h ì > L 8 0 8 ^ j 

The C H l f l a i i 

in UNITED SIMES 
HISTORY 

Published by 
OUR SUNDAY VISITOR 

Huntington, Indiana 









The Church In U n i t e d States 
H is to ry 

A m e r i c a ' s Deb t f o Catho l i cs 

Adapted with the Author's Permission 
by 

F. A. Fink 





Nihil Obstat: 
REV. T. E. DILLON 

Censor Librorum 

Imprimatur: 
Hh JOHN FRANCIS NOLL, D. D., 

Bishop of Fort Wayne 

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR PRESS 
Huntington, Indiana 





TABLE OF C O N T E N T S 
The Origin of the Catholic Question 1 
The Catholic Question in the Colonies 5 
George Calvert, First Lord Baltimore 10 
Cecilius and Leonard Calvert 16 
Roger Williams 22 
William Penn 27 
Thomas Dongan 33 
Colonial Attitude Towards the Church 38 
Eve of the American Revolution 44 
Catholicism and Democracy 49 
Declaration of Independence 56 
Catholic Participation in the Revolution 62 
The Constitution of the United States ..... 68 
Bishop John England 74 
Anti-Catholic Literature 79 
The Pioneer Catholic Press 85 
Native Americanism 90 
Archbishop John Hughes 94 
Know-Nothingism 99 
U. S. Recognition of the Papacy 106 
The Slave Question 114 
The Civil War 1 2 i 
Charles O'Conor 128 
Orestes A. Brownson £j 133 
The Paulists 139 
"The Faith of Our Fathers" 145 



1876 A Critical Year 151 
The Attack On Catholic Education 157 
The Plenary Councils of Baltimore 163 
The Voice of the Catholic Laity . 169 
The American Protective Association 174 
Conversions 180 
Catholicism and Americanism 184 
The Church and the Republic 189 
The Ku Klux Klan 195 
Our Sunday Visitor 203 
Bigotry in 1928 1 208 
The Church in the U. S. Today 214 



INTRODUCTION 
During the present (1937-38) observance of the Ses-

quicentennial of the Constitution of the United States 
Catholic groups throughout the nation are taking an 
active—in many places a leading—part in demonstrations 
planned to evidence the appreciation of our people of the 
liberties which they have enjoyed under that greatest of 
all liberty insuring documents. And it is only natural 
that they should do so, for essentially America is a Cath-
olic nation, the daughter of the Catholic Church. 

"Compared with thé Catholic part in the history of 
America," wrote Maurice Francis Egan some forty years 
ago, "the coming of the Mayflower is but an episode." 
And his words are true. Most of the thrill-filled pages of 
early American history are Catholic pages. It is known 
generally, but seldom emphasized sufficiently in the his-
tories of the discovery and colony-building in America 
that, as John Gilmary Shea tells us in his centennial 
essay for 1876: 

"The first explorers of our coasts were Catholics, and when they landed they planted the symbol of the Cross, and so studded their maps with names from the Church calendar, that we can trace their course by them. The lapse of years, the vicissitudes of war, the in-coming settlers with new-learned views, have not effaced them. When America took her rank among the nations, she claimed as her bounds the River of the Holy Cross and the River of St. Mary. . . It was the same in the in-terior, from St. Regis to the western river of St. Jo-seph and the rapids of Sault St. Marie. Catholicity had recorded her early presence as discoverer and ex-plorer on the soil of the Republic. . . and each acces-sion of territory brought in new proofs of Catholic discovery, exploration and settlements: St. Augustine on the south, St. Louis on the west, and beyond that the City of the Holy Faith (Santa Fe) , and San Francisco, as in a medieval painting amid a group of saints." 
While it is not our intention to review in this work 

the complete history of America from the time of its dis-
covery, it is pertinent to emphasize, these facts here: 
America was discovered by a Catholic, Columbus, whose 
voyage was financed by Catholic money and prompted by 



a zeal for the salvation of the souls who were living in 
what was then thought to be the Indies. It was a Catho-
lic a f te r whom our nation was named; the first colonies 
of the New World were established by Catholics; it was 
the zealous missionaries of the Church who organized 
and sustained the first missionary efforts to propagate 
the gospel among the savage Indians. The first schools in 
the western hemisphere were opened and conducted by 
Catholics; Catholics founded the first institutions for 
higher education for both men and for women on the 
American continent. The first charter of religious liberty 
in history was granted by a Catholic in the Catholic col-
ony of Maryland. The first printing press set up in any 
English colony was erected by a Catholic; the first book 
published in the American continent was a Catholic Cate-
chism. 

To Christopher Columbus belongs the undying fame 
iof having discovered America. One of his primary ob-
jects in his voyage westward was to propagate the Catho-
lic Faith. Every reader of history knows well the many 
disappointments and discouragements which he met in 
his preparations for his voyage, but few seem to realize 
that it was a Catholic priest who came to his assistance 
when all hope for his contemplated voyage of discovery 
seemed lost. Father Juan Perez, a member of the Fran-
ciscan order and a close friend of Queen Isabella, recog-
nized in Columbus the genius that was his, and sought to 
interest the Queen in the proposed voyage. But even she 
was without funds to sponsor the missionary enterprise, 
so together she and Father Perez sought the cooperation 
of Cardinal de Mendoza, who secured from Catholic funds 
the money needed to send Columbus on his way. 

Soon af ter the discovery of America Catholic Church 
authorities sent missionaries to the New World to spread 
the gospel in the vast reaches of this savage wilderness. 
The great religious orders of the Church manifested un-
paralleled zeal in this enterprise, and within a compara-
tively few years the Franciscans, Dominicans and Jes-
uits were performing their labors in the western hemis-
phere. In many instances these priests suffered at the 
hands of the Indians and not a few of them gave their 
lives for the Faith. The first martyr was Father Padilla, 
a Franciscan, who laid down his life for his Faith in 
1542. 



The early-explorers, all of them Catholic, set up the 
crucifix along all of the main lines of travel from one end 
of the continent to the other. So widespread were their 
missionary travels that the historian Parkman, a Protes-
tant, was made to exclaim: "Not a cape was turned, not 
a river entered, but a Jesuit led the way." 

For over two centuries af ter the discovery of the New 
World the work of exploration and colonization went 
steadily on, unchecked even by the commercial and relig-
ious revolutions that shook all Europe during the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries. Of the three principal 
colonizing nations, two were Catholic: Spain and France, 
and the claim of the third, England, to the f a r flung"" 
American colonies was based upon the voyages of Catho-
lic discoverers—John Cabot and his son Sebastian, who 
set out upon their voyage under the last, save one, Catho-
lic King, Henry VII. 

The story of the three colonial empires—New Spain, 
New France and New England with the colonies to the 
South, need not be retold here. Edward Gaylord Bourne 
has written a classic in his "Spain in America," the 
fairest of all descriptions we possess of the wide extent 
and high degree of Spanish culture in the colonies. He 
shows us that the first century of Spanish colonists "pro-
duced larger results in relation to the natives, the build-
ings of towns and cities, the construction of bridges, and 
the encouragement of learning than in the first century 
of French or English colonization." 

Exception may be taken to Francis Parkman's des-
criptions of missionary methods, but the twelve volumes 
of his "France and England in North America" are a 
dramatic exposition of the great sacrifices endured by 
Catholic colonists and priests from France to transmit to 
the New World the best culture of the old. 

The conquest of the old Spanish and French colonial 
empires where Catholicism had once reigned was not 
rapid; but its march was steady and unswerving until 
the middle of the last century when the American Re-
public reached definite frontiers. The purchase of Louis-
iana (1803), the advance towards the West during the 
war of 1812, the "Great Migration" of the next decade, 
the creation of new states out of old Catholic lands, the 
rise of Texas and the inevitable conquest of the Catholic 
Southwest and of California—these are episodes in the 



epic of our vanishing f ron t i e r—" the roost American 
th ing in America," as Professor Paxson called it. 

There was never in these former appanages of the 
Spanish or the French crowns any considerable popula-
tion; and beyond the place-names, the fascinating relics 
of the old Missions and the French customs of Louisiana, 
there is little trace of the heroic efforts made by Catholic 
priest and layman—Catholic martyrs, even—to build 
strongly and sturdily the House of God in the New 
World. 

Early in the history of America there arose what has 
i o m e to be known as "The Catholic Question in America." 
This arose because the Church was—and is—distinct 
from every other religious society in the land. Its center 

M government is in a foreign country, and its supreme 
spiritual head is resident there. Its disciplinary legis-
lation is framed by "aliens" and executed under the com-
mand of "aliens". This charge is sufficiently based in 
tcuth to make it, in the mind of one who does not see the 

"supernatural character and mission of this world-wide 
organism, lead to distrust. Nowhere since the rise of Pro-

testant ism has the "Catholic Question" given rise to more 
dangerous mistakes on the part of those who are not 
members of the Church than in English speaking lands. 
Under varying forms and formulas this has been the 
chief misunderstanding between Catholicism and Protes-
tantism since Tyburn's day. 

The history of the Catholic Church in America from 
colonial times to our own lies in the explanation of the 
delicate and supremely necessary adjustment of its spiri-
tual obedience to the temporal claims upon Catholic civil 
allegiance. To understand the Catholic Church in Amer-
ica, one must see how naturally and integrally the spiri-
tual allegiance of its members knits into their national 
allegiance so as to round each other out. 

It is on account of this spiritual allegiance to the head 
of this corporate society which to Protestants bears in its 
name the proof of its alienship—the Roman Catholic 
Church—that so many millions of Americans fear the 
power of the Church in the United States. I t would be 
absurd to say that these objectors to religious equality 
are not sincere in their distrust. I t would be equally 
absurd to conclude that they are consciously violating 
the spirit of the Federal Constitution in their stand that 



Catholics be bar red f r o m high official position in our gov-
ernment on account of the i r Fa i th . 

The purpose of this book is to bring, if possible, a / [ i 
clearer understanding of allegiance of Catholics to the 
spiritual head of their Church and to awaken a livelier ; 
interest on the part of the Catholics in the history of * 
their Faith in this country. "My people," said the Pro- % 
phet Osee, "have been silent, because they had no knowl- ¿/ 
edge."- There is, of course, slim excuse either for t he ' 
Catholic not to^know the story of the Church's gallant 
and almost victorious struggle through the ages, especial-
ly in our own land, to spread the sweetness and light of 
her doctrines, or for the Protestant not to understand by 
this time, a f te r four hundred years of argument and con-
troversy, that there can never be, as there never has 
been, the possibility of any conflict between the temporal 
allegiance the Catholic gives to those in authority in the 
government and the spiritual loyalty he is bound to give 
to those placed over him by Jesus Christ, the Founder of 
the Church. 

Few Know Story of Constitution 
One of the greatest weaknesses, if not the greatest, in J 

the popular knowledge of the American Republic and of 
the Constitution which gives it life, is that few of our 
citizens have bothered to read or to study the story of 
those days in the summer of 1787 when the little band of 
delegates met at Philadelphia to f rame the document ^ 7 ft J 
which Gladstone called "the most wonderful work ever / 
struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of 
man." 

Loyalty of Catholics Futile 
An unbroken record of a century and a half of Cath- J U 

olic patriotism should by this time lay low this ghost of ^ - ^ ^ ¿ t 
political bigotry. And yet the "Catholic Question" in the / f 
United States does not seem to have been answered, even 
by the overwhelming cooperation of Catholics, in time of 
war and in time of peace, in preserving the ideals of peace, ^ 
in preserving the ideals of the Republic and in handing 
on to succeeding generations the inalienable rights of 2 
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There could be 
no "Catholic Question" in our land if our Protestant fel-
low-citizens hearkened to the voices of our great leaders, 
Archbishop John Ireland, Cardinal. Gibbons, Cardinal \ 
O'Connell, Cardinal Hayes, Bishop Noll, and many others. ^ 



There can be no "Catholic Question" when every Catho-
lic citizen subscribes with all his heart to the declaration 
of John Ireland: "My religious faith is that of the Cath-
olic Church—Catholicism, integral and unalloyed, un-
swerving and soul-swaying—the Catholicism, if I am to 
put it into more positive and concrete form, taught by the 
-'supreme chieftain of the Catholic Church, the Bishop and 
Pope of Rome. My civil and political fai th is that of the 
republic of the United States—Americanism, purest and 
brightest, yielding in strength and loyalty to the Ameri-
canism of none other American, surpassed in spirit of 
obedience and sacrifice by none other citizen, none other 
soldier, sworn to uphold in peace and in war America's 
Star Spangled Banner." 







I 
The O r i g i n o f t h e Ca tho l i c Q u e s t i o n 

"The Catholic Question" in America is a legacy of dis-
trust and misunderstanding bequeathed to all those who 
have descended from, or who have been influenced by, the 
colonial Puritanism of New England. 

