chargeable with aiding in our delusion, if he did not as he could, and as his perfections would demand, interfere to correct the error. Our next observations must regard the quantity of testimony which would be required to prove one of those miraculous facts. The assertion has sometimes been made, that more than usually would suffice for establishing an ordinary fact, would be necessary to prove the existence of a miracle. We altogether dissent from this position. The facts, in the one case, are precisely as obvious to examination as

114

American Catholic Religious Thought

in the other. Strange as the assertion which I am about to make, will probably appear to many who have honored me with their attention, I plainly say that it will be found, upon reflection, that there is far less danger of deceit or mistake in the examination of a miraculous fact, than there is in one of ordinary occurrence. The reason is simple, and I believe natural and evidently sufficient. The mind is less liable to be imposed upon, when its curiosity is greatly excited, and when its jealousy and suspicions are awakened, than when it is prepared to expect and to admit what it is daily, perhaps hourly, in the habit of expecting and admitting. Ordinary events excite no curiosity, create no surprise, and there is no difficulty in admitting, that what has frequently occurred, occurs again; the statement of such an occurrence will easily pass; but the state of the mind is widely different, when we eagerly seek to ascertain, whether what has never been witnessed by us before, has now come under our observation, or whether we have not been under some delusion; whether an attempt has not been made to deceive us. We, in such a case, become extremely jealous; we examine with more than ordinary care, and we run less risk of being deceived or mistaken. No person doubts the power of the Creator, the supreme legislator and preserver of the universe, to suspend any law of nature in the course of its operation, or to select some individual case which he will except from the operation of that law, and during his own pleasure. The question can never be as to this power, as to the possibility of a miraculous interference; but it always must regard the fact, and that fact must be established by testimony, and without the evidence of testimony, no person who was not present can be required to believe. There does not, and cannot exist, any individual or tribunal, with power to require or command the humblest mortal to believe without evidence. RULES OF EVIDENCE

There is no place in which the rules of evidence are better understood, or more accurately observed, than in our respectable courts of law. Permit me, for the moment, to bring your attention to one of those cases which frequently presents itself to the view of our citizens. There stands a citizen charged with the murder of his fellow-man.

1 ~ John England

115

Long experience, deep study, unsullied purity, calm impartiality, and patience for investigation, form the judicial character; they are found upon the bench. Steady integrity, the power of discrimination, the love of justice, a deep interest in the welfare of the community, and the sanction of a solemn pledge to heaven, are all found in the jury; the public eye is upon them, and the supreme tribunal of public opinion, after an open hearing of the case, is to pronounce upon the judges and the jurors themselves. The life or death, the fame or infamy of the accused lies with them, and is in their keeping, at the peril of their feelings, their character, their conscience, and their souls. The decision must be made by the evidence arising from testimony, and that the testimony of men, and those men liable to all the weakness and all the bad passions of humanity; yet here, in this important case, a solemn decision must be made. That jury must be satisfied, that the person now said to be dead was living, that he is now dead, that the change from life to death was produced by the act of their fellow-citizen now arraigned before them; that this act was done with sufficient deliberation to proceed from malicious intent; that for this act he had no authority; he who was deprived of life being a peaceable person, under the protection of the state. In this there is frequently much perplexity, and little testimony, and that testimony frequently regarding not the substantial ingredients of the crime, but establishing facts, from which those that form the ingredients are only derived by inference. Still, we find convictions and executions, and the jury, with the approbation of the bench, and the assent of the community, unhesitatingly put on solemn record their conviction of the truth of facts which they never saw, and of which they have only the testimony of their fellow-men; and upon this testimony, society agrees that property, liberty, life, and fame shall all be disposed of, with perfect assurance of truth and justice. I will now suppose that court constituted as I have described, and for the purpose of ascertaining the fact of murder. A number of respectable witnesses depose to the fact of the person stated to have been slain having been alive: they were in habits of intimacy with him, were his companions during years, some of them have seen his dead body, in presence of others who also testify to their having seen and examined that body; those last were present when the prisoner, with

116

American Catholic Religious Thought

perfect deliberation, inflicted a wound upon the deceased. There can be no doubt as to the identity of the deceased, and there is none as to the identity of the prisoner. A number of physicians testify their opinion as to the wound so given, and which they examined, being a sufficient cause of death. The accused produces no authority for his act; there has been no process of law against the deceased, who was a peaceable and well-conducted citizen. How could that jury hesitate? They must, painful as is the task, they must consign the unfortunate culprit to the just vengeance of the law; the judge must deliver him to the executioner, and the public record of the state must exhibit his infamy. Life and character must both disappear; they are swept away by the irresistible force of evidence, founded upon human testimony. The widow must hang her head in shame; in the recess of her dwelling she must sit in lonely, disconsolate, unsupported grief; the orphans blush to bear their father’s name; the brothers would forget their kindred; and perhaps even gray hairs would gladly bow still lower, than, compelled by grief and years, to court the concealment of the grave. Yet, still, when a fact becomes evident from the examination of testimony, we must yield our assent to that fact without regarding its consequences. Let me continue my supposition. Before the dissolution of that court, whilst it is yet in session, that jury still occupying their seats—a rush is made into the hall—the same identical witnesses appear again; but they are accompanied by the deceased, now raised to life. They testify, that, as they were departing from the court, a man, whom they produce, proclaimed that he was commissioned by the Most High to deliver his great behests to his fellow-men; and that to prove the validity of his commission, he summoned them to accompany him to the tomb of that man whose death they had so fully proved, and that by an appeal to heaven for the authenticity of his commission, that man should revive. They went—they saw the body in the grave—the claimant upon heaven called upon the eternal God to show that he had sent him to teach his fellow-men—he calls the deceased—the body rises—the dead has come to life—he accompanies them to the court—he is recognized by his acquaintances—confessed by his friends—felt by the people—he speaks, he breathes—he moves, he eats, he drinks, he lives amongst them. Can that court refuse to say

1 ~ John England

117

that it is satisfied of the fact of the resuscitation? What would any honest man think of the members of that jury, should they swear that this man had not been resuscitated by the interference of that individual who thus proves his commission? If that jury could, upon the testimony of those witnesses, find the first fact, why shall they not, upon the same testimony, find the second? But, we may be asked, how we know that this man was dead? Probably it was only a mistake. He could not have been totally bereft of life. Ask the jury, who, upon the certainty of the fact of death, consigned their fellow-citizen to infamy and to the gallows. Shall we admit the certainty for the purposes of human justice, and quibble with our convictions to exclude the testimony of heaven? This, indeed, would be a miserable sophistry. Would any court upon such a plea, so unsupported, issue a respite from execution? An isolated, perhaps, with nothing to rest upon, set up against positive testimony, resting upon the uncontradicted evidence derived from the senses, from experience, and from analogy; a speculative possibility against a substantive fact, by which the very possibility is destroyed! Where is the cause of doubt? Where the difference between the two cases? In both suppositions the essential facts are the same—life, death—identity; the difference consists in the accidental circumstances of the priority of one to the other. The one is the ordinary transition from life to death, an occurrence which is to us most mysterious and inexplicable, but with the existence of which we are long familiar; the other a transition from death to life, not more mysterious but which rarely occurs, and when it does occur, is most closely examined, viewed with jealous scrutiny, and which excites deep interest, and to admit the truth of which there is no predisposition in the mind. The facts are precisely the same in the case of the murder and of the miracle, the accident of the priority of each alternately to the other, constitutes the whole difference. And surely if witnesses can tell me that a man who has never died shows all the symptoms of life, the same witnesses can tell me the same fact, though that man had passed from death to life. The symptoms of life are always the same, and the testimony which will establish the fact of life at one time, by proving the existence of those symptoms, will be at any time sufficient for the same purpose. The same is to be said of the symptoms of death, and

118

American Catholic Religious Thought

of the testimony which will establish the fact by proving their existence. It may be objected that no adequate cause is assigned for this extraordinary occurrence. The answer is twofold. To be convinced of the truth of a fact, it is not necessary that I should know the cause of its existence; it suffices for me to know the existence of the fact itself, and its existence will not be the less certain though I should never be able to discover the cause. How many facts do we every day witness, whose causes are still to us inaccessible and undiscovered. Next; an adequate cause is here distinctly pointed out and referred to. He who first breathed into the nostrils of man, whom he fashioned from the dust, a living soul, is now equally powerful to call back the departed spirit to its moldering tenement of clay. In the Mosaic—in the Christian dispensation, what multitudes of miraculous facts attest the presence of the Deity? The revelations of heaven? During what a length of time were not those facts open to every species of examination? How favorable were the circumstances for the detection of imposition, for the exposure of fanaticism, for the ridicule of folly, if the impostor, the fanatic, or the fool had claimed to be the messenger of heaven? Thus we believe that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ instructed man in the doctrines of truth, had authority to prescribe laws of morality, and founded institutions to which we are religiously bound unalterably to adhere. If the miraculous facts, which establish this conclusion, are not in full evidence, I, for one, must profess that I must blot from my mind all that I have been ever led to believe was a fact of history. A peculiarity of our religion is, that we may at any moment risk its truth or falsehood upon the truth or falsehood, of the statement of any one or the whole of a vast variety of facts. We know nothing of speculation, we know nothing of opinion. Opinions form no part of our religion. It is all a statement of facts, and the truth of those facts can at any moment be brought to the test. With this we stand or fall. Allow me to adduce one fact as an instance and an illustration. The founder of our church, the Savior of the world, foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, and that not a stone should be left upon another of the mighty mass of the splendid temple. One of our prophets foretold that upon the establishment of the new law which we profess, the sacrifice should cease, and never be restored in that

1 ~ John England

119

temple. The sacrifice did cease—the city was sacked—the temple was destroyed:—the Christians proclaimed that the temple would never be rebuilt, the sacrifice would never be restored. The Roman emperor Julian, having apostatized from the faith, was determined to humble the church from which he had deserted, and by establishing one fact to defeat their prophecy, to prove the delusion of the Nazarenes or Galileans, as he termed the Christians. With the wealth of the Roman empire, the power of his scepter, the influence of his place, and the devotion of the most zealous people under heaven, he made the attempt. The whole Jewish people, animated with love of country and of religion, cheered by their neighbors, urged on by their emperor, flattered by his court, undertook the work, they rooted up the old foundations of the temple, until indeed there was not left a stone upon a stone: they prepared to rebuild; but history testifies their disappointment. Cyril of Jerusalem, a bishop of our church, and Ammianus Marcellinus, the emperor’s historian, a Christian and a pagan, together with a cloud of other witnesses, inform us of their discomfiture. Centuries have elapsed. The prophecy and the attempt are both on record. Today we say, as our predecessors said then, “Build that temple, offer one sacrifice according to the Mosaic rites within its walls, and we acknowledge our delusion.” But we cannot, for any speculative opinions of philosophers, abandon the evidence of miracles, of prophecy, and of history united. DISTINCTIVENESS OF CATHOLICISM

My brethren, I come now to a new part of my subject. We have seen that our blessed Savior Jesus Christ made a revelation to the human race: our next and very natural inquiry must be, to discover how we shall ascertain what that revelation is. This is the place where we arrive at the essential distinction between the Roman Catholic Church and every other: it is, indeed, upon this question the whole difference turns; and to this it must be always brought back. The doctrine which, as a prelate of that church, and from my own conscientious conviction, I preach, differs very widely indeed from what is generally professed and acted upon by the great majority of our citizens, and by a vast portion of the respectable and enlightened assemblage which surrounds me. I shall state our doctrine fully upon this head;

120

American Catholic Religious Thought

but I do not feel that it would be correct, or delicate on my part, to enter at present, upon the field of polemics for its vindication. Still it will be permitted that I give an outline, imperfect and defective it must be, for the cause which I have assigned, of the reasons for that faith which is in us. And here let me assure you, that if, in the course of my observations, any expression should escape from me that may appear calculated to wound the feelings of those from whom I differ, that it is not my intention to assail, to insult, or to give pain; and that I may be pardoned for what will be in truth an inconsiderate expression, not intended to offend. Neither my own feelings, nor my judgment, nor my faith, would dictate to me anything calculated to embitter the feelings of those who differ from me—merely for that difference. My kindest friends, my most intimate acquaintance, they whom I do, and ought to esteem and respect, are at variance with my creed; yet it does not and shall not destroy our affection. In me it would be ingratitude; for I must avow, and I do it most willingly, that in my journeys through our states I have been frequently humbled and abashed at the kindness with which I have been treated. I came amongst you a stranger, and I went through your land with many and most serious and unfortunate mistakes, for which you were not blamable, operating to my disadvantage. If a Roman Catholic bishop were in truth what he is even now generally supposed to be, in various parts of this Union, he should not be permitted to reside amongst you; yet was I received into your houses, enrolled in your families, and profited by your kindness. I have frequently put the question to myself whether, if I had similar impressions regarding you, I could have acted with the like kindness; and I must own, I frequently doubted that I would. It is true, you labored under serious mistakes as to what was my religion, and what were my duties and my obligations. But you were not yourselves the authors of those mistakes; nor had you within your reach the means of correcting them. I feel grateful to my friends who have afforded me this opportunity of perhaps aiding to do away those impressions; for our affections will be more strong as those mistakes will be corrected; and it must gratify those who, loving the country, behold us spread through it, to be assured, that we are not those vile beings that

1 ~ John England

121

have been painted to their imaginations, and which ought not to be allowed existence in any civilized community. Upon our principles, my brethren, we must not speculate; we must always keep our eye steadily upon facts. The wisest man might be misled in speculation; might make great mistakes in forming opinions; but if he has evidence of a fact, he has ground upon which he can rest with certainty; and the inevitable consequence of that fact produces certainty also: let us then look for facts, instead of hazarding conjectures, or maintaining opinions. REVELATION, TRADITION, AND SCRIPTURE

It is a fact, that our blessed Redeemer did not write his communications: it is equally certain, that he neither gave a command, nor a commission to have them written. It is a fact, that his religion was fully and extensively established before any part of the Scriptures of our new law was committed to writing. We therefore believe it to be evident that our religion was not established by the dissemination of writings. We have abundant testimony to show that our blessed Redeemer, besides having publicly taught the people, selected a few persons whom he more fully instructed, and duly authorized to teach also. They were his companions during life, and after his death they were the promulgators of his doctrine. Their commission from him was not to become philosophers, discussing what was probably the nature of God and the obligation of man, and examining what means they would esteem to be most likely to lead mankind to eternal happiness; but they were constituted witnesses to others, to testify what the Savior revealed to them, and to speak of positive facts with undoubting certainty,—and to state what he actually told, what he precisely commanded, what he positively instituted, and for what purpose, and what were to be the consequences: all this was matter of fact testified by witnesses, not discovered by disquisitions of philosophy. The teachers were not to add, they were not to diminish, they were not to change; the perfection of the revelation consisted in preserving the account purely unchanged. We find it is a fact that others were added to the commission of teachers; the very nature of the case exhibited the necessity of such addition, because the original commissioners would

122

American Catholic Religious Thought

not suffice for the multitude to be taught. Natural reason pointed out the course which testimony shows us was followed. They who were originally constituted by the Redeemer to form the teaching tribunal, selected those whom they found best instructed, and being satisfied of their integrity by the testimony of those who had long known them, they were themselves judges of their full acquaintance with the truths which were to be taught, and of their ability; they ordained them as fellow-witnesses, extended to them the power of the commission, and thus in every city were chosen faithful men, who might be fit to teach others that form of sound words which had been committed to themselves before many witnesses; the people who heard the testimony of the first teachers were also capable of observing if any deviation had been made by their successors. Those first teachers and their associates were scattered abroad widely through the world, but in all places they taught the same things, for truth could not be contradictory. Some persons sought after novelties, and separated from the great body, which itself remained united in government and in doctrine, though widely scattered through the world. Those isolated and independent divisions followed each some theory of its own, having some peculiarity by which each was distinguished from the other, each judging and deciding for itself, and each claiming to have preserved the true doctrine. This state of things existed almost at the very origin of the Christian church, and has since continued more or less extensively. It was not until the eighth year after the ascension of our Lord, or the year 41 of our era, that the first part of the New Testament was written by St. Matthew, who was one of the earliest companions of the Savior, and an apostle. Many of the Christians had committed to writing several facts and discourses which they had learned. Many of their accounts contained much that has never reached us. Some years afterwards, St. Mark, who was not an apostle, but who was a companion of St. Peter, the president of the apostolic body, first in honor and first in jurisdiction, abridged much of what St. Matthew had written, and added much of his own, which he had probably learned from St. Peter; those books had a limited circulation amongst the Christians in some places, but highly as they were valued, they were not looked upon as the exclusive evidence of the doctrines of the Redeemer, and the very fact, which is of course incontestable, that a vast quantity

1 ~ John England

123

of what we all now receive as his doctrine is not contained in them, but was subsequently written, renders it impossible for any of us to assume this principle. In the year 53 of our era, St. Luke, who was a physician in Antioch, and who had been occasionally a companion of St. Paul, and had conversed with many of the other disciples and apostles, began to write his gospel from the accounts collected through others, and chiefly to counteract the circulation of many erroneous accounts which were written; he probably had not seen either of the two gospels written by Matthew or Mark. About ten years after this, he wrote the Acts of the Apostles as a continuation of his history, and in it he principally confines himself to the account of the labors of St. Paul, as he was his companion, and had the opportunity of observing his proceedings. Upwards of thirty years more elapsed before St. John wrote his gospel at the request of the churches of Asia Minor, in order to testify against the errors of several persons who then troubled those churches with their speculations and imaginations. He had previously written his book of Revelations, being an obscure prophecy of some future events blended with history and vision. He had written some epistles to churches and to individuals on particular occasions. St. Paul, in the discharge of his duties, had been sometimes consulted upon particular questions, by churches which he had founded or visited; and some of his epistles are extant, in which he answers their difficulties, gives them instruction suitable to their circumstances, and makes several regulations. He also wrote on other occasions to churches, and to individuals, as did three or four of the other Apostles; some of those letters remain; we are informed, and think it not unlikely, that many more have been lost. Thus, during the first century, it is a fact, that no such book as we now receive, called the New Testament, was used or adopted in the church as the mode for each individual or each church to ascertain what was the doctrine of Christ. The several portions of which it is composed had indeed been written, and were used, but they were not collected together, and very probably no individual had a copy of the whole. But those were not the only books of the same description which circulated, for there were very many others purporting to be gospels and epistles; and it would indeed be very difficult for

124

American Catholic Religious Thought

any individual who desired to know the doctrine of the Redeemer, to discover it from books, in such a state of things. BISHOPS AS TEACHERS OF DOCTRINE

Another fact is also obvious—that in this century the Apostles, and most of those whom they had associated with them in their commission, died. During their lives, they were the teachers of the doctrine; they testified what Christ had taught, and it was by reference to their tribunal it was ascertained. But a question here naturally presents itself to us. Should a difference of testimony be found amongst those teachers, it is very evident that one of them must have, to say the least, made a mistake: how was an honest inquirer after truth to know what God has revealed? It is plain, we say, that truth and error must exist in such a case, however innocent the erring party might be. And unless there were a very plain and simple mode of detecting that error, he who gave the revelation would not have provided for its preservation. And as this difference not only might exist, but did actually occur at a very early period within this same century, the evidence of truth would have been lost in the difference of testimony, and revelation would have been made useless, almost as soon as it had been given. We say that the common rule of evidence arising from testimony would have been sufficient, when properly applied, to have detected the error. That rule is: examine the witnesses fully as to the fact, and if the vast majority, under proper circumstances, will agree in the testimony, it is the evidence of truth. Our history exhibits to us, in the lifetime of the Apostles, the facts of the difference, the examination, and the decision by this rule; and also the further fact, that they who would not abide by the decision, were no longer considered as holding the doctrine which had been revealed, but as making new opinions, and substituting what they thought ought to be, instead of preserving what had always been. We then find those who continued to testify the doctrine of the Apostles holding communion with them, recognized as joined in their commission, and authorized also to extend and to perpetuate the same. Thus, although the Apostles and their associates died within this century, still that tribunal of which they were the first members survived, and at the end of this period was far more numerous and much more widely extended through the world;

1 ~ John England

125

and it was to this tribunal recourse was had to ascertain what was the doctrine of our blessed Redeemer. Originally this tribunal consisted of Peter, and his associates, the other Apostles:—now it consisted of the successor of Peter, and the successors of the other Apostles, and of their associates through the world. No king could say that he would regulate the doctrines for his people; no nation had authority to modify those doctrines for themselves. The perfection of religion consists in preserving the doctrines such as they have been given by God in revelation. The difference of temporal government cannot alter what he has said. Thus, there was formed but one church through many nations—one tribunal to testify in every place the same doctrine—all the individuals who taught were witnesses for or against each other—the whole body, with the successor of Peter at its head, watchful to see that each taught that which was originally delivered. THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE

In the second century, the same system continues; similar facts present themselves to our view; the mode of ascertaining what Christ had taught was, by the declarations of this permanent body, thus continued. The books of the New Testament were, perhaps, better known and more generally read, but their circulation was comparatively limited, their authority not sufficiently developed, and they were by no means considered as the only source from which individuals, or even congregations, could draw a full knowledge of the revelations of the Savior. It was not until after the lapse of three centuries that the members of that living tribunal, which had always been the witness of doctrine, selected the books that form the New Testament from the various other works of a similar description, which had been very freely disseminated; and we have full evidence of the plain fact, that this tribunal had been the authoritative witness of the revealed truths from the beginning, and that it was only after a long lapse of time that body separated the writings known as the scriptures of the new law from several spurious works of little or no value, some of them even false and pernicious. And our belief is, that the mode of ascertaining the doctrine of truth originally was, and continued to be, from

126

American Catholic Religious Thought

the testimony of that tribunal, rather than by the mere testimony of those books. What would be the authority of those books, without the authority of that tribunal? Bring any written document into any court of justice; lay it on the table; what will it prove? Will you not first produce evidence to show what it is? You must prove by the testimony of some competent witness, the nature and authenticity of a written document, before that written document can be used. Without having been thus established, it lies useless before the court; it may be what it purports to be, but it is plain that a written or printed book may not be what it assumes in its title; a document flung upon the table of a court lies there without any use, until it is made useful by testimony besides itself. The record of a court must be proved by the officer of that court; fictions and forgeries are as easily printed or produced as are the genuine statements of truth; and it does not derogate from the value of a genuine document, to say that it needs first to be proved, for no document can prove itself. Our doctrine then is, that in all cases of difference as to faith, between the commissioned teachers of the church, or in any such differences between others, the mode originally used will procure for us evidence of truth. The question never can be respecting opinion; it must always be concerning fact; that fact is what God did reveal. The original witnesses spread through the world testified this fact to their associates and to their successors; this testimony was thus continued. In the second or third century, the bishop in Greece could testify what had been transmitted to him; the Parthian bishop gave his testimony; the Egyptian added his; the Italian told what he had been taught; their agreement could not have been the effect of accident; the prejudices, the national habits, and the thousand accidental differences of each, made them sufficiently watchful of each other; their joint and concurrent testimony must have been full proof of the sameness of the testimony of their predecessors, until all met in the Apostles who heard it from Jesus Christ. We say, that when the great majority of the bishops united with their head, the Bishop of Rome, who succeeds to Peter, thus concur in their testimony, it is evidence of truth: we will infallibly come to a certain knowledge of what God has revealed. This is our doctrine of the infallibility of the church;

1 ~ John England

127

and thus we believe that we will ascertain what Christ taught, by the testimony of the majority of the bishops united to their head, whether assembled or dispersed through their sees, all over the world. Others may be of opinion, that this is an irrational—that this is an incorrect, that this is an insufficient mode. We do not view it in that light; and I may be permitted to say for myself, perhaps it might be deemed prejudice; perhaps a weakness of intellect, or a slavery of mind; to me it appears a much better mode of attaining its great object than to take up the Scriptures and decide solely for myself; better than to depend upon the authority of any individual, however learned or pious, or inspired with heavenly knowledge he might be deemed. I am not infallible; but in virtue of my place I give my testimony; I may err, but the majority of my brethren will correct that error. A few others may err; still the testimony of the majority prevails—thus individuals may separate from us, but our unity and our testimony remains. We do not profess to believe our Pope infallible. We believe, that by virtue of the divine appointment, he presides amongst us, but we are fellow-witnesses with him. BISHOPS AS WITNESSES TO DOCTRINE

But this power of decision is by its own nature extremely limited. We are witnesses to our brethren, not despots over men’s minds. Our testimony must be confined to what has been revealed; we cannot add, we cannot diminish. Such is the duty of a witness, such is ours. All the popes and bishops, all the councils which have ever existed, or which may exist, have not, and cannot have the power of commanding the humblest individual to believe one particle more on the subject of revelation than what they testify God to have taught. When they exhibit what has been taught by Heaven, man is bound to believe; let them say, “besides this which God has revealed, we are of opinion that you would do well to believe this, which he has not taught, but which we think a very good doctrine.” He is free to act as he may think proper, his belief would not be faith, it would be receiving the opinions of men, not the teaching of heaven; this mode of teaching is never used in our church. The decisions of our councils are the exhibition of the original revelation, not the expression of adopted opinions: so too, the whole body of our church cannot omit to teach

128

American Catholic Religious Thought

any revealed truth; she must teach all; she must be a faithful witness; neither adding, omitting, or changing. In our mode of examining, although we believe the founder of our church made a promise of his divine guidance to protect our body from erring, we take all the natural means which will aid in the discovery of the original fact. We not only have known the testimony of those from whom we learned, and that of those with whom we associate; but we have the records of our churches, we have the documents of antiquity; we have the writings of our ancient, and venerable, and eminent bishops and doctors, coming from every age and from every nation. We have the decisions of former councils, we have the monuments which have been erected, the usages which have prevailed, the customs which continue, and when we take up the sacred volume of the Scriptures, we collate its passages with the results which we gather from those sources. The prelates of our several nations make this examination in every quarter of the globe, each testifies what he has found in conjunction with those of his vicinity who could aid him in his research, and thus we obtain testimony of the world respecting facts in which the world is deeply interested. Can it be slavery in me to bow to the decision of this tribunal? Frequently, questions which have been long since decided in this manner are revived. Our answer in those cases is very short. “This has been already determined.” We are told this is limiting the operations and chaining down the freedom of the human mind. Perhaps it is. But if the proper use of the faculties be the discovery of truth, and that truth has been already discovered, what more is necessary? When investigations have been made, and results arrived at, why investigate still? You go into court to defend your property, you have your titles fully investigated, judgment is given in your favor, it is put upon record; a new litigant calls upon you to go over the same ground, will not the record of the judgment against his father protect you? Or must you, because he chooses to trouble you, burn that record, and join issue again? We quote the decisions of former times as proofs that investigation has been already made, and that a decision has long since been had. And what has once been found to have been revealed by God, cannot by any lapse of time cease to be revelation: if the fact shall have been once fully proved,

1 ~ John England

129

that proof must be good always—if a record thereof be made, that record is always evidence. CATHOLICISM AND AMERICAN FREEDOMS CHURCH AND STATE: RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

A political difficulty has been sometimes raised here. If this infallible tribunal, which you profess yourselves bound to obey, should command you to overturn our government, and tell you that it is the will of God to have it new modeled, will you be bound to obey it? And how then can we consider those men to be good citizens, who profess to owe obedience to a foreign authority,—to an authority not recognized in our constitution,—to an authority which has excommunicated and deposed sovereigns, and which has absolved subjects and citizens from their bond of allegiance. Our answer to this is extremely simple and very plain; it is, that we would not be bound to obey it,—that we recognize no such authority. I would not allow to the Pope, or to any bishop of our church, outside this Union, the smallest interference with the humblest vote at our most insignificant balloting box. He has no right to such interference. You must, from the view which I have taken, see the plain distinction between spiritual authority and a right to interfere in the regulation of human government or civil concerns. You have in your constitution wisely kept them distinct and separate. It will be wisdom, and prudence, and safety to continue the separation. Your constitution says that Congress shall have no power to restrict the free exercise of religion. Suppose your dignified body tomorrow attempted to restrict me in the exercise of that right; though the law, as it would be called, should pass your two houses, and obtain the signature of the president, I would not obey it, because it would be no law, it would be a usurpation; for you cannot make a law in violation of your constitution—you have no power in such a case. So, if that tribunal which is established by the Creator to testify to me what he has revealed, and to make the necessary regulations of discipline for the government of the church, shall presume to go beyond that boundary which circumscribes its power, its acts are invalid; my rights are not to be destroyed by its usurpation; and there is no principle of my creed which prevents my using my natural right of proper resistance to any tyrannical usurpation.

130

American Catholic Religious Thought

You have no power to interfere with my religious rights; the tribunal of the church has no power to interfere with my civil rights. It is a duty which every good man ought to discharge for his own, and for the public benefit, to resist any encroachment upon either. We do not believe that God gave to the church any power to interfere with our civil rights, or our civil concerns. Christ our Lord refused to interfere in the division of the inheritance between two brothers, one of whom requested that interference. The civil tribunals of Judea were vested with sufficient authority for that purpose, and he did not transfer it to his Apostles. It must hence be apparent, that any idea of the Roman Catholics of these republics being in any way under the influence of any foreign ecclesiastical power, or indeed of any church authority in the exercise of their civil rights is a serious mistake. There is no class of our fellow-citizens more free to think and to act for themselves on the subject of our rights, than we are: and I believe there is not any portion of the American family more jealous of foreign influence, or more ready to resist it. We have brethren of our church in every part of the globe, under every form of government; this is a subject upon which each of us is free to act as he thinks proper. We know of no tribunal in our church which can interfere in our proceedings as citizens. Our ecclesiastical authority existed before our constitution, is not affected by it; there is not in the world a constitution which it does not precede, with which it could not coexist; it has seen nations perish, dynasties decay, empires prostrate; it has coexisted with all, it has survived them all, it is not dependent upon any one of them; they may still change, and it will still continue. CATHOLICISM AND REPUBLICANISM

It is again urged, that at least our church is aristocratic, if not despotic, in its principles, and is not calculated for a republic,—that its spirit is opposed to that of republicanism. This objection cannot be seriously urged by any person who has studied history, nor by any person who is acquainted with our tenets. Look over the history of the world since the establishment of Christianity, and where have there been republics? Have the objectors read the history of Italy? A soil fertile in republics, and most devoted to our religion! What was the religion of William Tell? He was a Roman Catholic. Look not only to the Swiss

1 ~ John England

131

republics, but take San-Marino,—this little state, during centuries, the most splendid specimen of the purest democracy, and this democracy protected by our Popes during these centuries. Men who make the assertions to which I have alluded cannot have read history! Amongst ourselves, what is the religion of the venerable Charles Carroll of Carrollton? Men who make these assertions cannot have read our Declaration of Independence. What was the religion of the good, the estimable, the beloved Doctor Carroll, our first Catholic Archbishop of Baltimore, the founder of our hierarchy, the friend of Washington, the associate of Franklin? Have those men been degraded in our church because they aided in your struggle for the assertion of your rights, for the establishment of our glorious and our happy republics? No—they are the jewels which we prize, the ornaments of our church, the patriots of our country. They and others, whom we count as our members, and esteem for their virtues, have been the intimate and faithful associates of many of our best patriots who have passed from our transitory scene, and of some who yet view in consolation our prosperity. What is the religion of Simon Bolivar? What the religion of the whole population of our republican sisters upon the southern continent? We are always assailed by speculation. We always answer by facts. Have we been found traitors in your councils, unfaithful to your trust, cowards in your fields, or in correspondence with your enemies? Yet we have been consulted for our prudence, confided in for our fidelity, enriched your soil with our blood, filled your decks with our energy; and though some of us might have wept at leaving the land of our ancestors because of the injustice of its rulers, we told our brothers who assailed you in the day of battle that we knew them not, and we adhered to those who gave to us a place of refuge and impartial protection. Shall we then be told that our religion is not the religion calculated for republics, though it will be found that the vast majority of republican states and of republican patriots have been, and even now are Roman Catholic? It is true, ours is also the religion of a large portion of empires, and of kingdoms, and of principalities. The fact is so far an obvious reason, because it is the religion of the great bulk of the civilized world. Our tenets do not prescribe any form of government which the people may properly and regularly establish. No revelation upon which my eye has fallen, or which ever reached

132

American Catholic Religious Thought

my ear, has taught me that the Almighty God commanded us to be governed by kings, or by emperors, or by princes, or to associate in republics. Upon this God has left us free to make our own selection. The decision upon the question of expediency as to the form of government for temporal or civil concerns, is one to be settled by society, and not by the church. We therefore bind no nation or people to any special form, the form which they may adopt lies not with us, but with themselves. What suits the genius and circumstances of one people might be totally unfit for another; hence, no special form of human government for civil concerns has been generally established by divine authority: but the God of order who commands men to dwell together in peace, has armed the government which has been properly established by the principles of society, with power for the execution of the functions which are given by society to its administration; whilst it continues, within its due bounds, to discharge properly its constitutional obligations, it is the duty of each good member of society to concur in its support; and he who would resist its proper authority, would in this case resist the ordinance of the God of peace and of order, and, as the apostle says, would purchase damnation for himself. This principle applies alike to all forms of government properly established, and properly administered,—to republics and to kingdoms alike. It is then a mistake to imagine that our church has more congeniality to one species of civil government than to another; it has been fitted by its author, who saw the fluctuating state of civil rule, to exist independently of any, and to be suited to either. Its own peculiar forms for its internal regulation may and do continue to be adhered to under every form of temporal rule. CATHOLICISM AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION

But is it not a tenet of our church, that we must persecute all those who differ from us? Has not our religion been propagated by the firebrand and by the sword? Is not the Inquisition one of its component parts? Are not our boasted South American republics persecutors still? And in the code of our infallible church have we not canons of persecution which we are conscientiously bound to obey and to enforce? Did not the great Lateran Council, in 1215, command all

1 ~ John England

133

princes to exterminate all heretics?4 If, then, we are not persecutors in fact, it is because we want the power, for it is plain that we do not want the disposition. I would humbly submit, that not one of these questions could be truly answered in the affirmative. The spirit of religion is that of peace and of mercy, not that of persecution; yet men of every creed have persecuted their brethren under the pretext of religion. The great founder of our church, at a very early period, checked this spirit in his Apostles; when some cities would not receive his doctrine, they asked why he did not call down fire from heaven to destroy them; but his calm and dignified rebuke was, that they knew not by what spirit they were led; it was the spirit of human passion assuming the garb of heavenly zeal. I know of no power given by God to any man, or to any body of men, in the Christian dispensation, to inflict any penalty of a temporal description upon their fellow-men for mere religious error. If such error shall cause the violation of peace, or shall interfere with the well-being of society, temporal governments, being established to prevent such disorders, have their own inherent right, but not a religious commission, to interfere merely for that prevention. Each individual is responsible to God for his conduct in this regard; to him, and to him only, we stand or fall. He commissioned the church to teach his doctrine,—but he did not commission her to persecute those who would not receive it. He who beholds the evidence of truth and will not follow it, is inexcusable; he who will not use his best exertions to obtain that evidence, is inexcusable; he who having used his best exertions for that purpose, and having with the best intentions made a mistake in coming to his conclusion, is not a criminal because of that mistake. God alone, the searcher of our hearts, can clearly see the 4

[The third decree of the Fourth Lateran Council ordered that heretics be handed over to the secular authorities for “due punishment” and that those same authorities be required to cleanse their territories of “this heretical filth” or be excommunicated for failure to do so. If a secular authority (i.e., “temporal lord”), moreover, failed to execute the decree against heretics the pope could declare “his vassals absolved from their fealty to him.” For the decree, see Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1:23335.]

134

American Catholic Religious Thought

full accountability of each individual upon this head,—because each person must be accountable according to his opportunities. I feel that many and serious mistakes are made by my friends in this country. I know who are mistaken, but far be it from me to say that all who err are criminal. I have frequently asked myself whether, if I had had only the same opportunities of knowing the doctrine of my church, and its evidences, that many of them have had, I would be what I now am. Indeed, it would be very extraordinary if I was. They labor under those mistakes, not through their own fault in several instances; and if the Roman Catholic Church were, in her doctrines and her practices, what they have been taught she is, I would not be a Roman Catholic. They imagine her to be what she is not; and when they oppose what they believe her to be, it is not to her their opposition is really given. To God, and to him alone, belongs ultimately to discriminate between those who are criminal and those who are innocent in their error; and I look in vain through every record, in vain I listen to every testimony of my doctrine to discover any command to persecute, any power to inflict fine, or disqualification, or bodily chastisement upon those who are in mere religious error. It is no doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church; I do not know that it is the doctrine of any church calling itself Christian; but, unfortunately, I know it has been practiced by some Roman Catholics, and it has been practiced in every church which accused her of having had recourse thereto. I would then say it was taught by no church; it has been practiced in all. One great temptation to its exercise, is the union of any church with the state; and religion has more frequently been but a pretext with statesmen for a political purpose, than the cause of persecution for zeal on its own behalf. Christ gave to his Apostles no commission to use the sword or the brand, and they went forth in the simplicity of their testimony, and the evidence of their miracles, and the power of their evidence, to convert the world. They gave freely their own blood to be shed for the sake of religion, but they shed not the blood of their opponents. Their associates and their successors followed their example, and were successful by that imitation. And the historian who represents the chastisements of infidel barbarians, by Christian princes, for the protection of their own people, and the security of their own prop-

1 ~ John England

135

erty, misleads the reader whom he would fain persuade, that it was done for the purposes of religion at the instigation of those who laid down their own lives in the conversion of those barbarians. It is true, indeed, that we cannot call error truth, nor style truth error; it is true that we say there must continue to be an essential distinction between them; it is true that we cannot belie our consciences, nor bear false witness to our neighbors, by telling them that we believe they adhere to the doctrines of Christ, when they contradict what we receive as those doctrines; we cannot believe two contradictory propositions to be at the same time true. But such a declaration on our part does not involve as its consequence that we believe they ought to he persecuted. The Inquisition is a civil tribunal of some states, not a portion of our religion. We now come to examine what are called the persecuting laws of our church. In the year 1215, at the Council of Lateran, certain heresies were condemned by the first canon; and amongst other things this canon recites as Catholic faith, in opposition to the errors of those whom it condemned, that there is but one God, the creator of all things, of spirits as well as bodies; the author of the Old Testament and of the Mosaic dispensation, equally as of the New Testament and of the Christian dispensation; that he created not only the good angels, but also the devil and the bad angels, originally coming good from his hand, and becoming wicked by their own malice, &c. In its third canon it excommunicates those heretics, and declares them to be separated from the body of the church. Then follows a direction, that the heretics so condemned, are to be given up to the secular powers, or to their bailiffs, to be duly punished. This direction continues to require of all bishops and others having authority, to make due search within their several districts for those heretics, and if they will not be induced to retract their errors, desires that they should be delivered over to be punished. There is an injunction then to all temporal lords to cleanse their dominions by exterminating those heretics; and if they will not, within a year from having been so admonished by the church, cleanse their lands of this heretical filth, they shall be deprived if they have superior lords, and if they be superior lords and be negligent, it shall be the duty of the metropolitan and his provincial bishops to excommunicate them, and if any one of those lords paramount

136

American Catholic Religious Thought

so excommunicated for this negligence shall continue during twelve months under the excommunication, the metropolitan shall certify the same to the Pope, who, finding admonition useless, shall depose his prince, and absolve his subjects from their oaths of fealty, and deliver the territory over to Catholics, who, having exterminated the heretics, shall remain in peaceable possession. This is the most formidable evidence adduced against the position which I have laid down, that it is not a doctrine of our church, that we are bound to persecute those who differ from us in belief. I trust that I shall not occupy very much of your time in showing that this enactment does not in any way weaken that assertion. I shall do so, by satisfying you that this is a special law for a particular case; and also by convincing you that it is not a canon of the church respecting any of those points in which we admit her infallibility; nor is it a canon of the church. The doctrines condemned in this first canon originated in Syria, touched lightly at the islands of the Archipelago, settled down in Bulgaria, and spread into the south of Europe, but were principally received in the vicinity of Albi, in France. The persons condemned held the Manichean principle of there being two creators of the universe; one a good being, the author of the New Testament, the creator of good angels, and generally of spiritual essences; the other an evil being, the creator of bodies, the author of the Mosaic dispensation, and generally of the Old Testament. They stated that marriage was unlawful, and co-operation with the principle of evil was criminal. The consequences to society were of the very worst description, immoral, dismal, and desolating. The church examined the doctrine, condemned it as heretical, and cut off those who held or abetted it from her communion. Here, according to the principles which I have maintained before you, her power ended. Beyond this we claim no authority; the church, by divine right, we say, infallibly testifies what doctrines Christ has revealed, and by the same right, in the same manner, decides that what contradicts this revelation is erroneous; but she has no divine authority to make a law which shall strip of their property, or consign to the executioner, those whom she convicts of error. The doctrine of our obligation to submit does not extend to force us to submit to a usurpation; and if the church made a law upon a subject beyond her

1 ~ John England

137

commission for legislation, it would be invalid; there would be no proper claim for our obedience; usurpation does not create a right. The council could by right make the doctrinal decision; but it had no right to make the temporal enactment; and where there exists no right to legislate on one side, there is no obligation of obedience on the other. If this was then a canon of the church, it was not one in making which she was acting within her constitutional jurisdiction, it was a usurpation of temporal government, and the doctrine of infallibility does not bear upon it. Every document respecting this council, the entire of the evidence respecting it, as well as the very mode of framing the enactments, prove that it was a special law regarding a particular case. The only persons whose errors were condemned at that council were those whom I have described. The general principle of legal exposition restraining the application of penal enactments must here have full weight, and will restrain the application of the penalty to the only criminals brought within its view. But the evidence is still more confirmed, by the special words of definite meaning, this, and filth, which were specially descriptive of only those persons; the first by its very nature, the second by the nature of their crime; and the continued exposition of the enactment restrained its application to the special case, though frequently attempts had been made by individuals to extend its application, not in virtue of the statute, but in virtue of analogy. It would then be improperly forcing its construction to say that its operation was to be general, as it evidently was made only for a particular case. In viewing the preamble to this council, as well as from our knowledge of history, we discover that this was not merely a council of the church, but it was also a congress of the civilized world. The state of the times rendered such assemblages not only usual but necessary; and each legislative body did its own business by its own authority; and very generally the subjects which were decided upon by one body in one point of view, came under the consideration of the other assembly in a different point of view, and their separate decisions were engrossed upon a joint record. Sometimes they were preserved distinct and separate; but copyists, for their own convenience, brought together all the articles regarding the same subject, from what source soever they were obtained. Such was precisely the case in the instance before

138

American Catholic Religious Thought

us. There were present on this occasion, by themselves or by their legates, the King of Sicily, Emperor elect of the Romans, the Emperor of the East, the King of France, the King of England, the King of Arragon, the King of Jerusalem, the King of Cyprus, several other kings, and lords paramount, sovereign states, and princes. Several of the bishops were princes or barons. In the ecclesiastical council, the third canon terminated exactly in one sentence, which was that of the excommunication or separation from the church, of those whom the first canon had condemned, whatever name or names they might assume; because they had in several places several appellations, and were continually dividing off and changing names as they separated. The duty and the jurisdiction of the council came to this, and the ancient records give no more as the portion of its enactments. But the congress of the temporal powers then made the subsequent part as their enactment; and thus this penal and civil regulation was not an act of the council, but an act of the congress; and it is not a canon concerning the doctrine of the church, nor indeed is it by any means a canon, though the copyists have added it to the canon as regarding the very same subject; and as confessedly the excommunication in the third canon regarded only the special case of those particular heretics, the addition of the penal enactment to this particular canon is confirmatory evidence that those who added it knew that the penalty in the one case was only co-extensive with the excommunication in the other. Having thus seen that this canon of the Council of Lateran was not a doctrinal decision of our church establishing the doctrine of persecution, and commanding to persecute, but that it was a civil enactment by the temporal power against persons whom they looked upon as criminals, it is more the province of the politician or of the jurist than of the divine to decide upon its propriety; I may, however, be permitted to say that in my opinion the existence of civilized society required its enactment, though no good man can approve of several abuses which were committed under the pretext of its execution, nor can any rational man pretend that because of the existence of a special law for a particular purpose every case which may be thought analogous to that for which provision was made is to be illegally subjected to those provisions.

1 ~ John England

139

DEPOSING POWER OF THE POPE

We are now arrived at the place where we may easily find the origin and the extent of the papal power of deposing sovereigns, and of absolving subjects from their oaths of allegiance. To judge properly of facts, we must know their special circumstances, not their mere outline. The circumstances of Christendom were then widely different from those in which we now are placed. Europe was then under the feudal system. I have seldom found a writer, not a Catholic, who, in treating of that age and that system, has been accurate, and who has not done us very serious injustice. But a friend of mine, who is a respectable member of your honorable body, has led me to read Hallam’s5 account of it, and I must say that I have seldom met with so much candor, and, what I call, so much truth. From reading his statement of that system it will be plainly seen that there existed amongst the Christian potentates a sort of federation, in which they bound themselves by certain regulations, and to the observance of those they were held not merely by their oaths, but by various penalties; sometimes they consented [that] the penalty should be the loss of their station. It was of course necessary to ascertain that the fact existed before its consequences should be declared to follow; it was also necessary to establish some tribunal to examine and to decide as to the existence of the fact itself, and to proclaim that existence. Amongst independent sovereigns there was no superior, and it was natural to fear that mutual jealousy would create great difficulty in selecting a chief; and that what originated in concession might afterwards be claimed as a right. They were however all members of one church, of which the Pope was the head, and, in this respect, their common father; and by universal consent it was regulated that he should examine, ascertain the fact, proclaim it, and declare its consequences. Thus he did in reality possess the power of deposing monarchs, and of absolving their subjects from oaths of fealty, but only those monarchs who were members of that federation, and in the cases legally provided for, and by their concession, not by divine right, and during the term of that federation and the existence of his 5

[A reference to the English Whig historian Henry Hallam (1777-1859), whose chief historical works were Sketch of Europe in the Middle Ages (1818) and the Constitutional History of England From Henry VII’s Accession to the Death of George II (1827).]

140

American Catholic Religious Thought

commission. He governed the church by divine right, he deposed kings and absolved subjects from their allegiance by human concession. I preach the doctrines of my church by divine right, but I preach from this spot not by that right but by the permission of others. It is not then a doctrine of our church that the Pope has been divinely commissioned either to depose kings or to interfere with republics, or to absolve the subjects of the former from their allegiance, or interfere with the civil concerns of the latter. When the persecuted English Catholics, under Elizabeth, found the Pope making an unfounded claim to this right, and upon the shadow of that unfounded right making inroads upon their national independence, by declaring who should or who should not be their temporal ruler, they well showed how little they regarded his absolving them from their allegiance, for they volunteered their services to protect their liberties, which their Catholic ancestors had labored to establish. And she well found that a Catholic might safely be entrusted with the admiralty of her fleet, and that her person was secure amongst her disgraced Catholic nobility and gentry, and their persecuted adherents; although the Court of Rome had issued its bull of absolution, and some divines were found who endeavored to prove that what originated in voluntary concession of states and monarchs was derived from divine institution. If then Elizabeth, of whose character I would not wish in this place to express my opinion, was safe amidst those whom she persecuted for their faith, even when the head of their church absolved them from allegiance, and if at such a moment they flocked round her standard to repel Catholic invaders who came with consecrated banners, and that it is admitted on all hands that in so doing they violated no principle of doctrine or of discipline of their church, as we all avow; surely America need not fear for the fidelity of her Catholic citizens, whom she cherishes and whom she receives to her bosom with affection and shelters from the persecution of others. Neither will any person attempt to establish an analogy between our federation and that of feudalism, to argue that the Pope can do amongst us what he did amongst European potentates under circumstances widely different. It has been frequently objected to us, that our church has been more extensively persecuting than any other. This is not the place to enter into a comparison of atrocities: but I will assert, that when weighed

1 ~ John England

141

against each other, our scale will be found light indeed. Did any person think proper to conjure up the victims from the grave, I would engage to produce evidence of the inflictions upon us in abundance, until the hairs of our hearers should stand on end, and humanity interpose to prevent the recital. But the crimes of individuals or of assemblies are not the doctrines of a church. CONCLUSION: RELIGION AND CHARITY

I had other subjects which I desired to treat of in your presence, but I feel I have trespassed too long upon your patience. Let us go back to our view of religion. We may now say that all the law and the prophets can be reduced to the two great commandments as our blessed Savior gave them: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and thy whole soul, and thy whole mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first and the greatest. Love is affectionate attachment founded upon esteem. We seek to know the will of those whom we love that we may bring ours to be in conformity therewith. The will of God is, that we should seek to know what he teaches, because, indeed, he would not have taught without desiring that we should learn. Our Savior himself tells his disciples, if they love him they will keep his word. The proof, then, of our love is not to be exhibited in our mere declaration, it is to be found in the manifestation of our assiduity to know what our Creator has taught, that it may be the rule of our practice—that we may believe his declarations, obey his injunctions, and adhere to his institutions. As his knowledge surpasses ours, so his declarations may regard facts beyond our comprehension, and our faith be thus built upon the evidence of his word for things which we have not seen, and his promises exhibit to us the substance of what we hope to enjoy, because he has pledged his veracity, not because our reason makes it manifest. It is our duty to love him so as to be zealous for discovering what he has taught, that we may pay to him the homage of our understanding, as well by its exertion as by its submission. Let me then exhort you to this love. Investigate for the purpose of obtaining the knowledge of truth, and then pay the homage of your will by determining to act in conformity with what you shall have discovered. Submit your affections to his law, bring your passions in subjection thereto. Of ourselves we are weak, in his grace

142

American Catholic Religious Thought

we can become strong. His institutions have been established, that through them we might be strengthened in that grace. It is therefore our duty, as it is our interest, to have recourse to them. Reason, religion, wisdom, which is the perfection of both, leads us to this conclusion. It necessarily, then, is incumbent on us to search for where those institutions are to be found. The second commandment is like the first: it is, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself for the sake of God. The apostle asks us, How can a man say that he loves God whom he hath not seen, and hate his neighbor whom he seeth? And that neighbor is made to the likeness of God. The Savior commands us even to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us, and to pray for those who calumniate and persecute us. Nothing can excuse us from the discharge of this duty, the observance of this great commandment. No difference [of creed or] of religion, can form a pretext for noncompliance. Religion, that holy name has too often been abused for this end, that man might flatter himself with having the sanction of heaven for the indulgence of a bad passion.—In these happy and free states we stand upon the equal ground of religious right; we may freely love and bear with each other, and exhibit to Europe a contrast to her jealousies in our affection. By inquiry we shall correct many mistakes, by which our feelings have been embittered; we shall be more bound together in amity, as we become more intimate; and may our harmony and union here below produce that peace and good will that may be emblematic of our enjoyment of more lasting happiness in a better world.

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES Sebastian G. Messmer, ed., The Works of the Right Reverend John England, 7 vols. (Cleveland: The Arthur Clark Co., 1908). Ignatius A. Reynolds, ed., The Works of the Right Reverend John England, 5 vols. (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1849). United States Catholic Miscellany, 1822-42.

1 ~ John England

143

SECONDARY SOURCES Patrick Carey. An Immigrant Bishop: John England’s Adaptation of Irish Catholicism to American Republicanism (New York: U. S. Catholic Historical Society, 1979). ———, “John England,” Biographical Dictionary of Modern British Radicals Since 1770: 1770—1832, eds. J. 0. Baylen and N. J. Gossman, (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1978). Peter Clarke. A Free Church in a Free Society: The Ecclesiology of John England, Bishop of Charleston, 1820-1842. A Nineteenth Century Missionary Bishop in the United States (Hartsville, South Carolina: Center for John England Studies, 1982). Charleston Courier, (April 12, 1842). Obituary. Peter Guilday, The Life and Times of John England, 2 vols. (New York: The America Press, 1927). Harvey Hills, “American Catholicism? John England and ‘The Republic in Danger,’” Catholic Historical Review 89 (April 2003):240-57. Virginia Lee Kaib, “The Ecclesiology of John England, The First Bishop of Charleston, South Carolina 1821-1842,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 1968). David F. Kearnes, “Bishop John England and the Possibilities of Catholic Republicanism,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 102 (January 2001): 47-67. John Kelly, “Charleston’s Bishop John England and American Slavery,” New Hibernia Review 5 (Winter 2001): 48-56. Richard W. Rousseau, “Bishop John England and American Church-State Theory,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada, 1969). ———, “The Greatness of John England,” The American Ecclesiastical Review, 168 (March 1974): 196-206. ———, “Bishop John England: 1837 Relazione to Rome on his Haitian Mission,” Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 11 (1973): 269-88. R. Frank Saunders, Jr., and George A. Rogers, “Bishop John England of Charleston: Catholic Spokesman and Southern Intellectual, 1820-1842,” Journal of the Early Republic 13 (Fall 1993): 301-22.

Part II Romantic Catholicism, 1830-1888

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson ORESTES A. BROWNSON: LIFE BY COMMUNION Orestes A. Brownson (1803-76), a convert to Catholicism, was the foremost American Catholic lay theologian of the nineteenth century. He called his own philosophy and theology “synthetic”1 because they attempted to reconcile the polar opposites subject and object, grace and nature, without destroying the distinction between them. Although his positions developed and changed in the course of his life, he never totally abandoned his attempt to synthesize the polarities that constituted life itself. Orestes Brownson was born to Sylvester and Relief Metcalf Brownson in Stockbridge, Vermont. Throughout his life he was an active religious pilgrim. He was born to a Presbyterian father and a Universalist mother, but was raised in a relative’s Calvinist-Congregationalist home from the age of six to fifteen, when he had a Methodist-Arminian evangelical conversion experience. In 1822, after this experience, be became a Presbyterian and in late 1824 he rejoined his mother’s Universalist religion, becoming a Universalist minister in 1825. Throughout the years 1826 to 1831, he edited three different journals of theological and social concerns and contributed articles to numerous other periodicals. He rejected Universalism in 1829, became a member of the Workingmen’s Party, and for a brief period disassociated himself from all organized religion. In 1830, influenced by the liberal Christianity 1

“The Synthetic Philosophy,” Works, 1:58-129; “The Synthetic Theology,” Works, 3:536-64.

148

American Catholic Religious Thought

of William Ellery Channing, he became a Unitarian minister and from 1838 to 1842 edited the prestigious Boston Quarterly Review. Brownson’s fluctuating religious positions did not cease after his conversion to Catholicism in 1844. Most historians, in fact, have noted three distinct periods during his Catholic years. From 1845 to 1855, he became a militant apologist for American Catholicism, using the traditional historical apologetics of post-Tridentine scholasticism. During the years 1856 to 1864, he revealed more liberal views on the accommodations of Catholicism to modern society, and he demonstrated a more optimistic view of the world. After the publication of Pope Pius IX’s Quanta cura and the Syllabus errorum on December 8, 1864, however, he became the unquestioning champion of Roman Catholic orthodoxy, repeatedly denouncing liberalism and accommodation to nineteenth-century values. During most of his Catholic years he edited Brownson’s Quarterly Review (1843-65; 1873-75), one of the foremost journals of mid-nineteenth-century Catholic thought. Brownson had very little formal education; he was a self-taught philosopher and theologian influenced by the various currents of thought in early nineteenth-century New England, by the French philosophers Claude Henri de Saint Simon, Benjamin Constant, Victor Cousin, and Pierre Leroux, by post-Tridentine Catholic apologetics, and by the traditionalism and ontologism of Vincenzo Gioberti. He was a creative eclectic whose own religious quest made his theology an independent reflection upon what he read and what he experienced in American society. The following selection comes from the period just prior to Brownson’s conversion to Catholicism and reflects his fundamental doctrine of Life by Communion.2 That doctrine tried to establish, against the positions of Theodore Parker and Benjamin Constant, that the origin and ground of religion was not to be found in a natural and therefore universal human religious sentiment but in the relation of Creator and creature which was made known to humans by God himself. Religion 2

For other sources of Brownson’s view of life by communion see, e.g., “The Mediatorial Life of Jesus, “ Works, 4:140-72; The Convert, or Leaves From My Experience (New York: Sadlier & Co., 1857); The American Republic (New York: P. O’Shea, 1866).

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

149

originated and was grounded in the infusion, through communion, of a supernatural life into natural human life. Brownson placed primary emphasis upon the church’s mediatorial role in the process of salvation. Communion with Christ, he argued, is possible only through communion with the church—the living organism and medium through which the Son of God practically redeems humankind. This doctrine, which Brownson articulated in a Unitarian paper, was partially republished and favorably commented upon by the New York Freeman’s Journal (May 6, 1843, p. 358; May 20, 1843, p. 374) and other Catholic papers. The articles clearly placed Brownson outside the Unitarian communion to which he then belonged and revealed a logical trajectory toward Catholicism. The fact that Catholic journals copied his articles made Brownson aware for the first time of the possible termination of his thought in Catholicism.3

****** TEXT THE CHURCH AND ITS MISSION Source: The Christian World 1 (February 4, 1843): 1-2; (February 11, 1843): 2; (February 18, 1843): 2. THE CHURCH AND ITS MISSION (February 4, 1843)

We proceed now to answer briefly, but still as satisfactorily as we can, within our limits, the two questions proposed in our last,4 namely, 1. What is the church? 2. What is its connection with the salvation of the sinner? We mean in this discussion, by the church, the Lord’s church, not man’s; the church of Christ, not a human institution, which men may make or unmake. The definition sometimes proposed of the Christian Church that it is “a voluntary association of believers for religious purposes,” does not embrace what we understand by the church. In 3 4

The Convert, 265. [“What Shall I Do To Be Saved?” The Christian World 1 (January 28, 1843): 2 .]

150

American Catholic Religious Thought

this sense, it would be impossible to make any distinction between the church and Bible, missionary, tract, or even temperance societies, for these, in fact, are principally composed of believers who have associated for religious purposes. In this sense also, the church would be a mere human institution, the creature of the individuals who form it by their associating together, and therefore, subject to their control, and to be altered, preserved, dissolved, abolished, at their pleasure. We mean, moreover, by the church, an outward, visible, organized body; not an internal mystical body, like the church of our Quaker and Transcendental friends. There are those among us, and they not a few, who say that the church is in the soul, and not only in the soul of those who have been renewed through the Spirit, but in the soul of every man, of the sinner as of the saint; and therefore, all that we have to do to find it, is to “look within,” and all to be united to it, and saved through it, is to “enter into ourselves.” But the church, in this mystical sense, is identical with the great principles of truth, justice, and love, and is rather Christ himself, than the church of Christ. Unquestionably, the kingdom of God is within, and consists not in “meat and drink, but in righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost” [Rom 14:16]. But within whom? Does God, Christ, truth, justice, love, reign in the heart of the sinner? Can Christ be in a man, and that man still be a sinner? Can the light be in us, and we still be in darkness? The truth dwell in us, and we be in error? The life, the true eternal life, live in us, and we be dead in trespasses and sins? The church, in this mystical sense, in which sense it is Christ himself, rather than the church of Christ, can be in none except those who, through Christ, have been redeemed and united to God. It is, in this sense, the end that we are in pursuit of, and not the means of obtaining that end. How shall that end be obtained? These mystics, for whom we have great respect, for they are in general a very pure-minded, and well-meaning race, fall into the mistake of confounding the church, as a means appointed by divine grace for the salvation of the sinner, with the salvation itself, or the great, eternal, and immutable principles, in the possession of which, the salvation consists. They see very clearly, this great truth, a truth never to be lost sight of that religion, regarded not as the means, but the end, consists in the union of the soul through Christ with God,

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

151

and is what our old Divines call “the life of God in the soul.” For this, they also see that no handwriting of ordinances, no outward churches, temples, sanctuaries, external services, or forms of worship, of any kind whatsoever, can be any the least substitute. All this is well enough; but, unfortunately, they fix their eyes so exclusively on this that they forget that the sinner is alienated from God, and cannot come into this union with God without a mediator, a medium. Unquestionably, he who is so united to God, has all that he needs, all that God demands of him, and is, therefore, saved, and safe. But what is this to me, who am not so united to God? Will you say, be united to God? Alas, my brother, this is my very difficulty; I am alienated from God, and have no power in myself to become one with him. I need a church to bring me into your church. Your church takes me not, where I am, a sinner, but takes me only when I have already become redeemed and sanctified. I want a church that shall take me, a sinner, all polluted as I am, and bring me into union with Jesus, and through him, into union with God. The church that proposes to do this, not the church that takes me only after this has been done, is what we now understand by the church of Christ. The church of Christ is the outward, visible, organized body of our Lord, bearing the same relation to Jesus, as our ever-present Savior, as did the body in which he was crucified, to him as Son of Mary. It is the real body of Christ in which he now lives, and through which, he carries on his mediatorial work. It is not only his body, his living body, but the individual men and women, who are members of it, are literally joined to it as living members, and bear a relation to it, analogous to that borne by the hand, the foot, the eye, or the ear, to our bodies. This we learn from Paul, in a manner so clear and explicit, as to leave no room to doubt. “For as we have many members in one body, and all the members have not the same office; so we, being many are ONE BODY IN CHRIST, and every one members one of another.” Rom. 12:4, 5. So again: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit, are we all baptized into ONE BODY, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and all have been made to drink into one Spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not

152

American Catholic Religious Thought

the hand, I am not of the body; is it, therefore, not of the body? And if the ear shall say, because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it, therefore, not of the body? God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honor unto that part which lacked that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. NOW YE ARE THE BODY OF CHRIST, AND MEMBERS IN PARTICULAR” [1 Cor. 12:12-27]. That Paul here means to assert expressly that the church is the body of Christ, is evident from Ephesians 1:22, 23. “And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body”; and Colossians, 1:24, “Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, in my flesh, for his body’s sake, which is the church.” Nothing can be plainer, or more express to our purpose than this. The church, then, we may assume as settled, is the BODY OF CHRIST. This body has many members, and these members are, unquestionably, individual men and women. What is the relation of these members to the body? What is the relation of them one to another? The relation of the members to the body is, we have said, that of the hand or the foot to the human body. “We are,” says Saint Paul, Ephesians, 5:30, “members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” The relation of member to member, is that of living members of one and the same body. “We are,” says Saint Paul, again, in the passage already quoted from Romans, “one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” So that if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, and if one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. According to this view, the church, as the body of Christ, is not an association, but an organism. Without individual members, there would, of course, be no actual church, as there would be no actual body, if all the members were taken away; but do the members make the body? The life of the body—understanding now by the word life, the principle of life, or power to live—the life of the body, is it in the parts? or is the life of the parts in the body? If the life of the body were in the members, the members would have a separate and

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

153

independent life, and be able to live as well, when severed from the body, as when united to it. In such case it would excite no surprise, to see feet severed from the body, walking about, hands working, ears hearing, and eyes seeing. But we know that in the human body, this is not true; for the members have no life, but in their union with the body, in which is the one common principle of their vitality. Herein is the distinction between an association and an organism. In the association, the body has no life but the aggregate life of the members, and therefore, none but what they impart to it; in the organism, it is precisely the reverse, the life of the members is in the body, and they have none but what they receive from it, through their intimate union with it. If the church were a mere association, although an association of saints for the holiest purposes, it would receive all its life from its members, just as if the body were to receive its life from the hand, the foot, the ear, and the eye. The members of the association would receive no increase of life from their union with it. They might be severed from it, and it dissolved, abolished, with no losses of life to themselves, or to the world. This would be reducing our low-churchism, to no-churchism, with a vengeance. But now is the church of Christ, not an association, but a body, an ORGANISM, and therefore does not receive its life from its members, but imparts to them their life; and they can live only in their intimate union with it. Hence the significance of excommunication. In declaring the church to be the body of Christ, we necessarily declare that Christ is the life of the church, as the Spirit is the life of the body. If he is the life of the church, then he lives in the church, and, then, is the church his body, his embodiment in time and space, and the medium of communion with him, as the body of a man is the medium of communion with the spirit of a man. 5

[“The Mission of Jesus,” Christian World, January 21, 1843. Growth in Christ’s life, Brownson says, “is not by development, but by assimilation.” “Something more is always needed than the mere tempting forth of what is already within.” Growth and progress, for Brownson, is dependent upon the influence of or communion with an object outside the self that is superior to the self and, therefore, can raise the self above its own inherent qualities. A teacher, for example, communicates and imparts, whether

154

American Catholic Religious Thought

How Christ can or does literally live in the church is not by any means difficult to be explained to those who comprehend the doctrine we established in our third essay on the mission of Jesus,5 which essay we pray our readers to read over again, and as many times as they find necessary, in order to comprehend the law of life, expressed by the term communion, which we have there insisted upon. This law is that that life of the object with which we commune, to the full extent of the communion, becomes literally an indissoluble portion of our life, so that what we call our life is always the resultant, so to speak, of two factors, of which I am one, and that with which I commune, but which is not I, is the other. This law is profound and is co-extensive with all dependent beings. Now, represent to your minds Jesus, who lives by intimate but supernatural communion with God, so that in his life, he is at once indissolubly human and divine, as incarnated that is, dwelling like us, in a body of flesh, amongst our brethren. He becomes in this case and object of communion. They who commune with him are his disciples. Through communion, his life, called in the New Testament, sometimes the life, and sometimes the Spirit, passes into these disciples, and thus he lives in them, and they in him. While in the flesh his body served as the medium through which, by this law of life, he could and would naturally communicate the life, the Spirit, to those who communed with him personally; but when he personally ascended into heaven, to be seated at the right hand of the Father, men could no longer commune with him through the medium of that body; and of course he would have been lost to the world had he not continued to live embodied in these very disciples, friends to whom by precept or example, a portion of his own life to the student, and the student actively, not passively, receives this communication. In this process of communion “the influence and the influenced, so far as the influence extends, do literally become one, living one and the same life.” The Law of Life is a result of the interaction of the subject and the object with which the subject communes. All life, therefore, is simultaneously subjective and objective. Life, in a word, is the result of the synthesis of the subject’s and the object’s joint activity. Jesus imparts his life, which is a redeeming life because it is above the life of any human being, to humankind by virtue of this law of life.]

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

155

he had through communion communicated himself, on whom he had breathed, saying, “Receive my Spirit” [Acts 7:59]. But as he could, as he naturally would, and as we are assured that he did so continue to live in them, these would constitute his body, through which others might have access to him and through him to the Father. Jesus, then, could live in his disciples by virtue of this law of life, which we express by the word communion, and began so to live through personal communion with them while he was with them in the flesh. It was necessary, nay, absolutely necessary that he should come in the flesh, for in no other way could the life be communicated, without changing or violating the laws of human nature, which would have been tantamount to the annihilation of humanity. Hence, John assures us that they who confess not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, are deceivers and antichrists. He must also have been divine, the Son of God, or his coming in the flesh, and becoming the life of his disciples, would have amounted to nothing. Hence again, “he is an antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son” [l John 2:22], that is, that the Father is to us by and through the Son, or that the Son is the revelation of the Father; so that he who hath the Son, may truly say that he hath the Father. “He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father” [John 14:9]. The life, the Spirit, by which Jesus lives in his disciples, is one life, one spirit, and therefore would, as we have seen, unite all those in whom he lived into one body. These at first were his personal disciples, those with whom he lived while in the flesh, and who through personal communion received him. They must from the nature of the case, have been all those, and could have been only those. These then constituted, not the first church as we sometimes say, but the church, and the whole church in the beginning. They were all who had the life, the unity of the Spirit with its diversity of operations. The life, the Spirit, being the life, the spirit of Jesus, was a divine life, the Spirit not of man, but of God. Jesus was the way, the truth, and the life. Consequently, he, continuing to live in the church, in the life of his followers, is in them in truth and the life. Hence, Jesus living in the church, becomes identical with the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth that should lead into all truth. The Holy Ghost the

156

American Catholic Religious Thought

church has always affirmed to be God, but God proceeding forth from the Father through the Son, which is precisely the view here given. Jesus, through communion of his disciples with him, lives in them. This answers the question, how can Jesus literally live in the church? This life, or the Spirit is one, and therefore, necessarily unites into one body, and, as it is life, into one living organism, all in whom Jesus through the Spirit lives. This establishes the UNITY of the church. The indwelling Jesus, being identical with the spirit of truth, the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, the body in which he dwells must be an inspired body. Jesus was not a mere man. The whole gospel is a mere farce on the supposition of what is called his simple humanity. He is the Son of God, and in a sense, in which no man is naturally a Son of God. He is then supernatural, and then the life that from him goes out into his disciples, into the church, is a supernatural life, a life transcending the generic power, which is what we must mean by the natural power, of man to live. Hence, the life of the church is a supernatural life, and not only supernatural, but is the life of God. Here is seen the ABILITY of the church. The church is competent to instruct us, for the Holy Ghost is its life, for the Spirit of truth lives in it. It is competent to discipline us, because it has within itself the ability to know, and from the nature of the case, the disposition to do whatever is necessary for our spiritual welfare. But if the church be constituted, as it must be, according to what we have said, by the indwelling Jesus, by the Holy Ghost being in it, its unity, its teacher, and its life, or power to live, then it must not only be an inspired body, not only a body competent to the work of salvation, but must be an authoritative body. What has the right to command us, if not the Spirit of truth, of Jesus, of God? Is not God the Sovereign? Is not Jesus his Son, his revelation, speaking in the name that is to say, with the authority of his Father? If, then, the church be the body of Jesus, through which he speaks, is not the voice of the church, the highest expression of the law that we have, or can have? The church speaks by the authority of the Spirit, and as the Spirit is the Holy Ghost, one in the last analysis with God, where is there, or can there be, for us any higher authority? Question this authority, you question that Jesus lives in the church; therefore that he lives at all for

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

157

us; and therefore, again that there is for us any medium of communion with God. If we confine our remarks to the church when it consisted solely of those who personally communed with Jesus, we presume none who profess to believe in him, in the gospel, will question our statements, in regard either to the unity or universality, either to the inspiration or the authority, of the church. We all admit, nay, all contend that at that moment, the church was composed of these disciples, and of all who had the Spirit, and of none others; and that these were literally the body of Christ. Or, in other words that Christ literally lived in them; that it was this fact of his living in them that made them the church, his body; that by virtue of his living in them, they were inspired, were possessed of a supernatural life, and competent to the work of mediating between Christ and the sinner; and finally that by virtue of the Holy Ghost, shed abroad in their hearts, they could, and did speak with authority. This is precisely what all those believe, who assert the authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures; for it is on their authority that Christians assert the inspiration of the Old Testament; and the New Testament is nothing but a record, more or less full, of the life of this very church of the disciples. Here, then, in the very fact that we affirm the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, do we necessarily affirm that the church in its origin was one, catholic, inspired and authoritative. God did, then, “set some in the church; first, apostles; secondarily, prophets; thirdly, teachers; after that, miracles; then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues” 1 Cor. 12:28. Well, will any one tell us when this constitution of the church was altered, and by whose authority? Has the original church, the church of Christ, passed away? Have sin and Satan triumphed, and crushed and obliterated the works of the Son of God? Or has God altered his modes of dealing with men, changed the Christian dispensation, or given us a new dispensation? Answer, we beseech you, ye wise ones of the earth, who revolt at an inspired, authoritative church. Say, has the church failed? Has Christ ceased to dwell with man? Has he abandoned humanity in despair, and acknowledged himself vanquished? Or have we grown so good, so holy, so wise, so all-sufficient for ourselves that there is no longer any work for the Savior to do, in bringing us to

158

American Catholic Religious Thought

God? If not, why contend that the church is not now precisely what it was in its origin? Did not Jesus promise his disciples, saying, “Lo! I am with you, unto the end of the world” [Matt 28:20]? Did he mean anything by this promise, or did he not? Has he kept this promise, or has he broken it? We demand of those who contend that the church is a differently constituted body now, from what it was when it was the church of the disciples that they bring us the proof of the fact they allege. We would know when the alteration took place? In what it consists? And by whose authority it was made? You all admit there was a church of God once on the earth, which was all that we allege the church is; for you receive and acknowledge the inspiration, sufficiency and authority of the Scriptures, which were its production. Well, is there, or is there not, such a church still on the earth? When has the Apostolic church ceased? The fact is, we cannot assert that there was an Apostolic church, without asserting that it still continues, and has never for a moment ceased. Whence did the disciples receive Jesus? Was it not by communion? Well, they did receive him, and he lived in them, and they were filled with the Holy Ghost. Then they had power to impart life. They who should come into communion with them, would, by the very law of communion, receive the very same Spirit, which they had received through personal communion with Jesus. Now, either show that the succession has been broken, that the continuity of the church, from that time to this, has been interrupted, and that there have been, in time, chasms so broad that the Spirit could not leap across them, or else admit that the church has continued the one, catholic, inspired, authoritative body, it was in its apostolic origin. The church may have been, nay, it no doubt has been in the world, as leaven hidden in three measures of meal; and it has not all at once succeeded in leavening the whole lump. The great dragon, or the principle of evil, working in the hearts of the rebellious, may have at times seemed to have swallowed her up with the floods of iniquity, and she have been forced to be a church of the captivity, hanging her harps upon the willow, and sitting down in a strange land, by the rivers of Babylon, and weeping as she remembers the days of her glory. She may have become, as we believe she now is, the church in the wilderness; but ever has she been the true church, battling with

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

159

sin and Satan, and showing forth the grace and mercy of God, in the face of the armies of his enemies. Nay, and she shall return from her captivity; nay, she shall come up out of the wilderness, leaning on the arm of her beloved, beautiful as the morning, mild as the evening, but terrible as an army with banners. God will arise. Why did the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing? The Lord’s hand is not shortened that he cannot save; nor his ear heavy that he cannot hear. We answer, therefore, to the question, what is the church? That it is the living body of Christ, composed of all those men and women who are by the unity of the Spirit united to it as living members; that it is a one, catholic, inspired, authoritative body. Whether it is identical with this or that one of the extant organizations, calling themselves Christian churches, is an inquiry into which we do not enter at present. All we say is that the true church of Christ is an outward body, formed by the indwelling of his Spirit, and that it still exists in time and space, unchanged in spirit, capacity, disposition, or authority, from what it was in the apostolic age. The connection of this church with the salvation of the sinner, the second question we asked, we will answer in our next; which we shall follow by the attempt to answer the question, How does the church accomplish its mission in the salvation of the sinner? That is, by what agencies does it take the sinner, all defiled with sin, and bring him to God? THE CHURCH AND ITS MISSION (February 11, 1843)

Having ascertained what the church is, we now proceed to consider its connection with the salvation of the sinner. Is the church absolutely essential to salvation? Is it competent to mediate between the sinner and Christ, and therefore between the sinner and God. . . . We do not wish to dissemble that this conclusion [i.e. that the Church is absolutely necessary for salvation], from which for the life of us we see no escape, will not be acceptable to our liberal brethren. We are aware that many among us, who would shrink with horror from the bare thought of denying the Lord that bought us, do not regard the church as by any means indispensable to salvation. They even go

160

American Catholic Religious Thought

so far as to believe that men can be saved by the “light of nature,” if they follow it, without even stopping to ask if men without Christ, have the power to follow the “light of nature,” which after all is an exceedingly dim and uncertain light. But, have they reflected that in so believing, they believe men can be saved without the mediation of Christ? If men can be saved without the mediation of Christ, if the heathen, for instance, can be saved by the light of nature, then, what need of his mediation? But is not Christ the door? Is there any way of coming to God, but through him? Assuredly not. For he himself says expressly, John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: NO MAN COMETH TO THE FATHER BUT BY ME.” To affirm that we can come to God in any other way than through the mediation of Jesus, is in fact to deny the authority of Jesus, and the necessity of his mediation. But if we can come to God, that is, be saved, only through the mediation of Jesus, then, comes up our old question, how shall that mediation be made effectual in the actual salvation of the sinner? Immediately? that is, miraculously? We have refuted this notion already, for it would be to declare that there was no occasion for his coming in the flesh. It also virtually declares that no mediator between God and men is necessary, for God at any time, might by a miracle have brought the sinner to himself; that is, he could have as well done it without the mission of Jesus, as with it, providing that the mission leaves the necessity for a resort to miracle still standing. Moreover, this way of bringing men to Christ by a miracle, which, by the by is no way at all, for a way is a medium, is very far from meeting the wants of the sinner. The sinner, it is true, cannot be regenerated, saved, without the intervention of supernatural power; that is, a power which transcends man’s generic power, or simple power as a human being; but the mode in which this power intervenes and operates in transforming the sinner must be natural, that is, in perfect harmony with the principles of human nature; or, as we have already shown, its intervention, instead of saving a man, would annihilate him, by changing him into a being of a different kind. In order to meet this necessity, the supernatural power must intervene, in a regular, certain, and fixed manner. If it do not so intervene, then is there no regular, fixed, and certain way of salvation. Then is all in the economy of grace, left, so

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

161

to speak, at loose ends. We are, as sinners, poor invalids, gathering around the pool of Bethesda, obtaining and able to obtain no relief, till the angel of the Lord comes down and troubles the waters, and even then, able to obtain no help for our infirmities, unless we chance to be the first assisted to step in. Has Jesus left his work thus unfinished? Did he not come expressly for the purpose of establishing a regular, fixed, and certain way of salvation? Is all then still uncertain, and must we continue to wander up and down the earth crying out continually, “who will show us any good?” If so, O Jesus, why didst thou come? In vain hast thou lived, preached, suffered, died, and risen again; in vain hast thou sent forth apostles, founded thy church, declared that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it, and given unto it the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and asserted that whatsoever it should bind on earth should be bound in heaven, and whatsoever it should loose on earth should be loosed in heaven. In vain hast thou founded the kingdom of grace, and provided the means of redemption and sanctification, if still the way is uncertain, and men can come to thee only through the intervention of a miracle! This notion of immediate, or miraculous communion with Jesus, must be abandoned. The Church which asserts that it is still necessary to resort to a miracle, denies that Jesus has opened the way of salvation, nay, that there is any fixed and certain way of salvation, and proclaims its own weakness and utter insufficiency as a Church of Christ. Some of our brethren have tried to make a distinction between Christ and Christianity, and have alleged that it is possible to have a very sufficient Christianity, without any Christ at all.6 If there be any truth in the principles we have laid down, no separation, in fact no distinction, can be made between Christ and Christianity. Christ does not teach Christianity, does not make it: HE IS IT, and there is no Christianity but Christ. Hence, the evangelists tell us to believe on 6

[A reference to Theodore Parker’s view, expressed in The Transient and Permanent in Christianity (1841), ed. George Willis Cooke (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1908), 21, that “if it could be proved—as it cannot—in opposition to the greatest amount of historical evidence ever collected on any similar point, that the gospels were the fabrication of designing and actual men, that Jesus of Nazareth had never lived, still Christianity would stand firm and fear no evil.”]