Puritanism did not create this misunderstanding; for, 
as has rightly been said by a recent anti-Catholic antag-
onist, the "Catholic Question" in America is an after-
math of the Reformation, which was essentially a 
struggle between two opposing forms of thought, one of 
which relied on Authority, and the other on the Private 
Mind. But American Puritanism gave to the anti-Catho-
lic viewpoint several distinctive attributes which make it 
peculiarly a problem apart from the Protestantism of 
other lands. 

To come now to the home of the Puritan—England. 
With the passage of the two Acts of Supremacy and Uni-
formity in 1559, Queen Elizabeth's government accom-
plished two things: first, they gave to the Queen supreme 
jurisdiction in religious affairs; and second, they stan-
dardized religious worship and discipline in accordance 
with the views of the Edwardine reformers. The imme-
diate effect of the two Acts was to make the newly-estab-
lished Church of. England a department of the govern-
ment and to outlaw the Catholic Faith in the realm. How 
the Catholics suffered under the legal disabilities created 
by the Acts does not enter into our story. We are in-
terested chiefly in the fact that the new English Church 
was a kind of compromise made up of Catholic and Pro-
testant factors. This religious compromise was not satis-
factory to one group in the Anglican Church, and the 
opposition thus created has lasted until our own day and 
is intimately connected with most of the political history 
of Great Britain and Ireland. 

The Bitter-Enders 
There was present, therefore, at the birth of the An-

glican Church a group of Protestants who were deter-
mined to carry the principles of the Reformation to the 



2 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
bitter end in England. Their purpose was to rid the 
Established Church of every vestige of worship and dis-
cipline which in any way might recall the Catholic days 
of yore. Through their efforts, the Church of England 
was to be "purified" of all lingering "Popish" elements, 
and the episcopal system of Church government was to be 
supplanted by Calvin's more democratic system of con-
gregational administration. The discontented Protes-
tants who wished to effect these changes whilst remain-
ing members of the State Church, were offensively called 
"Puritans." There were others who rebelled against the 
close union of Church and State set up by the Acts of 
1559. These latter separated from the Anglican com-
munion and were called Independents, Separatists and 
later Congregationalists. 

From this latter group came in 1620 to Plymouth the 
justly-famed Pilgrim Fathers, and some eight years later 
they were followed by the forerunners of the Puritan 
immigration of 1628-1640. The history of these two 
movements—the Congregationalists of Plymouth and the 
Presbyterians of Salem—is one of the most interesting in 
all American annals. In spite of the instinctive prejudice 
the Puritan mode of life and thought arouses in the 
minds of many Americans, there is no denying the fact 
that, with all his grim aggression toward those who dif-
fered with him, the Puritan stands at the threshold of 
American history bearing in - his hands some of the 
noblest gifts ever brought to our shores. One of these 
gif ts had come over to him from his medieval Catholic 
ancestors, mixed, it is true, with the alloy of his hatred 
for the Faith of Rome. That gi f t was his love of liberty. 

Puritan Attitude Towards Catholicism 
It would be absurd to hold any longer that the Puri-

tans, who gradually absorbed the communities set up by 
the Pilgrim Fathers, had come to the New World with 
the single-hearted desire to found a state wherein liberty 
would be the watchword. Worldly motives, and those 
mostly selfish, were not absent. Their original purpose, 
as their leaders expressed it, was to found in the New 
World "a bulwark against the Kingdom of anti-Christ." 
Anti-Christ meant Rome, and Rome meant "Popery." The 
Pope was "the man of sin." The ministrations of the 



THE ORIGIN OF THE CATHOLIC QUESTION 3 
Church were superstitious and idolatrous. Mass was a 
blasphemy. The invocation of the saints was a device of 
Satan. Catholics were the enemies-of God's truth. The 
term commonly applied to them was "ignorant and obsti-
nate papists." The Pope was the world's worst tyrant. 
Catholics were treacherous, and would not scruple to 
break their word with heretics. No office of state, no 
position of public trust, might safely be confided to them. 
The whole aim of the Catholic was to control the govern-
ment of every state wherein he resided in goodly num-
bers in order to renew the bloody Inquisition and to ex-
terminate all heretics. 

All these invectives saw their origin in Germany at 
the outset of the Protestant Eevolt. They were embodied 
in that first great Protestant apology, the "Centuries" of 
Magdeburg, published by the Lutheran Flacius between 
1556 and 1564. The earliest English Protestant writer to 
be influenced by the Magdeburg histories was John Foxe, 
the author of the notorious "Acts and Monuments of the 
Christian Martyrs," which he published in 1563. Al-
though thoroughly discredited today, even in Protestant 
circles, the "Book of Martyrs" as it was frequently call-
ed, was almost as well known to the Puritans of England 
and of New England as the Bible. The historian of the 
Puritans, Neal, says that "no book ever gave such a mor-
tal wound to Popery as this; it was dedicated to the 
queen (Elizabeth), and was in such high repute that it 
was ordered (1571) to be set up in the churches, where 
it raised in the people an invincible horror and detesta-
tion of that religion which had shed so much innocent 
blood." 

Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" 
The "Book of Martyrs" is one of the main sources of 

the intense hatred for all things Catholic in English-
speaking countries. It is Foxe's book which stands in the 
shadow behind many of the "No Popery" laws enacted 
by our colonial legislatures. And it is the memory, 
dimmed though it be, of the anti-Catholicism it engen-
dered among our American pioneers, that gives vigor 
to the same spirit today. 

In the long line of battle between the opposing forces 
of Protestantism and Catholicism, the two armies have 



4 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
fought their bloodiest battles not at any doctrinal point, 
but upon the field of divergent political standpoints. Es-
sentially, Protestantism is a State religion; it is national-
istic, intolerantly bound up with the State government. 
Catholicism's capital sin in the eyes of a Protestant gov-
ernment is that it is international in its religion and in 
its administration. In English-speaking countries, as 
Carlton J. H. Hayes has pointed out in his "Essays on 
Nationalism," anti-Catholicism has chiefly been based 
upon the inherent dread Protestantism has ever had for 
the international or supernational influence which radi-
ates from Eome out across national borders. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Define in your own words the "Catholic Question" in America. Trace its origin. 
2. Who were the "bitter-enders" ? What was their pur-pose? What was, briefly, the Eeformation? 
3. Who were the Puritans? When did they come tc America? Why did they come? 
4. What was the Puritan attitude towards Catholics? Towards Liberty? Towards the Pope? 
5. Who was John Foxe? What did he write? How did his works affect Catholics? Name one important dif-ference between Catholicism and Protestantism. 



VIII 
The Ca tho l i c Q u e s t i o n in t h e C o l o n i e s 

The transmission of the English "No Popery" spirit 
to the Colonies was effected through the preaching of the 
Puritan divines and by the spread of such collections of 
anti-Catholic diatribes as Foxe's "Book of Martyrs". We 
need not stop to analyze the "Book of Martyrs", although 
it is probable that not one in a hundred thousand of our 
American Catholics has ever seen the work. 

Puritanism in New England, despite its varied and 
opposing forms, recognized a common enemy in the 
Catholic Church. The safety of its "Biblical Common-
wealth" lay mainly in preserving the people from "Pop-
ery". A long series of legal enactments might now be 
cited to show how systematically that idea was kept 
before the people of the Colonies. 

Anti-Catholic Legislation In New England ' 
Under the guise of a law against idolatry, the cele-

bration of the Mass in Massachusetts was made punish-
able by death. In the New Haven and Connecticut 
settlements the law expressly forbade Catholics to enter. 
The fact that Catholics did not come to Puritan New 
England did not make the magistrates and minis-
ters any the less apprehensive about the spread of 
"Popery". In 1634, John Endicott, one of the fore-
most leaders, ordered the red cross cut out of the English 
flag because it was a "Popish" symbol. In 1647, Jesuits 
were forbidden to enter Massachusetts. The first offense 
meant banishment; the second death. Cromwell's advent 
to power in 1649 brought a feeling of security to Puritan-
ism, and it was during the Commonwealth that the gen-
eral court of Massachusetts gave legal expression to its 
deep Puritan horror of all things savoring of "Popery" 
by making the observance of Christmas a punishable of-
fense. Naturally, much of this animosity was directed to 
the neighboring French settlements in Maine and Canada. 
The Puritans, to use the words of their chronicler, Felt, 
were "fearful lest Romanism spread in North America", 
and their leaders had viewed with ominous forebodings 



6 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
the founding of Maryland as a refuge for the persecuted 
Catholics in the homeland, in 1634. 

The restoration of Charles II to the throne of England 
(1660) cast the shadow of "Popery" again over New 
England, but with the downfall of the Catholic James II 
and the accession of William and Mary (1639), a new 
epoch of intolerance began in colonial America. There 
was more toleration for the dissenting Christian religious 
beliefs, but all the penal laws against the Catholics were 
more rigidly enforced. 

Extension of the Persecution 
The Revolution of 1688 opened, then, a new era in 

the penal laws for the persecution of Catholics in England 
at home and in the England beyond the seas. The cruel 
Act of 1699 "for fur ther preventing the growth of Pop-
ery" found its counterpart in all the American colonies, 
except Maryland, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. The 
Stuart uprising of 1715 increased the severity of the laws 
against Catholics and the fear of Jacobite plots and in-
trigues ran on to the outbreak of the French and Indian 
War in 1754. 

During all these years—the heart of the colonial 
period of American History—the feeling against Catho-
lics never relaxed its vigilance, and it was fed by an 
increasing series of attacks upon "Popery" in and out 
of the pulpit. Many of the sermons delivered were print-
ed and widely read, and a catalogue of the books and 
pamphlets published up to the American War of Inde-
pendence reveals the fact that almost two-thirds of these 
are filled with what Sanford H. Cobb, in his "Rise of 
Religious Liberty in America", calls "the insane cry of 
'No Popery'." 

Intolerance in Virginia and the Carolinas 
Outside of New England, when Virginia and the 

Carolinas were founded, the Established Church of Eng-
land was established by law, and Catholics in these colon-
ies met with the same intolerance under which their 
brethren in England suffered. Catholics had as little 
incentive to emigrate to Virginia and the Carolinas as 
they had to New England. The Virginia legislature en-
acted in 1642 a law of banishment against all priest? 



THE CATHOLIC QUESTION IN THE COLONIES 7 
who might come into the colony, as a safeguard against 
the danger of "infection" from Roman Catholic Mary-
land. It was Virginia which passed in 1756 the act "for 
disarming Papists", the same act containing a clause 
forbidding a Catholic to keep a horse above the value 
of £5. "Only a desire to annoy," says Cobb, "would seem 
to account for that provision." The Carolinas were not 
founded for the purpose of complete religious liberty, 
but Protestant dissenters were permitted to enter, while 
Catholics were excluded from the colony. Georgia like-
wise granted liberty of conscience to all "except Papists". 

In the other colonies founded under Protestant aus-
pices, the history of religious equality or freedom of 
conscience is the same. In all of them except Rhode 
Island and Pennsylvania (Delaware was part of Pennsyl-
vania until 1702), the history of religious equality or 
freedom of conscience differs little from the Puritan 
establishments of New England or the Church of Eng-
land establishments in the South. 

New York's Law Against Priests 
Catholics were not wanted. With a short interlude 

under James II (1685-1688), when New York lived under 
the Charter of Liberties granted by the Catholic Gov-
ernor Dongan, Catholics who came to the colony were 
not openly persecuted, but any priest found within the 
limits of the colony of New York af ter November 1, 1700, 
was to be condemned to life imprisonment. Should he 
escape and be caught, the penalty was death. Another 
law passed in 1701 excluded Catholics from holding office 
and from the right to vote. 

In 1718, the ferocious Acts of the English Parliament 
against Catholics were made applicable to all the colonies, 
and af ter that date Catholic immigration to America was 
practically brought to a standstill. The few who lived in 
Maryland and in Pennsylvania were reduced to the poli-
tical level of the slaves, although it was generally con-
ceded at the time that the Catholics of these two colonies 
were pre-eminently the leading intellectual men of these 
provinces. 

Maryland Law to Prevent Conversions 
In 1746, Governor Bladin of Maryland issued a procla-



§ THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
mation in which any priest making converts to the Faith 
was declared a traitor to the colony. As a result of all 
this petty persecution, the Catholics of Maryland author-
ized Charles Carroll, the father of the Signer, in 1752, 
to apply to the French Government for a tract of land 
in Louisiana. The French and Indian War (1754-1763) 
caused another outbreak of legislation against the "Pa-
pists", and it is plainly visible in the newspapers of the 
time that colonial America was fast approaching the 
crisis of outlawing Catholics altogether in the British 
possessions along the Atlantic coast. Only the general 
discontent over the various points of dispute between the 
Mother Country and the Colonies prevented this concerted 
anti-Catholic movement, and the Revolution in this sense 
may truly be said to have saved the small body of Catho-
lics from extinction. 

With the Treaty of Paris in 1763, Canada passed into 
the possession of the English, and with the exception of 
the Island of New Orleans and two tiny islands in the 
Atlantic, England ruled everything east of the Missis-
sippi River. The next eleven years were among the most 
perplexing in the history of British imperialism, and, as 
we shall see, the "Catholic Question" played an important 
part in the final decision which brought about the War 
of Independence and American freedom. 

Before passing to these years, however, something 
should be said about a brighter page in the history of 
colonial intolerance towards the Catholics—religious free-
dom as practised in Maryland, Rhode Island, and Pennsyl-
vania. As we shall see presently, unjust and inhuman 
as was the whole penal legislation in colonial America, 
there was a spirit at work which would eventually be 
enshrined in the American Constitution in 1787,—the 
recognition that without religious equality, the ship of 
state could not long keep from wreckage on the rocks of 
political disaster. 



THE CATHOLIC QUESTION IN THE COLONIES 9 
Study Club Outline 

1. In which State was the celebration of Mass made 
punishable by death? In which settlements were 
Catholics forbidden to enter? Why? Where was the 
celebration of Christmas a punishable offense? 

2. How did conditions in England affect Catholics in America ? 
3. In which colonies did Catholics receive the best treat-ment? 
4. What were the prevailing attitudes towards Catholics in Virginia? The Carolinas? New York? How were priests treated? 
5. Were Cathqlics always treated as equals in Maryland, 

Rhode Island, Pennsylvania? What prevented the 
outlawing of Catholics in all colonial America? 



Ill 
G e o r g e C a l v e r t , F i rs t L o r d B a l t i m o r e 

Three Calverts shared in the founding of Maryland, 
the first colony in the future Republic to make the funda-
mental law of its government freedom of worship to all 
who believed in Jesus Christ—George Calvert, the first 
Lord Baltimore (1579-1632), Cecil Calvert, his son, the 
second Lord Baltimore (1605-1675), and Leonard Calvert, 
the brother of Cecil, the first Governor of Maryland 
(1606-1647). 

Much has been written—some of it in a spirit of bit-
terness—to dispute the right of the Calverts to the unique 
honor of being the first to enact and to practice the 
Christian law of liberty of conscience in the New World. 
In the first edition of his "History of the United States," 
Bancroft says: "Calvert deserves to be ranked among the 
most wise and benevolent law-givers of all ages. He was 
the first in the history of the Christian world to seek 
for religious security and peace by the practice of justice 
and not by the exercise of power; to plan the establish-
ment of popular institutions with the employment of 
liberty of conscience; to advance the career of civilization 
by recognizing the rightful equality of all Christian 
sects." 

Maryland was the one spot, where "in a remote corner 
of the world, on the banks of a river, which, as yet, had 
hardly been explored, the mild forbearance of a proprie-
tary adopted religious freedom as the basis of the State." 

Exalted Position of the Calverts 
Of all the facts in American history which remain 

vexatious to the lingering Puritan anti-Catholicism of 
our day, none is more so than the exalted position of the 
Calverts in the foundation of religious liberty in America. 
One may choose at random any ten of the latest histories 
of the United States written for our secondary schools, 
colleges and universities, and it is remarkable how sedu-
lously they are silent upon the fact that Maryland, the 
Land of Sanctuary, at the time it was founded, was the 
only home of religious liberty in the New World, 



GEORGE CALVERT, FIRST LORD BALTIMORE 11 
The Calverts themselves have fared badly at the hands 

of some Maryland historians; and yet no three characters 
in the colonial period deserve a higher place among our 
pioneers. George Calvert stands apart from all the colo-
nial founders in his determined effort to establish a prov-
ince in the western world where Catholics and non-Cath-
lices might live together in peace and concord. Certainly, 
none of the colonial founders, not even with the exception 
of William Penn, had so colorful a life as the first Lord 
Baltimore. 

The First Lord Baltimore 
George Calvert was born of Protestant parents about 

the year 1579, in Yorkshire, England. At an early age 
he matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, and af ter 
graduating from that institution, he made the usual 
"Grand Tour" of the English college man, returned to 
England and entered Parliament. James I, the Protestant 
son of Mary Stuart, was then King, and Calvert soon 
found himself chosen as one of the inner circle of royal 
friends. In 1605, Calvert married, and shortly afterwards 
became private secretary to Sir Robert Cecil, Secretary 
of State. This was the year of the Gunpowder Plot to 
blow up the King and Parliament; and, although de-
nounced by the Catholic leaders in the kingdom, the dis-
covery led to a renewal of the bloody persecution of 
Catholics. The manager of the Plot was Guy Fawkes and 
the date set for the explosion was November fifth. 

Washington's Rebuke to Bigots 
It is interesting in the light of its influence upon the 

colonial American mind, to recall the fact that this day 
was the common holiday of all the colonies up to its sup-
pression by George Washington af ter he took command 
of the Continental Army at Cambridge in 1775. The day 
was celebrated with fireworks of various kinds, and so 
when July Fourth became the nation's holiday, the fire-
works were carried over as part of the ceremonies. Wash-
ington's order, dated November 5, 1775, reads as follows : 

"As the Commander-in-Chief has been apprised of a design formed for the observance of that religious and childish custom of burning the effigy of the Pope, he cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be officers and soldiers in this army so devoid of com-



12 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
mon sense as not to see the impropriety of such a step at this juncture; . . . to be insulting their (the Cana-dians') religion, is so monstrous as not to be suffered or excused; indeed, instead of offering the most remote insult, it is our duty to address public thanks to these our brethren, as to them we are indebted for every late success over the common enemy in Canada." 

Conversion of Calvert 
George Calvert took a part in the persecutions which 

followed the plot against the King in whose favor he 
rapidly advanced. Knighted in 1617, Calvert became 
Secretary of State two years later, and received from 
James I a large estate in County Longford, Ireland. The 
religious controversies of those years between the Puri-
tans and Anglicans centered men's minds on the old 
Faith which a half-century of brutal legislation could not 
entirely subdue, and in 1624, Calvert asked that most 
engaging of all the English Catholic priests of the period, 
Sir Tobie Matthew, the converted son of the Angelican 
Archbishop of York, to receive him into the Church. 
Owing to the Test Oath, no Catholic could hold any public 
office under the crown, and Calvert resigned his secretary-
ship, although James I retained him as a privy councilor 
and later elevated him to the Irish peerage as Baron Bal-
timore of Baltimore, in County Longford. 

The creation of the two Virginia Companies—the 
London branch and the Plymouth branch—in 1606, for 
the purpose of colonization in North America, was fol-
lowed by the settlement of Jamestown in 1607, under the 
auspices of the London Company. This same year the 
Plymouth Company attempted a settlement in Maine and 
when this proved unsuccessful, the merchant adventures 
were reorganized and New England was thrown open to 
settlers. The first to come were the Pilgrim Fathers who 
set out on the "Mayflower," in September, 1620, and 
landed at Plymouth Rock on December 21. The whole 
venture, the details of which need not be entered into 
here, focussed attention more than ever before upon the 
unjust legislation which had made exiles of these sturdy 
sons of England. 

New England was a vague term in those days, and 
in 1620, Calvert purchased a part of Newfoundland which 



GEORGE CALVERT, FIRST LORD BALTIMORE 13 
he called Avalon. The charter for Avalon, granted by 
James I in 1623, is silent on the question of religious 
disabilities, and it is surmised that Calvert, who wrote 
the Charter himself, was then contemplating his conver-
sion to the Church and consequently wished this omission 
in order to afford a place of refuge in the New World 
for the persecuted Catholics of England. 

Calvert's Tolerance 
Calvert spent about $100,000 in making a settlement 

(Ferryland) in Avalon, and in 1627, sailed for Newfound-
land, accompanied by two secular priests. The Protes-
tants of the colony were permitted to have their own 
minister. The following spring Calvert returned to Eng-
land, and early in 1629, came out again to Avalon, bring-
ing with him Lady Baltimore and his children. The 
severity of the winter and the failure of crops prompted 
him to abandon the colony and seek land far ther south. 
In the autumn of 1629, he sent his children back to Eng-
land and sailed with Lady Baltimore and the leaders of 
the Avalon colony for Virginia, arriving at Jamestown, 
October 1, 1629. Here he was met with coldness and 
contempt by the Governor and Council and was told that 
he could not remain unless he took the two Protestant 
oaths of allegiance and supremacy. To take the latter 
was impossible to any loyal Catholic. He then sailed for 
England, and obtained from Charles I a grant of land 
on both sides of the Chesapeake, which was called Mary-
land in honor of Charles' Queen, Henrietta Maria. Be-
fore the great seal of England was affixed to the Charter, 
Lord Baltimore died (April 16, 1632), and was succeeded 
by his son, Cecilius, who became the second Lord Balti-
more. 

The Charter of Maryland 
The Charter of Maryland was the most extraordinary 

document issued by the English crown during the colonial 
period. Naturally, its religious clause has attracted the 
most attention from historians and has caused more 
discussion and debate than any similar clause in our 
colonial history. But there is another aspect of the 
Charter which is too often overlooked, even by Catholic 
defenders of Lord Baltimore's right to be classed as the 
first among the founders of America to establish religious 



14 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
freedom. This is the royal prerogative of the Charter 
itself. The Charter made Lord Baltimore almost absolute 
monarch of Maryland. He and his heirs were absolute 
lords and proprietors, and there was vested in his person 
all power—civil, military, naval, and ecclesiastical. He 
was in reality head of the State and of the Church. 
Charles I realized the full force of the powers and pre-
rogatives granted in the Charter, when he issued it to the 
son of Lord Baltimore, Cecilius Calvert. He knew also 
that the second Lord Baltimore was as staunch a Catholic 
as his father and was the son-in-law of one of the most 
influential Catholics in England, the Earl of Arundel. 
Neither the King nor Cecilius Calvert could have had any 
doubt about the meaning of the famous fourth section of 
the Charter which gave to the Catholics of the realm, for 
the first time since 1559, the surety of a refuge where 
they might worship God according to their conscience. 

Maryland Land of Sanctuary 
Every conceivable attempt has been made by Protes-

tant historians, both here and in England, to rob the 
Charter of this meaning. But the objective fact remains 
that practically all England knew at the time exactly 
what the first Lord Baltimore's plan was, namely, a land 
of sanctuary for persecuted Catholics at home and a place 
of refuge for all others who were then suffering, espe-
cially in the American colonies, for conscience's sake. 
Few non-Catholic American writers have done justice to 
George Calvert. Bancroft 's hypocrisy is the most out-
standing example. 

The late Bishop Russell has clarified the many dis-
putes which have arisen around the Charter in his "Mary-
land, the Land of Sanctuary." Of George Calvert he 
writes: 

"He admirably illustrated in his life a combination of qualities too rarely found in great men. Having to deal with great political affairs, he was a statesman of the highest order, but at the same time he proved him-self to be a man of the most scrupulous integrity. Im-partial non-Catholic historians have vied with one another in praise of his character." 
Nowhere else in colonial America does the stark tragic 

fact of Puritan bigotry stand out so clear as in Maryland. 



GEORGE CALVERT, FIRST LORD BALTIMORE 15 
For all time, the Act of Toleration, passed by the Cath-
olics there in 1649 as a last dyke against the religious 
intolerance seeping into the Province with every welcome 
held out to Protestant dissenters from other colonies, 
will remain as America's greatest monument to the Ro-
man Catholic religion. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Who was the first Lord Baltimore? From whom was 

the charter for Maryland received? 
2. Who were first in the New World to enact and practice 

the Christian law of liberty of conscience? What does 
the Church teach about liberty of conscience as re-
gards religious belief? 

3. What has been the attitude of non-Catholic historians towards the Calverts? Give a brief outline of the life of the first Lord Baltimore? 
4. Why did Washington rebuke the soldiers of his army? 

What was the Gunpowder Plot? Who was Guy 
Fawkes? When were fireworks first used in the U. S.? 

5. Who were the Pilgrim Fathers? When did they reach 
America? How? Why did they come? Explain why 
the Maryland Charter is called an extraordinary doc-
ument. 



VIII 
Cec i l i us a n d L e o n a r d C a l v e r t 

Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, the actual 
founder of Maryland, was born about 1606. Little is 
known of his boyhood and youth, except that at the age 
of twenty-three he married Anne Arundel, the daughter 
of one of England's foremost noblemen, the Catholic Earl 
of Arundel. 