162

American Catholic Religious Thought

Christ Jesus, to embrace him, never Christianity. Now, we have shown that Christ himself must be received, not what he taught; and that he can be received only where he is. He is only in the church. That is his body. There he lives, if one may so say, dwells. He can live nowhere else, for he can live only in the lives of those who are united to him by the unity of the Spirit, or the life, and his living in them, a one life, constitutes them the church. Then it is as impossible to make any distinction between Christianity and the church, as between Christ and Christianity. There is no Christianity, but Christ, and no Christ for us, but the church, that is to say, the informing life of the church, of which all partake who come into communion with the church. Go out of the church, there is no Christianity, no Christ, and therefore, no medium of access to the Father. Here we are controverted. “What! do you mean to say that all who die without the pale of the Christian church, die without hope?” Whence, we ask in turn, comes the hope of the sinner? Do you mean to tell us that a man can be saved without receiving the very life of Jesus into his life, so that Christ does literally become to him “the Lord our righteousness?” If not, how is this life to be received, but by communion with it where it is, that is to say, in the church where we have proved that he lives? If the reverse, then you deny all necessity for the mediation of Christ, and are to be met as infidels, not as Christian believers. But, we are told again that we reason upon a false assumption. “This notion of yours about receiving the life of Jesus is all moonshine. Jesus came merely to set us an example in his own life of what we should be and do. This life may be lived by those who never heard of Jesus or saw his example, as there were many who were virtuous before Socrates defined virtue.” Admirable, my brother! only thou forgettest that, on this ground, the gospel is no such mighty affair as some people think it, and especially that admitting Jesus set this example, through sin thou has lost thy power to follow it, and for this eighteen hundred years no one, notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts, has been able to follow it. O my brother! do not deceive thyself. Jesus, as an example merely, is as good as no Jesus at all; for what thou wantest is not so much to perceive what thy duty is, as inward power to do it. O do not mock the sinner, who is all helpless, and cannot through the

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

163

destruction he has brought upon himself, take one single step towards heaven, and who is lost forever unless sovereign grace comes to his rescue—O do not mock him with a Jesus who is only the way, and not also the truth, and the LIFE! Where shall the sinner obtain the power to walk in the way, to follow this example of Jesus? My brother, thou forgettest this question, which after all is the main question. But we are controverted again, and this time from the other side of the house. “We are saved, it is true,” say these voices from the extreme right, “by the righteousness of Christ, but not as you suppose, by its being imparted to us, so that it becomes literally ours; but by its being imputed to us, adjudged ours by the Father, for and in consideration of the great merits of his Son; as if I, to show my regard for Peter, should forgive his brother James the debt he owes me. Christ saves us by his DEATH. He died for us on the cross. By that death he opened the door of salvation, made it possible, or consistent, for God to forgive the sinner; and so now all obstacles being removed, God imputes the righteousness of his Son to whomsoever he will, and makes that one practically holy through the sovereign workings of his Spirit. Now, as salvation, or rather redemption, comes by the death of Christ, which of course was not through the mediation of the church, and as justification unto life is by the free gift of God imputing to whom he wills, the righteousness of his son, and owning them in reward of the merits of his son, where is or can be this absolute necessity of the church for which you contend?” This objection is urged against us in consequence of a misapprehension of the scheme of divine grace for the salvation of men. This whole scheme is the work, unquestionably, of sovereign grace. Man had no agency in devising it, and none in providing or establishing the means for carrying it into effect. But we totally and fatally misapprehend the gospel, if we suppose that the life and death of Jesus save us any further than they operate as means of making us personally holy. The simple fact that Christ died, viewed as isolated from the virtue which went out from it, and which converts the souls of men, saves nobody, as is evident from the fact that notwithstanding it, we are sinners and under the wrath of God, till we are personally renewed, till the blood of the atonement has been personally applied.

164

American Catholic Religious Thought

The old doctrine of imputed righteousness had a deeper significance than its partisans perceived. They saw very clearly that the sinner could not save himself; that he could never merit heaven as a reward; and that God could not consistently with his moral government, receive him to heaven while a sinner, nay, that heaven could be no heaven to the sinner. Thus far all was right. They saw also that the only righteousness in which the sinner could appear before God, in an acceptable light, was the righteousness of Christ. But how establish an actual relation between the sinner and this righteousness of Christ, so that the sinner should be actually clothed with it? This was the question. The old divines answered by imputation. But after all, what did they really mean? What lay at the bottom of their thought? Assuredly, that the righteousness of Christ must become the righteousness of the sinner, before the sinner could be acceptable to his Maker. How it could become so, they did not precisely see, and therefore said, by imputation. We accept their thought, which is true, but reject their philosophy, which is defective. But even the advocates of the doctrine of imputation, also held that no one could be saved, without what they called, a “personal application of the blood of the atonement.” This, if it mean anything, must mean actually clothing us with the righteousness of Christ; or literally imparting to us his life; so that he becomes truly, without a figure, the life of our life. God is just, and can justify none till they are just. Hence, the righteousness of Christ must not only be putatively ours, but actually ours. Then, the work of saving the sinner was not completed by the death of Jesus on the cross. That is to say, we are not, after all, saved by the Christ that was, but by the Christ that is, for we can receive the life of Christ only by personal communion with him where he lives. The moment we substitute imparted for imputed righteousness, a living Savior becomes necessary, and a body through which we may receive him. Jesus must be imparted to us, must be received into us, and assimilated to us, as the sole condition of our acceptance with God. “Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life in you” [John 6:53]. We can receive him only by communion, and since he is embodied only in the church, it is only in and through the church that we can commune with him. Hence, again, the indispensableness of the church.

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

165

But a new class of objectors springs up “We admit your premises. We admit that we come to God only through Jesus Christ, and that we can come to him only through a medium; but this medium is not the church, but FAITH. ‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved’” [Rom 10:9]. Admit, my brother, that we commune with Jesus through faith, does this answer every question? Is there no question back of this? Admit we come to Jesus by faith, pray how do we come to faith? That is, how or by what agencies do we obtain this saving faith in the Lord Jesus? Paul shall answer for us. Rom. 10:13-15: “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach except they be sent?” Faith, then, it would seem, can be obtained only through the medium of the church, and in point of fact, except where the witness and the instructions of the church are found, faith in the Lord Jesus is not found. But after all, to speak accurately, faith is the communion with Jesus, or the immediate effect of communion with him, rather than the medium through which we obtain access to him. But we are told once more that “if this be conceded, still you are wrong in asserting that the mediation of the church is indispensable to communion with Jesus. For we commune with him, and, in fact, even with the Father, through PRAYER.” Thou art fertile in objections, my brother; but I would that thou wouldest look a little deeper. We admit that prayer is a medium, not of communion with Jesus in the sense in which we now consider communion with him, but of communion with God; but what then? Our prayers to be acceptable must be in faith. “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him” [Heb 11:6]. “So then without faith it is impossible to please God” [Heb 11:6]. Thus, in order to commune with God through prayer, we must have faith; and to the production of faith, we have seen that the church is indispensable. Nor is this all. We are commanded to pray in the name of Jesus, and the promise is only to those who meet together in his name, or pray in his name. By this we must understand that to pray

166

American Catholic Religious Thought

acceptably, we must pray in the Spirit of Jesus. The prayers of the wicked do not reach to heaven; they are an abomination in the sight of God. We must, then, receive of the life of Jesus, be to some extent filled with his Spirit, before even we can pray. Here comes up again our old question, how receive the life of Jesus, or come into communion with him? This brings us back to the church as the depositary of his life, and the agency by which we are brought into communion with him. But there is still another objection to our doctrine behind, and the one on which they who do not accept our doctrine, rely more than on any other which can be urged. “We admit,” say they who urge it, “all you say about the necessity of Christ as the mediator between God and men, all that you say about the necessity of a regular, fixed and certain method of communion with Jesus, of some agency to give us faith in Christ, and to teach us, and enable us to pray; but all this, which you find in the church, we find in the Bible. The Bible is alone sufficient to bring us into communion with Jesus, and to make us wise unto salvation.” This objection deserves a serious and full answer, and a fuller answer than we now have room to give it. We will therefore adjourn its consideration till our next, when we will take it up at length. THE CHURCH AND ITS MISSION: SUFFICIENCY OF THE SCRIPTURES (February 18, 1843)

They who reject the doctrine that Jesus mediates between us and the Father only through the medium of his body, the church, and allege, in opposition thereto, the sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures, proceed on the ground that Christianity is distinguishable from Christ, and assume that the immediate object of Christian faith is not Christ but Christianity, that salvation is the effect not of receiving Christ himself, but Christ’s teachings, and that the sinner is able, uninstructed by the church, from the Bible alone, to find out what Jesus really taught, and to conform to it in his life. This is the only ground, so far as we can see, on which men can even pretend to assert the sufficiency of the Scriptures

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

167

But this ground is very far from being tenable. There is no distinction possible between Christ and Christianity. There are not certain eternal and immutable truths, or divine purposes, which we may call Christianity, and which must be believed; and a Jesus Christ, separate or distinguishable from these, who reveals them, illustrates and confirms them by the beauty and authority of his miraculous life. In this abstract sense there is no Christianity. Jesus does not teach the truth, impersonate, or symbolize the truth; HE IS IT, and there is no truth for us, no Christianity, but the living Son of man, who is also, and at the same time, the Son of God. The object of Christian faith, is not then what Jesus taught, whether by precept or example, nor indeed what he was or did, but simply and solely HIMSELF. It is an error then to assume that salvation is the effect of faith in his teachings. We are not saved by believing in any doctrine whatever; neither in the unity nor the Trinity; neither in the divinity, nor in the humanity of Jesus; neither in God’s sovereignty, nor in man’s agency; neither in justification by faith alone, nor in justification by works; neither in justification by having the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, nor in justification by having the righteousness of Christ communicated to us. We are saved, as we have already proved over and over again, not by believing what Christ taught, but by receiving and assimilating to our spiritual life Christ himself, so that we may say truly, without a figure, that he lives in us, and we live in him. Assume now, what indeed we shall soon proceed to question that the Bible alone is sufficient to instruct us in all the mysteries of the Christian faith, to tell us exactly who and what Jesus was, and in a word, to make us acquainted with the whole scheme of gospel salvation, all the details of the economy of divine grace, it will not follow that the Scriptures alone are sufficient to make the sinner wise unto salvation. We may know and believe all the facts and doctrines of the gospel, in the ordinary sense of knowing and believing, and in the ordinary sense of facts and doctrines, and be still in the “bonds of iniquity and the gall of bitterness” [Acts 8:23]. Even believing that we ought to receive and assimilate the divine life, who is Christ the Lord, the living God, as we do the bread that we eat and which sustains our mortal bodies, avails us, as we have seen, nothing, nothing at all; but the literal reception of Christ himself into us, the life of

168

American Catholic Religious Thought

our life, so that we are united to him by one spirit, as the branch to the vine. Now, the most the Bible can do, is to give us a correct view of the truth as it is in Jesus. It cannot give us Christ himself, a living, personal, ever-present, indwelling Savior. It therefore is not, and cannot be alone sufficient, as all must see and own the moment that they understand that we are saved by receiving Christ himself, not merely by a knowledge of, and faith in what he taught. The Holy Scriptures themselves, whose authority we admit to the fullest extent, declare their own insufficiency, when they declare that it is the Son himself, not instruction concerning the Son that frees us from the bondage of sin and death. Nor is this all. We deny the ability of the sinner to find out from the Bible alone, what it was that Jesus really taught; and therefore, we deny that the Bible alone would be sufficient, even in case saving faith were faith in the teachings of Jesus, and not, as we have seen, the literal, actual, but spiritual reception of Jesus himself. We who are born in Christian lands, do breathe from the first the atmosphere of the church, and long before we have become able to read the Bible, are instructed, directly or indirectly, as to what we are to find in it, when we do read it. We are therefore, never in a condition to rely on the Bible alone. We never go to it wholly devoid of preliminary instructions and therefore, of prepossessions. Hence it turns out that for the most part, when we do come to study the Bible, we find little else in it than the faith we have brought to it, so that we may be said to put our faith into the Bible, not to obtain our faith from it. Hence it is Episcopal children find the New Testament full of Episcopacy; Congregational children full of Congregationalism; Trinitarian children full of Trinitarianism; Unitarian children full of Unitarianism, &c. Our prepossessions determine, even with the best intentions on our part, the meaning we attach to the words we read. Suppose we could come to the Bible without these prepossessions, divested of all the religious instruction we have received prior to reading it, so that our minds on approaching it were a perfect blank, we should not help the matter; for in such case the pages of the book would be as blank as our minds. It is not possible for us to come so to the Bible, and it would avail us nothing if we could. We should be obliged to inquire into the meaning of the words, and to do this we

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

169

should need to resort to the grammars, dictionaries, glossaries, and commentaries, which have been made by students of the Bible, who had brought to the study of it their prepossessions, and had explained the words and sentences according to the understanding of them which they had been previously taught. There is no getting over this. Take the Bible to a heathen land, and translate it into the language of a heathen people. If this people have no notion of God, how will you translate into their language the Hebrew, Greek, or English word for God? If they have some notion of God, they will have a word for God, and you must use, in translating that word to express the Christian conception of God. But that word conveys to them their own previous conception of God, and how will you, without the discipline of the missionary, prevent them from substituting that conception for the Christian conception? But we go a step further; we affirm that all ecclesiastical history goes to prove the insufficiency of the Scriptures, when taken alone, without the authoritative interpretation of the church. Have men, left to themselves and the Bible alone, ever agreed as to its precise import? Nay, with all the aids they could receive from erudition, science, the study of ecclesiastical history and philosophy, have they been able to come to any tolerable agreement as to its doctrines? Protestantism starts with the right of private judgment and the sufficiency of the Scriptures. It assumes the Bible as the authoritative rule in faith and practice, and that private judgment is competent, from the study of the Bible alone, to find out and apply this rule. This rule, we have a right to assume, is one. There is but one way to heaven. There is but one God, and one mediator between God and men. Well, have our Protestant sects, left free to study the Bible, and to interpret it by their private judgment, come to anything like an agreement as to what this one rule is? Is there a single point on which the Protestant world has departed from the Catholic faith, and the Catholic interpretation of the Bible, on which Protestant sects are not divided, and concerning which they are not, as it were, at sword’s points? The disputes between Protestant sects, let it be understood, are not about trifles; they extend 7

[Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), scientist and theologian, was a founder of the Unitarian movement in England and had an influence upon its development in the United States where he lived after 1794.]

170

American Catholic Religious Thought

to the very essentials of the Christian faith. The gospel, according to John Calvin, is fundamentally different from the gospel, according to Joseph Priestley;7 and we confess that the gospel we are ourselves advocating, seems to us to be totally another gospel from that set forth by Belsham, and the English Unitarians, or that contended for by the German Rationalists, whether of the school of Paulus, or of the school of Strauss.8 How then, say, the Scriptures are alone sufficient? What private judgment has, from the study of them alone, nay, with all the helps of science and erudition, been able to determine, even in essentials, what it is they teach? Nor will we stop here. We allege the inability of the sinner to know and believe in the truth as it is in Jesus. One ground of the condemnation of the sinner, as well as his need of help, is, in the fact that while a sinner, unrenewed, he is unable to discover the truth, and still more unable to embrace it as truth. If the sinner were able, in and of himself, to know and believe the truth, he would be able, in and of himself, to work out his own salvation. We must not forget that they are the pure in heart only who see God. Sin blunts intellectual as well as moral perceptions. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” [1 Cor 2:14]. We must have spiritual discernment before we can know and receive the doctrine of Jesus; but can we have spiritual discernment without receiving Christ himself? In other words, faith, instead of being as some contend, the medium of salvation, is the effect of salvation. The regenerating influences of the Spirit do not come to us through our faith in the truth, but precede that faith, and are its indispensable condition. As Paul 8

[Thomas Belsham (1750-1829) was Joseph Priestley’s fellow Unitarian at Hackney College in Hackney, England. Belsham wrote frequently in defense of Unitarianism and accepted Priestley’s Unitarian pulpit at Hackney when Priestley moved to the United States. Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus (1761-1851), German orientalist and theologian at the Universities of Jena and Heidelberg, tried to reconcile belief in the substantial accuracy of the Gospel narrative with disbelief in the miracles and the supernatural. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-1874), German theologian at the University of Tübingen, wrote Das Leben Jesu (1835-36) a Life of Jesus that pointed to mythical elements in the Gospels and denied the historical foundation of all supernatural elements in them.]

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

171

says to Timothy, “God will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” [1 Tim 2:4]. He does not say, God will have all men come to the knowledge of the truth, and be saved. The salvation must precede the knowing, as its condition. Assuming, then, that a man who is saved, who has been enlightened by the indwelling of the Spirit, is able from the Bible alone, to become acquainted with the truth, this would not prove the sufficiency of the Scriptures to make the sinner wise unto salvation, which is the point to be made out. A man must receive Christ, before he can understand the Bible; but when he has received Christ, he is saved. Now will reading the Bible without understanding it give us Christ, and unite us to him by one spirit? Then, if not, we need some other medium than the Bible, through which to come into communion with the Savior. Understanding of and faith in the gospel, in what may be termed the philosophy of religion, are not the preliminary conditions of salvation, for they presuppose no small degree of spiritual illumination; but they are among the means by which we grow in grace; that is to say, come into closer and fuller communion with Jesus; a communion which with the saint will be eternally becoming more intimate and complete. But waiving even this, assuming that the sinner has the ability to see and comprehend and believe the truth, and that seeing and believing of it will be sufficient as the means of his redemption and sanctification, the difficulty is not removed; for no sinner, unless, as it were, compelled by some outward authority, will read the Bible, or if reading it, so read as to profit by it. The Bible, for the most part, is not only unintelligible to the sinner, but it is offensive to his taste and feelings. He finds no pleasure in it; and finding no pleasure in it, he will not study it. If he do not study it, we presume it will not be contended that it will make him wise. We presume no Protestant idolator of the Bible will go so far as to suppose that there is virtue in merely having the printed volume in our possession, and that virtue goes out from it to those who comprehend nothing of what it contains. Is not the church necessary, then, to enjoin the reading of the Bible, and to discipline us into the reading it? “But this work may be done by the parents.” No matter. It is a work that is necessary to be done, before the Bible can be at all effectual as a means of our instruction; and therefore a work to which the Bible is not itself sufficient.

172

American Catholic Religious Thought

Furthermore, even admitting that the sinner needs no disciplining to bring him to read the Bible, and no divine illumination of the Spirit, in order to enable him to understand and believe what it teaches, still, the ability to conform to what it teaches is unprovided for. We have seen that the sinner is not able to do what is demanded of him. How shall this disability be removed? “But we deny,” says the reader, “this disability of which you speak. The sinner, knowing his duty, can do it if he will.” Very well: suppose he will not. Is will not less a disability to be overcome than can not? Granted that the difficulty, the whole difficulty, on the side of the sinner is that he will not; this strikes us as by no means lessening the difficulty. It requires a foreign power to overcome will not, as much as it does to overcome can not. This power, we presume all will concede us, is the grace of God. Well, will reading of the Bible, with this strong will not, become to us the medium of this grace? Who so infatuated as to pretend it? Nay, our brethren who contend for the sufficiency of the Scriptures, do themselves deny that sufficiency in stronger terms than we do. They contend as well as we, in point of fact, that the sinner must be regenerated, and regenerated by a supernatural influence, too. Well, do they believe that reading the Bible alone is the medium, or a sufficient medium through which this supernatural influence is or may be regularly and certainly obtained? If so, why do they build churches? Why do they have teachers and pastors, preaching, praying, singing, exhorting, parochial visitings, baptisms, and love-feasts? Nay, why these revival meetings, these inquiry meetings, protracted meetings, anxious seats, and revival preachers, and all the ordinary and extraordinary ministrations of the Word? If the Bible alone is sufficient to make us wise unto salvation, why not leave us to that alone? Why adopt these other means of coming into communion with the Spirit? Where would be the harm, if these people who contend for the sufficiency of the Scriptures should put their faith in practice? Why, instead of sending out missionaries to the heathen, do they not content themselves with merely sending a copy of the Holy Scriptures? Far be it from us to say one word against the inspiration or the authority of the Scriptures; but we insist upon it that without the interpretation of the Spirit, which is in the church and nowhere else, they are to us not only a sealed book, but a dangerous book, which

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

173

men may and do wrest to their own destruction. There is no use in concealing this fact. They who have been engaged for years in the effort to instruct their congregations in the sacred mysteries of our faith, do know that the greatest obstacle they have to contend with is in the almost universal perversion of the Scriptures. Men who are unacquainted with the simplest elements of the Christian faith, and who know nothing of the divine significance of the Holy Scriptures, who indeed can hardly read them, set up to be oracles, and reject with proud disdain the words of the gospel as uttered by its humble minded and pious ministers. Is there an appeal made from the pulpit? The veriest stripling in the assembly is ready to resist it, by alleging that it is founded upon a false interpretation of Scripture. Is there a sin rebuked? The sinner turns aside the edge of the rebuke, by entering into a dispute with you about the meaning of some text, or the true nature of some abstract dogma of faith. All our congregations are too wise to be taught; and, instead of listening to the preacher as an ambassador from God, to learn their duty, and to be admonished of their short-comings, assume the judgment-seat, place the minister on trial, and acquit or condemn him, as he does or does not countenance their own crude speculations. All teachableness is lost, and our people no longer comprehend that, unless they become as little children, they shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. We are all prophets, all teachers; and the more ignorant we are, the more dogmatical; and the less we have of the graces of the Spirit, the more competent we feel ourselves to instruct. A worse state of things cannot well be conceived of. The preacher has become a lecturer; the minister of Jesus has become little more than a rhetorician. And whence? Simply from our constant exhortations to our people to read the Bible, and our constantly ringing it in their ears that they are, no matter how ignorant, abundantly able, sinners, or not, to read and understand the word for themselves; because instead of preaching to men, we discourse to them; and instead of speaking to their consciences, and rebuking them in the name of God, we discuss with them from the pulpit the various points of Christian theology. We would hinder no one from teaching who is competent to teach; but we deny the competency of individuals to teach till they have shown a willingness to be taught, and we think it more important that the people should be made to

174

American Catholic Religious Thought

feel that they would be wiser and more modest, if they would distrust their competency to instruct their teachers, than they are by assuming as they now do, their ability to decide off-hand, because they can quote Scripture, the knottiest points of Christian faith. Nothing has tended more to foster heresy, and to spread infidelity, and through these to introduce a general laxity of moral principle, than this feeling cherished in our congregations of their ability, without the aid of the church, to interpret the word for themselves. Religion loses its hold upon us; we sink into doubt, skepticism, indifferency to all that is spiritual; become cold, calculating, worldly-minded, with no god but our bellies, with no faith but in Mammon, and no reverence but for the ledger. We know what will be said of this statement, but we must be faithful to our Master, and at the risk of offending human pride, say that the Bible is a book which may be perverted to the worst ends, and is so perverted when placed in the hands of the ignorant, the impure, the proud, and the self-willed. We should feel that our ability to read and understand the word of God, is not innate, born with us, a portion of our natural inheritance, but comes solely from our union with Christ, and the illuminations which we receive from him through the medium which he himself has instituted. But waiving all this, admitting that through the Bible we could even become united to the spirit of Jesus, and therefore members of his body, it could be only to the Christ that was; for it is only the Christ that was that is in the Bible. But we are saved not by a Christ that was, but by the Christ that is. We need a personal Christ as much as did those among whom Jesus tabernacled as Son of Mary. The Savior must be a living Savior; but the Savior in the Bible is not a living Savior; it is but the echo of the Savior, bearing about the same relation to Jesus as the living Savior that a fact of memory bears to a fact of consciousness, a joy remembered to a joy which is present. But we not only need a present Savior, but we are promised one; for Jesus says to the Apostolic church, “Lo! I am with you always unto the end of the world” [Matt 28:20]. The Bible again, and this follows from the necessity of a present Savior, is too inflexible to be received as the authoritative rule, unless there be a co-ordinate authority to interpret and apply it. Paul evidently teaches passive obedience, and forbids resistance in any case whatever

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

175

to civil government. Suppose that we take the Bible alone as our rule, what will be the result? Civil governments, we know, nay, we are told from the Bible itself, do often oppress; but we must not resist them, and therefore oppression can never be ended. The Bible in this case would be a glorious book for tyrants, and we are not surprised that civil rulers have always been very willing to have it circulate among their subjects. But may not tyranny be ever lawfully resisted? Not by the individual, unless you surrender the very possibility of legitimate authority. The individual is called upon to obey, not to sit in judgment on the authority that commands. It is nonsense to pretend that I am bound to obey an authority which I have the right to judge. I am bound to obey, and the command of the sovereign is to me my only rule of right. Therefore I, as an individual, as one of the people, have not, and never can have, the right to resist the magistrate whatever he commands. This is Paul’s doctrine, and it is sound, the only doctrine compatible with any civil government at all. What then, shall tyranny be perpetual? Certainly it must be, if you have no authority, beyond the state, beside the Bible and private judgment. Here is where we are reduced by Protestantism. Protestantism has raised the state over the church, and, therefore, reduced us either to no government at all, or to absolute submission to the civil ruler. There is no escape from this, but by assuming an authority, ever present, capable of interpreting and applying the dicta of the New Testament writers. Give us an authoritative church; it will command the subject to submit to the magistrate, and forbid him ever to resist it, however oppressive, on his own authority; for that would be to put an end to the state at once; but it will admonish the civil ruler of his duty, point out to him the wrong he does, and command him to redress it. If he refuse, it declares him a tyrant, and legitimates resistance, by absolving the subject from his allegiance. This the church formerly did, and through it, peaceably, without anarchy or rebellion, the poor and down-trodden could be protected against the civil tyrant. But now, alas! we are obliged to submit to the grossest wrongs, or else become rebels, or anarchists. But we shall be told, “common sense will interpret these rules of the Bible aright, so that the authority of the church is not needed to

176

American Catholic Religious Thought

tell us their meaning and application.” The common sense of whom? Of the unregenerate, and the unenlightened? Or of the regenerate, and enlightened, that is to say, of the church? If of the last, shall it be the common sense of the church formally or informally expressed. If the first, then all we contend for is conceded; for then there must be a regular, official way, of declaring the sense of the church, and when so declared, it is authoritative. But in conclusion, the Bible, we have already seen, is the production of the church, and has been received on the authority of the church. The simple question then, in regard to its sufficiency, is, whether the church that produced the Bible, was all the church needed, and that now, since the Bible is produced, there is no longer any necessity of the church? None are willing to say that the church is no longer necessary. Will someone, them, tell us, wherein consists its necessity, if the Bible alone be sufficient? P.S. In consequence of the conductors of the Christian World, having expressed their unwillingness to hold themselves responsible for the views of the writer of this series of articles, and as the writer wishes to implicate no one but himself in his views, he will simply say that they are published on his own responsibility; and he here adds his initials, which he will do to whatever else he may contribute to this journal. O.A.B.

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES Henry E Brownson, ed., The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, 20 vols. (Detroit: Thorndike Nourse, 1882-87). “The Brownson Papers” (19 microfilm rolls; and A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Orestes A. Brownson Papers, ed. by Thomas T. McAvoy and Lawrence J. Bradley (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966). Joseph F. Gower and Richard M. Leliaert, eds., The Brownson-Hecker Correspondence (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979). Boston Quarterly Review, 1838-42. Brownson’s Quarterly Review, 1844-64; 1873-75.

2 ~ Orestes A. Brownson

177

Patrick W. Carey, ed., The Early Works of Orestes A. Brownson, 5 vols. to date (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2000- ). ———, ed., Orestes A. Brownson: A Bibliography, 1826-1876 (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1997). SECONDARY SOURCES Spencer Clare Bennett, “Orestes Brownson: On Civil Religion, Conflicts in the Evolution of a Concept of National Faith,” Ph.D. dissertation, Case Western Reserve University, 1973. Henry F. Brownson, Life of Orestes Brownson, 3 vols. (Detroit: Henry F. Brownson, 1898-1900). Patrick W. Carey, An American Religious Weathervane: Orestes A. Brownson (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 2004). ———, “Orestes A. Brownson on Tradition and Traditionalism,” in The Quadrilog: Tradition and the Future of Ecumenism, ed. Kenneth Hagen (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1994), 162-88. ———, “Ontologism in American Catholic Thought, 1840-1900,” Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique 91/3-4 (1996): 834-62. Dario Caroniti, Problema sociale, nazione e cristianesimo: Orestes A. Brownson (Rubbettino, 1998). Dennis Joseph Dease, “The Theological Influence of Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker on John Ireland’s Americanist Ecclesiology,” Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1978. Leonard Gilhooley, Contradiction and Dilemma: Orestes Brownson and the American Idea (New York: Fordham University Press, 1972). William James Gilmore, “Orestes Brownson and New England Religious Culture, 1803-1827,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 1971. Arie J. Griffioen, Orestes Brownson and the Problem of Revelation: The Protestant Years (New York: Peter Lang, 2003). Robert Emerson Ireland, “The Concept of Providence in the Thought of William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, and Orestes A. Brownson. A Study in Mid-NineteenthCentury American Intellectual History,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maine, 1972. Americo D. Lapati, Orestes A. Brownson (New Haven, Connecticut; College and University Press, 1965). Richard Maurice Leliaert, “Orestes A. Brownson (1803-1876): Theological Perspectives on His Search for the Meaning of God, Christology, and the Development of Doctrine,” Ph.D. dissertation, Graduate Theological Union, 1974.

178

American Catholic Religious Thought

———, “The Religious Significance of Democracy in the Thought of Orestes A. Brownson,” The Review of Politics 38 (January, 1976): 3-26. ———, “Brownson’s Approach to God: The Catholic Period,” The Thomist 40 (October, 1976): 571-607. George K. Malone, The True Church: A Study in the Apologetics of Orestes Brownson (St. Mary’s of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein, Illinois, 1957). Armand Maurer, “Orestes Brownson and St. Augustine,” The Modern Schoolman 69 (March/May 1992): 463-74. Theodore Maynard, Orestes Brownson: Yankee, Radical Catholic (New York: Macmillan Co., 1943). Hugh Marshall, Orestes Brownson and the American Republic: An Historical Perspective (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1971). Thomas R. Ryan, Orestes A. Brownson, A Definitive Biography (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor Press, 1975). Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Orestes A. Brownson, A Pilgrim’s Progress (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1939). Per Sveino, Orestes A. Brownson’s Road to Catholicism (New York: Humanities Press, 1970). Naomi Wulf, “Orestes Brownson and the Relationship between Reform and Democracy,” in Religious and Secular Reform in America: Ideas, Beliefs and Social Change, eds. David K. Adams and Cornelis A. van Minnen (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 77-90.

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker ISAAC THOMAS HECKER: AMERICAN CATHOLIC ROMANTIC Isaac Thomas Hecker (1819-88), convert to Catholicism and founder of the Congregation of St. Paul, Missionary Priests of the Apostle (i.e., Paulists), was another American Catholic representative of the Romantic mood in the United States. Influenced by the transcendentalist movement, American revivalism, Orestes Brownson, and the theology of Johann Adam Möhler, Hecker developed his own method of apologetics. Rather than using what Brownson called the apologetics of external authority, Hecker tried to demonstrate that the basic drives of the human heart and of the nineteenth century could be fully satisfied only by Catholicism. The starting point of his theological reflection was human and cultural interiority (i.e., “the wants of the heart,” the “Questions of the Soul,” the “Aspirations of Nature,” “The Church, in view of the Needs of the Age”), and not external authority, motives of credibility, or reason. From this starting point, Hecker developed a style of apologetics for Catholicism that tried to correlate the interior questions and needs with the external answers and workings of the Catholic Church. The Holy Spirit, working within human beings and the world, therefore, harmonized with the Holy Spirit’s activity within the institutional church. In fact, the external ministries of the institutional church were the sacramentalizations of human and cultural aspirations. Hecker was born in New York City to John and Susan Friend Hecker, immigrants from Germany. As a young man, Isaac was loosely associated with his mother’s Methodist Church. He received very little formal education, attending a public school in New York City for five years. After leaving school, he worked in various jobs before joining his two older brothers in establishing a bakery and flour mill in the late 1830s. After meeting Orestes A. Brownson in the early

180

American Catholic Religious Thought

1840s, Hecker began to become acquainted with the intellectual movements of the day, journeying to the Transcendentalist stronghold in Massachusetts. In 1844, after some years of religious searching, he converted to Catholicism. In 1845, he joined the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists), going to the novitiate of St. Trond, Belgium and to Witten, Holland to receive his education for the priesthood. After ordination in London in 1849, he served the next seven years as a Redemptorist missionary in New York and other American cities. In 1858, he was released from the Redemptorist vows and established the Paulists, as a religious order dedicated to the conversion of American Protestants. He served as superior of that order until his death in 1888. As a Paulist he established and edited the Catholic World, a periodical of religious thought for American Catholics. In 1874 and 1875, while visiting Europe, Hecker wrote “An Exposition “ of his plan for the future direction of the church. The “Exposition “ was to be “nothing less than a general outline of a movement from without to within.”1 In the essay, Hecker called for greater Catholic emphasis upon the role of the Holy Spirit in personal and ecclesiastical regeneration. He envisioned an effusion of the Holy Spirit in the present age and urged the Catholic Church to complement its stress upon the Holy Spirit’s activities in the church’s external structures by a corresponding emphasis upon its activities in the individual soul. Such an emphasis would, in his estimate, bring about the renewal of religion which in turn would revitalize society. Divine Providence, which had guided the church to defend its external authority during the post-Tridentine era, was now guiding it to reassert the power of the Holy Spirit within the individual person.

******

1

Quoted in John Farina, An American Experience of God: The Spirituality of Isaac Hecker (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), 154.

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

181

TEXT AN EXPOSITION OF THE CHURCH IN VIEW OF RECENT DIFFICULTIES AND CONTROVERSIES AND THE PRESENT NEEDS OF THE AGE Source: Catholic World 21 (April-September, 1875):117-38.

“These are not the times to sit with folded arms, while all the enemies of God are occupied in overthrowing everything worthy of respect.” Pius IX, Jan. 13, 1873. “Yes, this change, this triumph, will come. I know not whether it will come during my life, during the life of this poor Vicar of Jesus Christ; but that it must come, I know. The resurrection will take place and we shall see the end of all impiety.” Pius IX, Anniversary of the Roman Plebiscite, 1872. I. THE QUESTION STATED

The Catholic Church throughout the world, beginning at Rome, is in a suffering state. There is scarcely a spot on the earth where she is not assailed by injustice, oppression, or violent persecution. Like her divine Author in his Passion, every member has its own trial of pain to endure. All the gates of hell have been opened, and every species of attack, as by general conspiracy, has been let loose at once upon the church. Countries in which Catholics out-number all other Christians put together, as France, Austria, Italy, Spain, Bavaria, Baden, South America, Brazil, and, until recently, Belgium, are for the most part controlled and governed by hostile minorities, and in some instances the minority is very small. Her adversaries, with the finger of derision, point out these facts and proclaim them to the world. Look, they say, at Poland, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Bavaria, Austria, Italy, France, and what do you see? Countries subjugated, or enervated, or agitated by the internal throes of revolution. Everywhere among Catholic nations weakness only and incapacity are to be discerned. This is the result of the priestly domination and hierarchical influence of Rome!

182

American Catholic Religious Thought

Heresy and schism, false philosophy, false science, and false art, cunning diplomacy, infidelity, and atheism, one and all boldly raise up their heads and attack the church in the face; while secret societies of world-wide organization are stealthily engaged in undermining her strength with the people. Even the Sick man—the Turk—who lives at the beck of the so-called Christian nations, impudently kicks the church of Christ, knowing full well there is no longer in Europe any power which will openly raise a voice in her defense. How many souls, on account of this dreadful war waged against the church, are now suffering in secret a bitter agony! How many are hesitating, knowing not what to do, and looking for guidance! How many are wavering between hope and fear! Alas! too many have already lost the faith. Culpable is the silence and base the fear which would restrain one’s voice at a period when God, the church, and religion are everywhere either openly denied, boldly attacked, or fiercely persecuted. In such trying times as these silence or fear is betrayal. The hand of God is certainly in these events, and it is no less certain that the light of divine faith ought to discern it. Through these clouds which now obscure the church the light of divine hope ought to pierce, enabling us to perceive a better and a brighter future; for this is what is in store for the church and the world. That love which embraces at once the greatest glory of God and the highest happiness of man should outweigh all fear of misinterpretations, and urge one to make God’s hand clear to those who are willing to see, and point out to them the way to that happier and fairer future. What, then, has brought about this most deplorable state of things? How can we account for this apparent lack of faith and strength on the part of Catholics? Can it be true, as their enemies assert, that Catholicity, wherever it has full sway, deteriorates society? Or is it contrary to the spirit of Christianity that Christians should strive with all their might to overcome evil in this world? Perhaps the Catholic Church has grown old, as others imagine, and has accomplished her task, and is no longer competent to unite together the conflicting interests of modern society, and direct it towards its true destination?

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

183

These questions are most serious ones. Their answers must be fraught with most weighty lessons. Only a meager outline of the course of argument can be here given in so vast a field of investigation. II. REMOTE CAUSE OF PRESENT DIFFICULTIES

One of the chief features of the history of the church for these last three centuries has been its conflict with the religious revolution of the XVIth century, properly called Protestantism. The nature of Protestantism may be defined as the exaggerated development of personal independence, directed to the negation of the divine authority of the church, and chiefly aiming at its overthrow in the person of its supreme representative, the Pope. It is a fixed law, founded in the very nature of the church, that every serious and persistent denial of a divinely revealed truth necessitates its vigorous defense, calls out its greater development, and ends, finally, in its dogmatic definition. The history of the church is replete with instances of this fact. One must suffice. When Arius denied the divinity of Christ, which was always held as a divinely-revealed truth, at once the doctors of the church and the faithful were aroused in its defense. A general council was called at Nice, and there this truth was defined and fixed for ever as a dogma of the Catholic faith. The law has always been, from the first Council at Jerusalem to that of the Vatican, that the negation of a revealed truth calls out its fuller development and its explicit dogmatic definition. The Council of Trent refuted and condemned the errors of Protestantism at the time of their birth, and defined the truths against which they were directed; but, for wise and sufficient reasons, abstained from’ touching the objective point of attack, which was, necessarily, the divine authority of the church. For there was no standing ground whatever for a protest against the church, except in its denial. It would have been the height of absurdity to admit an authority, and that divine, and at the same time to refuse to obey its decisions. It was as well known then as today that the keystone of the whole structure of the church was its head. To overthrow the Papacy was to conquer the church.

184

American Catholic Religious Thought

The supreme power of the church for a long period of years was the center around which the battle raged between the adversaries and the champions of the faith. The denial of the papal authority in the church necessarily occasioned its fuller development. For as long as this hostile movement was aggressive in its assaults, so long was the church constrained to strengthen her defense, and make a stricter and more detailed application of her authority in every sphere of her action, in her hierarchy, in her general discipline, and in the personal acts of her children. Every new denial was met with a new defense and a fresh application. The danger was on the side of revolt, the safety was on that of submission. The poison was an exaggerated spiritual independence, the antidote was increased obedience to a divine external authority. The chief occupation of the church for the last three centuries was the maintenance of that authority conferred by Christ on S. Peter and his successors, in opposition to the efforts of Protestantism for its overthrow; and the contest was terminated for ever in the dogmatic definition of papal infallibility, by the church assembled in council in the Vatican. Luther declared the pope Antichrist. The Catholic Church affirmed the pope to be the Vicar of Christ. Luther stigmatized the See of Rome as the seat of error. The council of the church defined the See of Rome, the chair of S. Peter, to be the infallible interpreter of divinely revealed truth. This definition closed the controversy…. III. PROXIMATE CAUSE

The church, while resisting Protestantism, had to give her principal attention and apply her main strength to those points which were attacked. Like a wise strategist, she drew off her forces from the places which were secure, and directed them to those posts where danger threatened. As she was most of all engaged in the defense of her external authority and organization, the faithful, in view of this defense, as well as in regard to the dangers of the period, were specially guided to the practice of the virtue of obedience. Is it a matter of surprise that the character of the virtues developed was more passive than active? The weight of authority was placed on the side of restraining rather than of developing personal independent action.

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

185

The exaggeration of personal authority on the part of Protestants brought about in the church its greater restraint, in order that her divine authority might have its legitimate exercise and exert its salutary influence. The errors and evils of the times sprang from an unbridled personal independence, which could be only counteracted by habits of increased personal dependence. Contraria contrariis curantur. The defense of the church and the salvation of the soul were ordinarily secured at the expense, necessarily, of those virtues which properly go to make up the strength of Christian manhood. The gain was the maintenance and victory of divine truth and the salvation of the soul. The loss was a certain falling off in energy, resulting in decreased action in the natural order. The former was a permanent and inestimable gain. The latter was a temporary, and not irreparable, loss. There was no room for a choice. The faithful were placed in a position in which it became their unqualified duty to put into practice the precept of our Lord when he said: It is better for thee to enter into life maimed or lame, than, having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire (Mt. 18:8). In the principles above briefly stated may in a great measure be found the explanation why fifty millions of Protestants have had generally a controlling influence, for a long period, over two hundred millions of Catholics, in directing the movements and destinies of nations. To the same source may be attributed the fact that Catholic nations, when the need was felt of a man of great personal energy at the head of their affairs, seldom hesitated to choose for prime minister an indifferent Catholic, or a Protestant, or even an infidel. These principles explain also why Austria, France, Bavaria, Spain, Italy, and other Catholic countries have yielded to a handful of active and determined radicals, infidels, Jews, or atheists, and have been compelled to violate or annul their concordats with the Holy See, and to change their political institutions in a direction hostile to the interests of the Catholic religion. Finally, herein lies the secret why Catholics are at this moment almost everywhere oppressed and persecuted by very inferior numbers. In the natural order the feebler are always made to serve the stronger. Evident weakness on one side, in spite of superiority of numbers, provokes on the other, where there is consciousness of power, subjugation and oppression.

186

American Catholic Religious Thought IV. IS THERE A WAY OUT?

Is divine grace given only at the cost of natural strength? Is a true Christian life possible only through the sacrifice of a successful natural career? Are things to remain as they are at present? The general history of the Catholic religion in the past condemns these suppositions as the grossest errors and falsest calumnies. Behold the small numbers of the faithful and their final triumph over the great colossal Roman Empire! Look at the subjugation of the countless and victorious hordes of the Northern barbarians! Witness, again, the prowess of the knights of the church, who were her champions in repulsing the threatening Mussulman; every one of whom, by the rule of their order, were bound not to flinch before two Turks! Call to mind the great discoveries made in all branches of science, and the eminence in art, displayed by the children of the church, and which underlie—if there were only honesty enough to acknowledge it—most of our modern progress and civilization! Long before Protestantism was dreamed of Catholic states in Italy had reached a degree of wealth, power, and glory which no Protestant nation—it is the confession of one of their own historians—has since attained. There is, then, no reason in the nature of things why the existing condition of Catholics throughout the world should remain as it is. The blood that courses through our veins, the graces given in our baptism, the light of our faith, the divine life-giving Bread we receive, are all the same gifts and privileges which we have in common with our great ancestors. We are the children of the same mighty mother, ever fruitful of heroes and great men. The present state of things is neither fatal nor final, but only one of the many episodes in the grand history of the church of God. V. WHICH IS THE WAY OUT?

No better evidence is needed of the truth of the statements just made than the fact that all Catholics throughout the world are ill at ease with things as they are. The world at large is agitated, as it never has been before, with problems which enter into the essence of religion or are closely connected therewith. Many serious minds are occupied with the question of the renewal of religion and the regeneration of society. The aspects in which questions of this nature are viewed are

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

187

as various as the remedies proposed are numerous. Here are a few of the more important ones. One class of men would begin by laboring for the reconciliation of all Christian denominations, and would endeavor to establish unity in Christendom as the way to universal restoration. Another class starts with the idea that the remedy would be found in giving a more thorough and religious education to youth in schools, colleges, and universities. Some would renew the church by translating her liturgies into the vulgar tongues, by reducing the number of her forms of devotion, and by giving to her worship greater simplicity. Others, again, propose to alter the constitution of the church by the practice of universal elections in the hierarchy, by giving the lay element a larger share in the direction of ecclesiastical matters, and by establishing national churches. There are those who hope for a better state of things by placing Henry V on the throne of France, and Don Carlos on that of Spain. Others, contrariwise, having lost all confidence in princes, look forward with great expectations to a baptized democracy, a holy Roman democracy, just as formerly there was a Holy Roman Empire. Not a few are occupied with the idea of reconciling capital with labor, of changing the tenure of property, and abolishing standing armies. Others propose a restoration of international law, a congress of nations, and a renewed and more strict observance of the Decalogue. According to another school, theological motives have lost their hold on the people, the task of directing society has devolved upon science, and its apostolate has begun. There are those, moreover, who hold that society can only be cured by an immense catastrophe, and one hardly knows what great cataclysm is to happen and save the human race. Finally, we are told that the reign of Antichrist has begun, that signs of it are everywhere, and that we are on the eve of the end of the world. These are only a few of the projects, plans, and remedies which are discussed, and which more or less occupy and agitate the public mind. How much truth or error, how much good or bad, each or all of these theories contain, would require a lifetime to find out. The remedy for our evils must be got at, to be practical, in another way. If a new life be imparted to the root of a tree, its effects will soon be seen in all its branches, twigs, and leaves. Is it not possible to get

188

American Catholic Religious Thought

at the root of all our evils, and with a radical remedy renew at once the whole face of things? Universal evils are not cured by specifics. VI. THE WAY OUT

All things are to be viewed and valued as they bear on the destiny of man. Religion is the solution of the problem of man’s destiny. Religion, therefore, lies at the root of everything which concerns man’s true interest. Religion means Christianity, to all men, or to nearly all, who hold to any religion among European nations. Christianity, intelligibly understood, signifies the church, the Catholic Church. The church is God acting through a visible organization directly on men, and, through men, on society. The church is the sum of all problems, and the most potent fact in the whole wide universe. It is therefore illogical to look elsewhere for the radical remedy of all our evils. It is equally unworthy of a Catholic to look elsewhere for the renewal of religion. The meditation of these great truths is the source from which the inspiration must come, if society is to be regenerated and the human race directed to its true destination. He who looks to any other quarter for a radical and adequate remedy and for true guidance is doomed to failure and disappointment. VII. MISSION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

It cannot be too deeply and firmly impressed on the mind that the church is actuated by the instinct of the Holy Spirit; and to discern clearly its action, and to cooperate with it effectually, is the highest employment of our faculties, and at the same time the primary source of the greatest good to society. Did we clearly see and understand the divine action of the Holy Spirit in the successive steps of the history of the church we would fully comprehend the law of all true progress. If in this later period more stress was laid on the necessity of obedience to the external authority of the church than in former days, it was, as has been shown, owing to the peculiar dangers to which the faithful were exposed. It would be an inexcusable mistake to suppose for a moment that the holy church, at any period of her existence, was ignorant or forgetful of the mission

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

189

and office of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit established the church, and can he forget his own mission? It is true that he has to guide and govern through men, but he is the Sovereign of men, and especially of those whom he has chosen as his immediate instruments. The essential and universal principle which saves and sanctifies souls is the Holy Spirit. He it was who called, inspired, and sanctified the patriarchs, the prophets and saints of the old dispensation. The same divine Spirit inspired and sanctified the apostles, the martyrs, and the saints of the new dispensation. The actual and habitual guidance of the soul by the Holy Spirit is the essential principle of all divine life. “I have taught the prophets from the beginning, and even till now I cease not to speak at all.”2 Christ’s mission was to give the Holy Spirit more abundantly. No one who reads the Holy Scriptures can fail to be struck with the repeated injunctions to turn our eyes inward, to walk in the divine presence, to see and taste and listen to God in the soul. These exhortations run all through the inspired books, beginning with that of Genesis, and ending with the Revelations of S. John. “I am the Almighty God, walk before me, and be perfect” (Gen 17:11) was the lesson which God gave to the patriarch Abraham. “Be still and see that I am God” (Ps 45:2). “O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet; blessed is the man that hopeth in him” (Ps 33:9). God is the guide, the light of the living, and our strength. “God’s kingdom is within you,” said the divine Master. “Know you not that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you” (I Cor 3:16)? “For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to accomplish, according to his will” (Phil 2:13). The object of divine revelation was to make known and to establish within the souls of men, and through them upon the earth, the kingdom of God. In accordance with the Sacred Scriptures, the Catholic Church teaches that the Holy Spirit is infused, with all his gifts, into our souls by the sacrament of baptism, and that, without his actual prompting or inspiration and aid, no thought or act, or even wish, tending directly towards our true destiny, is possible. The whole aim of the science of Christian perfection is to instruct men how to remove the hindrances in the way of the action of the 2

The Imitation of Christ, Thomas á Kempis, book iii. c. 3.

190

American Catholic Religious Thought

Holy Spirit, and how to cultivate those virtues which are most favorable to his solicitations and inspirations. Thus the sum of Spiritual life consists in observing and fortifying the ways and movements of the Spirit of God in our soul, employing for this purpose all the exercises of prayer, spiritual reading, sacraments, the practice of virtues, and good works. That divine action which is the immediate and principal cause of the salvation and perfection of the soul claims by right its direct and main attention. From this source within the soul there will gradually come to birth the consciousness of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, out of which will spring a force surpassing all human strength, a courage higher than all human heroism, a sense of dignity excelling all human greatness. The light the age requires for its renewal can come only from the same source. The renewal of the age depends on the renewal of religion. The renewal of religion depends upon a greater effusion of the creative and renewing power of the Holy Spirit. The greater effusion of the Holy Spirit depends on the giving of increased attention to his movements and inspirations in the soul. The radical and adequate remedy for all the evils of our age, and the source of all true progress, consist in increased attention and fidelity to the action of the Holy Spirit in the soul. “Thou shalt send forth thy Spirit, and they shall be created: and thou shalt renew the face of the earth” (Ps. 103:30). VIII. THE MEN THE AGE DEMANDS

This truth will be better seen by looking at the matter a little more in detail. The age, we are told, calls for men worthy of that name. Who are those worthy to be called men? Men, assuredly, whose intelligences and wills are divinely illuminated and fortified. This is precisely what is produced by the gifts of the Holy Spirit; they enlarge all the faculties of the soul at once. The age is superficial; it needs the gift of wisdom, which enables the soul to contemplate the truth in its ultimate causes. The age is materialistic; it needs the gift of intelligence, by the light of which the intellect penetrates into the essence of things. The age is captivated by a false and one-sided science; it needs the gift of science, by the light of which is seen each order of truth in its true relations to other orders

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

191

and in a divine unity. The age is in disorder, and is ignorant of the way to true progress; it needs the gift of counsel, which teaches how to choose the proper means to attain an object. The age is impious; it needs the gift of piety, which leads the soul to look up to God as the Heavenly Father, and to adore him with feelings of filial affection and love. The age is sensual and effeminate; it needs the gift of force, which imparts to the will the strength to endure the greatest burdens and to prosecute the greatest enterprises with ease and heroism. The age has lost and almost forgotten God; it needs the gift of fear, to bring the soul again to God, and make it feel conscious of its great responsibility and of its destiny. Men endowed with these gifts are the men for whom—if it but knew it—the age calls: men whose minds are enlightened and whose wills are strengthened by an increased action of the Holy Spirit; men whose souls are actuated by the gifts of the Holy Spirit; men whose countenances are lit up with a heavenly joy, who breathe an air of inward peace, and act with a holy liberty and an unaccountable energy. One such soul does more to advance the kingdom of God than tens of thousands without such gifts. These are the men and this is the way—if the age could only be made to see and believe it—to universal restoration, universal reconciliation, and universal progress. IX. THE CHURCH HAS ENTERED ON THIS WAY

The men the age and its needs demand depend on a greater infusion of the Holy Spirit in the souls of the faithful; and the church has been already prepared for this event. Can one suppose for a moment that so long, so severe, a contest, as that of the three centuries just passed, which, moreover, has cost so dearly, has not been fraught with the greatest utility to the church? Does God ever allow his church to suffer loss in the struggle to accomplish her divine mission? It is true that the powerful and persistent assaults of the errors of the XVIth century against the church forced her, so to speak, out of the usual orbit of her movement; but having completed her defense from all danger on that side, she is returning to her normal course with increased agencies—thanks to that contest—and is entering upon a new and fresh phase of life, and upon a more vigorous action

192

American Catholic Religious Thought

in every sphere of her existence. The chiefest of these agencies, and the highest in importance, was that of the definition concerning the nature of papal authority. For the definition of the Vatican Council, having rendered the supreme authority of the church, which is the unerring interpreter and criterion of divinely-revealed truth, more explicit and complete, has prepared the way for the faithful to follow, with greater safety and liberty, the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. The dogmatic papal definition of the Vatican Council is, therefore, the axis on which turn the new course of the church, the renewal of religion, and the entire restoration of society. O blessed fruit! purchased at the price of so hard a struggle, but which has gained for the faithful an increased divine illumination and force, and thereby the renewal of the whole face of the world. . . . What is the meaning of these many pilgrimages to holy places, to the shrines of great saints, the multiplication of novenas and new associations of prayer? Are they not evidence of increased action of the Holy Spirit on the faithful? Why, moreover, these cruel persecutions, vexatious fines, and numerous imprisonments of the bishops, clergy, and laity of the church? What is the secret of this stripping the church of her temporal possessions and authority? These things have taken place by the divine permission. Have not all these inflictions increased greatly devotion to prayer, cemented more closely the unity of the faithful, and turned the attention of all members of the church, from the highest to the lowest, to look for aid from whence it alone can come—from God? These trials and sufferings of the faithful are the first steps towards a better state of things. They detach from earthly things and purify the human side of the church. From them will proceed light and strength and victory. Per crucem ad lucem. “If the Lord wishes that other persecutions should be sown, the church feels no alarm; on the contrary, persecutions purify her and confer upon her a fresh force and a new beauty. There are, in truth, in the church certain things which need purification, and for this purpose those persecutions answer best which are launched against her by great politicians.” Such is the language of Pius IX.3 3

January 15, 1872. This, and the subsequent quotations of the words of Pius IX, are taken from Actes et Paroles de Pius IX Par Auguste Roussel. Paris: Palmé, 1874.

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

193

These are only some of the movements, which are public. But how many souls in secret suffer sorely in seeing the church in such tribulations, and pray for her deliverance with a fervor almost amounting to agony! Are not all these but so many preparatory steps to a Pentecostal effusion of the Holy Spirit on the church—an effusion, if not equal in intensity to that of apostolic days, at least greater than it in universality? “If at no epoch of the evangelical ages the reign of Satan was so generally welcome as in this our day, the action of the Holy Spirit will have to clothe itself with the characteristics of an exceptional extension and force. The axioms of geometry do not appear to us more rigorously exact than this proposition. A certain indefinable presentiment of this necessity of a new effusion of the Holy Spirit for the actual world exists, and of this presentiment the importance ought not to be exaggerated; but yet it would seem rash to make it of no account.”4 Is not this the meaning of the presentiment of Pius IX, when he said: “Since we have nothing, or next to nothing, to expect from men, let us place our confidence more and more in God, whose heart is preparing, as it seems to me, to accomplish, in the moment chosen by himself, a great prodigy, which will fill the whole earth with astonishment”?5 Was not the same presentiment before the mind of De Maistre when he penned the following lines: “We are on the eve of the greatest of religious epochs; . . . it appears to me that every true philosopher must choose between these two hypotheses: either that a new religion is about to be formed, or that Christianity will be renewed in some extraordinary manner”?6 X. TWOFOLD ACTION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Before further investigation of this new phase of the church, it would perhaps be well to set aside a doubt which might arise in the minds of some, namely, whether there is not danger in turning the attention of the faithful in a greater degree in the direction contemplated? The enlargement of the field of action for the soul, without a true knowledge of the end and scope of the external authority of the church, would only open the door to delusions, errors, and heresies 4 5 6

Traité du S. Esprit, par Mgr. Gaume, 1864. January 22, 1871. [in Actes et Paroles de Pius IX.] De Maistre, Soirée de St. Petersburg. Xe Soirée.

194

American Catholic Religious Thought

of every description, and would be in effect merely another form of Protestantism. On the other hand, the exclusive view of the external authority of the church, without a proper understanding of the nature and work of the Holy Spirit in the soul, would render the practice of religion formal, obedience servile, and the church sterile. The action of the Holy Spirit embodied visibly in the authority of the church, and the action of the Holy Spirit dwelling invisibly in the soul, form one inseparable synthesis; and he who has not a clear conception of this twofold action of the Holy Spirit is in danger of running into one or the other, and sometimes into both, of these extremes, either of which is destructive of the end of the church. The Holy Spirit, in the external authority of the church, acts as the infallible interpreter and criterion of divine revelation. The Holy Spirit in the soul acts as the divine Life-Giver and Sanctifier. It is of the highest importance that these two distinct offices of the Holy Spirit should not be confounded. The supposition that there can be any opposition or contradiction between the action of the Holy Spirit in the supreme decisions of the authority of the church, and the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in the soul, can never enter the mind of an enlightened and sincere Christian. The same Spirit which through the authority of the church teaches divine truth, is the same Spirit which prompts the soul to receive the divine truths which he teaches. The measure of our love for the Holy Spirit is the measure of our obedience to the authority of the church; and the measure of our obedience to the authority of the church is the measure of our love for the Holy Spirit. Hence the sentence of S. Augustine: “Quantum quisque amat ecclesiam Dei, tantum habet Spiritum Sanctum.” There is one Spirit, which acts in two different offices concurring to the same end—the regeneration and sanctification of the soul. In case of obscurity or doubt concerning what is the divinely revealed truth, or whether what prompts the soul is or is not an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, recourse must be had to the divine teacher or criterion, the authority of the church. For it must be borne in mind that to the church, as represented in the first instance by S. Peter, and subsequently by his successors, was made the promise of her divine

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

195

Founder that “the gates of hell should never prevail against her” (Mt 16:18). No such promise was ever made by Christ to each individual believer. “The church of the living God is the pillar and ground of truth” (2 Tim 3:15). The test, therefore, of a truly enlightened and sincere Christian, will be, in case of uncertainty, the promptitude of his obedience to the voice of the church. From the above plain truths the following practical rule of conduct may be drawn: The Holy Spirit is the immediate guide of the soul in the way of salvation and sanctification; and the criterion or test that the soul is guided by the Holy Spirit is its ready obedience to the authority of the church. This rule removes all danger whatever, and with it the soul can walk, run, or fly, if it chooses, in the greatest safety and with perfect liberty, in the ways of sanctity. XI. NEW PHASE OF THE CHURCH

There are signs which indicate that the members of the church have not only entered upon a deeper and more spiritual life, but that from the same source has arisen a new phase of their intellectual activity. The notes of the divine institution of the church—and the credibility of divine revelation—with her constitution and organization, having been in the main completed on the external side, the notes which now require special attention and study are those respecting her divine character, which lie on the internal side. The mind of the church has been turned in this direction for some time past. One has but to read the several encyclical letters of the present reigning supreme pontiff, and the decrees of the Vatican Council, to be fully convinced of this fact. No pontiff has so strenuously upheld the value and rights of human reason as Pius IX; and no council has treated so fully of the relations of the natural with the supernatural as that of the Vatican. It must be remembered the work of both is not yet concluded. Great mission that, to fix for ever those truths so long held in dispute, and to open the door to the fuller knowledge of other and still greater verities! It is the divine action of the Holy Spirit in and through the church which gives her external organization the reason for its existence. And it is the fuller explanation of the divine side of the church and its relations with her human side, giving always to the former its due accentuation,

196

American Catholic Religious Thought

that will contribute to the increase of the interior life of the faithful, and aid powerfully to remove the blindness of those—whose number is much larger than is commonly supposed—who only see the church on her human side. As an indication of these studies, the following mere suggestions, concerning the relations of the internal with the external side of the church, are here given. The practical aim of all true religion is to bring each individual soul under the immediate guidance of the divine Spirit. The divine Spirit communicates himself to the soul by means of the sacraments of the church. The divine Spirit acts as the interpreter and criterion of revealed truth by the authority of the church. The divine Spirit acts as the principle of regeneration and sanctification in each Christian soul. The same Spirit clothes with suitable ceremonies and words the truths of religion and the interior life of the soul in the liturgy and devotions of the church. The divine Spirit acts as the safeguard of the life of the soul and of the household of God in the discipline of the church. The divine Spirit established the church as the practical and perfect means of bringing all souls under his own immediate guidance and into complete union with God. This is the realization of the aim of all true religion. Thus all religions, viewed in the aspect of a divine life, find their common center in the Catholic Church. The greater part of the intellectual errors of the age arise from a lack of knowledge of the essential relations of the light of faith with the light of reason; of the connection between the mysteries and truths of divine revelation and those discovered and attainable by human reason; of the action of divine grace and the action of the human will. The early Greek and Latin fathers of the church largely cultivated this field. The scholastics greatly increased the riches received from their predecessors. And had not the attention of the church been turned aside from its course by the errors of the XVIth century, the demonstration of Christianity on its intrinsic side would ere this have received its finishing strokes. The time has come to take up this work, continue it where it was interrupted, and bring it to completion. Thanks to the encyclicals of Pius IX, and the decisions of the Vatican Council, this task will not now be so difficult.

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

197

Many, if not most, of the distinguished apologists of Christianity, theologians, philosophers, and preachers, either by their writings or eloquence, have already entered upon this path. The recently-published volumes, and those issuing day by day from the press, in exposition, or defense, or apology of Christianity, are engaged in this work. This explanation of the internal life and constitution of the church, and of the intelligible side of the mysteries of faith and the intrinsic reasons for the truths of divine revelation, giving to them their due emphasis, combined with the external notes of credibility, would complete the demonstration of Christianity. Such an exposition of Christianity, the union of the internal with the external notes of credibility, is calculated to produce a more enlightened and intense conviction of its divine truth in the faithful, to stimulate them to a more energetic personal action; and, what is more, it would open the door to many straying, but not altogether lost, children, for their return to the fold of the church. The increased action of the Holy Spirit, with a more vigorous cooperation on the part of the faithful, which is in process of realization, will elevate the human personality to an intensity of force and grandeur productive of a new era to the church and to society—an era difficult for the imagination to grasp, and still more difficult to describe in words, unless we have recourse to the prophetic language of the inspired Scriptures. Is not such a demonstration of Christianity and its results anticipated in the following words? “We are about to see,.” said Schlegel, “a new exposition of Christianity, which will reunite all Christians, and even bring back the infidels themselves.” “This reunion between science and faith,” says the Protestant historian Ranke, “will be more important in its spiritual results than was the discovery of a new hemisphere three hundred years ago, or even than that of the true system of the world, or than any other discovery of any kind whatever.”7 7

[Friedrich von Schlegel (1772-1829), a convert to Catholicism in 1808, was a German writer, critic and originator of many of the philosophical ideas that inspired the early Romantic movement in Germany. Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) was the leading German historian of the nineteenth century. He established the historical seminar and had a great influence

198

American Catholic Religious Thought XII. MISSION OF RACES

Pursuing our study of the action of the Holy Spirit, we shall perceive that a deeper and more explicit exposition of the divine side of the church, in view of the characteristic gifts of different races, is the way or means of realizing the hopes above expressed. God is the author of the differing races of men. He, for his own good reasons, has stamped upon them their characteristics, and appointed them from the beginning their places which they are to fill in his church. In a matter where there are so many tender susceptibilities, it is highly important not to overrate the peculiar gifts of any race, nor, on the other hand, to underrate them or exaggerate their vices or defects. Besides, the different races in modern Europe have been brought so closely together, and have been mingled to such an extent, that their differences can only be detected in certain broad and leading features. It would be also a grave mistake, in speaking of the providential mission of the races, to suppose that they imposed their characteristics on religion, Christianity, or the church whereas on the contrary it is their Author who has employed in the church their several gifts for the expression and development of those truths for which he specially created them. The church is God acting through the different races of men for their highest development, together with their present and future greatest happiness and his own greatest glory. “God directs the nations upon the earth” (Ps. 66:5). Every leading race of men, or great nation, fills a large space in the general history of the world. It is an observation of S. Augustine that God gave the empire of the world to the Romans as a reward for their civic virtues. But it is a matter of surprise how large and important a part divine Providence has appointed special races to take in the history of religion. It is here sufficient merely to mention the Israelites. One cannot help being struck with the mission of the Latin and Celtic races during the greater period of the history of Christianity. What brought them together in the first instance was the transference of the chair of S. Peter, the center of the church, to Rome, the on Western historiography, establishing criteria for an objective approach to historical studies.]

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

199

center of the Latin race. Rome, then, was the embodied expression of a perfectly organized, world-wide power. Rome was the political, and, by its great roads, the geographical, center of the world. What greatly contributed to the predominance of the Latin race, and subsequently of the Celts in union with the Latins, was the abandonment of the church by the Greeks by schism,8 and the loss of the larger portion of the Saxons by the errors and revolt of the XVIth century. The faithful, in consequence, were almost exclusively composed of Latin-Celts. The absence of the Greeks and of so large a portion of the Saxons, whose tendencies and prejudices in many points are similar, left a freer course and an easier task to the church, through her ordinary channels of action, as well as through her extraordinary ones—the Councils, namely, of Trent and the Vatican—to complete her authority and external constitution. For the Latin-Celtic races are characterized by hierarchical, traditional, and emotional tendencies. These were the human elements which furnished the church with the means of developing and completing her supreme authority, her divine and ecclesiastical traditions, her discipline, her devotions, and, in general, her aesthetics. . . .9 XVI. MIXED SAXONS RETURNING

Christ blamed the Jews, who were skillful in detecting the signs of change in the weather, for their want of skill in discerning the signs of the times [Mt. 16:1-4]. There are evidences, and where we should first expect to meet them—namely, among the mixed Saxon races, the people of England and the United States—of this return to the true church. The mixture of the Anglo-Saxons with the blood of the Celts in former days caused them to retain, at the time of the so-called Reformation, more of the doctrines, worship, and organization of the 8

9

[In 1054 the Byzantine churches and the Roman church excommunicated each other bringing about a split between Eastern and Western Christianity that continues to exist.] [Three sections have been deleted from the text at this point: XIII. Some of the Causes of Protestantism; XIV. Present Saxon Persecutions; and XV. Return of the Saxon Races to the Church.]

200

American Catholic Religious Thought

Catholic Church than did the thorough Saxons of Germany. It is for the same reason that among them are manifested the first unmistakable symptoms of their entrance once more into the bosom of the church. At different epochs movements in this direction have taken place, but never so serious and general as at the present time. The character and the number of the converts from Anglicanism to the Catholic Church gave, in the beginning, a great alarm to the English nation. But now it has become reconciled to the movement, which continues and takes its course among the more intelligent and influential classes, and that notwithstanding the spasmodic cry of alarm of Lord John Russell and the more spiteful attack of the Right Hon. William E. Gladstone, M.P., late prime minister.10 It is clear to those who have eyes to see such things that God is bestowing special graces upon the English people in our day, and that the hope is not without solid foundation which looks forward to the time when England shall again take rank among the Catholic nations. The evidences of a movement towards the Catholic Church are still clearer and more general in the United States. There is less prejudice and hostility against the church in the United States than in England, and hence her progress is much greater. The Catholics, in the beginning of this century, stood as one to every two hundred of the whole population of the American Republic. The ratio of Catholics now is one to six or seven of the inhabitants. The Catholics will outnumber, before the close of this century, all other believers in Christianity put together in the republic. This is no fanciful statement, but one based on a careful study of statistics, and the estimate is moderate. Even should emigration from Catholic countries to the United States cease altogether—which it will 10

[Lord John Russell (1792-1878) was prime minister of Great Britain (184652; 1865-66) and an aristocratic liberal who was highly critical of the First Vatican Council’s definition of papal infallibility. William E. Gladstone (1809-98) was also prime minister (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94) and another critic of the Vatican definition. His The Vatican Decrees in their Bearing on Civil Allegiance, a Political Expostulation (London: John Murray, 1874) created quite a stir in England and drew a response from John Henry Newman and other British Catholics.]

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

201

not—or even should it greatly diminish, the supposed loss or diminution, in this source of augmentation, will be fully compensated by the relative increase of births among the Catholics, as compared with that among other portions of the population. The spirit, the tendencies, and the form of political government inherited by the people of the United States are strongly and distinctively Saxon; yet there are no more patriotic or better citizens in the republic than the Roman Catholics, and no more intelligent, practical, and devoted Catholics in the church than the seven millions of Catholics in this same young and vigorous republic. The Catholic faith is the only persistently progressive religious element, compared with the increase of population, in the United States. A striking proof that the Catholic Church flourishes wherever there is honest freedom, wherever human nature has its full share of liberty! Give the Catholic Church equal rights and fair play, and she will again win Europe, and with Europe the world. Now, who will venture to assert that these two mixed Saxon nations, of England and the United States, are not, in the order of divine Providence, the appointed leaders of the great movement of the return of all the Saxons to the Holy Catholic Church? The sun, in his early dawn, first touches the brightest mountaintops, and, advancing in his course, floods the deepest valleys with his glorious light; and so the Sun of divine grace has begun to enlighten the minds in the highest stations in life in England, in the United States, and in Germany; and what human power will impede the extension of its holy light to the souls of the whole population of these countries? XVII. TRANSITION OF THE LATIN-CELTS.

Strange action of divine Providence in ruling the nations of this earth! While the Saxons are about to pass from a natural to a supernatural career, the Latin-Celts are impatient for, and have already entered upon, a natural one. What does this mean? Are these races to change their relative positions before the face of the world? The present movement of transition began on the part of the LatinCeltic nations in the last century among the French people, who of all these nations stand geographically the nearest, and whose blood is most mingled with that of the Saxons. That transition began in violence,

202

American Catholic Religious Thought

because it was provoked to a premature birth by the circumstance that the control exercised by the church as the natural moderator of the Christian republic of Europe was set aside by Protestantism, particularly so in France, in consequence of a diluted dose of the same Protestantism under the name of Gallicanism. Exempt from this salutary control, kings and the aristocracy oppressed the people at their own will and pleasure; and the people, in turn, wildly rose up in their might, and cut off, at their own will and pleasure, the heads of the kings and aristocrats. Louis XIV, in his pride, said, “L’Etat c’est moi!” The people replied, in their passion, “L’Etat c’est nous!” Under the guidance of the church the transformation from feudalism to all that is included under the title of modern citizenship was effected with order, peace, and benefit to all classes concerned. Apart from this aid, society pendulates from despotism to anarchy, and from anarchy to despotism. The French people at the present moment are groping about, and earnestly seeking after the true path of progress, which they lost some time back by their departure from the Christian order of society. The true movement of Christian progress was turned aside into destructive channels, and this movement, becoming revolutionary, has passed in our day to the Italian and Spanish nations. Looking at things in their broad features, Christianity is at this moment exposed to the danger, on the one hand, of being exterminated by the persecutions of the Saxon races, and, on the other, of being denied by the apostasy of the Latin-Celts. This is the great tribulation of the present hour of the church. She feels the painful struggle. The destructive work of crushing out Christianity by means of these hostile tendencies has already begun. If, as some imagine, the Christian faith be only possible at the sacrifice of human nature, and if a natural career be only possible at the sacrifice of the Christian faith, it requires no prophetic eye to foresee the sad results to the Christian religion at no distant future. But it is not so. The principles already laid down and proclaimed to the world by the church answer satisfactorily these difficulties. What the age demands, what society is seeking for, rightly interpreted, is the knowledge of these principles and their practical application to its present needs.

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

203

For God is no less the author of nature than of grace, of reason than of faith, of this earth than of heaven. The Word by which all things were made that were made, and the Word which was made flesh, is one and the same Word. The light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world, and the light of Christian faith, are, although differing in degree, the same light. “There is therefore nothing so foolish or so absurd,” to use the words of Pius IX on the same subject, “as to suppose there can be any opposition between them.”11 Their connection is intimate, their relation is primary; they are, in essence, one. For what else did Christ become man than to establish the kingdom of God on earth, as the way to the kingdom of God in heaven? It cannot be too often repeated to the men of this generation, so many of whom are trying to banish and forget God, that God and God alone, is the Creator and Renewer of the world. The same God who made all things, and who became man, and began the work of regeneration, is the same who really acts in the church now upon men and society, and who has pledged his word to continue to do so until the end of the world. To be guided by God’s church is to be guided by God. It is in vain to look elsewhere. “Society,” as the present pontiff has observed, “has been enclosed in a labyrinth, out of which it will never issue save by the hand of God.”12 The hand of God is the church. It is the hand he is extending, in a more distinctive and attractive form, to this present generation. Blessed generation, if it can only be led to see this outstretched hand, and to follow the path of all true progress, which it so clearly points out! XVIII. PERSPECTIVE OF THE FUTURE.

During the last three centuries, from the nature of the work the church had to do, the weight of her influence had to be mainly exerted on the side of restraining human activity. Her present and future influence, due to the completion of her external organization, will be exerted on the side of soliciting increased action. The first was necessarily repressive and unpopular; the second will be, on the contrary, expansive and popular. The one excited antagonism; the other will attract sympathy 11 12

Encyclical to the German bishops, 1854. January 24, 1872 [in Actes et Paroles de Pius IX].

204

American Catholic Religious Thought

and cheerful co-operation. The former restraint was exercised, not against human activity, but against the exaggeration of that activity. The future will be the solicitation of the same activity towards its elevation and divine expansion, enhancing its fruitfulness and glory. These different races of Europe and the United States, constituting the body of the most civilized nations of the world, united in an intelligent appreciation of the divine character of the church, with their varied capacities and the great agencies at their disposal, would be the providential means of rapidly spreading the light of faith over the whole world, and of constituting a more Christian state of society. In this way would be reached a more perfect realization of the prediction of the prophets, of the promises and prayers of Christ, and of the true aspiration of all noble souls. This is what the age is calling for, if rightly understood, in its countless theories and projects of reform.

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES Questions of the Soul (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1855). Aspirations of Nature (New York: J. B. Kirker, 1855). The Church and the Age (New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1887). The Catholic World, 1865-88. Archives of the Paulist Fathers, New York City. Joseph Gower and Richard Leliaert, eds., The Brownson-Hecker Correspondence, (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1979). SECONDARY SOURCES Walter Elliott, The Life of Father Hecker (New York: Columbus Press, 1891). John Farina, An American Experience of God: The Spirituality of Isaac Hecker (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). John Farina, ed., Hecker Studies: Essays on the Thought of Isaac Hecker (New York: Paulist Press, 1983). Joseph R. Gower, “The ‘New Apologetics’ of Isaac Thomas Hecker (18191888): Catholicity and American Culture.” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 1978.

3 ~ Isaac Thomas Hecker

205

———, “Democracy as a Theological Problem in Isaac Hecker’s Apologetics,” in Thomas M. McFadden, ed., America in Theological Perspective (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), 37-55. ———, “A ‘Test Question’ for Religious Liberty: Isaac Hecker on Education,” Notre Dame Journal of Education 7 (Spring 1976), 28-43. Vincent F. Holden, The Early Years of Isaac Thomas Hecker, 1819-1844 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1939). ———, The Yankee Paul: Isaac Thomas Hecker (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1958). Le Père Hecker, Fondateur des Paulistes Américains 1819-1888 ... Introduction par Msgr Ireland. Préface par 1’abbé Felix Klein (Paris 1897). Joseph McSorley, Father Hecker and His Friends (St. Louis: P. Herder Book Co., 1952). Charles Maignen, Etudes sur l’Americanisme: Père Hecker, est’il un Saint? (Paris: V. Retaux, 1898). David O’Brien, Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic (New York: Paulist Press, 1992). William L. Portier, “Providential Nation: An Historical-Theological Study of Isaac Hecker’s Americanism.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of St. Michael’s College, 1980.

Part III VATICAN I AND PAPAL AUTHORITY, 1869-1870

4 ~ Martin John Spalding MARTIN JOHN SPALDING: MODERATE INFALLIBILIST Martin John Spalding (1810-71), Bishop of Louisville and Archbishop of Baltimore, as already indicated in the introduction, asserted prior to the First Vatican Council that papal infallibility was a theological opinion that he favored. During the Council he was on the side of the advocates of infallibility, but once the definition was promulgated he was careful to show the limits of papal infallibility and to explain how this definition fostered the primacy of the spiritual in Christian life and how it could be interpreted as a benefit for the modern world. Martin Spalding was born in Rolling Fork, Kentucky to Richard and Henrietta Hamilton Spalding, descendants of seventeenth-century Roman Catholic Marylanders. Martin received his elementary education at St. Mary’s College in Lebanon, Kentucky (1821-26) under Fr. William Byrne and his education for the priesthood at St. Thomas Seminary, Bardstown, Kentucky (1826-29) under Bishop Benedict J. Flaget, Fathers Francis Patrick Kenrick and John B. David. Like Kenrick, he went to the Urban College in Rome (1830-34) where he received a doctorate in theology. From 1835 to 1848 he served various pastoral functions in the Diocese of Louisville. In 1848, he was consecrated Bishop of Louisville and served in that capacity until 1864 when he was made Archbishop of Baltimore (1864-71). The following selection on papal infallibility was written in Rome, one day after the First Vatican Council voted in favor of the definition. Spalding had been in favor of the definition throughout the council’s debates over the issue. This document represents Spalding’s attempts to explain and justify the doctrine to the Catholics of his Archdiocese. With a sensitivity to American constitutional values, he is quick to point out not only the meaning of the powers the pope has

210

American Catholic Religious Thought

been declared to possess, but also the limitations of papal authority. He also argues, against some opponents of the teaching, that papal infallibility is no new doctrine, that it should not shock Protestants, that it was no threat to civil government, and that the council fathers had complete freedom of debate during the council before the definition was voted upon.

****** TEXT PASTORAL LETTER OF THE MOST REVEREND MARTIN JOHN SPALDING, D.D., ARCHBISHOP OF BALTIMORE, TO THE CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE ARCHDIOCESE, ON THE PAPAL INFALLIBILITY (JULY 19,1870) Source: The Evidences of Catholicity, 6th ed. (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1876), 441-45; 448-58; 460-77 VENERABLE BRETHREN OF THE CLERGY: BELOVED BRETHREN OF THE LAITY

Nine months have elapsed since we left you, in obedience to the voice of the supreme pontiff summoning all the bishops of Christendom to the great Vatican Council. During this period we have been busily employed, but we have not failed daily to remember our dear flock and to pour forth to the throne of grace our poor prayers in their behalf. “For you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together” (2 Cor. 7:3). And we have been comforted with the confident belief, that you too have not failed and will not fail to offer up your fervent supplications for us and for the success of the Council, whose deliberations may still be protracted for more than a year. . . . The Vatican Council is composed of bishops from all the quarters of the globe—from Europe, Asia, America, Africa, Australia, and the Islands of the Sea; they speak many languages, but they are all of one faith, and, in one sense, they are all of one tongue. The Latin language is still that of the Church, and her far-seeing wisdom and world-wide view are strikingly exhibited in the fact that all the business of the Council

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

211

is transacted, and all the orations are delivered in this language, which on this very spot, more than eighteen centuries ago, was spoken with so much grace and dignity by Cicero and Ennius—another striking historical coincidence, in which we find extremes meeting. A council means debate. Discussion is the characteristic of all deliberative assemblies, of which the oldest and best models have been the councils of the Catholic Church. From that of Jerusalem, presided over by Peter, to that of the Vatican, presided over by his successor Pius IX, there has always been first “much disputing,” and then later, after the matter had been discussed, and Peter or his successor had pronounced sentence, a great silence and peace (Acts 15:12). Never has there been a council in which there has existed fuller latitude or greater freedom for discussion, or one in which greater decorum and dignity have been observed. Every subject, or Schema, has been thoroughly examined in its most minute details and in all its possible bearings. The regulations provided for a triple discussion; the first in writing, the other two by word of mouth. After the distribution of the Schema, the Fathers were invited to hand in, in writing, within a specified period, their objections or modifications, to the appropriate deputation or committee, which thereupon instituted a searching examination, and reported back the result of their deliberations in the shape of a revised and reprinted Schema. Then the oral discussion began, first in general, or on the general matter and form of the Schema; and next in particular, on each chapter and even on each phrase and word, the speakers at the same time presenting in writing the amendments which they deemed opportune. These amendments were printed and distributed among the Fathers, who were advised of the day assigned for voting on them. The vote taken, such of the amendments as were adopted were embodied in the reprinted Schema, and then the Fathers were called upon to vote first on each separate part or chapter of the revised text, and next on the whole. The last vote was most solemn; it was taken by calling separately all the members of the council, each of whom might answer in one of three ways: either by Placet, or yea; by Non Placet, or nay; or by Placet juxta modum, or yea with a modification. These modifications, handed in, in writing, were printed and sent back to the deputation for examination, and on their report to the council, the final preparatory vote was taken in

212

American Catholic Religious Thought

the general congregation, preliminary to the solemn and conclusive vote in the public session. The great mass of these debates regarded the forms of expression rather than the substance of the things themselves, though some of them, especially on the last Constitution, to which we will soon refer, touched to a greater or less extent the substance itself, or at least the opportuneness of the definition. Every sentence, every phrase, every word, every comma even,1 was searchingly examined; and with a triple discussion and a triple preparatory vote, even humanely speaking, there could scarcely be room for a mistake. The judgments of the Church on matters of faith and morals when confirmed by the Roman pontiff—as they necessarily must be—being irreversible and infallible, and regarding all time as well as all nations, all these precautions are wisely taken as a preliminary to the promised presence and assistance of the Holy Ghost, who then puts the seal of his infallible truth on the results of human research and industry. These are not only not excluded by the divine promises, but they are regarded not indeed as a condition of infallibility, but as a moral duty of the assembled Fathers, who are bound to search the Scriptures and the Traditions of the Church before rendering their decision. After these general remarks on the council and its mode of procedure, we come now, venerable and beloved brethren, to a subject which has excited much attention and interest throughout Christendom, and has provoked much discussion both in and outside the Council Hall. We refer to the Constitution just passed by an overwhelming majority of the council,2 on the primacy and the infallible teaching of the Roman 1

2

One of the most earnest debates and interesting votes of the assembled Fathers regarded the retention or omission of a comma. The text often passed through seven or eight revisions, before it was regarded as satisfactory. The final vote took place in the fourth public session, held on the 18th July: it stood Placet 533, non Placet 2. The last preliminary vote in the public Congregation a few days previously stood Placet 451, non Placet 88, Placet with modification 62. Most of the last class voted Placet at the session, while most of the non Placet voters chose to absent themselves, though they were perfectly free to vote, as the example of two of their number proved. Comparing the total number of voters on this occasion

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

213

pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra—that is, as Universal Pastor and Doctor, deciding for the whole Church a doctrine in matters of faith and morals. It is our duty officially to promulgate this Constitution, and to explain especially that portion of it which regards the infallible official teaching of the pontiff. . . . A brief analysis of this doctrinal exposition and definition will show us, venerable and beloved brethren, how clear and comprehensive is the former and how carefully guarded in all its expressions is the latter. The exposition begins with the declaration, that the supreme power of teaching is embraced in the Apostolic Primacy, which was instituted in the person of Peter and his successors by Christ our Lord for the good of the Church, that all his followers might be preserved in the truth and thereby in the unity of the faith, by being all alike fed not with poisonous food of error but with the wholesome aliment of sound doctrine. It then proceeds to enforce this teaching by the testimony of general councils of the Church, particularly of those in which the East and the West came together for the purpose of re-establishing unity of faith and charity, interrupted by schism. These general councils are three in number: the eighth, or fourth of Constantinople in the ninth century, the second of Lyons in the thirteenth, and that of Florence in the fifteenth. In these great assizes of the Church the subject of the Primacy of the Roman pontiff, with its essential prerogatives, was specially discussed, and fully settled by general consent. The following principles were unanimously proclaimed, as clearly derived from the institution promises of Christ: first, that in the Apostolic or Roman See the Catholic faith has always been preserved immaculate, with the true and entire solidity of the Christian Religion, and that in consequence all are bound to be in communion with that See; second, that with that of the Fathers who originally belonged to the council, we notice a falling off of two hundred and twenty-nine, of whom about twelve had departed this life, and the remainder, with the exception above indicated, had been permitted for legitimate causes to return to their dioceses, except a few of them were detained by illness. The great majority of them were in favor of the infallibility. See Giornale di Roma, July 18, 1870. The total number of speeches delivered since the opening of the council was about 420, of which about one hundred were on the question of papal infallibility, either in the general or in the special discussion.

214

American Catholic Religious Thought

the Roman pontiff, having received in the Blessed Peter the Primacy, with the plenitude of power, is bound above all others to defend the truth of the faith, and that all questions which may arise in matters of faith must be defined, or finally settled, by his judgment; and third, that he is the true Vicar of Christ upon earth, the Head of the whole Church, and the Father and Teacher of all Christians; and that in the Blessed Peter full power was given to him by our Lord Jesus Christ to feed, rule, and govern the universal Church. The doctrinal exposition then proceeds to illustrate these principles by three great historical facts, which no one can gainsay, which meet your eye on almost every page of the ecclesiastical records, and which clearly prove that those principles were not merely theoretical but eminently practical, intimately connected with the practical working and the very life of the Church. The first fact is, that, in accordance with long custom and the ancient canonical rule, the Bishops of the Church were in the habit of constantly referring to the Holy See all ecclesiastical questions, especially those in which the faith was involved or might be endangered, in order, as St. Bernard says, that the damages to faith might be there repaired where the faith could not fail. The second fact is, that the Roman pontiffs, on receiving such appeals, carefully studied the questions referred to them for final decision, availing themselves of all the means placed in their power, sometimes convoking general councils, or enquiring into the belief of the Church dispersed, sometimes assembling particular Synods, or employing such other aids as divine Providence afforded; and after this careful preliminary study, they defined what they had ascertained to be conformable in the premises to the Holy Scriptures and Apostolical Tradition. Finally, the third fact is, that in all cases their decisions thus delivered were willingly accepted and adhered to by the venerable Fathers and orthodox doctors of the whole Church, who were deeply persuaded that they could contain nothing but the truth, as the See of Peter could not but be preserved free from all error in virtue of the promise made by the Lord our Savior to the Prince of his disciples: I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not (St. Luke 22:32). After this doctrinal exposition comes the definition of the pontifical infallibility itself, as based upon and derived from the institution and promises of Christ, and as illustrated by the facts and principles just set

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

215

forth, clearly showing the verdict of the Church of Christ for eighteen centuries on that divine institution and those divine promises. And lest any one should be led into error as to the nature and extent of this pontifical infallibility, and lest the enemies of the Church should take occasion from the definition to misrepresent and calumniate us, we deem it our duty, in officially promulgating the doctrine, to explain first what this infallibility is not, and secondly what it is. In doing this, we shall not have occasion to depart from the tenor of the record itself, which either plainly expresses or clearly implies all that we shall have occasion to state in illustration or explanation. WHAT PAPAL INFALLIBILITY IS NOT

1. It is not impeccability or immunity from sin. The Pope regularly confesses his sins to the priest of Christ, like all other good Christians, and by the divine law, he is bound to do so as much as any other. Every day, before ascending the holy altar, he proclaims himself a sinner before God, before saints, angels, and men, and he thrice strikes his breast saying mea culpa—through my fault, through my fault, through my exceeding great fault. He makes the offertory for “his innumerable sins, offenses, and negligences,” and before the communion he again strikes his breast thrice, uttering the words of the centurion: “Lord I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof.” He spends whole hours every day in prayer for himself and for the whole flock of Christ divinely committed to his care, with a deep feeling of the fearful responsibility resting upon him to answer before the Great Shepherd, whose Vicar he is, for their salvation. Though the Roman pontiffs are and freely acknowledge themselves to be sinful men, yet it is a remarkable evidence of the divine guardianship watching over them, that nearly all of them have been men of edifying conduct and holy life, that about one-third of them have been martyrs or canonized saints, and that in the whole line of succession stretching through eighteen centuries, not more than five or six, out of two hundred and sixty, can be pointed to, even by the finger of enmity, as not having been much better in their private moral conduct than the average of contemporary worldly sovereigns; and of these few no one can say with truth that they ever attempted to change anything in the doctrines of the Church.

216

American Catholic Religious Thought

2. Infallibility does not attach to the Pope as a private person, nor as a temporal sovereign, nor as a private doctor writing or stating his own theological opinions; nor even as Pope delivering decisions in particular judicial cases depending for their merits on the testimony of men, much less in the words and acts of his ordinary life, outside the spiritual domain of faith and morals of Church discipline and government. 3. The papal infallibility is not inspiration, such as was possessed by the prophets and Apostles; nor is it a new revelation making known a new doctrine; but it is only a divine assistance, by which, though naturally of themselves weak and fallible, the pontiffs are divinely enabled “holily to preserve and faithfully to expound the revelation or deposit of the faith delivered through the Apostles.” 4. Hence, it is manifest, that the pontiffs cannot define any new doctrine not contained either expressly or impliedly in the original deposit of the faith, much less can they define merely according to their own will or caprice, as their enemies are not ashamed sometimes to assert. As we have already shown, from the doctrinal exposition itself, they have always diligently used every means at their command to ascertain what is conformable to the Holy Scriptures and Apostolic Traditions before deciding on any question of faith or morals, and they will certainly continue to do so in the future; for nowhere is precedent more rigidly adhered to, or regarded as more sacred, than in the Roman Church, as every one knows. WHAT PAPAL INFALLIBILITY IS

1. The pontiff is infallible, not in his private, but in his official character, when he speaks ex cathedra—from his official magisterial or teaching chair—as the Father and teacher of all Christians, and when thus speaking, he defines, by his supreme apostolic authority, a doctrine on faith or morals to be held by the universal Church; and this infallibility derives, not from any personal wisdom or other quality in himself, but from the divine assistance promised to him in the Blessed Peter. The end for which it was bestowed is the good of the Church, that the flock of Christ may be always preserved in sound faith and guarded from fatal error and heresy, and that thus the purpose of Christ in establishing his Church may not be thwarted, but faithfully carried out and realized to the consummation of the world.

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

217

From this it follows: first, that the papal infallibility, in the strict sense of the definition, is confined to the domain of doctrine on faith and morals; secondly, that the pontiff must define, or finally settle a doctrine, not merely declare more or less strongly a belief; thirdly, that the definition must contain a doctrine to be held by the whole Church; and fourthly, that the definition must be official or ex cathedra, according to the meaning attached to the word, as above stated. 2. The formula of the definition further declares, that, under these circumstances, the pontiff “is endowed with the same infallibility with which the divine Redeemer wished his Church to be invested while defining a doctrine on faith or morals.” This portion of the definition makes the official papal infallibility identical in its objects and limits, in its extent and certitude, with that of the Church itself; and as the latter is well known to all theologians and to all well instructed Catholics, the former, being the same, is thus easily ascertained by all who sincerely wish to know the truth. 3. To prescribe the error of those who pretend that the official infallibility of the pontiff is not derived from the promises of Christ made directly to Peter and his successors but from the consent of the Church, a clause is added to the definition of the effect, “that such definitions (as above) of the Roman pontiff are irreformable, or irreversible, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church.” We shall have occasion to refer to this branch of the subject more at length further on. All this is in full conformity with what the Angel of the Schools—St. Thomas Aquinas—wrote six hundred years ago, proclaiming the universal faith of the Church before and in the thirteenth century. He says: “the faith of the whole Church should be one, according to that of St. Paul (I Cor.), ‘Let all say the same thing, nor let schisms exist among you;’ which could not be observed, unless a question of faith which might arise should be finally settled by him who presides over the whole Church, that thus his decision may be held by the whole Church. Therefore it belongs to the authority of the Roman pontiff alone to issue a new edition of the Symbol (or Confession of faith) as likewise to do all other things which concern the whole Church.”3 3

St. Thomas, Summa, 2. 2. Quaestio 1. Art. X.

218

American Catholic Religious Thought

In order to illustrate more fully this important subject, we will endeavor, venerable and beloved brethren, to establish the three following propositions: . . . 1. In defining the PUBLIC and OFFICIAL infallibility of the Roman pontiff in his solemn judgments and final decisions of matters of faith and morals for the guidance of the whole Church, the Vatican Council has set up no new doctrine, but has merely proclaimed in a more solemn manner a truth which was handed down from the beginning, and which, in all its essential principles, has been for centuries generally and practically accepted and acted upon by the Holy Catholic Church. We must view this subject from the Catholic standpoint, which is the infallibility of the Church in her teaching concerning matters of faith and morals. Now we maintain, that given the infallibility of the Church, that of the pontiff follows as a logical and necessary consequence. For according to Catholic doctrine, the Pope, in the person of St. Peter, whose successor he is, was appointed by Jesus Christ the rock upon which the Church is firmly built as upon a solid foundation, with the solemn promise made by him who could not deceive that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it (Mt. 16:18); he is the divinely constituted confirmer of his brethren, with the clearly implied promise, as a necessary consequence of the special prayer of Christ, that his faith shall not fail, while discharging the important office of confirming his brethren (Lk. 22:32); he is the great chief shepherd of the one fold, with the office solemnly committed to him by Christ to feed the lambs and the sheep—the entire flock (Jn. 21:15-17); finally, he is the visible head of the Church, Christ Jesus being the great invisible Head who purchased it with his blood, and who has by his solemn promises guaranteed its stability and purity of faith by his presence and assistance all days even to the consummation of the world (Mt. 28:20). Heaven and earth will pass away, but his word shall not pass away (Mt. 24:35). Now this being the Catholic doctrine, how is it possible to conceive that the Roman pontiff, so intimately and indissolubly connected with the indestructible and infallible Church by divine appointment, can be himself fallible in his public and official teaching for the whole Church? Can we logically conceive of an infallible and indestructible edifice built upon a fallible and tottering foundation? Can we imagine

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

219

an infallible body of brethren confirmed, or strengthened in the faith, by a fallible confirmer? Can we suppose that an infallible sheepfold can be guided, governed, and nurtured with the food of sound doctrine by a fallible chief shepherd? Finally, can we conceive of an infallible body directed by a fallible head? All these suppositions are plainly inconsistent and illogical; they are clearly unworthy of the wisdom of Christ and irreconcilable with his solemn and reiterated promises in behalf of his Church. In willing the indefectibility and the infallibility of his Church, he clearly adopted means adequate to this great end; and no matter how seemingly weak or imperfect these means might appear, his wisdom and his power could and would supply all deficiencies and infallibly secure the end contemplated. Evidently, in conformity with his plan and promise, the infallibility of the Church and that of its visible head are indissolubly associated; they stand and fall together; they are one. Accordingly we find, venerable and beloved brethren, that this great principle has been recognized and acted on by the Church from the very beginning. The Church has invariably and in all ages received and adhered to the solemn decisions of its visible head and supreme judge in matters of faith and morals; there is clearly no exception to this great fact of Church history.4 Partial, even violent opposition there 4

The case of Honorius forms no exception; for 1, Honorius expressly says in his letters to Sergius that he meant to define nothing, and he was condemned precisely because he temporized and would not define; 2, because in his letters he clearly taught the sound Catholic doctrine, only enjoining silence as to the use of certain terms, then new in the Church; and 3d, because his letters were not addressed to a general council of the whole Church, and were rather private than public and official—at least they were not published, even in the East, until several years later. The first letter was written to Sergius in 633, and eight years afterwards—in 641—the Emperor Heraclius, in exculpating himself to Pope John II, Honorius’ successor, for having published his edict—the Ecthesis—which enjoined silence on the disputants, similar to that imposed by Honorius, lays the whole responsibility thereof on Sergius, who, he declares, composed the Edict. Evidently, Sergius had not communicated the Letter to the Emperor, probably because its contents if published would not have suited his wily purpose of secretly introducing, under another form, the Eutychian heresy. Thus falls to the ground the only case upon which the

220

American Catholic Religious Thought

may have been, and there occasionally was, for a time, against such decisions; but in the end, the papal decision carried the day and won the general assent of the Church. . . . For, the general fact of adhesion just stated reaching back to the earliest ages of the Church, there are two practical principles which have been clearly settled and generally acted on by the Church for centuries, especially for about two hundred years, since the rise of Jansenism and the controversies excited by Gallicanism. These are: 1st, that all Christians are bound to yield not only external respect, but also internal assent to the solemn decisions of the Roman pontiff; 2d, that no appeal can be lawfully made from such decisions to a general council—the only other tribunal in the Church to which an appeal could possibly be made. . . . If all Catholics are bound to yield full and cordial assent to the official judgments of the pontiff, and if no appeal lies from his decisions, is it not plain that if the pontiff should err in such decisions the whole Church would necessarily be led into fatal error, the whole work of Christ for the salvation of men would be marred, and the infallibility of the Church would be at an end. The conclusion then is obvious: that to be consistent, a Catholic must either believe in the official infallibility of the Pope, or reject the infallibility of the Church. There is clearly no alternative. You will naturally ask us, beloved brethren, if the matter was already practically settled, why did the Vatican Council issue its solemn definition on the subject? The question is reasonable, and we will endeavor opponents of infallibility have continued to insist. This entire subject has been exhausted by many recent learned writers. [Honorius I (Pope 625-38) became involved in the monothelite (that is, one will in Christ) controversy when Sergius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, asked him whether or not there was “one energy” in Christ. Misunderstanding the question, Honorius responded that there was one will in Christ and eventually rejected the expression of two wills, one divine and one human, in Christ, even though he asserted that there were two natures in Christ. The Council of Constantinople in 680, after Honorius’ death, defined the doctrine of two wills in Christ and condemned the formula of one will as unorthodox. For the decree, see Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 1:224-30.]

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

221

to answer it as briefly and as clearly as possible. The answer may be comprised in one phrase—Gallicanism revived.5 It would lead us too far to go into the history or to discuss the principles of Gallicanism. ... Its principles, so far as they were theological,6 consisted in a revival of the decrees of Constance declaring the superiority of the council over the Pope, in limiting the exercise of the papal prerogative to what is contained in the canons, without apparently granting him the 5

6

We do not wish to be understood as here intending to cast any reflection whatsoever on the course adopted by those bishops of Christendom, who, using their clear right of discussion in the council, questioned the opportuneness or propriety of the definition. We refer to various publications outside the council, which appeared in Germany and France during the last eight months: such as that entitled Janus, which filled all good Catholics with horror. Many of those were conceived in the worst spirit, far worse even than that of the older Gallicans, and they were openly scandalous, going in some instances to the very verge of heresy. They greatly contributed to render necessary and to hasten the very definition they were intended to oppose. The presidents, with the concurrence of the great body of the Fathers of the council, entered a solemn protest against two of these pestilent pamphlets, written in French, as replete with false statements affecting the good name of the council and that of the Holy Father himself. [Janus was the pseudonym for Ignatius von Döllinger, J. N. Huber, and J. Friedrich who wrote a series of letters in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung in March of 1869 attacking Pope Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors (1864) and the idea of papal infallibility that was being fostered by Jesuits in Rome. The letters were revised and published in a book, which was translated into English as The Pope and the Council (London: Rivingtons, 1869) and became widely distributed in English-speaking countries before and during the Vatican Council.] Of the first article in the declaration, which denies any temporal power of the Pope over sovereigns or governments, we will have occasion to speak further on. [The so-called four Gallican Articles, a declaration of the French clergy, drawn up by Bishop Jacques Bossuet in 1682, denied papal authority over temporal affairs, upheld the decrees of the Council of Constance (1414-18) affirming the superior authority of general councils over the papacy, asserted the ancient liberties and rights of the French Church, and finally declared that the Pope’s judgments required the consent of the Church to be valid and were not in themselves irreformable.]

222

American Catholic Religious Thought

power of exceptions or dispensations, and especially in regard to the received usages, rules, and institutions of the French Church; finally, in the declaration made in the fourth and last article, which we give textually, in a literal translation, as it contains the gist of Gallicanism as lately revived, to the utter astonishment of all Christendom. “Likewise in questions of faith (we declare) that the Sovereign pontiff has the principal part, and that his decrees regard the Churches, all and singular; nevertheless that his judgment is not irreformable, unless ratified by the consent of the Church.” Any comparison between the power of the pontiff and that of a general council, outside the time of a papal schism, is clearly preposterous, from the Catholic standpoint. For as all Catholic divines admit that there can be no general council without the Pope, the question as to which is greater would resolve itself into this: is the council of Bishops, together with the Pope, superior to the Pope alone; or this, is the Pope alone superior to the Pope with the council of Bishops? Every one sees, at a glance, how very absurd such a comparison would be, and will hence infer that the Council of Constance could not possibly have intended to extend their decrees beyond the time of schism. The attempt to limit the exercise of the papal jurisdiction by the canons, of which the pontiff is the divinely accredited interpreter, and in which he may dispense in case of need, was clearly a limitation of the power of the keys given to him in its plenitude, in the person of Peter by our Lord himself; while the reservation specially made in behalf of the customs received in the Gallican Church seemed to look towards setting up a national church, whose local laws and customs should be of paramount authority. Happily, the dangerous principle was not carried out to its full extent, thanks to the deeply seated and abiding loyalty of the noble French hierarchy; else schism would have been the necessary result. But the most dangerous of all the articles, as has been already intimated, was the fourth requiring the consent of the Church as an essential condition for rendering the judgment of the pontiff on questions of faith—final and irreformable. This principle once admitted, many practical difficulties of a most embarrassing nature would arise, which would render the papal decision of little or no effect. For how long should we wait for this consent of the Church, before accepting

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

223

the papal judgment as final? What consent would be required; that of a minority, or a majority of the bishops of Christendom, or a moral unanimity? Should this consent be express or implied—a tacit and merely negative acquiescence or a clearly marked acceptance? And in the meantime, the proscribed error or heresy would have full time to spread and to seduce thousands, perhaps millions of the faithful…. The fourth article seems to refer chiefly to the consent of the Church subsequent to the pontiff ’s judgment; but besides this, there is an antecedent and a concomitant consent of the Church. The latter suffers no difficulty, when it refers to that given by the bishops assembled in general council under the presidency of the pontiff in person or through his legates. This has never failed to be given, and according to the essential Constitution of the Church, it can never fail; else the council would and could not be general, but would be plainly schismatical, and its decisions null and void. The antecedent consent of the Church, though by no means essential to irreformable finality of the papal judgment, which derives its divine solidity from the immediate concession of Christ and his solemn promises to Peter and his successors, has, however, been often secured in advance; as has been already seen in the historical and doctrinal exposition of the Vatican Council given above. In fact, all students of Church history, and all who are even slightly acquainted with the method of procedure invariably adopted by the Holy See in its doctrinal decisions, cannot fail to have remarked the patient and protracted deliberations which invariably precede the issuing of such judgments. No industry is spared, no means left untried, to ascertain the doctrine of the Church as contained in the deposit of Scripture and tradition. Sometimes, as in the case of defining the Immaculate Conception, all the bishops of Christendom are previously consulted; sometimes, general councils are convened; sometimes particular synods; in all cases, the matter in issue is maturely discussed by repeated Congregations of cardinals aided by the most learned theologians: and no decision is made until the whole ground has been accurately and fully surveyed in all its parts and bearings. Thus, before the condemnation of Jansenism, from forty to fifty Congregations of cardinals were held, many of them in the presence of the pontiff, and the deliberations extended over the space of two years. Very generally

224

American Catholic Religious Thought

also, provincial or national councils are held on the spot where the new error has been first broached, and the judgment pronounced in these inferior courts of the Church are carried up for final adjudication to the supreme court of Christendom, whose decision is final and infallible. Without this permanent, ever living and present supreme tribunal for finally settling controversies on faith and morals, sufficient provision would not have been made by our dear Lord for the faith of the Church, which he purchased with his blood, and secured from error by his infallible promises. General councils cannot be convened except at long intervals, and under the pressure of the greatest emergencies. It is only with the greatest difficulty, that nearly a thousand bishops, scattered over the whole world, can be brought together in general council; and often the political condition of the world is so disturbed as to render such meetings impracticable. Accordingly, we find that nearly three hundred years elapsed before the meeting of the first general council at Nice in 325; and three hundred and six years have elapsed from the close of the last general Council of Trent in 1563 and the opening of the first of the Vatican in 1869; while more than two hundred and fifty years intervened between the eighth and the ninth general councils. Under these circumstances, how could heresies be condemned, and the ruin of the Church be averted, unless Christ our Lord had given to the successor of Peter the prerogative to pronounce authoritative judgment with unerring and infallible certainty? To what other tribunal can recourse be had for finally settling controversies and preserving unity? Plainly to none other, as even, apart from the solemn declarations and promises of Christ, all Church history proclaims, with a thousand tongues. Most of the heresies which have in various ages sprung up in the Church have been solemnly condemned by the Roman pontiffs without the intervention of general councils; and, as we have already seen, in no case has it ever occurred that the Church dispersed over the world did not adhere to and concur in the papal decisions thus rendered. The facts of Church history thus furnish a clear and conclusive comment on the promises of Christ, and exhibit the infallibility of the Church as essentially identical with that of the Roman pontiff pronouncing ex cathedra, through the apostolic authority imparted

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

225

to him by the divine founder of the Church. It is in this sense that Suarez, the great theologian and champion of papal infallibility, writes: “When the pontiff defines, the Church speaks through her head; nor is the body separated from the head, nor is the head separated from the body.”7 According to the essential Constitution of the Church as divinely settled, such a separation is clearly impossible; the head gives life and movement to the body, the head directs and leads, the body obeys and follows. In the human body, the head may be separated from the members, but death immediately and necessarily ensues from the separation: the Church, which is the body of Christ, is immortal; and therefore no separation can possibly take place. Thus, from the Catholic standpoint, whichsoever way we turn, we cannot logically believe in the infallibility of the Church, without, at the same time, admitting the official infallibility of its visible head, the Roman pontiff. And it is not at all to be wondered at that this cardinal point of Catholic doctrine should have been defined in the Council of the Vatican, as it had been so publicly impugned, with so much evil to the Church since the close of the last general Council of Trent; particularly as the opposition to it has lately been re-awakened in a manner so fierce and so determined. It was surely time to settle finally a question which has produced so much excitement, to the great embarrassment and disedification of the faithful. The decision presents nothing new in substance; it is only a solemn and authoritative definition of what has always been the general belief of Catholic Christendom, and which, from what we have already shown, has been admitted in practice, even by that small portion of Catholics who denied it in theory. These, in fact, could not have done otherwise; for resistance to the formal definitions of the pontiff on matters of faith and morals, or yielding to them only external respect and not internal assent, would have placed them at once outside the pale of Catholic communion. We pass now, venerable and beloved brethren, to the second proposition which we promised briefly to illustrate. 7

Cum Pontifex definit, Ecclesia per caput suum loquitur; neque corpus separatur a Capite, neque caput a corpore.—Definit Fidel, O. 23, N. 27.

226

American Catholic Religious Thought

II. There is no valid reason for asserting that the definition will or should so greatly startle or shock the prejudices of non-Catholics, as to prevent or even retard their conversion to the true faith. Why should it? If non-Catholics and unbelievers choose to believe less than we, or nothing at all, why should they be particularly shocked if we believe more or something? As we have already shown, it is not a question here of the innate or natural infallibility of man, but of the infallibility of God, who is true to his promises, omnipotent in his action, and faithful in carrying out effectually his high purposes, in spite of the weakness of the instrument he employs. And, in this view of the case, it is surely as easy for him to guard from error one man appointed by himself as the teacher and leader of his people, as it is to guard a thousand dispersed over the world. And if there be any difference of degree it would seem more obvious and reasonable for him to guard from error in preference the head, that the body might not be led astray, to secure the foundation, that the edifice might not totter or fall, to enlighten and fortify the shepherd, that the whole flock of sheep and lambs might not be scattered, devoured by wolves, or led to poisonous instead of wholesome pastures. A long acquaintance and a friendly discussion with intelligent and candid non-Catholics running through a period of more than the third of a century, has impressed us with the conviction, that what they admire most in the Catholic controvertist is candor, directness, and an openness which leaves no suspicion that anything is left in the background or meant to be concealed. They admire a man who feels strong enough to accept the whole position, and who is bold enough to meet every issue and to decline no responsibility. The first things which strike a cultivated non-Catholic, when his attention is called to the Catholic Church, are its world-wide grandeur of extension, its superhuman and marvelous unity of faith and its tenacious consistency in so steadily adhering to principle amid weal and woe; and above all, its wonderful antiquity, indicated so strikingly in its long line of pontiffs reaching back, through the wreck of kingdoms and the vicissitudes of human affairs, to the time when Peter and Paul first came poor strangers and pilgrims to the eternal city, to set up the standard of the crucified in the magnificent metropolis and mistress of the world. The range of human history can present no parallel to

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

227

this line of Venerable pontiffs, through whose energetic exertions and untiring zeal apostles were ordained and successively sent out to convert the nations, and to knit them as fast as converted to the great Roman center of unity, so that in the course of a few centuries the world became Christian, even far beyond the boundaries of the Roman empire. Thus was accomplished the promise of Christ, the great divine shepherd of the flock, through the agency of his delegated chief shepherd: “And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also must I call, and there shall be One Sheepfold under the one Shepherd” (Jn. 10: 16). The chief agents, under Christ, of this marvelous transformation were manifestly the Roman pontiffs; and to them, whenever it is a question of the Church, all eyes are spontaneously directed. Now, in discussing with Protestants, we take this high standpoint, as our beginning, and from it we easily survey the whole field and point out all its bearings, with the official infallibility of the pontiffs established, and along with it the necessary adherence of the body to the head; we explain at once the secret of that wonderful unity and tenacity of faith which so puzzles the unbeliever in supernatural interposition and guidance. The fidelity of Christ in fulfilling his promise, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against his Church built upon Peter as a rock, and that his faith should not fail that he might safely and securely confirm his brethren, makes clear what else would be well nigh, if not wholly, inexplicable. True, without expressly maintaining the official infallibility of the Pope as an article of faith, we have hitherto been able to explain and defend triumphantly the infallibility of the Church, and to answer the objection as to the subject, or seat of infallibility. But we have done so more or less haltingly in the view of the more intelligent and shrewder class of non-Catholic inquirers. Our usual answer has been, that, even admitting the separate fallibility of the head and of the body apart from the head, the two conjoined constitute the seat of infallibility divinely guaranteed. This last proposition always has been and it still is the Catholic doctrine; but its explanation would probably be more satisfactory to the intelligent mind, if our process began with the head and thence proceeded to the body. It is much more simple and far more readily understood; and it obviates many objections which have

228

American Catholic Religious Thought

been already sufficiently alluded to. The promises of Christ were first made to Peter, and then to the apostles along with Peter: he was full sharer in all the promises made to the apostolic college, while he had divinely secured to him prerogatives bestowed on none of the rest, nor on the entire college apart from him; and what is true of Peter and the apostles, is also true of the Pope and the bishops. While professing their belief in the divine mission of the apostles and in the inspiration of the New Testament, evangelical Protestants admit the infallibility of Peter and of the other apostles, at least of such of them as were inspired writers. Why was this gift of infallibility conferred on them? Plainly, that the whole body of Christians who would be instructed by their writings might not be necessarily led into error. It was for the security and common good of Christendom that this extraordinary gift was divinely bestowed. The infallibility of the other apostles did not descend to their successors, the individual bishops; because these were to have charge of only particular and local churches, and their error would thus not affect or mislead the whole body, and it might moreover be readily remedied by the ordinary powers left by Christ with his divinely constituted Church. The case was widely different with Peter and his successors, whose jurisdiction was to remain world-wide, and whose error—if official error there could be—would necessarily taint and ruin the entire body of the Church. For, from the very beginning of the Church, from and before the days of Irenaeus, in the second century, it was a generally received axiom and rule of conduct, that “all other churches—that is, the faithful who are everywhere, MUST OF NECESSITY AGREE with the Roman Church.”8 It may indeed happen, that ignorant and prejudiced men will sneer at and calumniate this doctrine, as making an idol of a man; but with the clear and, we trust, satisfactory explanations of the true meaning of the doctrine, as already furnished, we may well afford to disregard 8

Ad quam (R. Ecclesiam) necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, id est omnes qui sunt undique fideles. Contra Haer. L. iii. c. 3. Bossuet and De Marca, unsuspected witnesses, both translate convenire by s’accorder—agree with—which is its undoubted meaning. So if the Roman Church could teach error, all the other churches would necessarily be led astray from the faith.

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

229

all such misrepresentations, which can mislead only those who wish to be misled. The Catholic Church has been so long accustomed to be assailed by such weapons, that she looks upon them as harmless to herself, and injurious only to those who wield them. The great and essential question is this: is the Church a divine or is it merely a human institution? If the former, no candid man with ordinary intelligence can be shocked or startled at its claiming official infallibility for its divinely constituted head, foundation rock, and chief shepherd, in virtue of the solemn promises of Christ, who is God, and whose word cannot pass away unfulfilled. If the latter, then there can be plainly no question of infallibility whatsoever; and accordingly we are not at all surprised that the human sects lay no claim to this prerogative in theory, whatever they may do in practice. But even in all well-regulated human societies, whether religious or civil, there always exists, besides a chief executive, a supreme judge or court, to which all cases in controversy are or may be ultimately referred, and whose decision is final and irreformable—that is, in so far infallible, that no remedy can be found in case of error. This is the case with our own free government; the judgments of the Supreme Court can be reversed by no other tribunal. It is not, indeed, intrinsically infallible, because nothing that is merely human is or can be infallible, and because in human things, which so soon pass away, infallibility is not essential. It is not so in divine things, upon which eternity depends, and in which error may be fatal for eternity; and accordingly we find, that our Blessed Lord, in his infinite goodness and wisdom, was pleased to guarantee from error his appointed supreme judge, that his decisions might be safely looked up to, in all ages, by his people, as not only final but infallible; as, in fact, his own judgments pronounced in his name by his own vicar and minister plenipotentiary on earth. Thus he redeems his solemn promise made to Peter: “To thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, it shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt lose on earth, it shall be loosed in heaven” (Mt. 16:18). Was ever promise more ample; was ever promise kept more faithfully? Let the solemn verdict of eighteen centuries answer. To illustrate the Gallican principle, as compared with that of the Catholic Church, let us for a moment apply the former to the judg-

230

American Catholic Religious Thought

ments of our Supreme Court. Suppose it were a principle of law with us, that the judgments of the Supreme Court were not final until after the consent and concurrence of all or the most of the inferior courts would have been previously asked and obtained! The legal mind would shudder at the bare thought; and even common-sense would be revolted, and would regard the new principle as disorganizing and necessarily leading to anarchy. The inferior courts are all well enough within their own sphere and attributions; but to give them the power to revise and nullify the decisions of the Supreme Court would lead to the ruin of all well regulated jurisprudence, and consequently of all social order and security. And this shows how groundless is the allegation, that declaring the judgments of the supreme court in the Catholic Church, or of the sovereign pontiff, final and infallible, carries with it the abrogation of the judicial power of the bishops, who are also judges of the faith. They are judges, indeed, but inferior and subordinate judges in their own respective dioceses; and this right is not only not impaired, but it is rather strengthened by proclaiming the judgments of the supreme court of the Church final and irreformable. Each court is thus left in its own appropriate sphere, and there is and can be no dashing whatsoever between their respective powers, the inferior judges freely admitting that their decisions may be revised and reversed by him whom they recognize as the supreme judge by divine appointment. When assembled in council with the supreme judge, they are associate judges, who must pronounce judgment in unison with their chief; as always has been the case, and as from the very nature and divine Constitution of the Church, must always and necessarily be the case. The head and the members have always been united; and so long as the promises of Christ will endure, they always will and must be united. The history of all general councils clearly establishes this; and of none is it more conspicuously true than of the present glorious Council of the Vatican. Fidelity to the Pope by the bishops secures to the latter the fidelity and obedience of both priests and people under their jurisdiction; while the rejection of the papal authority has invariably ended in the bishops becoming the slaves of the civil power, or the subservient instruments of the flocks over whom they are placed; all history proclaims this truth.

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

231

We pass now, venerable and beloved brethren, to the illustration of the third proposition which we undertook to establish; and we must necessarily be brief, not to overstep the legitimate limits of a pastoral letter. III. The definition should afford no reasonable cause of complaint to civil governments, even to those which are free, or professed to be based on what is called LIBERALISM. We have already, we trust, sufficiently shown that the definition will make no practical change whatever either in the modus operandi, or in the extent of the field to which the papal prerogative will still be confined, namely, to that of faith and morals. We cannot see how civil governments can take any reasonable umbrage at the solemn declaration of what has thus always been so generally believed, and so universally acted on in the Church, without any detriment to their real interests. No intention whatsoever is entertained, or even so much as thought of, to interfere with existing civil governments. On the contrary, the Church and the Popes will always inculcate on her children, as in times past, the sacred duty of obedience to the existing powers, whether monarchical, liberal, or republican, in all things connected with the well-being of society, and the legitimate objects of civil government; and the Church and the Popes, as heretofore, will always continue to protest, in the name of God and of the right, against all encroachments of the civil power on the spiritual domain, and on the legitimate and time honored rights of the Church. In all this, no change whatever need be apprehended; and all attempts to get up undue excitement as to imaginary projects of the Church and the papacy against the rights or stability of existing civil governments, should be discarded at once, as not only signally mischievous, but as wholly groundless and purely malicious. . . . The time has long passed—for three centuries—when pontiffs, acting in accordance with the generally received and clearly established jurisprudence of the ages of faith, hurled the thunderbolts of excommunication, with annexed sentence of deposition, at the heads of tyrannical sovereigns, who crushed their people, and sacrilegiously

232

American Catholic Religious Thought

invaded the rights of the Church. We have changed all that, and we have discovered an easier, though perhaps not a safer or wiser way, for getting rid of tyrants, and even of good though unpopular sovereigns. Bloody revolutions and blind mobs have but too often been substituted for what even the enemies of the Church must regard as the comparatively mild and wise adjudication of the supreme pontiffs, to whose sentence all once looked for a redress of grievances else unbearable. Bloodshed, rapine, confiscation have but too often taken the place of the sublime pontifical arbitratorship between kings and peoples adopted by our fathers in the Middle Ages, when all were of one faith, and the tower of Babel with its confusion of tongues had not yet cursed the world with its dinning discord of creeds, and before infidelity became rife in the midst of Christian nations hitherto governed in accordance with the sound principles of Christianity. Whether the change has been for the real good of mankind, or for the true and sound progress of humanity, we leave to others to pronounce. . . . Governments, like garments, must fit, or suit the people for whom they are formed. Some may need a monarchy; some may prefer a republic. The Church leaves all this to regulate itself, according to the choice of the people, or the circumstances of time and place, confining herself to teaching both sovereigns and peoples their respective duties, as laid down by the law of Christ. She teaches boldly and fearlessly, though she may sometimes be able only to cry out in the wilderness to those who will not heed her voice. . . . Beloved Brethren, there is liberty and liberty; there is perhaps likewise liberalism and liberalism. There is the true, and there is the counterfeit coin. There are three kinds of liberty, on each of which allow us briefly to unfold our thought. 1. There is the highest grade of liberty established by Christ himself, “the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21). This is the liberty which Christ promised as the result of divine truth; “and you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”(Jn. 8:32); and again, “if therefore the Son shall make you free, you shall be free indeed” (Jn. 8:36). It is the blessed state to which only Christianity can bring us; in which, ceasing to be the slaves of sin, we breathe the pure and free air of God’s children, and our hearts swell with the feel-

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

233

ing of exultation at having our bonds broken, the snares of the devil destroyed, and ourselves free with the freedom with which God has freed us; for “where the spirit of God is, there is liberty”(Jn. 8:34), and “whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin”(2 Cor. 3:17); nor can such a slave chant the paeans of victory, without, at the same time, shaking his heavy chains. This is the liberty which the Catholic Church has always inculcated, and it is this teaching precisely which has rendered possible any other kind of liberty. We thus owe all modern civil liberty to the humanizing influence in the Christian masses of this precious leaven of Gospel liberty diffused among them by the Popes and the Church. Without this, true, real, solid civil liberty were an utter impossibility. 2. The second kind of liberty, and the highest possible type of it in civil governments, is that in which, whatever be the form of government, the rights of all citizens are respected and protected alike; in which, if it be a republic, the majority rules while respecting the rights of the minority; in which the taxes are equitably levied upon all citizens in proportion to their ability or means, and do not exceed what is necessary for carrying on the government; above all, in which the property and the just rights and laws of the Church are respected, and left inviolate, and in which all citizens, ecclesiastics included, are equally protected by the law, not only as written, but as executed: in which, in a word, without discrimination, especially as between the rich and the poor, all are equally protected in their legitimate rights, all are equal before the law, and all are equally governed and are equally benefitted by the law. This theory of liberty was, in substance, laid down by the Catholic schoolmen of the Middle Ages, but it has seldom, if ever, been fully realized in this imperfect world. 3. Has this species of liberty, or has any kind of liberty worthy the name, been guaranteed to the people by these European governments which profess to be governed by free institutions under the name of Liberalism! Alas! Beloved brethren, that we cannot answer in the affirmative in regard to all or even the most of them. Inaugurated by revolution, the first step of these liberal governments has usually been, to seize upon and confiscate the property of the Church, to trample upon her dearest rights and liberties, to expel her ministers, such of them at least as they might choose to regard as obnoxious, to suppress her

234

American Catholic Religious Thought

monasteries and convents, to turn her poor, helpless, religious women into the streets, and to desecrate her holiest sanctuaries.9 Even when the storm had passed, and they had settled down into something of a normal state, it usually happened that the exchequer was empty, and that the population was ground down with excessive taxes. In most of them, what is called liberty thus becomes not only an expensive luxury, but an instrument for the still greater oppression of the masses of the people. As vast standing armies are necessary to sustain the new order of things, a most oppressive conscription, pervading all classes of the people, takes the place of the hitherto comparatively mild method adopted for recruiting the ranks of the army; and their taxes are fearfully increased, and the people are deprived of their substance and of their personal liberty. Among those who are the loudest champions of liberty, practice is not always in accordance with professions; and it is but fair to judge the latter by the former. Look at Italy, look at Spain, for the most recent and striking examples of what we here state. It was necessary to state these things, beloved brethren, that you might be enabled to understand how it is, that the pontiffs have so often protested against the excesses committed by these so-called European Liberals, in the hallowed name of liberty, which they, in too many cases, employ as a cloak for malice. The Popes have never uttered one word of censure against true liberty such as we have endeavored to depict it; on the contrary, they have done everything in their power to foster its growth. It is against the false principles which have been engrafted on the tree of liberty, not against the tree itself, that they have raised their voice of warning. It is but fair to judge their words and their acts by this standard of sadly existing facts based as they were upon false and dangerous principles subversive of all religion and of all justice. And now, venerable and beloved brethren, we have completed our task, imperfectly indeed but earnestly, and we must come to a conclusion, wishing you all blessings, both temporal and spiritual, and

9

We ourselves have seen beautiful churches in Italy, with marble altars and noble paintings and statuary of the first masters, turned into military magazines and barracks; and all this in the name of liberty!

4 ~ Martin John Spalding

235

asking your fervent prayers in our behalf, we remain in life and unto death your devoted Father in Christ, Martin John Spalding, Archbishop of Baltimore. Given at Rome, outside the Flaminian Gate, on the Feast of St. Vincent de Paul, 19th July, 1870.

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES D’ Aubigne’s History of the Great Reformation in Germany and Switzerland Reviewed (Baltimore: J. Murphy, 1844). Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky (Louisville: B. J. Webb and Brother, 1844). General Evidences of Catholicity (Louisville: Webb, 1847). Sketches of the Life, Times and Character of the Rt. Rev. Benedict Joseph Flaget (Louisville: Webb and Levering, 1852). An Address to the Impartial Public on the Intolerant Spirit of the Times (Louisville: Webb and Levering, 1854). Miscellanea: Comprising Reviews, Lectures, and Essays, on History, Theology, and Miscellaneous Subjects (Louisville: Webb and Levering, 1855). The History of the Protestant Reformation (2 vols.; Louisville: Webb and Levering, 1860). SECONDARY SOURCES James J. Hennesey, The First Council of the Vatican: The American Experience (New York: Herder and Herder, 1963). Patrick K. Hennessy, “The Theological Influence of the Declaration of Papal Infallibility on the Church in the United States.” Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University, 1977. ———, “The Infallibility of the Papal Magisterium as Presented in the Pastoral Letters of the Bishops of the United States after Vatican I,” Horizons 23 (Spring 1996): 7-28. Michael Kappes, “Bishop Augustin Verot: ‘L’Enfant Terrible’ of Vatican I,” American Catholic Studies 111 (Spring-Winter 2000): 61-76.

236

American Catholic Religious Thought

Adam A. Micek, The Apologetics of Martin John Spalding (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1951). Sandra Yocum Mize, “The Common-Sense Argument for Papal Infallibility,” Theological Studies 57 (June 1996): 242-63. ———, “The Papacy in Mid-Nineteenth Century American Catholic Imagination.” Ph. D. dissertation, Marquette, 1987. William Portier, Isaac Hecker and the First Vatican Council (Lewiston, New York: Mellon Press, 1985). David Schimpf, “Martin John Spalding’s ‘Apocalyptical Use of History in the Social Setting of the Mid-Nineteenth Century American Catholic Community,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 96 (MarchDecember 1986): 19-34. Barbara Schlaud, “Peter Richard Kenrick and Martin John Spalding: A Study of Their Positions on Papal Infallibility.” Master’s Thesis, University of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, 1979. David Spalding, “Martin John Spalding, Legislator,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 75 (September 1964), 131-60. John Lancaster Spalding, The Life of the Most Rev. M. J. Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore (New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1873). Thomas W. Spalding, Martin John Spalding: American Churchman (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1973).

Part IV AMERICANISM, 1880-1900

5 ~ John Ireland JOHN IRELAND: AMERICANIST John Ireland (1838-1918), first Archbishop of St. Paul, became known in the American hierarchy as the “consecrated blizzard of the Northwest.” His zealous advocacy of American values and his attempts to bring the Catholic Church into conformity with those values made him the chief American Catholic spokesman for the optimism of the “Gilded Age.” Like other Americans caught in the sweep of manifest destiny, Ireland believed that America had a special mission in the world. He also believed that the American Catholic Church had come of age and should be a significant influence upon the development of international Catholicism. In Europe as well as in the United States, Ireland tried to establish harmony between the values of Catholicism and those of the late nineteenth century. His enemies saw him as the potential head of a schismatic church, one that was democratic in structure and reductionist in theology. Because of his attempts to accommodate the church to American values, he was accused of “Americanism “ on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1899, Pope Leo XIII, in an encyclical, Testem benevolentiae, condemned the so-called heresy of “Americanism”—a heresy that many of Ireland’s opponents believed he held. Ireland himself, however, denied that any of the positions he had ever articulated were condemned by the encyclical. Ireland was born in Burnchurch, Ireland to Richard and Judith Naughton Ireland during the years of the Irish famine. At the age of twelve, he emigrated to the United States with his family and joined the westward migration to Chicago and then to St. Paul in 1852. In 1853, he went to the College of Meximieux in the Diocese of Belley, France, for a classical education. In 1857, he entered the seminary at Montbel in France, graduating in 1861. That same year he returned to St. Paul to join the Union Army as a Catholic chaplain. From 1862 to 1875, he ministered in St. Paul as curate and then rector of the

240

American Catholic Religious Thought

Cathedral of St. Paul. In 1875, he was consecrated coadjutor bishop of the diocese, becoming Archbishop of St. Paul in 1888. The following selection manifests a number of Ireland’s Americanist concerns. The address was given on October 18, 1893 in Baltimore on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the episcopal consecration of James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore. Ireland took this opportunity to raise the banner of harmony between the values of the age and those of Catholicism. He encouraged the hierarchy and clergy to be independent leaders in reforming the church and making a Catholic contribution to American society. He tried to demonstrate that such leadership was already present in Gibbons and Pope Leo XIII. He also seems to be responding to the American Nativists’ charges that Catholicism is foreign to Americanism. Here he sees the world as a place of opportunity and progress and positively evaluates the aspirations of the age. The church, too slow to understand the new age, needs to conciliate in order to Christianize the ages’ aspirations. God works both in the age and in the church; both need, therefore, to be harmonized and to correct and change each other’s “accidental” accumulations.

****** TEXT THE CHURCH AND THE AGE (OCTOBER 18, 1893) Source: John Ireland, The Church and Modern Society (New York: D. H. McBride & Co., 1903), 165-31.

. . . . This evening, it is my privilege to honor a man among men. The record of the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore! I speak it with pride and exultation. It is the record I should have traced for the ideal bishop and leader of men in these solemn times through which the Church is passing. CHURCH AND ERA

The times are solemn. In no other epoch of history, since the beginning of the Christian era, did changes so profound and so far-reaching take

5 ~ John Ireland

241

place. Discoveries and inventions have opened to us a new material world. Social and political conditions have been transformed. Intellectual curiosity peers with keenest eye into the recesses of sky and earth. Intellectual ambition, maddened by wondrous successes in many fields, puts on daring pinions and challenges all limitations of knowledge. The human heart is emboldened to the strangest dreams, and frets itself into desperate efforts before all barriers to the fulfillment of its desires. Let all things be new, is the watchword of humanity today, and to make all things new is humanity’s strong resolve. To this end are pledged its most fierce activities, which, wherever in the realm of man they are put forth, are exemplified in the stream and electricity of the new material creation. In the midst of times so solemn the Catholic Church moves and works, purposing, under the terms of her charter, to conquer to Christ minds and hearts, individuals and society. Her mission to the world is the same as it has been during nineteen hundred years; but the world has changed and is changing. With the new order have come new needs, new hopes, new aspirations. To conquer the new world to Christ, the Church must herself be new, adapting herself in manner of life and in method of action to the conditions of the new order, thus proving herself, while ever ancient, to be ever new, as truth from heaven is and ever must be. Now is the opportunity for great and singular men among the sons of God’s Church. Today, routine is fatal; today the common is exhausted senility. The crisis demands the new, the extraordinary, and with it the Catholic Church will score the grandest of her victories in the grandest of history’s ages. The Church and the age are at war. I voice the fact with sorrow. Both Church and age are at fault. I explain my words. When I speak of Church and age in conflict one with the other, I take the age as portrayed by many representatives of the age, and I take the Church as portrayed by many representatives of the Church. Church and age, rightly understood, are not at war. I blame the age. Elated with its material and intellectual successes, it is proud and it exaggerates its powers. It imagines that the natural, which has served it so well, is all sufficient; it tends to the exclusion of the supernatural; it puts on the cloak of secularism. In its worship

242

American Catholic Religious Thought

of the new, it regards whatever is old with suspicion. It asks why its church may not be new, as well as its chemistry, or its biology. A church bearing on her front the marks of nineteen centuries is, in its eyes, out of date and out of place. Pride and thoughtlessness are the evil and misleading characteristics of the age. I blame the Church. I speak as a Catholic. I know the divine elements in the Church. I have full faith that those elements are at all times guarded by the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit. But I know, also, the human elements in the Church, and I know that upon those human elements much of the Church’s weal depends. The Church has had her more brilliant epochs of light and glory, according as pastors and people scanned the world with clearer vision and unsheathed the spiritual sword with greater alacrity The dependency of the Church upon her human elements is too easily forgotten, although the Church herself authoritatively teaches that undue reliance upon divine grace is a sin of presumption. I am not afraid to say that, during the century whose sun is now setting, many leaders of thought in the Church have made the mistake of being too slow to understand the new age and too slow to extend to it the conciliatory hand of friendship. They were not without their reasons. The Church, in her divine elements, is unchangeable, supremely conservative; her dread of change, so righteous in a degree, is easily carried beyond its legitimate frontier, and made to cover ground where change is proper. The movements of the age were frequently ushered into existence under most repellent and inauspicious forms. The revolution of 1789, whose waters, rushing and destructive as the maddest mountain torrent, were crested with the crimson of blood, was the loud signal of the new era. The standard-bearers of the age often raised aloft the insignia of impiety and of social anarchy. Certain Catholics, indeed, as Lamennais, sought to establish an alliance between the church and the age; but they were imprudent in speech, and, in their impatience, they invoked failure upon themselves and discouragement upon their allies.1 But with all these excuses, church1

In 1830 Lamennais and his associates, chief among whom were Montalembert and Lacordaire, established the famous journal L’Avenir. It had for its device, “Dieu et Liberté,” and for its mission, the alliance of the Church with democracy. Of L’Avenir, Le Père Chocarne writes in his “Life

5 ~ John Ireland

243

men thought and acted too slowly. They failed to grasp the age, to Christianize its aspirations, and to guide its forward march. The age passed beyond them. There were a few Lacordaires, who recognized and proclaimed the duties of the hour: but timid companions abandoned them: reactionaries accused them of dangerous liberalism, of of Lacordaire”: “The smallest care of ardent and absolute spirits is to reckon with opportuneness, patience, and time; their mistake is to forget that the logic of facts is not so hurried as the logic of ideas; that if the grain of wheat entrusted to the earth does not attain to maturity until long months have passed, the growth of an idea in the cold and slow soil of the public mind demands yet longer time; that it is much, in the lifetime of men, to have thrown into the world a fecund thought, leaving to a subsequent generation to see it germinate and blossom. This was the mistake of the men of L’Avenir.” Those remarks do not, of course, apply to Lamennais’ writings after his secession. Lamennais seceded from the Church. For Lamennais’ secession from the Church, and the writings which he published after his secession, no excuse can be offered. But this much may, perhaps, be said, that if he had been left to deal with Rome alone, even after the encyclical Mirari Vos had appeared, the strong probabilities are that he would have remained a dutiful son of the Church. Vide Spuller: “Vie de Lamennais,” Brownson: Works, 20:265; Mrs. Oliphant: “Memoir of Count de Montalembert,” chap. vi. [Félicité Robert de Lamennais (1782-1845), a French priest, was a well known religious and political author who tried to reconcile the Catholic Church in France with the democratic age. Some of his ideas were condemned in two papal encyclicals, Mirari Vos (1832) and Singulari Nos (1834). After these condemnations, he left the Catholic Church and continued to write on political topics. Charles René Forbes Montalembert (1810-70), a lay French Catholic historian and politician, was, like Lamennais an ardent liberal Catholic who desired to see the Church freed from the control of the state. Unlike Lamennais, he remained in the Catholic Church after Mirari Vos and continued to advocate liberal views on the relationship of the church and the state in France. Henri Dominique Lacordaire (1802-61) was a famous French Dominican preacher who was a follower of Lamennais until the papal condemnations. Even after disassociating himself from Lamennais, however, he continued to foster the liberal movement in politics.]

244

American Catholic Religious Thought

semi-heresy; and they were forced to be silent.2 The many saw but the vices of the age, which they readily anathematized; its good and noble tendencies they either ignored or denied. For them the age was the dark world against which Christ had warned his followers. The task of winning it to the gospel was a forlorn hope. It was a task to be accomplished only through some stupendous miracle from heaven, and, until the miracle would come, the ministers of Christ must withdraw into winter quarters, sacristies, and sanctuaries, where, surrounded by a small band of chosen souls, they might guard themselves and their friends from the all-pervading contagion. The age, abandoned to itself and to false and mischievous guides, irritated by the isolation and the unfriendliness of the Church, became hardened in its secularism, and taught itself to despise and hate religion. This deplorable condition was prevalent in some countries more than in others; but from none was it wholly absent. The Church had seemingly furled her flag of battle, her flag of victory.3 MISSION OF CHURCH TO AGE

It was a mistake and a misfortune. “Go, teach all nations,” Christ had said once for all time. In obedience to this command the first apostles hastened through the Roman Empire, preaching to the sages of Athens on the Hill of Mars, to the patricians and senators of Rome in the courts of emperors, to the slaves in their huts, and the Roman Empire was Christianized. Even if our age had been radically evil and 2

3

Lacordaire lived to see the dawn of his triumph. In his latter days he was able to write to one of his friends: “In the time of L’Avenir we were rash men, blasphemers, heretics. Forty bishops reported to the Holy See seventytwo propositions taken from our writings. Today, what a change!” Had he lived thirty years longer, and been able to read Leo’s encyclical to the French Catholics, and the encyclical “On the Condition of Labor,” what a reward was his for devotion to liberty and to democracy! “I die,” he said in his last moments, “a penitent Catholic and an impenitent liberal.” Feared and frowned upon by the authorities of the State, ignored and suspected by those of the Church in France, abandoned by his own brethren, he never changed, never despaired. Lacordaire lived for the future, and the future in which he put his trust has justified him. Vide “La Papauté, le Socialisme et la Democratie,” par Anatole Leroy Beaulieu, chaps i. and xvi.

5 ~ John Ireland

245

erring, the methods and the zeal of the early apostles would have won it to the Savior. But, in veriest fact, the present age, pagan as it may be in its language and in its extravagances, is, in its depths, instinct with Christian emotions; it worships unwittingly at Christian shrines, and only awaits the warm contact of Christ’s Church to avow itself Christian. I indicate the opportunity for the great and singular churchman. His work is to bridge the chasm separating the Church from the age, to dispel the mists of prejudice which prevent the one from seeing the other as it is, to bring the Church to the age, and the age to the Church. Men must be taught that the Church and the age are not hopelessly separated. The age has, assuredly, its sins and its errors, and these the Church never will condone. But sins and errors are the accidentals, not the essentials, of the age. For my part, I see in the present age one of the mighty upheavals which, from time to time, occur in humanity, producing and signalizing the ascending stages in its continuous progress. Humanity, strengthened by centuries of toil and of reflection, nourished and permeated by principles of Christian truth, is now lifting its whole mass upward to higher regions of light and liberty, and demanding full and universal enjoyment of its God-given rights. All this is praiseworthy; all this is noble and beautiful. This is what we are asked to accept when we are asked to accept the age. When we accept the age, we reserve to ourselves the right to rebuke it for its defects; in accepting it we put ourselves in a position to correct it. The Church, too, has her accidentals and her essentials. We should distinguish accidentals from essentials; we should be ready, while jealously guarding the essentials, to abandon the accidentals, as circumstances of time and place demand. What the Church at any time was, certain people hold she must ever remain. They do her much harm, making her rigid and unbending, incapable of adapting herself to new and changing surroundings. The Church, created by Christ for all time, lives in every age and is of every age. We find, consequently, in her outward features the variable and the contingent. The Church, at one time imperialistic in her political alliances, was, at another, feudalistic; but she never committed herself in principle to imperialism

246

American Catholic Religious Thought

or to feudalism. She spoke Greek in Athens and Latin in Rome, and her sons wore the chlamys or the toga; but she was never confined to Greece or to Italy. In later days she lisped the nascent languages of Goth and Frank, and, in her steppings through their lands, showed not a little of their uncultured bearing and of their unformed civilization; but she was never limited in life and conditions to the life and conditions of Goth or Frank. Her scientific knowledge was scant as that of the epoch; her social legislation and customs, as rude and tentative. She was merely partaking, in her human elements, of the life of her epoch, her divine elements always remaining the self-same. Two or three centuries ago she was courtly and aristocratic under the temporal sway of the Fifth Charles of Spain, or of the Fourteenth Louis of France; but this again was a passing phase in her existence, and at other times she may be as democratic in her demeanor as the most earnest democracy would desire. Her canon law, which is the expression of her adaptability to environment, received the impress, now of Charlemagne, now of Hapsburgh or Bourbon edicts; but never was she herself mummified in Justinian or Bourbon molds, and her canon law may be as American as it was Roman, as much the reflection of the twentieth century as it was of the Middle Ages. Were not all this true, the Church would not be Catholic, as her founder was Catholic, the teacher and Savior of all ages and of all nations. Let us be as broad and as Catholic in our conception of the Church as Christ was, and we shall have no difficulty in recognizing her fitness to all lands and to all ages—past as well as present and present and future as well as past. What! the Church of the living God, the Church of ten thousand victories over pagans and barbarians, over heresies and false philosophies, over defiant kings and unruly peoples—the great, freedom loving, truth-giving, civilizing Catholic Church—this Church of the nineteenth century afraid of any century! not seeing in the ambitions of the nineteenth century the fervent ebullitions of her own noble sentiments, and in its achievements for the elevation of mankind the germinations of her own Christlike plantings! this Church not eager for the fray, not precipitating herself with love irresistible upon this modern world to claim it, to bless it, to own it for Christ, to foster and encourage its hopes or to rectify and remedy its defects, and with

5 ~ John Ireland

247

her impetuous arm to lift it to the very summit of its highest aspirations—to which by the Church’s aid alone this doubting, quivering, hoping, despairing world can ever attain! Far, far, from Catholics be the chilling, un-Catholic thought! I preach the new, the most glorious crusade. Church and age! Unite them in the name of humanity, in the name of God. Church and age! They pulsate alike: the God of nature works in one, the God of supernatural revelation works in the other—in both the self-same God. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AGE

Let us note the chief characteristics of the age. The age is ambitious of knowledge. Its searchings know no rest and submit to no limitations. Be it so. The Catholic Church proclaims that all truth, natural as well as supernatural, is from God, and that the mind grows more Godlike as it absorbs truth in more generous proportions. Two sources of knowledge there are, according to Catholic teaching, both from God the reason of man and the voice of God in revelation. Between reason and revelation there never can be a contradiction; the so-called war between faith and science is a war between the misrepresentations of science and the misrepresentations of faith, or, rather, between the ignorance of some scientists and the ignorance of some theologians. The Church has no fear of natural truth; yea, from it strongest proofs come to her of the truth of supernatural revelation. The discoveries of the age, whether in minute animalcules or in vast fiery orbs, demonstrate God. Through all the laws of the universe they show forth an absolute cause, all-wise, all-powerful, eternal. The fruits of all historical research, of all social and moral inquiry, give us Christ rising from the dead and raising the world from the dead. They gave us Christ’s Church as the enduring embodiment of Christ’s mission. The knowledge of the age! The age has not a sufficiency of knowledge; and the need of the hour, the duty of the Church, is to stimulate the age to deeper researches, to more extensive surveyings, until it has left untouched no particle of matter that may conceal a secret, no incident of history, no act in the life of humanity, that may solve a problem. The knowledge of the age! The Church blesses it; the Church promotes its onward growth with all her might, with all her light.

248

American Catholic Religious Thought

It is an age of liberty, civil and political; it is the age of democracy—the people, tired of the unrestricted sway of sovereigns, have themselves become sovereigns, and exercise with more or less directness the power which was primarily theirs by divine ordinance. The age of democracy! The Catholic Church, I am sure, has no fear of democracy, this flowering of her own most sacred principles of the equality, fraternity, and liberty of all men, in Christ and through Christ. These principles are found upon every page of the gospel. From the moment they were first confided to the Church they have been ceaselessly leavening minds and hearts towards the full recognition of the rights and the dignity of man, towards the elevation of the multitude, and the enjoyment of freedom from unnecessary restrictions, and of social happiness mingled with as few sorrows as earth’s planet permits. The whole history of the Catholic Church is the record of the enfranchisement of the slave, the curbing of the tyranny of kings, the defense of the poor, of woman, of the people, of all the social entities that pride and passion choose to trample upon. The great theologians of the Church lay the foundations of political democracy which today attains its perfect form. They prove that all political power comes from God through the people, that kings and princes are the people’s delegates, and that when rulers become tyrants the inalienable right of revolution belongs to the people. The Church is at home under all forms of government. The one condition of the legitimacy of a form of government, in the eyes of the Church, is that it be accepted by the people. The Church has never said that she prefers one form of government above another. But, so far as I may from my own thoughts interpret the principles of the Church, I say that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, is, more than any other, the polity under which the Catholic Church, the church of the people, breathes air most congenial to her mind and heart.4 It is an age of battlings for social justice to all men, 4

Some foreign writers reject for a priori reasons political democracy and discredit the possibility of harmonious relations between the Church and republican institutions. Catholic theologians of high standing in the schools of the Church have amply vindicated what the writers referred to style “the pretended dogma of popular sovereignty.” The hostility to the Church which the same writers seem to expect from a republic is perhaps founded upon politico-religious complications which unfortunately exist in certain republics, but which are in no way to be ascribed to the nature

5 ~ John Ireland

249

for the right of all men to live in the frugal comfort becoming rational creatures.5 Very well! Is it not Catholic doctrine that birth into the world is man’s title to a sufficiency of the things of the world? Is not the plea for social justice and social well-being the loud outburst of the cry which has ever been going up from the bosom of the Church since the words were spoken by her founder: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice and a these things shall be added unto you”? (Mt. 6:33) It is not sufficiently understood that the principles which underlie the social movement of the times in its legitimate demands are constantly taught in schools of Catholic theology; as, for instance, the principle which, to the surprise of his fellow-countrymen, Cardinal Manning6 proclaimed: that in case of extreme necessity, one may use, as far as it is needed to save life, the property of others. We have, of late, been so accustomed to lock up our teachings in seminary and sanctuary that when they appear in active evolution in the broad arena of life they are not recognized by Catholics; nay, are even feared and disowned by them. It is an age of material progress, of inventions, of the subjugation of nature’s forces to the service of man, of the building up of man’s empire over all irrational creation. Will the Church condemn the age for this? It is her teaching that the earth was given to man that

5

6

of a republican form of government. America is the most democratic of democracies, and in no country in the world is the Church more unhampered in her action. The letter [Au milieu des sollicitudes, 17 February 1892] of His Holiness, Leo XIII, on the duty of the Catholics of France towards the French Republic should reassure all who apprehend danger to religion from republican institutions. [Ireland is here referring to Rerum Novarum (“The Condition of Labor,” 1891), #45. See Claudia Carlen, ed., The Papal Encyclicals, 1878-1903 (Wilmington, N.C.: McGrath, 1981), 253, where Pope Leo XIII says that just wages must be determined by “a dictate of natural justice more imperious and ancient than any bargain between man and man, namely, that wages ought not to be insufficient to support a frugal and well-behaved wage-earner.”] [Henry Edward Manning (1808-92), Archbishop of Westminster from 1865 to 1892, was a convert to Catholicism from Anglicanism. He was an ardent supporter of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council and after the council became a vocal advocate of social justice in England.]

250

American Catholic Religious Thought

he dominate over it. Progress along lines of all human activity is the divine ordering. That the stagnation of human energies provokes God’s anger, is the lesson of the parable of the talents. CATHOLIC RELATIONS TO THE AGE

I have described the intellectual attitude which it befits us to assume towards the age. What should our practical relations with it be? Let them be all that the warmest apostolic zeal and the best human prudence counsel. We desire to win the age. Let us not, then, stand isolated from it. Our place is in the world as well as in the sanctuary; in the world, wherever we can prove our love for it or render it a service. We cannot influence men at long range; close contact is needed. Let us be with them in the things that are theirs—material interests, social welfare, civil weal—so that they may be with us in the things that are ours—the interests of religion. Let us be with them because their interests are ours, and ours are theirs, because nature and grace must not be separated. The age loves knowledge: let us be patrons of knowledge. Let us be the most erudite historians, the most experienced scientists, the most acute philosophers; and history, science, and philosophy will not be divorced from religion. The age demands liberty with good government: let us be models of patriotism, of civil virtue, of loyalty to the country’s institutions; and no suspicion will ever rest on us that we are the advocates of buried regimes, the enemies of liberty, civil or political. The age pleads for social justice and the amelioration of the masses: in social movements let us be most active, most useful; and men will recognize the truth that religion, having the promises of the life to come, has those, too, of the life that is, and seeing in the Church the friend and the protectress of their terrestrial interests, they will put faith in her pledges of supernatural rewards. The age exults in its material progress, its inventions, and discoveries; let us exult with it and recognize its claims to stupendous achievements; let us, books of history in hand, show to the age that the earliest leaders in modern material progress were sons of the Church; let us embrace every opportunity to work for further victories of mind over matter; and no man will dare speak to the Church a word of reproach in the name of progress.

5 ~ John Ireland

251

And in all that we undertake or do, let us labor earnestly and energetically. The world succeeds in its enterprises through tireless perseverance and Titanic labors. It is in such wise that we shall succeed in our task. The half-hearted manner in which we evangelize the age deserves and entails failure. Steam and electricity in religion cooperating with divine grace will triumph; old-fashioned, easy-going methods mean defeat. We have not heretofore won the age; let us not put all the blame upon the age. But I am afraid, one will say, of the opposition that I shall encounter if I speak as you speak this evening, if I act as you advise me to act. Do not, I pray, lose time in thinking of opposition that may come to you. If you dread opposition, you are not “of the seed of those men by whom salvation is brought to Israel” [1 Mc 5:62]. Opposition is sure to come. In every historic transition there are reactionaries, who would feign push back into Erie the waters of Niagara—men, to whom all change is perilous, all innovation damnable liberalism, or, even, rank heresy. Heed them not; pass onward with Christ and his Church. But the age, another says, is wedded to its idols; it is turned away from the Church and will not listen. The age will listen, if minds and hearts properly attuned speak to it. Men are always convertible to God;7 the age is convertible to him. I know as well as you the errors and the evils of the age, and you and I condemn them, even as God and his Church condemn them. I know that movements, holy and legitimate in themselves, are directed towards things false and pernicious, and that by many advocates of the age natural truth is made a protest against revealed religion; liberty becomes license and anarchy, and social justice means the violation of private right to property. Against this misdirection of the movements of the age, Catholics should labor with all their might. But to do so effectively, Catholics must first prove that they are heart and soul in sympathy with the movements themselves, and actively devoted to the advancement of all that is good and true in them. No one will say that during the nineteenth century Catholics have not, in loud speech and brave acts, made opposition to all the bad tendencies visible in the movements of the age. If, however, their opposition failed to arrest those tendencies, may not the cause be that they did not make clear their love for what 7

“Sanabiles fecit nationes orbis.” Wisdom 1:14.

252

American Catholic Religious Thought

is good in the age, while expressing their hatred of what is bad in it? The age believed that it was attacked in all its aims and activities; it regarded as its enemies those who spoke, and it refused to hearken to them. To hold the age to truth and justice, Catholics must be in it and of it; they must be fair to it, recognizing what is good no less than what is bad in it; they must love what is good in it, and work in aid of all its legitimate aspirations. PROVIDENTIAL MEN OF THE AGE

The Church and the age! Their union is assured. The nineteenth century has seen in its latter days men “by whom salvation is brought to Israel.” I name a few: Von Ketteler, of Mayence; Lavigerie, of Carthage; Manning, of Westminster; Gibbons, of Baltimore; Leo, of Rome.8 Two we especially revere. Leo, I hail thee, pontiff of thy age, providential chieftain of the Church in a great crisis of her history! How true it is that God has care of his Church! It seemed to be a supreme moment in her life among men. The abyss between her and the age was widening; governments warred against her; peoples distrusted her; the intellectual and social movements of humanity ignored her. Catholics, priests and laymen, terrified and disheartened, isolated themselves from the active world and made of their isolation a rule, almost a dogma. Humanly speaking, the horizon was dark with fateful forebodings. Leo comes to the helm; quickly he discerns the dangers from angry elements, from shoals and breakers, and, under his hand, the ship moves in new courses; she surmounts the highest billows, fearless of their fury; she reaches 8

[Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler (1811-77), Bishop of Mainz from 1850 to 1877, spent most of his episcopal life trying to free the German Catholic Church from state controls. He had a keen interest in social questions and was considered by many historians one of the primary influences upon the developments that led to Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum (1891). Charles Martel Allemand Lavigiere (1825-92), French Bishop of Nancy from 1863 to 1867, Archbishop of Algiers from 1867 to 1884 and Cardinal Primate of Carthage from 1884 to 1892, is best known for his attempts to reconcile French Catholics to the republican form of government, his advocacy of Pope Leo XIII’s policies in this regard, and his promotion of the anti-slavery movement in North Africa.]

5 ~ John Ireland

253

calm seas, where triumphantly she ploughs the waters—the peerless queen. Leo speaks to the age in its own language, and the age understands him. He tells the age what the mind of the Church is in regard to its hopes and aspirations, and the age wonders and admires. He acts, and demands that others act, for the furtherance of those hopes and aspirations under all their legitimate forms, and the age praises and loves the name of Leo. Leo charges the age to go forward in its discoveries and inventions. He writes: “Because all that is true must of necessity have come from God, whatever of truth human investigation brings out, is recognized by the Church as a reflection of the divine mind. The Church is not opposed to the discovery of new things; she is not opposed to the searching for things that will add to the elegance and the comfort of life: nay rather, the Church, as the enemy of apathy and idleness, ardently desires that the minds of men be exercised and cultivated and made to produce rich fruits.”9 He opens to the scholarship of the world the archives of the Vatican, establishes universities in Europe and America, raises the standard of studies in the schools of the Church, and thus strives to place the Church in the van of the world’s race for knowledge. By his encyclical on “The Condition of Labor,” he makes himself the pontiff of the working man; he gives to labor its charter, teaching labor not only its duties, of which it had heard so much, but, also its rights, of which it had heard so little. The poor, the oppressed, the masses of the people now know that the Church is with them, not merely as their counselor, but as their defender and their champion. Leo’s encyclical to the Catholics of France tenders to democracy the long-coveted approval of the Church.10 Empires and monarchies had claimed as exclusively their own the smiles of the Church: these smiles are now bestowed upon the republic, the highest embodiment of popular rights. God be praised that we have lived to know and to love Leo! In letters, in private conversation, Leo urges bishops, priests, and laymen to be ambassadors of the Church, to bear in her name to 9 10

[Encyclical: Immortale Dei, 1885.] [The reference here is to Leo XIII’s encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes.]

254

American Catholic Religious Thought

peoples and governments, not the sword of war, but the olive branch of amity and concord. His letters to Decurtins and De Mun are examples of his enlightened zeal. “I try to do everything, everywhere, for the Church,” said Leo to me, “and so would I have bishops do, wherever circumstances permit.” Nor does Leo restrict for Catholics the lines of action to confraternities and religious associations. In his letter to the Bishop of Grenoble, he counsels Catholics to work for truth and virtue wherever they are allowed to work and with men who, though not themselves Catholics, are led by their good sense and their natural instincts of righteousness to do what is right and to oppose what is evil.11 Leo has the courage of his high mission. Pope as he is, he has opponents within the Church; men whose sickly nerves suffer from the vibrations of the ship moving under his hand with accelerated velocity; reactionaries, who think that all the wisdom and all the providential guidance of the Church are with the past; obstinate advocates of selfinterest, who place their own views and their own likings above the welfare of the Church of Christ. But in spite of all opposition Leo works, and Leo reigns. The Roman pontificate is today invested before governments and peoples with prestige and moral power unknown to it for years; the Church is out upon the broad world, esteemed and listened to as she has not hitherto been in this century. Whole nations are saved! Leo is doing for France what France is unable to do; he is uniting her people, giving to her a durable government, and staying the hand of religious persecution. Say what some may, such are in France the results of the papal encyclicals in favor of the Republic. Leo shows forth in especial splendor the Church’s catholicity—her divinely-begotten fitness for all ages and all nations. He withdraws the Church from political and social entanglements, makes her inde11

Litterae ad Episcopum Gratianipolitanum, 1892. [Ed. Albert de Mun (1841-1914) was an orator and journalist who dedicated his life to the re-Christianization of France, helped to launch Catholic social reform movements, and pioneered as a parliamentarian to enact social legislation. Gaspar Decurtins (1855-1916) was a Swiss politician who like de Mun was interested and involved in the social and economic reform movements of his day. He tried to relate Christian doctrines to these problems, becoming a major exponent of the Swiss Catholic social movement.]