Like his father, he was a graduate of Oxford. He 
inherited all his father 's sagacity and uprightness of 
character and showed in his plans for the colonization of 
Maryland the same prudence and wisdom. The Maryland 
grant included the territory now constituting the States 
of Delaware and Maryland, the southern edge of Pennsyl-
vania, and a part of what is now West Virginia. After 
securing the Charter, Cecilius began to make arrange-
ments for planting a colony on the banks of the Chesa-
peake. Here again, owing to his careful handling of the 
preliminary details of the voyage and to the "Instruc-
tions" he wrote for the conduct of the colonists while 
aboard the "Ark" and the "Dove" as well as af ter their 
landing, Cecilius Calvert has met with unfair treatment 
from American historians who accuse him of flexibility 
in matters of religion and politics and who insinuate that 
he was indifferent to both. Again, it may be claimed with-
out danger of exaggeration that all that strata of English 
society interested in American colonization knew what 
Cecilius Calvert meant to accomplish—the establishment 
of a Land of Sanctuary for all persecuted Christians, in-
cluding those of his own faith. 

Opposition to Calvert's Charter 
The Charter, when made public in 1632, immediately 

aroused a storm of opposition from both Anglican and 
Puritan leaders. Some of these objections arose, it is 
true, from Catholic leaders as well; but once Calvert's 
policy of toleration was understood and once it became 
known that he was being aided by prominent Catholics 
like the Howards, Arundels and Blounts, as well as by the 
Jesuits, these objections were dropped. It was not so 
easy to quell the Protestant opposition to this scheme of 



CECILIUS AND LEONARD CALVERT 17 
refuge for the persecuted Catholics. Indeed, it looks as though what really saved the plan was the friendly in-fluence of a Protestant, Sir Thomas Wentworth, later Earl of Stafford. 

I t was openly said by those opposed to the Maryland 
Palatinate that it would deprive Protestants of the op-
portunity to continue their design of forcing the Catho-
lics to conform to the reformed church. To allow the 
Catholics to escape would deprive priest-hunters of their 
living and make the penal code idle legislation. Moreover, 
to allow Catholics to leave the realm would be an implicit 
acceptance of the rights of "Papists" to enjoy civic and 
religious freedom. One popular opposition was that the 
Catholic colonists of Maryland might call in the Span-
iards, who were not f a r away in the West Indies, to 
massacre all the Protestants in New England and Vir-
ginia. All this certainly proves that the preparations for 
settling the Catholic colony of Maryland were not pro-
jected in the dark; and certainly anyone who reads the 
sturdy answers of Cecilius Calvert to the objectors can 
hardly conclude that he was anything else than a noble 
representative of his illustrious father. 

Jesuits Accompany Colonists 
The number of the Maryland pioneers is disputed, but 

it is generally believed that over three hundred colonists 
had finally agreed to emigrate to Maryland. Cecilius de-
cided to send his brother Leonard Calvert as the head of 
the party and as first Governor of Maryland. George 
Calvert, another brother, accompanied Leonard, and with 
them went two assistants and counsellors, both Catholics 
—Jeremy Hawley and Thomas Cornwallis. The month 
of October, 1633, found the group ready to embark. 
Among the emigrants were two Jesuit priests, Fathers 
Andrew White and John Altham, and a Jesuit lay 
brother, Brother Gervase. The majority of the colonists 
were Catholics and it would have been quite in keeping 
with the politics of the day if Cecilius Calvert had in-
structed the Catholics to plan their form of government 
so that political power would always remain in their own 
hands. Such would have been the action—such was, in 
fact, the action—of every group of Protestant settlers 
landing on our shores. 



18 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
First Law of Religious Freedom 

But to have instructed the Catholics of his colony to 
follow this narrow minded Puritan policy was foreign to 
his liberal and far-seeing mind. This can be seen by any-
one who will take the trouble to read his celebrated "In-
structions," issued on November 13, 1633, to Leonard 
Calvert. In these he orders that everything be done "to 
preserve unity and peace amongst all the passengers on 
shipboard," and that nothing be done to give scandal or 
offense "to any of the Protestants." The Catholic emi-
grants were to be warned that they were "to be silent 
upon all occasions of discourses concerning matters of 
religion." Moreover, all Catholic services, such as Mass 
and prayers, were to be performed as privately as possi-
ble. Such was the first law of religious freedom, enacted 
for the new colony—the absence of any persecution of 
Protestants because of their religious belief and respect 
for their religious feelings. What is more important from 
our point of view is the fact that while in Maryland re-
ligious freedom was only a part of the liberty granted to 
non-Catholics, since they enjoyed a civic freedom and the 
franchise as well, in every other English settlement along 
the Atlantic at this time, the large majority of the set-
tlers were disfranchised on religious grounds. 

First Mass in Maryland 
On Lady Day, March 25, 1634, the colonists landed at 

St. Clement's Island and the first Mass was celebrated by 
Father Andrew White. The scene is best described in 
his own words: 

"On the day of the Annunciation of the Most Holy Virgin Mary, in the year 1634, we celebrated Mass for the first time on the Island. This had never been done before, in this part of the world. After we had com-pleted the Sacrifice, we took on our shoulders a great Cross, which we had hewn out of a tree, and advancing in order to the appointed place, with the assistance of the Governor and his associates, and the other Catho-lics, we erected a trophy to Christ the Saviour, humbly reciting, on our bended knees, the litanies of the Holy Cross with great emotion." 
Cecilius Calvert, the lord proprietary, never came to 

Maryland, and, during the first thirteen years of the 



CECILIUS AND LEONARD CALVERT 19 
colony's existence, the burden of its political administra-
tion fell upon his brother, Leonard Calvert, to whom, 
therefore, should be given in an especial degree the praise 
due the whole glorious experiment. He found himself 
from the beginning beset by two dangers: the animosity 
of the squatter, Claiborne, who had taken possession of 
Kent Island in the Chesapeake and who was being aided 
and abetted by the Puritans of Virginia; and the silent 
but ever-growing religious animosity of the Protestants 
who were being welcomed to the colony. There is no need 
to relate the incidents of the bitter struggle which ensued. 
It is the most shameful page in the history of American 
Puritanism. 

Calvert Oath of Tolerance 
Cecilius Calvert had left no loophole in his "Instruc-

tions" for the government of Maryland for the entrance 
of religious intolerance in any form. The province was 
in control of a Catholic majority until 1649, and religious 
equality was rigidly enforced during that period. With 
a view to perpetuating this basic principle of his rule, 
Cecilius Calvert prescribed in 1636, the following oath, 
to be taken by the Governor: 

"I will not, by myself or any other, directly or in-directly, trouble, or molest, or discountenance any per-son professing to believe in Jesus Christ, for, or in respect to, religion; I will make no difference of persons in conferring offices, favors or rewards, for, or in respect of, religion, but merely as they shall be found fai thful and well deserving, and endued with moral virtues and abilities; my aim shall be public unity; and if any person or officer shall molest any person profess-ing to believe in Jesus Christ, on account of his re-ligion, I will protect the person molested and punish the offender." 
In July, 1638, occurred the trial of William Lewis, a 

Catholic colonist, who attacked two of his Protestant 
servants whom he found reading an anti-Catholic book. 
Lewis was arrested, tried, and found guilty of having 
offended against the fundamental law of the province 
and was heavily fined. In 1641, another Catholic planter, 
Thomas Gerard, was fined 500 pounds of tobacco for hav-
ing interfered with Protestant services, and the sentence 
was so imposed that the fine itself should go for the 



20 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
maintenance of the first Protestant minister to arrive 
in the colony. Toleration was the accepted social and 
religious law of the Maryland Catholics and was scrupu-
lously obeyed as long as the Government of the colony 
was in Catholic hands. 

The change came in 1648. Protestants had multiplied 
in the colony and that year (Leonard Calvert died June 
9, 1647) they forced Cecilius Calvert to appoint a Protes-
tant Governor, William Stone, together with five Coun-
sellors, only two of whom were Catholics. The Governor's 
oath of office was changed in order that no Catholic would 
be discriminated against in the selection of public officers 
for the colony on account of his faith. .Evidently, the 
Catholic freemen of the province realized that they could 
not long hope to enjoy the same freedom they had given 
the Protestants during the fifteen years that had passed; 
and in order to raise a barrier to the presence of religious 
bigotry in Maryland, the Assembly of 1649 passed the 
celebrated Toleration Act in order to place upon the stat-
ute books of the province a law which would enshrine the 
practice of this first period of Maryland's history. 

The Toleration Act 
The Toleration Act is the proudest monument in the 

history of the Catholic Church in the western world. As 
a legislative confirmation of an unwritten law, the Act 
remains forever as a reminder to those of our generation 
that all back through the years to 1649, Catholics and 
the Catholic Church have ever stood for religious equality 
and that in every decade during these three centuries 
the pages of our colonial and national history have been 
blackened by the deeds of that element in Protestantism 
which apparently has never lost its animosity towards 
the Catholic faith. 

Naturally, everything that might be said against the 
Act, "the true glory of the Catholics of Maryland," has 
been said; but the result of impartial testimony has 
brought out in glorious colors the unique place the Cath-
olic freemen of the Assembly of 1649 shall ever have as 
the creators of this immortal document. The storm of 
intolerance was about to break upon them, and in the 
succeeding decade the old hatred of "Popery" was to rule 
the province; but if the Maryland experiment went down 



CECILIUS AND LEONARD CALVERT 21 
to defeat before its Puri tan assailants, it was with an 
honor that can never be taken away from the Catholic 
Church. Six years later (1654), Catholics were outlawed, 
and from that time until the Revolution, the cry "No 
Popery," which one Protestant writer has called the 
absurdest shriek of agony that ever split the air, was the 
dominant note heard in the halls of justice, in the assemb-
ly, and in the pulpits of Protestant churches. Though 
Cecilius Calvert lived until 1675, he was powerless to aid 
his fellow-Catholics in the province over which he ruled. 
Puritan bigotry had won its greatest victory in the New 
World. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Who was Cecilius Calvert? Tell what you can of his 

life. What did he plan to accomplish? What territory 
did the Maryland Grant include? 

2. Who protested Calvert's Charter? Why? How were 
Protestants treated under his rule? Were any Cath-
olic priests with the Maryland pioneers? How many? 
Of what order? 

3. What were the "Instructions" issued to Leonard Cal-
vert? Who was he? 

4. Were Protestants allowed to vote in Maryland? Were 
Catholics permitted to vote elsewhere in the colonies? 
When was the first Mass said in Maryland? By 
whom? 

5. Did Cecilius Calvert live in Maryland? Did Catholics 
retain control of the colony? What is called "the most 
shameful page in the history of American Puritan-
ism"? What was the Oath of Tolerance? Who was 
William Stone? What was the Toleration Act? 



VIII 
R o g e r W i l l i a m s 

Three of the founders of the thirteen English colonies 
deserve a place apart in the history of religious freedom 
in America—George Calvert (1580-1632), Roger Wil-
liams (1599-1683), and William Penn (1644-1718). All 
three of these colonial founders had much in common. 
As Charles Hallan McCarthy writes in his "History of 
the United States for Catholic Schools," Roger Williams, 
the founder of Rhode Island, "is to be classed with George 
and Cecil Calvert, his predecessors in the field of religious 
freedom, and with William Penn, the Quaker, his worthy 
successor in the following generation." 

All three differed in many ways, but they reached 
the decision to make religious equality a part of the 
colonial government they intended to establish upon the 
same liberal principles. Calvert went beyond Roger Wil-
liams and Penn in this—that religious freedom was the 
actual basis of his government. The credit is all the 
greater to these three pioneers, since they could not 
possibly have found in the social and political intoler-
ance in England, or in the colonies already founded, any 
support for their liberality and humaneness. 

Roger Williams Exiled From Massachusetts 
Roger Williams was born in Wales in 1599 during one 

of the most blood-thirsty decades in the reign of Eng-
land's cruel and intolerant Queen. We know what a gal-
lant stand the Welsh made all through Elizabeth's reign 
against the New Religion and how, little by little, as 
Frederick George Lee has written in his "Church Under 
Queen Elizabeth," force gradually triumphed over con-
science and the faithful Catholics were driven from 
church, convent, and monastery at the point of the sword. 