5 ~ John Ireland

255

pendent of the transient traditions of the past, and sets her before the world radiant in her native beauty and freedom, prepared to embrace and bless the new humanity of the twentieth century, as she embraced and blessed the humanity of preceding centuries, the Church of today as of yesterday, the Church of tomorrow as of today. True, much is yet to be done before the union of Church and age is complete; but the work has been begun and is progressing. May Leo live yet many years! May Leo’s spirit long dominate in the Vatican! All will then be well. Meanwhile, in America, let us be loyal to Leo, and work as earnestly as he does for the welfare of Church and of humanity, and in full accord with his teachings. We are especially favored by Leo. He lives among us in the person of his chosen friend and representative, one who makes the pontiff known to us as none other could, and who, in the acts and discourses by which he interprets Leo’s mind, proves daily to us that Leo is, indeed, the pontiff of the age. The Church and the age! Rome and America! Their intimate union is heralded in the command of Monsignor Satolli to the Catholics of America: “Go forward on the road of progress, bearing in one hand the book of Christian truth—Christ’s gospel—and in the other the Constitution of the United States.”12 Gibbons, of Baltimore: I cannot give to my words the warmth of my heart; I will give to them its sincerity. I have spoken of the providential Pope of Rome. I speak now of the providential Archbishop of Baltimore. Often have I thanked God that in this latter quarter of the nineteenth century Cardinal Gibbons has been given to us as primate, as leader. Catholic of Catholics, American of Americans, a bishop of his age and of his country, he is to America what Leo is to Christendom. Aye, far beyond America does his influence extend. Men’s influence is not confined by the frontiers of nations, and Gibbons is European as Manning is American. A special mission is reserved to the American Cardinal. In America, the Church and the age have fairest field to display their activities, and in America more speedily than elsewhere is the problem of their reconciliation to be solved. The world has a supreme interest in this reconciliation, and watches intently the prelate 12

[A quotation from Archbishop Francesco Satolli’s talk at a Lay Catholic Congress held in Chicago during the World’s Fair, September 5, 1893. The talk was reported in the Chicago Journal, September 5, 1893.]

256

American Catholic Religious Thought

who in America leads the forces of the Church. The name of Cardinal Gibbons lights up the pages of nearly every European book which treats of modern social and political questions. The ripplings of his influence cross the threshold of the Vatican. Leo, the mighty inspirer of men, is himself not seldom inspired and encouraged by his faithful lieutenants, from whom he asks: “Watchman, what of the night?” And the historic incident of the Knights of Labor, whose condemnation by the Roman Congregations Cardinal Gibbons was able to avert, exercised, I am sure, no small influence upon the preparation of the encyclical “The Condition of Labor.” But Cardinal Gibbons belongs to America; let him be judged by his work in America. The work of Cardinal Gibbons forms an epoch in the history of the Church in America. He has made the Church known to the people of America; he has demonstrated the fitness of the Church for America, the natural alliance existing between the Church and the freedom-giving democratic institutions of America. Thanks to him the scales have fallen from the eyes of non-Catholics; prejudices have vanished. He, the great churchman, is also the great citizen. In him Church and country are united, and the magnetism of the union pervades the whole land, teaching laggard Catholics to love America, teaching well-disposed non-Catholics to trust the Church. Church and country, Church and age, modern aspirations and ancient truths, republican liberty and spiritual princedom—harmonized, drawn into bonds of warm amity, laboring together for the progress and happiness of humanity! How great the mission assigned to Cardinal Gibbons! How precious the work done by him in fulfillment of it! I need not tell what qualities of mind and heart have brought the reward of success to the labors of Cardinal Gibbons. The nation knows them. He is large-minded; his vision cannot be narrowed to a one-sided consideration of men or things. He is large-hearted; his sympathies are limited only by the frontiers of humanity. He is ready for every noble work, patriotic, intellectual, social, philanthropic, as well as religious, and, in the prosecution of it, joins hands with laborer and capitalist, with white man and black man, with Catholic, Protestant, and Jew. He is brave; he has the courage to speak and to act according to his convictions; he rejoices when men work with

5 ~ John Ireland

257

him; he works when men fall away from him. Cardinal Gibbons, the most outspoken of Catholics, the most loyal co-laborer of the Pope of Rome, is the American of Americans. I desire to accentuate his patriotism, for it has been a wondrous factor in his success. We have heard it said that frequent declarations of patriotism are unseeming in loyal citizens, whose silent lives ought to give sufficient evidence of their civic virtue. Then let it be said, too, that frequent declarations of religious faith are not in place among devoted Christians; then, let the Credo be seldom repeated. I have spoken my tribute to the Cardinal Archbishop of Baltimore. A wide field remains ungleaned from which others may gather other tributes. My whole observation of the times, and in particular of this memorable Columbian year, convinces me that the Church has now her season of grace in America, and I often put to myself the anxious question: Will she profit by it? At times my soul sinks downward to the borderland of pessimism. I hate pessimism; I believe it to be one of the worst crimes against God and humanity; it puts an end to progress. Yet it tempts me, when I read in so many souls indifference and inertia, when I hear of the trifles with which soldiers of truth busy themselves, when I perceive the vast crowd looking backward lest they see the eastern horizon purpled by the rays of the new sun, and moving at slowest pace lest perchance they leave the ruts of the past and overtake the world, whose salvation is their God-given mission. But this evening, far from me is pessimism driven. I feel that religion will surely conquer. My soul throbs with hope. For I remember the God above me; I remember the leaders he has given to the Church—in Rome, Leo XIII; in America, Cardinal Gibbons. What one man can do is wondrous; what could not ten men—a hundred men do? O Catholic Church, fruitful mother of heroes, give us in unstinted measure men, sons of thy own greatness and of thy own power! The jubilee of Cardinal Gibbons is not a celebration of song and tinsel; it is a lesson to bishops, priests, and laymen of God’s Church in America.

258

American Catholic Religious Thought

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES The Apostolic Church (St. Paul, Minn.: North-Western Chronicle, 1882). The Church and Modern Society (New York: D.H. McBride & Co., 1896). The Church and Modern Society. (St. Paul, Minn.: The Pioneer Press, 1904). Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul. SECONDARY SOURCES “Americanism and Americanization: Essays in Honor of Philip Gleason,” U.S. Catholic Historian 17 (Winter 1999), entire issue. “The Americanist Controversy: Recent Historical and Theological Perspectives,” U.S. Catholic Historian 11 (Summer 1993), entire issue. Dennis Joseph Dease, “The Theological Influence of Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker on John Ireland’s Americanist Ecclesiology.” Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1978. John T. Farrell, “Archbishop Ireland and Manifest Destiny,” Catholic Historical Review 33 (1948): 269-301. James H. Moynihan, The Life of Archbishop John Ireland (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953). Marvin O’Connell, John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988). Margaret Mary Reher, “The Church and the Kingdom of God in America: The Ecclesiology of the Americanists.” Ph.D. dissertation, Fordham University, 1972. Thomas Wangler, “The Ecclesiology of Archbishop John Ireland, Its Nature, Development and Influence.” Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 1968. ———, “John Ireland’s Emergence as a Liberal Catholic and Americanist, 1875-1887,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 81 (June, 1970): 67-81. ———, “John Ireland and the Origins of Liberal Catholicism in the United States,” Catholic Historical Review 56 (1971): 617-29. ———, “The Birth of Americanism: Westward the Apocalyptic Candlestick,” Harvard Theological Review 65 (1972): 415-36.

Part V MODERNISM AND PROGRESSIVISM, 1900-1920

6 ~ John Montgomery Cooper JOHN MONTGOMERY COOPER: CATHOLIC PROGRESSIVE John Montgomery Cooper (1881-1949) was a professor of religion and of anthropology at the Catholic University of America, where he developed undergraduate theology as a distinct discipline. Like a number of other Catholic University professors of the progressive age, he was highly critical of the excessive intellectualism of a manual theology tradition that had its roots in scholasticism and post-Reformation Catholic polemics. The dominant spirit of scholastic theology, he asserted, was didactic, dialectic, apologetic and speculative and that spirit informed most of the manual theologies and handbooks that were used in college religion courses. He wanted to reform college theology by returning to the objectives and procedures of Patristic theology which, he believed, was devotional and much closer than scholasticism to the lived experience of the Catholic religious tradition as well as to the currents of progressive education. Influenced by empirical psychology, biology, anthropology, and the progressive movement in education, he focused upon the affective and pragmatic, action-oriented effects of religion and sought to create a discipline with this aim primarily in mind. As empirical psychology had turned its attention from the cognitive to the affective side of the human soul, so also, he believed, religious and theological education should focus its attention on the affective and functional value and pragmatic effects of basic Christian doctrines.1 Born in Maryland, Montgomery County, Cooper was educated by the Baltimore Sulpicians before being sent to study philosophy and theology at the North American College in Rome, where he earned a doctorate prior to his ordination in 1905. Shortly after ordination he returned to Washington, D.C., where he was assigned to St. Matthew’s parish. In 1909, he became a part-time instructor 1

“Religious and Scientific Teamwork,” The Salesianum 23 (July 1928): 4.

262

American Catholic Religious Thought

in religion at the Catholic University of America and began studying cultural anthropology. In 1920 he obtained a full time teaching position at the University and organized the Department of Religion for undergraduates. Simultaneously he taught anthropology in the Department of Sociology. In 1930 he organized a graduate department in Religion at the Catholic University. In 1934 he founded the Department of Anthropology and continued to teach in the Religion Department, while editing and publishing Primitive Man, a journal of anthropological studies. The following selection on the content of an undergraduate religion course reflects Cooper’s appropriation of elements of progressive education. As in other articles he wrote on theological education he placed priority on the affective ends of education, asserting that Christian doctrines played primarily a functional role in religious education. Religion was primarily an affective discipline leading to love not a strictly technical intellectual discipline leading to knowledge.

****** TEXT THE DOGMATIC CONTENT OF THE ADVANCED RELIGION COURSE Source: Catholic Educational Review 21 (February 1923): 80-88.

Dogmas, like the human mind, may be studied in their static and structural aspects or in their dynamic and functional aspects. We may have a functional theology as we have a functional psychology. We may ask what dogmas are, or we may ask what dogmas do. The advocates of creedless religion answer the latter question with a sweeping negative. Dogmas, they say, do nothing; they are fifth wheels, if not indeed drags. Live your life according to high moral standards, our emancipated brethren admonish us, and it does not matter what you believe or whether you believe anything at all. As Catholics, we beg to differ. Moreover, our Catholic answer to the question, What do dogmas do?, has an intimate bearing upon the answer to the further question, What should be the dogmatic content of an advanced religion course? For if the aim of Catholic religious

6 ~ John Montgomery Cooper

263

education is to get our students to live the Catholic ideal of love of God and neighbor, the determination of what their dogmatic faith contributes to such molding of their lives becomes a matter of primary concern. Using, then, the words “dogma” and “dogmatic truth” to include both worship in the sense of grace, prayer, and the sacraments as well as dogma in its more restricted sense, let us inquire, What do dogmas do? Why has God revealed to us certain supernatural truths? Are such revealed truths simply divinely set tests of our intellectual humility? Are they anticipatory illuminations of the intellect lighting the way for the fuller illumination that is to come when we shall see God face to face and no longer as in a glass darkly? Are they affectionate self-revelations from God, vouchsafed to us on the principle that we “reveal” ourselves to those whom we love? The discussion of these questions would carry us far afield into speculative theology. We may instead simplify our educational task by confining our quest to the less ambitious and more tangible question: What do dogmas do in helping us to live our Catholic lives, in helping us towards the goal of being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect? What, so to speak, is their religious educational function? On the answer to this question hinges the determination of the dogmatic content of religious educational instruction. So far as dogmas relating to grace, prayer, and the sacraments are concerned, their function is quite obvious. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, and these dogmas tell us how to go about getting from the author of all good things that tonic of the soul which we call grace, that assistance from on high which strengthens the spirit against the weakness of the flesh and helps us live up to our Catholic moral ideal. As regards dogmas understood in their more restricted sense, the answer does not lie so close to the surface. We shall therefore, in approaching the question, choose for analysis and study some concrete examples. “The world,” wrote Lecky, “is governed by its ideals, and seldom or never has there been one which has exercised a more profound and, on the whole, a more salutary influence than the mediaeval concep-

264

American Catholic Religious Thought

tion of the Blessed Virgin. . . . No longer the slave or toy of man, no longer associated only with ideas of degradation and sensuality, woman rose, in the person of the Virgin Mother, into a new sphere . . . .” This agelong historical and educational influence exercised upon the lives of countless Catholic multitudes by the ideal of the Virgin Mother of Christ has been exercised by reason of the accumulating dogmas that have built up and enriched that ideal. These dogmas are those of Mary’s divine motherhood, of her Immaculate Conception, of her sinlessness, of her virgin maternity, of her perpetual virginity, and of her freedom from even the bodily corruption of the grave. Her divine Son showered upon his Mother privilege upon privilege, purity upon purity, and out of the resulting wealth of dogmas, heaped, so to speak, one upon another, has grown the star-white and radiant ideal of Mary’s virginal chastity and maternal loveliness. By what process has this ideal become the dynamic uplifting force that it has been? Do you think that the average lay Catholic can define clearly each of these various doctrines and dogmas concerning the Blessed Virgin? In 1918, and again in 1920, the writer’s colleagues and he gave a surprise test of elementary catechism questions to unselected groups of Catholic college students, 436 students in all. These groups would probably represent a fair cross-section of the general Catholic population. Among the questions was, What is the Immaculate Conception? Of the 436 students, 264 or 60.5 per cent answered correctly, 19 or 4.3 per cent hazily, and 153 or 35.1 per cent quite incorrectly. Yet all these students had, as has the average Catholic, a very clear vision and impression of the radiant purity of Mary, a vision and impression that serves in their lives as an inspiring and dynamic ideal. The energizing ideal remains as an abiding after-image or after-impression, even though the perhaps once known and memorized definitions of the various Marian dogmas have suffered more than a sea-change. Some of the scaffolding has fallen, but the temple walls remain. In other ways, too, has the devotion to Mary, founded upon dogma, influenced and educated our Catholic lives. Devotion to Mary has enabled religion to utilize and capitalize and, shall we say, sublimate towards a supernatural purpose and activity the natural filial-to-mother sentiment and the normal reverence for motherhood that are common to humankind the world over and that are such potent influences upon

6 ~ John Montgomery Cooper

265

better and higher living. Devotion to her has also enabled religion to capitalize and build upon the natural deep-seated respect for pure womanhood that is hidden in the heart of even the profligate and the degenerate. Devotion to her has, moreover, energized our imitative tendencies. Let us analyze another dogma, that of the Incarnation. The feast of the Incarnation, March 25, is passed over each year almost unnoticed so far as the great mass of Catholics is concerned, and even in the official liturgy of the Church it ranks below the feast of Christmas. Yet from the purely dogmatic standpoint, the Incarnation is immeasurably more important than the Nativity. But the Incarnation has no great human appeal, while the Nativity has. The birth of the helpless divine Infant touches off and activates the powerful parental and protective impulses within us, and through them draws us closer to Christ. Had the Son of God come on earth in full adulthood, the Incarnation would still have been a strong religious motive for conduct, a motive that would have had a predominantly rational pull, a motive that could be formulated about as follows: If God so loves me as to become man for me, I should love Him in return. But, coming as our Savior did as a helpless infant, the Incarnation and birth give not only a rational appeal but also an affective, instinctive appeal, a tug at the very heart-strings of humanity. Here, then, in the Incarnation and birth of Christ we find dogma providing two psychologically distinguishable motives or types of motivation, one in which the motive power or driving force is derived from a conscious or reflective appeal to our reason or rational will, the other in which the driving force is derived from an appeal, often not consciously recognized or adverted to by us, to the parental, protective, and sympathetic impulses of our instinctive or quasi-instinctive nature. The two types of motivation blend and mutually reinforce each other, and so tie us to Our Lord with their twined strands, and urge us to love both God and man the more deeply. Parenthetically, may we not add, that if the divine educator par excellence, through his dogmatic revelation, utilizes and builds upon human instinctive driving forces, should we have any hesitation in doing so in our own halting technic for soul-training and religious education?

266

American Catholic Religious Thought

The great dogmas of the future life are at the same time an appeal to the rational will on the ground of prudence and enlightened self-interest and an appeal to the instinctive craving for well-being, self-preservation, and happiness. The dogma of creation is the rational basis of the motive of duty, while the related dogmas of divine omnipresence and omniscience builds upon and turns to supernatural purposes the natural, and apparently instinctive, human craving for approval and shrinking from disapproval. And so one could run through the whole of Catholic doctrinal teaching and multiply illustrations evidencing the fact that dogmas furnish a motive power, a driving force, a dynamic motivation, which impels us to live up faithfully to our Catholic ideal of life. Dogmas, then, provide the supernatural motivation of conduct. Such motivation, moreover, appears to be of at least three types, which we may call for convenience, and without pressing the technical psychological meaning of the terms, rational, imaginative, and instinctive. The rational or reflective motivation of self-interest is provided by such dogmas as immortality, judgment, heaven, and hell; that of duty by the dogmas of God and creation especially; that of gratitude by such dogmas as those of Providence, the Incarnation, and Redemption; that of love particularly by the dogmas of the divine Fatherhood, the brotherhood of Christ, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and the Trinity. Imaginative motivation is exemplified in the ideal of Mary, Virgin and Mother. Instinctive motivation is illustrated in all of the above examples of dogmas that touch off and stimulate and sublimate either instinctive forces and impulses within us or else those instinct-habit consolidations and acquired tendencies which are genetically related to or which closely resemble instinctive forces proper. Dogmas mold theoretic ethical codes. A man’s ethical standards are almost inevitably influenced by his religious faith or his philosophy of life. The Protestant Reformation, for instance, produced profound changes in the hitherto prevailing ethics of the family and property. The philosophy of modern socialism or rationalism has induced even more radical changes. What one believes will ultimately and in the long run determine the concrete principles and tenets of his moral code. This is the intellectualistic dynamic nexus between dogma and morality. But not less dynamic is the voluntaristic or affective and

6 ~ John Montgomery Cooper

267

volitional tie between the two. An agnostic or atheist must fall back upon the purely humanistic motives of conduct. A Catholic has these and the supernatural motives to boot. Furthermore, the humanistic driving forces are integrated, sublimated, reinforced, and strengthened by the Catholic supernatural motives derived from dogmas. We may now sum up in one sentence what has been a rather tedious even if unavoidable discussion. As moral teaching provides the ideal of conduct, so prayer and the sacraments provide the means of grace that help us to attain that ideal, while dogmas proper provide the motives that urge and impel us to live out the same ideal. What then is the bearing of this conclusion on the dogmatic content of the religion course? If the educative function of dogmatic truths, understood in their broader sense, is to provide the supernatural helps and motives of conduct, may we not make the inference that the primary aim of dogmatic instruction should be to reinforce and enhance the motivating power of beliefs and to direct the student in the most fruitful use of the supernatural means of help from God. It is in accordance with his general principle that content and method of presentation should be determined. The following paragraphs contain some scattered suggestions along this line. 1. The major stress should be put upon the great central motivating Catholic dogmas, and the minor dogmas should be grouped with this end in view. Take, for instance, the dogmatic cycle or cluster relating to the Redemption. We have therein the simple nuclear heart of the dogma, namely, that God so loved us as to become man and die for us. The rudest mind realizes that greater love hath no man for another that he lay down his life for his friend. Secondly, the nuclear truth is explained and enriched in content and vividness by the organically related truths concerning original sin and the fall, actual sin, the preparation for and birth of the Savior, the life and personality of Christ, the circumstances of his passion and death. With apologies to the etymologists, may we call these the peri-nuclear dogmas? Thirdly, theology discusses in connection with the Incarnation and Redemption certain questions regarding the hypostatic union such, for instance as that of the two wills in Christ, questions around which revolved so many of the Christological heresies of the early and later centuries. Such truths we may call protective or defensive dogmas.

268

American Catholic Religious Thought

Thus, just as the biological cell is built up of the nucleus, the surrounding cell-substance, and the protective cell-wall, so many dogmatic cycles have three aspects—the nuclear, the sustaining peri-nuclear, and the defensive or protective. In our dogmatic instruction the greater emphasis should be put upon the nuclear truth and its peri-nuclear explanation and content. There would be little if any educative value in explaining, for instance, many of the early heresies regarding the hypostatic union. The conciliar definitions that vanquished most of these early heresies were measures of defense which the Church took with reluctance and as a last resort to parry attacks that would eventually have struck a deadly blow at the very heart of the nuclear dogmas themselves. Again, as regards the “peri-nuclear” explanation of the dogma, technical dogmatic theology, on which our advanced religion textbooks are pretty closely modeled, gives little attention, say, to the circumstances of the birth and passion in treating of the Incarnation and Redemption. Yet these circumstances are of paramount motivating value, as we have seen. In general, the explanation of the Incarnation and Redemption should be modeled much more closely upon the Gospel account than, as at present, upon the standard textbooks of dogmatic theology. Technical theology says little explicitly about the Fatherhood of God, a great central motivating dogma. The subject does not permit perhaps of technical intellectualistic treatment. Likewise, most of our advanced religion textbooks, while covering in detail the attributes of God, scarcely if at all mention his Fatherhood. What a contrast to our Lord’s dogmatic pedagogy! 2. Definitions are not the be-all and end-all of dogmatic instruction. As we have seen in discussing the dogmas regarding the Blessed Virgin, the imaginative or impressionistic ideal is active as a motive, even where the exact nuances of dogmatic definition cannot be distinguished with theological precision. This is no brief for vagueness or impressionism in teaching, but is rather a word of encouragement to those who fret because the exact definitions learned today in class will soon be forgotten after—if not long before—the boy or girl has graduated from high school or college. Scientific theology must exist to analyze, define, systematize, and correlate dogmatic truths. There must be definitions somewhere—defini-

6 ~ John Montgomery Cooper

269

tions clearly set forth in strict theological terminology, definitions known and firmly grasped by technical theologians, definitions embodied and safeguarded in the official literary sources of Catholic tradition. But is an absolutely exact theological and technical knowledge and retention in memory of many such definitions a necessity for the lay Catholic man or woman? If so, the early Christians must have been seriously handicapped, for we know how few definitions beyond those in the Creeds were part and parcel of their religious education. If so, many a simple soul in our American parishes would have scant chances of entering the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not always the intellectual precision of thought so much as the vivid and vital effective grasp of the nuclear and peri-nuclear truths that gives the real dogmatic motive for conduct. The important aim in our Catholic dogmatic teaching is not to turn out amateur theologians who can answer every definition in the advanced religion textbook, nor to turn out amateur apologists who can answer every question non-Catholic inquirers can put, but to turn out boys and girls who have gotten the habit of making doctrinal truths the vital motives for loving God and their neighbors. 3. In dogmatic instruction, some account should be taken of age and sex interests, instincts, and trends of the students. In the advanced religion course, for instance, less attention need ordinarily be paid to Baptism and Confirmation, as most of the students will already have received these sacraments. On the other hand, the sacrament of matrimony should be treated with considerable fullness, as should also such kindred subjects as choice of mate, courtship, conventions and liberties, impediments, practical procedure for arranging with the pastor for a wedding, and, if time permits, something on the care and education of children. Again, in dealing with boys of early adolescence—of the “gang age”—should we stress the passive life and virtues of Christ culminating in his passion and death, or should we stress the active aggressive life and virtues of Christ culminating in the triumph of his Resurrection? The writer would incline to the latter alternative. In teaching girls, perhaps the former is the better method. 4. The treatment of dogmatic truths should emphasize the higher motives of conduct. On the one hand, these higher motives of duty,

270

American Catholic Religious Thought

gratitude, and love are usually attainable in greater or lesser degree by the average lay Catholic, at least as combining with or tinging the lower motives of self-interest. On the other hand, there is no little danger that our boys and girls, if content with the lower motives, will fall even below the required level of attrition or imperfect love. And if they fall below this level, even good faith and ignorance are of no avail. In the surveys referred to on a preceding page, 422 college students were asked to answer the following question: “Is the disposition represented in the following statement sufficient for Confession: ‘If there were no heaven and no hell, I wouldn’t bother my head about God’s commands, although since heaven and hell exist I repent’?” While the question is slightly open to misinterpretation, the results of the surprise test were disturbing, not to say alarming. Of the 422 students, 262 or 62.1 per cent answered correctly; 14 or 3.3 per cent were hazy; 146 or 34.6 per cent answered incorrectly. 5. Into dogmatic instruction should be frequently and inconspicuously interwoven the moral implications and applications of the dogma under consideration. A similar point was stressed in the writer’s article in last month’s REVIEW and need hardly be gone over again. A paragraph labeled “Practice” or “Application” tacked on to the end of the dogmatic chapter is too obvious, not to say irritating or nugatory. The moral implication or application should tie naturally into the body of the chapter and should grow organically out of the current treatment of the topic. A “Let us resolve” at the end of the lesson or chapter makes a somewhat dull appeal to the adolescent mind and will. . . .

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES “Bibliography of John Montgomery Cooper,” Primitive Man 23 (July 1950): 66-84. “Catholic Education and Theology,” in Roy Deferrari, ed., Vital Problems of Catholic Education (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Education Press, 1939), 127-43. Content of the Advanced Religion Course (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Education Press, 1923).

6 ~ John Montgomery Cooper

271

“Content and Credit Hours for Courses in Religion,” Catholic Educational Association Bulletin 23 (November 1926–August 1927): 134-42. “Religion in the College Curriculum,” in College Organization and Administration (Washington, D.C.: Catholic Education Press, 1947), 148-74. SECONDARY SOURCES Patrick W. Carey, “After Testem Benevolentiae and Pascendi,” Catholic Southwest: A Journal of History and Culture 7 (1996):13-33. Regina Flannery, “John Montgomery Cooper, 1881-1949,” American Anthropologist 52 (1950): 64-74. Paul Hanly Furfey, “John Montgomery Cooper, 1881-1949,” Primitive Man 23 (July 1950): 49-65. Elizabeth McKeown, “From Pascendi to Primitive Man: The Apologetics and Anthropology of John Montgomery Cooper,” U.S. Catholic Historian 13 (Winter 1995): 1-22. Deirdre M. Moloney, American Catholic Lay Groups and Transatlantic Social Reform in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). Benedict Neenan, Thomas Verner Moore: Psychiatrist, Educator and Monk (New York: Paulist Press, 2000). William H. Russell, “John M. Cooper: Pioneer,” Catholic Educational Review 47 (1949):435-41. Pamela Young, “Theological Education in American Catholic Higher Education, 1939-1973.” Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 1995, 67-79.

Part VI

SOCIAL JUSTICE, 1840-1940

7 ~ John Hughes JOHN HUGHES: A CHRISTIAN ECONOMY John Hughes (1797-1864), fourth Bishop of New York, was a combative apostle for American Catholicism in his struggles against the lay trustees, the Common School Society of New York, and the “Protestant Crusade.” He was not a consistent nor a systematic thinker, but he had insights into some problems in American society. He criticized, for example, the divorce of religious from economic values and the total autonomy of a capitalistic economic theory and practice, and called for the incorporation of a Christian anthropology into economic theory and practice and a return to the more integral practices of an idealized medieval Christendom. In his judgment, the pre-Reformation Catholic Church had been the buffer against an exaggerated individualism and an excessively capitalistic spirit. The Protestant Reformation broke this buffer and thus released these twin evils into contemporary society. Hughes was born in Annaloghan, Ireland, in the Province of Ulster, to Patrick and Margaret Hughes. In 1817, he emigrated to the United States and shortly thereafter enrolled in Mount St. Mary’s College and Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland (1819-26). After ordination to the priesthood in 1826, he assumed various pastoral duties in Philadelphia where he earned his reputation as an articulate and bellicose Catholic warrior. In 1838, he was consecrated Coadjutor Bishop of New York, becoming bishop in 1840. For the remaining twenty-three years of his life, he served the immigrant Catholic community in New York. The following selection reflects his criticism of incipient capitalism and his advocacy of Christianity as the necessary basis for determining the common good in society. Hughes delivered this address before the

276

American Catholic Religious Thought

Calvert Institute of Baltimore and the Carroll Institute of Philadelphia on the 17th and 18th of January 1844. The speech was one of a number of popular addresses given before the immigrant and native American Catholic communities of those cities. The Unitarian and social critic Orestes A. Brownson, when reviewing this work, called Hughes “one of the ablest and most enlightened men of the times,” an opinion he may have revised later in his life. Like Hughes, Brownson saw the laboring man’s current distressful economic circumstances as a result of the Protestant Reformation’s rejection of the Catholic Church’s authority. “The rejection of that authority left men without the necessary moral restraints on their natural selfishness, free to regulate all individual and social matters according to the dictates of the self-interests of individuals and governments, instead of the dictates of Christian duty and love.” The only solution to current problems was to return to the authority of the “Church of Christ.” The Church represented the only rival to the “Mammon” that “reigns in modern society,” and “we cannot remedy this evil without some power stronger even than the money-god.”1 In this article Hughes seems to be drawing upon William Cobbett’s thesis, articulated in his History of The Reformation in England and Ireland (1824-27), that individualistic or selfish capitalism arose simultaneously with the Protestant “revolt” against Catholicism.2 Such views were common among American Catholic apologists in middle nineteenth-century America.3

******

1 2

3

Brownson Quarterly Review (April, 1844): 278-80. Cobbett’s work, which was frequently republished in the United States, England and Ireland, was subtitled, Showing How that Event Has Impoverished and Degraded the Main Body of the People in These Countries. In a Series of Letters Addressed to all Sensible and Just Englishmen. See, e.g., Martin John Spalding, Miscellanea (Baltimore, 1894), 455505.

7 ~ John Hughes

277

TEXT A LECTURE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF A CHRISTIAN BASIS FOR THE SCIENCE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, AND ITS APPLICATION TO THE AFFAIRS OF LIFE Source: Lawrence Kehoe, ed., Complete Works of the Most Rev. John Hughes, D.D., Archbishop of New York; Comprising His Sermons, Letters, Lectures, Speeches, etc., 2 vols. (New York: Lawrence Kehoe, 1865), 1:513-34.

Political economy professes to treat of the material wealth of nations, and to trace out the laws which govern and regulate its tendencies to increase or diminution. By material wealth, it would have us to understand not only the precious metals, as gold and silver, but all descriptions of property, having an exchangeable value. Whatever substance, whether in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth, is consecrated to the use of mankind, by the expenditure of human capital, or human labor, passes, ipso facto, under the scientific dominion of political economy. . . . Of its two great primary departments, the one comprises the inhabitants of the earth; the other embraces the material things which are required, and can be supplied, for the physical sustenance or enjoyment of these inhabitants. Now, it is found that these material things, before they can be fully prepared for the purposes of sustenance and pleasure, require the expenditure of capital, either in money, or labor, or both. Such things are divided into two stages of time; the one commencing with the first expenditure of capital on the raw material, and ending at the term of expenditure, when the thing is entirely prepared, and passes over to its use. This comprehends all the industrial pursuits and occupations of mankind; and the whole is designated by the term production. The other stage begins when the object is applied to its use; and this stage is called by the general term consumption. The latter of these terms represents the wants, whether real or artificial, of society; the former designates the supply of these wants. Population is also classed under two corresponding divisions; namely, producers and consumers. But in general, the science has, so far been conducted rather in conformity to the special interests of particular nations, than according to

278

American Catholic Religious Thought

any principles of universal origin or application. The countries which have paid most attention to this subject, in a scientific point of view, are France and England; and the works emanating from these countries, represent very distinctly, the national type, according to which the study has been prosecuted. Hence, although there are found in their treatises, principles supposed to be of universal application, still the actual condition of society, the nature of industrial pursuits, the bearing of commercial laws, peculiar to those countries, have come in so powerfully in modifying the views of their political economists, that their best principles cannot be appreciated, except by a just discrimination of all the circumstances, in which one nation differs from another. Thus, for instance, confining our remarks to England, with which we are better acquainted, we are met with a distribution of the population into classes, which are not formed in our own country. These are, landlords, capitalists, and laborers. Generally in this country, the same individual represents all three. He is the owner of the soil, which he cultivates; and his means of carrying on agriculture, constitutes his capital. The three classes are indeed, found; but that which constitutes the rule in England, is only the exception here. It is not, perhaps, the fault of political economy, as a science, that it seems to regard wealth as the end, and human beings as only the means, in order for its attainment. We would not venture to make this a reproach; and yet we cannot help making it a subject of regret. Its writers did not create the science; they only embodied a copy of its workings in practical life, as they found it in the relations of men. The prominence which is given to wealth, in tracing out the most certain rules for the acquisition of it, cannot but have had an injurious moral effect, in so far as it enhanced the ideal value of riches in the estimation of the human mind. There perhaps never was a period, when men entered on the pursuit of wealth with so much of what might be called almost desperate determination to succeed, as the period in which we live. And we may entertain a reasonable doubt, whether it be not owing to this, that individuals in high and honorable stations, have so frequently (and of late as never before,) jeoparded and sacrificed an unblemished character, rather than miss the opportunity of rapidly acquiring wealth; the means of which, circumstances and confidence had placed within

7 ~ John Hughes

279

their reach. Cupidity is a natural propensity of man; and it is to be feared that the theoretic, and practical, political economy of our age, has encouraged and whetted the passion instead of moderating and regulating its violence. It is certain, that self-interest is the great motive principle of human exertion; but it is equally certain, that political economy, as a science, omits what would be essential in a true definition of a man’s interest. Of this we shall be convinced, if we examine the moral principle on which, whether in the practice of modern nations, or in the theory of writers, political economy is founded. If we follow it up to the mysterious link which connects it with the spiritual or moral world, in the breast of man, we shall find that it acts exclusively on that of personal interest. So much so indeed, that if England and France, and the nations of modern times, in general instead of being Christians, or at least professing Christianity, were heathens, it would still be almost unnecessary to change a single word in the actual philosophy or ethics of political economy. Here then, it is, that the importance of a Christian basis demands our attention. The advantages and disadvantage of position between landlord and tenant—between the capitalist and the laborer, are such, that if mere material self-interest alone be left to regulate their relations, it is easy to foresee that the weaker are liable to fall victims to the interests and power of the stronger. The truth of this proposition is manifest now, in the condition of England, where these relations are, and have been in existence for a long time. Now, if Christianity were admitted as an element in political economy, man—human nature—in consideration of the value which it has acquired by the Redemption, would be the first and principal object of solicitude, and all things else would be estimated by reference to this. Man’s interest would be graduated on a scale proportioned to the whole of his nature, combining the spiritual with the corporeal; and the whole of his destiny, extending to eternity, as well as time. Then, indeed, self-interest thus understood, would constitute a principle sufficiently high and sufficiently ample to combine the acquisition of wealth, with sacred regard for the rights and privileges of human beings. But this is not the case. The landlords, capitalists, and laborers of England, are supposed to represent three great departments of capital; the one in territory—the other in money—and the third in muscular strength, or mechanical skill.

280

American Catholic Religious Thought

Each is supposed to be free, and the only motive which is furnished in the present system, is that of individual advantage. But it happens necessarily, that what would be the advantage of one class, is directly opposed to the interests of another; and then each adhering to the common principle, it is clear that he or they who have most power to hold out, will be able to damage or destroy the antagonist interest of the other. The influences to be derived from a high and enlightened appreciation of human worth, according to the standard of revelation, seem to have been shut out from the practical and theoretic economy of modern nations. The interest of the body, in its relation with material wealth limited, of course, to this present life, is the narrow and ignoble sphere within which political economy affects to move. ENGLAND’S ECONOMY

I must not proceed, however, with views of this kind, until I shall have anticipated an objection which has already, perhaps, arisen in your minds, in seeming refutation of what is here advanced. And this is, that the immense wealth, the wonderful power, and unequaled prosperity of England, as a nation, is a practical proof of the soundness of her political economy. Or, it may be, that an assumption, which has often been proclaimed, has presented itself to your mind as a yet stronger refutation, namely: that the wealth of England, her power and prosperity are owing to her profession of the Protestant religion, and the play of those energies which that religion is supposed to foster and develop. Now, with the qualifications which will occur during the course of these remarks, I admit the truth of both these observations. That England is the wealthiest nation on the globe, is indisputable. But it is to be remarked, that this wealth is in the hands of a small portion of her inhabitants; and we can form some idea of its amount from the fact that we read of private individuals, whose annual income is not less than half a million of pounds sterling. That must, indeed, be a wealthy country, in which the income of a private gentleman, for a period of twelve months, would be sufficient to pay the salary of our President for nearly a hundred years! But perhaps no stronger instance could be adduced, to show how unequally the wealth of England is distributed among its inhabitants, than such a case as this, contrasted with the hundreds of thousands and millions of the people, who are

7 ~ John Hughes

281

sunk and sinking under the combined evils of moral and physical destitution. Taking the population of the three kingdoms together, as constituting one political family, it will be found that there is no nation of the world, and above all no Christian nation, in which there is such an amount of poverty and wretchedness as in England. She has, indeed, fought the great battle for wealth with other countries, and has, by universal consent; gained the victory. But how comes it that, while a few of her sons are rioting in the spoils of the vanquished, the cries of the wounded and dying of her own battalions, are heard on every side? How comes it that, in Ireland, out of a population of between eight and nine millions, there are over two millions absolutely dependent on the charity of others, scarcely a degree above their own condition? How comes it that, in Scotland, misery and destitution are hardly less general, and, from other causes, perhaps even more excruciating still? How comes it that, in England itself, distress among the laboring classes presses, at intervals, to such an extreme point, as to threaten, from time to time, insurrection and revolution? How comes it, in fine, to happen that, while the dogs of landlords and capitalists are well fed and well housed—while their horses are daintily provided for, the sons and daughters of Britons around them go forth with gaunt looks and sunken features, through want of food? These are results which puzzle political economists, but which never could have happened, if political economy had not been transferred from the Christian basis on which it was originally reared in that country, to the inadequate foundations of mere individual interest. I am willing, then, to ascribe to the Protestant religion, the credit of England’s wealth; but her poverty, and the destitution of her millions, must, I insist upon it, be charged to the same account. This, however, only in so far as these results have been brought about by the political economy of that country. Other causes may have contributed to both—such as the system of colonization and military conquest, in which England has been no less distinguished. Neither would I have it to be understood, that I regard the national character of the people of that country as differing essentially from that of other nations. If it be true, as some say it is, that, as a nation or as individuals, they are proverbially selfish, I do not ascribe it so much to any inherent deficiency of moral excellence or feeling, as I do to their system of

282

American Catholic Religious Thought

public economy, which has so long prevailed, that it has gradually become, as it were ingrained into the habits, principles, sentiments and associations of the people. Unfortunately, the same feelings with the prevalence of the same system, are extending to other nations; and if they should continue, as appears quite likely, it may be difficult, at no distant day, to determine which will be entitled to preeminence on this score. There is, it is but just to add, perhaps no other nation in which there is a greater readiness to come to the relief of public distress, when it can be remedied, than in England. But the root of the disease is deep in the social condition of the country: and the highest effort of modern statesmen, political economists, and philanthropists, is to apply palliatives to the evils which it must produce, without daring to eradicate or disturb the principle from which they flow. Let us, then, go back to the origin of this system, and trace its workings in connection with political economy, and we shall, perhaps be able to discover the sources from which both the wealth and the poverty of England have been derived. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, England, as a manufacturing country, had no pre-eminence, and was scarcely equal to France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. Up till that period, the profession of the same religion had established, throughout all these nations, a certain type of uniformity, in reference to moral as well as religious questions, constituting a standard common to them all. This, however, did not interfere with the peculiar genius and national characteristics of each people. But, in reference more especially to certain social questions, such as the exercise of charity, making provision for the poor, seasons of religious observances, days of rest, and the like, the usages of the different nations approached sufficiently near to uniformity. England, as is known, broke away from this religious connection. The Christianity which she embraced in its stead was based upon an entirely different principle, as regards the social relations. The merit of good works was rejected as an erroneous doctrine, and it was ascertained that salvation is by faith alone. This is not the time nor the place to inquire which of these two systems is true, in a theological point of view. But they are mentioned in contrast, as having been calculated to affect most seriously the social relations, especially in reference to the condition of the poor. Up to that period, the influence of the Christian religion on the hearts of

7 ~ John Hughes

283

the people was sufficient to provide, by voluntary contribution, for the necessities of the destitute; and it was a great safeguard for that unfortunate class, that the wealthy were under the conviction, right or wrong, of the importance and advantage to themselves, of doing good to their neighbor. When the universal belief was, that even “a cup of cold water given in the name of a disciple, should not be without its reward,” the efforts and sacrifices made spontaneously, to remedy or provide against distress, could not have been regarded either as vain or unproductive expenditure of capital. But another and more obvious result of the change was, in the increased production which England was enabled to bring forth, in consequence of having abolished the religious holidays of the ancient church. These, at that time, were little short in number of one day in each week. The original motive for their institution was not exclusively religious. Those days furnished seasons of rest for the serfs or slaves of the Middle Ages; and thus, by diminishing the profits of their lords, and furnishing themselves with such opportunities of education and moral elevation as the times afforded prepared them gradually for the free condition. By abolishing them, England was enabled to present a production of nearly two months’ labor, in each year, more than the other states that still adhered to the ancient system. The consequence of this was, that, by increasing the amount, she diminished the value of her productions. Through this diminution in their value, she was enabled to undersell her rivals, first in all neutral foreign markets; and then, following up, with energy and perseverance, the advantages thus gained, she was enabled to undersell them in their own countries, and take possession of their own markets. Thus she began to drain other countries of their circulating medium, which became again a new instrument in developing still further the advantages of her position. … Thus, precisely, has it happened in the history of manufactures in England, as compared with the other nations of Europe. The results of the entire national industry, during some forty or forty-five days in each year, gave her the first advantage over her rivals. This brought her capital, and drained from them their resources. It made her strong, and left them weak and exhausted. By means of capital she was enabled not only to increase the quantity, but also to improve the quality, of her

284

American Catholic Religious Thought

productions, to a degree which they could not rival; and if, at different subsequent periods, they attempted to revive their manufactures, even by artificial means British skill and British capital were prompt, even at a little sacrifice, if necessary, to effect their extinguishment. Thus, England became a monopolist in the market of nations—thus, their wealth flowed to her workshops—thus, competition was destroyed abroad; and the foundation laid at home for that super-abundance of riches by which she has been enabled to borrow from her own subjects almost the whole of her national debt, amounting to some eight hundred millions of pounds sterling. It is not pretended that this is the only cause of the great aggregate wealth of England; but so far as it comes under the head of political economy, it was one great cause, of which the comparative poverty of other European nations is as manifestly another consequence. Here, then, we see the principle of interest operating in its national form; and, thus concentrated, powerful enough to sustain England, in competition, against the world. But having been successful in putting down all foreign competition, how did this principle operate on the condition of its own inhabitants? The contest now is among those three classes into which political economy is pleased to distribute her people. The interest of the manufacturer, as a capitalist, is in the profits of his production. When the markets are brisk and the demand great, he will make large returns by his investments. But still, if he can cheapen the cost of production, he will be increasing his profits on both sides. Hence the laborer must maintain his interest, against that of the capitalist. Both are free; and labor is a commodity liable to rise and fall, like every other thing, with the fluctuations of trade. But the position of the laborer is unfortunate, inasmuch as the interests of the capitalist must be provided for before his can be reached. He may, indeed, refuse to work for less than fair wages; but no matter how just his pretensions on that score, the hunger that stands at the portals of his dwelling, threatening both himself and his family, if he do not work, renders him perfectly unequal to the contest. He must give in; for the same policy which annihilated competition in other nations, employs that same competition at home, for the increase of profits by the reduction of wages, or even the occasional suspension of labor altogether. Add to this the introduction of machinery, within the last fifty years. It is

7 ~ John Hughes

285

estimated that the machinery of England, in the various departments of industrial production, is equal to the labor of a hundred millions of workmen. Besides at the present time, almost every nation has, at length, been aroused to the subject of manufactures, and has come to the conclusion that it is wiser to encourage and employ its own laborers, than to spend the amount of money which such employment may cost in the purchase of British goods. If, then, we take the actual condition of the poorer classes of Great Britain, depending in a great measure on this class of employment for the means of life, in connection with the rising manufactures of other states, and take in the future which statesmen ought to anticipate, it will appear doubtful whether, even in an economical point of view, the policy of England has not been a shortsighted policy after all. Let us now turn to the condition of the agricultural laborers of Great Britain. One would suppose that their condition should be improved by the transition of so many from their ranks to those of manufacturing industry. But this is not the case; for, as a class, they are not so well off as they were several centuries ago. They cannot, at present, obtain for a day’s wages more than one-fourth of the amount of food which could be purchased for a day’s labor, up to the reign of Henry VIII. In an act, or rather the preamble of an act, passed in his reign, 1533, “beef, pork, mutton, and veal” are mentioned as the ordinary “food of the poorer sort;” so that the agricultural laborers of the present day require to have three hundred per cent, added to their actual wages, in order to live as well as their predecessors did, three centuries ago! Here is an awful deterioration in their condition. A precarious, and, at best, a scanty supply of the cheapest, and, consequently, poorest kind of food, is all they can now obtain in exchange or recompense for their incessant toil. And hence they are described and represented, in public and official documents, as on the verge of absolute pauperism. Why and how has all this come to happen? The question is the more startling, because, during this period the aggregate wealth of the nation has increased many hundred fold. To my mind, however, the answer is simple. It has happened, because, during this period, the whole practical economy of the country has been transferred from the ancient basis, and left to be regulated on the exclusive principle of universal, material self-interest. It is all very

286

American Catholic Religious Thought

fine, to talk, as we Americans do, of the “immense wealth of England;” and, as the English themselves do, of the “sturdy reliance and manly bearing of a British operative”—as contrasted with the humble deportment of corresponding classes in other European states. But political economy has not seen, or, seeing, has not dared to denounce the social blunder—the mockery of freedom—which are presented in the spectacle of the starving laborer maintaining a contest of competition with the bloated capitalist. Each, in that contest, is referred back to his own interest; and while the interest of the one is to increase, or at least not diminish, his capital, the interest of the other is simply to escape a death of starvation which is pressing on him. If these remarks be deemed sufficient to explain why the condition of the laboring classes is so much deteriorated from former times, we may now proceed to explain how the thing has been brought about. In order to do this, it will be necessary to recur briefly to the social condition of England antecedent to the change of religion in that country. Nothing is more true, than that a large portion of the wealth and of the real estate of the country were in the hands of the clergy. The origin of their title was as just and as authentic as that of any other property in Europe. The wealth which they possessed was the growth of time—the result of their own industry, economy, and the gradual increase in the value of their estates. The church, and its principles—or rather, the principle of Christianity, working out through the living agencies of the church—had become interwoven, to a certain extent, with all the relations of social life. It operated as an invisible bond, binding together the various ranks, classes, and conditions of the whole people; and correcting or reconciling the antagonism of mere material interests, by the influence of other interests relating to another world. It was as the cement in the social edifice. After the serfs of the Middle Ages had passed into the condition of tenants and free laborers, those who occupied or cultivated the lands of the monasteries and of the church had kind and indulgent landlords to deal with. In fact, all this property, as to its advantages, belonged rather to the poor at large, than to those who were its nominal proprietors. The law of the church regulated its uses. Its revenues, by this law, were divided into three portions. The first was sacred to the maintenance of the poor; the second was appropriated to the repairs of the churches, and the

7 ~ John Hughes

287

improvement of ecclesiastical property. Out of the third, the clergy were entitled to their support; and if still there remained a surplus, this also was a charge on their conscience, as belonging to the poor. It is not pretended in these remarks, that this law was, in all cases, strictly observed. But yet, the absence of all destitution and suffering among the poor, except in seasons of famine, is a sufficient proof that it was substantially attended to; since we find that there was no other poor law needed in the country, except that of him who said, “The poor you have always with you, and when you will, you can do good unto them” [Mt. 26:11]. When the change of religion took place in England, the possession of those ecclesiastical estates, and this wealth, constituted perhaps the greatest error of the church. They excited the cupidity of the monarch and his parasites. And if monasteries were denounced as citadels of luxury, indolence, and crime—if celibacy was held up as a variation from the law of God, and an injury to the welfare of the State, the motives of the declaimers against both are fairly liable to suspicion, when it is remembered that the wealth of the assailed was to become the prey and patrimony of the assailant. The secular clergy were, with few exceptions, brought into the measures of the monarch. The inmates of the cloisters, male and female, were turned adrift on the world, and added to the ranks of the destitute whom they had hitherto been accustomed to relieve. The estates of the church were seized by the ancestors of many of the landlords and noble families of the present day. The fathers and mothers of the poor in the religious communities of both sexes, that were scattered from point to point over the surface of England, were driven from their peaceful abodes, and their estates seized in the private right of private individuals. The consequence of all this was, that in less than half a century there was not concern enough for the poor left remaining in the hearts of the people to provide for their support, without the aid, or rather the coercion of an act of Parliament. This is the first instance in the annals of Christian nations, in which the principles of religion were found insufficient to furnish a spontaneous provision for the destitute. The burdens of their support necessarily fell upon the occupants and cultivators of the soil. The lands of the church were rented out on the principle of the proprietor’s interest, modified only by two considerations—one

288

American Catholic Religious Thought

was the extent of competition among the applicants; and the other was, the amount of rent which might be exacted without depriving the tenants and their families of the means, at least necessary, for subsistence. Hence, weighty rents; and as the landlords were for the most part, the law-makers also, hence too, in process of time, those statutes in favor of landlord interests, which in our days are familiarly known under the designation of corn-laws. Does not every one see that all such legislation, whatever may be its other effects, must tend to diminish the wages of all the productive and laboring classes, by either diminishing the quantity, or raising the price, of bread? So that if you look to the relations thus created between the laborers of England and the other two classes into which political economists have divided the population, namely, landlords and capitalists, it would seem as if the whole practical purpose of public economy has been to reduce the working people down to that condition in which Malthus4 has discovered what he calls the “natural standard of wages”—which means, perhaps, a little more than is barely sufficient to keep the workman’s soul and body together. It is impossible not to perceive, in all this, the injurious effect of the principle to which we have already, more than once, alluded, as the actual regulator of political economy in Great Britain, namely, self-interest. Viewed according to the light of this principle, it was perfectly natural for those who were at once landlords and lawmakers, to secure to themselves the largest amount of rents; and to throw off, on others, the weight of every public burden. In former times, the system presented the resources of the poor, from the very land which produced the crop. But now, the whole crop is claimed for the benefit of the landlord; and the tax, for the support of the poor, is to 4

[Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was a Church of England clergyman whose “Essay on the Principle of Population” (London, 1798; rev. ed., 1803) argued for moral restraint in marriage in order to check the growth of population. Population, he held, when unchecked either by governmental means or by natural vices and disasters, tends to increase in geometrical ratio while food and sustenance increase in an arithmetical ratio. A geometrically-increasing population would eventually not have enough food. He also advocated the abolition of the poor laws in England in order to protect the limited means of the country for those who truly deserved them.]

7 ~ John Hughes

289

be gathered, not from those who grow the wheat, but from those who eat the bread; that is to say, in every nine cases out of ten, from the laboring classes themselves. Thus the laboring classes of England are placed as in a cleft stick, between capitalists and landlords and feel the effects of pressure from both sides: from the one side, in the reduction of wages; and from the other, in the increased prices of food. The consequence now is, that in that country, including the three kingdoms, there is poverty and distress, such as cannot be found in the civilized world besides. In other countries there is less of aggregate wealth; but in no nation is there to be found so much, or such intense, misery, as among the poor of England. Nothing can show this more fully than the official reports made, from time to time, by order of Parliament, on their condition. Leaving the condition of the agricultural laborers aside, the reports on the condition of laborers in mines and manufactories present a picture of physical and moral destitution such as it is appalling to contemplate. We read, for instance, of children’s being employed from the age of seven years and upward. And why is this? Because a child is as good as an adult person in waiting on the evolutions of machinery. Now the wages of a child is less than that of a man, and interest whispers to the employer to give the child the preference. It matters not that the delicate limbs of such beings are unable to support their bodies during the long hours of labor. It matters not that they become deformed, and contract physical maladies, which will accompany them through the remainder of their wretched lives. These things go on—for interest so determines it—until Parliament is at length obliged to pass enactments to interdict such outrages of the rights of childhood. It is quite honorable to the feelings of the English people that they should sympathize in the sufferings of those who are in the condition of slaves throughout the world. But while her gaze can extend across the Atlantic; and while her honest and genuine sympathy is often disgraced by the cant and fanaticism of those who would be its organs, surely it cannot be wrong for us to sympathize with those of her own population, whom avarice, or the interests of capital have buried in the bowels of the earth in her mining districts. Delicate women and tender children, as reported to Parliament, were found in the mines, with harness fitted to them, and obliged to drag loads on their hands

290

American Catholic Religious Thought

and knees, after the manner of beasts. Passing from these again, to the pauper class, we see that the public economy directs their classification in a manner such as, in some countries, would be regarded as a violation of the rights of human nature. The dearest ties—even those which constitute the last sweet drop, in the cup of poverty, are rudely disregarded and ruptured. Husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, are separated from each other, and distributed in the establishments of public relief, as if they were malefactors, guilty of some social crime. Now, the worst feature in this system of political economy is, not precisely that the facts are so; but that the prejudices of the nation, like the principles of the science itself, as looking to individual interest as the life-spring of society, do not allow them even to conceive that things ought to be otherwise. And so true is this, that, according to the recognized principle, you may pass all the various members of society in review, and you will be unable to discover to whom the fault belongs; and in fact, according to the principle of self-interest, the fault belongs nowhere! Every man for himself. SOCIALIST THEORIES AND PROGRAMS

It is the contemplation of all this that has impelled many benevolent, but, as I conceive, mistaken persons, to conclude that society in general is organized on a vicious principle. Individuals of this description have stood forth, in France, England, and this country also, flattering themselves with the hope of being able to withdraw some portion of their fellow-beings from the miseries which they regard as essentially connected with the actual state of things. For this purpose, various schemes, and schools of political economy have made their appearance, encouraging separate systems of private socialism, founded each on some favorite theory. These either have failed, or will fail; and principally for the reason that, while they have discovered the self-interest which operates so injuriously in the present systems, they have not discovered in those which they would substitute any other principle of sufficient power to correct it. This can be done only through a renovated faith, and a practical exercise of the virtues prescribed by religion. The tendency of society in general, at least in all that appertains to political economy, is in the opposite direction; and there

7 ~ John Hughes

291

is but little hope that its course will be arrested until nations, as well as individuals, shall have been punished for their great social error. RELIGIOUS SOLUTIONS

How much ink has been shed in describing the evils which now press on the people, at least the laboring classes, of Great Britain! How much of profound meditation has been employed, in vain efforts to find a solution for the social problem of that country! And though many of her statesmen have begun to trace these evils back to their true cause, yet few have proclaimed the discovery, and fewer still have ventured to suggest the true remedy. Sometimes the evils are charged to one cause, sometimes to another. Now, it is the “restrictions on commerce;” and now, is an “excess of population over and above the wants of consumption.” But no one has, as yet, contended for the true cause; that is, the absence of a religious power which should be able to extend the obligation of duties, in exact proportion with the extension of rights. The social machine, in its relations to political economy, has been left to regulate itself, by the spring of mere individual interest; and it is manifest that the weights and balances necessary to restore its equilibrium and to regulate its motion, cannot be adjusted except by the invocation of some extrinsic power, such as can be found in practical Christianity alone. The earth is not expected to furnish itself with light and heat: these come from the sun. So also, with regard to the practical political economy of modern nations—unless its lips be touched and purified with living coals from the altars of divine religion, it can never accomplish the entire purpose, according to which society is an institution of God. Any religion which can accomplish this, whatever may be the truth or the error of its other dogmas, will have rendered essential service to humanity. It is on this account that political economy, as a science, appears to me inadequate and defective. It would be more complete, and certainly more exalted, if, instead of regarding man as the mere “producer” and “consumer” of material wealth, it took cognizance of his intellectual, moral, and religious nature. It may, however, be objected, that these faculties, being spiritual and not material, have nothing to do with the subject. This seems to me an unfounded conclusion. The ancient Persians, for instance, held, as a religious opinion, that anything which could defile the waters

292

American Catholic Religious Thought

of the ocean was sinful. Here, then, is an important branch of political economy—maritime commerce—affected by a religious conviction. … In assuming the “importance of a Christian basis for political economy, I did not indeed imagine, as you may easily conceive, that the system now so deeply and almost universally established, could be transferred to any other foundation than that on which it rests. But when I consider the nature of the evils which press upon so large a portion of modern society, it seems to me that a preventive, if not a remedy, is discoverable in the political economy (so to call it) of the old Catholic Church. She had, preeminently, the faculty of guiding the affections and energies of mankind, in the direction most required by the actual wants of society in given times and circumstances. She differed from the modern religions, essentially on one great point; namely, that, while they teach that salvation is “by faith alone,” and that good works have no merit, though they are provided for, as consequences of faith, she taught that they are to be concomitants of belief; that faith without works, is dead in itself! and that whatever good we do to one of the least of Christ’s disciples, he will reward as if done to himself. This is the turning point of difference between the political economy of the Catholic Church and that of the religions which have been substituted in its stead. Thus, she created an interest not to be estimated by the acquisition or exchange of material wealth, but by the consideration of advantages in the spiritual order and in the life to come. This doctrine, like the principle of life in the human body, vivified the spirit, and influenced the actions of all her members. Besides, she conceived human nature as having been exalted and ennobled through the Incarnation and Redemption, by the Son of God. Hence she valued human beings according to the high dignity of their ransom, irrespective of wealth or poverty. She has, indeed, been reproached with the tendency to abridge the rights of men. But the explanation of this is to be found in the fact that the inherent selfishness of fallen humanity prompts them to claim injurious immunities; while, as she conceived, her office was to apportion duties according to the means which Providence furnished for the discharge of them. Men are prompt to assert their rights; but prone to forget that every right is accompanied with a corresponding duty. To every class and condition she assigned its own peculiar range of Christian

7 ~ John Hughes

293

obligation. To sovereigns and legislators, those of justice and mercy in the enactment and execution of laws. To the rich, moderation in enjoyment, and liberality toward the poor. To the poor, patience under their trials, and affection toward their wealthier brethren. Toward all, the common obligation of loving one another, not in word, but in deed. Neither was this by a uniform development of the principles of the Christian doctrine from the pulpit alone, but by a rigid process of self-examination and self-accusation, which was incumbent on every individual, when preparing for the sacraments of Penance and of the Holy Eucharist. Here, the lawgiver, the landlord, the capitalist, and the laborer—all men of all classes—were required to stand at least once a year in judgment upon themselves, in the presence of God and of his minister. Far be it from me to insinuate or assert, that these great leading duties are not set forth to the people by the religions which have taken the place of the Catholic faith in Great Britain. But I think it will be evident that, in them all, there are wanting the means for their practical inculcation. First, because the paramount motive has been utterly destroyed by rejecting the “merit of good works,” and proclaiming “salvation by faith alone.” It is, indeed, alleged that, by a higher motive still, works, as the consequence, or fruits, or evidence, of faith, are provided for. But still, those who enjoin works of this kind, since they declare them to be of “no merit” in the sight of God, seem to pull down with one hand what they have built up with the other. Besides this, in the new system of religion, every man claims to be the judge of his moral duties, as well as of his religious faith. Thus you perceive that the only motives left, as inducements for the performance of good works, in this system, are essentially of the human and temporal order. Now the manifestations of these fundamental principles are obvious, in the social developments under the influence of the two religions. Of its consequences, in the one case, the preceding remarks of this lecture are a sufficient exhibition. Rights are claimed—interests are prosecuted—every one that can, throws the burden from himself. Each is the judge of his own moral and social duties—and self-love blinds him against what would require the sacrifice of his material interests, even if religion presented any adequate motive for making that sacrifice. Wealth is accumulating enormously on one side—poverty, deep

294

American Catholic Religious Thought

and distressing, spreads on the other: England is the richest and the poorest country on the globe; and where, or to whom, belongs the guilt of this social anomaly, no man can determine! The type of the other doctrine has developed itself in those principles and institutions which incur the censure, and sometimes the hatred, even of those who are the victims of their overthrow. If they were errors in religion, it is the more to be regretted, as they would have been blessings in social, if not in political economy. They would have been, first of all, a merciful resource for the condition of the poor, which now constitutes the great puzzle of Political Economists, throughout the three kingdoms. The interests of man—taking in his spiritual nature and his eternal destiny—would be surveyed from a high and holy eminence. And when the rich man gave of his abundance to the needy, he would be acting, not against, but according to this principle of Christian interest. When the prince or the noble, moved by the “Amor Jesu nobilis” descended from his elevated position, to put on the sandals, the garment, and the girdle of religious poverty, in some monastic order, he understood, perfectly well, what he was about—comprehended the advantage of the step; and, whether he was mistaken or not, his determination was of infinite importance to the condition of the destitute. He became poor from a religious motive, having first, perhaps, given his property to the relief of the class to whose condition he attached himself. He became their mediator with the rich—his own example had a powerful influence on them—he represented the necessity of alms-deeds—he spoke of their common Savior, as having, in his own person, selected the condition of poverty; and reminded them that whatever they did for their suffering brethren, was done for Christ. It was by the spirit of this doctrine of good works, that hospitals and asylums for the afflicted, sprang, as if spontaneously, into existence, in all parts of Great Britain, as well as of other European countries. It was by this that every kind of social evil, whether in physical suffering or in moral destitution, found whole armies of volunteers, ready to go in the face of pestilence and death, and this without human recompense, to counteract its ravages. It was by this, that individuals were constantly found ready to devote themselves to every species of good works.

7 ~ John Hughes

295

The question in connection with this subject, is not whether these individuals were acting under a genuine principle of Christianity or not—but it is, whether their devotion had any bearing upon the political economy of the country. That it had, is in my mind, beyond dispute. Firstly: In such a state of things, no poor law would be necessary. Secondly: The burden of their support would not be regarded as a burden, but as a privilege, and would fall on individuals in the rank of landlords and capitalists, instead of laborers as at present. Thirdly: The expense of supporting the poor would not be increased by the enormous sums which are paid to state officers, in that department. Fourthly: The ecclesiastical revenues, which have now quite a different direction, would be applied to that purpose. Fifthly: But besides all this, the influence of the doctrine I have alluded to, would infuse a spirit of gentle kindness into the treatment of the poor, which would leave no room for those dark and bitter passions against society, with which their breasts are now, too often, agitated; for it is a shocking feature of our times, that distinguished writers on political economy, have gone so far, as to maintain that poverty when it reaches the point of destitution ought to be treated as “infamy,” in order to make the struggle for self-support of the sinking laborer “honorable.” If this reasoning, and these reflections be correct we see what has been the cause of the prevailing distress; and what would have been the preventive or the remedy. And in either case, the great social calamity which is every day becoming more and more formidable, in the estimation of British statesmen and political economists, instead of being, as it now is, apparently irremediable, would never have existed at all. Some may imagine that in following out this subject, my judgment has been warped by a natural partiality for the religion to which I belong. This is, indeed, possible; but I can only say, that if it be true, I am entirely unconscious of it. Neither, at the present day, are these views peculiar to Catholics: a declaration briefly uttered, among others, by a distinguished Protestant statesman, Lord John Manners, expresses a similar conclusion, when he says, “that the re-establishment of the monasteries which have been destroyed, can alone provide a suitable remedy for the condition of the poor.”5 5

[John Manners (1818-1906), Conservative Party member, was a leader of the Young Englanders and an active social reformer in the British Parliament.]

296

American Catholic Religious Thought

What, we may now ask, would be the influence of the political economy of the ancient Church on the class of society immediately next above pauperism: Of this we may judge by the fact already noticed, that during its prevalence, the English laborer could exchange a day’s work for four or five times the quantity of food which a day’s labor will now bring. But what it may be asked, had the doctrines of the Church to do with a result like this? They had simply this: that from principles already referred to, her policy, if I can use the expression, was directed to, or at least resulted in, two consequences; one was, to keep up the value of labor; the other, to keep down the price of bread. Both of these objects were included in the economy of religious festivals, which gave increased value to labor, by diminishing the amount of production. Rich and poor, assembled on an equality around the altars. Those days furnished leisure for the poor to be instructed, at least, in their Christian hopes and duties; as well as to repose from toil. The ceremonies of the Church—the grandeur and beauty of its architecture—the works of painting, and art, and music which could be enjoyed within its walls—exercised a refining influence on their feelings and manners, in the absence of that popular education which the multiplication of books and the improvements in knowledge have since so much facilitated. It is to be observed, however, to those who understand no more of the subject, than the silly charge that, “the Church in all this encouraged idleness,” a more unfounded imputation could scarcely be conceived. The principle of the Church, on that subject, may be seen in the rules of her religious orders. In these, you will find time so distributed, as to allow periods for labor—for reading—prayer—repose—but not one moment for idleness. It is to be remembered, also, that these holidays in no way interfered with the crops or productions of the earth. For, not only was labor allowed, but in many cases, absolutely enjoined, even on Sundays, when the inclemencies of the season endangered the productions of the earth. What then was the result in the light of political economy? Simply that which was most important for the consideration of the laboring classes. The evils of over-production were provided against; and thus, the value and adequate price of labor were maintained. Had this system been continued, seasons of rest would have been provided for, and regularly distributed, at intervals, throughout the year. But these

7 ~ John Hughes

297

days were abolished; and after capitalists had realized the advantages of the change, its rebound fell, with terrible effect, upon the laborers. Even at reduced wages, they have to encounter seasons when employment is denied for weeks and months. And why is this? It is from over-production; the very evil which the economy of the Church in the observance of holidays was calculated to prevent. In the actual condition of the laborers the want of employment is synonymous with the want of food; and when the cry of distress rings in the ears of their rulers, it is too often ascribed to other, than the real causes. The author of the “Essay on Population,” Malthus, startled Europe with the theory, that mankind increases in a ratio disproportioned to the means of their support. He maintained that, inasmuch as population increases in a geometrical ratio, and the agricultural productions of the earth, only in an arithmetical degree; therefore a time must come, when the excess of the former over the amount of the latter, would require that a large portion of the human race should perish! In this, there is some ground to believe, that he was misled by confounding the excess of “production” with excess of “population.” If the island of Great Britain were the only agricultural soil on the globe, then, indeed, with its present population, his theory might be correct. But the earth is teeming with fertility, which the industry of man has not yet turned to account. If the interested policy of England allowed other nations to send their surplus agricultural produce, in fair exchange, for her industrial fabrics, there would be no need for the invention of this theory. It is estimated that the valley of the Mississippi, alone, could furnish the staple of life for a population of one hundred and twenty-five millions. And yet the genius of political economy, in England, was such as to conceal this fact from the mind of Malthus. And instead of allowing the bread of that valley to reach the hungry operatives of Manchester; in other words, instead of diminishing the material interests of the British landholder, he allowed himself, to be thrown on the horrible alternative of recommending, as a prospective remedy, that the increase of population should, as much as possible, be prevented by restraints on the marriage of the poor. But what is more surprising still, is that his theory should have been received with approbation by distinguished writers on political economy. Indeed, so far is this true, that the doctrine is now boldly asserted, that in real-

298

American Catholic Religious Thought

ity the pauper has no more right to quarter himself on the public for support than the rich man; that if he be so supported, it is owing to the humanity of the public, but not due, as a right, to his condition. The universal doctrine prevalent is, that every man has “a right to do what he pleases with his own;” consequently, that, unless compelled by law, he has a right to refuse relief from his property, and leave the sufferer to die! When Sir Robert Peel, on a late occasion, declared, in Parliament, that property had “duties as well as rights,” the sentiment was re-echoed by the press, with one chorus of astonishment; as if an axiom of morals, as old as the Christian religion, were a recent discovery made by the minister.6 But, supposing we admit the correctness of the conclusion at which Malthus arrived, how awful and retributive is the vindication which it furnishes of the social economy of the Church in the sanctioning of voluntary celibacy! The nation that denounced celibacy when it was a voluntary choice, in the clergy and in the monastic institutions, are reduced to the necessity of recommending the enforcement of it by compulsion, in regard to the poor. If that institution had continued, how great would have been the public economy in the support of the clergy! One-twentieth part of the revenues of the Church, at the present time, would be sufficient to support a single, that is, unmarried clergyman, in the proportion of one to every one thousand souls of the population. If it be said, that the ecclesiastical revenues return to the people, through some other channel, a better condition would be that nineteen-twentieths of it should not have been taken from them at all. But even the economy would not be the only advantage. The influence of such a ministry of religion, acting in a moral direction, could not but produce the happiest effects among that portion of mankind who are compelled to toil daily for the means of subsistence. Their pleasures would be of a more rational, more elevating, and, at the same time, more economical description. Their feelings and manners would be softened and improved, by the influence of religion and frequent intercourse with its ministers. Their moral faculties would be cultivated; and, if the trials of life bore heavily upon them, religion 6

[Sir Robert Peel (1788-1850) was British Prime Minister (1834-35, 184146) and founder of the Conservative Party in England. He was primarily responsible in 1846 of repealing the Corn Laws.]

7 ~ John Hughes

299

would still be near, to console them with the promised hopes and joys of another world. Such are the results of political economy, as based on the principle of individual material interest. It might possibly suffice, if the means of protecting—each his own interest—were equal in the hands of all. But what chance have the poor against the rich? the weak against the strong, under such a system? When all the social elements of material industry, of consumption, production, capital and labor, wealth of nations in general, all resolve themselves, by common consent and established usage, into mere personal selfishness? Could any other result have been reasonably expected, by men who understand the feelings and passions of poor fallen nature? And what remedy can be applied now? Alas! whatever remedy either wisdom or philanthropy might suggest, will come too late for many of the victims that are sinking under this state of things. And it is feared, even by wise men, that they will lead, at no remote period, if they continue on, to some social catastrophe, such as one shudders to think of. Unquestionably, in the system itself, there are elements for mitigating these miseries. But the measures for that purpose can only be presented in the aggregate of abstract interest, and are still violently opposed by the selfishness of coteries, and of individuals who have power to resist them. The only way to apply a corrective to the root of the evil, would be, not indeed to destroy the principle of interest, but to enlarge it, to an extent corresponding with the whole nature and destiny of man, as made known through the lessons of our divine Redeemer. Bring temporal interests into harmony with spiritual—infuse some portion of the attributes of God, justice and mercy, into the minds and hearts of princes, of legislators, of nobles, of landlords; yea, if possible, of capitalists and money-changers themselves, as the Christian rules, for their thoughts and actions toward the weaker classes of their countrymen. Persuade them, not only that there is a God in heaven, but also that he is the common Father of all, rich and poor; that they ought to love each other. Bring their hearts nearer to each other—unite and bind them together, not only as citizens of the same country, but also as aspirants to the same immortal life and eternal glory. Any effort toward this will be a step in the great cause of society and human nature. All this the Church would have done, without seeming to spend a thought

300

American Catholic Religious Thought

upon it, if you had allowed her to continue the peaceful mission with which her Founder sent her forth to the nations of the earth. In times of barbarism she was the means of erecting for your forefathers a noble and majestic social edifice, sufficiently ample to shield and protect them all. She would have enlarged, improved, and adorned it, in proportion to your increasing numbers, and the varying wants of your condition. But you overthrew this, and built for yourselves an incongruous and misshapen structure. You are fain to call it a social edifice! But no; its true name is a temple of interest. Princes, and lords, and capitalists are indeed well provided for, beneath its glittering arches—a few others still may find protection within its vestibule; but as for you, oh ye millions of the poor and laboring classes, who are called and compelled to worship at its shrine, ye are strewn around its outer porches; and, instead of its sheltering you from the storm and the rains of adversity, you are even drenched with the waters that descend from its roof. Go back among the ruins of former things, you may still find and trace out the deep foundations of the better edifice you destroyed. And, if there be no other hope for you, cooperate with divine religion in rearing up its stately walls, and its capacious dome, beneath which, even as regards your temporal condition, you, or at least, the heirs of your condition, your children, may yet find shelter and protection.

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES John Hughes and John Breckenridge, Controversy Between Rev. Messrs. Hughes and Breckenridge, on the Subject “Is the Protestant Religion the Religion of Christ?” (Philadelphia: E. Cummiskey, 1833). A Discussion of the Question, Is the Roman Catholic Religion, in any or in all its Principles or Doctrines, Inimical to the Civil or Religious Liberty and of the Question, Is the Presbyterian Religion in any or in all its Principles or Doctrines Inimical to Civil or Religious Liberty (Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1836). Lawrence Kehoe, ed., Complete Works of the Most Rev. John Hughes, D.D., Archbishop of New York; Comprising His Sermons, Letters, Lectures, Speeches, etc., 2 vols. (New York: Lawrence Kehoe, 1865).

7 ~ John Hughes

301 SECONDARY SOURCES

Joseph Chinnici, “Spiritual Capitalism and the Culture of American Catholicism,” U. S. Catholic Historian 5 (1986): 131-61. Jay P. Dolan, “A Critical Period in American Catholicism,” The Review of Politics 35 (October, 1973): 523-36. John R. G. Hasard, Life of The Most Reverend John Hughes, D.D., First Archbishop of New York, with Extracts from his Private Correspondence (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1866). R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), especially chapter 2. Richard Shaw, Dagger John: The Unquiet Life and Times of Archbishop John Hughes of New York (New York: Paulist Press, 1977).

8 ~ Catholicism and Slavery American Catholic intellectual responses to the slavery issue, as indicated in the Introduction, varied from theological justification of the institution to a moral emphasis on the respective rights and duties of masters and slaves to moral opposition to the continuation of the institution. For the most part, though, there was no joint episcopal statement on the church’s teachings on slavery. The following two essays in the Baltimore Metropolitan Magazine and Cincinnati’s Catholic Telegraph reflect two of the different approaches to slavery in the Catholic community. The first essay, written perhaps by the editor of the Metropolitan, Father Charles Ignatius White, illustrates the Southern Catholic Whig mentality but it was also an opinion that was widely shared in the North, as was evident in its republication on the front page of the Boston Pilot. The second essay, written by Father Edward Purcell, the editor of the Telegraph during the Civil War, supported President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and claimed that the Catholic Church had a long history in favor of emancipation. Purcell’s essay was attacked by James A. McMaster, editor of the New York Freeman’s Journal, charging that Purcell did not know his history and that the Catholic Church had always been favorable to slavery, finding nothing inherently sinful in the institution. The debate on slavery between the Telegraph and the Freeman’s Journal continued in editorial after editorial throughout 1863.

******

304

American Catholic Religious Thought

TEXTS I. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE QUESTION OF SLAVERY Source: Metropolitan Magazine (Baltimore) 3 (June 1855): 265-73. Reprint in Boston Pilot 19 (September, 20, 1856): 1.

In other ages, those who withdrew from the Catholic Church were rent into parties by diversity of opinion on points of dogma. In our age, however, dogmatic theology has become too absolute to afford matter for a schism; the only resource left is to fly to Theologia Moralis, to find some new point on which to differ, as creeds and symbols are no longer binding. Sin abounds, or rather sins abound; yet not in sufficient number to please some tastes, and a new commandment is added to the decalogue. Many men in England rolled in luxurious ease on the wealth hoarded up by their ancestors in the successful prosecution of the slave trade. They had time to view slavery at leisure; they viewed it at a distance, that the latter quality might lend an enchantment which proximity would dispel; they viewed it and agreed that it was a sin to own a slave. Such being the case, you may perhaps suppose that they like some foolish people in the Middle Ages, gave up the property which had been acquired by the slave trade, and devoted it to the relief of the enslaved descendants of those whom their forefathers had wronged. No! no! They held on to that, but they took the public money, to manumit the slaves in the colonies; and the world applauded their heroic sacrifice. The fever then passed to America; and all Protestantism was asked to accept the new commandment, “Thou shalt not hold a slave.” Those who had no slaves agreed; those who had refused. The justified man at the North would not communicate with the sinner at the South. A schism ensued, and there arose a Methodist church North, and a Methodist church South, and what was sin in the North was no sin at the South, so that a man dying in Charleston would go to heaven, who had he died at New York, would, cateris paribus, have had to go the other way.

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

305

Other religious sects split on the same rock and divided; the Episcopalians long held back, but now even some of their bishops denounce slavery, and their papers take the same ground. Last year three thousand Protestant clergymen of various denominations rebuked Congress, and in the name of the Almighty denounced the Nebraska bill.1 Throughout the land only one religious body has kept aloof from this political question which threatens to convulse the union, and that body is one which every pulpit, newspaper and brawler charges with ever interfering in politics. The Catholic Church alone stands aloof, and though most powerful at the North gives no countenance to abolitionism. For this offense Catholicity has drawn on it the ire of those who denounced Congress. Soaring aloft in the murky clouds of his German Pantheism, and mist-veiled unintelligibility of infidelity, Theodore Parker of Boston cries, “There are noble ministers of all sects save the Catholic. I never knew of a Catholic priest who favored freedom in America, as slave himself, the mediaeval! theocracy! eats the heart!! out from the celibate!!!! monk!!!!!.”2 Some years since the late Pope, the unswerving Gregory XVI,3 issued a bull against the slave trade, a traffic very extensively carried on in the Northern cities even now. A member of the Cabinet at Washington, himself a Southerner, thereupon denounced the Pope and the Catholics as abolitionists;4 and at the very same time the abolitionists 1

2

3

4

[The Kansas-Nebraska Bill was put to the Senate by Stephen Douglas in 1854. It allowed for states to enter into the union with or without slavery as they chose. Henry Ward Beecher was among the most outspoken against it, condemning the bill from his pulpit and raising money to supply arms for those who would oppose slavery.] [The substance, but not the exact quotation, of Parker’s remarks are found in “An Anti-Slavery Address,” in Theodore Parker Centenary Edition, vol. 12, ed. F. B. Sanborn (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1907), 167.] [Bartolommeo Alberto Cappellari (1765-1846) served as Pope Gregory XVI from 1831 to 1846. In 1839 he promulgated In Supremo Apostolatus condemning the slave trade. For the English translation, see Ignatius Aloysius Reynolds, ed., The Works of Right Rev. John England, 3:111-12] [John Forsyth (1780-1841), Senator of Georgia, was appointed Secretary of State by President Andrew Jackson in 1834 and continued under President Martin Van Buren. Although a Unionist and in favor of abolishing the

306

American Catholic Religious Thought

denounced us as fautors of slavery, and sent an address to President Boyer to induce him to exclude Bishop England,5 who had been sent to St. Domingo as apostolic legate. It may therefore not be amiss to state briefly what the Catholic Church holds on the question of slavery; what she has done for the temporal and eternal well-being of the slave in preceding ages and in our own, and what it does for the freed Negroes in the United States. We shall endeavor to establish this point; that as the Catholic Church alone by gradual and gentle steps abolished slavery in Europe, so she alone can abolish it in America. Has the Catholic Church taken any stand in the matter of slavery? We follow no new lights, The path our fathers trod We travel in the trusting hope, That it doth lead to God. Our Fathers’ ancient hope, Our Fathers’ ancient way, We hold not turn to worship yet At shrines of yesterday.

It may be well for new made creeds to ordain and determine until they have at last a settled system. Synods and conventions, classes and quarterly meetings may well meet in the nineteenth century to determine what is, and what is not, sin. Ages since, when Christianity superseded the worship of Baal, Woden, and Jupiter, our ancestors learned the decalogue and its exposition. Heirs of their Christianity, we hold like them that it is not a sin forbidden by the law of God to

5

slave-trade, Forsyth was a supporter of the institution and of state rights on the subject of domestic slavery.] [In 1833, Pope Gregory XVI sent Bishop John England as an apostolic delegate to Haiti as part of an attempt to negotiate a concordat between Haiti and the Vatican. On this, see Richard W. Rousseau, “Bishop John England: 1837 Relazione to Rome on his Haitian Mission,” Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 11 (1973): 269-88. England’s letters on domestic slavery were written to John Forsyth, arguing against his charge that the Catholic Church was abolitionist.]

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

307

hold a fellow man in bondage. The apostolic men who converted the pagan nations of Europe, the Gaul, the German, the Briton and the Celt, nowhere required the slave holder to manumit his serfs. The scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages, patrons as they were of human liberty, never in their most subtle argumentations discovered a sin in the relation of master and slave. The relation of servitude had existed from the time when man began war on man, from the time when society began to deprive the culprit of his liberty and make him a servant of the people: it existed in our Savior’s time, and is nowhere condemned in the gospel: it existed until the Church in the Middle Ages, ages of light and Christian heroism, abolished slavery not by anathema, not by distorting the gospel doctrine, or usurping God’s prerogative, but by counsel, advice, example, her great and mighty weapons. So too in our day, when wealth madly pursued seems to govern the world, men are found to denounce the possession of property as a sin, and to call for a division, in order to remedy the evils which materialism has produced. But what is the course of the Church? She, too, sees the evil; she saw it before, when the crusades opened to Europe the rich commerce of the East; she then checked the evil not by making sin what was not sin, but by counsel and example; by creating religious orders to glory in their poverty; to ennoble poverty; to exalt poverty; so that kings laid down their crowns, and merchants left their counting rooms to become as poor as Lazarus at the rich man’s gate. To return to the Catholic Church on the question of slavery, we cannot do better than translate from the Moral Theology of the present Archbishop of Baltimore6 the principal passages relating to this relation: merely adding, that moderate in his opinions here, as on every other topic, he gives the opinion of the moralists whom the Church has constantly approved. 6

[Francis Patrick Kenrick (1796-1863) was Bishop of Philadelphia from 1830 until he was appointed Archbishop of Baltimore in 1851. His views on slavery were published in his Theologia Moralis, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: Eugene Cummisky, 1841-43), a text that was regularly used in seminaries in the antebellum period.]

308

American Catholic Religious Thought

“As all men,” says Archbishop Kenrick, “are by nature equal, no one is by nature master of another; yet by the law of nations not only the dominion of jurisdiction, but also the dominion of property is granted to man over man; and this the old law ratified (Exod. 20; Lev. 25). The apostles found slavery existing amongst most nations and did not condemn it (Eph. 6:5). With these authorities before her eyes, the Church in the Council of Gangres7 anathematized those who seduced slaves from their owners on a pretext of religion; but as far as it could, favored human liberty, by exhorting masters to manumit their slaves, until, slavery having been gradually and insensibly abolished, Alexander III, in 1167, forbade Christians to be held as slaves.”8 He then proceeds to treat of slavery in the United States. “What,” he says, “is to be thought of slavery as it exists in the Southern and Western States? Truly, in this plentitude of liberty in which we all glory, it is to be regretted that there are so many slaves, and that to prevent their rising, laws have been passed to prevent their education, often a serious hindrance to the practices of religion. But in this condition of the republic, nothing is to be done against the laws.”9 “It may be asked, whether masters may retain as slaves, men whose ancestors seem to have been unjustly brought hither from Africa? We think the answer must be affirmative, for defect of title must be considered cured by lapse of time, otherwise the state of society would be ever uncertain, in constant danger of outbreaks.”10 Such is the doctrine which he lays down as regards the owner and his rights: and he proceeds to discuss the duties arising out of the relation of master and slave. Then as to third parties, he no less clearly lays down their duties: “Nor should we do or say anything illegally by 7

8

9 10

[The Council of Gangra took place c. 345 in Paphlagonia. Its main purpose was to defend marriage against a false asceticism. Mansi 2 (1759), cols. 1095-1112; Hardouin 1 cols. 529-40.] [Theologiae Moralis, 2 vols. (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1861), 1:164-65. See also Bishop England’s Works (1849 ed.) 3:118: “All our theologians have from the earliest epoch sustained, that though in a state of pure nature all men are equal, yet the natural law does not prohibit one man from having dominion over the useful action of another as his slave, provided this dominion be obtained by a just title.”] Theologiae Moralis [1861 ed.], 1:165. Ibid., 166.

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

309

which slaves may be liberated, or on account of which they may be discontented with their state.” “We have the authority of the apostles before us; those who neglect it, seeking for humanity sake, to disturb the whole state of society, generally render the condition of slaves worse then before.”11 Such is the doctrine of the Church as formally laid down by the highest theological authority in the United States: and it is repeated in the letters of the late Bishop England on slavery, addressed to the Hon. John Forsyth, to the able letters of the Bishop of Charleston we refer all who wish authorities for the opinion of the Church at various epochs, authorities showing a perfect uniformity of sentiment. The Catholic Church acknowledges slavery as a civil institution. When Bishop England was asked, “whether he was friendly to the existence or continuation of slavery,” he replied, “I am not—but I also see the impossibility of now abolishing it here. When it can and ought to be abolished, is a question for the legislature and not for me.”12 In like manner the Church has always left it to the civil power to abolish slavery, but has at all times shown her love for the slave and her desire to secure his manumission. At the establishment of the Church, slavery was universal and the word “servant” in the Scriptures is rarely susceptible of the meaning of hireling; its general signification is that of slave. As Christianity spread it made the slave more resigned to his lot, the master more indulgent to one whom he had learned to regard as his fellow member in Christ, heir like himself to the eternal promises. Even as early as the canons and constitutions of the apostles this is inculcated; and the next step of the Church was to check the power of life and death which the Roman law gave the master over his slave. In 304 the Council of Elvira13 subjected to a penance of seven years the mistress who, by excessive punishment, caused the death of her slave; and reduced the period of penance to five years only when the mistress had no intention of causing 11 12

13

Ibid., 166. [See John England, “Domestic Slavery” in The Works of the Right Reverend John England, 7 vols. (Cleveland, OH: Arthur H. Clark, 1908), 5: 311.] [The Council of Elvira was held in Illiberis, Spain. It focused mostly upon disciplinary, not doctrinal issues. The canon in question is canon 5, “si domina per zelum ancillam occiderit.” See Mansi, vol. 2, col. 146.]

310

American Catholic Religious Thought

death. So generally was this step welcomed, that in 320 Constantine formally took the power of life and death from the master, and gave the civil judges sole cognizance of offences committed by slaves. To confirm this the Church in the Synod of Epaone14 excommunicated any man who slew his slave without the knowledge of the judge. The marriage of slaves was the next object of attention. “It was imperatively demanded, by the very nature of the case, that some restraint should be placed upon that absolute power which the owners had and sometimes uses of wantonly separating man and wife.” The State passes laws preventing it, and the Church by its censures checked concubinage and gave security to marriage. The next step was to encourage the manumission of worthy slaves: this was done frequently in church, in the presence of the bishop and with something of a religious formality. Ere long slavery was to a great extent abolished throughout the Roman empire. It arose again, however, introduced by the northern nations. The Scandinavians were the great pirates and slave dealers of the North: they carried off captives from various parts and sold them on the continent: but this slavery too yielded to the general spread of Christianity and faded away leaving it as a kind of axiom that no Christian could be held as a slave. A third period of slavery arose from the antagonism of Christianity and Mohammedanism on the Mediterranean. According even to the doctrine of the English jurist, Lord Coke,15 there is necessarily perpetual war between the Christians as servants of Christ and Mohammedans as subjects of the devil: and the captive Moor was sold as a slave in the same way that in Moorish Spain and the Barbary States the Christian prisoner was reduced to bondage. The wars against the Moors led to invasions of Africa, to Negro slavery, and to its transplantation from Africa to Europe. The discovery of America and the want of laborers in the new states formed by the Spaniards and Portuguese, led to the transplantation of slavery to the new world; the Dutch, first taking the lead as slave traders. 14

15

[The Council of Epaone (517) took place in Burgundy. The reference is to canon 34, “si quis servum proprium sine conscientia judicis occiderit.” See Mansi, vol. 8, col. 563.] [Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), Institutes of the Laws of England (1644).]

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

311

Every European nation that settled any portion of America recognized the right of reducing infidels to slavery and acted on it; the Indians as pagans were everywhere sold as slaves; and with the English the fact that the poor red man had been converted and baptized by French or Spanish missionaries did not save him. New England, where books are now written to depict with all the zealous glow of virtuous indignation, the manner in which the Indians were enslaved in the West Indies, then found those very West Indies a most convenient market for Indian slaves, taken in war like the Pequods and Narragansetts, or seized by treachery like the Abenakis and Miemacs, or taken on predatory excursions like “the Christian converts of the Spanish priests” on the Apalachee. With the rapid extinction of the Indians ceased the slavery of the red man; that of the Negro has been perpetuated in America. Canada, a colony of France was, we venture to say, never sullied by slavery: but it prevailed in New England, the Dutch colony on the Hudson, the Swedish settlements on the Delaware, and in all the English colonies to the south, as well as in the Spanish and Portuguese possessions in other parts. A wide difference, however, prevailed between the Catholic and Protestant colonies in regard to the slaves. The former by law required the slaves to be instructed in Christianity and secured to them certain rights and privileges: the latter recollecting the old maxim, that Christianity and slavery were incompatible, prohibited the baptism of slaves, and resisted every attempt made to instruct them. Even in our day the legislation of many States shows that this feeling has not entirely died away. In the space which a magazine can afford to devote, we cannot give anything like a history of Negro slavery in the various parts of America. To show what Catholicity has done for the Negroes, we may cite a few examples: At the close of the sixteenth century, Father Alphonso de Sandoval,16 a Jesuit, devoted himself entirely to the good of the Negro slaves, but in his labors, devotedness and care of those unfortunate men was far surpassed by his successor, the blessed Peter Claver,17 whose wonder16

[Alonso de Sandoval (1552-1634) was a Jesuit theologian and missionary to the slaves of Cartagena, a seaport of northwestern Columbia on the Caribbean coast. He wrote two books, Naturaleza, policía sagrada y profana,

312

American Catholic Religious Thought

ful life has so recently been set before us as a model. From 1615 to 1650 this apostolic man was, to use his own language, the slave of the slave. He boarded the slavers that came to Carthagena before they came to land, in order to console the poor African: he tended the sick, instructed all. Landed and placed in the shops for sale, they were still his care: sold on plantations or in the city he visited them regularly: his church was theirs alone: the rich whites had plenty to minister to them, he was the priest, the friend, the slave of the poor Negro. He procured them refreshments, amusements for their holidays, he superintended their whole conduct, was ever interceding for them with their masters. Far from the conduct of the modern friends of the Black, he did not incite them to revolt; on the contrary, he used every argument which faith could supply to reconcile them to their lot. What was the result? His power was unlimited. “He seemed to haunt the city like a very spirit. If the wild music which they brought from Africa tempted the Negroes to join the lascivious dance, the Father’s form suddenly appeared among them and they fled at his approach. Nay, it happened at times, that if a Negro approached a Negress in the streets, and words of evil intent were spoken between them, all on a sudden, with the cry “Father Claver is coming!” they would break away from each other, though the bystanders looked around and saw no Father Claver there. When the lash was about to descend mercilessly on the trembling slave, as though he knew by instinct where his Negroes were suffering, his appearance arrested the uplifted arm.” Wherever a poor outcast slave lay neglected in hut or hovel or by the wayside, his all-seeing charity discovered him and bore him, in his arms to some hospital. His mighty example ennobled more slaves, liberated more, exalted more than all the societies ever erected for the amelioration of the condition of the Black. Color was forgotten: the slaves, submissive

17

costumbres, ritos y supersticiones de todos los Etíopes (1627) and De instauranda aethiopum salute (1641), that are of central historical significance for understanding the conditions of the African slaves in Columbia.] Peter Claver (1581-1654) came to Cartagena in 1610 as a Jesuit novice, was ordained in 1615, and worked as a missionary to the African slaves. He baptized and instructed over 300,000 Africans in Cartagena. He was canonized in 1888 and his feast day is celebrated on September 9th.]

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

313

to his master, won respect: the brutal master forbore to ill treat one whom a Claver held in respect.18 Almost at the same time a mulatto was the object of the veneration of Lima. The blessed Martin Porras,19 a lay brother of the order of St. Dominic, was the son of a Negress: but in spite of his color, ignoble birth and humble capacity he acquired by the influence of his virtues an unlimited power over the minds of men. But he never forgot his origin; he was a poor mulatto; infirmarian in the hospital, he always sought to humble himself to all: of his mother’s enslaved race he was ever the friend, the consoler and the guide. His example was not without its effect: men, who revered Porras on bended knee as a living temple of the Holy Ghost, could not but treat their Negroes with forbearance. But these cases were in distant parts. We have a striking one which happened in the City of New York in the year 1741, that is, more than a century ago. The city was then alarmed by reports of a Negro plot to burn the city and massacre the inhabitants: of course no plot in those days could do without the Irish having a share in it: an Irish army was accordingly to join the insurgents, a priest was then required to complete all: an unfortunate non-juring Anglican clergyman, a sharer in what would now be called the Puseyism20 of Atterbury’s 18

19

20

See the Life of the Blessed Claver, by Fleuriau. [Bertrand Gabrial Fleuriau, La vie du vénérable Pere Pierre Claver de la Compagnie de Jesus, apôtre de Cartagene et des Indes Occidentales, par le P. Bertrand-Gabriel Fleuriau de la même Compagnie (Paris: Chez Bordelet, 1751; Paris: Gaume Frères, 1830). Eng. Trans. The Life of the Venerable Father Claver, S.J., Apostle of the West Indies (New York: Dunigan, 1849).] [Martin de Porres (1579-1639) was born in Peru the illegitimate son of a Spanish noblemen and a freed Black slave. After nine years as a lay helper in the Dominican order, his superiors requested that he make full profession as a religious. Although he was eventually spiritual director to his entire community, he referred to himself as a “poor slave” or “mulatto dog.” He was canonized in 1962. His feast day is celebrated on November 3rd.] [Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882) was an Anglican priest and theologian and leader of the Oxford Movement. Condemned for his Catholic views the term “Puseyism” was synonymous with “Tractarianism.”]

314

American Catholic Religious Thought

party,21 was unfortunately for himself pronounced to be a Catholic priest in disguise. All was now ready: arrests were made, trials had, white men hanged, Black men burnt. The number of innocent men who perished from poor Mr. Ury22 down to poor Negro Cuffee23 is perfectly appalling. Of the Negroes concerned in this plot some were Spanish Negroes taken on a Spanish vessel in time of war and sold as slaves, instead of being treated as prisoners of war, for they were freed men. Most, however, of those executed were Negroes raised in the colony by English or Dutch families. The former were wronged, and could scarcely be blamed for attempting to recover their natural freedom, had they really done so; the latter were turning on those who had owned them from the cradle, to whom they were bound by many ties. But what is more, the former showed education, talent, all that constitutes a man; the latter were like dumb cattle. Unaided by a lawyer, for every member of the bar was arrayed against them, the Spanish Negroes took objections which certainly would have weight: with any but a prejudiced judge; yet in spite of all their arguments and testimony 21

22

23

[Reference is to another Anglican Minister, Francis Atterbury (1662-1732). Having sympathies for the Stuart’s claim to the English throne he was linked to the plot of 1722, stripped of his offices, and banished.] [In 1741 several fires broke out in New York from suspected arson, and 32 people were executed in connection with what was called the “Great Negro Plot” or the “New York Conspiracy.” John Ury, a former Anglican minister and non-juror was prosecuted as part of the conspiracy under charges of being an “ecclesiastical person.” He was painted as a Catholic Papist spy for Spain. He was hanged on August 29th, 1741, still professing his innocence. See, Thomas J. Davis, A Rumor of Revolt (New York: The Free Press, 1985), 161-65, 181, 194-201, 226-31.] [Two slaves by the name of Cuffee were executed in connection with the fires of 1741. Reference here is probably to the Cuffee who, along with Quack, were brought to trial for actually starting two of the fires. On the day they were to be executed by burning at the stake both confessed and implicated eight other men. Daniel Horsmanden (1694-1778), Supreme Court Justice and city recorder of New York, stayed the execution in order to obtain a reprieve but because the crowd grew to a restless mob the execution went ahead before a reprieve could be obtained. See Davis, A Rumor of Revolt,12-21, 96-97.]

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

315

they were condemned. The New York Negroes made no attempt at defense, and were indeed incapable of making any. In many cases they made any accusation or admission that was asked. At the stake the difference was ever greater. The poor native Negroes were led out like so many brutes, unattended by any clergyman, with no attempt to convert them, but chained to the stake and burned amid their howls of despair. The conduct of the Spanish, and consequently Catholic, Negroes was striking, even to the savage Justice Horsmanden,24 who chronicles the plot. Priest there was none to prepare them for death; they were left to themselves. “Juan de Sylva, the Spanish Negro,” say Horsmanden, “condemned for the conspiracy, was this day executed according to sentence; he was neatly dressed in a white shirt, jacket, drawers and stockings, behaved decently, prayed in Spanish, kissed a crucifix, insisting on his innocence to the last.”25 To come to our times, we can refer to the case of Pierre Toussaint, the well known barber of New York, who died a year or so ago, and whose biography has been so beautifully written by Mrs. Lee.26 He was a Catholic. Despite his color, he was universally esteemed among us for his piety and zeal, no less than his many other solid virtues. His Church made no distinction with regard to him. Dear to her in life, he was equally so in death; his body was carried to St. Peter’s Church, where he had so long worshiped, and where he, like many other New York Catholics, had more than once seen a Negro priest officiate at the altar. At his obsequies the church was filled chiefly by whites, and none would have known that the deceased was not some person of rank. The pastor in his address made no allusion to his color: he dwelt on the virtues of the deceased, his charity to the poor and afflicted, and 24

25 26

[Horsmanden was the first and leading proponent of the conspiracy theory in connection with the fires of 1741. He wrote A Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy Formed by Some White People, in Connection with Negro and Other Slaves (New York: James Parker, 1744) in defense of his actions.] [Horsmanden’s Negro Plot (Ed. 1830), 320.] [Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee (1780-1865) was a widow and mother of three when she began her literary career in 1832, first writing a series of books on thrift, and then a series of small educational books on historical subjects and figures.]

316

American Catholic Religious Thought

the loss which all had sustained in the death of so excellent a man.27 And this man was born a slave in St. Domingo, but under the influence of religion was content with his lot. When his mistress fled to this country, he attended her, and still deeming himself a slave gave her all he earned. To all who told him he was free he turned a deaf ear: his mistress on her death bed alone released him, for he would not permit her to do so before. Such was the man into whom Catholicity had transformed the brutalized slave. But this is not all. The exertions of the Catholic Church in the United States in behalf of the Negro are not limited to isolated states. While every Catholic republic on the continent frees the slave, and restores freedom to all, while Mexico makes Texas free soil for us to restore it to the realm of slavery, the Catholics in the United States cannot remain behind. There exists in Baltimore an institution known but to few, an institution which it has long been our wish to see extended to other parts of the country: this is the House of Oblates, Sisters of Providence. The members of this Society are all colored women, who, like the Sisters of Charity,28 bind themselves by religious vows, and devote their lives to the education of colored girls. They were founded on the 5th of June, 1829, by the Rev. Mr. Joubert, long the pastor of the colored Catholics at Baltimore.29 The Holy See acknowledged 27

28

29

Memoir of Pierre Toussaint, born a slave. Boston: 1854. [Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, Memoir of Pierre Toussaint (Boston: Crosby Nichols, 1854)]. [The Sisters of Charity were founded by Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774-1821). She opened her first school in Baltimore in 1808 and in 1809 started a community with four other women called the “Sister’s of St. Joseph.” Dedicated to education and helping the poor, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is credited with beginning the parochial school movement in the United States. The first American born saint, she was canonized in 1975. Her feast day is January 4th.] [Jacques Hector Marie Nicholas Joubert de la Muraille (1777-1843) worked with the slaves in Baltimore who together with their masters had fled from the revolution in Haiti. Concerned with their lack of education he wanted to start a school but lacked the means. After meeting the Haitian refugee Elizabeth Lange (1784-1882), who with other Black women, were running a small school for Black children, Joubert, with Lange’s assistance,

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

317

them as a Religious Society in 1831, and granted them many spiritual advantages and privileges. Here a few colored women renounce the world to consecrate themselves to God and the Christian education of colored girls. The object of such an institution is of great importance all will allow, and on greater reflection will be seen to surpass in true philanthropy, the greatest works of Northern abolitionism. Since its institution it has trained numbers of girls, who as servants, and later as wives and mothers, have perpetuated faith, piety and Christian virtues in their humble rank of life. But we must give further details. We have given examples enough to show the course of Catholicity in regard to the slave; this policy has not been without its effect. Every Catholic republic in America has abolished slavery; it exists indeed in the empire of Brazil and the Spanish Antilles, but even there it shows influence of the Church. There is at Rio Janeiro a touching instance of the power of faith, which shows the operation of Catholicity on the heart of the slave. Several years since, an African prince, whose revenues were derived from the slaves whom he supplied to the ships engaged in that traffic, attacked a petty inland tribe and burning its village, carried off most of the inhabitants. Among the number thus hurried off to the slaver’s hold was the king of the tribe, who was ere long sold in the market of Rio Janeiro to an English Catholic merchant. At first he little brooked the harsh lot which had fallen to him, but instructed in the rudiments of Christianity he became a fervent Catholic. Now, although as he walks the streets, a slave, with a heavy burden on his shoulders, his former subjects bend the knee in reverence to their fallen king, still he has no regret for his lost power or liberty. In his slavery he views a kindly interposition of heaven, which thus rudely indeed but most wisely, drew him from the shades of paganism to the light of the gospel. He is content to remain a slave. Wherever slavery exists cases of oppression will necessarily occur, for nowhere can a power be found in the hands of man which is not at times abused. To remedy these, to relieve the oppressed, has no less helped to found the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first Black order of women religious. The religious order was confirmed by Rome in 1831, during a period when Black women were not accepted in White orders of women religious and the education of Blacks was illegal.]

318

American Catholic Religious Thought

been the care of the Church, not by societies to abolish slavery, but by appeals to the principles of the master, and often, very often, by redeeming the ill treated slaves, or obtaining for them more kindly masters. Many instances of this kind have occurred, even in the United States where our Catholic clergy are least numerous, in the slaves states. Touching was the case of two young ladies redeemed by the exertions of Bishop England. A planter purchased a very light mulatto girl, of excellent disposition, manners and education; he was soon won by her good qualities and married her, but unfortunately neglected to make out her manumission in due form of law. She died previously to him, having borne two daughters, who were educated at the Ursuline Convent at Charleston. On their father’s death, these young ladies, elegant, virtuous, accomplished, entered into possession of their father’s property, but a distant relative discovering the fact that their mother had never been legally freed, claimed not only the property but the ladies themselves. They were in the eye of the law, slaves, and part of their father’s estate. Using all his legal rights, he exposed them for sale, and the Catholics, headed by their bishop, raised means to purchase and free them. Such examples show that the Catholics of the United States are not insensible to the sufferings of the slave, when he actually suffers, nor to his social, moral or religious welfare. Believing that heaven is open alike to the bond and the free, the Church has sought less to free them from the fetters of man, than from the fetters of sin. She has her mission, and fulfills it; fulfilling it of yore, she repeatedly induced mankind in country after country to raise the slave from his degraded station to an equal rank with his master; where she finds it now she makes no distinction within her walls between White and Black, slave and freeman. All must kneel side by side before her altars; and in fact all do; she gives the same sacraments to the poor Negro, that she does to the monarch; she makes and can make no distinction between them, and no Catholic ever finds it strange to see that the holy Benedict of St. Philadelphia, though a Black, was made superior of a White convent in his lifetime, and canonized after his death. The Catholic Church in the United States stands alone, immoveable, unchangeable, the only conservative body in the land, the only body which does not take a partisan stand or send out its propagandists.

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

319

Attacked, she does not resist; reviled, she does not revile; she advances doing good. She has liberated the slave wherever she had the power, and did so with the full consent of the slaveholder. The present abolition movement began several years ago, and has produced only one result, the stability of slavery. Since the agitation began no state has enfranchised its slaves; on the contrary, Texas, Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, which would naturally have been free territory, have all been added to the domain of slavery, and in these slave states the laws against the slaves are more severe than ever, and all attempts to ameliorate the condition of the Negro have been neutralized. In one word, the emancipation of the slaves has been retarded, perhaps for a century. Convinced of this, that abolitionism is in itself wrong, that it is injurious instead of beneficial to the slave; that moderation and the exercise of Christian charity alone will effect the liberation and what is more, the elevation of the Negro slave, Catholics must ever stand aloof from the abolition movement, and in their own way labor to effect the great end; and few we think who have followed us through this article, will entertain any other opinion than our own, that if slavery is ever abolished, it will be by the Catholic Church, in her own calm, steady, lawful way.

****** II.

THE CHURCH AND SLAVERY Source: [Edward Purcell], Catholic Telegraph (April 8, 1863): 116.

In some remarks lately made on the emancipation of the serfs in Russia,30 we observed that the Church and slavery could never get along well together. The New York Freeman’s Journal condemns our remarks, quotes St. Paul and Church councils, and says that we are ignorant of ecclesiastical history.31 The writer in the Freeman’s also observes that 30

31

[“A Day to be Remembered,” Catholic Telegraph (March 25, 1863): 100.] [“A Day to be Remembered” New York Freeman’s Journal (April 4, 1863): 4. Almost every issue of the Journal for the next few months carried an article in opposition to the Telegraph’s editorials against slavery.]

320

American Catholic Religious Thought

he does not wish for a controversy with us. As the Freeman, on this occasion, is mild and uses no very offensive language, we reply to his comments at some length. We assure our cotemporary that we, too, have no desire to enter into a controversy. It would be useless now, because the subject of slavery is dead. The first cannon fired at Sumter sounded its knell. It would be much easier to take Richmond or open the Mississippi, than restore slavery in the United States. The thing is gone forever. But our cotemporary suggests that we are not acquainted with ecclesiastical history and that slavery and the Church have got along well together, and quotes St. Paul and the councils. Our cotemporary has a right to entertain any opinion he pleases about our ignorance. His opinion is his own. But without acrimony we can write on this subject of slavery. It must be discussed; there is no help for it—and whilst we accord to those who are its advocates all liberty of speech, we hope that some license will be extended to us when we give our reasons on the other side. It is not in a factious spirit that we write, but under the strong conviction that a great change is at hand in the political welfare of the country, and that it is of some consequence to Catholics to decide wisely what part to take. This cannot be done by crying out “ignorance,” “abolition,” but by friendly discussion. Whether we like it or not, slavery is extinguished in the United States, and all that we have to do is to decide how we shall accommodate ourselves “to coming events.” We have said and we now repeat it, that slavery and the Catholic Church could never get along well together. The Church never tries to correct evils by revolutionary means. When she has not the legislative power in her hands she is patient, long-suffering, gentle. What she could not suppress she tolerated. But she found slavery little disposed to imitate her meekness. When the slave power predominates, religion is nominal. There is no life in it. It is the hard-working laboring man who builds the church, the schoolhouse and the orphan asylum, not the slaveholder, as a general rule. Religion flourishes in a slave state only in proportion to its intimacy with a free state, or as it is adjacent to it. There are more Catholics in the Cathedral congregation of this city than in North and South Carolina and Georgia! There are more Catholics in one of our second-rate congregations than in the whole

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

321

State of Alabama! Louisiana ought to be a Catholic state, but it has never sent a Senator or Representative to Congress who identified himself with the Catholic cause, so far as we know. The slave-owners are not the zealous men of the Church in that state. What help is Cuba, with all its riches, to the Catholic cause? The poorest Irish or German congregation in the free states does more for religion than Havana, if we can rely upon the representations of those who ought to know and whose character forbids deception. It appears to us, therefore, that slavery is not friendly to the propagation of the Catholic faith—or to its charity and fervor when it happens to be professed. If for telling these plain truths any subscriber wishes to withdraw his patronage, we hope he will do so at once. And if for telling these truths the ladies of a community in a slave state choose to burn our paper again, they have our liberty, if that be of any consequence, to prove their amiability and piety by doing so. The time is near at hand when they will wish that they had been more tolerant to the expression of an opinion. But to our knowledge of ecclesiastical history: “No one now ventures to doubt,” says Balmes, “that the Church exercised a powerful influence on the abolition of slavery: this is a truth too clear and evident to be questioned. . . . It did all that was possible in favor of human liberty; if it did not advance more rapidly in the work, it was because it could not do so without compromising the undertaking—without creating serious obstacles to the desired emancipation. Such is the result at which we arrive when we have thoroughly examined the charges made against some proceedings of the Church. . . That slavery endured for a long time in presence of the Church is true; but it was always declining, and it only lasted as long as was necessary to realize the benefit without violence—without a shock—without compromitting its universality and its continuation.”32 These last few words from the fifteenth chapter of Balmes’ incomparable work, show the exact position occupied by the Church in reference to slavery. To say that she ever favored the system is a calumny. She proclaimed men’s fraternity 32

[Jaime Luciano Balmes, European Civilization: Protestantism and Catholicity Compared in their Effects on the Civilization of Europe (1840; Baltimore: Murphy, 1850), 91, 94.]

322

American Catholic Religious Thought

with each other, and their equality before God, and therefore could not be the advocate of slavery. With respect to the words of St. Paul, so often quoted, we find a full justification of our position. He wrote to Philemon, commending his faith and charity, and says—“Wherefore, though I might have much confidence in Christ Jesus to command thee that which is to the purpose, for charity’s sake I rather beseech, thou being such a one, as Paul the aged and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ; I beseech thee for my son Onisimus, whom I have begotten in my chains—whom I have sent back to thee. And do thou received him as my own bowels . . . Not now as a servant, but instead of a servant a most dear brother, especially to me; but how much more to thee, both in the flesh and in the good?” [Phm. 8-17] Any one who can find anything in this in favor of slavery, must have piercing optics. Would St. Paul have sent him back to a heathen master—or one who would have the power and the will to despise him—to sell his wife and children into slavery? The thought is not to be entertained of the blessed apostle? If a fugitive slave in this country was to be sent back to some master in Mississippi or Texas by a Catholic Bishop of our days, bearing such an epistle as the above, how would the master mock and the world laugh at the Bishop? What a joke it would be considered in the South? But what did the Popes think of slavery? This will probably throw some light on ecclesiastical history. Paul III in 1537, and Urban VIII in 1639, condemned in the strongest terms the crime of reducing men to slavery, separating them from their wives and children, or in any manner depriving them of their liberty, or upon any pretext to preach or teach that it is lawful. Pius II in 1462, also denounces the system in the strongest terms. Gregory XVI, who, in his Apostolic Letter of the 3d of December, 1839, refers to the foregoing, uses this vehement language on the same subject—“Wherefore, we, desiring to turn away so great a reproach as this from all the boundaries of Christians and the whole matter being maturely weighed, certain Cardinals of the holy Roman Church, our venerable brethren being also called into council, treading in the footsteps of our predecessors with Apostolic authority, do vehemently admonish and adjure in the Lord, all believers in Christ, that no one hereafter may dare unjustly to molest Indians,

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

323

Negroes or other men of this sort, or to spoil them of their goods or reduce them to slavery . . . We, therefore with Apostolic authority do reprobate all the aforesaid actions as utterly unworthy of the Christian name, and by the same Apostolic authority do strictly prohibit and interdict that any ecclesiastic or lay person shall presume to defend that very trade in Negroes as lawful under any pretext or studied excuse, or otherwise to preach or in any manner, publicly or privately, to teach contrary to those things which we have charged in this our Apostolic letter.”33 This is a tolerably showy language. Its import, we think, is clear enough to any one who has a human mind. There can be “no pretext or studied excuse,” says the good and great pontiff. Are Catholics afraid or unwilling to read the admonition of the Vicar of Jesus Christ? But it will be said that Gregory XVI alluded to the foreign slave trade! This, however, is a pretext and has not even the dignity of a “studied excuse.” We have a word to say on the point. Shortly before the appearance of this Apostolic letter a religious order in the United States, by their close communication with Rome, received information of its existence and approaching publication. With more wit than piety the superiors of that order collected together a large number of their slaves and sold them all to a Southern gentleman, we will call him so, who hurried them into Louisiana and they were scattered over the South without reference to their relationship one to another.34 The whole Catholic community was shocked at the occurrence. Pope Gregory’s letter appeared soon after and it did not moderate the feeling of indignation. When the fact was known in Rome, such was the emotion felt by His Holiness, that the superiors, on whom the responsibility rested, were ordered forthwith to proceed

33

34

[For the English translation of Pope Gregory XVI’s In Supremo, see Ignatius Aloysius Reynolds, ed., The Works of Right Rev. John England, 3:111-12.] [The reference here is most likely to the Maryland Jesuits’ 1838 sale of their 272 slaves for $115,000. On this, see Robert E. Curran, “‘Splendid Poverty’: Jesuit Slaveholding in Maryland, 1805-1838,” in Catholics in the Old South: Essays on Church and Culture, ed. Randall M. Miller and Jon L. Wakelyn (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1983), 125-46.]

324

American Catholic Religious Thought

to the Eternal City, and they did not return for years. Why they were detained it is unnecessary to discuss. This shows that slavery, in every shape, is condemned and reprobated by the Church. In the meantime she did nothing violently. She only spoke the solemn words of admonition. Events have hurried on—what the Church would not or could not do the politicians have done. The door is now made open without any agency of Catholics, and those who wish to despise the venerable pontiffs and be the jailors of their fellow men, may endeavor to close and lock and bolt it. We take no part in any such proceeding.

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES Anthony Grazzi, “The Letters of Antonio Grazzi, S.J., to the Vatican on Slavery in the American South, 1818,” The Catholic Religion in the United States (Rome, 1818) in American Catholic Historical Researches 8 (1892): 98-111. John England, “Domestic Slavery,” (1840-41), in Ignatius Reynolds, ed., Works, 3:106-91. Francis Patrick Kenrick, “De servitute,” Theologiae Moralis, 3 vols. (Philadelphiae: Eugene Cummisky, 1841-43), 1:5.6.35-41. Jeremiah Cummings, “Slavery and the Union,” New York Freeman’s Journal 47 (May 25, 1850): 1-2. Orestes A. Brownson, “Slavery and the War,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 23 (October 1861): 510-46. John Hughes, “Brownson’s Review,” Metropolitan Record (New York City) (October 12, 1861): 653-54. Kenneth J. Zanca, ed., American Catholics and Slavery, 1789-1866: An Anthology of Primary Documents (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1994). SECONDARY SOURCES Joseph D. Brokhage, Francis Patrick Kenrick’s Opinion on Slavery (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1955).

8 ~ Catholicism & Slavery

325

Maria Genoino Caravaglios, The American Catholic Church and the Negro Problem in the XVIII-XIX Centuries (Charleston, S.C.: Caravaglios, 1974). ———, “A Roman Critique of the Pro-Slavery Views of Bishop Martin of Natchitoches Louisiana,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 83 (June, 1972), 67-82. Patrick W. Carey, “Political Atheism: Dred Scott, Roger Brooke Taney, and Orestes A. Brownson,” Catholic Historical Review 88 (April 2001): 207-29. Peter Giles, “Catholic Ideology and American Slave Narratives,” U. S. Catholic Historian 15 (Spring 1997): 55-66. C. Walker Gollar, “Catholic Slaves and Slaveholders in Kentucky,” Catholic Historical Review 84 (January 1998): 42-62. Daniel C. R. Heisser, “Bishop Lynch’s Civil War Pamphlet on Slavery,” Catholic Historical Review 84 (October 1998): 681-96. ———, “Bishop Lynch’s People: Slaveholding by a South Carolina Prelate,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 102 (July 2001): 238-62. John Kelly, “Charleston’s Bishop John England and American Slavery,” New Hibernia Review 5 (Winter 2001): 48-56. John Francis Maxwell, Slavery and the Catholic Church: The History of Catholic Teaching Concerning the Moral Legitimacy of the Institution of Slavery (Chichester: Rose [for] the Anti-Slavery Society for the Protection of Human Rights, 1975). Randall M. Miller, “Black Catholics in the Slave South: Some Needs and Opportunities for Study,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 86 (March/December, 1975), 93-106. ———, “Slaves and Southern Catholicism,” Masters & Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South, ed. John B. Boles, (Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky, 1988),127-70. Joel S. Panzer, The Popes and Slavery (New York: Alba House, 1996). Stafford Poole and Douglas J. Slawson, Church and Slave in Perry County, Missouri, 1818-1865 (Lewiston, New York: E. Mellen, 1986). Madeleine Hooke Rice, American Catholic Opinion in the Slavery Controversy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944). William G. Sharrow, “John Hughes and a Catholic Response to Slavery in Antebellum America,” Journal of Negro History 57 (1972): 254-69.

9 ~ Edward McGlynn EDWARD McGLYNN: CATHOLIC SOCIAL GOSPEL Edward McGlynn (1837-1900) was a controversial priest of New York City who identified himself with the poor and unemployed and became an articulate spokesman for social justice. For McGlynn, charity was not sufficient to respond to the needs of the poor. One had to understand the root causes of poverty and do something to eradicate those causes, establishing a just foundation for the economic life of the American people. McGlynn eventually became convinced by Henry George that the fundamental remedy to economic and social injustice was in a single tax that would fairly distribute fiscal responsibility and provide economic opportunities for the workingmen of the country.1 McGlynn was eventually charged with socialism because of his position on social justice and his political advocacy of Henry George for mayor of New York City. Like other social reformers in New York City, e.g., the Protestant social gospeler Walter Rauschenbusch, McGlynn had pastoral experience with poverty; his calls for social justice, therefore, were not grounded solely in social theories, but in social theories that were responsive to practical experiences of poverty and human degradation. McGlynn, the seventh of eleven children, was born on September 27, 1837 to Peter and Sarah McGlynn, middle class Irish Catholics who had immigrated to New York City in 1824. He was educated in the New York public schools until the age of thirteen (1850) when he was sent to the Urban College of Propaganda in Rome where he received his education for the priesthood. In 1859, he became Vice On the single tax theory, see James Jeremiah Green, “The Impact of Henry George’s Theories on American Catholics.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 1956.

1

328

American Catholic Religious Thought

President of the newly established North American College in Rome and a year later received his doctorate in theology. He returned to the United States in 1860, after ten years in Rome, and accepted a number of pastoral positions in the Diocese of New York (i.e., assistant pastor of St. Joseph’s, New York City, 1860-66; pastor of St. Stephen’s, New York City, 1866-86; pastor of St. Mary’s, Newburgh, New York, 18951900). In 1886, he was suspended from the priesthood for supporting Henry George and was excommunicated from the Catholic Church in 1887 for, among other things, disobedience. During the period of his excommunication, 1887 to 1892, he served as President of the Anti-Poverty Society in New York City. In 1892, he was reinstated in the Church and died on January 7, 1900, as pastor of St. Mary’s in Newburgh, New York. The following selection is a speech Dr. McGlynn gave repeatedly from 1887 to the end of his life. In it he calls for a new crusade on behalf of the poor, proclaiming that the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, essential Christian doctrines, are the primary motivating forces behind the movement. The new crusade was undertaken, like most of the older Christian crusades, for the liberation of humankind from the prisons of poverty, ignorance, disease, and selfish materialism. This new crusade was not just another social movement; it was “necessarily a religious movement.”

****** TEXT THE CROSS OF A NEW CRUSADE Source: The Standard (April 2, 1887): 2-3 ADDRESS BY DR. McGLYNN IN THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC NEW YORK CITY TUESDAY EVENING, MARCH 29,1887

Ladies and Gentlemen: . . . . The cross of the new crusade is not raised in hostility to the cross of Christ. The very thought of a crusade and of the honored badge of

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

329

a crusade—the holy ensign of the cross—is entirely borrowed from him. The crusades of old, that brought a good thing, and with it a new name into the world, were inspired by tenderest reverence for the cross of Christ and affection for the places, even on the sea sands, on the mountain side, and at the city gates, where he had walked and slept and suffered and taught and died. It was the enthusiastic love of the cross, and of the magnificent teachings of the cross, that fired the hearts of men and made them undertake and carry on for centuries the old crusades. It was a man of God—a hermit—consecrated by peculiar sanctity of life, profession and practice to the service of Christ, who became the preacher of the holy war that took for itself the name of a crusade.2 The crusade was to ransom from captivity the tomb of Christ; to redeem thousands and tens of thousands of Christian men and women who were enslaved under the hated ensign of the Saracen invaders; to emancipate individual men and women in countless multitudes from horrible chattel slavery. It was to restore to Christendom the possession of the places that had been made sacred by the life, the tears, the music of his voice, and the expiring cry upon the cross of him who gave name to Christendom. . . . When the first crusade was proclaimed at the Council of Clermont the happy thought—no doubt inspired—seized upon the multitude of making the Cross of Christ, no matter of how rich or cheap material it might be, the badge of the holy war. And so women rent their garments, and men took off their raiment, and making strips of them formed crosses with which to deck the breasts of the soldiers of the cross. And it was this badge of the cross of Christ, the ensign of the holy war, that gave to all our modern languages the word crusade. And so the cross of a new crusade need not be any material emblem, but it stands for the acceptance by men and women, by whomsoever will hear, of the call, the trumpet blast, that invites them to forget themselves, to set aside their wretched strifes, to utterly renounce the injustice in which they may have been engaged, and to take on a new 2

[The reference is to Peter the Hermit (1050?-1115) who was an eloquent preacher of the First Crusade, inaugurated by Pope Urban II in 1095 at the Council of Clermont.]

330

American Catholic Religious Thought

enthusiasm of humanity in believing, in working, in battling, in suffering, and, if need be, in dying, for the right, for a great truth that I shall not be guilty of the indiscretion of calling a new truth, for a truth that, like all great truths, must in its germ and in its essence be as old as God himself in eternity, and as old as the world, or the race of men in time. And so it is a new crusade, to which you are invited, for the proclaiming, the propagating, and the enforcing of an ancient truth—a truth that is eminently consonant with the great truth of Christianity itself—and, properly understood, resolves itself into the very essence, the very core of all religion as taught us by him, who spake as never man spake before or since, and in homely accents, and in simple parables, taught the poor, the lowly and the oppressed the comforting doctrine, so full of truth and light, of the fatherhood of one God and the universal brotherhood of man. This new crusade then, while, to use a modern phrase, there is nothing sectarian about it, is necessarily a religious movement. And permit me to say, and I am not at all singular in the saying of it, if it were not a religious movement you might at the very outset count me out of it; for I think that any cause, any movement, any object that enlists the thought of men and the affections of the hearts of men must have a religious inspiration, a religious justification and a religious consummation, or the cause is not worth wasting our breath, our time and our strength upon. It were useless to prate about truth and beauty and goodness and justice and humanity, and the brotherhood of man, if this truth and justice and goodness and beauty, and this universal brotherhood, found not their source and their center, their type, their ideal, their justification, in God himself. That all great causes must necessarily be religious was not hidden from the sages of pagan antiquity any more than it is hidden from us. For whatever fires the heart of man—in the sense in which the heart of man means affection, love, forgetfulness of self, enthusiasm for something outside of self—in this sense whatever fires the heart of man must come from a source that is not only outside of man, but above man. When we talk of justice we must mean something more than a mere abstraction, or else we are talking most unphilosophically. There must be a standard of justice. There must be a standard of truth. There must

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

331

be somewhere an ideal beauty, an ideal holiness, an ideal justice, an ideal truth, and that ideal must be above all men and angels. It must be a source from which all men and angels shall in their measure partake of truth, of holiness, of beauty, of justice. And that for me is God. God is the perfect justice, the eternal, the infinite, the absolute purity, goodness and truth. . . . And now, therefore, this is—if I need one at all—my excuse for having stepped forth from the pulpit to stand upon other platforms, and to talk of justice, of truth, of charity, of love (applause); to talk to men who, perhaps, sad to say, have learned to hate with a peculiar intensity the church of which I was but an humble servant, to talk to men who thought, or thought they thought, that there was no God. I felt that it was not amiss to take reverently, as if from the very ark of God, the precious truth and bring it out and scatter it broadcast among men, fearing not that it should ever be soiled or contaminated by coming into closer contact with the minds and the hearts of any of God’s children. And I felt, if I needed justification, more than justified in this, by the thought of the example of him who taught wherever men would hear him, whether in the courts of the temple or by the wayside, or from the boat of the fisherman or on the summit of the mount; who taught the multitude, and never ceased to teach in homely parables the truths of God; taught to Scribes and Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes; taught to priests of the temple, and to disciples of John, as well as to those whom he called his disciples, the great truths that are most precious, most simple, and most universal, of the essential relations of the minds and the hearts of God’s children to their Creator, to their Father, to their God. The reason why I have felt it almost a sin to refuse any invitation that came to me to speak for any great public cause of truth or justice or morality was just that. I feel that it is amiss for us to hide whatever light may be given to us under a bushel, but that rather should we let our light shine before men, that men seeing may be attracted by the beauty of truth, and may perchance desire to know more of it, and may come in from the highways and the byways, and from halls where meetings are held that are political or social, or whatsoever you will, to learn more of that better way, to inquire if there be not other truths, if not so essential yet most important in guarding, in building

332

American Catholic Religious Thought

up, in strengthening and making perfect the great essential truths of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. And now if you will permit I will let you into a little secret, and I am somewhat comforted in this indiscretion of telling you the secret, because I observe with some gratification that there are quite enough of you here tonight to keep the secret. The secret is this: It is my opinion—of course that does not add any great weight to it—but the secret is that it is my opinion that the Christian church would speedily gather in the whole world into the flock of Christ if she would preach more generously and more self-sacrificingly to men and women and children wherever they will listen to her, and would carry out with all her wondrously potent influences the blessed lesson of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. I may quote the authority of a gentle spirit, who, in a discussion in which I took part before the Nineteenth Century Club not very long ago, while he spoke on the agnostic side of the question under discussion—which was the alleged failure of agnosticism—yet said most tenderly beautiful things about the character of Christ, and professed the most tender reverence for that character, and told this great truth to the nominally Christian men and women who filled that hall: “If you and all Christians would but carry out the precepts of your Master, very speedily there would be but few agnostics in the world.” And what emphasized the lesson coming from such a source was the fact that he was neither by race nor training a Christian; he was a scion of the great old Hebrew race who spoke thus reverently and beautifully and truly of him whom we call Lord and Master. And I may say that during a certain political campaign that may, perhaps, be considered to have passed into ancient history—I believe it is actually nearly three or four months ago—not a few men said to me that they were attracted to the movement in which I took a humble part by the religion that they found in it; by the fact that it was opening to them a new vista; that it was bringing them back to God; that it was making them feel ashamed, as it were, of the bitterness that they had cherished in their hearts against the very name of God, because God had been presented to them as a monster, as an ogre, as a being who made laws that necessarily resulted in the poverty, the degradation and the crime of a very large portion of his children; of

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

333

an alleged father who did not know how to provide for his children, and who gave certain privileges to a chosen few of the children to impoverish, to degrade, to enslave, and to rob the greater part of their brethren. When they began to hear of a man telling that God was the father who by beautiful laws of justice, by simple universal economic laws, had provided admirably for his children, had provided a table so long and so wide and so well supplied with all manner of good things that there never could be too many at that table—never the slightest fear that the poorest and weakest need be crowded away from it—a man who came to preach, not so much a new political economy as to teach the old and the best political economy, that the more mouths that come into the world the more hands come with them to feed the mouths; and that the larger and the denser the population, all the better for the country, because all the better the facilities of production and exchange; a man who taught them that Malthusianism, taking name from an alleged Christian minister, was a blasphemy against the Most High; and that while God’s children come into the world with diversity of gifts, of physical strength, of intellect, of heart and fancy, yet they all come stamped ineffaceably with the same image of the Father and the King, his and his alone the image, and his the superscription, and that, therefore, in spite of these inequalities of stature, or of wit, or of weight, or of brain, or of fancy, there is an essential equality that far transcends all these inequalities, the essential image of God in the capacity to know the truth, and to love the good and to do the right, and therefore an essential equality of all men as against all other men under the common, beneficent, just, wise and merciful rule of an all—loving Father. And I confess that from very early years, as a boy and a very young man, and a very young clergyman, I was tormented by these problems. I have been blessed, or cursed, as you will, from my earliest childhood with a decided enlargement of the heart. From a very early day I wondered and pondered and I tormented myself with the question, why is there so much misery in the world? Why are there so many barefooted and ragged children? Why are there so many seeking bread and seeking it in vain? Why are there so many who look upon what we are told in the Scriptures is in some measure a curse—the curse of labor—look

334

American Catholic Religious Thought

upon it as a priceless boon, and crave with intensest earnestness the mere chance to work even for a wretched pittance, as if in the very work itself they found something wonderfully good and beautiful and comforting? I wondered and tormented myself with the question why it was that so many who toil not, neither do they spin, are dressed in all the colors of the rainbow, and are actually sated with the good things of this world, and find life itself a bore. And while they are thus sated with the good things of the world they begin to ask themselves: Is this pleasure? Is life worth living? Is the game worth the candle? And not a few of them say in the bitterness of their souls as they grow old, “It is a pretty tiresome thing, after all, for a man for seventy years every day to be pulling on and off his stockings.” That disease of mine of enlargement of the heart had a great deal to do with drawing or driving me into the priesthood of the Catholic church; because there I saw a ministry consecrated to the preaching of the highest truths, to a life of renunciation for the sake of the brethren, to the doing of gentle deeds of Christlike charity; and I repeat, and I shall never tire of repeating, that I find justification for loving every social cause, every economic cause, every political cause, whose object is the diminution— rather let us say the abolition of poverty, for the diffusion of knowledge, for the refinement and the civilization of these images of God all around us—a cause in which I must sympathize, and for which, as far as I can, I must speak and labor; and I never for a moment fancied on that, to me, most sacred day, when, full of reverence, I bowed before a Christian altar, to receive the consecration of Christ’s priesthood, that I was to rise from that prostrate attitude any the less a man, any the less the citizen. I felt that the priesthood of Christ gave to manhood and citizenship a new grace and dignity, that in a spiritual sense it gave new loftiness to the man’s stature and made him capable of being more unselfish, if he would not be recreant to the best interests of humanity—of aiding the poor, of comforting the afflicted—that it enabled the man, not entirely unaided by supernatural lights and graces, to do something in his time to make the world appear more beautiful and more comfortable for the children of men. If we read history aright we shall see that all the great triumphs of the cause of Christ came where the Church sent out her missionaries to be the

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

335

friends and fathers of the people, to teach them art and literature and science while teaching the priceless truths of religion. The missionaries of Christ went out with the self-same spirit, lowliness, poverty and self-renunciation as the Master himself had gone out to teach man by example as well as by word how good a thing it is to deny ourselves, to labor, to do, to suffer and even to die for our brethren. The Church did a great work when she began to teach to the downtrodden; when she taught the abject slave that was crushed beneath the chariot of a Roman conqueror that he was all of a man, and not only taught him that he was the child of God, but also taught the proud Roman emperor upon his throne that he was only a man who one day must stand wretched and miserable and naked before the throne of him whose majesty he had outraged by oppressing even the least of the brethren who bore in their natures the image and impress of the King. The Christian church gained a magnificent patrimony, upon which it has been banking for centuries, and the allegiance of all the nations of Europe, by sending out her priests with the great lesson for men’s hearts that it was to the poor and lowly and oppressed that they were sent, “For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” It was then they went out from this Christian church with the divine injunction to gather up the waifs and strays and fragments of humanity, the blind, the poor, and foundlings and insane, to gather up from the wayside all that suffer from tyranny and heedlessness, to gather them up with tenderness and reverence, even as they gathered up the sacred particles of the sacrament of Christ upon the altar, lest they should suffer profanation—it was when they went forth with such lessons in their hearts that they conquered the world. They never went to apologize to the Roman emperor (Thunders of applause). They never went to seek an interview (Applause). They went on with supreme cool indifference to preach the Gospel, to gather up the fragments of Christian humanity in the persons of the poor (Applause). The Roman emperor gave orders that their heads should be cut off. And these Christian ministers, strangely enough, seemed to enjoy having their heads cut off. They actually at times foolishly went out of their way to have their heads cut off, and sometimes bounded unnecessarily into the arena to proclaim themselves Christians, when they could just as well have kept out of the way and kept their heads

336

American Catholic Religious Thought

upon their shoulders. Why did they enjoy having their heads cut off? Why? They did not fear men as long as they followed the teaching of the Master. That man who has a great truth in him, in his head or in his heart, can preach the truth a hundred times better with his head cut off than with his head on his shoulders. I think I can gather from your applause and from your cheering that you think you discover in that last remark of mine something of a parable not entirely inapplicable to myself. I assure you that when I started out with the sentence I had not the slightest intention of making any personal application. At the same time if this very respectable jury finds in it any applicableness to my case I shall not be guilty of the indiscretion of questioning the verdict. Now, dear friends, what I have said thus far is something of an explanation and a justification of the part of a Christian minister, of a Catholic priest, feeling it not amiss, thinking it even a duty to leave his sanctuary, to put off his gown, and even in secular attire, and before what may be called secular audiences, to discourse of justice and of truth; and it will be a sad day for the world when the strange and unnatural divorce shall have full sway between the church and society, between the altars of the church and the family altars, between the teachings in the church and the teachings in the school, in the market place, in the highways, and in the byways—and by this I do not mean for one moment to insinuate, but the very reverse—I do not for a moment mean to insinuate that ecclesiastical authorities shall control politics and commerce and the development of nationalities, but that there shall be so truly religious a spirit permeating the minds and hearts of men that wherever they go they shall feel the unspeakable comfort of knowing that in the great causes they are promoting they have the sanctions and benedictions of sweet religion. The crusade that we have chosen to call a “new crusade” is for the enforcing of one of those great truths of which I have already spoken to you—the truth that, with diversity of natural gifts, God has given an equality of essential rights to all his children just because they are his children; that for every mouth he sends into the world to be fed, he sends, with rare exceptions, a pair of hands to feed it; that he had made us land animals, and not fishes or birds, and therefore he has

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

337

made us to live upon the land and not to fly in the air or swim in the water, and that because he has made us land animals, and because he has made us at all, he has given us the right with these two hands somehow or other to root, to scratch and to dig for a living in order to feed these mouths; and that any man or set of men, who shall by law or in any other way deny, impair, diminish or restrain the equal right of every human being to the possession of the general bounties of nature, the sunlight, the air, the water and the land, is guilty of blasphemy against the goodness of the universal Father. They are perverting under the name of law the right of men; they are desecrating the holy name of law to sanction a monstrous injustice. Under the name of right they are doing a horrid wrong; under the pretense of guarding the best interests of society they are opposing the very germinal principle of rightly ordained society. They are guilty of the monstrous crime of making hundreds of thousands, yea, millions, of God’s creatures feel that this life is a wretched mistake, or worse than that the joke of some most hateful fiend rather than the gift of an all-wise and all-loving Father. It was not for nothing that he who came to save the souls of men did so much to minister to the relief of their bodily wants. He healed their diseases; he raised their dead; he cured their distempers; he bore their sorrows; he felt compassion for the multitude; lest they should faint by the wayside, he miraculously supplemented the laws of nature and fed them with miraculous loaves and fishes in the wilderness. He did all this, because doing it he knew full well that the bodies of men as well as their souls are the creatures of God, and that their bodies and the capacities of those bodies are but signs and symbols of the spiritual things within, even as all the vast universe of God is but his garment, is but the sign and symbol and the thin veil that surrounds him, through the rifts in which we catch on every hand glimpses of God and of heaven. The heavens are telling the glory of God. There is a greater heaven here, vaster and more wondrous than the physical universe, in the intelligent mind and the affectionate heart of the least of God’s creatures. All the multitudinous and multifarious beauties and glories of the physical world are not equal to the dignity and the sanctity of the mind and the heart of the least of God’s children; and therefore it is

338

American Catholic Religious Thought

that Christ tells us that at the very peril of our souls we must look after the bodies of these little ones; we must feed the hungry; we must comfort and, as far as we can, heal the sick; we must provide shelter for the home-less; we must look after the weak, the blind, the halt, and the insane. Is all this a mistake? No; it is a part of true religion, because it is the sign and the symbol of spiritual things. It is because of the proper care of the bodies of men, of the proper feeding of those bodies, of the proper sheltering of them, that we make it possible for human nature to expand as a beautiful flower under the influence of genial warmth and refreshing breezes and showers, and so the lilies and flowers of every virtue may the more readily expand if the mind and the heart of the child are able to look up and to feel that God the Father has not been entirely unmindful of the wants of the child. This is the word of an apostle of Christ: “This is true religion—to visit the widow and the fatherless in their affliction, and to keep one’s self unspotted from the world” [James 1:27]. So it is necessarily a part of true religion to insist on what is essentially the equality of man, regardless of the comparatively trifling differences in their gifts and acquirements. This is the political economy, the teaching and reducing of which to practice are the core and essence of this new crusade. All men, inalienably, always, everywhere, have a common right to all the general bounties of nature; and this is in perfect and beautiful keeping with the other law of labor that every mouth has two hands with which to feed itself, a necessary corollary of which is that these hands must have equal direct or indirect access to the general bounties of nature out of which to make a living. That is the whole of the doctrine of this new crusade in a nutshell, that the land as well the sunlight, and the air, and the waters, and the fishes, and the mines in the bowels of the earth, all these things that were made by the Creator through the beautiful processes of nature, belong equally to the human family, to the community, to the people, to all the children of God. The law of labor requires that these natural materials shall be brought into such relations with men that they shall afford to them food, raiment, shelter; for the erection of works not merely of utility, but of ornament; that out of these materials the children of men shall have equal, indefeasible rights to pluck, to catch, to delve, in order not merely to satisfy the necessities of the animal body or to keep it from the inclemency of

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

339

the blast, but to do more than this—to make the very shelter itself a thing of beauty, to make the home a kind of temple in which there may be a family altar; to erect great public works that shall serve not merely purposes of utility, but shall educate the eye and the fancy, and shall gladden the habitations of men during their brief temporal abode; to add something to the mere garments that shall clothe and preserve the body from the inclemency of the atmosphere; to make even the raiment of man a work of art; to give a charm and a grace and a dignity even to the mere feeding of the animal. All men then have this right; and it is a part of the gospel of this new crusade that while we may make much allowance for the ignorance in which these great cardinal truths are too often forgotten, the barbarism and the slavery in which, because of might, right went under and stayed under for centuries; while we may be very indulgent to the errors and even be willing to forgive in some measure the crimes of the past, we hold aloft the banner upon which is inscribed this truth, that ever and always in the past, the present and the future the earth and the fulness thereof were given by God, and therefore should belong to all the children of God. The crimes and the horrors of history are chiefly due to the forgetting of that great truth, because of the sordid passions of the few, who, being stronger of mind and swifter of foot and more cunning of brain, used their gifts to enslave and to rob their brethren. But might never has made, and in the Book of God never can make, right. You may find it prudent to surrender your purse to the highwayman, but you shall never find it in your hearts to think that that surrender gives him any right to hold it. And you may perhaps think it a discreet thing, if a man with a big sword in his hand stands ready to cut your head off if you want to speak a certain word, to keep your mouth shut and not speak that word until some other day. But at the same time, if that word happens to be the truth, the man with the sword ready to cut off your head does not make it a falsehood. Now, what are we going to do about it? . . . . The first thing is to keep talking just the way I am talking tonight, at all times, in season and out of season, to any crowd that will listen to us who are supposed to belong to the labor party.

340

American Catholic Religious Thought

There are laboring men and laboring men. There is a broad distinction between the kinds of laboring men. There are those who labor with their hands and those who work with their jaws. And one may work very successfully and accomplish many good things with the jaws. This class of men have been called by the hand workers—facetiously and somewhat contemptuously—jawsmiths. I have never done much with my hands, so I suppose I may consider myself as belonging to the jawsmiths; and, after all, I think the truth is imparted more by talking than by writing. Writing is all very well in its way, but there is a touch of magnetism about the human voice, about the expression of a man’s countenance, that makes the spoken word much more effectual than the written. The best example of this is in the teaching of our Lord and Master. He taught by word of mouth. The command was to go and preach—to go and teach. So I want you to have respect for talking. Then the next thing is to write; to circulate the truth by books, newspapers—any way that we can manage to dovetail it in; to wedge it in, to smuggle it in, to get it in in any way. Now, if you can convince the majority of the people, especially of the ungentle sex, of this doctrine, of what they have got to do, than we are going to teach the majority of the ungentle sex by the exercise of the right of suffrage to change their institutions so as to undo the wrong and to bring man closer to God. Cardinal McCloskey,3 the Lord rest his soul, by means of a message from Rome, about four years ago, got word that there were some heretical doctrines being preached, and he sent to me to inquire what all this was about. He had got a copy of a report of a speech of mine, and, although it was two months old, it was news to the good cardinal. “Why,” he said to me, “here, you want to divide up Manhattan Island into little bits, and give each of us one of the bits.” I said: “Oh, no; there is no such meaning there.” And then I proceeded to explain to him just what we want to do, as I shall now try to explain it to you. Take this whole island of Manhattan—what is it worth? Without the houses and buildings—just merely for agricultural purposes—not much; but for the sake of its capacity for building houses on it—say a 3

[John McCloskey, the archbishop of New York (1864-85), was the first American to be made a cardinal (1875).]

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

341

thousand million dollars. Why is it worth that? Simply for its capacity to keep men and women and children from falling through into the center. All these people of New York must sit, lie down, work, eat and suffer upon Manhattan Island. What is it that gives this peculiar value? It is the aggregation of population; it is the density of population; it is the necessities of the million and a half of people here; it is because of the peculiar, subtle something—this ethereal, immaterial something—that this aggregation of population gives it. It is because of the touch of shoulder to shoulder, because of the nearness of man to man, because of the wondrous multiplication of the productive powers of men and of the miraculous multiplication of the powers of exchange between man and man that are created by this density of population that this ground of Manhattan Island takes on this peculiar and this enormous value. Now, who has the benefit of this? It is individuals who have inherited from grandfathers a few acres of land. It is our dense population which gives it its value. To whom does this belong? To those that made it. It belongs to society, it is the outcome of society; it is the very shadow of society that follows society just as the shadow follows the man who walks hither and thither. Take away the aggregation of the people and Manhattan Island will be worth less than the $24 for which I believe at one time it was purchased. How are we going to give back to the poor man what belongs to him? How shall we have that beautiful state of things in which naught shall be ill and all shall be well? Simply by confiscating rent and allowing people nominally to own if you choose the whole of Manhattan Island, if it will do them any good to nominally own it; but while they have the distinguished satisfaction of seeming to own it we are going to scoop the meat out of the shell and allow them to have the shell. And how are we going to do that? By simply taxing all this land and all kindred bounties of nature to the full amount of their rental value. If there isn’t any rental value then there won’t be any tax. If there is any rental value then it will be precisely what that value is. If the rental value goes up, up goes the tax. If the rental value comes down, down comes the tax. If the rental value ceases, then the tax ceases. Don’t you see? It is as clear as the nose on your face. . . .

342

American Catholic Religious Thought

That is what we mean by taxing and appropriating rental value. We would simply tax all these bounties of nature, where there is a scramble for them, to the full rental value. In a new community, where the people are few, land is comparatively limitless; there is no such thing as rent; the land is pretty equally distributed; there is no choice; it would be a senseless thing for men to quarrel about it; there is land enough for all. What is the law of rent? Where there is competition for a larger or choicer portion of the common bounties, for a portion of land that is nearer a river, that is next to the junction of two great rivers, that is near to a great city, for a corner lot, say at the corner of Broadway and Wall street, or at Broadway and Twenty-third street, there rent exists. And how is the competition for the use of such land to be decided? Simply by allowing it to go to the highest bidder. Thus would be provided, through the exercise of the taxing power, a fund for the common treasury, a munificent fund growing with the growth of population and civilization, supplied by a beautiful providential law, a simple, economic law that works with the same simplicity and the same regularity as the law of gravitation itself—a magnificent ever-increasing fund to supply the wants of increasing civilization and increasing population. This magnificent fund would go to support all public burdens; it would do a great deal more than is done at present by the tax levy; you would have larger, more beautiful and more numerous parks; you would be able to sweep away the greater part of the wretched rookeries that, under the name of tenement houses, are a sin and a shame, and a blot upon the fair name and fame of this beautiful city, and instead of those the best class of houses will be built, and we will have parks, with trees and flowers and the singing of birds, to make glad and beautify this island and God’s children, and will thereby add enormously to the value of the surrounding land; and then it would no longer sound Quixotic to talk of building free rapid transit railroads on solid foundations, on which trains could travel at the rate of thirty miles an hour for twenty, thirty or forty miles into the suburbs, to give homes to all the people, from which they could come and go every day, and in which they could enjoy some of nature’s life, by which they could get the sun and the air, green fields and flowers. This is no fancy sketch; it is entirely feasible, and in every view it could be

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

343

brought about if a majority of citizens, convinced of the truth of this doctrine, would carry it into practice and deposit their ballots in the ballot box in favor of this thing. One of the greatest beneficial consequences of this just and necessary reform, of this restoration to all of what belongs to all, would be this: The artificial value that is now given to land, even beyond this enormous value which we have just discussed, would cease; the giving to individual men what God never intended they should have—the absolute ownership of land—would cease. If there was no individual ownership in land then there would be no such thing as speculative value in land. Then no man would be such a fool as to pay rent to keep land fenced in from year to year, preventing everybody else from doing anything with it. That man, if he nominally owned it, must pay the full rental value of it. Even if he were a fool, he would soon see there was no fun in that kind of thing, and he would give it up and let somebody else take it. You see what would be the result. There would be a consequent increase in the building trades; houses would spring up all over the city of New York, and the tenement houses would be depopulated, and the owners would be glad to sell them cheap to the city, so they could be destroyed to make breathing places for the people. Capital will then find nothing to invest in except human labor and its products. Don’t you see the general demand for human labor that will result? In every society there is capital, and it is the instinct of men not to keep capital lying idle if they can use it, and the only manner in which they can use it is by producing something, so that there will be a steady demand for labor. But a more steady demand for labor comes from something else. It comes from the law of hunger, of cold, of the need to have some soft spot to lie down and sleep, and so whether capital employs labor or not, you may be sure, if labor gets a chance, it will employ itself. The average man is not going to lie down and die of hunger if he can get any kind of a fair chance to dig in the soil for food; the average man is not going to perish by the winter’s cold if he can get a chance to provide himself shelter; nor to freeze if he can get access to raw materials to make clothes for himself. And so, in this beautiful condition of things there will always be a demand for labor, and then it will be strictly true and proper to say to

344

American Catholic Religious Thought

any able-bodied man or woman that comes begging: “Why, you are not sick—why should you beg?” “I can’t find work.” “Oh, that is not true; in this community there is always enough work for all; there is always a demand for labor exceeding the supply.” And that leads us to another beautiful consequence—high wages. Oh, that is a grand thing for us labor people. How does that come about? Why, by a reversal of the terrible law that at present makes wages always keep tending down. Why? Because with the increase of population comes this increased value of land. Don’t you notice how great fortunes are accumulating here, as they have accumulated in England and elsewhere? They are becoming amassed more and more in the hands of a few. Now, all this will be changed; it will necessarily have to be changed by this beautiful and simple law that we have just spoken of. These enormous fortunes will be distributed, and wages will become higher. Why? Because then it will be the capitalist that will have to be running around after the laborer and begging him to be kind enough to work for him, and not the laborer that shall be running after the capitalist and begging him as if he were a divinity to give him a chance to live. So, then, we laboring men shall enjoy this unutterably comforting spectacle of reversing the present order of things by seeing not seven poor devils of workmen running after one lord of a capitalist and begging him to employ them, but the seven poor devils of capitalists running after one workman and begging him to work for them. And he will put on lordly ways and feel that he is the lord of creation, the joint owner of the soil, and that he has something in his muscular and sinewy arms, in his well-preserved health, preserved by chastity, sobriety and healthy muscular exercise, that the poor capitalists have not; that he has got something more precious that these capitalists can’t do without, and so he dictates his terms, and he says, “Now, how much will you seven people bid for my labor?” And one poor capitalist says, “Well, for a starter I will say $3 a day.” “No, no,” “$3.25,” “$3.50,” “$4” “$4.50” “$5,” and finally, when the capitalists begin to thin out in that competition, he knocks himself down to the man who will give him five, or six, or seven dollars. What will be the proper wages resulting from that competition of the seven capitalists for the labor of that one man? Do you know

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

345

what the wages will be? just precisely what they ought to be, exactly; neither one cent more nor one cent less. How does that come about? By that law that works just like the law of gravitation. What are economic wages? In the very essence and nature of things what are wages any how? They are what the workman produces by his labor out of the materials to which he has legitimate access. What he has put into that raw material is his, and he sells it to somebody else, and for what should he sell? For a perfect equivalent. And so the wages of the man will be an absolute and perfect equivalent for what he has done, for this transmutation of his nerves, of his brain, of his sinews, of his time, into some thing new and strange, rich and rare, that he has developed out of that raw material, and so economic wages will be a perfect equivalent for the time and muscle and so on that he has put into that thing and that will determine itself as a matter of course, just as water finds its level. Directly or indirectly in a true system of economic government every man shall have absolutely his own, a free field and no favor, but absolutely justice to all, favoritism to none. But in addition to these natural wages that this man shall get for what he has produced will come his magnificent share as a joint stock holder or owner in the common estate. He will be getting through the common treasury the use and the benefit of a rental in things that the mere man in the barbarous, rustic state has little or no conception of. This leads us to that other consequence of this law of God that, instead of being afraid of having too many children in a family or too many people in a city or too many people in a country, we shall be asking God to send us more of these good things, and we shall be saying we shall never have enough. Some of you gray-bearded gentlemen in this audience here are old enough to remember that there used once to be a common notion in this country of ours that we couldn’t have too many people, and we used to think that every man that came into this country—every able-bodied man—was worth $1,000 to $1,500 to the country. In the Southern portion of this country, not very many years ago, a man used to be supposed to have a well defined value. A man was worth his $1,000, his $1,200 or his $1,500, wasn’t he? And every able-bodied man, every able-bodied woman, every healthy child that comes into this country, whether from heaven or from Europe, is money in the pocket of the country. Why? For the reason that we

346

American Catholic Religious Thought

have just explained, that density of population, thick population, creates this subtle something, this immaterial something, that adds so enormously to the value of all natural bounties. Do you not observe that it is only where there are dense populations that you can have anything like civilization? Have you reflected upon the fact that the very word civilization comes from the same root as city—civitas. The very words civitas and civis are supposed to come from a word which means “coming together, “ and it is logically, historically and philosophically true, as well as etymologically. Coming together—you are coming together, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, helping one another. That is civilization—facility of exchange. . . . Here civilization will increase by density of population, and it is a crime against this economic law to be talking about the danger of overpopulation. And that is keeping with that other—forgive the remark—rot about overproduction. Overproduction of good things! Overproduction of houses! Overproduction of clothes! Overproduction of food! “What fools these mortals be! “ Overproduction! It is underconsumption, not overproduction. I am going to prove to you now that there is not any overproduction. You just pass the word around that all these things that have been overproduced, the houses that have impaired the real estate market—have broken the market—and the glut of dry goods and silks and sealskins and groceries and things, are going to be distributed free; that anybody that needs these things can come and have them for the mere trouble of taking them away. I want to know how long would that overproduction continue to distress our souls. Not very long, which proves to a demonstration that there is plenty of demand for these things. But the trouble is that the poor devils who are suffering cold for the want of sealskins and hunger for the want of groceries can’t get at these things because they haven’t the means with which to buy them. So the trouble is not overproduction, but it is the unjust arrangements of society by which so large a portion of the people either cannot get work at all or have to work at starvation wages. And because when there is a so-called overproduction and underconsumption there comes commercial depression—stagnation in trade—a large portion of the

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

347

people are thrown out of work and in their misery are willing then to work for lower wages—for anything that will keep them from starving and from perishing. Then there is a revival in trade. Then people say: “Now is a good time to get in the goods, because they can be got so cheap—because labor is cheap. Now is a good time to build, because labor is cheap.” And so gradually there is a cessation of this commercial depression, and times begin to get a little better, and then they begin to get what is called good, and the moment the times begin to be good and business begins to prosper, then the man that is sitting there, neither working nor spinning, but eating and drinking, begins to say: “Ha, ha, times are good. Business is prospering. Real estate will go up.” And so it does. Land will go up. There is a need for building more houses. There is a need for more factories, and land goes up, and so a large and constantly increasing portion of the profits of both capital and labor go to pay the unjust rent to the landlord. But when we shall have appropriated to the common treasury the economic rent, all that condition must necessarily cease, and as men will be able to get steady employment or steadily to employ themselves, and will get the highest wages that the very law of wages itself will permit, they will not be so foolish when the wants of their bodies are admirably supplied as to work themselves to death, to continue to degrade themselves into mere working machines. And so, with the increase of general wealth, the raising of wages and the general well being, will commence, voluntarily and naturally, a shortening of the hours of work. It doesn’t require any law of the legislature, or any strike, or any rule of a trades union or any similar society to determine these things. Men will then be more free than they ever have been before to work or not to work as they please; to work long hours or short hours, as it suits best their tastes, their desires and their convenience. If a man wants to work, very good. If a man does not want to work there will be nobody to coerce him, and so we shall restore in a great measure individual liberty. We shall restore what hitherto has been singularly characteristic of our country, but is fast ceasing to be so characteristic of it—the magnificent individualism of Americans. Let us be humble and acknowledge what is the truth, that the boasted superiority of the American people in their inventive genius is the liberality that has presided over the forming of all their institu-

348

American Catholic Religious Thought

tions. Things that have been hitherto characteristic of American men and women, and of American civilization, were not due, are not due, so much to any superiority of ourselves bodily or mentally as to the magnificent opportunities that, under the Providence of God, came to this new people from what used to be considered the boundless and illimitable resources of this wide continent. The peculiar inventiveness of the American people came from the need on the part of a few men to subdue a continent, to make locomotion from one end of it to the other possible within a reasonable space of time. But these characteristics, and the homely virtues that were also characteristic of the American people, were due not so much to difference of race as to difference of condition, and now with changing conditions many of these characteristics and characteristic influences and virtues have disappeared, and we are fast becoming assimilated to those older societies both in their criminal luxuries and in the horrible chasm that separates the rich from the poor. And now, last of all, I would appeal to all you men and women to take up the cross of this new crusade. And, though you will not impress upon your forehead and wear upon your breast any material emblem thereof, let at least the mighty controlling thought take possession of your minds, the divine enthusiasm seize upon your hearts. Take, then, the cross of this new crusade of justice and truth for humanity. Do what you can to help us in what, we are trying to do, in the words of the great Christian poet of England, “To justify the ways of God to men;”4 to give leisure to God’s children from the “carking cares,” as the same poet says, from imbruting and ceaseless toil, from degradation and want, and the worse degradation of the fear of want; to give them plenty, so that they shall say with glad and loving hearts their grace—not a mere form of words, but grace before meat and after meat—and feel that it is not a mockery to say, “Bless, O Lord, these Thy gifts which we are to receive from Thy bountiful hands”—a mockery too often over the cup of tea and dry bread which is the too common food and drink of the working women of this city today. Make room at the Father’s table for all of his children. Go, then, into the highways and byways. Not merely invite them, but compel them to come in and sit at the Father’s table and feast and 4

[John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, Line 22.]