Whether Williams was the son of Catholics parents is 
uncertain. He graduated from Pembroke College, Cam-
bridge, in 1627, and took orders in the Church of Eng-
land. Shortly afterwards he became identified with the 
extreme Puritans and was one of those who sought refuge 
in the American colonies, owing to the hostility of Laud, 



ROGER WILLIAMS 23 
then Bishop of London. Williams was a thorough-going 
dissenter; and when he arrived in Boston, in February, 
in 1631, he soon incurred the wrath of its religious lead-
ers by denying the competency of the magistrates to 
interfere in certain matters of conscience. Owing to his 
gentle disposition and the spirituality of his character, 
he was invited to take the pulpit in the Salem congrega-
tion. From this vantage-ground, he lashed the State-
Church of Massachusetts for its intolerance. His radical 
view of the necessity of a complete separation of Church 
and State forced him to take refuge with the more liberal-
minded Puritans of Plymouth. Here he remained about 
two years, and in 1635, the General Court of Massachu-
setts exiled him from the Colony. To those in power the 
teaching of Williams sounded like anarchy. 

Williams Founds Town of Providence 
Roger Williams fled to Rhode Island to escape arrest ; 

and there founded the town of Providence, in 1636. His 
theology centered around the doctrine that Church and 
State were to kept apart and that the civil law had no 
authority in matters of religious belief, since each in-
dividual was free to follow the guidance of his own 
conscience. The Charter of 1644 of the "Providence Plan-
tation" is silent, however, on the question of religious 
freedom. The Great Charter of 1663 contained the cele-
brated clause—"Every person may at all times freely 
and fully enjoy his own judgment and conscience in mat-
ters of religious concernments." 

Out of these facts has grown a theory which has been 
practically accepted by all American historians that Roger 
Williams founded the first home of religious freedom not 
only in America but in the world. It is well to repeat 
some of the statements made by these writers. Hockett, 
in his "Political and Social History of the United States," 
claims that Rhode Island was "the first experiment" in 
full religious liberty. Cobb, in his "Rise of Religious 
Liberty," says that Williams, "the first among philosoph-
ers and statesmen, since the day of Constantine, to 
proclaim the complete freedom of mind and conscience 
from all civil bounds, became the founder of the first 
state in whose fundamental law that freedom was in-



24 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
corporated, not only as a charter of liberty, but as the 
actual reason and purpose of the states's existence." 
Beard's "Rise of American Civilization," probably the 
best survey of American history in English, calls Wil-
liams "a pioneer among the bold thinkers of the world in 
proclaiming religious toleration on principle rather than 
on expediency." All this is high praise. Indeed, were it 
true, it would place Roger Williams foremost of all 
Americans who have ever lived. 

Three Documents of Toleration 
No one can sincerely doubt Williams' integrity in his 

policy of complete religious freedom. No one would sin-
cerely wish to deny to him the great glory of actually 
being the first to teach and to practice such a noble doc-
trine. That honor rests upon the interpretation of three 
documents—the Compact of 1636, the Charter of 1644, 
and the Great Charter of 1663. A careful examination of 
these three papers has been made by Rev. Lucian John-
ston, of Baltimore, in his "Religious Liberty in Maryland 
and Rhode Island," and the critical analysis given in his 
pages raises several questions which have not yet been 
adequately answered by those who claim prior rights for 
Roger Williams in this regard. I t must be remembered 
that the freedom written into the Compact of 1636 is two 
years later than the founding of Maryland and nearly 
ten years a f te r George Calvert had made religious equal-
ity the basis for his government of Newfoundland, or 
Aval on. The absence of Catholics in Rhode Island leaves 
the issue in doubt, and considerable risk is run by the 
historian who claims that the Charter of 1663 actually 
opened the borders of Rhode Island to the Catholics who 
were proscribed by the laws of other American colonies 

It is undeniable that later on, about the year 1728 
Catholics were disfranchised by the Rhode Island Assem-
bly, but the historians of the State are agreed that the 
law was never acted upon. Archbishop Dowling, an au-
thority on the history of the Church in the New England 
States, says in his "History of the Diocese of Providence" 
that no test oath was ever administered in Rhode Island 
and that no questions were ever asked as to the religion 
of the candidates for franchise in the colony. 



ROGER WILLIAMS 25 
Honor Due Williams 

Without wishing to deprive Roger Williams of the 
honor and glory which are justly due to one who was so 
f a r advanced in liberality and tolerance beyond the Pro-
testant leaders of the other American colonies, the prob-
lem of how f a r religious liberty was extended to Catho-
lics remains unsettled, owing to the fact that Rhode 
Island had very few, if any, Catholic colonists whose 
presence would reduce to practice the theory on which 
Williams' .prestige has been based. 

That Rhode Island was not the first colony to practice 
religious equality needs no proof, since Lord Baltimore's 
charter of 1632 for Maryland, granting religious free-
dom, was the logical and historical development of his 
Avalon (Newfoundland) patent of 1623. Religious free-
dom was the law in Maryland a whole year before the 
banishment of Williams (1635) and for almost thir ty 
years before the Great Charter of Rhode Island of 1663. 
But as one Catholic writer says, "a comparison of Wil-
liams and Lord Baltimore is, at bottom, somewhat idle as 
at best it is a priority of only a few years. Both were 
undoubtedly great and broad-minded men, pioneers in 
the cause of religious freedom, though not its origina-
tors. A broad view will give credit to both for equal 
liberality and for having worked out the problem in the 
best way suitable to each, one as a preacher, the other 
as a practical man of business, both as founders of colo-
nies." 

Williams' Liberal-Mindedness Catholic 
What is of greater importance is the realization that 

the great and noble experiment of Roger Williams in 
creating a haven of religious freedom in the New World 
would have been utterly impossible had it not been that 
in his own unexplainable way there was not sufficient 
Puritanism in the man to carry on the blighting intoler-
ance of those whose ancestors had thrown off the liberal-
ism of Catholic teaching. The best the Protestant pio-
neer of the land brought with him, it has been said, no 
matter how unwittingly it was brought, was Catholic. 
Roger Williams' liberal-minded humaneness was as truly 
Catholic as the purest spirit of freedom in the Middle 



26 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
Ages, when the world was Catholic. I t is a consoling 
thing, says Dr. Carlton J. H. Hayes in his "Obligations to 
America", and all the more so because it is so undeniably 
true, that "turn wheresoever you will in these United 
States and study any institution or any ideal which has 
commonly been regarded as an aspect of true American-
ism, and you will discover that no matter who is imme-
diately responsible for its erection or formulation, its 
embryo and antitype are to be found in Catholic theory 
or practice. This is what I mean by insisting that Amer-
ica is a daughter of the Catholic Church." 

No group in the United States can revere more sin-
cerely the great figure of Roger Williams than those who 
belong to the Catholic Church. Protestant as he was, his 
heart was nearer the true Faith in his love for his fel-
lowman than any other non-Catholic in the colonies at 
that time. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Compare the principles held by the Calverts, Roger Williams and William Penn. In what way did Cal-vert go beyond Williams and Penn? 
2. From which colony was Williams exiled? Why? Was he a Catholic? 
3. What town did Williams found? What were his views on Church and State? 
4. Describe in your own words the Providence Charter. What was its principal provision? How were Catho-lics treated under it? Was the Charter changed? 
5. What erroneous statement is made concerning the first home of religious freedom? Discuss Maryland's and Rhode Island's claims for the honor of being tha first home of religious freedom in the world. 



VIII 
W i l l i a m P e n n 

Similar in several important respects to the Calvert foundation of Maryland was the establishment of the pro-vince of Pennsylvania by William Penn in 1681. Penn was at this time in middle life, having been born in Lon-don in 1644. The son of Admiral Sir William Penn, he was educated at Christ Church College, Oxford, where he fell under the influence of Thomas Loe and became at-tracted to the Quaker faith. His life from this time until his death can be divided into three periods: from his conversion until his departure for Pennsylvania in 1682; from that year until his departure from the colony in 1701; and from his return to England (1701) until his death in 1718. 
This third period of his life has little bearing on the 

history of religious freedom in America. The second 
period it is which has given to William Penn an excep-
tional place; as one of the most benevolent and broad-
minded men of all time. In Penn's case, the first period 
must be sharply separated from the second; for, there is 
little in his writings (and he wrote much during these 
years) to indicate that when he founded his colony, com-
plete religious freedom would be the rule. 

Persecution of the Quakers 
His co-religionists had suffered cruelly at the hands 

of the English government, in some cases as cruelly as 
the Catholics, during these years. George Fox, the ack-
nowledged founder of the Quakers, began his preaching 
in the days of the Commonwealth (1649-1660) and en-
joyed to a certain extent the protection of Cromwell; al-
though when the throne was restored to Charles II, four 
hundred coherents of the Society of Friends were in 
prison for their faith. Many of them suffered during 
Charles' reign (1660-1685) because they would not take 
the oath of supremacy. During these years, Penn had 
been expelled from Oxford on account of his refusal to 
conform to Anglican services and custom, and went 
.abrpad for a time to escape punishment. In 1664, he re-



28 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
turned to London and began the study of law. Later he 
was sent to his father 's estate near Cork, as manager, 
and there he became a Quaker. Owing to his father 's 
prominence at the Court of Charles II, every effort was 
made to have him abandon the Society, but he remained 
firm in his new-found fai th and was soon acknowledged 
as the best controversial writer and preacher among the 
Quakers. Thrown into prison on several occasions for his 
utterances, he fought steadily against the Established 
Church of England. 

In 1670, Penn's father died and among the parcels of 
the estate he inherited was a claim of sixteen thousand 
pounds against the King. After vainly trying to extract 
the debt from Charles II, Penn compromised for the 
grant of a large tract of land between Maryland and New 
York of .about 45,000 square miles, to which the King 
gave the name: Pennsylvania. The Charter, granted 
March 4, 1681, resembled that of Maryland. Penn was to 
be recognized by the Crown as the true and absolute lord 
of the domain. 

Penn's "Holy Experiment" 
He was now free to do what the Calverts had accom-

plished, in spite of the penal legislation which outlawed 
the Quakers, namely, to establish a refuge for the per-
secuted members of his faith. He already owned West 
Jersey, having purchased that territory in 1674, and 
upon securing his Charter, he was ready for what he 
called his "holy experiment." By that term he meant a 
commonwealth built upon the two principles of demo-
cratic government and liberty of conscience. This he de-
clared in the printed advertisements which he issued in 
English and German, and soon a goodly number of Eng-
lish and German colonists prepared to settle in the new-
ly-established province. 

The colony flourished from the very outset. Many 
settlers had already come to the territory and were ready 
to greet the proprietary, when the "Welcome" with Penn 
aboard landed near New Castle, Del., in September, 1682. 
The first colonial assembly of Pennsylvania met at Ches-
ter, Pa., in December, 1682, and the "Great Law" passed 
at its sessions has as its first chapter "On Religion." 
Therein it is stated that all persons "living in this Pro-



WILLIAM PENN 29 
vince. . . shall not in any case be molested or prejudiced 
for his, or her, conscientious persuasion or practice." 
This meant freedom of worship for the Catholics, who 
should come to the province from abroad or from the 
neighboring colonies. Under the "Great Law," a Catholic 
could enjoy not only religious liberty, but the franchise as 
well. "This exceptional favor," writes Cobb in his "Rise 
of Religious Liberty," was due to the sentiment of Penn, 
"who in England in his arguments and influence had 
grouped the Romanists with the Quakers, as classes from 
whom civil disabilities should be removed." 

Penn's Attitude Towards Catholics 
William Penn had not always thought kindly of Cath-

olics, and it may well be surmised that one of the reasons 
why his violent diatribes against the Catholics so gen-
erously scattered through the pages of his many pamph-
lets in the earlier part of his public career, were silenced, 
was because he was obliged in 1678 to defend himself 
before a committee of Parliament from the charge of 
being "a concealed Papist, a seminarist, a Jesuit, an emis-
sary of Rome, and in the pay of the Pope, a man dedicat-
ing his endeavors to the interest and advancement of that 
party." He was honest enough to perceive that he could 
not in justice demand liberty of conscience for his own 
co-religionists without extending that same liberty to 
Catholics; but it took some years for that realization to 
effect a change in his antagonistic attitude towards 
Catholicism. A bond of suffering, writes Kirlin in his 
"Catholicity in Philadelphia," united Catholics and Quak-
ers. "Both had felt alike the lash of persecution; both 
had been taxed unjustly for the support of a religion that 
had made itself odious. Although the Friends had felt 
the force of laws directed primarily against the Papists, 
and although Penn did not approve of all Catholic prac-
tice and certain doctrines that he thought were Catholic, 
his true charity would not permit him to except Catholics 
from his liberal laws, as they were excepted in the other 
colonies. 