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

349

make merry and be glad in his presence. And give them leisure from this degrading, ceaseless toil to beautify their minds and hearts and worship their Maker, to glorify the Christ in humanity; to read books and to enjoy works of art, not depending for these upon individual charities, but with twenty or fifty art schools and Cooper Unions provided for out of the common treasury. And when men’s bodily necessities have been satisfied, when their minds shall begin to be cultivated, and they shall have begun to take on as a common thing the graces and refinements of culture and science and art, then you will have by the doing of natural justice, by the following of God’s economic laws, a way prepared for the coming of the kingdom of heaven. Then will blasphemy cease upon the lips of the children of men, and man will recognize the handiwork of his Creator. Shall we not make some attempt to prepare the way for the coming of that better day foretold by the Master of old, who, as he gathered around him the faithful few, foretold that the little flock should grow and spread until it shall take in all the kingdoms of the earth? Shall we not do our share toward hastening the time that was foretold by the Master when he taught us to look up and say, “Our Father who art in heaven,” and then to say, “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? While, therefore, it is eminently proper for a Christian to teach the blessedness of suffering after Christ’s example, and for his dear sake, to teach that there is a higher and better something beyond all this, yet at the same time it is a blasphemy against the Maker thus continually to make light of the sufferings of the poor, and to be guilty of the folly of saying that it is a good thing to continue to foster, preserve and perpetuate poverty in the world. As if, forsooth, if we should abolish poverty our occupation would be gone! that there would be nothing for us charitable people to do—as if it would be right to carefully abstain from purifying the whole system and to persist in plastering a sore leg instead. It is by the doing of justice, by the inculcation of the law of equality, liberty and fraternity on earth that we shall prepare the way for the glorious millennial day when it shall be something more than a prayer, and in great measure a reality—“Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

350

American Catholic Religious Thought

Take up, then, the cross of this new crusade, and I, for one, dare to say here, before this vast audience, that I have taken it into my head and heart, and never shall I see the day as long as I live that I shall pluck it out from the one or the other. It were a sad thing indeed to think that any man or set of men should forbid you and me to believe these truths of God, to teach them, to preach them, to love them with a religious enthusiasm or to sacrifice even our very lives in the noble work of making them cheap and common among men; and I stand here and say, without fear of reasonable denial, that all that I have said tonight is eminently consonant with the highest Christian truth and the best Christian justice, and that no condemnation of this truth has ever been heard from the blessed lips of Christ nor from the highest tribunal in his church. Nor is there any more danger or possibility of such condemnation of so clear and salutary an economic truth than there is of the condemnation of the proposition that two and two make four. . . .

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES

“The American Idea,” New York Tablet 14 (September 3, 1870):8-9, (September 17, 1870):9. “The Bugbear of Vaticanism,” American Catholic Quarterly Review, 1 (January 1876): 73-100. “Dr. McGlynn’s Pessimistic Philosophy,” The Nation 43 (December 21, 1886): 450-51. “Lessons of the New York City Election. The Labor Party View,” The North American Review 143 (December, 1886): 571-76. “The New Know-Nothingisms and the Old,” The North American Review 145 (August, 1887): 192-205. “Justice Wanted More Than Charity, “ The Independent (December 11, 1890): 3-4. “The Vatican and the United States,” The Forum 16 (1893): 11-21. “Large Fortunes and Low Wages,” Donahoe’s Magazine 34 (July, 1895): 749-53. “The Results of Cardinal Satolli’s Mission,” The Forum 52 (February, 1897): 695-705.

9 ~ Edward McGlynn

351 SECONDARY SOURCES

Stephen Bell, Rebel, Priest and Prophet. A Biography of Dr Edward McGlynn (New York: The Devin-Adair Co., 1937). J. Brian Benestad, “Henry George and the Catholic View of Morality and the Common Good I,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 44 (July 1985): 365-78. Robert Emmett Curran, Michael Augustine Corrigan, and the Shaping of Conservative Catholicism in America, 1878-1902 (New York: Arno Press, 1978). ———, “The McGlynn Affair and the Shaping of the New Conservativism in American Catholicism, 1886-1894, “ The Catholic Historical Review 66 (April, 1980): 184-204. ———, “Prelude to ‘Americanism’: The New York Accademia and Clerical Radicalism in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Church History 47 (March, 1978): 48-65. Gerald P. Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1982). Sylvester L. Malone, Dr Edward McGlynn (New York, 1917; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1978). C. Joseph Nuesse, “Henry George and Rerum Novarum, American Journal of Economics and Sociology 44 (April 1985): 243-47. Samuel J. Thomas, “Portraits of a ‘Rebel Priest’: Edward McGlynn in Caricature, 1886-1893,” Journal of American Culture 7 (Winter 1984): 19-33.

10 ~ John Augustine Ryan JOHN AUGUSTINE RYAN: A JUST WAGE John A. Ryan (1869-1945), the “Right Reverend New Dealer,” was the chief Catholic spokesman for economic justice in the United States throughout the early twentieth century. Influenced by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum (1891), Ryan began to discover the plight of laborers in the United States. A fundamental concern for a just wage, therefore, stood at the core of all Ryan’s activities. He argued that a just wage was the worker’s right derived from his dignity as an individual. According to Ryan, the Catholic ethicist should not simply articulate a priori ethical principles, he had to discern the conditions of the times and adapt principles of natural law to those conditions. The ethicist involved in the labor-management problems of the industrial order had to use the sciences of economics and social psychology within his own ethics in order to determine the nature of justice in the real order. Ryan became the first American Catholic ethicist to apply himself to a scientific study of economics in order to create an ethics of the economic order. Although he opposed classical socialism because he insisted upon the natural right to private property, nevertheless he sought to secure and insure the workers’ rights to fair wages through the intervention of government. The church also had a role to play in the social order. Ryan repeatedly prodded American Catholics to concern themselves with the issues of social justice more than they had in the past. Catholic leaders, whether clerical or lay, had to become better informed about the problems of the new industrial order and to become involved in reforming that order in accord with the natural principles of social justice. Ryan tried to steer Catholics and government between the paths of socialism and individualistic capitalism. His position resembled that of a limited socialism, or a restricted capitalism; it appeared to be limited socialism when he stressed the good of the whole economic body and when he called upon government to protect this good; it seemed like a restricted capitalism

354

American Catholic Religious Thought

when he appealed to the rights of private property and the need to protect the rights of capitalists in the ownership and management of their own industries. John Ryan was born in Vermillion, Minnesota to William and Maria Luby Ryan. He matured in a rural Minnesota Irish family that had fled famine Ireland. In those early years he read the Irish World, edited by Patrick Ford who had supported Henry George, and was influenced by the thinking of Ignatius Donnelly, founder of the Anti-Monopoly Party and an advocate of populist causes, and by Archbishop John Ireland who was himself an advocate for social reforms. Educated in the local schools in Vermillion, the classical curriculum of St. Thomas Minor Seminary in St. Paul, and the clerical curriculum of St. Paul Seminary, he was ordained in 1898. After ordination, Archbishop Ireland sent Ryan to obtain a doctorate in theology at the Catholic University in Washington, D.C. In 1902, he returned to St. Paul to teach in the seminary, and taught there until 1915. From 1915 to 1939, he taught social ethics at the Catholic University in Washington, became involved in social legislation through the National Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Social Action Department, and wrote numerous articles on the social issues of the day. He retired from the Catholic University in 1939, but continued writing and working for social causes in Washington until his death in 1945. The following selection comes from his first major work, A Living Wage, and represents Ryan’s position on a natural rights philosophy. According to Ryan, a living wage is a natural right. In this chapter, therefore, he outlines what he means by right. He calls his position “a middle ground” between the revolutionary and positivistic theories of the origin and extent of individual rights. These rights, which belong to the individual by nature, are discovered and known partly by intuition and partly by analysis. These individual rights, of course, must always be consistent with the rights of others and the common good.

******

10 ~ John Augustine Ryan

355

TEXT THE BASIS AND JUSTIFICATION OF RIGHTS Source: A Living Wage: Its Ethical and Economic Aspects (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1906), 43-66. THEORY OF RIGHTS

The thesis to be maintained in this volume is that the laborer’s claim to a living wage is of the nature of a right. This right is personal, not merely social: that is to say, it belongs to the individual as individual, and not as member of society; it is the laborer’s personal prerogative, not his share of social good; and its primary end is the welfare of the laborer, not that of society. Again, it is a natural, not a positive right; for it is born with the individual, derived from his rational nature, not conferred upon him by a positive enactment. In brief, the right to a living wage is individual, natural and absolute. A right in the moral sense of the term may be defined as an inviolable moral claim to some personal good. When this claim is created, as it sometimes is, by civil authority it is a positive or legal right; when it is derived from man’s rational nature it is a natural right. All rights are means, moral means, whereby the possessor of them is enabled to reach some end. Natural rights are the moral means or opportunities by which the individual attains the end appointed to him by nature. For the present it is sufficient to say that this end is right and reasonable life. The exigencies of right and reasonable living, therefore, determine the existence, and number, and extent of man’s natural rights. Just as his intellectual, volitional, sensitive, nutritive and motive faculties are the positive, or physical, agencies by which he lives and acts as a human being, so his natural rights are the moral faculties requisite to the same end. He cannot attain this end adequately unless he is regarded by his fellows as morally immune from arbitrary interference. They must hold themselves morally restrained from hindering him in the reasonable exercise of his faculties. His powers of intellect, will, sense, nutrition and motion will be of little use to him if his neighbors may licitly deprive him, whenever it may suit their convenience, of his external goods, or his liberty, or his members, or his life. In addition to his positive powers, he stands in need of those moral powers which give to his claim upon certain personal goods that character of

356

American Catholic Religious Thought

sacredness which restrains or tends to restrain arbitrary interference by his fellows. Man’s natural rights are absolute, not in the sense that they are subject to no limitations—which would be absurd—but in the sense that their validity is not dependent on the will of anyone except the person in whom they inhere. They are absolute in existence but not in extent. Within reasonable limits their sacredness and binding force can never cease. Outside of these limits, they may in certain contingencies disappear. If they were not absolute to this extent, if there were no circumstances in which they were secure against all attacks, they would not deserve the name of rights. The matter may be made somewhat clearer by one or two examples. The right to life is said to be absolute because no human power may licitly kill an innocent man as a mere means to the realization of any end whatever. The life of the individual person is so sacred that, as long as the right thereto has not been forfeited by the perverse conduct of the subject himself, it may not be subordinated to the welfare of any other individual or any number of individuals. Not even to preserve its own existence may the state directly and deliberately put an unoffending man to death. When, however, the individual is not innocent, when by such actions as murder or attempted murder he has forfeited his right to live, he may, of course, be rightfully executed by civil authority, or killed in self-defense by his fellow man. He may also be compelled to risk his life on behalf of his country, for that is a part of his duty; and he may with entire justice be deprived of life indirectly and incidentally, as when non-combatants are unavoidably killed in a city that is besieged in time of war. Again, the right to liberty and property are not absolute in the sense that the individual may have as much of these goods as he pleases and do with them as he pleases, but inasmuch as within reasonable limits—which are always determined by the essential needs of personal development—these rights are sacred and inviolable. With respect to their natural rights, all men are equal, because all are equal in the rational nature from which such rights are derived. By nature every man is a person, that is, a rational, self-active, independent being. Every man is rational because endowed with the faculties of reason and will. His will impels him to seek the good, the end, of his being, and his reason enables him to find and adjust means to this end.

10 ~ John Augustine Ryan

357

Every man is self-active, inasmuch as he is master of his own faculties and able in all the essentials of conduct to direct his own actions. Every man is independent in the sense that he is morally complete in himself, is not a part of any other man, nor inferior to any man, either in the essential qualities of his being or in the end toward which he is morally bound to move. In short, every individual is an “end in himself,” and has a personality of his own to develop through the exercise of his own faculties. Because of this equality in the essentials of personality, men are of equal intrinsic worth, have ends to attain that are of equal intrinsic importance, and consequently have equal natural rights to the means without which these ends cannot be achieved. Only in the abstract, however, are men’s natural rights equal. In the concrete they are unequal, just as are the concrete natures from which they spring.1 This is not to say that equality of rights is an empty abstraction, without any vital meaning or force or consequences in actual life. Men are equal as regards the number of their natural rights. The most important of these are the rights to life, to liberty, to property, to a livelihood, to marriage, to religious worship, to intellectual and moral education. These inhere in all men without distinction of person, but they have not necessarily the same extension, or content, in all. Indeed, proportional justice requires that individuals endowed with different powers should possess rights that vary in degree. For example, the right to a livelihood and the right to an education will include a greater amount of the means of living and greater opportunities of self-improvement in the cases of those who have greater needs and greater capacities. But in every case the natural rights of the individual will embrace a certain minimum of the goods to which these rights refer, which minimum is determined by the reasonable needs of personality. The rights that any person will possess in excess of this minimum will depend upon a variety of circumstances, individual and social. Hence, instead of saying that the natural rights of all men are equal in the abstract but not in the concrete, it would perhaps be more correct, or at least less misleading, to describe them as equal 1

For an explanation of the distinction between abstract or specific and concrete or individual equality, see, Taparelli, “Droit naturel,” nos. 35463, and Naudet, “La democratie,” ch. XV.

358

American Catholic Religious Thought

in kind, number and sacredness, and in extension relatively to their particular subjects; but not in quantity nor in absolute content. SCOPE AND CHARACTER OF ENDS

Such in bare outline is the theory of the character, purpose, and extent of natural rights. Do they really exist? Is the individual really endowed with moral prerogatives, inviolable claims, in virtue of which it is wrong, for instance, to take from him, so long as he is innocent of crime, his life or his liberty? Whence comes the validity and sacredness of these claims? The answers to these questions have already been briefly indicated in the statement of the end for which the claims exist. Natural rights are necessary means of right and reasonable living. They are essential to the welfare of a human being, a person. They exist and are sacred and inviolable because the welfare of the person exists—as a fact of the ideal order—and is a sacred and inviolable thing. It was Cicero who wrote: “Fine in philosophia constituto, constituta sunt omnia.” In problems of philosophy, when we have established the end we have established all things else. Let us look more deeply, then, into the scope and character of this end to which natural rights are but means. Right and reasonable life, the welfare of the person, consist in the development of man’s personality through the harmonious and properly ordered exercise of his faculties. He should subordinate his sense faculties to his rational faculties; exercise his rational faculties consistently with the claims of his Creator and the reasonable demands of his fellows; and seek the goods that minister to the senses and the selfish promptings of the spirit in subordination to the higher goods, namely, those of the intellect and of the disinterested will. In a word, the supreme earthly goal of conduct is to know in the highest degree the best that is to be known, and to love in the highest degree the best that is to be loved. These highest objects of knowledge and love are God, and, in proportion to the degrees of excellence that they possess, his creatures. To prove that these moral and spiritual values are facts, we have only to appeal to the consciousness of any normally constituted human being. The average man has an abiding conviction that the rational faculties are higher, nobler, more excellent, of greater intrinsic worth than the sense-faculties; that consequently

10 ~ John Augustine Ryan

359

the goods of the mind are to be preferred to those of the senses; and that among the activities of the rational powers those dictated by disinterested love are intrinsically better than those which make for selfishness. These primary and general moral intuitions produce in the mind of the person who heeds them the conviction that it is not only reasonable but obligatory for him to pursue the path of conduct thus dimly outlined. The immediate objective basis of this obligation is the intrinsic superiority of the higher faculties, the infinite worth of God, and the essential sacredness of human personality. The ultimate source of the obligation is the will of God just as the ultimate source of the distinction between the higher and lower faculties, activities, and goods is the divine essence; and just as the ultimate source of the intuitions by which we perceive these distinctions is the divine reason. Since, therefore, the individual is obliged to live a moral and reasonable life in the manner just described, the means to this end, i.e., natural rights, are so necessary and so sacred that all other persons than the one in whom they reside are morally restrained from interfering with or ignoring them. The dignity of personality imposes upon the individual the duty of self-perfection; he cannot fulfil this duty adequately unless he is endowed with natural rights. Such is the immediate basis of natural rights and the proximate source of their sacredness; their ultimate source is to be found in the reason and will of God, who has decreed that men shall pursue self-perfection and that they shall not arbitrarily deprive one another of the means essential to this purpose. This method of basing the individual’s natural rights upon his duties is perhaps the one most commonly employed by those writers who hold individual perfection to be the immediate end and rule of conduct. According to another mode of reasoning, they rest, not upon the duties of their possessor, but upon those duties of other men toward him which are called juridical, that is, the “other-regarding” duties that cover goods which in the strict sense belong to him as his own. Thus the fulfilment of lawful contracts is a juridical duty, while assisting the needy is only a duty of charity. All juridical duties may be summed up in the command, “thou shalt not arbitrarily interfere with the external liberty of thy fellow man,” for external liberty comprises

360

American Catholic Religious Thought

all those opportunities of activity, acquisition and possession that are essential to the pursuit of reasonable self-perfection. Corresponding to and implied by these juridical duties in one man are those moral prerogatives in other men that we call natural rights. The foundation and source of these duties is that precept of the natural law (understanding by natural law that portion of God’s eternal law which applies to human conduct and is written in the human reason) which enjoins men to respect the dignity of human personality in one another.2 This line of argument, however, suggests that not even the juridical duties of men are formally necessary as a basis and justification of natural rights. These duties are, indeed imposed upon man by the natural law, but the reason why this particular precept of the law exists, as well as the reason that constrains us to believe that it does exist, is to be found in the intrinsic and inviolable worth of the individual. That is the ultimate basis—on this side of God—of both juridical duties and natural rights. To prove the existence of the latter, it seems, therefore, logically sufficient to show that because of his intrinsic dignity a person is morally privileged to pursue self-perfection, and his fellows are morally restrained from hindering his exercise of the privilege. Natural rights may be likened to the legal right by which a man holds a piece of land that he has bought from the state. His claim thereto is founded neither upon his duty to support his family (to which end the produce of the land may be assumed to be the necessary means) nor upon the obligation which binds his neighbors to leave him in undisturbed possession. Similarly, the individual’s natural rights may be regarded as independent both of his own duties and of the duties which these rights occasion in his fellows.3 Finally, natural rights can be logically defended on the principles of what may be called intuitive hedonism. There are men who maintain that the supreme end and rule of conduct is universal happiness. By this phrase they mean, not “the greatest happiness of the greatest number,” nor the general happiness of the group or of society—all of which 2

3

Cf. “Philosophia Moralis,” by Julius Costa-Rosetti, 2d edition, thesis 114. Cf. “The Theory of Morals,” by Paul Janet, Book II, ch. IV, in which the author defends a doctrine very similar to the one just outlined, although he strangely calls a right a “responsibility.”

10 ~ John Augustine Ryan

361

are equivalent in the concrete to the happiness of the majority—but the happiness of each and every human being. They insist that, since human happiness is the good of a person, it has intrinsic worth, is in itself a sacred thing, and that all individuals have, therefore, essentially equal claims to the opportunity of pursuing it. This doctrine is hedonistic, inasmuch as it makes happiness the ultimate end, and intuitive, inasmuch as it postulates not merely the desirableness of personal happiness, but the intrinsic worth of all human happiness. The late Professor Sidgwick held substantially this view, although he admitted that it contains an inherent contradiction.4 For if the intuition of “rational benevolence” be acknowledged as logically sufficient to compel me to forego my own happiness for the greater happiness of others then the ultimate end, rule and determinant of right action is no longer my happiness—which is the only “desirable consciousness” that can have any meaning for me—but conformity to the dictates of reason. In other words, reason assures me that human happiness is valuable per se, while all my aspirations and experiences tell me happiness is a good only in so far as it provides me with agreeable states of consciousness. If, however, the general principle be admitted in spite of its inherent weakness, a system of natural rights can be logically deduced therefrom. THREE OPPONENTS OF NATURAL RIGHTS

All of these methods, therefore, posit as the ultimate earthly basis of the individual’s natural rights the inherent sacredness of his personality. This is true even of the argument which derives rights from the duty of perfecting one’s self; for this duty is itself founded upon the intrinsic worth of the person, specifically of his higher faculties. Hence we find that those who reject the doctrine of natural rights, and who reason logically, reject likewise the principle of the essential and absolute dignity of every human being. They either deny that anything in the universe possesses intrinsic worth, or assert that social welfare is the highest good. To the former class belong the believers in egoistic hedonism; to the latter, the social utilitarians and the Hegelians. 4

See his “Methods of Ethics,” Book III, chapters XIII and XIV; and Book IV, concluding chapter, 6th ed.

362

American Catholic Religious Thought

EGOISTIC HEDONISM

For those who maintain that the supreme end of life and rule of conduct is one’s own happiness, there can, of course, be no such thing as a right in the moral sense of the term. There is no sacredness, no intrinsic worth, no obligation-compelling force in either the concept or the fact of happiness unqualified and divorced from all consideration of the dignity of personality. The person who refuses to seek his own happiness can be condemned as unwise but not as immoral. And if he is not, in any true sense of the word, under moral obligation to procure happiness for himself, neither is he bound by any sort of duty to respect or refrain from hindering the happiness of others. As there is no sacredness in the end—happiness—and none in the persons pursuing it, so there can be no sacredness in the means—those opportunities of activity that we call rights—and no obligation to respect them. In such a system individual rights have neither logical foundation nor intelligible meaning. Again, if personal happiness be the ultimate aim and criterion of reasonable conduct it is altogether fitting and reasonable that each man should interpret happiness in his own way, and strive to obtain it by whatever means seem to him best, regardless of such unreasonableness and unfounded restraints as rights and obligations. SOCIAL UTILITARIANS AND POSITIVISTS

This purely egoistic hedonism seems to be completely and consistently accepted by only a very small minority of the world’s thinkers. Even with them it is a merely speculative belief. In practice they reject or at least modify it, in common with the overwhelming majority of the men and women who live outside of lunatic asylums. A formal refutation of it in the interest of the doctrine of natural rights is, therefore, unnecessary. Of much greater importance for our contention is the theory that all rights are positive, that is, derived from society, and conferred upon the individual primarily for the benefit of society and only secondarily for the sake of the individual.5 Individual rights are 5

In substance this theory seems to be held by a majority of the non-Catholics of our time who write on justice and political philosophy. Not all state it in the same language nor restrict the concrete rights of the individual to the same extent, but all accept the principle that the individual has no

10 ~ John Augustine Ryan

363

valid in so far as they do not hinder the social weal. “By himself,” says Mackenzie, “a man has no right to anything whatever. He is a part of the social whole; and he has a right only to that which it is for the good of the whole that he should have.”6 In this view the social organism becomes an end in itself; and its good becomes the final goal and rule of human conduct. Now society is, indeed, something more than an abstraction, something more than the sum of its component individuals. And its function is not simply to guarantee equal liberty to all its members, in the sense of Immanuel Kant and Herbert Spencer. It is a real entity, a moral body, an organism, whose purpose is to safeguard the rights and promote to a reasonable degree the welfare of everyone of its members. It is an organism only by analogy, however; not literally

6

right which society may not in certain contingencies annul for its own welfare. The sources of the theory are chiefly: (1) writers who opposed the doctrines of the French Revolution, such as, Edmund Burke in “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” and Joseph de Maistre in “Essai sur le principe generateur des constitutions politiques”; (2) juristic writers who, in opposition to the Eighteenth century teaching on natural rights, endeavored to place all rights on a basis of historical facts and development, the most prominent of whom were F. C. de Savigny in “System des roemischen Rechts,” and F. C. Stahl in “Philosophie des Rechts”; (3) the Hegelian conception of the state as the highest manifestation of the universal reason and will, the source of all rights, and the absolute end to which the individual must subordinate his particular aims and activity; see Hegel’s “Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts,” and Lasson’s “System der Rechtsphilosophie”; (4) and finally, the doctrine of evolutionist utilitarianism, which emphasizes the importance of race progress at the expense of the individual. Some indications of common points in the last two sources will be found in chapter II of Ritchie’s “Darwin and Hegel,” while recent statements of the general positivistic theory of rights are contained in “Natural Rights,” by the same author, in Hobson’s “Social Problem,” and in Willoughby’s “Social Justice.” Good presentations of the doctrine of natural rights defended in this chapter are made by Taparelli, “Droit naturel,” and Meyer, “Institutiones Juris Naturalis.” Finally Hegel’s general concept of personality is successfully attacked in Andrew Seth’s “Hegelianism and Personality,” especially on pp. 67-69 and in the concluding chapter. “A Manual of Ethics,” 296.

364

American Catholic Religious Thought

or physically. It is an organism inasmuch as its members are mutually dependent, and have diverse functions; inasmuch as it persists amid continuous changes in its membership, and will retain its identity after all its present members shall have perished; and inasmuch as its health is determined by the health of its members, and in turn reacts upon the latter. When this much has been said the analogy between society and a biological organism is about exhausted. Society is not an organism in the sense that it is a finality. Its members do not exist and function for its welfare; they possess intrinsic worth and sacredness. Hence it is not an organism in which the individual’s personality is merged and lost, like the branch in the tree, to use the illustration of Hegel. Society has, indeed, rights that are distinct from the rights of the individuals composing it, and its scope and aims reach beyond the welfare of the men and women that live in it at any given time. It has the right, for example, to make war, which the individual has not; and to prevent the ruthless destruction of forests, which prohibition may be contrary to the interests and wishes of its present members. Nevertheless, every right that society possesses, every act that it performs, every assertion that it makes of its legitimate power over individuals, is ultimately for the sake of individuals. It cannot otherwise be justified, for it is not an end in itself. Let us concede for the moment that society exists for its own sake, is its own highest good. All its powers, prerogatives and activities will be naturally used as a means to this end. Whenever individuals, however innocent of wrong doing, impede society’s progress they are to be relentlessly blotted out of existence. Let us suppose that as a result of this social selection the general level of the race is much higher than it would have been had regard been paid to the “superstition” of natural rights. Society has been treated as an end in itself, and the result is a more excellent society. It must be evident that the individuals who have been removed to bring about this result could not reasonably have been expected to make the sacrifice willingly. They could not have been satisfied to efface themselves for the sake of society as distinct from its members, since this would be to die for an abstraction. Nor is it likely that any considerable number of them were willing to forego existence in order that the individuals who were left behind might enjoy a more

10 ~ John Augustine Ryan

365

complete existence in the improved society; for the real meaning of this situation is that the former have been used as mere instruments to the welfare of the latter. It is not reasonable to expect men to devote themselves completely to any other end than their own highest good, and a superior society cannot be the highest good for those who must be annihilated as a condition of its realization. They will very naturally prefer to run the risk of securing their own welfare in a less perfect social organization. There is no duty constraining one section of the community—not simply to risk their lives, as in a just war—but to submit to be killed by the social authority, in order that the surviving citizens may have the benefit of a more efficient state. The same statement may be made concerning any other of the individual’s natural and essential rights. And if the individuals whose rights are treated as non-existent are neither willing nor bound by moral obligation to make the sacrifice, the state has certainly no right, no moral power, to treat them as a means pure and simple to the welfare of those of its members who are permitted to survive. For, juggle as we will with the terms “social utility” and “social welfare,” talk as obscurely as we may about regarding the individual from the viewpoint of society, the true meaning of the assertion that the rights of the individual are derived from and wholly subordinate to society, is that the lives of those who are less useful to society are essentially inferior to the lives of those who are more useful. And not until those who reject natural rights have succeeded in proving that some human lives are less sacred, have less intrinsic worth, stand on a lower grade of being than others, can they indulge the hope of winning over any considerable number of thinkers to the contention that the individual—even the poorest and lowliest person that breathes—has no rights that are indestructible by society. The positivist theory of rights becomes more formidable, at least at first sight, when it is stated in terms of Hegelianism. The question is no longer one between the relative interests and importance of the stronger, wiser and more virtuous citizens on the one hand, and of the weaker, less intelligent and more vicious on the other. Organized society, or the state, is in this system regarded as a good in itself, the highest manifestation of the universal reason, which is the only final reality. The all-important consideration, then, is to see that this highest

366

American Catholic Religious Thought

embodiment of the universal reason or world-spirit called the state, shall reach the fullest possible development. Compared with this purpose, the welfare of individuals, who are merely particular and imperfect realizations of the one great reality, is insignificant. Their importance is analogous to that of the individual trees in a beautiful grove: the totality called the grove is the supreme end, to which the existence and condition of any particular tree is entirely subordinate. The rights of the individual are, therefore, derived from the state and intended for the greater glory of the state. The late Professor Ritchie, one of the ablest of the Hegelians who wrote in English, describes the rights and dignity of the human person thus: “Every human being may claim a right to be considered as such, because he potentially shares in the consciousness of the universal reason.”7 Each, individual is, as it were, a receptacle of the universal reason, and derives therefrom all his worth and sacredness. When, consequently, the life or liberty of the individual begins to be an obstacle to the activity or unfolding of the universal reason, whenever the interests of the universal reason demand that any given individual should cease to embody it, he may lawfully be put to death, just as a diseased limb may be severed from the body, or a leaking pot be consigned to the scrap heap. If the pantheistic basis of this deification of the state be accepted the theory of rights reared upon it is entirely logical. It may well be doubted, however, whether this blind, impersonal entity known as the universal reason seems to any considerable number of persons to have the moral authority requisite to oblige them to surrender their particular existence for its aggrandizement. And of the few who may recognize the supreme rights of the universal reason, not all will acknowledge that its loftiest manifestation is to be found in the very fallible and very imperfect state in which they happen to live. An attempt to refute the metaphysical assumptions underlying the Hegelian theory of rights is, consequently, not much needed at this time. One of the most frequent of the popular arguments against natural rights runs thus: All rights come into existence, become necessary, and obtain adequate protection only in society; hence they are derived from society, exist for a social end, and should be exercised chiefly for the social welfare. This presentation is vitiated by an incorrect analy7

“Natural Rights,” 96, 97.

10 ~ John Augustine Ryan

367

sis and by unwarranted inferences. Not all of man’s rights require a social organization, or even social contact of any kind, in order that they should become existent. All that is necessary is that two men be alive at the same time. They may be thousands of miles apart, may not even know of each other’s existence, yet each will possess in full validity such natural rights as those of life, liberty and property, and will be morally restrained from hindering his fellow in the reasonable exercise of these rights. As to the second contention, it is true that rights are not needed until men come into some form of social intercourse; for a right means the moral power of restraining others from interfering with one’s personal goods, and if there is no one near enough to interfere the moral restraint is unnecessary and impracticable; but this does not prove that rights are created by society, any more than the fact that evening dress is worn only at certain “functions” proves that this form of apparel is created by or for the “functions.” The clothes are intended for the individual wearers on certain occasions. In like manner, the individual’s rights have for their primary purpose his own welfare in society. Finally, the fact that a man’s rights can be sufficiently protected only in civil society is not a reason why they should be entirely subordinated to the ends of society, any more than the employer’s dependence upon his employees puts him under obligation to turn over to them all his profits. REVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF RIGHTS

Academic opposition to the doctrine of natural rights is directed not so much against the moderate conception of them that has always prevailed in Catholic ethical teaching, as against the exaggerated and anti-social form in which they were proclaimed by the political philosophers of France, and even by some of those of England and America, in the latter half of the Eighteenth century. The Catholic view, which is the one defended in this chapter, is, as already noted, that the individual’s natural rights are derived from and determined by his nature, that is to say, his essential constitution, relations and end. They are also said to proceed from the natural law, which is simply that portion of God’s eternal law that applies to actions of human beings. The natural law is so expressed in man’s nature that its general precepts may readily be known, partly by intuition and partly by analyzing man’s faculties,

368

American Catholic Religious Thought

tendencies and destiny. In the view of the revolutionary philosophers, however, “nature” and “natural” referred not to what is essential and permanent in man, but to that which is primitive and unconventional. Hence they laid more stress on the “state of nature” than on the “law of nature.”8 The natural law was merely that very simple and very primitive system of rules that would suffice for the state of nature, in which political restraints would be unknown, or at least reduced to a minimum. As the late Professor Ritchie has well said: “To the Thomist9 the law of nature is an ideal for human law; to the Rousseauist it is an ideal to be reached by getting rid of human law altogether.”10 In the mind of the revolutionist, therefore, to re-establish the law of nature meant to shake off the cumbersome and obstructive political regulations of the day, and get back to the simple state of nature, the semi-anarchical conditions of primitive times. This was, of course, a very inadequate interpretation of man’s nature and of the natural law. No such “state of nature” ever existed or ever could exist compatibly with civilization. No valid conclusion regarding the individual’s liberties, duties or rights could be deduced from his position and relations in this imaginary and irrational existence. Nevertheless, upon it were based and by it were measured men’s natural rights in the Revolutionary system. As a consequence, the rights of the individual were exaggerated and the rights of society minimized. In practice this juristic liberalism has meant, and always will mean, that the state allows to the strong the legal right and power to oppress the weak. A good example of the evil is to be found in the results of the economic policy of laissez-faire. It is no wonder that there has been a reaction against this pernicious, anti-social and really unnatural theory of natural rights. RYAN’S THEORY

The doctrine of natural rights outlined in the foregoing pages holds, then, a middle ground between the revolutionary and the positivistic theories of the origin and extent of the rights of the individual. It insists that the individual is endowed by nature, or rather, by God, with the rights that are requisite to a reasonable development of his 8 9 10

Cf. Bonar, “Philosophy and Political Economy,” 186. And the Catholic philosopher generally. “Natural Rights,” 43.

10 ~ John Augustine Ryan

369

personality, and that these rights are, within due limits, sacred against the power even of the state; but it insists that no individual’s rights extend so far as to prevent the state from adjusting the conflicting claims of individuals and safeguarding the just welfare of all its citizens. In other words, man’s natural rights must not be so widely interpreted that the strong, and the cunning, and the unscrupulous will be able, under the pretext of individual liberty, to exploit and overreach the weak, and simple, and honest majority. The formula that correctly describes the limits of individual rights is not the one enounced by Kant and Fichte, namely, that a person has a right to do everything that does not interfere with the equal liberty of others.11 Interpreted in one way, this formula is utterly incapable of application, since the doing of an action by one man means the limitation to that degree of the liberty of all other men. Understood in a completely subjective sense, it would justify and legalize theft, adultery and murder; for I may claim the right to steal if I am willing that others should enjoy the same liberty. The true formula is, that the individual has a right to all things that are essential to the reasonable development of his personality, consistently with the rights of others and the complete observance of the moral law. Where this rule is enforced the rights of individuals, and of society as well, are amply and reasonably protected. On the other hand, if the individual’s rights are given a narrower interpretation, if on any plea of public welfare they are treated by the state as non-existent, there is an end to the dignity of personality and the sacredness of human life. Man becomes merely an instrument of the State’s aggrandizement, instead of the final end of its solicitude and the justification of its existence. If all rights are derived from the state, and determined by the needs of the state, the laborer has no such thing as a natural right to a living wage, nor any kind of right to any measure of wages, except in so far as the community would thereby be benefitted. President Hadley tells us that some workers are more profitable at a low wage than at a high one, that the “economy of high wages” is not a universal law. “There are some men whose maximum efficiency per unit of food is obtained with small consumption and small output. These go into lines requiring neither exceptional strength 11

See Kant’s “Metaphysik der Sitten,” section C, and Fichte’s “Science of Rights,” 161, Kroeger’ s translation.

370

American Catholic Religious Thought

nor exceptional skill, and remain poor because the best commercial economy in such lines is obtained by a combination of low output and low consumption.”12 Those who would measure the rights of the individual by the social weal must logically conclude that whenever “the best commercial economy” is secured by “low consumption,” in other words, by low wages, the underpaid worker, let him be never so cruelly “sweated,” is not treated unjustly and has no right to a larger remuneration. Hence the importance of the doctrine of rights to the subject of this volume; for it cannot be shown that every laborer has an ethical claim to a living wage unless the teaching of Christianity be accepted, to-wit: “That every individual by virtue of his eternal destination is at the core somewhat holy and indestructible; that the smallest part has a value of its own, and not merely because it is part of a whole: that every man is to be regarded by the community, never as a mere instrument, but also as an end.”13

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES A Living Wage: Its Ethical And Economic Aspects (New York: Macmillan, 1906). Distributive Justice: The Right and Wrong of Our Present Distribution of Wealth (New York: Macmillan, 1916) . Social Reconstruction (New York: Macmillan, 1920). Declining Liberty and Other Papers (New York: Macmillan, 1927). Social Doctrine in Action: A Personal History (New York: Harper, 1941). Harlan Beckley, ed., Economic Justice: Selections from Distributive Justice and a Living Wage by John A. Ryan (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996).

12 13

“Economics,” section 363. Gierke, “Political Theories of the Middle Age,” 82.

10 ~ John Augustine Ryan

371

SECONDARY SOURCES Harlan Beckley, Passion for Justice: Retrieving the Legacies of Walter Rauschenbusch, John A. Ryan, and Reinhold Niebuhr (Louisville, Ky.: Westminister John Knox Press, 1992). Francis L. Broderick, The Right Reverend New Dealer: John A. Ryan (New York: Macmillan, 1963). Charles E. Curran, “American and Catholic: American Catholic Social Ethics, 1880-1965,” Thought, 52 (March, 1977): 50-75. ———, American Catholic Social Ethics: Twentieth-Century Approaches (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982). Patrick W. Gearty, The Economic Thought of Monsignor John A. Ryan (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1953). George G. Higgins, “The Underconsumption Theory in the Writings of Monsignor John A. Ryan,” M.A. dissertation, Catholic University, 1942. Robert G. Kennedy, et al., eds., Religion and Public Life: The Legacy of Monsignor John A. Ryan (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2001). Theodora E. McGill, “A Bio-Bibliography of Monsignor John A. Ryan,” M.A. dissertation, Catholic University, 1952. Joseph M. McShane, “Sufficiently Radical.” Catholicism, Progressivism, and the Bishop’s Program of 1919 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1986).

Part VII NEO-THOMISM AND CATHOLIC CULTURE, 1920-1960

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura JOHN STANISLAUS ZYBURA: PROGRESSIVE SCHOLASTICISM John Stanislaus Zybura (1875-1934), Polish Catholic priest and an ardent student of Neo-Scholasticism, was one of the primary exponents of the revival of scholastic philosophy and theology in the 1920s and 1930s. Like a number of other early American proponents of neo-scholasticism, he read Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni patris (1879), the encyclical that gave official papal impetus to the revival, as an encouragement to put scholastic philosophy and theology in dialogue with modern developments in philosophy. For Zybura, as for Pope Leo, scholastic philosophy was the perennial philosophy, but it could be revived and remodeled Zybura was born in Subkau, in Prussian Poland, and emigrated to the United States some time in the late nineteenth century. His family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he was educated at St. Ignatius College and St. Mary’s Seminary in the early 1890s. After his college education in philosophy he was sent to the North American College in Rome where he completed his theological studies in preparation for the priesthood. In 1898, in the midst of the Americanist crisis, he was ordained in Rome. He returned to the Diocese of Cleveland after ordination and received a number of parish appointments in the city of Cleveland, becoming pastor of St. Stanislaus parish in Lorain, Ohio in 1908. Because he was stricken with tuberculosis, he could not sustain a pastoral ministry and therefore retired in 1915 and was confined first to the Glockner Sanatorium and later to St. Francis Hospital in Colorado Springs, Colorado. For the last nineteen years of his life in the Sanatorium he studied the scholastic revival and promoted it through his translations and his own literary productions. He was a master of a number of foreign languages (Polish, German, Italian,

376

American Catholic Religious Thought

French) and acquainted his American readers with the scholastic revival in other parts of the world. The selection that follows is from an introduction he wrote for his English translation of Gerardo Bruni’s Riflessioni sulla Scolastica (Rome, 1927). He titled the translation Progressive Scholasticism because of his view that the scholastic revival was not just a retrieval of the perennial philosophy. As a perennial philosophy it had assimilative powers that could appropriate what was good in other forms of thought and could discard those elements of the perennial philosophy that were time-conditioned and no longer useful in the modern world. He viewed scholastic philosophy as a dynamic force in the world and an answer to what he and others perceived as the excessive subjectivism, relativism, and pragmatism of some modern forms of thought. Unlike some anti-modernist neo-scholastics, however, he was open to modern developments and advised his sympathetic readers to be receptive to what was new without abandoning the perennial.

****** TEXT PROGRESSIVE SCHOLASTICISM Source: John S. Zybura, “Translator’s Foreward,” Gerardo Bruni, Progressive Scholasticism (St. Louis and London: B. Herder, 1929), iv-xxxv.

According to the philosophies of “perpetual flux” or “absolute relativism,” we must eternally recommence the solution of the great riddles of nature and of man. Penelope-like, we must undo the work already finished, and begin to weave anew the texture of philosophic thought, only to have it unraveled again by our successors. But, est perennis quaedam philosophia, said Leibniz1 who, in the opinion of Gierke, “in so many directions went deeper than his con1

Philosophische Schriften (ed. Gerhardt, 1887), 3:424. He appropriated the phrase from Augustinus Steuchus Eugubinus, whose work De Perenni Philosophia was first published at Lyons in 1540.

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

377

temporaries, and who, perhaps for that reason, so often turned his eyes backward towards medieval ways of thought.”2 We must, wrote Trendelenburg3 over fifty years ago, abandon the prejudice that a newly formulated principle has yet to be discovered for the philosophy of the future. The principle is found: it lies in the organic world-view grounded in Plato and Aristotle, propagating itself from them, developing, fashioning, and gradually perfecting itself by a more profound investigation of the fundamental ideas and particular aspects, as well as by a reciprocal action with the various positive sciences. The New Scholasticism, like the old, is inspired by this ideal of a perennial philosophy: it aims to represent most comprehensively this fund of deathless philosophic doctrines, and progressively to enrich it by all the new conquests of the human mind. It claims to possess the principle mentioned by Trendelenburg in “that profound system of metaphysics, such as it was founded by Plato and Aristotle, fashioned in the Christian spirit by Patristic thought, rounded off by medieval Scholasticism, particularly in the imperishably lucid form and logical elaboration given it in the light of first principles by St. Thomas Aquinas, accepted in its essential traits by Leibniz as the philosophia perennis. Surely, this system can and must be continued and further developed, enriched, thoroughly secured and poised on its foundations—especially in its theory of knowledge4—maintained in progressive relation with the advances of empirical science; but it cannot without detriment be abandoned as to its groundwork and leading

2

3

4

E. Barker, in Mediaeval Contributions to Modern Civilization (London, 1921), 5. A. Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1870), I, ix. Cf. C. Mazzantini, Filosofia Nuova o Filosofia Perenne? in Rivista di Filosofia NeoScolastica (March-June 1926): 125-39; O. Willmann, Aus der Wekstatt der Philosophia Perennis (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1912); Geschichte des Idealismus (Braunschweig, 1907); Engert, Ueber den Gedanken einer Philosophia Perennis, in Philosophisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft, 39 (1926): 105-27. Cf. J. H. Ryan, The Approach to the Problem of Knowledge, in The New Scholasticism 2 (1928): 18 f.

378

American Catholic Religious Thought

propositions.”5 It is with this soul of perennial truth, as found in the great body of Greek and Scholastic thought, restored, rethought, and restated for our own day, that Neo-Scholastics aim to vivify, permeate, unify, and organize the conquests of modern and contemporaneous philosophy and science. Precisely because of the ideal which the New Scholasticism aspires to realize, it must be at once cautiously conservative and prudently progressive. While embracing and guarding the immortal truths and tested standards of the past, it must be quick to appreciate, prompt to appropriate, ready to assimilate whatsoever proves itself true in the present or the future: it must warmly welcome the spolia Aegyptiorum and look everywhere for the “seeds of the Logos.” Its normal condition is not the rigidity of a corpse, but the suppleness of a living organism—not only assimilating the wholesome nourishment of new truths, but also eliminating the waste matter of dead ideas and outworn theories. Its perennial character consists not only in its unswerving loyalty to immutable truths, but also in its undiminished capacity for continual renewal. Mindful of the indefinite perfectibility of human expressions of the truth, it regards the task of philosophy as never finished: opus philosophicum semper perfectible. Its very life depends on this twofold process of conservation and renovation. Hence it will be stamped with universality: it is not the philosophy of one race, nation, or period, but the constantly progressing philosophy of mankind; hence it will also have continuity. It will always be marked by modernity, not only because truth is always modern, but also because it hospitably receives the new whenever it is true. Then, too, is not Scholastic thought of the very warp and woof of the Western mind? Its spirit and splendid mental discipline fashioned, and left their lasting impress upon, the soul of the leading modern nations. The modern world lives and thrives on the rich heritage of the past: what is best in it in the spiritual, intellectual, artistic, and political spheres, is a patrimony received from the ancient and the medieval world. Because of this affinity, Scholastic thought can readily assimilate what is true, good, and beautiful in modern thought and culture. Moreover, by the 5

Cl. Baeumker, Philosophische Welt- und Lebensanschauung, in Deutschland und der Katholizismus (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1918), 1:69.

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

379

witness of a scholar like Gilson,6 St. Thomas Aquinas, the chief glory of Scholasticism, is the first of modern philosophers because to him is due the epochal achievement of having been the first to constitute philosophy in its own right, to give it full consciousness of self, independence and autonomy, by establishing on fundamental principles the distinction between philosophy and theology, and assigning to each its proper domain and method. Modern philosophy came of age, not in the sixteenth, but in the thirteenth century. The best Neo-Scholastic minds strongly emphasize all the requisites mentioned above as being of the very essence of a Scholasticism that aims to be progressive and so, by remaining loyal to its best traditions, to escape the tragic fate that befell the older Scholasticism during the period of transition from the medieval to the modern era. To quote a few: “In attributing to the New Scholasticism, rightly understood, a living development, sound progress, broadness and open-mindedness for the philosophic problems of the present, we are unquestionably thinking and acting in harmony with the mind of St. Thomas. Historical research is bringing out with increasing clearness the fact that for his time St. Thomas was a very modern and progressive philosopher.”7 “Philosophic thought is not a finished work; it is a living thing, like the mind that conceives it. It is not a sort of shrouded mummy, but an organism ever young and ever active—to be kept alive and nourished by personal effort, so as to assure its unceasing growth.”8 “Why did the brilliant attempt made in the sixteenth century by the Dominicans and Jesuits of Spain and Italy have but a local and ephemeral success? Because the return to the vital sources of the thirteenth century was not accompanied by sufficient interest for contemporaneous movements. Undoubtedly a Suarez or a Lessius discussed the 6

7 8

In Êtudes de Philosophie Médievale (Paris, 1921), v. For other authorities see Zybura, Present-Day Thinkers and the New Scholasticism (St. Louis and London, second edition, 1927), 494. Also, the articles on medieval philosophy by Professor Longwell of Princeton in the January and May (1928) issues of the Philosophical Review. M. Grabmann, in Zybura, Present-Day Thinkers, 149. Card. D. Mercier, Le bilan philosophique du XIX siècle, in Revue Néo-Scolastique de Philosophie (1900): 327.

380

American Catholic Religious Thought

political theories of Protestantism, but the conceptions of a Telesius or a Giordano Bruno, as well as the diatribes of the Humanists, left them indifferent.”9 “We are Neo-Scholastics of the twentieth century, who propose to synthesize into one organic whole the immortal truths of pre-modern thinkers with the contributions made by modern times in the scientific and philosophical investigations of concreteness. Such is our programme, our method, our system.”10 And yet, despite these unequivocal and forceful avowals, and in the face of the actual advances made toward the realization of these progressive ideals since the encyclical Aeterni patris (1879),11 many nonScholastic thinkers stubbornly persist in maintaining that Scholastic philosophy (“if it be a philosophy”12) cannot be truly progressive; two main reasons are advanced in support of this assertion. For one thing, its subservience to Catholic dogma restricts or even destroys its freedom. Here is “the stone of stumbling and the rock of offence” for so many non-Scholastics; “Scholastic philosophy is identified with theological dogmas”; “its outcome is determined in advance by the principle of authority”; “Scholastics are not thinking for themselves, nor are they free to follow the argument withersoever it leads,” and so on.13 Again, it is alleged that their unhistorical and ultraconservative attitude toward modern thought and culture incapacitates the NeoScholastics for appreciating and assimilating whatever progress philosophy and the sciences have made during the modern era. In fact, 9 10 11

12

13

M. De Wulf, in Revue Néo-Scolastique de Philosophie (May, 1926): 123. F. Olgiati, in Zybura, Present-Day Thinkers, 299-300. In Part II of Present-Day Thinkers leading Neo-Scholastics of the principal countries explain the progress of the Neo-Scholastic movement since the issuance of the encyclical. To signalize the fiftieth anniversary of the Aeterni patris, the alert editors of our lusty young quarterly, The New Scholasticism, will publish a special number in which they follow the same plan, though, of course, on a larger scale. Professor Longwell’s prolonged researches, however, have convinced him that medieval Scholastic philosophy was “the first real achievement of our modern race in its search for rationalized truth.” (Cf. Philosophical Review, January and May, 1928.) Cf. Zybura, Present-Day Thinkers, 117.

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

381

it is averred, some Scholastics condemn en bloc the last four centuries of human thought. It is precisely because Dr. Gerardo Bruni’s timely work14 throws new light on these important problems that it was hoped a translation of it would be welcomed by the English-speaking public. His solution of the relations between faith and reason, theology and philosophy, is, of course, the traditional Thomistic one; but his manner of treatment occasionally sets the problem at a new angle and so renders the point at issue clearer. It is to be commended also for the lucid and succinct presentation of the historical background of the problem by marking its successive stages and pointing out how they led to the definitive solution. “It is an important book,” says Dr. James H. Ryan15 (the newly appointed Rector of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C.). “The second portion of the book betrays an originality and an independence of thought not often seen in works of this character . . . Dr. Bruni has faced the problem squarely and honestly. His solution is wise, the only one which will and can triumph. Scholastics and non-Scholastics alike are sure to find the book enlightening and stimulating.” II

The translator takes this opportunity to point out briefly by what means the new Scholasticism is striving to realize its ideals.

14

15

Riflessioni sulla Scolastica (Rome, 1927) is the title of the original, which was revised and enlarged by the author for the present English translation. The title Progressive Scholasticism was chosen because it indicates more specifically the aim and content of the “Reflections.” Dr. Bruni is not a total stranger to the American public. As assistant librarian of the Vatican Library he was a member of the commission sent by the Holy Father to this country to study our library methods, and for the greater part of a year he conducted his researches at Columbia University, New York. Dr. Bruni holds a doctorate in philosophy not only from a Catholic institution, but also from the state university, where he studied modern philosophy under Giovanni Gentile. In The New Scholasticism 2 (1928), 80-81.

382

American Catholic Religious Thought

The progressive efforts of Neo-Scholastics, that is to say, the work of philosophical and scientific research on the one hand, and that of the assimilation and synthesis of all the truths and values which are found to have a permanent character on the other, is reaching out in four main directions. First, there is the intensive study of the sources of Scholastic thought in its fundamental and lasting aspects. This study extends to the historical as well as the theoretical side. And so, a deeper and wider investigation is being devoted to Greek philosophy, particularly to the works of Aristotle, in the original; for they have an interest of the first rank for the deeper understanding of Scholastic thought.16 For it will not do to say that the substance of Aristotle may be found in St. Thomas. Because of the many difficulties he had to encounter in getting at the true meaning of much of Aristotle, the critical work of Aquinas on the Stagirite could be neither complete nor definitive.17 Moreover, “the historical researches of recent years have thoroughly cleared up the ways by which the writings of Aristotle came into Scholasticism, as well as the forms taken by the translation, utilization, and evaluation of the Stagirite; they have likewise thrown abundant light on the role of Platonism, Neo-Platonism, and Augustinianism in Scholasticism. These historical results of research must be turned to account for the understanding of the content of the Christian Aristotelianism of Albert the Great and particularly of St. Thomas Aquinas.”18 Medieval Scholasticism likewise stands in need of further thorough investigation, and this applies not only to Thomism, but also to the other currents,19 16

17 18

19

Cf. the thoughtful article, Die Antike—ein Hauptquellgebiet der scholastischen Philosophie, in Scholastik 1 (1926): 81-104, on the providential mission of Greek philosophy; P. Gény, Questions d’Enseignement de la Philosophie Scolastique (Paris, 1913), 203-10; J. Rimaud, Thomisme et Methode (Paris, 1925), 28-40. Gény, Questions, 207-208. M. Grabmann, in Zybura, Present-Day Thinkers, 133. Cf. Prof. Mansion’s Bulletin de Littérature Aristotélique in Revue Néo-Scolastique de Philosophie (February, 1928): 82-116; also his articles on La Genèse de l’oeuvre d’Aristote, in the same review for August, 1927, 307-41, and for November, 1927, 423-66. The rich harvest of the latest researches in this field is to be found in the eleventh revised and enlarged edition of the second volume (Patristic and

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

383

particularly to the thought of the Franciscan School and to that of the now rehabilitated Duns Scotus.20 Nor must we overlook the Nominalism of the fourteenth century21 nor the important contributions made by the brief but brilliant Scholastic revival of the sixteenth century. There are some, says Grabmann,22 who regard as superfluous all researches into the history of Scholasticism, and assume a purely systematic attitude. However, without favoring a one-sided historism, we should keep in mind that the historical investigations of the literature and ideas of medieval Scholasticism are by no means completed; that only one way is open to the clear understanding of the nature and significance of knotty problems in Thomistic thought: the way of historical research into the sources—including the still unpublished works of the predecessors, contemporaries, pupils, and opponents of St. Thomas. It was precisely through such historical investigations, instituted by Denifle, Cardinal Ehrle, Baeumker, and others, that

20

21

22

Scholastic Philosophy) of Ueberweg’s monumental Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Zweiter Teil. Die Patristische und Scholastische Philosophie, edited by Dr. B. Geyer (Berlin, 1927). The bibliography alone fills 157 closely packed octavo pages. Cf. E. Longpré, La Philosophie du B. Duns Scot (Paris, 1924); also his articles, Pour la Défense de Duns Scot, in Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica (January-February 1926): 32-42; in the second edition of Volume I of his work, Le Point de Départ de la Métaphysique (Louvain, 1927), Maréchal takes into account the results of the researches made by Longpré and others. As a consequence, he revises in several points his original estimate of the epistemology of Duns Scotus. Cf. also the important article “De Vita et Operibus B. Joannis Duns Scoti juxta Litteraturam Ultimi Decennii,” by P. Stephanus Simonis, O.F.M., in Antonianum, 3 (Rome, October, 1928): 451-84. C. R. S. Harris, Duns Scotus, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1927). Opinions differ as to the merits of this latter work. Its importance is exemplified in a recent work by A. Tellkamp, Das Verhältnis John Lockes zur Scholastik (Münster, 1927), which shows that Locke was deeply influenced by the decadent nominalistic current of Scholasticism. M. Grabmann, Kulturphilosophie de hl. Thomas von Aquin (Augsburg, 1925), 186 f. Cf. also his pamphlet on Der Gegenwartswert der geschichtlichen Erforschung der mittelalterlichen Philosophie (Vienna and Freiburg im Breisgau, 1913); and his work on Thomas von Aquin (Munich, 5th ed., 1926), 159 ff.

384

American Catholic Religious Thought

medieval Scholasticism began to be more justly appraised and duly appreciated also in non-Scholastic circles.23 Nor should we forget that a deeper insight into the mutual relations between medieval philosophy and theology on the one hand, and all phases of medieval culture on the other, is not merely of historical interest, but is also very instructive for a proper understanding of the modern mind, and therefore valuable in more than one respect for purposes of systematization. Baeumker24 likewise keenly realized the systematic value of these philosophical-historical researches. Not that we are to regard philosophy as wholly resolvable into history, or the latter as existing exclusively for the sake of the philosophical system. History possesses a value of its own as the mind’s historical unfoldment in which, as in all living development, the past is immanently retained in the present, and renders impossible an absolute breach with the past without the severance of life’s continuity. But precisely on this account historical researches have a meaning and abiding value also for philosophic thought and systematization. And this for two reasons. In the first place, the significant thoughts of the great masters, the conquests of earnest inquirers, the constructive elements for a philosophia perennis, are by this means preserved in a state of vital, creative fertility. Secondly, this enlightened historical standpoint, by its comparative method, by imparting a sense of the complexity of philosophic problems, by engendering a solicitude for precision in regard to details, proves to be the best critical corrective of the authoritarian bias, blind faith, unhistorical attitudes, unreasonable antagonisms, premature generalizations, and shallow or false syntheses. The danger of the latter is more real for the Scholastic because the solid metaphysical groundwork of his philosophy tends to make him over-confident. It is this same viewpoint which teaches us that even the most precious achievements must be understood as historically conditioned. It is a remedy against a merely slavish reiteration of the past, and keeps the eye steadily fixed on the real problems. Systematic philosophical thought must be fructified by historical research: the speculative effort, looking the great problems of the day squarely in the face, must be combined with that historical investigation which seeks to see and 23 24

We have the recent example of Professor Longwell in the articles cited above. In Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen 2 (Leipzig, 1923), 31ff.

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

385

understand the philosophical problems in their making, in their origin and unfoldment in the course of time. This brings us to the second momentous task which the NeoScholastic seeks to perform in his progressive strivings: a thorough and comprehensive study of all systems of modern philosophy and all phases of modern culture, so as to get at their historical significance, to discover whatever of the philosophia perennis they embody. This the Neo-Scholastic is obliged to do if he is to remain loyal to the basic principles of his own metaphysics. It is true that the Scholastic system became decadent and lost its influence during the transitional period, but the immortal truths of Scholasticism went marching on: like all truth, they were “fated not to die.” Hence Scholasticism, as the perennial philosophy, must seek and find itself in whatever is true in every system of modern thought and in every aspect of modern culture. “Let us be persuaded that we [Scholastics] are not the sole possessors of the truth, and that the truth we do possess is not the whole truth.”25 But as Dr. Bruni devotes special attention to this point in the second part of his book, it is not necessary to dwell on it here.26 The third main effort of the progressive Neo-Scholastics is being directed to devoting due attention to the important role played by the positive sciences in the development of philosophic thought.27 They 25 26

27

Cardinal Mercier, Revue Néo-Scolastique de Philosophie (1900), 328. In fulfilling this second task, the orientations of the Neo-Scholastic schools of Louvain and Milan are by no means contrary to, but rather complementary of, each other. For discussions of this topic, see Revue Néo-Scolastique de Philosophie (November, 1912: Gemelli’s viewpoint, 549 f.; De Wulf ’s reply, 555 f.); Revue de Philosophie (January, 1913): 46-56; Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica for April, 1919, 101-09; for January, 1925, 23-39; for January, 1926, 56-62; for July, 1927, 367-80; in the November, 1927 issue, 444-58, Dr. Olgiati, while warmly commending the first part of Dr. Bruni’s book, takes exception to some statements in the second part (unrevised edition). Without naming his critic, Dr. Bruni answers him briefly toward the conclusion of the second part of his revised edition. A more detailed reply is to appear in an early issue of the same Rivista. Cf. Gény, Questions, 111-146; O. Habert, Le Primat de l’Intelligence (Paris, 1926), 38-90; R. G. Bandas, Science and Philosophy in Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 75-89.

386

American Catholic Religious Thought

constantly keep in mind the eminently positive character of Peripatetic Scholasticism (its theory of knowledge), and seek to maintain continuous contact with reality, not only by means of ordinary empirical knowledge, but also by scientific observation and experiment. Always keeping abreast of the progress of the sciences, they utilize the established results of the latter in their philosophical elaborations. For they know full well that the progress of philosophy depends on the harmonious combination and constant co-operation of the inductive and deductive methods. The fundamental principle—grounded in the very nature of the human mind and of its cognitive processes—for the proper distinction (not separation in watertight compartments, or identification) between philosophy and science, as well as for the continuity necessarily existing between them, was established by Aristotle,28 and followed by the medieval Scholastics.29 The unnatural separation of scientific from common knowledge, as well as the divorce of science from philosophy, had their beginnings in that period of unparalleled progress in the sciences of observation, the sixteenth century and after. The 28

29

Cf. C. Sentroul, Kant et Aristote (Louvain and Paris, 1913), viii, 289-321; J. Maréchal, Le Point de Départ de la Métaphysique (Bruges and Paris, 1922), 1:43ff. Maréchal, Le point de Départ , 69 ff.; Gény, Questions, 131-36; Grabmann, Die Kulturphilosophie des hl. Thomas von Aquin (Augsburg, 1925), 129-30; Revue Néo-Scolastique de Philosophie (May 1926): 112-14. Cf. A. E. Taylor’s view in Recent Developments in European Thought (Oxford, 1921), 26 ff. We need to develop the philosophy of science. Uncertainty and confusion exist among philosophers and scientists as to the nature and division of the sciences. “Science,” says Santayana (in Zybura, Present-Day Thinkers, 74), “which many supposed had superseded all speculative philosophy, has itself now become obscure and dubious in its foundations.” Cf. E. De Bruyne, A propos de la définition et la division des sciences, in Revue NéoScolastique de Philosophie (February 1928): 58-81; F. Renoirte, La Théorie Physique, in the same Revue for November, 1923; the collection entitled Qu’est-ce que la Science? (Paris, 1926), in which the answers given to the question by Duhem, Poincaré, Meyerson, and Le Roy, are reviewed by other scientists; P. Rossi, La Teoria Fisica di Pietro Duhem, in Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica (July-October 1927): 280-98; L. J. Walker, Realism and Physical Science, in Theories of Knowledge (London, 1919), 473-505. Also, Gregorianum, 9 (1928): 442-60.

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

387

idolatry of science originated, on the one hand, in the reaction against the pseudo-metaphysical excesses of the first half of the nineteenth century, resulting in distrust and contempt for all metaphysics and in the well nigh total loss of the metaphysical sense; on the other, in the marvelous development of the positive sciences which began its triumphant course with the second half of the last century, and has continued unabated to the present time. The Neo-Scholastic alone has ready to his hand the sound principles that can heal the age-long breach between philosophy and science, restore the proper balance between these intimately related modes of human knowledge, and furnish the natural sciences with the light they have been hitherto seeking in vain. And it is high time for the scientist to recognize that he has a twofold need of philosophy: as a guide, to establish and to guard the presuppositions of all science; as the perfection of scientific knowledge, for metaphysical problems germinate spontaneously, so to speak, on the very soil worked over by the positive sciences. In their own way, some contemporary thinkers are beginning to realize this need.30 By the testimony of non-Scholastics themselves, many American philosophers fail to discriminate between philosophy and science. At the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, held in 1926, too many of the Americans, says Dr. E. S. Bates,31 were unable to emerge from the level of the sciences to that of philosophy, supposing themselves to be dealing with philosophy when they were really dealing with physics, psychology, and sociology. In this, he thinks, members of the Congress revealed a general American attitude. Apropos of this matter Dr. Dewey said at the Congress: “There is energy and activity among us, enough and to spare. Not an inconsiderable part of the vigor that once went into industrial accomplishments now finds its way into science; our scientific ‘plant’ is coming in its way to rival our industrial plants. Especially in psychology and the social sciences an amount of effort is putting forth which is hardly equaled in the rest of the world. He would be a shameless braggart who claimed that the result is as yet adequate to the activity. What is the 30

31

Cf. A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York, 1926), 25, 86. In The Commonweal for October, 1926, 521.

388

American Catholic Religious Thought

matter? It lies, I think, with our lack of imagination [?] in generating leading ideas. Because we are afraid of speculative ideas, we do, and do over and over again, an immense amount of dead, specialized work in the region of ‘facts.’ We forget that facts are only data. . . . As long as we worship science and are afraid of philosophy, we shall have no great science, except a lagging and halting continuation of what is thought and said elsewhere. As far as any plea is implicit in what has been said, it is, then, a plea for the casting off of that intellectual timidity which hampers the wings of imagination, a plea for speculative audacity, for more faith in ideas, sloughing off a cowardly reliance upon those partial ideas to which we are wont to give the name of facts.”32 President Lowell, of Harvard University, spoke in a similar vein: “We have learned to live, but we have not learned why to live. We have lived faster than many people, but we do not know why we do it. Now, we want to know where we are going. We are burning our coal and oil, but what for? In order that posterity may be bankrupt, or in order that it may be better? Do we think of anything but the speed with which we are doing something which may be after all nothing more than a turning of a squirrel’s wheel? There is another reason why I think philosophy is needed now. Great advances have been made by the methods of excessive specialization. . . . We have learned a great deal by specialization, but has not the time come for a synthesis of what we know? . . . We need at the present day something that will break down the barriers between the subjects. Indeed, we are losing something in this land of ours by excessive organization. We organize departments so rigidly that nobody may look into a subject that does not belong to him for fear of being despised by those who are experts in it. We need to break down those barriers, and that is the work of philosophy. This we need now more than we have needed it for a long time. We need men who will sit on the border line of subjects and look with a philosophic eye over more than one field. And what is more, we need to have each man study his own subject as a part of universal knowledge—which means universal philosophy.”33 32

33

In Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy (New York, 1927), 542 (Italics mine). In Proceedings of the Sixth International, 74-75 (Italics mine).

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

389

The fourth task of progressive Scholasticism is that of rethinking and developing the best thought of the Greek and medieval masters, and especially of St. Thomas, in function of the established results of modern and contemporaneous philosophy and science, and of the problems presented by the life and culture of today. By what process is the old Scholasticism, and particularly the old Thomism, to be brought up to date so as to become a new Scholasticism and a new Thomism? Today the Leonine encyclical on the restoration of Scholastic philosophy is being given a more intelligent interpretation because its deeper and broader meaning and purpose have been more clearly recognized. The shortsighted zealotry and narrow literalism of certain enthusiasts during the years immediately following its publication, are yielding to that historical sense, to that conception of the progress of the human mind,34 to that comprehensive spirit with which the universal and synthetic genius of St. Thomas would interpret the document were he living today.35 We are to rethink the doctrines of Aquinas, or better, to think as he would think, to work as he would work, to employ the methods he would employ, were he in the midst of the philosophical, scientific, and cultural currents of the present. His abiding ideal was the achievement of integral truth. His constant preoccupation was to see truth steadily and to see it as a whole. He sought its elements everywhere. He strove to behold it not only through his own eyes, but also through those of others in search of it. He endeavored to understand their opinions, to do them justice, to give them the most favorable interpretation possible. His crystal clear mind vividly realized that the progress of thought is the result of universal cooperation. He who appropriated so much from Aristotle, Plato, Averroës, Avicenna, Albert the Great, and a host of others, would he, were he alive now, 34

35

St. Thomas himself has lucidly explained his conception of this progress and of the proper attitude towards the thought of the past, in De Substantiis Separatis, cap. IX; In I De Anima, lect. 2; In II Metaphys., lect. I, ad finem; In II Metaphys., lect. I. Cf. S. Vismara, Ill Concetto della Storia nel Pensiero Scholastico (Milan, 1924), 33. Cf. A. Sertillanges, S. Thomas d’Aquin (Paris, 4th ed., 1925), 2:327 ff.; Rimaud, Thomisme et Methode, 7; Zybura, Present-Day Thinkers, 47179.

390

American Catholic Religious Thought

haughtily ignore or summarily condemn thinkers like Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Spinoza, and others? Were he with us today, would his marvelously fertile intellect merely repeat his Summae? Would he subscribe to all their articuli and capita without any retouching, without any regard for subsequent developments? Would he consent to being a barrier instead of a beacon for the onward march of human thought? In the works referred to,36 St. Thomas presents his ideas on the unfoldment of thought and on the proper attitude towards thinkers of the past. Grateful to our predecessors for their efforts, we should, he says, seek in their works the material for advancement. And this in two ways: by means of their true doctrines, which we appropriate; and through their errors, insofar as they call for a more precise study with a view to refuting them. Moreover, we are to familiarize ourselves with all opinions, we are to examine every system, for the purpose of disengaging the truth they embody and utilizing it for our own synthesis: “prove all things: hold fast to that which is good.”37 Finally, in that one among the preceding systems which in its ensemble seems compatible with a true view of reality, we should strive to determine what is definitively established, to find, if possible, new reasons for upholding it, and to defend it against ever recurring objections. We must reject whatever proves to be erroneous, develop what is only in embryo, and finish what is incomplete. It is these latter portions of the work which must always be taken up anew. In them consists progress, particularly that connected with the synthesizing process. In the face of this conception of development, who will still dare maintain that St. Thomas intended his system, marvelous though it was in its way and in its day, to be rigid and closed system? His synthesis, his doctrinal framework, is supple and open. This theses can be rethought in function of widened mentalities. Without being garbled, they can be enriched by all the genuine contributions of thinkers of succeeding generations. 36

37

[See St. Thomas’s De Substantiis Separatis, cap. IX; In I De Anima, lect. 2; In II Metaphys., lect. I, ad finem; In II Metaphys., lect. I. Cf. S. Vismara, Ill Concetto della Storia nel Pensiero Scholastico (Milan, 1924), 33.] 1 Thess. 5:21.

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

391

The method, then, by which the best Greek and medieval thought, particularly that of Aristotle and St. Thomas, is to be quickened into a thought that will be living and effectual for today, the process by which it is to be made the organizing leaven that will reconstitute the philosophia perennis for a time and generation which have forgotten its very language—this process cannot be one of mere commentary, or addition, or adaptation: it must needs be one of genuine assimilation, of vital intus-susception. The method of commentary alone is out of the question. For centuries it has been exploited by a host of commentators, and has been worn almost threadbare. The insistence on its exclusive use for the works of St. Thomas would be tantamount to resurrecting the aberration of Averroës in regard to the writings of Aristotle: there could be differences of opinion only as to the interpretation of his words and as to the inferences to be drawn from them. Nor will the mechanical method of addition suffice. A mere juxtaposition of recent doctrines designed as an external confirmation or enrichment of the old, would result in something like a party-colored patchwork. But some have actually imagined that the Neo-Scholastic’s sole aim was just this practical and tactical one of tricking out the corpse of a supposedly outworn doctrine according to the latest scientific fashion, of adorning it with all the baubles of the laboratory and all the ornaments of present-day erudition, so as to make it presentable to the élite of the learned. All this outward finery might impress the shallow. It would evoke contempt and ridicule from the thoughtful for attempting to disguise a defunct doctrine in the attractive vesture of modernity.38 Some propose adaptation. But this, too, in one sense at least, is open to exception. There is an essential difference between adaptation as an external method and the internal, vital process of assimilation, of a development by virtue of an energy immanent in the organism. The process of adaptation implies the passivity of an idea which is being acted upon by external environment, by the currents surrounding it, by the men who variously interpret it. The new ideas do not become intrinsic and homogeneous to the old in the substantial unity of a harmonious whole, but retain their former independent existences or 38

A. Gemelli, in S. Tommaso d’Aquino (Milan, 1923), 31 ff.

392

American Catholic Religious Thought

“souls” by the side of the old. Truth, however, essentially means unity, and a organism can have but one soul. For these reasons assimilation is the process indispensably necessary. It is wholly different from a mere external adaptation: it means activity, and that not from without, but from within—an intrinsic activity. Every living being is capable of this intus-susception; what is more, the latter is a condition sine qua non, and a test of its very vitality. Living truth, therefore, precisely because it is such, possesses a marvelous assimilative power. And the higher the place a truth holds in the scale of theoretical values, the more intimately it embraces all subordinate truths, that is to say, assimilates them. Moreover, as in assimilating bodily nourishment we do not cease to be ourselves, but rather transmute the assimilated substance into our very own, so the assimilation of new truths does not imply the abdication of the truths we already possess, but rather their conservation and development. Truth calls to truth because there is a most intimate relationship between one truth and another: they are kindred parts of one great whole. And the deepest reason of this affinity and mutual attraction lies in the sublime fact that they are all reflections of the one divine Logos. Scholastic philosophy, then, in so far as it is a fund of living, perennial truths, cannot rest satisfied with merely moving alongside of other contemporaneous currents of thought, or with attempting some sort of compromise with other systems: because its imperishable truths are living truths, they have the capacity as well as the appetence for assimilating whatever is true in subsequent developments, for an intus-susception governed by principles similar to those controlling the growth of every living thing, principles as constant as they are comprehensive. By this assimilative process the perennial philosophy is able to incorporate into the vital unity of its organism and to vivify by its spirit every truth the mind discovers in every domain of human knowledge. Thus, after the example of the “Prince of Scholastics,” the truly Scholastic mentality strives after an integral view of reality, after a comprehensive possession of truth. It bewares of idolizing portions of truth. It endeavors to maintain the proper proportion and perspec-

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

393

tive. It is ever on its guard against over stressing one aspect of reality in any domain. It studies carefully all one-sided views, and readily accepts every kernel of truth they contain for embodiment in its own synthesis. This well-balanced, all-inclusive view of reality stands out in striking contrast to those partial systems, each one of which gazes on reality only from its own favorite narrow angle, with the result of a philosophic (if such it can be called) vision that lacks perspective, proportion, and comprehensiveness. All the foregoing remarks point to the aim, ideal, and method of progressive Scholasticism: to penetrate more deeply into the best thought of the great Greeks and the medieval Scholastics; to rethink it, in the manner outlined, in reference to modern conquests in every realm of thought and to present-day problems; with fine discernment to search out the perennially true in the old and the new; thoroughly to assimilate both, with a view to the eventual elaboration, by another Aristotle or another Thomas, of a richer and more fruitful philosophical synthesis of existing knowledge than any yet achieved. III

A distinct and striking change of attitude towards Scholasticism has come about in the recent past. There is “a homeward march of the intellect of Europe.”39 In our own country a re-awakened interest in Scholastic thought, a closer study and a clearer understanding of its content, method, and spirit, are on the increase; we have the examples of earnest thinkers like Professors Longwell, Sheldon, and others. The Sixth International Congress of Philosophy invited several NeoScholastics to present various aspects of Scholastic doctrine. Chairs of Neo-Scholastic philosophy have recently been founded in several of our non-Catholic universities. On the whole, the outlook for the New Scholasticism is promising, and this chiefly for two reasons. We have, in the first place, the wide-spread and intense yearning for reality, for the absolute: “back to the object,” “back to objective metaphysics,” are cries heard on many sides. The modern mind is at 39

V. McNabb, in E. Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas (London and St. Louis, 1924), v.

394

American Catholic Religious Thought

length vividly realizing that for so long it has been given the stone of appearances, and it is now hungering for the bread of reality. Kant’s artificial “system” was doomed to dissolution.40 But its spirit and tendency impregnated to its very depths the greater part of the thought of the nineteenth century as well as that of many of our contemporaries. To such thought the very idea of an intellect capable of laying hold of the reality of things existing independently of the thinker became inconceivable. In the majority of modern systems the intellect, dispossessed of its proper object, stripped of its proper virtues, uncertain of its first principles, abandoning all hope of ever reaching the real, either abdicated its own rights in favor of the concrete of sense by yielding to the fascinations of positivism—and we have scientism and historism; or, because “man is a metaphysical animal” with an inborn longing for the absolute, it proclaimed the primacy of man’s appetitive powers, of the will, of sentiment, of “action”—and we have the anti-intellectualistic systems of today, which twist and torture thought in their preposterous efforts to discover truth without the laws of the intelligence.41 Like a prisoner of self, like a squirrel in its cage, the modern mind for the most part has been feverishly circling round the ego without ever getting outside and beyond it. Disillusioned by all the assumptions, fictions, psychologisms, and mythical ideologies, an ever increasing number of serious thinkers is finally becoming keenly alive to one of the primary spontaneous convictions of mankind: it is of the very nature of the intellect to know, and to know things. This accounts for the fact that so many significant tendencies and aspirations of the day are inspired by an intense desire to cast off subjectivism, relativism, and to get back to the object, to the absolute—to metaphysics by way of the intelligence. These aspirations are apparent in the world of art and letters, of sociology and economics and, above all, of scientific and philosophic thought.42 40

41 42

Cf. the article, Le Kantisme est mort, by P. Charles in the Nouvelle Revue Théologique 54 (December, 1927). Cf. J. Maritain, Réflexions sur l’Intelligence (Paris, 1924), 36, 49, 303 ff. Cf. M. Ettlinger, Geschichte der Philosophie von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 1924), 302 ff. It is especially in Germany that the field of metaphysics is being assiduously cultivated. Cf. The New Scholasticism, 2:250 ff. Also the article by Professor A. Liebert on “Contemporary Ger-

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

395

And here we come to the second reason of the hopeful outlook for the New Scholasticism: all these aspirations are so many predispositions—some of them remote, it is true43—for the great systematic aspects of Scholastic philosophy, for the intellectual form of its metaphysics. For the latter is capable of grounding and integrating these aspirations and tendencies because it teaches us to conquer reality intellectually; to have full confidence in the objectivity of knowledge, without, however, lapsing into a naive dogmatism; to yield the primacy to the intellect without becoming rationalistic; to respect the continuity of tradition without fearing novelty and progress. It is the Scholastic doctrine on the nature, place, and function of the intellect44 that offers the master-key to the treasures of the real,

43

44

man Philosophy,” in the Philosophical Review (Vol. 35). Professor Dewey calls attention to this revival of interest in metaphysics, and to the role played in it by Scholasticism: “Philosophy has its local veers and temporal swerves, but it returns from its oscillations to the central question of the relation of existence and ideas, matter and mind, nature and spirit. The vein of positivism and phenomenalism seems to be temporarily worked out. Contemporary philosophy shows a marked disposition to invade the field which much nineteenth-century thought contemptuously dismissed as ‘ontological’; it manifests a marked tendency to revert to the issues of Greek and mediaeval speculation and to inquire into the intrinsic nature of matter and mind, nature and spirit, and their relations with one another. For the first time, after many a long year, there is high discourse of being and essence.” (In the New Republic, February 15, 1928). In his work, A History of Philosophy (New York, 1928), Dr. H. W. Dresser likewise bears witness to the fact that the value of metaphysics is being increasingly recognized by contemporary thinkers. And a writer in the Christian Century (45:977-78) earnestly pleads for “A Protestant Scholasticism.” In America and England we have the New Realism. However, as Dr. Kremer’s recent penetrating study shows, the great weakness of the new realists lies in their failure to disengage themselves sufficiently from empiricism; R. Kremer, Théorie de la Connaissance chez les Néo-Réalistes Anglais (Louvain and Paris, 1928), 199. On this subject the following works are recommended: J. Maritain, Réflexions sur l’Intelligence et sur sa Vie Propre (Paris, 1924); O. Habert, Le Primat de l’Intelligence (Paris, 1926); A. Sertillanges, S. Thomas d’Aquin (Paris, 1925), 2:140-91; J. Maréchal, Le Point de Départ de la Métaphysique

396

American Catholic Religious Thought

inasmuch as it leads to the philosophy of being, to an objective metaphysics. Because it holds fast to a rational loyalty to the intellect, to reason and its principles, without a rationalistic and aprioristic enslavement to it, this doctrine is the light that will lead the mind out of the slough of delusions onto the solid ground of truth. An atheistic philosopher, Gonzague Truc, sees the only salvation for reason in a return to Scholasticism.45 “In any settlement of the meaning of intelligence,” says Professor Spearman, of the University of London, “it [Scholastic philosophy] possesses an indubitable claim to be heard before all others.”46 It is recognized as the philosophy of common sense, as the embodiment of the wisdom of the race, because it is an easy and natural development of common and universal habits of thought: it is built on the justification and systematization of the spontaneous convictions of mankind; common sense is the salt that keeps it fresh and wholesome. “It stays close to human experience . . . and has the passion of the common man for intelligibility, for understanding the meaning and the significance of everything.”47 It strongly recommends itself as the philosophy of the golden mean48 because it steers a clear course between the Scylla and Charybdis of monism and extreme

45

46

47

48

(Paris and Bruges, 1922 f.); Garrigou-Lagrange, Le Sens Commun (Paris, 1923); Idem, Dieu (Paris, 1923), 107-223); L. Noël, Notes d’Epistémologie Thomiste (Louvain and Paris, 1925); C. Sentroul, Kant et Aristote (Louvain and Paris, 1913); J. Geyser, Auf dem Kampffelde der Logik (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1926); R. Kremer, Le Néo-Réalisme Américain (Louvain and Paris, 1920); Idem, La Théorie de la Connaissance chez les Néo-Réalistes Anglais (Louvain and Paris, 1928. Awarded the prize by the Royal Academy of Belgium. These last two works are decidedly the best expositions and appraisals of the New Realism we have); F. J. Sheen, God and Intelligence (New York, 1925); P. Coffey, Epistemology (London and New York, 1917), Vol. I. Gonzague Truc, Le Retour à la Scolastique (Paris, 1919), 158, 162, and passim. E. Spearman, The Nature of Intelligence and the Principle of Cognition (New York and London, 2nd ed., 1927), 22. J. H. Randall, Jr., The Making of the Modern Mind (Boston, 1926), 31, 32. Cf. P. Tischleder, Die geistesgeschichtliche Bedeutung des hl. Thomas von Aquin für Metaphysik, Ethik und Theologie (Frieburg im Breisgau, 1927).