Early Catholics of Pennsylvania 
There is evidence, indeed, of Catholics living in the 

province from its earliest settlement. Daniel Nestorius, 



30 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
who led the- first German colonists to what is now Ger-
mantown, had a Catholic in his party, and the record 
exists of a J. Gray, a Roman Catholic gentleman of Lon-
don, who came to Philadelphia under the name of John 
Tatham, in 1685. I t is believed that his profound knowl-
edge of the fai th and his staunch adherence to the 
Church gave to Pennsylvania its first Catholic convert, 
Lionell Brittin. Before the first decade had passed, the 
Catholics of Philadelphia and the surrounding villages 
were being attended by priests from New York and 
Maryland. In fact, it is on record that Mass was cele-
brated in Philadelphia as early as 1707. 

But the liberal attitude shown toward Catholics by 
Penn himself did not last long. After his first return to 
England in 1684, he succeeded in obtaining from James 
II the release of more than 1,200 Quakers from prison; 
and when the King issued his Declaration of Indulgence 
(April, 1687), granting liberty of conscience to all his 
subjects, the pressure which drove Catholics out of Eng-
land was removed for a time. This declaration may be 
taken as the first step in James' downfall the following 
year. When William and Mary ascended the throne, Penn 
was in peril for a time owing to his friendship for the 
last Catholic King of England and was harried by the 
English government until 1694, when his proprietary 
rights in Pennsylvania were restored to him and he was 
free to return to Philadelphia. This second journey oc-
curred in September, 1699. Two years later, he was 
obliged to return to England to protect his rights, and he 
never returned, dying on July 30, 1718. 

English Test Oath 
Meanwhile, the first Parliament of William and 

Mary's reign had passed (1689) the Toleration Act 
granting freedom of worship to all dissenters except 
Catholics. The test oath to be taken by all public officials 
was extended to the colonies and this excluded Catholics 
from the right of franchise. William Penn made a gal-
lant fight against the application of the test oath in his 
province, but it was passed by the Pennsylvania As-
sembly in 1696. In 1699-1700, he succeeded in restoring 
the liberty granted by the "Frame of Government" of 



WILLIAM PENN 31 
1682, but a peremptory order from William's successor, 
Queen Anne, in 1702, annulled the law of 1682, and 
exacted the test oath of every person in public office. 
This act remained in force until 1776. "Thus," says Cobb, 
"the Quakers went back on their record as champions for 
human freedom, and established for their chosen colony 
the principle which elsewhere they had resisted, that the 
full enjoyment of civil rights should be confined to pro-
fessors of a specified religious creed." 

During these years (1702-1776), while Catholics were 
excluded from participating in the political affairs of 
the province, to the honor of Pennsylvania it can be said 
that they enjoyed during this period a larger freedom for 
the exercise of their faith than in any other colony along 
the Atlantic coast. Penn failed, as the Calverts had failed 
to stem the tide of that intolerant attitude towards the 
ancient Faith which has always acted on the principle 
that only Christians of the Protestant churches were fit 
for public office or citizenship. 

Washington Helped Build Catholic Church 
As a result of the religious freedom granted to Cath-

olics in Pennsylvania during this period when civic rights 
were denied (1702-1776), there was a more compact 
organization of Catholic life in the Province than in 
Maryland. St. Joseph's church, in Philadelphia, was er-
ected by Father Joseph Greaton, S. J., who began his 
labors there in 1720. We have a fuller history of Cath-
olicism in Pennsylvania from this time to the Revolution 
than in any other part of the colonies. It was in Phila-
delphia that the first church for the Germans was erected, 
and it is a sign of the important change that had come 
over the colonial mind when we find President George 
Washington's name in the list of contributors to the 
erection of St. Augustine's church in 1796. 

Side by side with the Calverts and Roger Williams 
stands the sturdy, stock figure of William Penn. A fighter 
like the other pioneers of religious liberty in the colonies, 
Penn never yielded on the principle of freedom of con-
science, and he deserves to be ranked as one of the pio-
neers of America's greatest "heritage—equal justice and 
liberty to all the inhabitants of the land. 



32 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 

Study Club Outline 
1. Who was William Penn? What was his religious be-lief? In which period of his life are we principally-interested? Why? 
2. Who were the Quakers? Were they persecuted? By Whom? Why? Who was George Fox? 
3. How did William Penn obtain his Charter to Penn-sylvania? What other Charter did it resemble? In what way? What was his "holy experiment"? 
4. What was Penn's attitude towards Catholics? Dis-cuss this as a group. When was Mass first celebrated in Pennsylvania? Where? 
5. What was the English Toleration Act? How did it affect Catholics? Protestants? 



VIII 
T h o m a s D o n g a n 

Thomas Dongan, the second Earl of Limerick, was born the year of Maryland's founding (1634), at Cel-bridge, County Kildare, Ireland, and was a nephew of Grace Calvert, the daughter of Lord Baltimore, who married his uncle, Sir Robert Dongan. Thoroughly de-voted to the Stuarts, the Dongans went into exile af ter the execution of Charles I (1649), and Thomas became a colonel of one of the Irish regiments in France. He re-turned to England in 1678, and six years later was ap-pointed by James II then Duke of York, as Governor of the Province of New York. 
Few men who participated in colonial foundations in America have received such universal praise as Gover-nor Dongan. And justly so. For Dongan contributed to American history something more than another page in its annals of religious freedom. He, more than any other statesman of the colonial period, laid the foundations of American liberties. The "Catholic Encyclopedia" attrib-utes to him, as the author of the Charter of Liberties of 1683, the high honor of being the founder of the Amer-ican Constitution of a century later, because "his system of government became the programme of continuous poli-tical agitation by the colonists of New York Province during the eighteenth century. I t developed naturally into the present state government, and many of its prin-ciples passed into the framework of the Federal govern-ment." 

Distortion of History by Omission 
The Charter of 1683 is one of the outstanding papers 

in the development of political science. It enacted a demo-
cratic form of government similar to that under which 
we now live in the United States. Courts of justice were 
established. Religious liberty was guaranteed, and the 
shibboleth of Revolutionary days—no taxation without 
representation—was made the cornerstone of the policy 
of the Province. Suffrage or the right to vote was denied 
to none. In spite of the breath-taking liberality of the 



34 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
Charter, the reader will look in vain for it in such man-
uals (prepared for our colleges and universities) as that 
by the eminent historian, William Macdonald, "Select 
Charters Illustrative of American History." Dongan's 
name will not be found in one of the most pretentious of 
all histories of the United States—that by Charles Beard 
and his wife. It is silences like these that make the Cath-
olic student of American history pause. I t is difficult 
to pass them by with the charitable word: oversight. 
Indeed, the Catholic student must be on his guard at all 
times against the conscious or unconscious suppression 
of the t ruth practiced against his Faith and his Church 
by Protestant historical writers. I t is an unpleasant side 
of American scholarship, but there can be no doubt of 
this rather general betrayal of the t ruth in American 
historical literature. 

Dongan's Famous Charter 
Governor Thomas Dongan landed in Boston on August 

10, 1683, and was received with due honors by the Gov-
ernor of Massachusetts. On August 25, he arrived at 
New York City, the capital of the Province entrusted to 
his care. On October 17, 1683, he met the seventeen dele-
gates who formed the Assembly, and presented for its 
consideration the celebrated Charter of Liberties, which 
the Assembly passed and which Dongan signed on Octo-
ber 30. The religious clause of the Charter was as fol-
lows : 

"No person or persons which profess fai th in God by Jesus Christ shall at any time be anyways molested, punished, disquieted or called in question for any dif-ference in opinion or matter of religious concernment, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of the Prov-ince but that all and every person or persons may from time to time and at all times freely have and fully en-joy his or their judgments or consciences in matters of religion throughout all the province, they behaving themselves, peacefully and quietly, and not using this liberty to licentiousness nor to the civil injury or out-ward disturbance of others." 
The administration of the Province before his coming 

had become grossly corrupt, and Dongan found no easy 
task ahead of him in trying to bring order out of the 
anarchy around him—drunkenness, debauchery, swearing 



THOMAS DONGAN 35 
and blasphemy are particularly mentioned in his official 
instructions from James, Duke of York. His task was 
evidently difficult, when all knew that he was a staunch 
and zealous Catholic. The Province was almost without 
exception peopled by Dutch and • English Protestants, 
all of whom were strong believers in the dangers of 
"Popery." 

The reader interested in the moral and political con-
dition of New York will find them described in "Religion 
in New Netherland," which the Rev. Dr. Frederick J. 
Zwierlein, of Rochester Seminary, published some years 
ago. It is a sad picture, and only a man of Dongan's 
courage would have attempted the administration of the 
Province. How quickly he won the good will of the leaders 
in New York can be seen in the letters sent to the head of 
the Dutch church at Amsterdam and to James himself. 
For example, the sheriffs of the Province in an address 
to the Duke of York wrote: "We do therefore beseech 
your royal highness to accept our most humble and most 
hearty thanks for sending us over the honorable Colonel 
Thomas Dongan, to be lieutenant and governor of this 
province, of whose integrity, justice, equity and prudence 
we have already had a very sufficient experience at our 
last general Court of Assizes." 

King James' Instructions to Dongan 
The instructions given by James II to Dongan reveal 

the last of the Stuarts to ascend the throne of England 
as a statesman fa r beyond the boasted liberality of the 
times. For the first—and let us admit it honestly, the 
last—time, in the history of the colonies up to the middle 
of the nineteenth century, the people, without distinction 
of creed, class or property ownership, were given control 
of their own government. You will look in vain in all 
colonial American history for the words found in the 
preamble to the Charter of Liberties—"the people met 
in general assembly." 

Dongan was accompanied in 1683 by Father Thomas 
Harvey, S. J., as his chaplain. In 1685, Father Henry 
Harrison, S. J., arrived in New York City, and later 
Father Charles Gage, S. J., came to the Province. Al-
though the Charter expressly gave toleration to Chris-
tians only, it is historically true that the Jews were al-



36 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
lowed to erect a synagogue by the fa i r minded Governor. 
Catholics were few in the Province; but evidently there 
were enough to warrant the opening of a Latin School by 
the Jesuits. When Charles II died in 1685, Dongan's 
protector, the Duke of York, ascended the throne as 
James II and New York ceased to be a proprietary gov-
ernment and became a royal province. The Board of 
Trade and Plantations which governed the colonies vetoed 
the Charter of Liberties and James II was forced to 
accept their decision. In 1687, the King dissolved the 
New York Assembly, and the following year Dongan was 
superseded by Sir Edmund Andros, who became Gov-
ernor of the consolidated Provinces of New England and 
New York. Dongan then returned to his estate on Staten 
Island. 

Dongan Forced to Flee 
With the arrival of William, Prince of Orange, who 

married James' oldest daughter, Mary, in England, on 
November 5, 1688, the Protestant Rebellion began, and 
ended that same year. 

Governor Dongan's term of office was short, but he 
wrote into the history of political government in America 
one of its immortal pages. Religious intolerance had kept 
New York in a constant state of turmoil for nearly forty 
years before Dongan's arrival. He found the colony on 
the verge of bankruptcy and rebellion. He made it a 
haven of peace, a home of justice and refuge, for those 
persecuted elsewhere for conscience's sake. Eight months 
af ter the fanatic Leisler drove him out, the Province was 
aflame with rebellion. The subsequent history of New 
York brings out in splendid contrast the liberality of 
Dongan's scheme of government. It is not surprising 
that as we come to know him better, we realize that he 
justly deserves to be called the greatest colonial states-

m a n of the seventeenth century. 
Shameful Pages in New York History 

How different is the history of religious tolerance 
af ter Dongan's departure. The New York Assembly of 
1691 declared null and void all the liberal laws of Don-
gan's rule. The Catholic Church was outlawed and the 
"diabolical designs of the wicked and cruel Papists" were 
again proclaimed as the chief evil in the Province. In 



THOMAS DONGAN 37 
1700, an act was passed declaring that every priest re-
maining in or coming into the Province af ter November 
1st of that year, should be condemned to "perpetual im-
prisonment." In case of escape and capture, he might 
be treated as an outlaw. The following year Catholics 
were disfranchised. 

There is a shameful page in the story of New York's 
religious bigotry during the eighteenth century— the 
hanging of the unfortunate John Ury in 1741, ostensibly 
because he was alleged to have been an instigator in the 
Negro Plot, but in reality because he was believed to be 
a Catholic priest. Whether he was or not, has never been 
fully determined, although the evidence would lead one 
to believe he was not. I t is, however, quite clear from the 
printed evidence that the "holy horror of Popery" had as 
much to do with his execution as the fear of a Negro 
insurrection. Ury was arraigned as a priest, tried and 
condemned as a priest, and never formally denied his 
priesthood. 

New York might have had a glorious share in the his-
tory of high-minded religious liberality, if the Charter 
of Liberties which Colonel Dongan gave her had been 
preserved as it was. However, so ingrained was the anti-
Catholic spirit that it was only in 1806 that the New 
York legislature abolished the last of its barriers to 
Catholic freedom in that state. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Who was Thomas Dongan? Outline his claims to fame. 
2. How has Dongan been treated by historians? How would you explain such treatment? Discuss this as a group. 
3. What was the Charter of Liberties? Discuss its re-ligious clause. Compare with Maryland, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. 
4. What made Dongan's work particularly hard? Ex-plain. What peculiar privilege were the people ac-corded? 
5. Describe conditions in New York previous to Don-gan's term of office. What is called the most shameful page in New York's history? 



VIII 
C o l o n i a l A t t i t u d e T o w a r d s t h e Chu rch 

We have seen so far that out of all those whose names 
and whose fame are inseparably linked with the colonial 
history of the United States, only six men deserve to be 
held up to posterity as possessing in their own day of 
bigotry and narrow-mindedness a humane attitude to-
wards those of other faiths than their own. These men 
are the Calverts (George, Cecil, and Leonard), Roger 
Williams, Penn, and Thomas Dongan. Apart from these 
leaders, the entire weight of the colonial mind was deadly 
so fa r as liberality of religious thought and action are 
concerned. Not to understand the colonial anti-Catholic 
spirit is to bar one's way to the secret springs of many 
currents in present-day American political thought. 

From this anti-Catholic standpoint, the colonial his-
tory of the United States may be divided into two distinct 
parts: first, from the founding of all the colonies (except 
Georgia) to the year 1689; and secondly, from that date 
to the outbreak of the American Revolution. Whatever 
attempts had been made before 1689 to bring a more 
humane spirit of religious relief into the New World 
were stilled when the Glorious Revolution became a recog-
nized fact and England's last Catholic King, James II, 
was in exile in France. 

Passage of English "Toleration" Act 
I t is doubtful whether any date in American history, 

even including the year of the Declaration of Independ-
ence, is more significant than that of 1689. That year 
marks the accession to the throne of William III, "the 
idol of seventeenth century Protestantism," and Mary, his 
Queen, the Protestant daughter of James II. I t was 
England's third revolution in forty years and the new 
sovereigns realized that peace must be secured at any 
cost in order to hold their joint throne. Above all was 
religious peace necessary. To secure this, the Toleration 
Act was passed in 1689, granting to all dissenters, that 
is to every form of Protestant worship, the legal right 
at home and in the American colonies to public worship 
upon the acceptance of the oath of allegiance to the 



COLONIAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE CHÛRCH Èé 
crown. By this Act the chief cause of religious str ife at home and abroad, was removed. 

Debarred without exception from the benefit of the 
Act were all Roman Catholics. Moreover, the Act itself 
while bringing relief to many Protestant objectors to thé 
Established Church, enabled all Protestants—Anglicans 
and Nonconformists—to make common cause against the 
Catholics of the realm. To hold any office or public t rust 
under the English government the following test oath 
had to be taken: 

"I do swear that I do from my heart abhor, detest, and abjure as impious and heretical that damnable doc-trine and position that princes excommunicated or de-prived by the Pope or any authority of the See of Rome may be deposed or murdered by their subjects or any other whatsoever. And I do declare that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state or potentate hath or ought to have any power, jurisdiction, superiority, pre-emi-nence or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm. So help me God." 
With the Toleration Act as a bludgeon the way was 

open for the final extermination of Catholicism in Eng-
land and in her colonies. The reorganization of the 
American colonies carried with it certain political 
changes, the chief of which were a more direct royal 
power over the colonial Assemblies and the maintenance 
ot a more effective royal control by means of officials sent 
by the King. Out of this recast of colonial politics was 
to come eventually the self-determination which ended in 
independence. 

But there was something more. The attempts made 
by the only liberal-minded statesmen the colonies saw— 
the Calverts, Williams, Penn, and Dongan—to establish 
ireedom of conscience for all the inhabitants of the land 
were at an end. Religious coercion was henceforth the 
law in all the colonies, and with the exception of a small 
minority of Catholics in Maryland and Pennsylvania 
who succeeded in escaping persecution on account of 
their social and financial position or on account of the 
quietness of their lives, one law ruled the American col-
onies—No "Papists" would be allowed civic or religious 
rights of any kind and every means would be permitted 
to the provincial legislatures to outlaw their presence 



40 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
"No Popery," Protestant Rallying Cry 

From 1689 until the outbreak of the American Revo-
lution, the rallying cry of colonial Protestantism was "No 
Popery." In 1690, the number of Americans was about 
220,000. They were living mostly in a narrow strip of 
land along the Atlantic from Maine to the Carolinas. 
On the eve of the American Revolution (1760) the total 
population had increased to 1,500,000. During these years 
(1689-1763), the American colonies were thrown into 
the maelstrom of European rivalries and wars; and while 
the question at stake was-international control, religious 
causes were prominent in the four intercolonial wars— 
King William's War (1689-1697), Queen Anne's War 
(1702-1713), King George's War (1744-1748), and the 
French and Indian War (1754-1763). 

In the first three of these conflicts England was at 
war with Catholic nations, France and Spain. The proxi-
mity of the French in Canada and Louisiana was used 
by colonial legislatures to offset any alliance between the 
scattered Catholics, and some curious, if not amusing, 
laws were passed to keep them from helping their French 
and Indian coreligionists. 

Penal Legislation Against Catholics 
The first result of the reconstruction of colonial gov-

ernment under William and Mary (1689-1702) and Anne 
(1702-1714) was the re-enactment of the penal legisla-
tion against Catholics. Effectively confined to the locali-
ties in England in which they were living, they could 
not emigrate freely to the colonies, and those who came 
found the same restrictions here. The test oath debarred 
them from all civic office. Priests were not permitted in 
the colonies and if they succeeded in entering the prov-
inces they were expelled. A second entry in some cases 
meant imprisonment and death. One of the most curious 
pieces of legislation is the action of the General Court 
of Massachusetts, about ten years before the accession of 
William and Mary, in making the observance of Christ-
mas a punishable offense, because it savored of "Popery." 
The legal enactments against Catholics af ter 1689 were 
all the more strongly worded, because Protestants in 
England and in the colonies had not yet recovered from 



COLONIAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE CHÛRCH Èé 
their horror of the proclamation of 1687, in which James II gave freedom to Catholics. 

Where the colonial legislation shows no enactments 
against Catholics between 1689 and 1754, it is because 
there were no Catholics in that particular province and 
therefore no cause for alarm over their presence. The 
Stuart uprising in 1715 and the Highland Rebellion of 
1754 found echoes in the colonies and careful watch was 
placed upon all known Catholics for fear of possible 
Jacobite sympathies. When Charles, the third Lord Bal-
timore, died in England in 1715, his son, the fourth 
Maryland Palatine, found no other way open to secure 
possession of his province except formal apostasy, and 
this he agreed to that same year. "A degenerate scion 
ot a noble Roman Catholic house," Cobb calls him. Since 
the argest number of Catholics (and few they were when 
totalled up) in the colonies was in Maryland, the Mary-
land Assembly, therefore, presents the anti-Catholic col-
onial mind clearer than those of the other provinces 
where the doughty Protestant legislators were either 
playing crude politics or fighting imaginary shadows in 
their succession of "Acts to prevent the growth of 
Popery." 

Acts Against Catholics 
Maryland passed such as Act in 1704, in order to out-

law the presence of any priest or bishop in the province, 
l h e only freedom allowed to the Catholics was that of 
having religious services within the home of a "private 
family of the Romish communion." In 1715, it was en-
acted that children of a Protestant father and Catholic 
mother, in case the father died, could be taken legally 
from the mother and brought up by Protestant relations. 
An act of 1718 forbade Catholics to vote at the polls 
unless they adjured their faith. The peak of all this irk-
some penal legislation came in 1756 when a law was 
passed "for disarming Papists." All Catholics were re-
quired to give up whatever arms and ammunition they 
possessed, because "Papists" were considered potential 
enemies during the French and Indian War. A similar 
law was passed in Pennsylvania and Virginia. There can.be no surprise, therefore, that Catholics did not come in large numbers to the American colonies 



42 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 
during these Protestant years (1689-1763). The surprise 
is that in spite of so much penal legislation, American 
Catholics were able to keep the Faith. Classed as unfit 
to take part in the political aifairs of the colonies, they 
were thereby placed in the same civic scale with the 
Negro slaves. "Of all the religious legislation m the 
colonies," writes Cobb, "nothing was more absurd than 
that against Roman Catholics. One would suppose that 
the Roman Church was a constant and threatening foe to 
colonial institutions. The fact was f a r otherwise." 

Cobb's Comments on Injustice to Catholics 
When the Revolution occurred, there were not more 

than fifteen thousand Catholics in all the American co-
lonies. Bishop Carroll estimated the total number of 
Catholics in 1784 as about twenty-five thousand. And 
standing out like a baleful fire in the midst of Protestant 
intolerance towards those of the ancient Church is the 
monstrous ingratitude of the Protestants of Maryland. 
Cobb, in his "Rise of Religious Liberty in America, 
brushes all this anti-Catholic legislation aside with a 
condescending gesture. To his mind, and his volume 
shows how carefully he holds to the principle that Cathol-
icism can only exist in a "Protestant" land, like America, 
by the large-minded sufferance of those who are opposed 
to the Catholic Faith, the colonial penal legislation was 
chiefly sound and fury. Refusing to recognize the dead-
ening effect socially and morally of the weight of these 
penal laws, he says that the Roman Catholics "suffered 
no great hardships and no personal persecutions." I t is 
interesting to note that he passes over in silence the case 
of John Ury, who was hanged in New York in 1741, be-
cause the jury believed he was a Catholic priest. 

I t only clouds the issue when it is said that "with all 
the loud professions of Protestant zeal on the part of 
the leaders, there was too much love of liberty m the 
land to countenance severity." Against this statement 
stands the fact that the oppressive anti-Catholic laws 
were never repealed by the colonial legislatures. The next 
ten years (1763-1774) were to witness an anti-Catholic 
agitation in the colonies that was the logical result of a 
century of Protestant bigotry. 



COLONIAL ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE CHÛRCH Èé 

Study Club Outline 
How many men of colonial days deserve to be remem-bered for their religious tolerance? Name them * rom an anti-Catholic standpoint, how may our colo-nial history be divided? 

Why is 1689 so important in our history? What were 
conditions in England in that year? How did thev 
aitect America? Why was peace so necessary? What 
this W a S t t 0 S e c u r e r e l i S i o u s peace? Discuss 
What was the oath of allegiance? Did it affect Cath-olics? If so, how? What was the test oath? Discuss. 
Have one of your number discuss the "Protestant Rallying Cry". 

Have another member discuss anti-Catholic legisla-tion. A son of what prominent Catholic family is here mentioned? Why? 



VIII 
Eve o f t h e A m e r i c a n R e v o l u t i o n 

It might be held that the highest level of Protestant 
colonial intolerance apparently had been reached during 
the French and Indian War (1754-1763) with the "Act 
for disarming the Papists," were it not for the fact that 
the following year (1755) witnessed a cruelty unparal-
leled in the history of any Christian country. This was 
the dispersion of the Acadian Catholics from Nova Sco-
tia. The principal actor in this disgraceful scene was 
General John Winslow of Plymouth, Mass. 

For a century before Nova Scotia was ceded to Great 
Britain (1713), these pious and industrious French co-
lonists had built for themselves and their descendants 
quiet, peaceful villages. They were attached to France 
and were loyal children of the Catholic Church. After 
1713, they accepted English rule and held aloof from all 
the French and Indian forays along the New England 
border. Hence they were known as "French Neutrals." 
They had no part in the French and Indian War, but 
their lovely valleys and expansive bays were the object 
of envy to the New Englanders who began to flock there 
in great numbers af ter 1713. Ordered to take the oath 
of allegiance to Great Britain—an oath which implicity 
meant the denial of their Faith—they refused. 

Outrageous Treatment of AcacLians 
There is little use in retelling the story of duplicity 

and of disgraceful trickery practised by the Americans in 
robbing the Catholic Acadians of their land. Winslow's 
act of September 5, 1755, in driving 2,000 of these poor 
people at the point of the bayonet aboard British vessels 
has covered his name with an infamy which has never 
been lightened. Husbands were separated from their 
wives and children. Children never saw their parents 
again. The ships that carried them to the American co-
lonies left groups at many a port and the little bands soon 
found that they were in the midst of a hostile folk whose 
hatred for their Faith and their race dried up the springs 
of charity. Almost alone, the Quakers of Philadelphia. 



EVE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 45 
the Catholics of Maryland, and the Huguenots of South Carolina treated them with kindness. 