11 ~ John Stanislaus Zybura

397

dualism in cosmology, of materialism and excessive spiritualism in anthropology, of sensism and idealism (rationalism) in theory of knowledge. “It is a fact worthy of note that after the long detour of idealism, the human mind is perforce returning to the realism which was the life of the great philosophical tradition. This prolonged search of modern philosophy, which at times seemed hopeless, will not have been without profit. It has enabled the human mind to become the better conscious of its processes, of its limits, and of its profound relations with nature. The old realism will prove itself the most capable of assimilating whatever of profound truth idealism has discovered or recovered.”49

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES Contemporary Godlessness: Its Origins and Its Remedy (St. Louis: Herder, 1924). Translated. Otto Zimmermann, Problem of Evil and Human Destiny (St. Louis and London: B. Herder, 1924). Edited. Present-Day Thinkers and the New Scholasticism: An International Symposium (St. Louis and London: B. Herder, 1926). Translated. Martin Grabmann, Introduction to the Theological Summa of St. Thomas (St. Louis and London: B. Herder, 1930). Translated. Francesco Olgiatti, Key to the Study of St. Thomas (St. Louis and London: B. Herder, 1929). SECONDARY SOURCES Philip P. Gleason, “In Search of Unity: American Catholic Thought 19201960,” Catholic Historical Review 65 (1979): 185-205. ———, “NeoScholasticism as Preconciliar Ideology,” Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs Annual (Notre Dame: Catholic Commission on Intellectual and Cultural Affairs, 1988), 15-25. ———, Contending With Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). 49

R. Kremer, Le Néo-Réalisme Américain, 21.

398

American Catholic Religious Thought

William Halsey, The Survival of American Innocence: Catholicism in an Era of Disillusionment, 1920-1940 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980). Matthew Hoehn, Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches, 19301947 (Newark, N.J.: St. Mary’s Abbey, 1948), 811-12. Gerald A. McCool, “Twentieth-Century Scholasticism,” Journal of Religion 58 (November 1978), supplement: 198-224. ———, “The Tradition of St. Thomas in North America: At 50 Years,” Modern Schoolman 65 (March 1988): 185-206. ———, From Unity to Pluralism: The Internal Evolution of Thomism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1989). ———, The Neo-Thomists (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1994).

12 ~ Dorothy Day DOROTHY DAY: PERSONALIST LOVE IN ACTION Dorothy Day (1897-1980) believed that the human person realized the destiny of history only in a life of practical love that served the immediate needs of the neighbor without counting the costs and without demanding or expecting an effective result. The Spirit of Christ, present in the Christian, must be realized in history through the actions of persons who see themselves not as isolated individuals but as members one of another—united together in the creative and redemptive love of God which transcends all processes of history and yet is incarnated in the Christian community. This Christian personalism was not individualism; it was communitarian. Persons, not states or legislation or techniques or social programs or slogans or even monetary contributions, were responsible for other persons in need. Day was born in Brooklyn, New York on November 8, 1897 to John and Grace Satterlee Day. Her father was a sports writer who took his family from New York to San Francisco to Chicago in the early part of the twentieth century. When Dorothy was seventeen, she enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana and remained there for only two years, 1914 to 1916, joining the Socialist Party. In 1916, she went to New York City and became a reporter for the Socialist New York Call and later worked for The Masses. From 1916 to 1927, she was a Communist sympathizer, joined the International Workers of the World (i.e., the “Wobblies”), took a trip to Europe in 1920 to write her first novel (published in 1924 as The Eleventh Virgin), lived in a common law marriage with Forster Battingham, and gave birth to her first and only child, Tamar, in 1927. As the result of a desire to have her child baptized, she converted to Catholicism (1927). In 1932, she met Peter Maurin (1877-1949) and began to think more deeply about the meaning of her Catholicism and her mission in life. In the midst of the Depression she found her mission: service to those who

400

American Catholic Religious Thought

were suffering from economic and social wants. Within this context she and Peter Maurin began to organize what became known as the Catholic Worker Movement. On May 1, 1933, she began to publish The Catholic Worker to encourage more Christians to pay special attention to the needs of the outcast of society, to clarify Catholic social thought, and to provide examples of love in action. Until she died on November 29, 1980, she dedicated herself through her publications, speeches, public protests, prayer and personal sacrifices to the needs of the poor, world peace and human dignity. The following selections outline some of Dorothy Day’s fundamental Christian aims, attitudes and programs: social justice, peace, communitarianism, voluntary poverty, clarification of thought through round-table discussions, houses of hospitality for the corporeal and spiritual works of mercy, personal responsibility for the poor rather than state responsibility and farming communes as agronomic universities. Throughout these selections Dorothy Day reflects on the personalist philosophy of Peter Maurin, who, according to Day, was the soul of the Catholic Worker movement.

******

TEXTS I. TO OUR READERS Source: The Catholic Worker (May 1933): 4.

For those who are sitting on park benches in the warm spring sunlight. For those who are huddling in shelters trying to escape the rain. For those who are walking the streets in the all but futile search for work. For those who think that there is no hope for the future, no recognition of their plight—this little paper is addressed. It is printed to call their attention to the fact that the Catholic Church has a social program—to let them know that there are men of God who are working not only for their spiritual, but for their material welfare.

12 ~ Dorothy Day

401 Filling a Need

It’s time there was a Catholic paper printed for the unemployed. The fundamental aim of most radical sheets is the conversion of its readers to radicalism and atheism. Is it not possible to be radical and not atheist? Is it not possible to protest, to expose, to complain, to point out abuses and demand reforms without desiring the overthrow of religion? In an attempt to popularize and make known the encyclicals of the Popes in regard to social justice and the program put forth by the Church for the “reconstruction of the social order,” this news sheet, The Catholic Worker, is started. It is not as yet known whether it will be a monthly, a fort-nightly or a weekly. It all depends on the funds collected for the printing and distribution. Those who can subscribe, and those who can donate, are asked to do so. This first number of The Catholic Worker was planned, written and edited in the kitchen of a tenement on Fifteenth Street, on subway platforms, on the “L,” the ferry. There is no editorial office, no overhead in the way of telephone or electricity, no salaries paid. The money for the printing of the first issue was raised by begging small contributions from friends. A colored priest in Newark sent us ten dollars and the prayers of his congregation. A colored sister in New Jersey, garbed also in holy poverty, sent us a dollar. Another kindly and generous friend sent twenty-five. The rest of it the editors squeezed out of their own earnings, and at that they were using money necessary to pay milk bills, gas bills, electric light bills. By accepting delay the utilities did not know that they were furthering the cause of social justice. They were, for the time being, unwitting cooperators. Next month someone may donate us an office. Who knows? It is cheering to remember that Jesus Christ wandered this earth with no place to lay his head. The foxes have holes and the birds of the air their nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head [Mt. 8:20]. And when we consider our fly-by-night existence, our uncertainty, we remember (with pride at sharing the honor), that the disciples supped

American Catholic Religious Thought

402

by the seashore and wandered through corn fields picking the ears from the stalks wherewith to make their frugal meals. II. CW STAND ON THE USE OF FORCE, Source: The Catholic Worker (September 1938): 4.

Dear Father: You are one of many priests and laymen who have written to us of The Catholic Worker these past two years on the stand we have taken in the Spanish conflict. Many times we have been misquoted, or sentences from articles or public speeches have been taken from their context and distorted, and our friends have written us with pain that our attitude, should seem to be at variance with that of Catholic leaders. I am writing this letter to explain as best I can the points which we are trying to bring out in The Catholic Worker. I am writing it with prayer because it is so hard to write of things of the spirit—it is so hard to explain. If we had made ourselves clear before, we should not have to keep restating our position. But perhaps conflict is good in that it brings about clarification of thought. We all know that there is a frightful persecution of religion in Spain. Churches have been destroyed and desecrated, priests and nuns have been tortured and murdered in great numbers. In the light of this fact it is inconceivably difficult to write as we do. It is folly—it seems madness—to say as we do—“we are opposed to the use of force as a means of settling personal, national, or international disputes.” As a newspaper trying to affect public opinion, we take this stand. We feel that if the press and the public throughout the world do not speak in terms of the counsels of perfection, who else will? We pray those martyrs of Spain to help us, to pray for us, to guide us in the stand we take. We speak in their name. Their blood cries out against a spirit of hatred and savagery which aims toward a peace founded upon victory, at the price of resentment and hatred enduring for years to come. Do you suppose they died, saying grimly: “All right—we accept martyrdom—we will not lift the sword to defend ourselves but the lay troops will avenge us!” This would be martyrdom

12 ~ Dorothy Day

403

wasted. Blood spilled in vain. Or rather did they say with St. Stephen, “Father, forgive them” [Acts 7:60], and pray with love for their conversion. And did they not rather pray, when the light of Christ burst upon them, that love would overcome hatred, that men dying for faith, rather than killing for their faith, would save the world? Truly this is the folly of the cross! But when we say “Savior of the World, save Russia, “ we do not expect a glittering army to overcome the heresy. As long as men trust to the use of force—only a superior, a more savage and brutal force will overcome the enemy. We use his own weapons, and we must make sure our own force is more savage, more bestial than his own. As long as we are trusting to force—we are praying for a victory by force. We are neglecting the one means—prayer and the sacraments—by which whole armies can be overcome. “The King is not saved by a great army,” David said. “Proceed as sheep and not wolves,” St. John Chrysostom said. St. Peter drew the sword and our Lord rebuked him. They asked our Lord to prove his divinity and come down from the cross. But he suffered the “failure” of the cross. His apostles kept asking for a temporal kingdom. Even with Christ himself to guide and enlighten them they did not see the primacy of the spiritual. Only when the Holy Ghost descended on them did they see. Today the whole world has turned to the use of force. While we take this stand we are not condemning those who have seized arms and engaged in war. Who of us as individuals if he were in Spain today, could tell what he would do? Or in China? From the human natural standpoint men are doing good to defend their faith, their country. But from the standpoint of the supernatural—there is the “better way”—the way of the Saints—the way of love. Who of those who are combating The Catholic Worker stand would despise the Christian way—the way of Christ? Not one. Yet again and again it is said that Christianity is not possible—that it cannot be practiced. Today the whole world is in the midst of a revolution. We are living through it now—all of us. History will record this time as a time

404

American Catholic Religious Thought

of world revolution. And frankly, we are calling for saints. The Holy Father in his call for Catholic Action, for the lay apostolate, is calling for saints. We must prepare now for martyrdom—otherwise we will not be ready. Who of us if he were attacked now would not react quickly and humanly against such attack? Would we love our brother who strikes us? Of all at The Catholic Worker how many would not instinctively defend himself with any forceful means in his power? We must prepare. We must prepare now. There must be a disarmament of the heart. Yes, wars will go on. We are living in a world where even “Nature itself travaileth and groaneth” [Rom. 8:22] due to the Fall. But we cannot sit back and say “human nature being what it is, you cannot get a man to overcome his adversary by love.” We are afraid of the word love and yet love is stronger than death, stronger than hatred. If we do not, as the press, emphasize the law of love, we betray our trust, our vocation. We must stand opposed to the use of force. St. Paul, burning with zeal, persecuted the church. But he was converted. Again and again in the history of the church, the conquered overcome the conquerors. We are not talking of passive resistance. Love and prayer are not passive, but a most active glowing force. And we ask with grief who are they amongst us who pray with faith and with love, and so powerfully that they can move the mountains of hatred that stand in our path. The soul needs exercise as well as the body and if we do not exercise our soul in prayer now, we will be puny and ineffectual in the trials that await us. We are not praying for victory for Franco in Spain, a victory won with the aid of Mussolini’s son who gets a thrill out of bombing; with the aid of Mussolini who is opposing the Holy Father in his pronouncements on “racism”; with the aid of Hitler who persecutes the church in Germany. Nor are we praying for victory for the loyalists whose Anarchist, Communist and anti-God leaders are trying to destroy religion.

12 ~ Dorothy Day

405

We are praying for the Spanish people—all of them our brothers in Christ—all of them Temples of the Holy Ghost, all of them members or potential members of the Mystical Body of Christ. And we add daily to this prayer for peace: “Lord, teach us to pray.” “Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief.” “Lord, take away my heart of stone and give me a heart of flesh.” This editorial is not intended to be a complete statement of The Catholic Worker’s stand on the Spanish war. Neither does it purport to be anything dogmatic, merely an expression of the sincere convictions of The Catholic Worker staff. III. A LETTER TO OUR READERS AT THE BEGINNING OF OUR FIFTEENTH YEAR, Source: The Catholic Worker (May 1947): 1-3.

Dear Fellow Workers in Christ: This merry month of May, this month of Mary, this most important month which marks the beginning of our fifteenth year, I have offered, with great temerity, to write the whole paper, aside from Peter’s essays. We have a new farm and retreat house at Newburgh-on-the-Hudson, sixty miles from New York, and up there the men are ploughing and planting and building, Gerry Griffin and Jack Thornton, John Fillinger, Joe Cotter, Hans Tunnesen, Rocco and Frank Coyle. In a way I would like to have this issue of The Catholic Worker an anniversary issue, and give a resume of our life and work in neat and scholarly style. But being a woman, and a much-interrupted woman, I can only write a letter, a discursive letter, which none the less will be packed full of news and events and from which you will gain a picture, form an opinion, even perhaps make a decision. A decision to read a book, make a retreat, visit us on Mott street; a decision perhaps to consider yourself an apostle and search out some school of the apostolate to inform yourself more about God our King, and Heaven our country. Each and every paragraph of this letter will be interrupted, I know, by visitors, by babies perhaps, by meals, by matters of great importance in that they have to do with human beings. And in the face of these interruptions, I must remember what I read of Cervantes recently—that

406

American Catholic Religious Thought

he wrote his masterpiece, Don Quixote, while he lived in a four-room house with six women, and above a tavern full of roistering drinkers. Not much peace and quiet there. Peter Maurin’s program of action, in the face of the crisis of the day, a crisis that has continued these last fourteen years through a great depression and a great war, remains the same now as it did when first we met back in 1933. 1. To reach the man in the street with the social teachings of the Church. 2. To reach the masses through the practice of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, at a personal sacrifice, which means voluntary poverty. 3. To build up a lay apostolate through round table discussions for the clarification of thought. 4. To found houses of hospitality for the practice of the works of mercy. 5. To found farming communes for the cure of unemployment. To solve the problem of the machine, for the restoration of property and the combating of the servile state; for the building up of the family, the original community, the first unit of society. To form our minds, Peter brought us things to read, Chesterton and Belloc and Gill and Cobbett and Father Vincent McNabb; the encyclicals of the recent Popes, from Pope Leo XIII down to the present day. “Making the encyclics click,” he used to say with his bright and happy smile, at what he considered a happy phrase, something that would stick in the mind of the hearer. Peter is a Frenchman (for those of you who do not know him) and a peasant, and he has his own way of saying things. He introduced to us Leon Bloy, the pilgrim of the absolute, and that great and terrible line of his, which converted the Maritains, “There is only one unhappiness, and that is—NOT TO BE ONE OF THE SAINTS.” He showed us how Pope Pius XI called our attention in his encyclical on St. Francis de Sales, to the fact that we are all called to be saints, layman and religious, that this is our goal, union with God. “If you have risen with Christ, seek the things which are above. Mind the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hid with Christ in God” [Col 3:1]. “Unless

12 ~ Dorothy Day

407

the seed fall into the ground and die, itself remaineth alone. But if it die it bringeth forth much fruit” [Jn. 12:24]. Peter quoted this encyclical on St. Francis de Sales, he quoted the beatitudes, he quoted the Sermon on the Mount. And these ideas were afterward elaborated in the retreats given at Maryfarm, Easton, which are now being given at Maryfarm, Newburgh; retreats which emphasize man’s dignity as the son of God, the supernatural motive, as the little way to God; the correlation of the spiritual and the material; making one’s work coincide with one’s faith as a Christian. All summer we will have these retreats at Newburgh, and after the retreats there will be discussions and work on the land, to raise the food for the bread-line at Mott street. This letter will be for our prospective readers, as well as for the 58,000 readers we now have throughout the world. So I will try to take up Peter’s program point by point and tell what we have been doing these last fourteen years. Reach All Nations, Reach All Men

To reach the man in the street. “The workers of the world have been lost to the Church,” Pope Pius XI is reported to have said to Canon Cardijn,1 international head of the Young Christian Workers. It is here that the apostolate of the WORD comes in, newspapers, leaflets, magazines; THE CATHOLIC WORKER, a monthly, usually of eight pages, but now cut down on account of the paper shortage, has been distributed from the very first in public squares, sold on street comers, distributed in front of meeting halls. At times the circulation which started at 2,500 went up to 150,000, at a time when labor was beginning to organize and there was a greater call for the paper for mass distribution. 1

[Joseph Cardijn (1882-1967) was a Belgian priest and later cardinal who established in 1912 the Young Christian Workers, an organization that applied Christian principles to the work environment. The young Christian workers employed what has become known as the Jocist (after Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne) method of the lay apostolate. The method (observe-judge-act) was employed by a host of similar groups of farmers, students, married couples in the United States as well as in Belgium during the first half of the twentieth century.]

408

American Catholic Religious Thought

At those times when such simple issues as the right of workers to organize into unions of their own choosing were at stake, it was very necessary to get out into industrial conflicts, in front of factories and on picket lines, to emphasize what the popes have said in regard to the worker. But there were also criticisms to make as to the acceptance by the unions of the industrial set-up as it was, private enterprise, competition, industrial capitalism. Frankly, our position was that we had better work against the whole order—work for decentralization, in some cases even for abolition of the machine and the assembly line where it definitely went against the best interests of man and his needs and his nature. Since the unions were organized more for wages and hours, rather than for mutual aid and indoctrination, very often what we had to offer in the way of a program did not interest them. Our point of view was foreign if not hostile at times. Often it is a matter of criticism that we have not continued to work with unions as we did in 1933 through 1938. Frankly, it was because we were not interested in increasing armaments, big business, perpetuating the status quo, and working in many cases perhaps towards state ownership. We must continue to protest injustice, bad working conditions, poor wages which are general now in face of the high cost of living; but our vision is of another system, another social order, a state of society where, as Marx and Engels put it, “Each man works according to his ability and receives according to his need.” Or as St. Paul put it, “Let your abundance supply their want” [2 Cor 8:14]. Men are beginning to think of the annual wage, in the unions, but not the family wage. Usually it is “equal pay for equal work.” But that holy Pope, Pius XI, said we should work, to deproletarize the worker, to get him out of the wage-earning class and into the propertied class, so that he would own his home, as well as his tools. Join the Apostolate

We must continue to get out into the highways and byways to distribute the paper even if it is not the food the man in the street wants. Religion is morbid to most people, and indeed it is a matter of dying to self, in order to live for God and one’s neighbor. Religion has too

12 ~ Dorothy Day

409

long been the opium of the people, the opiate of the people. I forget how the jingle in the first issue of INTEGRITY ran, but the sense of it was this: John Smith puts on his hat and goes to Church on Sunday. And John Smith goes to hell for what he does on Monday.

Not Saturday night, mind you, when he may be taking surcease from care in some tavern, but for the work he engages in, whether it is the advertising business, or a fat job in the rubber company or copper or nickel mines, or a steamship company. We participate in the sin of others, we are all helping to make the kind of a world that makes for war. Yes, let us get out into Union Square, along Forty Second Street, in front of Madison Square Garden and distribute and sell The Catholic Worker. We have been doing that for many years, but we need to do much more of it. As the older ones get tired (and Stanley has become a tired radical in this job of selling the paper), let the younger students and workers take over the job of being fools for Christ. One seminarian sold the paper all one summer for us. One rainy night when we were going into a CIO meeting there he was, standing in the downpour shouting READ THE CATHOLIC WORKER—THE ONLY THING THAT ISN’T ALL WET! Big Dan used to call out (in opposition to Communist salesmen, who shouted, Read the Daily Worker), “READ THE CATHOLIC WORKER DAILY.” Leaflets, pamphlets, papers, as well as more scholarly journals, are needed to reach the man in the street. Here is a letter which came last month: “We have been receiving a hundred CATHOLIC WORKERS a month and selling and distributing them in Columbus Circle. Do publish an appeal for more zeal on the part of Catholics in getting the Catholic message to the worker, to the poor, to the oppressed. There is a colored Catholic couple in Philadelphia and they would like a supply of fifty papers every month to distribute in their neighborhood.”

410

American Catholic Religious Thought

Many an apostle has been found by selling Catholic literature on the street corner; he has been queried as to his positions and beliefs and has had to begin to study “to know the reason for the faith that is in him” [1 Pet 3:15] in order to answer all the questions that are put to him. And many a time he just can’t answer them and it’s no use his trying. Houses Needed for Hospitality

To reach the masses through the spiritual and the corporal works of mercy. Of course getting Catholic literature around is performing quite a few of those tasks. It is enlightening the ignorant and counseling the doubtful, comforting the afflicted, and you might even say that walking on a picket line is doing these things too, as well as rebuking the sinner. But when we talk of the works of mercy, we usually think of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless. We have had to do them all, even to burying the dead. One does not necessarily have to establish, run, or live in a house of hospitality, as Peter named the hospices we have been running around the country, in order to practice the works of mercy. The early Fathers of the Church said that every house should have a Christ’s room. But it is generally only the poorest who are hospitable. A young college graduate hitchhiking across the county during the Depression (he was trying to make up his mind about his vocation) said that the only place he found hospitality was among the Negroes and the Mexicans. Certainly priests’ housekeepers did not extend any. He met so much misery and starvation even, that when he reached Los Angeles, he finally started a house of hospitality there, and in that house he met with so many impossible cases that he turned more and more to the spiritual weapons, and now he is a priest, with the most powerful weapons of all in his hands. Every house should have a Christ’s room. The coat which hangs in your closet belongs to the poor. If your brother comes to you hungry and you say, Go be thou filled, what kind of hospitality is that? It is no use turning people away to an agency, to the city or the state or the Catholic Charities. It is you yourself who must perform the works of mercy. Often you can only give the price of a meal, or a bed on the Bowery. Often you can only hope that it will be spent for that. Often

12 ~ Dorothy Day

411

you can literally take off a garment if it only be a scarf and warm some shivering brother. But personally, at a personal sacrifice, these were the ways. Peter used to insist, to combat the growing tendency on the part of the state to take over. The great danger was the state taking over the job which our Lord himself gave us to do, “Inasmuch as you did it unto one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me” [Mt 25:40]. Of course husbands must be considered, and wives must be considered, and children. One must look after one’s own family it is true. But Fr. Coady said once, “We can all do ten times as much as we think we can do.” Right now we have two houses of hospitality in Detroit, the St. Martha House and the St. Francis House. In Cleveland there is the Martin de Porres House. In Pittsburgh, there is the St. Joseph House of Hospitality which was started by our group (the Bishop gave the use of a huge orphanage) and is now run by Father Rice and Joseph Lenz. In Harrisburg there is the Martin de Porres House. In Philadelphia, the House of Christ the Worker. In Rochester, St. Joseph’s House of Hospitality for men and the Martha flat for women. In the past there have been houses in Seattle, Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Chicago, South Bend, Toledo, Troy, Buffalo, Boston, Washington, Baltimore, New Orleans, etc., but when the Depression ended with the war boom, and there were again jobs for all, many of the houses closed. Of course there is always a need for such centers. There are always the lame and the halt and the blind. There are always the poor we will always have with us, as our Lord said. There are always those coming out of hospitals, mental asylums, jails, etc. There is the wayfarer that needs to be sheltered for a night and those who come and stay a lifetime and finally need to be buried. The war took many of our young men into the service, into conscientious objector camps, into the medical corps, into jails, and they were the ones who ran the houses and performed the works of mercy. There were only four houses for women, and of those two are still going; the Harrisburg house is a family center, to take care of the Negroes in the Seventh Street district in the shadow of the capitol.

412

American Catholic Religious Thought Unpremeditated

At one time a thousand a day were fed in New York, probably more. Now there are perhaps four hundred or five hundred. The house is always filled (we have 36 rooms and two stores) but the line is smaller. We started fourteen years ago by inviting whoever came along to dinner. Many of our workers were recruited in that way. By the time three years had passed, we were given the use of 115 Mott street and the line began to stretch around the block. We never contemplated starting a BREAD LINE. All Peter had ever talked about were houses of hospitality and he had hoped that there could be craft shops, and discussion centers and libraries, and perhaps a chapel, and that these houses would be little cells of Christian living, radiating peace and brotherly love. But the evil of the day, the poverty in our rich country, the unemployment in the age of the machine was so great, and the disability, mental and physical, so appalling, that our houses grew and the lines grew with them. But Peter never grows discouraged. “Discouragement is a temptation of the devil,” he would say. “We must make the kind of society where people find it easier to be good,” he would add very simply. Clarification Through Discussion

Round table discussions go on everywhere, when two or three gather together. Perhaps there is too much of it, in an informal way, and not enough of it in a formal way. We have regular Friday night meetings, when speakers come and present a point of view, lead in a discussion, or give a spiritual conference. There are discussions when visitors gather together, and whole groups, classes from seminaries, colleges and schools, come together to ask questions and to enter into controversy. There are the retreats at Maryfarm, which in the past have been glimpses of heaven to a great many, an enlightenment, a conversion, a time of peace and study and rest. Peter used to enter upon discussions on street corners, over restaurant tables, in public squares, as well as in the office, at all times of the day and night. He believed in catching people as they came, and often the discussions would go on all night. One is reminded of St. Paul, who talked so long that the young man fell off the window seat, out of the open window, and was picked up for dead; St. Paul had to

12 ~ Dorothy Day

413

revive him. And St. Catherine of Siena, it is said, talked until she put people to sleep and then woke them up to listen some more. But Peter can talk and discuss no longer. He is over seventy, and his mind is tired, and his memory bad. He has been a great leader, and his writings still inspire. And now significantly enough, many young people all over the country are trying to put into effect his ideas, both in publishing, in running centers of training, in establishing themselves on the land, and here these discussions are being continued. If you cannot find enough people around Mott street to talk to about these ideas, and books that Peter has recommended, one can go to John Straub or Walter Marx in Washington, or the Center for Christ the King at Herman, Pennsylvania, or to Loveland, Ohio, where there are a number of families, as well as the great school of the apostolate for women, THE GRAIL. Or there is a center at Brookfield, Conn., where there are four families on the land. Everywhere, the discussions, started by Peter, are going on. The candle he has lit has been lighting many another candle and the light is becoming brighter. Farm Centers Are Small Beginnings

There are these centers, and other farms too around the country which are centers of the lay apostolate, though not the communal farm that Peter envisaged at a time when unemployment was the tragedy of the day, and man had neither work nor bread. There is a Catholic Worker farm at Lyons, Michigan, where Louis and Justine Murphy live, and another Catholic Worker farm at Upton, Mass., where the O’Donnell, Paulson and Roach families live. Frank manages the St. Leo shop there and Carl Paulson and Mary make stained glass and do wood carving, etc. Both farms are called St. Benedict’s Farm. There are 14 children at the Massachusetts farm. There is Our Lady of the Wayside Farm at Avon, Ohio, where Bill and Dorothy Gauchat live with their three children and are taking care of a little crippled baby (who cannot live) whose parents cannot care for it. This farm helps provide food for the house of hospitality Bill manages in Cleveland. Now there is Maryfarm, Newburgh, which is connected with 115 Mott street, and which we hope will soon be self-sustaining, and not only self-sustaining, but helping to feed the breadline at Mott street. We will be having retreats there during the summer, and it will be

414

American Catholic Religious Thought

delightful to go by way of boat up the Hudson, a slow trip, but a fitting approach to a week of prayer and study. You can get there quickly by New York Central to Beacon in an hour and a half; then take the ferry to Newburgh and a bus to Coldenham for ten minutes or so. You ask to be let off on Route 17K at the Catholic Worker Farm which is opposite the Sunnybrook Fruit Farms. We have had our first retreat already, Easter week, dedicated to rejoicing. This is a brief summary of the Catholic Worker and its aims and purposes in the lay apostolate. Often people ask us what is the keynote of Peter’s message, and one could say at once, without hesitation, POVERTY. It is what sets him apart, it is what distinguishes him from the great mass of the teachers of the day. In a time when we are living in an acquisitive society, Peter Maurin is THE POOR MAN. Last month there was a sensational story in all the New York papers, and probably reprinted all over the country, about two brothers, Langley and Homer Cohyer, who were misers and accumulators and who met with a horrible end. On receipt of a telephone call, police broke into a house on upper Fifth Avenue in the Harlem section, a four story house which in this housing shortage could have been converted into homes for four families. They found Homer, who had been blind and helpless, dead from starvation. His brother had disappeared. The house was so filled with junk that Langley had had to tunnel his way through to go in and out of the house to make their few purchases. In fear of intrusion, he had made booby traps with hundreds of pounds of old iron ready to fall on whoever threatened their privacy. One of these booby traps caught Langley who smothered to death within a few feet of his blind brother, who on account of the junk, could not reach either his brother or the window to call for help. He slowly starved to death, while listening to the rats feeding on the corpse of Langley a few feet away. This story seems to me, a vision of hell, a very literal and appalling sample of the hell that awaits the acquisitive, the greedy, the accumulators, the seekers after markets, wealth, power, prestige, exclusiveness, empire, dominion, of everything opposed to the common good. Here were two old men who epitomized to the nth degree suspicion and hatred of their fellows, and a desire to gather together to themselves everything they could lay their hands on. “They were worth $100,000”

12 ~ Dorothy Day

415

the newspapers reported. What a strange use of words! They spent little. Among the things they collected were six grand pianos, dismantled cars, babies’ cribs. Peter, on the other hand, has accumulated nothing in this life. He has nothing but the suit on his back, the shoes on his feet. He has lived on Bowerys and Skid Roads all his life, not believing that his dignity needed to be maintained by residence at a decent address, or by stopping at a good hotel. To reach one’s fellows by the practice of the works of mercy, AT A PERSONAL SACRIFICE—this meant embracing voluntary poverty. Voluntary poverty as a means to an end, to publish a paper, to put out leaflets, to live on the land, to serve one’s fellows. He has lived these ideas. And so when people ask us how we get the funds to run houses of hospitality, to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, care for the sick and bury the dead, we can only reply that our own wages are a penny a day, and that by living in common we have enough to care for our brothers. The paper costs a cent a copy, or twenty-five cents a year. Many people send more. When our bills pile high, we send out an appeal, and usually this must be done twice a year, spring and fall; on St. Joseph’s Day in March and St. Francis’ Day in October. Always we get just enough to carry on. When there is some extraordinary project in view like the new farm at Newburgh, we make an especial appeal for that. Ask and you shall receive. That is, if the Lord wants you to have it. “I have no need of your goods,” he has said, through the psalmist, and one of the ways we may know if it is God’s will that we carry on this work, is by the response to our appeals. If he wants the work done, he will send the means to do it. Light and Warmth Means Love

All this is set forth to show the validity, the vitality of Peter Maurin’s ideas, of his vision. They said of the early Christians, “SEE HOW THEY LOVE ONE ANOTHER,” and we have seen in Peter’s poverty how this love could be expressed, to live with the poor, to work with the poor, and to love the poor. And how great and wonderful a thing is this love which makes all work joyful and all burdens light. “Love is the fulfilling of the law.” And HELL, Bernanos says, is not to love any more.

416

American Catholic Religious Thought

That love is not a matter of emotion, but a matter of the will, a matter of preference, one soon learns in work like this. To love your neighbor, to love your enemy, who only yesterday was your neighbor, your ally and now has become an enemy. Or so they say. And what does this love mean in regard to Russia for instance? What Is Our Stand on Russia?

We are fighting principalities and powers, not flesh and blood, and the Russians are our neighbors, our brothers in Christ, and not just a world power seeking empire. We are inclined to look upon the small nations as having much more to say, these days, and much clearer judgment than the mighty powers in the UNO. We are for disarmament and the outlawing of the atomic bomb, even if we die for it, even if we are deceived in the integrity of our brothers. We must lay down our lives as Christ did, “A New Commandment I give you, that you love your brother as I have loved you” [Jn 13:34]. But what about the concentration camps, forced labor, domination of small countries? “The worst enemy of a man will be those of his own household” [Mic 7:6]. “Regard not the mote that is in thy brother’s eye while disregarding the beam in thine own eye” [Mt 7:3]. What about our own problem of minorities; Negroes who are one tenth of our population, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese concentration camps, the recent deportation of Indonesians. Have we forgotten about these? If your enemy hunger, give him to eat. There is always a solution in the practice of the works of mercy, at a personal sacrifice. The Old Testament speaking of our Lord, foretelling him, is full of the same thought. The epistle on Monday in Holy Week was from Isaias, “I have given my body to the strikers, and my cheeks to them that plucked them. I have not turned away my face from them that rebuked me and spit upon me. The Lord God is my helper” [Is 50:6]. To those who call us isolationist, we must remind them that the Good Samaritan did not leave the poor traveler by the road and run after the robbers. He ministered to the wounded, and fed and sheltered him, and did not seem in the least concerned for justice to be done to the thieves, or revenge being taken. Love, it is a beautiful word, but as Father Zossima said, LOVE IN PRACTICE IS A HARSH AND DREADFUL THING COMPARED TO LOVE IN DREAMS.

12 ~ Dorothy Day

417

IV. PETER MAURIN Source: unpublished manuscript in Dorothy Day-Catholic Worker Collection, Marquette University Archives, Series D-3, Box 2, 3

When Peter talked about asceticism, it was matter-of-factly, as the word implies, an exercise of one’s religion. To him, religion and asceticism go together. It is inconceivable for instance that one can truly be “religious” and not embrace voluntary poverty. And it is this emphasis on voluntary poverty that has led to much criticism and antagonism toward the movement, even while it has called forth the most attention and attracted the most admiration. Unfortunately, the admiration has come from those who contemplate from afar, and the criticism from those close to us has much of justice in it. On account of the emphasis placed upon poverty in the past which led to heresies (an over-emphasis of one aspect of the truth, to the expense of others) probably not enough has been written about poverty in the present, especially here in the United States, when modern plumbing seems to epitomize culture and civilization. When Jesus gathered his disciples and the multitude around him to preach the Sermon on the Mount, he was not just addressing the disciples when he said, “Ye are the salt of the earth.” He was addressing the poor. The rest of his discourse was meant for them, the Beatitudes were for them, so he meant also to call them the salt of the earth. The poor are the salt of the earth; the truly poor—the poor in spirit. What a mysterious thing poverty is. To the religious-minded, it has had an enormous attraction down through the ages. To simplify one’s life, to cut out the superfluous, to go against the sensual inclinations of one’s own nature, Christian and non-Christian have emphasized these teachings. There is William James’ panegyric on poverty. “When we gravely ask ourselves whether this wholesale organization of irrationality and crime (war) be our only bulwark against ef-

418

American Catholic Religious Thought

feminacy, we stand aghast at the thought, and think more kindly of ascetic religion. One hears of the mechanical. equivalent of heat. What we need now to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved itself to be incompatible. I have often thought that in the old monkish poverty-worship, in spite of the pedantry which infested it, there might be something like that moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. May not voluntarily accepted poverty be “the strenuous life,” without the need of crushing weaker peoples? Poverty indeed is the strenuous life, without brass bands or uniforms or hysteric popular applause or lies or circumlocutions; and when one sees the way in which wealth-giving enters as an ideal into the very bone and marrow of our generation, one wonders whether a revival of the belief that poverty is a worthy religious vocation may not be the transformation of military courage and the spiritual reform which our time stands most in need of. Among us English-speaking peoples especially do the praises of poverty need once more to be boldly sung. We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and cant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are to do and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly, the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape. When we of the so-called better classes are scared as men were never scared in history at material ugliness and hardship; when we put off marriage until our house can be artistic, and quake at the thought of having a child without a bank account and doomed to manual labor, it is time for thinking men to protest against so unmanly and irreligious a state of opinion. It is true that so far as wealth gives time for ideal ends and exercise to ideal energies; wealth is better than poverty and ought to be chosen. But wealth does this in only a portion of the actual cases. Elsewhere the desire to gain wealth and the fear to lose it are our chief breeders of cowardice and propagators of corruption.

12 ~ Dorothy Day

419

There are thousands of conjunctures in which a wealth-bound man must be a slave, whilst a man for whom poverty has no terrors becomes a free man. Think of the strength which personal indifference to poverty would give us if we were devoted to unpopular causes. We need no longer hold our tongues or fear to vote the revolutionary or reformatory ticket. Our stocks might fall, our hopes of promotion vanish, our salaries stop, our club doors close in our faces; yet while we lived we would imperturbably bear witness to the spirit, and our example would help us to set free our generation. The cause would need its funds, but we its servants would be potent in proportion as we personally were contented with our poverty. I recommend this matter to your serious pondering, for it is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.” One of our Italian neighbors has an extravagant fear of poverty. When we took over one of the apartments in the front building there were so many locks and bars and bolts that one would have thought there was a vendetta in the neighborhood. I looked at those bolts and bars. The family was not afraid of public opinion—it was the strongest family in the neighborhood. They were not afraid of the law—the matriarch of the family sold liquor in her kitchen, without a license, as many of the families did, and other members had gotten into trouble with the law. They were not afraid of God himself, since none of them went to Church. They were afraid of neither God nor man, but they were afraid of losing their money. That was the greatest terror life had to offer. There is Saint Francis—the heart leaps at the thought of him loved by Catholic and non-Catholic. Once a priest pointed to a statue of Saint Francis and said sadly, “There is the last Franciscan.” Bernanos, in his Diary of a Country Priest understood poverty, and Leon Bloy, who wrote The Woman Who Was Poor. Poverty is hard to understand. It is an inexhaustible mine of wisdom. “Those who are in honor are without understanding,” [Ps. 49:21] the Psalmist said. Christ did not try to rescue people from their poverty. He came to preach the Gospel. When he fed the multitude, and there are two stories of such miracles in the Gospel, the people must have wanted

420

American Catholic Religious Thought

him to go on feeding them. But he fed them once, taking compassion on them so that they did not go away hungry. It must have been a suffering all through his life, not to feed people in their poverty. It was one of the temptations of the devil who said to him, “Turn these stones into bread” [Mt 4:3]. It would have been so easy for him to feed them, to relieve their hunger. He must have seen many hungry, many suffering, many begging. Remembering this, and living in poverty ourselves is the only way we can endure life which is so filled with suffering these days. Yet by poverty we do not mean destitution. Daniel-Rops in The Poor and Ourselves makes a distinction between poverty and destitution. To us, voluntary poverty has been a mine of wealth and wisdom; a means to an end. And amongst us all, Peter has most exemplified the man who was poor.

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES The Eleventh Virgin (New York: Boni, 1924). From Union Square to Rome (Silver Spring, Md.: The Preservation of the Faith Press, 1938). House of Hospitality (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1939). The Long Loneliness (New York: Harper and Row, 1959). Therese (Notre Dame, Indiana: Fides Publishers, 1960). Loaves and Fishes (New York: Harper, 1963). On Pilgrimage: The Sixties (New York: Curtis, 1972). Articles in The Catholic Worker, 1933-80. SECONDARY SOURCES Robert Coles, Dorothy Day: A Radical Devotion (Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley, 1987). Marc H. Ellis, Peter Maurin: Prophet in the Twentieth Century (New York: Paulist Press, 1981). John Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left, 1930-1950 (Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1981).

12 ~ Dorothy Day

421

Anne Klejment and Alice Klejment, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker: A Bibliography and Index (New York: Garland, 1986). Wayne Lobue, “Public Theology and the Catholic Worker,” Cross Currents 26 (Autumn 1976): 270-85. William Miller, Dorothy Day: A Biography (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1982). ———, A Harsh and Dreadful Love: Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (New York: Doubleday, 1973). Sandra Yocum Mize, “‘We Are Still Pacifists’: Dorothy Day’s Pacifism During World War II,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 108 (Spring-Summer 1997): 1-12. David O’Brien, “Dorothy Day and History,” Commonweal, December 19, 1980. Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origin of Catholic Radicalism in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982). Nancy Roberts, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker (New York: State University of New York Press, 1984). William Thorn, Phillip M. Runkel, and Susan Mountin, eds., Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement: Centenary Essays (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2001).

13 ~ Dom Virgil Michel DOM VIRGIL MICHEL: LITURGICAL REFORMER Dom Virgil (née George) Michel (1890-1938) was the foremost spokesman for the liturgical revival in American Catholicism during the early twentieth century. Combining interests in sociology, economics, politics, education, philosophy, and art with his study of liturgy, Michel developed a liturgical movement in the United States that differed significantly from its European Catholic precursor. Unlike the European liturgists he advocated a renewed understanding of the liturgy that emphasized the liturgy’s potential for social reform. The liturgy expressed a Christian community of justice as well as faith. For Michel, this meant that a renewal of the social order must be tied to a revival of the liturgy, and that a revived concern for the liturgy demanded a corresponding concern for social reconstruction. The European liturgical movement reflected little of this emphasis upon social justice and reform. It did not have the pragmatic and activist orientation that Michel gave to the American Catholic movement. Michel’s movement, of course, was not a popular movement in American Catholicism, but it did anticipate the liturgical renewal fostered by the Second Vatican Council. Michel was born in St. Paul, Minnesota to Fred and Mary Griebler Michel, immigrants from Germany. George received his elementary education in St. Paul, entered St. John’s Preparatory School in Collegeville, Minnesota in 1903, and was graduated in 1909 from St. John’s University with a Bachelor’s degree in Latin. Immediately after college, he entered the Benedictine Order at St. John’s Abbey and was ordained in 1916. From 1916 to 1918, he studied at the Catholic University of America and received a doctorate in English, writing a dissertation on Orestes Brownson’s literary principles. From 1918 to 1924 he taught various disciplines at St. John’s. He then studied philosophy at Sant’

424

American Catholic Religious Thought

Anselmo in Rome and at the University of Louvain during 1924 and 1925. In 1926, back at St. John’s, he began to publish Orate Fratres, the organ of the liturgical movement he instituted. In 1930, exhausted with teaching and editing responsibilities, he retired from St. John’s to serve in the Indian missions in Northern Minnesota for three years. In 1933, he returned to St. John’s as Dean of the University. After a brief illness in November of 1938, he died at St. John’s. The following selection was originally an address given to the Minnesota branch of the Central-Verein Society during its thirty-seventh annual convention at Mankato, Minnesota on September 22, 1934. Stressing one of the primary themes of the Central-Verein, social reconstruction through local solidarity rather than through state intervention, Michel presented the liturgy as the basis of a common solidarity and as the teacher of organic fellowship and the dignity of the individual. The liturgy teaches most effectively, however, by doing. Teaching is always inseparable from practice. The liturgy, therefore, should not only express and teach human solidarity, but it should also enable the Christian community to be an agent of social regeneration.

****** TEXT THE LITURGY THE BASIS OF SOCIAL REGENERATION Source: Orate Fratres, 9 (1934/35): 536-45.

At the first mention of the subject of this address one might be inclined to ask: What has the liturgy to do with social reconstruction or the social question? Can the liturgy help to give jobs or raise wages? Can there be any connection between the liturgy and the social problem? It is now seven years ago that the Central Bureau of the Central-Verein published a pamphlet that was more than usually distinguished for its keen Christian sense as well as its historical vision. It was entitled The True Basis of Christian Solidarity and it carried the explanatory subtitle: “The Liturgy an Aid to the Solution of the Social Question.” The moment we deal with the problem of social regeneration, we shall do well to have recourse to the classic Catholic text on the ques-

13 ~ Dom Virgil Michel

425

tion, the encyclical Quadragesimo anno of the present Holy Father “on Reconstructing the Social Order.” The very idea of social regeneration or reconstruction implies that there is something very much awry with our present social order. Pius XI refers to this fact in the following brief sentence: “Nowadays, as more than once in the history of the Church, we are confronted with a world which in large measure has almost fallen back into paganism.” In analyzing conditions the pontiff speaks of a double danger. This is how he expresses it when he discusses the particular question of private property: “There is, therefore, a double danger to be avoided. On the one hand, if the social and public aspect of ownership be denied or minimized, the logical consequence is individualism, as it is called; on the other hand, the rejection or diminution of its private and individual character necessarily leads to some form of collectivism. To disregard these dangers would be to rush headlong into the quicksands of Modernism.” These, then, are the two dangers the Holy Father warns us to avoid if society is to be regenerated; they are the products of an un-Christian view of life and are therefore pagan at heart; and they are both current symptoms of a diseased social order. INDIVIDUALISM

I shall deal first with individualism. Christianity has always upheld the supreme value of each individual soul, and so has always been the champion of a moderate form of individualism. It could do no less since the whole Christian view of life, both natural and supernatural, is dependent on the existence of individual human responsibility for one’s action and conduct. Christianity has always stood for a proper appreciation of human personality and has always opposed the treatment of men as if they were animals or mechanical robots. When the great break occurred four centuries ago in the Christian tradition that had been developing for centuries, it showed itself precisely in the question of individualism. For many persons the individual conscience was then made the supreme judge in all matters of religion; each man became his own highest authority in the interpretation of the scriptural word of God. At the height of the eighteenth-century enlightenment the principle of extreme individualism had entered into

426

American Catholic Religious Thought

the entire field of social life. All authority superior to man was denied, and human traditions were laughed out of court. There was then no longer any master superior to man. Man was his own supreme authority, his own sole lawgiver, not only in religion but in all the fields of human conduct, especially also in economic life. Man no longer had any real duties towards his fellow men. He had a duty only towards his own self, and that duty was the pleasant one of looking after his own best interests in his own chosen way and not bothering about anyone else. This principle of extreme individualism was then given moral justification by the view that if every individual looks to his own best personal interest and makes that his supreme law in life, then the good of society will also be best attained. What actually happened thereupon was that this principle of exaggerated individualism made of society a battle-ground of each against all. This was a condition not of dignified human personalities and life, but a human version of the law of the jungle. It was a raw “struggle for existence and survival of the fittest” disguised under the phrase of “free competition.” Here is what Quadragesimo anno has to say on this point: “Just as the unity of human society cannot be built upon class warfare, so the proper ordering of economic affairs cannot be left to free competition alone. From this source have proceeded in the past all the errors of the ‘Individualistic’ school. This school, ignorant or forgetful of the social and moral aspects of economic matters, teaches that the state should refrain in theory and practice from interfering therein, because these possess in free competition and open markets a principle of selfdirection better able to control them than any created intellect. Free competition, however, though within certain limits just and productive of good results, cannot be the ruling principle of the economic world. This has been abundantly proved by the consequences that have followed from the free reign given to these dangerous individualistic ideals.” Such is one of the dangers alluded to by the Holy Father. And it is pagan in nature because it contradicts true Christian principles of social life. It has developed, moreover, during the past four centuries step by step with the gradual abandonment of traditional Christianity. As the mighty of the world went on from an abandonment of the Church of Christ to a denial of the divinity of Christ and then to a

13 ~ Dom Virgil Michel

427

denial of God, so did the jungle law and pagan principle of the right of the strong and the fortunate spread ever wider into every field of human life. COLLECTIVISM

The other danger pointed out by the Holy Father is called by him collectivism, the opposite extreme to individualism. In the sense in which the papal encyclical refers to collectivism, it is just as pagan, just as un-Christian as individualism; and it is just as one-sided as the latter. Just as the undue stressing of the individual led to the neglect of the social nature of human life, so the undue stressing of the social nature of man leads to a one-sided neglect of his individual rights as a human person. “It is true, indeed,” says our encyclical, “that a just freedom of action should be left to individual citizens and families.” Hence this collectivism is wrong in fact and principle. To quote again: “Just as it is wrong to withdraw from the individual and commit to the community at large what private enterprise and industry can accomplish, so too it is an injustice, a grave evil and a disturbance of the right order for a larger and higher organization to arrogate to itself functions which can be performed efficiently by smaller and lower bodies. . . . Of its very nature the true aim of all social activity should be to help individual members of the social body, but never to destroy or absorb them.” That is the true danger of collectivism: that it destroys or absorbs the individual. For it the individual does not count for anything. Authority and obedience is everything, and the human person nothing. That this danger is real today a glance at the face of Europe sufficiently proves. We may express it in one word: the totalitarian state. And we shall do well to remind ourselves that similar state absolutism, and supreme and arbitrary political power over life and death was a characteristic of pre-Christian pagan kingdoms and empires. No wonder that where the principles of the totalitarian state have been followed to the full, in Russia and Germany, for instance, we have a conscious espousal and enforcement of atheism on the one hand and a barbaric revival of pagan religion on the other. Such collectivism is as much the antithesis of Christianity as is individualism.

428

American Catholic Religious Thought THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE

Now what is the Christian principle over against these two pagan extremes? It is such a mutual balancing and limitation of the two as brings them into harmony. Pius XI refers to this principle at various times. Speaking of the question of capital and labor he states it as follows: “In the first place, due consideration must be had for the double character, individual and social, of capital and labor, in order that the dangers of individualism and collectivism be avoided.” It is this double character, the harmonious fusion of the two elements of human nature, the individual and the social, that we must not only keep in mind, but that must again become dominant in all human life. How can that be done? Pius XI answers by referring to a “new diffusion throughout the world of the Gospel spirit, which is a spirit of Christian moderation and of universal charity.” By reason of it, he says, “we confidently look forward to that complete and much desired renewal of human society, and to ‘the Peace of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ.’” Now this renewal of human society, which must needs bring about a harmonious relation between men, one of cooperation and mutual aid and not one of mutual strife and cut-throat competition, must have its origin and inspiration in religion. The Holy Father quotes his great predecessor Leo XIII to that effect: “For the ‘foundation of social laws being thus laid in religion, it is not hard to establish the relations of members one to another, in order that they may live together in concord and achieve prosperity.”’ He is indeed very emphatic on this point: “If we examine matters diligently and thoroughly we shall perceive clearly that this longed-for social reconstruction must be preceded by a profound renewal of the Christian spirit, from which multitudes engaged in industry in every country have unhappily departed. Otherwise, all our endeavors will be futile, and our social edifice will be built, not upon a rock, but upon shifting sand.” LITURGY: SOURCE OF THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT

Now the question logically arises: Where are we to find this Christian spirit that is essential to the successful regeneration of the social order? The answer was given long ago by the saintly Pius X in a statement that

13 ~ Dom Virgil Michel

429

many of you have undoubtedly heard repeated time and again. He first of all expressed it as his keenest desire “that the true Christian spirit flourish again and become more firmly grounded in all the faithful.” Then he pointed out the great need “of deriving this spirit from its primary and indispensable source, which is active participation in the sacred mysteries and the public and solemn prayers of the Church.” With this we have come to the liturgy. For the liturgy is nothing else than the solemn and public worship of the Church, her official prayers and blessings, the sacraments, and above all the holy Sacrifice of Christ, the Mass. Pius X not only called this liturgy the indispensable source of the true Christian spirit, but added that the faithful must derive this spirit from the Church’s worship by active participation: therefore, not by passive bodily presence, but by being present in such a manner that mind and heart are actively joined to the official worship and take intelligent part in the holy action. There is no time here to dwell on the meaning of active participation, nor to analyse further the nature of the elements that make up the Church’s liturgy. I shall proceed at once to the question: What is the basic idea of this liturgy? It is that of the Mystical Body of Christ—a concept that was not only well known to the early Christians but also a primary inspiration for all their conduct and life. It was constantly preached by the Church Fathers and taught by the Church down to our own day, but it has often, among the faithful of all ranks, been left in the background, even quite forgotten, especially since the growing dominance of an un-Christian individualism. The doctrine of the Mystical Body was explained by Christ under the example of the vine and the branches and by St. Paul under the picture of the human body composed of head and members. When through the liturgical initiation of Baptism we enter the Church, by that same fact we become intimately united with Christ as members of the Mystical Body of which he is the Head. Christ is then most truly and supernaturally our brother, we are all children of God in a very special and sublime manner; we are all brethren together who are intimately united in the one Christ. In this holy fellowship we find a harmonious combination of the two complementary factors of

430

American Catholic Religious Thought

humankind, that is, organic fellowship coupled with full respect for human personality and individual responsibility. This is not merely an abstract doctrine or truth of our Christian lives, but one that should be the basis of our every thought and action as Christians. The active character of it is seen for instance in what our catechism has taught us about the communion of the saints and the common treasury of supernatural merits in the Church. By becoming members of the Mystical Body of Christ through Baptism, we no longer belong to ourselves alone but above all to Christ and his cause. All our good actions and merits likewise, which we perform only through Christ, belong strictly to Christ for attaining the purposes of Christ. Thus all the merits of Christ, which exceed all human needs, and those of his members, form a common treasury of grace and merits, which are in turn applied to all the members according to their needs and their desert. This is the highest type of Christian solidarity—a supernatural living solidarity or fellowship—not only in theory but also in practice. Similarly the liturgy of the Church not only makes and keeps us members of this fellowship, but it always puts the idea of fellowship in Christ into full practice. Just in so far as we participate in the liturgy after the mind of Christ do we also live and breathe this supernatural social unity of all members in Christ. This is why the liturgy is so truly the primary and indispensable source of the true Christian spirit: it not only teaches us what this spirit is but also has us live this spirit in all its enactments. In the liturgy the teaching is inseparable from the putting into practice. I shall have to content myself with one of two examples of this truth. The sacrament of the Eucharist, holy Communion, is called by St. Thomas the sacrament of the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ. When we receive Communion we may be inclined to think of it as Christ coming into our hearts and becoming our own exclusive possession, and we think with gratitude of the infinite Christ confining himself within the limits of our small heart. When twenty persons receive Communion at Mass and go back to their separate pews, this would almost imply that there were now twenty Christs extant among the pews. We know, of course, that this is not the Catholic doctrine. When twenty or more individuals receive Communion they have all

13 ~ Dom Virgil Michel

431

been intimately united to one and the same sacramental Christ. Christ is not divided or really multiplied among them after Communion; rather are they all contained in one and the same Christ, and thus united most closely into a single supernatural fellowship with him. The early Christians understood this very well. And therefore they had no difficulty in transferring this intimate fellowship of love that was wrought among them in holy Communion into every action of their daily lives. They also understood that Communion was God’s answering gift to the offering they had made in an earlier part of the Mass. At the Offertory they all entered with full understanding and heart into the Offertory procession that was a universal custom of the Church for many centuries. What was the real meaning of this Offertory procession? First of all, everyone who assisted at Mass brought his own individual gift to God, something of his own, something he had raised or worked to acquire, something that he could have used for his own support and that therefore stood for himself. In bringing to the altar this gift, which was generally a portion of bread or wine, olive oil, or some such product, he was fully conscious of thereby dedicating his whole self to God, of giving body and soul, mind and heart to his Maker, and of doing so not only by internal intention but also by external action. Moreover no one brought his gift in isolation from his brethren. All joined together in the Offertory procession and together brought their gifts as one single common offering to God, each one offering not only himself and for himself but each one offering all and for all. It was thus a beautiful example as well as realization of true Christian solidarity and love. Of the gifts offered, some bread and wine were laid on the altar to be the essential elements of the Sacrifice of Mass, and all the rest of the one common offering was laid aside on tables to be used for the poor and the needy. Thus the common offering made by them to God became at the same time a common act of love and charity to the poor and the needy, so that in one and the same collective but unitary action they worshiped God directly and served him indirectly in their fellow men. Such was the sublime lesson of Christian solidarity that was brought home to the early Christians increasingly by their active participation in the liturgy. It was brought home to them not

432

American Catholic Religious Thought

only as a truth learned, but as a principle put into regular practice, which by repetition formed a permanent attitude and habit of mind. No wonder that they lived so true to this genuine Christian spirit in all the actions of their daily lives! The liturgy is replete with instances of the actual working out of this Christian fellowship and solidarity, this mutual Christian love which cannot bear to see a member suffer without an attempt to aid him. We are all aware of the fact that no Mass is offered without an official commemoration of the poor souls in purgatory. This is but another illustration of the general principle of Christian solidarity between the different divisions of the fellowship. Sometimes we view the sacrament of Confession as a striking instance of God’s dealing solely with the individual. But here too we have another example of the same solidary Christian spirit. Here too the merits of the common treasury of all is drawn upon for the needs of the individual member. This is beautifully expressed in the official prayer recited by the priest after the sacramental absolution. In a most offhand way the good works of the individual in question and of all the saints and of Christ are mentioned together: “May the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the blessed Virgin Mary and of all the saints, whatever good thou mayest do and whatever evil thou mayest have to endure, profit thee unto the remission of sins, increase of grace, and glory in the life without end. Amen.” This, then, is the true Christian spirit and first and last the supreme lesson of the liturgy as the official worship and life of the Mystical Body of Christ. And this spirit must needs be the source of all further extension and application of the principles of solidarity and fellowship in our common life and civilization. So it is pointed out by the Holy Father himself. For him this mutual supernatural relationship of men united in Christ is the model towards which, all social regeneration must strive. Speaking of the proper economic relations between men he says, for instance: “Where this harmonious proportion is kept, man’s various economic activities combine and unite into one single organism and become as members of a common body, lending each other mutual help and service.” Again: “Then only will it be possible to unite all in a harmonious striving for the common good, when all sections of society have the intimate

13 ~ Dom Virgil Michel

433

conviction that they are members of a single family and children of the same heavenly Father, and further, that they are one body in Christ and everyone members one of another.” The whole trend of ideas I have tried to bring before you is admirably expressed in a quotation from one of the most active and inspiring as well as profound apostles of Catholic Action in our day, Christopher Dawson. “The Mystical Body,” he says, “is the link between the liturgy and sociology: and in proportion as men are brought to realize, through the liturgy, their position as members of that Body, will their actions in the social sphere be affected thereby. . . . A visible manifestation of incorporation into Christ, a visible united action on the part of the members, cannot fail to revive and foster in them a determination to carry their Christ—life into the social and economic sphere.” In conclusion, I may summarize in what happens to take on the form of a logical syllogism: Pius X tells us that the liturgy is the indispensable source of the true Christian spirit; Pius XI says that the true Christian spirit is indispensable for social regeneration. Hence the conclusion: The liturgy is the indispensable basis of Christian social regeneration.

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES The Critical Principles of Orestes A. Brownson (Washington, D.C.: 1918). The Liturgical Apostolate (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1926). My Sacrifice and Yours (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1926). [with Martin B. Hellriegel] The Liturgical Movement (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1930). Philosophy of Human Conduct (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Co., 1936). The Liturgy of the Church (New York: Macmillan, 1937). Christian Social Reconstruction (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1937). Our Life in Christ (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1939). The Christian in the World (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1939).

434

American Catholic Religious Thought SECONDARY SOURCES

Colman Barry, Worship and Work: St. John’s Abbey, and University, 1856-1956 (Collegeville: St. John’s Abbey, 1956). Michael Baxter, “Reintroducing Virgil Michel: Towards a Counter-Tradition of Catholic Social Ethics in the United States,” Communio 24 (Fall 1997): 515-530. Seamus Paul Finn, “Virgil Michel’s Contribution to Linking the Liturgical and Social Apostolate in the American Catholic Church: A Fifty Year Perspective.” Th.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1991. Robert W. Franklin, Virgil Michel: American Catholic (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1988). Jeremy Hall, The Full Stature of Christ: The Ecclesiology of Dom Virgil Michel (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1976). Kenneth R. Himes, “Eucharist and Justice: Assessing the Legacy of Virgil Michel,’ Worship 62 (May 1988): 201-36. Paul B. Marx, Virgil Michel and the Liturgical Movement (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1957). David J. O’Brien, American Catholics and Social Reform: The New Deal Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968). Keith F. Pecklers, The Unread Vision: The Liturgical Movement in the United States of America, 1926-1945 (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1998).

14 ~ John Courtney Murray JOHN COURTNEY MURRAY: RELIGIOUS LIBERTY John Courtney Murray (1904-67) was the principal American Catholic theoretician on religious liberty. Murray believed that the post WorldWar II world demanded two major tasks from the American Catholic theologian before Catholics could cooperate with fellow Christians and Jews in attacking the social crises of the era. On the one hand, the theologian had to overcome Protestant and Jewish suspicions of Catholic political goals before cooperation was possible. This was the perennial problem in American Catholicism. On the other hand, he had to refute a secularist interpretation of separation of church and state that relegated religion to the sacristy or to the “private” sphere of individual conscience. The theologian had to develop an adequate response to these problems in order to secure the freedom of the church as an organized community in American society. Thus, Murray’s work on religious liberty was preliminary to the more fundamental task of discussing the positive role of Christians and churches in society. Murray was born in New York City to Michael John and Margaret Courtney Murray. At the age of sixteen, after receiving primary and secondary education in New York City, he joined the Society of Jesus. In 1926, he was a graduate from Weston College in Massachusetts and in 1927 received a Master’s degree from Boston College. From 1927 to 1930 he taught Latin and English literature in the Philippines. In 1930 he returned to the United States to study theology for the next four years at Woodstock College in Maryland. After ordination to the priesthood on June 25, 1933, he was sent to the Gregorian University in Rome to obtain a doctorate in theology. In 1937, after receiving the doctorate, he returned to Woodstock College where he taught theology until his death in 1967. In 1963, he was appointed a peritus, a theological expert, at the Second Vatican Council where

436

American Catholic Religious Thought

he became a primary contributor to the Council’s Declaration on Religious Liberty. In the following selection Murray argues that the American doctrine of religious liberty is a political and not a religious proposition. American Catholic assent to the first amendment, therefore, is grounded on moral principle and public philosophy rather than religious belief or theology. He also maintains that because the state is not juridically omnipotent in America, there is room for an independent exercise of an authority not derived from the state—i.e., for ecclesiastical authority. Thus, he concludes that the freedom of religion guaranteed by the Constitution provides for the possibility of religious integrity as well as civil and political unity. The wisdom and validity of this constitutional provision is grounded in and has been tested by the American experience.

****** TEXT CIVIL UNITY AND RELIGIOUS INTEGRITY THE ARTICLES OF PEACE Source: John Courtney Murray, We Hold These Truths: Catholic Reflections on the American Proposition (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1960), 55-85. With the kind permission of the publisher. Sheed & Ward is an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

The unity asserted in the American device, “E pluribus unum” (as I have adapted its meaning) is a unity of a limited order. It does not go beyond the exigencies of civil conversation, taken in the sense already defined.1 This civil unity therefore must not hinder the vari1

[By “E pluribus unum,” Murray means that the United States has “one society subsisting amid multiple pluralisms,” one of which is religious pluralism. The unity of which he speaks here is founded in a certain American consensus that acknowledges: 1. the nation to be under God; 2. the tradition of natural law; 3. the principle of consent; 4. the necessity of virtue for freedom; 5. the inalienability of human rights and responsibilities.]

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

437

ous religious communities in American society in the maintenance of their own distinct identities. Similarly, the public consensus, on which civil unity is ultimately based, must permit to the differing communities the full integrity of their own religious convictions. The one civil society contains within its own unity the communities that are divided among themselves; but it does not seek to reduce to its own unity the differences that divide them. In a word, the pluralism remains as real as the unity. Neither may undertake to destroy the other. Each subsists in its own order. And the two orders, the religious and the civil, remain distinct, however much they are, and need to be, related. All this, I take it, is integral to the meaning attached in America to the doctrine of religious freedom and to its instrumental companion-doctrine called (not felicitously) separation of church and state. I use the word “doctrine” as lawyers or political philosophers, not theologians, use it. We come therefore to the second question. It concerns the American solution to the problem put by the plurality of conflicting religions within the one body politic. In its legal form (there are other forms, as I shall later say) the solution is deposited in the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” What then is the Catholic view of this constitutional proviso? In 1790 Edmund Burke published his Reflections on the Revolution in France. When he comes to his defense of English institutions (“an established Church, an established monarchy, an established aristocracy, and an established democracy”), he says: “First I beg leave to speak of our Church Establishment, which is the first of our prejudices—not a prejudice destitute of reason, but involving in it profound and extensive wisdom. I speak of it first. It is first, and last, and midst in our minds.” In that same year the people of the states newly formed into the American Federal Republic were debating the ten amendments to the Constitution, submitted to them for ratification. The ratification was complete in 1791, and in that year the legal rule against any establishment of religion was on its way to becoming, where it had not already become, the first of our prejudices. There is a contrast here, a clash of prejudices, which still endures. The clash ought to be mentioned at the outset of our present question, primarily because it should teach

438

American Catholic Religious Thought

one the dangers of doctrinaire judgments. Such judgments are always in peril of falsity; they are particularly so in the delicate matter of the legal regulation of religion in society. We have a special prejudice in this matter, which is specifically American, because its origins are in our particular context and its validity has been demonstrated by the unique course of American history. The subject might almost be left right here, if it could be generally admitted that the First Amendment expresses simply an American prejudice, in Burke’s sense of the word. A prejudice is not necessarily an error; to be prejudiced is not necessarily to be unreasonable. Certain pre-judgments are wholesome. Normally, they are concrete judgments of value, not abstract judgments of truth. They are not destitute of reason, but their chief corroboration is from experience. They are part of the legacy of wisdom from the past; they express an ancestral consensus. Hence they supply in the present, as Russell Kirk puts it, “the half intuitive knowledge which enables men to meet the problems of life without logic-chopping.” The American Catholic is entirely prepared to accept our constitutional concept of freedom of religion and the policy of no establishment as the first of our prejudices. He is also prepared to admit that other prejudices may obtain elsewhere—in England, in Sweden, in Spain. Their validity in their own context and against the background of the history that generated them does not disturb him in his conviction that his own prejudice, within his own context and against the background of his own history, has its own validity. American Catholics would even go as far as to say of the provisions of the First Amendment what Burke, in his Reflections, said of the English Church Establishment, that they consider it as “essential to their state; not as a thing heterogeneous and separable, something added from accommodation, what they may either keep up or lay aside, according to their temporary ideas of convenience. They consider it as the foundation of their whole Constitution, with which, and with every part of which, it holds an indissoluble union.” The prejudice formulated in the First Amendment is but the most striking aspect of the more fundamental prejudice that was the living root of our constitutional system—the prejudice in favor of the method of freedom in society and therefore the prejudice in favor of a government of limited powers,

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

439

whose limitations are determined by the consent of the people. The American people exempted from their grant of power to government any power to establish religion or to prohibit the free exercise thereof. The Catholic community, in common with the rest of the American people, has historically consented to this political and legal solution to the problem created by the plurality of religious beliefs in American society. They agree that the First Amendment is by no means destitute of reason; that it involves profound and extensive wisdom; that its wisdom has been amply substantiated by history. Consequently, they share the general prejudice which it states; often enough both in action and in utterances they have made this fact plain. And that should be the end of the matter. THEOLOGIES OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT

But, as it happens, one is not permitted thus simply to end the matter. I leave aside the practical issues that have arisen concerning the application of the First Amendment. The question here is one of theory, the theory of the First Amendment in itself and in its relation to Catholic theories of freedom of religion and the church-state relation. It is customary to put to Catholics what is supposed to be an embarrassing question: Do you really believe in the first two provisions of the First Amendment? The question calls to mind one of the more famous among the multitudinous queries put by Boswell to Dr. Johnson, “whether it is necessary to believe all the Thirty-Nine Articles.” And the Doctor’s answer has an applicable point: “Why, sir, that is a question which has been much agitated. Some have held it necessary that all be believed. Others have considered them to be only articles of peace, that is to say, you are not to preach against them.” An analogous difference of interpretation seems to exist with regard to the first two articles of the First Amendment. On the one hand, there are those who read into them certain ultimate beliefs, certain specifically sectarian tenets with regard to the nature of religion, religious truth, the church, faith, conscience, divine revelation, human freedom, etc. In this view these articles are invested with a genuine sanctity that derives from their supposed religious content. They are dogmas, norms of orthodoxy, to which one must conform on pain of some manner of excommunication. They are true articles of

440

American Catholic Religious Thought

faith. Hence it is necessary to believe them, to give them a religiously motivated assent. On the other hand, there are those who see in these articles only a law, not a dogma. These constitutional clauses have no religious content. They answer none of the eternal human questions with regard to the nature of truth and freedom or the manner in which the spiritual order of man’s life is to be organized or not organized. Therefore they are not invested with the sanctity that attaches to dogma, but only with the rationality that attaches to law. Rationality is the highest value of law. In further consequence, it is not necessary to give them a religious assent but only a rational civil obedience. In a word, they are not articles of faith but articles of peace, that is to say, you may not act against them, because they are law and good law. Those who dogmatize about these articles do not usually do so with all the clarity that dogmas require. Nor are they in agreement with one another. The main difference is between those who see in these articles certain Protestant religious tenets and those who see in them certain ultimate suppositions of secular liberalism. The differences between those two groups tend to disappear in a third group, the secularizing Protestants, so called, who effect an identification of their Protestantism with American secular culture, consider the church to be true in proportion as its organization is commanded by the norms of secular democratic society, and bring about a coincidence of religious and secular liberal concepts of freedom. . . . This is not the place to argue the question, whether and how far any of these views can be sustained as an historical thesis. What matters here is a different question, whether any of them can serve as a rule of interpretation of the First Amendment. What is in question is the meaning and the content of the first of our American prejudices, not its genesis. Do these clauses assert or imply that the nature of the church is such that it inherently demands the most absolute separation from the state? Do they assert or imply that the institutional church is simply a voluntary association of like-minded men; that its origins are only in the will of men to associate freely for purposes of religion and worship; that all churches, since their several origins are in equally valid religious inspirations, stand on a footing of equality in the face of the divine and evangelical law; that all ought by the same token

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

441

to stand on an equal footing in the face of civil law? In a word, does separation of church and state in the American sense assert or imply a particular sectarian concept of the church? Further, does the free-exercise clause assert or imply that the individual conscience is the ultimate norm of religious belief in such wise that an external religious authority is inimical to Christian freedom? Does it hold that religion is a purely private matter in such wise that an ecclesiastical religion is inherently a corruption of the Christian Gospel? Does it maintain that true religion is religion-in-general, and that the various sects in their dividedness are as repugnant religiously as they are politically dangerous? Does it pronounce religious truth to be simply a matter of personal experience, and religious faith to be simply a matter of subjective impulse, not related to any objective order of truth or to any structured economy of, salvation whose consistence is not dependent on the human will? The questions could be multiplied, but they all reduce themselves to two. Is the no-establishment clause a piece of ecclesiology, and is the free-exercise clause a piece of religious philosophy? The general Protestant tendency, visible at its extreme in the free-church tradition, especially among the Baptists, is to answer affirmatively to these questions. Freedom of religion and separation of church and state are to be, in the customary phrase, “rooted in religion itself.” Their substance is to be conceived in terms of sectarian Protestant doctrine. They are therefore articles of faith; not to give them a religious assent is to fall into heterodoxy. The secularist dissents from the Protestant theological and philosophical exegesis of the first of our prejudices. But it is to him likewise an article of faith (he might prefer to discard the word, “faith,” and speak rather of ultimate presuppositions). Within this group also there are differences of opinion. Perhaps the most sharpened view is taken by those who in their pursuit of truth reject not only the traditional methods of Christian illumination, both Protestant and Catholic, but also the reflective methods of metaphysical inquiry. These men commit themselves singly to the method of scientific empiricism. There is therefore no eternal order of truth and justice; there are no universal verities that require man’s assent, no universal moral law that commands his obedience. Such an order of universals is not empirically demonstrable. Truth therefore is to be understood

442

American Catholic Religious Thought

in a positivistic sense; its criteria are either those of science or those of practical life, i.e., the success of an opinion in getting itself accepted in the market place. With this view of truth there goes a corresponding view of freedom. The essence of freedom is “non-committalism.” I take the word from Gordon Keith Chalmers. He calls it a “sin,” but in the school of thought in question it is the highest virtue. To be uncommitted is to be in the state of grace; for a prohibition of commitment is inherent in the very notion of freedom. The mind or will that is committed, absolutely and finally, is by definition not free. It has fallen from grace by violating its own free nature. In the intellectual enterprise the search for truth, not truth itself or its possession, is the highest value. In the order of morals the norm for man is never reached by knowledge. It is only approximated by inspired guesses or by tentative practical rules that are the precipitate of experience, substantiated only by their utility. This school of thought, which is of relatively recent growth in America, thrusts into the First Amendment its own ultimate views of truth, freedom, and religion. Religion itself is not a value, except insofar as its ambiguous reassurances may have the emotional effect of conveying reassurance. Roman Catholicism is a disvalue. Nevertheless, religious freedom, as a form of freedom, is a value, It has at least the negative value of an added emancipation, another sheer release. It may also have the positive value of another blow struck at the principle of authority in any of its forms; for in this school authority is regarded as absolutely antinomous to freedom. Furthermore, this school usually reads into the First Amendment a more or less articulated political theory. Civil society is the highest societal form of human life; even the values that are called spiritual and moral are values by reason of their reference to society. Civil law is the highest form of law and it is not subject to judgment by prior ethical canons. Civil rights are the highest form of rights; for the dignity of the person, which grounds these rights, is only his civil dignity. The state is purely the instrument of the popular will, than which there is no higher sovereignty. Government is to the citizen what the cab-driver is to the passenger (to use Yves Simon’s descriptive metaphor). And since the rule of the majority is the method whereby the popular will expresses itself, it is the highest governing principle of statecraft, from

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

443

which there is no appeal. Finally, the ultimate value within society and state does not consist in any substantive ends that these societal forms may pursue; rather it consists in the process of their pursuit. That is to say, the ultimate value resides in the forms of the democratic process itself, because these forms embody the most ultimate of all values, freedom. There are those who pursue this theory to paradoxical lengths—perhaps more exactly, to the lengths of logical absurdity—by maintaining that if the forms of democracy perish through the use of them by men intent on their destruction, well then, so be it. Given this political theory, the churches are inevitably englobed within the state, as private associations organized for particular purposes. They possess their title to existence from positive law. Their right to freedom is a civil right, and it is respected as long as it is not understood to include any claim to independently sovereign authority. Such a claim must be disallowed on grounds of the final and indivisible sovereignty of the democratic process over all the associational aspects of human life. The notion that any church should acquire status in public life as a society in its own right is per se absurd; for there is only one society, civil society, which may so exist. In this view, separation of church and state, as ultimately implying a subordination of church to state, follows from the very nature of the state and its law; just as religious freedom follows from the very nature of freedom and of truth. The foregoing is a sort of anatomical description of two interpretations of the religion clauses of the First Amendment. The description is made anatomical in order to point the issue. If these clauses are made articles of faith in either of the described senses, there are immediately in this country some 35,000,000 dissenters, the Catholic community. Not being either a Protestant or a secularist, the Catholic rejects the religious position of Protestants with regard to the ‘nature of the church, the meaning of faith, the absolute primacy of conscience, etc.; just as he rejects secularist views with regard to the nature of truth, freedom, and civil society as man’s last end. He rejects these positions as demonstrably erroneous in themselves. What is more to the point here, he rejects, the notion that any of these sectarian theses enter into the content or implications of the First Amendment in such wise as to demand the assent of all American citizens. If this were the case the very article that bars any establishment of religion would somehow

444

American Catholic Religious Thought

establish one. (Given the controversy between Protestant and secularist, there would be the added difficulty that one could not know just what religion had been established.) If it be true that the First Amendment is to be given a theological interpretation and that therefore it must be “believed,” made an object of religious faith, it would follow that a religious test has been thrust into the Constitution. The Federal Republic has suddenly become a voluntary fellowship of believers either in some sort of free-church Protestantism or in the tenets of a naturalistic humanism. The notion is preposterous. The United States is a good place to live in; many have found it even a sort of secular sanctuary. But it is not a church, whether high, low, or broad. It is simply a civil community, whose unity is purely political, consisting in “agreement on the good of man at the level of performance without the necessity of agreement on ultimates” (to adopt a phrase from the 1945 Harvard Report on General Education in a Free Society). As regards important points of ultimate religious belief, the United States is pluralist. Any attempt at reducing this pluralism by law, through a process of reading certain sectarian tenets into the fundamental law of the land, is prima facie illegitimate and absurd. . . . ARTICLES OF PEACE

From the standpoint both of history and of contemporary social reality the only tenable position is that the first two articles of the First Amendment are not articles of faith but articles of peace. Like the rest of the Constitution these provisions are the work of lawyers, not of theologians or even of political theorists. They are not true dogma but only good law. That is praise enough. This, I take it, is the Catholic view. But in thus qualifying it I am not marking it out as just another “sectarian” view. It is in fact the only view that a citizen with both historical sense and common sense can take. That curiously clairvoyant statesman, John C. Calhoun, once observed that “this admirable federal constitution of ours is superior to the wisdom of any or all the men by whose agency it was made. The force of circumstances and not foresight or wisdom induced them to adopt many of its wisest provisions.” The observation is particularly pertinent to the religion clauses of the First Amendment. If history

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

445

makes one thing clear it is that these clauses were the twin children of social necessity, the necessity of creating a social environment, protected by law, in which men of differing religious faiths might live together in peace. In his stimulating book, The Genius of American Politics,2 Prof. Daniel Boorstin says: “The impression which the American has as he looks about him is one of the inevitability of the particular institutions under which he lives.” This mark of inevitability is an index of goodness. And it is perhaps nowhere more strikingly manifest than in the institutions which govern the relation of government to religion. These institutions seem to have been performed in the peculiar conditions of American society. It did indeed take some little time before the special American solution to the problem of religious pluralism worked itself out; but it is almost inconceivable that it should not have worked itself out as it did. One suspects that this would have been true even if there had been no Williamses and Penns, no Calverts and Madisons and Jeffersons. The theories of these men, whatever their merits, would probably have made only literature not history, had it not been for the special social context into which they were projected. Similarly, the theories of these men, whatever their defects, actually made history because they exerted their pressure, such as it was, in the direction in which historical factors were already moving the new American society. To say this is not of course to embrace a theory of historical or social determinism. It is only to say that the artisans of the American Republic and its Constitution were not radical theorists intent on constructing a society in accord with the a priori demands of a doctrinaire blueprint, under disregard for what was actually “given” in history. Fortunately they were, as I said, for the most part lawyers. And they have a strong sense of that primary criterion of good law which is its necessity or utility for the preservation of the public peace, under a given set of conditions. All law looks to the common good, which is normative for all law. And social peace, assured by equal justice in dealing with possibly conflicting groups, is the highest integrating element of the common good. This legal criterion is the first and most solid ground on which the validity of the First Amendment rests. . . . 2

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953.

446

American Catholic Religious Thought

On these grounds it is easy to see why the Catholic conscience has always consented to the religion clauses of the Constitution. They conform to the highest criterion for all legal rulings in this delicate matter. The criterion is moral; therefore the law that meets it is good, because it is for the common good. Therefore the consent given to the law is given on grounds of moral principle. To speak of expediency here is altogether to misunderstand the moral nature of the community and its collective moral obligation toward its own common good. The origins of our fundamental law are in moral principle; the obligations it imposes are moral obligations, binding in conscience. One may not, without moral fault, act against these articles of peace. THE DISTINCTION OF CHURCH AND STATE

If the demands of social necessity account for the emergence in America of religious freedom as a fact, they hardly account for certain peculiarities of the first of our prejudices and for the depth of feeling that it evokes. Another powerful historical force must be considered, namely, the dominant impulse toward self-government, government by the people in the most earnest sense of the word. Above all else the early Americans wanted political freedom. And the force of this impulse necessarily acted as a corrosive upon the illegitimate “unions” of church and state which the post-Reformation era had brought forth. The establishments of the time were, by and large, either theocratic, wherein the state was absorbed in the church, or Erastian, wherein the church was absorbed in the state. In both cases the result was some limitation upon freedom, either in the form of civil disabilities imposed in the name of the established religion, or in the form of religious disabilities imposed in the name of the civil law of the covenanted community. The drive toward popular freedom would with a certain inevitability sweep away such establishments. Men might share the fear of Roger Williams, that the state would corrupt the church, or the fear of Thomas Jefferson, that the church would corrupt the state. In either case their thought converged to the one important conclusion, that an end had to be put to the current confusions of the religious and political orders. The ancient distinction between church and state had to be newly reaffirmed in a manner adapted to the American scene. Calvinist theocracy, Anglican Erastianism, Gallican absolutism—all

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

447

were vitiated by the same taint: they violated in one way or another this traditional distinction. The dualism of mankind’s two hierarchically ordered forms of social life had been Christianity’s cardinal contribution to the Western political tradition, as everyone knows who has looked into the monumental work of the two Carlyles, Medieval Political Thought in the West. Perhaps equally with the very idea of law itself it had been the most fecund force for freedom in society. The distinction had always been difficult to maintain in practice, even when it was affirmed in theory. But when it was formally denied the result was an infringement of man’s freedom of religious faith or of his freedom as a citizen—an infringement of either or both. Hence the generalized American impulse toward freedom inevitably led to a new and specially emphatic affirmation of the traditional distinction. . . . The point is that the distinction of church and state, one of the central assertions of this Western tradition [of politics] found its way into the Constitution. There it received a special embodiment, adapted to the peculiar genius of American government and to the concrete conditions of American society. How this happened need not concern us here. Certainly it was in part because the artisans of the Constitution had a clear grasp of the distinction between state and society, which had been the historical product of the distinction between church and state, inasmuch as the latter distinction asserted the existence of a whole wide area of human concerns which were remote from the competence of government. Calhoun’s “force of circumstances” also had a great deal of influence; here again it was a matter of the Fathers building better than they knew. Their major concern was sharply to circumscribe the powers of government. The area of state—that is, legal—concern was limited to the pursuit of certain enumerated secular purposes (to say that the purposes are secular is not to deny that many of them are also moral; so for instance the establishment of justice and peace, the promotion of the general welfare, etc.). Thus made autonomous in its own sphere, government was denied all competence in the field of religion. In this field freedom was to be the rule and method; government was powerless to legislate respecting an establishment of religion and likewise powerless to prohibit the free exercise of religion. Its single office was to take legal or judicial steps

448

American Catholic Religious Thought

necessary on given occasions to make effective the general guarantee of freedom. The concrete applications of this, in itself quite simple, solution have presented great historical and legal difficulties. This has been inevitable, given the intimacy with which religion is woven into the whole social fabric, and given, too, the evolution of government from John Adams’ “plain, simple, intelligible thing, quite comprehensible by common sense,” to the enormously complicated and sprawling thing which now organizes a great part of our lives, handles almost all education, and much social welfare. In particular, we have not yet found an answer to the question whether government can make effective the primary intention of the First Amendment, the guarantee of freedom of religion, simply by attempting to make more and more “impregnable” what is called, in Rogers Williams’ fateful metaphor, the “wall of separation” between church and state. However, what concerns us here is the root of the matter, the fact that the American Constitution embodies in a special way the traditional principle of the distinction between church and state. For Catholics this fact is of great and providential importance for one major reason. It serves sharply to set off our constitutional system from the system against which the Church waged its long-drawn-out fight in the nineteenth century, namely, Jacobinism, or (in Carlton Hayes’s term) sectarian Liberalism, or (in the more definitive term used today) totalitarian democracy. It is now coming to be recognized that the Church opposed the “separation of church and state” of the sectarian Liberals because in theory and in fact it did not mean separation at all but perhaps the most drastic unification of church and state which history had known. The Jacobin “free state” was as regalist as the ancien regime, and even more so. Writing as a historian, de Tocqueville long ago made this plain. And the detailed descriptions which Leo XIII, writing as a theologian and political moralist, gave of the Church’s “enemy” make the fact even more plain. Within this “free state” the so-called “free church” was subject to a political control more complete than the Tudor or Stuart or Bourbon monarchies dreamed of. The evidence stretches all the way from the Civil Constitution of the Clergy in 1790 to the Law of Separation in 1905. . . . The American thesis is that government

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

449

is not juridically omnipotent. Its powers are limited, and one of the principles of limitation is the distinction between state and church, in their purposes, methods, and manner of organization. The Jacobin thesis was basically philosophical; it derived from a sectarian concept of the autonomy of reason. It was also theological, as implying a sectarian concept of religion and of the church. In contrast, the American thesis is simply political. It asserts the theory of a free people under a limited government, a theory that is recognizably part of the Christian political tradition, and altogether defensible in the manner of its realization under American circumstances. It may indeed be said that the American constitutional system exaggerates the distinction between church and state by its self-denying ordinances. However, it must also be said that government rarely appears to better advantage than when passing self-denying ordinances. In any event, it is one thing to exaggerate a traditional distinction along the lines of its inherent tendency; it is quite another thing to abolish the distinction. In the latter case the result is a vicious monistic society; in the former, a faultily dualistic one. The vice in the Jacobin system could only be condemned by the Church, not in any way condoned. The fault in the American system can be recognized as such, without condemnation. There are times and circumstances, Chesterton jocosely said, when it is necessary to exaggerate in order to tell the truth. There are also times and circumstances, one may more seriously say, when some exaggeration of the restrictions placed on government is necessary in order to insure freedom. These circumstances of social necessity were and are present in America. THE FREEDOM OF THE CHURCH

Here then is the second leading reason why the American solution to the problem of religious pluralism commends itself to the Catholic conscience. Pius XII states, as the two cardinal purposes of a Concordat, first, “to assure to the Church a stable condition of right and of fact within society,” and second, “to guarantee to her a full independence in the fulfillment of her divine mission.” It may be maintained that both of these objectives are sufficiently achieved by the religious provisions of the First Amendment. It is obvious that the Church in America enjoys a stable condition in fact. That her status at law is not

450

American Catholic Religious Thought

less stable ought to be hardly less obvious, if only one has clearly in mind the peculiarity of the American affirmation of the distinction between church and state. This affirmation is made through the imposition of limits on government, which is confined to its own proper ends, those of temporal society. In contrast to the Jacobin system in all its forms, the American Constitution does not presume to define the Church or in any way to supervise her exercise of authority in pursuit of her own distinct ends. The Church is entirely free to define herself and to exercise to the full her spiritual jurisdiction. It is legally recognized that there is an area which lies outside the competence of government. This area coincides with the area of the divine mission of the Church, and within this area the Church is fully independent, immune from interference by political authority. The juridical result of the American limitation of governmental powers is the guarantee of the Church of a stable condition of freedom as a matter of law and right. It should be added that this guarantee is made not only to the individual Catholic but to the Church as an organized society with its own law and jurisdiction. The reason is that the American state is not erected on the principle of the unity and indivisibility of sovereignty which was the post-Renaissance European development. Nowhere in the American structure is there accumulated the plenitude of legal sovereignty possessed in England by the Queen in Parliament. In fact, the term “legal sovereignty” makes no sense in America, where sovereignty (if the alien term must be used) is purely political. The United States has a government, or better, a structure of governments operating on different levels. The American state has no sovereignty in the classic Continental sense. Within society, as distinct from the state, there is room for the independent exercise of an authority which is not that of the state. This principle has more than once been affirmed by American courts, most recently by the Supreme Court in the Kedroff case.3 The validity of this principle strengthens the stability of the Church’s condition at law. . . . 3

[Kedroff v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral 344 U.S. 94 (1952). This case arose because the New York legislature passed a statute transferring control over the church from the Moscow Synod to the local American parish. Kerdroff represented a group of parishioners who want the Moscow Synod to retain control over the local church. The Supreme Court decided in

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

451

THE AMERICAN EXPERIENCE

One final ground for affirming the validity of the religion clauses of the First Amendment as good law must be briefly touched on. Holmes’s famous dictum, “The life of the law is not logic but experience,” has more truth in it than many other Holmesian dicta. When a law ceases to be supported by a continued experience of its goodness, it becomes a dead letter, an empty legal form. Although pure pragmatism cannot be made the philosophy of law, nonetheless the value of any given law is importantly pragmatic. The First Amendment surely passes this test of good law. In support of it one can adduce an American experience. One might well call it the American experience in the sense that it has been central in American history and also unique in the history of the world. This experience has three facets, all interrelated. First, America has proved by experience that political unity and stability are possible without uniformity of religious belief and practice, without the necessity of any governmental restrictions on any religion. Before the days of the Federal Republic some men had tried to believe that this could be so; thus for instance the politiques in France, in their attack upon the classic Gallican and absolutist thesis, “One law, one faith, one king.” But this thesis, and its equivalents, had not been disproved. This event was accomplished in the United States by an argument from experience. For a century and a half the United States has displayed to the world the fact that political unity and stability are not necessarily dependent on the common sharing of one religious faith. The reach of this demonstration is, of course, limited. Granted that the unity of the commonwealth can be achieved in the absence of a consensus with regard to the theological truths that govern the total life and destiny of man, it does not follow that this necessary civic unity can endure in the absence of a consensus more narrow in its scope, operative on the level of political life, with regard to the rational truths and moral precepts that govern the structure of the favor of Kedroff, ruling that the New York statute improperly involved the state with an internal church dispute. The decision was based on the free exercise clause of the First Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment’s extension of that right to the states.]

452

American Catholic Religious Thought

constitutional state, specify the substance of the common weal, and determine the ends of public policy. Nor has experience yet shown how, if at all, this moral consensus can survive amid all the ruptures of religious division, whose tendency is inherently disintegrative of all consensus and community. But this is a further question, for the future to answer. I shall have occasion in later chapters to discuss this whole question of the American consensus and its present condition among us. The second American experience was that stable political unity, which means perduring agreement on the common good of man at the level of performance, can be strengthened by the exclusion of religious differences from the area of concern allotted to government. In America we have been rescued from the disaster of ideological parties. They are a disaster because, where such parties exist, power becomes a special kind of prize. The struggle for power is a partisan struggle for the means whereby the opposing ideology may be destroyed. It has been remarked that only in a disintegrating society does politics become a controversy over ends; it should be simply a controversy over means to ends already agreed on with sufficient unanimity. The Latin countries of Europe have displayed this spectacle of ideological politics, a struggle between a host of “isms,” all of which pretend to a final view of man and society, with the twin results of governmental paralysis and seemingly irremediable social division. In contrast, the American experience of political unity has been striking. (Even the Civil War does not refute this view; it was not an ideological conflict but simply, in the more descriptive Southern phrase, a war between the states, a conflict of interests.) To this experience of political unity the First Amendment has made a unique contribution; and in doing so it has qualified as good law. The third and most striking aspect of the American experience consists in the fact that religion itself, and not least the Catholic Church, has benefitted by our free institutions, by the maintenance, even in exaggerated form, of the distinction between church and state. Within the same span of history the experience of the Church elsewhere, especially in the Latin lands, has been alternately an experience of privilege or persecution. The reason lay in a particular concept of government. It was alternatively the determination of government to

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

453

ally itself either with the purposes of the Church or with the purposes of some sect or other (sectarian Liberalism, for instance) which made a similar, however erroneous claim to possess the full and final truth. The dominant conviction, whose origins are really in pagan antiquity, was that government should represent transcendent truth and by its legal power make this truth prevail. However, in the absence of social agreement as to what the truth really was, the result was to involve the Catholic truth in the vicissitudes of power. It would be difficult to say which experience, privilege or persecution, proved in the end to be the more damaging or gainful to the Church. In contrast, American government has not undertaken to represent transcendental truth in any of the versions of it current in American society. It does indeed represent the commonly shared moral values of the community. It also represents the supreme religious truth expressed in the motto on American coins: “In God we trust.” The motto expresses the two truths without which, as the Letter to the Hebrews says, “nobody reaches God’s presence,” namely, “to believe that God exists and that he rewards those who try to find him” (Hebrews 11:6). For the rest, government represents the truth of society as it actually is; and the truth is that American society is religiously pluralist. The truth is lamentable; it is nonetheless true. Many of the beliefs entertained within society ought not to be believed, because they are false; nonetheless men believe them. It is not the function of government to resolve the dispute between conflicting truths, all of which claim the final validity of transcendence: As representative of a pluralist society, wherein religious faith is—as it must be—free, government undertakes to represent the principle of freedom. In taking this course American government would seem to be on the course set by Pius XII for the religiously pluralist international community, of which America offers, as it were, a pattern in miniature. In the discourse already cited he distinguishes two questions: “The first concerns the objective truth and the obligation of conscience toward that which is objectively true and good.” This question, he goes on, “can hardly be made the object of discussion and ruling among the individual states and their communities, especially in the case of a plurality of religious confessions within the same community.” In other words, government is not a judge of religious truth; parliaments are not

454

American Catholic Religious Thought

to play the theologian. In accord with this principle American government does not presume to discuss, much less rule upon the objective truth or falsity of the various religious confessions within society. It puts to itself only Pius XII’s second question, which concerns “the practical attitude” of government in the face of religious pluralism. It answers this question by asserting that in the given circumstances it has neither the mandate nor the duty nor the right to legislate either in favor of or against any of the religious confessions existent in American society, which in its totality government must represent. It will therefore only represent their freedom, in the face of civil law, to exist, since they do in fact exist. This is precisely the practical attitude which Pius XII recognizes as right, as the proper moral and political course. In consequence of this American concept of the representative function of government the experience of the Church in America, like the general American experience itself, has proved to be satisfactory when one scans it from the viewpoint of the value upon which the Church sets primary importance, namely, her freedom in the fulfillment of her spiritual mission to communicate divine truth and grace to the souls of men, and her equally spiritual mission of social justice and peace. The Church has not enjoyed a privileged status in public life; at the same time she has not had to pay the price of this privilege. A whole book could be written on the price of such legal privilege. Another book could be written on the value of freedom without privilege. In fact, both books have been written, on the metaphorical pages of history. And looking over his own continually unrolling historical manuscript the American Catholic is inclined to conclude that his is a valid book. It does not develop a doctrinal thesis, but it does prove a practical point. The point is that the goodness of the First Amendment as constitutional law is manifested not only by political but also by religious experience. By and large (for no historical record is without blots) it has been good for religion, for Catholicism, to have had simply the right of freedom. This right is at the same time the highest of privileges, and it too has its price. But the price has not been envy and enmity, the coinage in which the Church paid for privilege. It has only been

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

455

the price of sacrifice, labor, added responsibilities; and these things are redemptive. CONCLUSION

In the final analysis any validation of the First Amendment as good law—no matter by whom undertaken, be he Protestant, Catholic, Jew, or secularist—must make appeal to the three arguments developed above—the demands of social necessity, the rightfulness within our own circumstances of the American manner of asserting the distinction between church and state, and the lessons of experience. Perhaps the last argument is the most powerful. It is also, I may add, the argument which best harmonizes with the general tone which arguments for our institutions are accustomed to adopt. . . . The Catholic Church in America is committed to this prejudice of religious liberty by the totality of her experience in American history. As far as I know, the only ones who doubt the firmness, the depth, the principled nature of this commitment are not Catholics. They speak without knowledge and without authority; and the credence they command has its origins in emotion. If perhaps what troubles them is the fact that the commitment is limited, in the sense that it is not to the truth and sanctity of a dogma but only to the rationality and goodness of a law, they might recall the story of Pompey. After the capture of Jerusalem in 63 B.C. he went to the Temple and forced his way into the Holy of Holies. To his intense astonishment he found it empty. He should not have been astonished; for the emptiness was the symbol of the absence of idolatry. It symbolized the essential truth of Judaism, that One is the Lord. Professor Boorstin, who recounts the tale, adds: “Perhaps the same surprise awaits the student of American culture [or, I add, the American Constitution] if he finally manages to penetrate the arcanum of our belief. And for a similar reason. Far from being disappointed, we should be inspired that in an era of idolatry, when so many nations have filled their sanctuaries with ideological idols, we have had the courage to refuse to do so.” The American Catholic is on good ground when he refuses to make an ideological idol out of religious freedom and separation of church and state, when he refuses to “believe” in them as articles of faith. He takes the highest ground available in this matter of the relations be-

456

American Catholic Religious Thought

tween religion and government when he asserts that his commitment to the religion clauses of the Constitution is a moral commitment to them as articles of peace in a pluralist society.

A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY PRIMARY SOURCES [with Edward S. Corwin], Religion and the State; the Supreme Court as National School Board (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1949). [with Walter Millis], Foreign Policy and the Free Society (New York: Oceana Publications, 1958). We Hold These Truths (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1960). The Problem of God. Yesterday and Today (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964). The Problem of Religious Freedom (Westminster, Md.: Newman Press, 1965). ed., Freedom and Man (New York: P. J. Kennedy, 1965). ed., Religious Liberty: An End and a Beginning (New York: Macmillan, 1966). Articles in Theological Studies and America, 1942-67. Thomas Hughson, ed., Matthias Scheeben on Faith: The Doctoral Dissertation of John Courtney Murray (Lewiston, New York: E. Mellen Press, 1987). J. Leon Hooper, ed., Bridging the Sacred and the Secular: Selected Writings of John Courtney Murray (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1994). SECONDARY SOURCES Faith E. Burgess, The Relationship between Church and State According to John Courtney Murray, S.J. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Basle, 1971; Dusseldorf: Rudolf Stehle, 1971. Walter J. Burghart, ed., Religious Freedom 1965-1975: A Symposium on an Historic Document (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1977). John Coleman, “Vision and Praxis in American Theology: Orestes Brownson, John A. Ryan, and John Courtney Murray,” Theological Studies 37 (March, 1976): 3-40. John M. Cuddihy, No Offense: Civil Religion and Protestant Taste (New York: Seabury Press, 1978).

14 ~ John Courtney Murray

457

Thomas P. Ferguson, Catholic and American: The Political Theology of John Courtney Murray (Kansas City, Mo.: Sheed and Ward, 1993). David Hollenbach, et alii, “J. C. Murray’s Unfinished Agenda,” Theological Studies 40 (Dec., 1979): 700-16. David Hollenbach, “ Public Theology in America: Some Questions for Catholicism after John Courtney Murray,” Theological Studies 37 (June, 1976): 290-303. J. Leon Hooper, The Ethics of Discourse: The Social Philosophy of John Courtney Murray (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1986). Thomas Hughson, The Believer as Citizen: John Courtney Murray in a New Context (New York: Paulist Press, 1993). Thomas L. Love, John Courtney Murray’s Contemporary Church-State Theory (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1965). Donald E. Pelotte, John Courtney Murray: Theologian in Conflict (New York: Paulist Press, 1975).

INDEX OF BIBLICAL REFERENCES Gen. 17:11, 189 Exod. 20, 308 Lev. 25, 308 1 Macc. 5:62, 251 Ps. 33:9, 189 45:2, 189 49:21, 419 66:5, 198 103:30, 190 Wisdom 1:14, 251n Isa. 50:6, 416 Mic. 7:6 Matt. 4:3, 420 6:33, 249 7:3, 416 8:20, 401 16:1-4, 199 16:18, 195, 218, 229 18:8, 185 24:35, 218 25:40, 411 26:11, 287 28:20, 157, 174, 218

8:36, 232 10:16, 227 12:24, 406 13:34, 416 14:6, 160 14:9, 155 21:15-17, 218 Acts 7:59, 154 7:60, 403 8:23, 167 15:12, 211 Rom. 8:21, 232 8:22, 404 10:13-15, 165 12:4-5, 151 14:16, 150 1 Cor. 2:14, 170 3:16, 189 12: 12-27, 152 12:28, 157 2 Cor. 3:17, 233 7:3, 210 8:14, 408 Eph. 1:22-23, 152 5:30, 152 6:5, 308

Luke 22:32, 214, 218

Phil. 2:13, 189

John 6:53, 164 8:32, 232 8:34, 233

Col. 1:24, 152 3:1, 406

460 1 Thess. 5:21, 390n. 37 1 Tim. 2:4, 170 2 Tim. 3:15, 195 Phm. 8-17, 322 Heb. 11:6, 165, 453 James 1:27, 338 1 Pet. 3:15, 410 1 John 2:22, 155

American Catholic Religious Thought

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS A Abell, Aaron, 74 abolitionism, 73, 305, 319 absolute, the, 394, 406 absolutism, state, 427, 446 accidentals, of the church, 245 Adam, 37-38 Adams, John, 448 Adams, John Quincy, 104 adaptation, 245, 391 advice, as means of emancipation, 307 Aeterni patris (Leo XIII), 71, 75, 78, 82, 83 and Thomas Bouquillon, 62 and Edward Pace, 66, 87 and Zybura, John Stanislaus, 375, 380 affections, and reason, 106-7 age, the, 190, 241-42, 245, 247-50 agnosticism, failure of, 332 Albert the Great, 382, 389 Alexander III, and slavery, 308 America, and Gibbons, 256 America, 70 American Catholic Dilemma (O’Dea), 98 American Catholic Historical Association, 69 American Catholic Philosophical Association, 87 “American Catholics and the Intellectual Life” (Ellis), 98 American Constitution, 19, 445 American Ecclesiastical Review, 64, 89 American Federation of Catholic Charities, 76

Americanism, 48-55, 239, 375 Ammianus Marcellinus, 119 anarchy, 202, 230 Anglicanism, converts from, 200 Anglo-Saxons, and Protestant Reformation, 199-200 anthropology, 67, 73, 261, 262 anti-Americanists, 49 Anti-Christ, reign of, 187 anti-Communism, 81 anti-Intellectualism, 98-99, 394 Anti-Monopoly Party, 354 Anti-Poverty Society, 328 anti-Scholasticism, 83 anti-vetoism, 103-4 Apocalypse of St. John, 35, 123, 189 apologetics, 32-35, 38-40, 69, 148 and papal infallibility, 227-28 and Romanticism, 31-40 Aquinas, St. Thomas, 84, 85, 377, 383, 393 and Albert the Great, 389 and Aristotle, 382, 389 and the Eucharist, 430 and unity of faith, 217 and modernity, 379 and the state, 17 and wisdom of the past, 390 archives, Vatican, 253 Arius, 183 Aristotle, 377, 390, 391, 393 and Aquinas, 382, 389 and sciences, 386 Arminianism, 147 art, and metaphysics, 394 articles, of peace, 436-56 asceticism, and Peter Maurin, 417

462

American Catholic Religious Thought

Bellarmine, Robert, and the state, 17 Belloc, Hilaire, 406 Belsham, Thomas, 170n Benedict of St. Philadelphia, 318 Bernanos, Georges, 415 Bernard, St., 214 Bible, 174, 176, 189, 268, 333-34 authority of, 157, 158 canon of, 125-27 and Christ, 167 and doctrine, 214, 216, 223 insufficiency of, 166-76 private interpretation of, 127, 17374, 425 as medium of communion with Jesus, 166 and modernism, 55, 57-58 as rule in faith and practice, 169 not salvific, 167 and slavery, 309 and sociology, 63 B sufficiency of, 157, 158, 166-76 Bacon, Francis, 15 See also Catholicism; church; ProtBaeumker, Clemens, 383, 384 estantism; Tradition Balmes, Jaime Luciano, 321, 312n biblical research, 94 Baptism, 189, 269, 430 biblical studies, 71 and sufficiency of Bible, 172 biology, and Cooper, 261 and mystical body, 429 bishops, 47, 230 and slavery, 311 and doctrine, 121-22, 124-27 Baptists, and First Amendment, as witnesses, 121-22 127-29 441 See also episcopacy “Basis and Justification of Rights, “Bishops’ Program of Social ReconThe” (Ryan), 355-70 struction” (Ryan), 78 Bates, E. S., 387 Bloy, Leon, 406, 419 Battingham, Forster, 399 body, the, 107, 337 beatitudes, 407, 417 Body of Christ, 151-54 Beecher, Henry Ward, 305n. 1 See also Mystical Body of Christ belief, 108, 111, 266 Bolivar, Simon, 131 Boorstin, Daniel, 455 “Aspirations of Nature” (Hecker), 179 assembly line, and Catholic Worker, 408 assimilation, 153n, 378, 391-92 atheism, 185, 427 atomic bomb, outlawing of, 416 atonement, personal application of, 164 Atterbury, Francis, 313, 314n. 21 Augustinianism, and Scholasticism, 382 Augustine, St., 194, 198 Au milieu des solicitudes (Leo XIII), 249n. 4, 253n. 10 authority, 25, 168, 194, 390 as antinomous to freedom, 442 of the pope, 40-48, 184, 209-38 autonomy, of philosophy, 379 Averroës, 389, 391 Avicenna, and Aquinas, 389

Index of Names & Subjects Bossuet, Jacques, 221n. 6 Boston Pilot, 303 Boston Quarterly Review, 147, 148 Boswell, James, 439 Bouquillon, Thomas Joseph, 62-63 Bourke, Myles, 59n. 93 Boyer, Louis, 306 bread, price of, and church, 296 Briggs, Charles A., 58 Brogan, Denis W., 98 Brook Farm, 39 brotherhood, of man, 328, 330, 332 Brothers Karamazov, The (Dostoevsky), 96 Brown, Raymond, 59n. 93 Brownson, Orestes, 14, 31, 35, 14778, 423 doctrine, of life by communion, 36-38, 154-55 and Isaac Hecker, 179 and John Hughes, 276 and papal infallibility, 44-45, 4748 and method of authority, 26 and slavery, 73 and Thomistic philosophy, 8687 Bruni, Gerardo, 381, 381n. 14, 385 Bruno, Giordano, 380 Burke, Edmund, 362-63n. 5, 437 Busch, William, 93 C Cajetan, Thomas de Vio, 84 Calhoun, John C., 444, 447 Call, The, 399 Calvert Institute, 275 Calverts, 445 Calvin, John, 169

463 Canada, and slavery, 311 canon, of Bible, 125-27 canon law, 246 capital, and labor, 187, 343 capital punishment, 356 capitalism, 13, 34, 75, 284, 408 Cardijn, Joseph, 407n Carlos, Maria Isidro de Borbón, 187 Carlyle, Thomas, 447 Carroll, Charles, 131 Carroll Institute, 275 Carroll, John, 11, 14n. 3, 15-19, 17n. 6, 22 and papal authority, 41 and Peter Guilday, 69 and religious liberty, 88, 103 and republicanism, 131 Cathedral chapter, 22 Catherine, of Siena, 413 Catholic Action, 404, 433 Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 94 Catholic Church. See Catholicism “Catholic Church and the Question of Slavery,” 303-19 Catholic Educational Press, 67 Catholic Educational Review, 66-67 Catholic Encyclopedia, 62, 66, 69-70 Catholic Historical Review, 69 Catholic Telegraph, 73-74, 303 Catholic University of America, 59-70 Catholic University Bulletin, 57, 62, 64 Catholic University of Louvain, 61, 68 Catholic Worker, The, 400-02, 407, 409 Catholic Worker Movement, 79, 81, 93-97, 400, 406

464

American Catholic Religious Thought

Catholic World, 180 Catholicism, 13, 19, 37, 97 and abolitionism, 305, 306n. 5 and Allegiance, double, 40 American, initial formation of, 14-15 and teaching authority in, 15 as barrier, against tyranny, 34 and Catholic countries, 181-82, 185 and bureaucratic centralization, 80-81 charges against, 15 and citizenship, 201 and civilization, Western, 32 and democracy, 69, 248 distinctiveness of, 119-29 effects of, 32-35, 248 and Enlightenment, 14-27 and freedom, American, 34, 12942, 452-53 and First Amendment, 438 and equality, 318 and government, theory of, 1617 growth of, in United States, 20001 identity of, 25, 81 and Incarnation, 38 and the individual, 15, 359, 360 and infallibility, 26 and knowledge, 250 liberal, 148 and patriotism, 140 and persecution, 132-38, 181-82 and politics, 16-17, 129 and the poor, 34, 335 post-Tridentine, 12, 99 prejudice against, 103 and progressivism, 186, 261-71

as reasonable, 25-26 and republicanism, 12, 15, 24 and revolution, 320 and Romanticism, 13, 27-40 and slavery, 303-24 and social differentiation, 80 and theology, 11 and values, American, 239 See also apologetics; church; Judaism; Nativism; Protestantism celibacy, voluntary, and the economy, 298 Celtic races, mission of, 198-99 Cervantes, Saevedra Miguel de, 405 Chabot, J. B., 61 Chalmers, Gordon Keith, 442 Channing, William Ellery, 147 charity, 72, 319, 359 Charlemagne, 246 Charles V, 246 Chateaubriand, Vicomte Francois René, 31 chauvinism, and Americanists, 50 Chesterton, G. K., 406, 449 Chinese, 416 Christ. See Jesus Christ “Christian Basis for the Science of Political Economy” (Hughes), 277-300 Christian perfection, science of, 189-90 Christian World, 176 Christianity, 12, 95, 188, 412 distinguished from Christ, 166 without Christ, 161 demonstration of, 197 and political economy, 279 and individual, 425 liberal, 147 mission of, 182

Index of Names & Subjects and human personality, 425 renewal of, 193 and slavery, 309 spirit of, 428-33 teaching of, and natural rights, 370 unity of, 18-19, 92-93 See also Bible; Catholicism; Church; Jesus Christ; Judaism; Protestantism; tradition Chrysostom, St. John, 403 church, 20-23, 130, 187, 217, 250 and adaptation, 245 and the age, 241, 245 apostolic, 158 as voluntary association, 152-53, 443 as authoritative, 94, 156, 169, 183 as the body of Christ, 225 of the captivity, 158 cessation of original, 157-58 and change, 195-97, 242 and consent, 222-23 establishment of, 19, 437 and faith, 165 faults of, 242 humanness of, 246 independence of, 46 as divine institution, 229 as infallible interpreter, 194 as leaven, 158 and liturgy, 94 mission of, 95, 244-47 national, 40, 187, 222 nature of, 149-76 notes of, 195 organic view of, 28, 152-53 outside usual orbit, 191 primitive, study of, 94

465 and republicanism, 248n reductions of, 187 rights of, 231 and salvation, 149, 159 and sinner, 149 as sum of all problems, 188 and truth, 183, 195 universality of, 246 in the wilderness, 158 See also Bible; Catholicism; Christianity; papacy; papal infallibility; Protestantism; state “Church and the Age” (Ireland), 240-57 “Church and Its Mission, The” (Brownson), 148-78 “Church and Slavery, The” (Purcell), 319-24 church men, 242-43, 245 church history, 61 Cicero, 211 CIO, 409 Civil Constitution of the Clergy, 448 “Civil Unity and Religious Integrity” (Murray), 436-57 Civil War, 72 civilization, 32, 346, 348 classes, in England, 278 Claver, Peter, 311-13, 312n. 17 clergy, 21, 22, 49, 286 Clermont, Council of. See councils Cobbett, William, 276, 406 Coke, Edward, 310, 310n. 15 collectivism, 425, 427 Collins, T. Wharton, 74 commandment, new, 304 commentary, method of, 391 common, the, as exhausted senility, 241

466

American Catholic Religious Thought

common good, 18 Common School Society of New York, 275 common sense, 84, 175-76, 396 Commonweal, 96 communion, doctrine of, 36-38, 94, 154-55, 161, 164 of the saints, 430 See also Eucharist competition, for labor, 344 concentration camps, 416 conciliarism, 23-24, 29, 40 “Condition of Labor, The” (Leo XIII). See Rerum novarum conduct, Hecker’s practical rule of, 195 Confession, sacrament of, 432 confirmation, in theological education, 269 Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, 180 Congregation of St. Paul, 179 Congregational Presbyterianism, 21 Congress, and Protestant clergymen, 305 conscience, 25, 441, 446 consciousness, 36-37, 190 conservation, of philosophy, 378 conservatism, and Catholicism, 318-19 Constance, Council of. See councils, ecumenical Constant, Benjamin, 36, 148 Constantine, and slavery, 310 “Constitution of the Clergy,” 22, 23 Constitution on the Liturgy, 93 constitutionalism, 24 consumption, defined, 277 conversion, 38, 180, 251

Cooper, John Montgomery, 67-68, 83, 261-71 cooperation, intercredal, 91-92, 254 Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (Chabot), 61 Cork Mercantile Chronicle, 104 Corrigan, Michael, 49 Coughlin, Charles, 79 councils, ecclesiastical, 23, 224 appeals to, 220 at Baltimore, 27, 29, 42, 224 Clermont, 329n ecumenical Constance, 221, 222 Constantinople III, 220n Constantinople IV, 213 Florence, 213 Lateran IV, 132-33, 135-38 Lyons II, 213 Nicea, 183, 224 Trent, 12, 183, 224, 225 Vatican I, 40-48, 50, 183, 195, 196, 209, 210-35 and Isaac Hecker, 192, 19596 as historical turning point, 48 and papal infallibility, 184, 212-13n. 2 procedures of, 211-12 Vatican II, 11-12, 23, 88, 93, 99, 423 of Elvira, 309 of Gangra, 308n. 7 at Jerusalem, 183 over the pope, 221 and temporal legislation, 157 as witnesses to doctrine, 127-28 Cousin, Victor, 36, 148 creation, doctrine of, 37, 266

Index of Names & Subjects credibility, internal and external notes of, 197 criticism, biblical and historical, 56 Cross, F. L., 55 “Cross of a New Crusade, The” (McGlynn), 328-50 Crossan, Dominic, 59n. 93 crusade, defined, 328-29 Cuba, and religion, and slavery, 321 cupidity, 279 Cuffee, 314 “CW Stand on the Use of Force” (Day), 402-5 Cyril of Jerusalem, 119 D Daily Worker, 409 Daniel-Rops, Henri, 420 David, King, 403 Dawson, Christopher, 433 Day, Dorothy, 14, 79, 95-97, 399421 De instuaranda aethiopum salute (Sandoval), 311-12n. 16 De Maistre, Joseph-Marie. See Maistre, Joseph-Marie Comte de De Mun, Albert. See Mun, Albert de De Porres, Martin. See Porres, Martin de De Sales, St. Francis, 406-07 death, of Christ, as salvific, 163 debate, and Catholic councils, 211 Decalogue, strict observance of, 187 decentralization, and Catholic Worker, 408 decisions, episcopal, limits of, 127 Declaration on Religious Liberty, 88, 436 Decurtins, Gaspar, 254, 254n

467 democracy, 54, 187, 248, 253 ecclesiastical, 21, 22 totalitarian, 448 Denifle, Heinrich, 383 denominationalism, 15 deposition, of princes, 136 Descartes, René, and New Scholasticism, 389 desires, and reason, 106-07 Desmond, Humphrey Joseph, 76 despotism, 202 destitution, and poverty, 420 determinism, historical or social, 445 development, 153n, 183 devotions, 187, 192 Dewey, John, on science, 387-88 Diary of a Country Priest (Bernanos), 419 “Dieu et Liberté,” 242n disability, of the sinner, 171-72 discernment, spiritual, 170 disciples, and communion, 154 discipline, and the church, 156 discouragement, as temptation of the devil, 412 A Discourse Before Congress (England), 104, 105-42 discussion, and Catholic councils, 211 disinterested love, 359 Distributive Justice (Ryan), 78 Divino afflante spiritu (Pius XII), 59n. 93 doctrine, 56, 92, 123-25, 134 of new crusade, 338 development of, 53-54 new, and papal infallibility, 216 functional value of, 68, 261-62, 263

468

American Catholic Religious Thought

of good works, 294 dogma, 183, 263, 266, 267 and First Amendment, 439 function of, 68, 263 as motives for loving God and neighbors, 269 and scholastic philosophy, 380 religious educational function of, 263 truth of, 263 “Dogmatic Content . . . of Religious Course” (Cooper), 262-71 dogmatism, naïve, 395 Dolan, Jay, 30 Döllinger, Ignatius von, 221n. 5 Dominicans, 379 Don Quixote (Cervantes), 406 Donnelly, Ignatius, 354 Dostoevsky, Fedor, 96 Douglas, Stephen, 305n. 1 dualism, 396, 447 Duchesne, Louis, 61 Duns Scotus, John. See Scotus, John Duns Dutch, the, and slave trade, 310

and social justice, 77 and survival of fittest, 426 faulty system of, 74 and theology, 64-65 theories of, 72-73 See also political economy; selfinterest ecumenism, 49, 92-93 education, 67, 262 Catholic, and empirical psychology, 65, 66 progressive, 66-68; 261 religious, 94-187 of slaves, and Francis P. Kenrick, 308 theological, 67-68, 261-71 Ehrle, Franz, 383 The Eleventh Virgin (Day), 399 Elizabeth I, and deposing power of pope, 140 Ellard, Gerald, 93 Ellis, John T., 98 Elvira, Council of. See councils Ely, Richard, 76 Emancipation Proclamation, 73 empirical psychology, and Cooper, E 261 ecclesiology, 20, 93, 441 empiricism, 15, 395n. 43 American approach to, 20, 23- Engels, Friedrich, 408 25 England, 200, 278, 280 of Gustave Weigel, 92-93 England, John, 14-16, 41, 69, 103Ecthesis, the, 219n 43, 306n. 5 economics, 62, 342, 394, 426 and papal authority, 42 and Americanists, 49, 52-53 and slavery, 308n. 8, 309, 318 and Catholic doctrine, 295 and the state, 17 and religious holidays, 283-84, and St. Domingo, 306 296 English Catholics, and Elizabeth I, and justification, 72-73 140 and salvation by faith alone, 292 English laborers, conditions of, 289 science of, 77, 353

Index of Names & Subjects Enlightenment, 13, 14-27, 103-4, 425-26 Ennius, 211 Epaone, Synod of, and slavery, 310 episcopacy, 21, 22, 43. See also bishops Episcopalians, and slavery, 305 equality, 233, 248, 338, 356-57 Erastianism, 446 eschatology, Christian, 95 “Essay on Population” (Malthus), 297 essentials, of the church, 245 Eucharist, 293, 335, 429, 430-31. See also communion, doctrine of Eutychianism, 219n evidence, of Christianity, 111, 11419 evolution, 49, 53-54, 56-57, 36263n. 5 ex cathedra, 213, 216-17, 224 example, as means of emancipation, 307 excommunication, 153, 231-32 expediency, and First Amendment, 446 experience, and religious liberty, 451, 455 experimental psychology, 65 “Exposition of the Church, An” (Hecker), 180-205

469

family, building up of, 406 fanaticism, 109 farming, 406, 413-15 fatherhood of God, 268, 328, 330, 332 fathers, of the church, 196 feeling, 28, 112 Fenton, Joseph C., 89 feudalism, and church, 139, 245 First Amendment, 436-56 as American prejudice, 438 as articles of peace, 444-46 Catholic view of, 437, 438 and church, 440-41 Protestant interpretation of, 44344 secularist interpretation of, 44344 as good law, 455 as social necessity, 445 theologies of, 439-44 See also John England; religious liberty; John Courtney Murray; state, and church, separation of Fitzgerald, Edward, 47 Florence, Council of. See councils Fogarty, Gerald P., 59n. 93 Ford, Patrick, 354 Forsyth, John, 305n. 4, 306n, 309 France, and science of political economy, 278 Francis, St., 419 F Franciscan School, 383 faith, 109, 141, 165 Franco, Francisco, 404 and philosophy, 65 Franklin, Benjamin, 131 and reason, 26, 110-11, 196, fraternity, and Catholic church, 248 381 freedom, 106, 232-34, 356 and salvation, 164-65, 170 American impulse toward, 447 and science, 247 and Catholicism, 130, 201, 248 and Scripture, 168 of the church, 449-50, 454

470

American Catholic Religious Thought

of discussion at Vatican I, 21112 and papal infallibility, 231-35 as liberalism, 233-34 method of, 438 as non-committalism, 442 of philosophy, 380 and poverty, 419 See also John England; First Amendment; liberalism; John Courtney Murray; state, and church, separation from French Revolution, 242 Freud, Sigmund, 87 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 369 Friedrich, J., 221n. 5 Frontiers of American Catholicism (Ong), 98 Fruitlands, 39 future, the, 203-04, 244n. 2, 266 G Galileans, 119 Gallicanism, 24, 28, 40 articles of, 221n. 6 as diluted Protestantism, 202 and Vatican I, 220, 221-22, 22930 “gang age,” and theological education, 269 Gangra, Council of. See councils Genesis, 189 genius, American, 347-48 Genius of American Politics, The (Boorstin), 445 Gentile, Giovanni, 381n. 14 George, Henry, 74, 332, 327, 328, 354 German Central-Verein, 78-79, 424 Germany, and totalitarianism, 427

Gibbons, James, 14n. 3, 49, 74, 240, 252, 255-57 Gierke, Otto Friedrich von, 377 Gigot, Francis, E., 58 Gill, Eric, 406 Gilson, Etienne, 84, 87, 379 Gioberti, Vincenzo, 148 Giovanni Gentile. See Gentile, Giovanni Gladstone, William E., 200 God, 111, 169, 247, 332 fatherhood of, 268, 328, 330, 332 as ground of natural rights, 359, 368-69 as perfect justice, 331 highest object of knowledge and love, 358 union with, 406 See also Holy Spirit; Jesus Christ; Unitarianism Good Samaritan, 416 gospel, the, 268, 428 government, 131-32, 248 as autonomous, 447 and popular choice, 232 and papal infallibility, 231-35 and Lateran IV, 138 republican notion of, 19 not juridically omnipotent, 44849 of limited powers, 438 rights of, 231 and popular sovereignty, 442 theory of, and Catholicism, 1617 See also First Amendment; politics; state Grabmann, Martin, 383 grace, divine, 28, 51

Index of Names & Subjects and modern methods, 251 misunderstandings of, 163 and presumption, 242 and human will, 172, 196 graduate school, purpose of, 86 Grail, the, 413 “Great Negro Plot,” 313-15, 314n. 22 Greek philosophy, 382, 388 Greeks, the, 199, 388 Gregory XVI, 305, 306n. 5, 322-23, 323n. 33 and slave trade, 323 Guilday, Peter, 68-69 H Hadley, Arthur Twining, 369 Haiti. See St. Domingo Halsey, William, 84, 85 happiness, universal, as rule of conduct, 360-61 Hapsburgh, 246 Harnack, Adolph von, 61 Harvard Report on General Education, 444 Hayes, Carlton, 448 Hecker, Isaac Thomas, 14, 27, 31, 35, 35-38, 179-205 and apologetics, 38-40 and papal infallibility, 47-48, 19596 hedonism, 360, 361-62 Hegel, Georg, 362-63n. 5, 364, 389 Hegelianism, 361, 365-66 Hegelians, 361, 366 hell, 415 Henry V, 187 Henry VIII, 285 Heraclius, 219n

471 Herbermann, Charles, 70 heresies, in church history, 224 heretics, 133, 135-56 historism, 394 history, 28, 31, 68-69, 90, 384 Americanists’ views of, 53 of the church, and Holy Spirit, 188-89 organic continuity of, 28 ecclesiastical, and slavery, 320 and papal infallibility, 219-20 interpretation of, 34 and papal primacy, 214 and religion, 250 and research, 247 teleological attitude to, 56 History of The Reformation in England and Ireland (Cobbett), 276 Hitler, Adolf, 404 Hobson, John Atkinson, 362-63n. 5 Hogan, John, 57, 83 holiness, personal, 96 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 451 Holy Ghost. See Holy Spirit Holy Spirit, 43, 47-48, 190, 193, 212 and communion, 155 gifts of, 189, 190-91 and Isaac Thomas Hecker, 179, 180, 188-90 increase of, 197 infusion of, 191 inspirations of, 192 as interpreter and criterion of revealed truth, 196 mission of, 39-40, 188-90, 19395 as principle, of regeneration and sanctification, 196

472

American Catholic Religious Thought

See also Bible; God; Jesus Christ Honorius, Pope, 219n Horsmanden, Daniel, 314n. 23 hospitality, houses of, 406, 410-12 House of Oblates. See Oblate Sisters of Providence Huber, J. N., 221n. 5 Hughes, John, 14, 30, 72, 275-301 and apologetics, 32-33 and slavery, 73 human nature, 106-7, 278, 333 dignity of, 337-38 two elements of, 428 and mediation, 160 as social, 427 human welfare, and social justice, 77 Humanists, 380 Humani generis (Pius XII), 83 humanity, as medium of life, 155 Hyvernat, Henri, 60-61 I idealism, 86, 397 illumination, and Holy Spirit, 190, 192 image, of God, 333, 334 Immaculate Conception, 223, 264 immanentism, 49, 51-52, 57 Immortale Dei (Leo XIII), 253n. 9 impartation, of righteousness, 163 impeccability, and papal infallibility, 215 imperialism, and church, 245 imputation, of righteousness, 16364 In Supremo Apostolatus (Gregory XVI), 305n. 3, 322-23, 323n. 33 Incarnation, 37, 38, 49 doctrine of, 28

function of doctrine of, 265 and history, 31 and John Hughes, 32-33 See also Jesus Christ indefectibility, and the church, 219 Indian missions, 424 Indians, as slaves, 311 indifferentism, religious, 18 individualism, 75, 425-27 within American Catholicism, 30 of American society, 72 ecclesiastical, 28 exaggerated, 275 magnificent, 347 Indonesians, deportation of, 416 induction, 16 inerrancy, 42 inequality, of natural rights, 357 infallibility, 137, 226 of the church, 126-27, 217-19 and divine promises, 229 of pope, 127, 217-19 Vatican I, 210-35 See also papal infallibility infidelity, 109, 185 injustice, protest against, 408 Inquisition, 132, 135 inspiration, 156, 157, 216 Integrity, 409 intellect, the, and Scholasticism, 395-96 intellectualism, 55 intelligibility, passion for, 396 international law, 187 International Workers of the World, 399 interpretation, of the Bible, 168-69, 173-74, 17576

Index of Names & Subjects

473

source of spiritual discernment, 170 teaching, manner of, 340 as the truth, 167 See also Catholicism; Christianity; church; God; Holy Spirit; Incarnation; Mystical Body; Protestantism; Resurrection Jews. See Judaism John of St. Thomas, 84 John, Gospel of, 123 John Chrysostom, St. See Chrysostom, St. John John II, 219n J Johns Hopkins University, 66, 68 Jackson, Andrew, 305n. 4 Johnson, Samuel, 439 Jacobinism, 448 Josephism, 28 James, William, 87, 417-19 Joubert, Jacques Hector Marie NichoJansenism, 220, 223 las de la Muraille, 316, 316n. 29 Janus, 221n. 5 Judaism, and Catholicism, 91-92, Japanese, 416 151, 185, 332 Jefferson, Thomas, 445, 446 Julian, 119 Jesuits, 22, 323, 379 justice, 13, 78, 80, 330-31, 333 Jesus Christ, 12, 118, 134 justification, by faith alone, 34, 292 and Catholic Worker movement, Justinian, 246 95 character of, 332 K as Christianity, 161-62 Kansas, and slavery, 319 and the church, 151, 246 Kant, Immanuel, 35-36, 87, 363, and communion with God, 154 369, 389 divinity of, 183 Katzer, Frederick, 49 as mere example, 162 Keane, John, 49, 52, 74 fools for, 409 Kedroff v. Saint Nicholas Cathedral, as the life of the church, 153 450n mission of, 153, 189 Kenkel, Frederick P., 79 and poverty, 419-20 Kenrick, Francis P., 14n. 3, 44, 307n, as revealer, 119 308-09 righteousness of, 163 Kenrick, Peter R., 14n. 3, 41, 43-44 and salvation, 160, 167 Kerby, William, 62-64 rule of, and First Amendment, 440 interiority, 94, 179 intolerance, 18 intuition, 28, 31, 359, 367 Ireland, John, 14, 49, 52, 58, 74, 75, 239-58 and John Ryan, 354 Irenaeus, 228 Irish famine, 239 Irish World, 354 Islam. See Mohammedanism Israelites, and providence, 198

474

American Catholic Religious Thought

Ketteler, Wilhelm Emmanuel von, 252, 252n kingdom of God, 150, 189, 191, 349 kingdom of heaven, and receptivity to preaching, 173 Kirk, Russell, 438 Knights of Labor, and Gibbons, 256 knowledge, 108-10, 395 L labor, 289, 296, 338, 343 labor party, and Edward McGlynn, 339 labor unions, 74, 408 laborer, the, 284, 285, 320, 340 Lacordaire, Henri Dominique, 242n, 243n, 244n. 2 LaFarge, John, 14n. 3 laissez-faire, 368 laity, 96, 269 Lamennais, Félicité Robert de, 242, 243n land, 340-41, 343 Lange, Elizabeth, 316n. 29 Lateran IV. See councils Latin, language of the church, 21011 Latin races, mission of, 198-99, 201-03 L’Avenir, 242n Lavigerie, Charles Martel Allemand, 252, 252n law, and the common good, 445 law courts, and evidence, 114-19 law of life, 154n Law of Separation, 448 lay apostolate, 96 lay trustees, rights of, 20-21

Lecky, William Edward Hartpole, 263 “Lecture on . . . Political Economy” (Hughes), 276-301 Lee, Hannah Farnham Sawyer, 315, 315n. 26 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von, 377, 389 Leo XIII, 49, 91, 406, 428, 448 Aeterni patris, 62, 71, 75, 78, 375 opponents of, 254 as Providential Man, 252-55, 257 and Rerum novarum, 75-77, 249n. 5, 353 and Testem benevolentiae, 55, 239 Leroux, Pierre, 36, 148 Lescher, Bruce, 64 Lessius, Leonard, 379 “Letter to Our Readers, A” (Day), 405-16 liberalism, 95, 232-34 and Catholicism, 13, 234, 448 as dangerous, 243 and papal infallibility, 231-35 as sectarian, 453 secular, 440 and Vatican I, 50 liberty. See freedom life, meaning of, 152, 154n, 337, 356 life by communion, 36-38, 147-78 Liturgical Movement, 93-94, 423 liturgy, 79, 93, 94, 187 “Liturgy the Basis of Social Regeneration” (Michel), 424-33 Living Wage, A (Ryan), 78 living wage, right to, 77-78, 355 localism, ecclesiastical, 28

Index of Names & Subjects Locke, John, 15 Logos, seeds of, 378 Loisy, Alfred, 55 Lonergan, Bernard, 85 Longwell, Horace Craig, 393 Louis XIV, 202, 246 love, 96, 141, 142, 404, 416 as disinterested, 359 low-churchism, 153 Lowell, A. Lawrence, 388 Luke, Gospel of, 123 Luther, Martin, and papal infallibility, 184 M machine, abolition of, and Catholic Worker, 408 machinery, and effects on economy, 284-85 Mackenzie, John Stewart, 363 Madison, James, 445 magisterium, 25, 50, 121-23 Maistre, Joseph-Marie Comte de, 31, 193, 362-63n. 5 majority, government of, 233 Malthus, Thomas, 288, 288n, 297, 298 Malthusianism, 333 Manicheanism, 136 Manners, John, 295, 295n Manning, Henry Edward, 249, 249n. 6, 252, 255 Marcellinus, Ammianus. See Ammianus Marcellinus Maréchal, Joseph, 85, 386n. 29 Maritain, Jacques, 84, 87 Mark, Gospel of, 122, 123 marriage, 136, 269, 297, 310, 418 martyrdom, and the poor, 335-36 Marx, Karl, 87, 408

475 Mary, 264-65 Mass, the, 429 Masses, The, 399 masses, amelioration of, 250 materialism, 396, 418 matrimony. See marriage Matthew, Gospel of, 122-123 Maurin, Peter, 399, 400, 413, 41720 and Catholic Worker Movement, 79, 95-97 as the Poor Man, 414, 415, 420 program of, 406 Mazzella, Camillo, 83 McCloskey, John, 340, 340n McCool, Gerald, 84 McCormick, John E., 87 McGlynn, Edward 14, 74, 75, 327-51 McKenzie, John L., 59n. 93 McMaster, James A., 303 McNabb, Vincent, 406 McQuaid, Bernard, 49 mediation, 151, 157 Medieval Political Thought in the West (Carlyle), 447 mercy, works of, 410, 416 merit, 163, 293 Merton, Thomas, 14n. 3 metaphysics, 387, 394 method, of authority, 26 Methodism, 147 Methodist Church, 179, 304 methods, harmony of inductive and deductive, 386 Metropolitan Magazine, 303 Mexicans, and hospitality, 410 Mexico, and slavery, 316 Meyer, Rudolf, 362-63n. 5

476

American Catholic Religious Thought

Michel, Virgil, 14, 79, 86, 93, 94, 423-34 might, and right, 339 Migne, Jacques Paul, 61 Millar, Moorhouse, 88 Miller, William, 95, 97 millennialism, 349 Milner, John, 22, 22n. 21 Milton, John, 348n miracles, 25-26, 113-14 Mirari Vos, 243n misery, in the world, 333-34 missionaries, 172, 335 Missionary Priests of the Apostle Paul, 179 Missouri, and slavery, 319 Mivart, George, 56 mobs, blind, 232 Modern Schoolman, 87 modernism, 49, 55-60 modernists, as minimizers, 50 modernity, 53, 71, 378, 393 despair of, 97 and egoism, 394 and philosophy, 378, 384 and science, 54 Mohammedanism, 186, 310 Möhler, Johann Adam, 31, 179 monarchies, 232, 246, 448 monism, and Scholasticism, 396 monothelitism, 220n Montalembert, Charles René Forbes, 243n Moor, 310 Moore, Thomas Verner, 68 moral consensus, and public welfare, 452 moral government, and salvation of God, 163 Morgan, J. P., 61

Moslem. See Mussulman motherhood, 264 motivation, 266 Mounier, Emmanuel, 95 Mun, Albert de, 254, 254n Murphy, Roland, 59n. 93 Murray, John Courtney, 11, 14, 84, 88, 435-57 Mussolini, Benito, 404 Mussulman, 186 mystery, of humanity, 110 mystical body of Christ, 93-95 as basic idea of liturgy, 429-33 and Dorothy Day, 405 mysticism, and the church, 150 N National Catholic War Council, 66 National Catholic Welfare Council, 78 National Conference of Catholic Charities, 64 Nativism, 13, 98 Nativity, 265 natural law, 90-91 defined, 360, 367, 368 and John Courtney Murray, 9091 natural order, 52, 185 natural rights, 354, 356, 361-68 Naturaleza, policía sagrada y profana (Sandoval), 311-12n. 16 naturalism, 49-50 nature, 109-10, 337, 355, 368 general bounty of, 337, 338 and grace, 203, 250 Nazarenes, 119 Near Eastern studies, 60 Nebraska, and slavery, 319 Nebraska bill, 305

Index of Names & Subjects Negro Plot (Horsmanden), 315n. 25 Negroes, 410, 416 Neo-Orthodoxy, 82, 86 Neo-Platonism, and Scholasticism, 382 Neo-Scholasticism, 375, 377, 378, 391-92 Neo-Thomism, 13, 80-100. See also Neo-Scholasticism; Scholasticism; Thomism neo-ultramontanism, 28, 29, 44 New Realism, 395n. 43, 395-96n. 44 New Scholasticism. See Neo-Scholasticism New Scholasticism, The, 87 New Testament, 122-25, 157 New Theology, 94 “New York Conspiracy,” 314n. 22 New York Freeman’s Journal, 74, 149, 303, 319 New York Review, The, 57, 88 Newman, John Henry, 53, 70 Newton, Isaac, 15 Nice. See councils, ecumenical, Nicea Nineteenth Century Club, 332 no-churchism, 153 nominalism, 383 non-Catholics, and papal infallibility, 226-31 non-establishment, as American prejudice, 437 North American College, 328, 375

477 Oblate Sisters of Providence, 31617n. 29 obligation, moral grounds of, 359 O’Connell, Daniel, 103 O’Connell, Denis, 49 O’Dea, Thomas E., 98 offertory, 431 O’Leary, Arthur, 103 omnipresence, doctrine of, 266 omniscience, doctrine of, 266 Ong, Walter, 14, 27, 48-49, 55, 98 ontologism, 148 optimism, 49, 53-54, 56, 239 Orate Fratres, 94, 424 orthodoxy, 83, 439 Our Father, 349 overpopulation, 297, 346 overproduction, 296-97, 346 ownership, of property, 425

P Pace, Edward, 65-66, 68, 70, 83, 87 pacifism, and Dorothy Day, 402-05 paganism, 425, 427 Pallen, Condé, 70 pantheism, and Theodore Parker, 305 papacy, the, 41 appeals to, 214 ascent to decisions of, 220 authority of, 40-48, 184, 230 charges against, 40 continuity of, 226 and the church, 183 O encyclicals of, 91, 401 obedience, 27, 174, 184, 188, 195, and divine right, 45 231 and religious liberty, 88 object, the, 393 See also papal infallibility; pope, the; primacy

478

American Catholic Religious Thought

papal infallibility, 40, 42, 44 and divine assistance, 216 axis of a new course of history, 192 and consent, 217 not new doctrine, 218-25 and Isaac Hecker, 47-48, 195-96 and Peter Richard Kenrick, 4344 limits of, 209-10 and Henry Edward Manning, 249n. 6 and Martin John Spalding, 20935 and Vatican I, 184, 210-35 See also papacy; pope, the; primacy papal states, 19 Paradise Lost (Milton), 348 parks, and taxes, 342 Parker, Theodore, 148, 305 Pascendi (Pius X), 58, 59, 61, 69-71 passions, and reason, 106-7 “Pastoral Letter . . . On Papal Infallibility” (Spalding), 210-36 pastors, 21, 172. See also preachers; priesthood patriotism, 50, 250 patristics, 94 patrology, 61 Paul III, and slavery, 322 Paul, St., 123, 322, 404, 412 Paulists, 179 Paulus, Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob, 169, 170n peace, 13, 80, 98, 132 Peel, Robert, 298 penance, 293 Penn, William, 445 perennial philosophy, the, 384, 392

perfectibility, of human persons, 15 perfection, counsels of, 402 persecution, 133, 335-36 person, welfare of, 358 personalism, Christian, 95, 399 personality, 357, 359, 369 persuasion, rational, 19 “Peter Maurin” (Day), 417-20 Peter the Hermit, 329n Peter, St., 122, 213, 228 Philemon, and slavery, 322 philosophia perennis, 384, 392 philosophy, 378, 380, 385, 391 and metaphysics, 394 need of, 388 and religion, 250 See also Neo-Scholasticism; NeoThomism; Scholasticism; Scottish Common Sense Realism; Thomism piety, 30-31, 98 Pius II, 322 Pius IX, 46-47, 49-50, 181, 192, 193 and reason, 195, 203 and Syllabus of Errors, 221n. 5 and Vatican I, 196, 211 Pius X, 428, 429, 433 Pius XI, 94, 406, 407, 408, 425, 428, 433 Pius XII, 59n. 93, 83, 449, 453, 454 Plato, 377, 389 Platonism, and Scholasticism, 382 pluralism, 13, 18, 437 polemics, post-Reformation Catholic, 261 political economy, 76, 277, 333 politics, 16-17, 129, 452. See also government; state

Index of Names & Subjects polity, ecclesiastical, 20 poor, the, 286-87, 335, 349, 415, 431 as salt of the earth, 417 Poor and Ourselves, The (DanielRops), 420 pope, the, 127, 184, 216, 218, 227 as Antichrist, 184 deposing power, 139-41 and slavery, 322 See also names of specific popes; papacy; papal infallibility; primacy Pope and the Council, The (Janus), 221n. 5 popular sovereignty, 19, 248, 248n population, 333, 341, 345-46 Porras, Martin. See Porres, Martin de Porres, Martin de, 313, 313n. 19 Portuguese, and slavery, 310 positivism, fascinations of, 394 positivists, 365-67 poverty, 63, 281, 417, 418 abolition of, 334 and Catholic Worker, 414 and divine laws, 332-33 and William James, 417-19 voluntary, 96, 415, 417, 420 See also Catholic Worker Movement; Dorothy Day; Peter Maurin power, 19, 23 pragmatism, 86 prayer, 165, 190, 403, 404 preacher, as ambassador from God, 173. See also pastor; priesthood precedent, and Catholic church, 216 Presbyterianism, 21, 147 prejudice, 134, 438

479 priesthood, 94, 315; 334-45. See also pastor; preacher Priestley, Joseph, 169 primacy, of the pope, 44-45, 212, 213-14. See also infallibility; papal infallibility; pope, the Primacy of the Apostolic See Vindicated, The (Kenrick), 44 Primitive Man (Cooper), 262 production, defined, 277 progress, 15, 54, 95, 202, 250 and continuity of tradition, 395 and Holy Spirit in the soul, 190 laws of, 188 and philosophy, 390 universal, 191 Progressive Scholasticism, 87, 37597 “Progressive Scholasticism” (Zybura), 375-97 Progressive Scholasticism (Bruni), 37597, 381n. 14 progressivism, 59-71 Propaganda Fide, 22 property, right to, 75, 287-88, 353, 356, 425 prophecies, 25-26, 118-19 Protestant Crusade, 14, 275 Protestant Episcopal Church, 104 Protestant Reformation, 34, 196, 282 and capitalism, 275 and individualism, 275, 425 and influence on family and property, 266 See also Reformation Protestantism, 72, 175, 185, 280 and Catholicism, 13, 91-93, 275 and papal authority, 43, 45, 184, 228

480

American Catholic Religious Thought

as exaggerated independence, 183 and First Amendment, 440 inadequacies of, 39 and private judgment, 169 as religious revolution, 183 and slavery, 304, 311 See also Bible; Catholicism; Christianity; Church; Protestant Crusade; Protestant Reformation providence, 34, 37, 49, 198 providential men, 252-57 psychiatry, and spirituality, 68 psychology, philosophical, 65, 261, 262 public welfare, 78, 91-92 Purcell, Edward, 73, 303, 319-24 Purcell, John, 73 purgatory, and Christian solidarity, 432 Pusey, Edward Bouverie, 313n. 20 Puseyism, 313

rationality, and law, 440 Rauschenbusch, Walter, 327 reactionaries, and liberalism, 251 realism, and the great philosophical tradition, 397 reason, 16, 26, 85, 108, 203 and Catholicism, 25-27 limits of, 108, 111 and Pius IX, 195 and revealed religion, 25-26, 11011 and revelation, 25, 247 See also Enlightenment; faith; NeoScholasticism; Neo-Thomism; rationalism; revelation; Scholasticism; Thomism reconciliation, universal, 191 Redemptorists, 180 Reflections on the Revolution in France (Burke), 437-38 Reformation, John Quincy Adams’ interpretation of, 104. See also Protestant Reformation Q reform, in church and society, 187 Quadragesimo anno (Pius XI), 79, 94, relativism, 376, 394 425, 426 religion, 106, 188, 194, 262, 291 Quakers, and church, 150 and charity, 141-42 Quanta cura, (Pius IX), 148 creedless, 262 Questions of the Soul, (Hecker) 39, defined, 109 179 as end and as means, 150-51 as Christianity, 188 R and guidance, of the divine Spirit, races, mission of, 198-99 196 racism, and Mussolini, 404 as morbid, 408 radicalism, 185, 401 natural, 107-08 Rahner, Karl, 85 as opium of the people, 408-09 railroads, rapid transit, and taxes, origins of, 148 342 and politics, 332, 336 Ranke, Leopold von, 197, 197n general principles of, 105-7 rationalism, 169, 397 as purely private, 441

Index of Names & Subjects as remedy for self-interest, 290 renewal of, 186, 188, 190 and slavery, 320 and society, renewal of, 428 and social justice, 330 as true, 18, 338, 441 See also Christianity; church; revelation religious freedom. See religious liberty religious liberty, 12-13, 15, 17, 19, 103, 129-30 and Catholicism, 91 as a constitutional concept, 8990 and John Courtney Murray, 11, 14, 84, 88, 435-57 See also John England; First Amendment; state, and church; tolerance republicanism, 15, 103, 232 and Catholicism, 12, 15, 24, 30, 130-32 and papacy, 40, 42-43 Rerum novarum (Leo XIII), 71, 7476, 79, 353 and John Ireland, 249n. 5, 253, 256 and Henri Dominique Lacordaire, 244n. 2 and John Ryan, 65 research, as duty of the church, 247 restoration, universal, 191 Resurrection, 116-17, 269 retreats, 412 revelation, 107-11, 127, 194, 216 fact of, 111 primitive, 37-38 purpose of, 263 testimony to, 111-13

481 See also Bible; Christianity; reason revenues, of church, division of, 286-87 revolution, 232, 248, 403 revivalism, 172 Rice, Charles Owen, 411 riches, value of, 278 Riedl, John O., 85 Riflessioni sulla Scolastica (Bruni), 376, 381n. 14 righteousness, 163 rights, 36, 292 the basis and justification of, 35570 defined, 355 as positive, 362 theories of, 366-70 Ritchie, David George, 366, 368 Roman Church, and Irenaeus, 228 Roman emperor, and the poor, 335 Romans, the, 198 Romanticism, 13, 27-28, 35, 49 Rome, and America, 255 round table discussions, 412 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 66 Rousseauists, 368 rule, of faith, 26, 124-25 Russell, John, 200 Russia, 403, 416, 427 Ryan, James H., 381 Ryan, John Augustine, 14, 76-78, 84, 88, 353-71 and Thomas Joseph Bouquillon, 62 as progressive Catholic, 64-65 S sacramental evangelicalism, 30 sacraments, 39, 190, 196, 403

482

American Catholic Religious Thought

Sacred Heart Messenger, The, 70, 199-201 sacrifice, 411, 415, 416 St. Domingo, 306, 316 Saint Simon, Claude Henri de, 148 saints, call for, 404 salvation, 51, 150, 159-66, 170, 292 sanctification, and Holy Spirit, 189, 194 Sandoval, Alonso de, 311, 311n Santayana, George, 386n. 29 Saracen, 329 Satolli, Francesco, 255, 255n Savigny, F. C. de, 362-63n. 5 Saxons, the, 199, 201, 202 Scandinavians, and slavery, 310 schism, and remedies of Constance, 222 Schlegel, Friedrich von, 31, 34, 197, 197n scholarship, Catholic, 59, 60, 70 Scholasticism, 196, 261, 379-80, 382, 383, 397 as an integral view of reality, 39293 medieval, and sciences, 386 as the perennial philosophy, 385 rethinking of, 388 return to, 396 and theology, 83 See also Thomas Aquinas; NeoScholasticism; Neo-Thomism; Thomism science, 187, 250, 385-86, 387, 441-42 scientism, 394 Scottish Common Sense Realism, 16, 27, 35 Scotus, John Duns, 383

Scripture. See Bible Second Vatican Council. See councils, ecumenical, Vatican II secularism, 49-50, 241, 244, 440, 441 self-interest, in economics, 279, 285, 288, 290, 298 self-perfection, duty of, 359 Semitic and Egyptian Languages and Literatures, 60-61 sensism, and Scholasticism, 397 sentiment, religious, 148 separation, of church and state. See state, and church, separation from serfs, of Middle Ages, 283 Sergius, 219n Sermon on the Mount, 407, 417 Seth, Andrew, 362-63n. 5 Seton, Elizabeth Ann, 316n. 28 Shahan, Thomas J., 60-62, 70 Sheen, Fulton J., 14n. 3 Sheldon, Wilmon Henry, 393 Shields, Thomas E., 66-67 Sidgwick, Henry, 361 Simon, Yves, 442 sinlessness, of Mary, 264 sin, 245, 304, 306 single tax, theory of, 327n, 341-43 Sisters of Charity, 316 Sisters of Providence. See Oblate Sisters of Providence Sixth International Congress of Philosophy, 387, 393 skepticism, and religion, 111-12 slavery, 303-24 abolition of, and Catholicism, 321 and Catholics, 73-74, 306, 335 and the First Crusade, 329

Index of Names & Subjects and English, 289 and Gregory XVI, 305 as a civil institution, 309 and Edward McGlynn, 339 and Maryland Jesuits, 323-34 and marriage, 310 in Middle Ages, 283 of the mind, 128 and Saint Paul, 322 and sin, 304, 306 and slave trade, 304, 305 status of, 320 and theologians, 307, 308n. 8 Smith, Alfred, 89 Smith, Gerard, 87 Smith, John Talbot, 83 Social Action Department, of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 354 social Christianity, 13, 71 social consciousness, and liturgy, 93 social justice, 71-80, 248-49, 249n. 6 social liberalism, 74 social problem, solutions to, 291 social program, of Catholic Church, 400 social reform, 72, 74 social regeneration, and liturgy, 424-33 social sciences, 56, 62 social teachings, of the church, 406 social utilitarians, 361-65 socialism, 75, 266, 290-91, 327, 353 society, 337, 364, 442, 449 American, 97 distinction between state and, 447 as end in itself, 363

483 and land values, 341 regeneration of, 186-88, 428 unjust arrangements of, 346-47 sociology, 62, 63, 394, 433 solidarity, Christian, 79, 430, 432 sovereignty, indivisibility of, 450 Spain, persecution of religion in, 402 Spalding, Martin John, 14, 14n. 3, 32 apologetics of, 33-35 and papal infallibility, 44, 20936 Spaniards, and slavery, 310 Spanish conflict, and Dorothy Day, 402 Spanish war, and The Catholic Worker, 403-05 specialization, excessive, 388 Spencer, Herbert, 363 Spinoza, Baruch, and New Scholasticism, 389 spiritual order, supremacy of, 45-46 spiritualism, and Scholasticism, 396 spirituality, 64, 68, 81 spolia Aegyptiorum, 378 Stahl, F. C., 362-63n. 5 state, the and Thomas Aquinas, 17 and Robert Bellarmine, 17 constitutional view of, 17, 90-91 and the church, 175, 435, 437, 447, 448 relations with state, 446-49 separation from state, 13, 15, 19, 103, 129 union with state, 88, 134 pantheistic deification of, 366 and John England, 17 as a good in itself, 365

484

American Catholic Religious Thought

Hegelian conception of, 362-63n. 5 and universal reason, 365 as source of individual rights, 366 and Francisco Suarez, 17 subordination of church to, 443 totalitarian, 427 See also First Amendment; government; John Courtney Murray; politics, religious liberty State and the Church, The (Ryan and Millar), 88-89 Strauss, Friedrich, 170, 170n Suarez, Francisco, 17, 83, 225, 379 Suarezianism, 83 subjectivism, 35, 39, 394 subjectivity, 32, 36, 88 submission, as Catholic disposition, 184 subsidiarity, 427 suffering, blessedness of, 349 superstition, 109 Supreme Court, 229, 230 Survival of Catholic Innocence, The (Halsey), 84 Syllabus errorum (Pius IX), 148, 221n. 5 synthesis, 194, 390

Tell, William, 130 temporalities, ecclesiastical, 20 Testem bevevolentiae (Leo XIII), 55, 59, 69, 70, 239 testimony, 111, 112 Texas, and slavery, 316, 319 theocracy, 446 theologians, 223, 307, 308n. 8 Theological Studies, 88 theology, 12-13, 92, 261, 268 and environment, 63-64 and First Amendment, 439 functional, 262-63 historical, 57, 94 and modernism, 56 and philosophy, 147, 379, 381 positive, 94 and popular sovereignty, 248 systematic, 71 undergraduate, as distinct discipline, 261 thesis-hypothesis, theory of, 89 Thomas Aquinas, St. See Aquinas, St. Thomas Thomism, 83-86, 88, 382, 389, 391. See also Thomas Aquinas; NeoScholasticism; Neo-Thomism; Scholasticism Thought, 87 thought, clarification of, 402, 406, T 412-13 Taparelli d’Azeglio, Luigi, 362-63n. “To Our Readers” (Day), 400-402 5 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 448 Tavard, George, 92 tolerance, universal, 18-19, 134. See Taves, Ann, 30 also religious liberty taxes, and rental value of land, 341, Toussaint, Pierre, 315-16 342 tradition, 31, 37-38, 212 teachers, and sufficiency of Bible, and development, 91 172 and doctrine, 214, 216, 223 Telesius, 380 rehabilitation of, 31

Index of Names & Subjects and Scripture, 121-24, 168 See also Bible; Catholicism; Christianity; church; doctrine, development of transcendentalism, 39, 148 Transcendentalists, and church, 150 treasury, of merits, 430 Trendelenburg, Friedrich Adolf, 377 tribunal, ecclesiastical, 124-27 Truc, Gonzague, 396 True Basis of Christian Solidarity, The, 424 trusteeism, 23, 29-30 truth, 106, 331-32, 389, 441-42 human expressions of, 378 religious, and government, 453 and scholasticism, 385 unicity of, 108 Turks, the, 182, 186 tyranny, and Bible, 174-75 U ultramontanism, 24, 40 underconsumption, 346 understanding, as faculty, 106 Union Army, and John Ireland, 239 Unitarianism, 35-36, 169 United States Catholic Miscellany, 104 United States, 54, 200 Constitution, and law, 19, 129, 445 unity, in church and state, 156, 187, 247, 451 Universalism, 35-36, 147 UNO, 416 Urban II, 329n Urban VIII, and slavery, 322 Ury, John, 314, 314n. 22

485 V Valle Crucis, 39 Van Buren, Martin, 305n. 4 Vatican I. See councils, ecumenical Vatican Library, 381n. 14 Vawter, Bruce, 59n. 93 virginity, of Mary, 264 virtue, 18, 184, 190 Vishnewski, Stanley, 409 voluntaryism, 15, 19, 103, 149-50 voting, and Catholic church, 129 W wages, 344-45, 369, 408 and intervention of government, 353 justice in, 353-70 natural standard of, 288 war, 356, 418 Washington, George, 131 wealth, 278, 418-19 Weigel, Gustave, 14n. 3, 87, 92-93, 98 welfare, human, 358-59 Weninger, Francis X., 43 White, Charles Ignatius, 303 will, the, 106, 394 Williams, Roger, 445, 446, 448 Willoughby, Westel Woodbury, 36263n. 5 wisdom, as the perfection of reason and religion, 86, 142 witnesses, to revelation, 128 Wobblies. See International Workers of the World Woman Who Was Poor, The (Bloy), 419 women, and Virgin Mary, 264 work, 334, 407 working man, and Leo XIII, 253

486

American Catholic Religious Thought

Workingmen’s Party, 147 works, of mercy, 406 world, end of, 187 World War II, effects on Catholic Worker, 411 World’s Parliament of Religion, 52 worship, the duty of all humans, 106-7 writing, as form of communication, 340 Wundt, Wilhelm, 65, 68 Wynne, John, 70 X Y Young, Pamela, 67 Z Zahm, John, 56, 57, 76, 83 Zossima, 416 Zybura, John Stanislaus, 87, 375-98