No effort has been left undone to paint these horrible 
scenes in a light favorable to the Americans and English 
who were responsible, but nothing can blot out the fact 
that it was because the Aeadians were "Popish Recus-
ants," that they were made to suffer untold tortures 
The newspapers of the day contain formal protests 
against the presence of these "Papists" in the provinces 
It was stark tragedy, born of anti-Catholic hate, but it 
did not prevent Governor Morris of Pennsylvania from 
calling these wretched exiles "Scorpions in the bowels of 
the country." Within the next four years, Louisburg and 
Quebec fell and Canada was at last, a f te r a century of 
wars in all of which this purpose was a salient factor, an 
English possession. 

When peace came formally in 1763, the Treaty of 
P a n s contained the following clause: "His Britannic 
Majesty, on his side, agrees to grant the liberty of the 
Catholic religion to the inhabitants of Canada: he will 
consequently give the most precise and most effectual 
orders, that his new Roman Catholic subjects may pro-
fess the worship of their religion, according to the rites 
of the Romish church, as f a r as the laws of Great Britain 
permit." On October 7, 1763, a royal proclamation was 
issued defining the boundaries of the newly acquired ter 
ntories. The English colonies in North America were 
divided into four sections: Quebec, the southern bound-
ary of which became the northern limit of New York and 
New England; East Florida; West Florida; and the In-
dian Country that is, all that territory lying west of the 
Appalachian Mountains to the borders of the Mississippi. 

Frenzied Agitation Against Catholics 
We do not need to review the debates which followed 

when the religious freedom of the Treaty of Paris of 
1763 came before Parliament. The Quebec Act, as it is 
called, finally became a law in 1774. These eleven years 
saw an anti-Catholic agitation in the American colonies 
which rose almost to a frenzy. "No Popery" became 
the^ watchword, and in thousands of sermons from Pro-
testant pulpits, the titles of which may be seen in Evans' 

Chronological Dictionary of Pamphlets," the "drum 



46 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
ecclesiastic" was beaten as never before in England or 
America. The popular viewpoint was that King George 
III, by assenting to the Quebec Act, that is, by granting 
freedom of worship to the Catholics in the conquered ter-
ritory of Canada, had thereby become a traitor to the 
coronation oath and was secretly a "Papist." Even so 
enlightened a statesman as Alexander Hamilton said that 
if Parliament had been "friends to the Protestant cause, 
they would never have provided such a nursery for its 
great enemy. They would never have given such encour-
agement to Popery. They may as well establish Popery 
in New York and the other colonies as they did in Can-
ada. Your lives, your property, your religion, are all at 
stake." 

On September 6, 1774, the famous Suffold County 
Resolutions were passed, and the tenth of these urged 
the Americans "to take all possible measures" for their 
security against this new freedom granted to the Catho-
lics of Canada. The day previous, the First Continental 
Congress met at Philadelphia, with representatives of 
twelve of the colonies present. The "Declarations and 
Resolves," passed on October 14,1774, contained a resolu-
tion against freedom of conscience being granted to the 
Canadians. On October 21, Congress sent an Address 
to the People of Great Britain, protesting against the 
action of the British Parliament in establishing in Can-
ada "a religion that has deluged your island in blood, 
and disbursed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and 
rebellion through every part of the- world." On October 
26, a Petition to King George III was passed with a 
similar protest in stronger language. 

Strange Conduct of Congress 
These two state papers we can understand. They are 

symptomatic of the frenzied fear which the "Popery" 
bogey always creates in the Puritan mind. But what is 
difficult to characterize is a letter sent that same day 
(October 26) by Congress to the Canadians, urging them 
to join the Americans in the war for independence which 
they saw was inevitable. In this letter Congress says: 
"We are too well acquainted with the liberality of senti-
ment distinguishing your nation to imagine that differ-
ence of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity 



EVE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 47 
with us." Intolerance, the Congressional Committee wrote, was a lowminded infirmity. 

Few among the better-known writers in the field of 
American history touch the religious issue of the War 
of Independence. The noted English historian, Cardinal 
Gasquet, published some years ago in the London "Tab-
let" several articles under the title—"The Price of Cath-
olic Freedom in Canada." He declares that England 
by keeping her word with France lost the Ameripan 
colonies. The leading American historian of the Revolu-
tion, Van Tyne, holds that the well-known economic 
causes given in our textbooks for the Revolution are not 
sufficient to explain the bitterness of the struggle, and he 
rates as principal causes religious bigotry, sectarian anti-
pathy, and the influence of the Calvinist clergy. 

The Cardinal's words merit repetition: "The Amer-
ican Revolution was not a movement for civil and religi-
ous liberty; its principal cause was the bigotry rage of 
the American Puritan and Presbyterian ministers at the 
concession of full religious liberty and equality to Catho-
lics of French Canada. The Taxation Acts were only a 
minor cause, or rather occasion, and the dispute could 
have been settled by Constitutional agitation without 
secession but for Puritan firebrands and the bigotry of 
the people." 

The Shadow of the Past 
The national inclination of all Americans regardless 

of creedal differences is to forget these-unhappy years 
of colonial anti-Catholicism. Indeed, many Catholics are 
opposed to recalling incidents which describe the priva-
tions and sufferings endured by their devoted forebears 
during that long eighteenth century of proscription. But 
there is no surer or more direct way to know America 
than to make one's self familiar with the evolution of 
religious equality up from these darkened years before 
the Revolution to the full light of America's Constitu-
tional guarantees. The shadow of the past is still upon 
the land and the intolerance of that past cannot with 
safety be ignored by those whose hearts are concerned 
about America's future. When millions of our fellow-
citizens believe that the two terms—Americanism and 
Protestantism—are interchangeable and equal, then we 



48 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
cannot refuse to learn the lessons to be gained from a 
recapitulation of the wrongs inflicted on Catholics in the 
name of Protestantism in this land. Men do not gather 
grapes of thorns nor figs of thistles. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Who was John Winslow? Discuss him. What is im-portant to Catholics about the year 1755? Who were the Acadian Catholics? 
2. Who were the Huguenots? They and who else be-

friended the Acadians? 
3. How did England gain possession of Canada? Who 

was Governor Morris? 
4. What was the Treaty of Paris? How did it affect Catholic Canadians? Were they given religious free-dom? How did Alexander Hamilton view the treaty? 
5. What was the first Continental Congress? When was it held? How many colonies were represented? Have one of your number discuss this Congress. Let the group join in. 



XVII 
C a t h o l i c i s m a n d D e m o c r a c y 

Almost four score years have passed since the white-
robed figure of one of the greatest of modern Dominicans, 
Henry Dominic Lacordaire, arose in the French Academy 
to deliver his inaugural address before that body of Im-
mortals. It was customary then, as it is now, for each 
newly-elected member to extol the virtues of his" dead 
predecessor; and seldom had anyone a panegyrist of such 
supreme skill as de Tocqueville had in Lacordaire, the 
foremost pulpit orator of the nineteenth century. 

Charles-Alexis de Tocqueville, the eminent political writer and statesman, died in 1859, at the early age of fifty-four, af ter having won undying fame by his great classic "Democracy in America," which he published in 1840. In January, 1861, Lacordaire, then at the height of his powers and within the shadow of his untimely death, was elected as his successor in the French Acad-emy. 
The American Civil War was then visible on the political horizon and it is not surprising that the burden of Lacordaire's famous discourse should be about Amer-ica. No man of his times foresaw with more striking accurateness of vision the future greatness of the Catho-lic Church in the United States and the inevitable disin-tegration of Protestantism than de Tocqueville. His pro-found appreciation of the political institutions of our country was universally regarded in his own day as the clearest and most impartial judgment ever made upon the American Republic. 

New Experience for De Tocqueville 
"I t was impossible for de Tocqueville to touch the' soil of America," Lacordaire said, "without being as-tonished by this new world, so different from that where he was born. Everywhere else in the old world where he visited, whether in England, Russia, China' or Japan, he came face to face with a situation, he knew already—that of peoples governed by rulers. * or the first time he saw a flourishing nation, peaceful industrious, rich, powerful, respected abroad, spread-



50 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
ing day by day into vast solitudes the tranquil stream of its population, and nevertheless having no master but itself, submitting to no distinction of birth, elect-ing its own magistrates of every degree of the civil and political hierarchy, free as the Indians who preceded them, as civilized as the best peoples of Europe, re-ligious without giving to any sect exclusive or prepond-erating rights, and presenting to an admiring world the living drama of the most absolute liberty in an equality the most entire." 

Few descriptions of contemporary American institu-
tions contain so many vital t ruths as this. De Tocque-
ville's admiration for America was not, however, without 
its restrictions. He did not believe that the political and 
religious systems which we had achieved were equally 
applicable to all peoples. In the very midst of his eloquent 
praise of America he feared not to lash the horrors of 
slavery which were then quite apparent in the land. 

But when he compared our institutions with those in 
Europe and visualized the future of humanity, he saw 
the United States as the leader of that world democracy 
which has written its latest chapter on the bloodiest bat-
tlefields of all time. The future always held, as he said, a 
sort of religious terror for him, and the only hope 
he saw was in the fact that the democracy which gov-
erned American communities appeared to be rapidly ris-
ing into power in Europe. In one of the strongest para-
graphs of his volume he writes: 

"The first duty which is at this time imposed upon those who direct our affairs is to educate our democ-racy; to warm its faith, if that be possible, to purify its morals; to direct its energies; to substitute a knowl-edge of business for its inexperience, and an acquaint-ance with its t rue interests for its blind propensities; to adapt its government to time and place, and to mo-dify it in compliance with the circumstances and the actors of the age. A new science of politics is indis-pensable to a world entirely new." 
American Democracy's Basic Elements 

The new science de Tocqueville saw in the spirit be-
hind the successful organization of the American Repub-
lic, and his volume "Democracy in America" was, and is 
still, the textbook for the nations of the world. What 



CATHOLICISM AND DEMOCRACY 51 
were the essential elements of that spirit, what were the 
principles of democracy, what were the granite rocks, as 
Lacordaire said, upon which the truest democracy might 
be built? The answer to these questions de Tocqueville 
saw in an analysis of the American spirit. That analysis 
gave four basic elements: 

1. The American spirit is religious. 
2. It has innate respect for law and order. 
3. It cherishes liberty as intensely as it cherishes 

equality. 4. It places the foundation of political liberty in civil 
liberty. 

In placing religion first in this category, de Tocque-
ville was influenced not only by his own belief in the 
necessity of a religious basis to all political institutions, 
but also by the powerful factor religion had been in the 
foundation and conservation of the American Republic. 
It was this affinity between religion and politics which 
became consecrate at the time the American colonies were 
founded, and which has been the safeguard of American 
democracy ever since. De Tocqueville says : 

"The greatest part of British America was peopled by men who, a f te r having shaken off the authority of the pope, acknowledged no other religious supremacy; they brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity which I cannot better describe, than by styling it a democratic and republican religion. This contributed powerfully to the establishment of a dem-ocracy and a republic; and from the earliest settlement of the emigrants, politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved. Almost fifty years ago, Ireland began to pour a Catholic population into the United States; on the other hand, the Catholics of America made proselytes, and at the present mo-ment more than a million of Christians, professing the truths of the Church of Rome, are to be met within the Union. These Catholics are fai thful to the observances of their religion; they are fervent and zealous in the support and belief of their doctrines. Nevertheless they constitute the most republican and the most demo-cratic class of citizens which exists in the United States; and although this fact may surprise the ob-server at first, the cause by which it is occasioned may easily be discovered upon reflection." 



52 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
Catholicism Favorable to Democracy 

I t is now almost a century since de Tocqueville visited 
the United States, and his tribute to the Catholicism of 
that day is indeed one worthy of being cherished always; 
but the illustrious author saw even more profoundly 
into the place Catholicism was to hold in the land, if 
democracy was to endure. 

"I think," he writes, "that the Catholic religion has erroneously been looked upon as the natural enemy of democracy. Among the various sects of Christians, Catholicism seems to me, on the contrary, to be one of those which are most favorable to the equality ol conditions. In the Catholic Church, the religious com-munity is composed of only two elements: the priest and the people. The priest alone rises above the rank of his flock, and all below him are equal. On doctrinal points the Catholic fai th places all human capacities upon the same level; it subjects the wise and the ig-norant, the man of genius and the vulgar crowd, to the details of.the same creed; it imposes the same observ-ances upon the rich and the needy; it inflicts the same austerites upon the strong and the weak; it listens to no compromises with mortal man, but reducing all the human race to the same standard, it confounds all the distinctions of society at the foot of the same altar even as they are confounded in the sight ol God. i t Catholicism pre-disposes the fai thful to obedience it certainly does not prepare them for inequality; but the contrary may be said of Protestantism, which generally tends to make men independent, more than to render equal. No sooner is the priesthood entirely separated from the Government, as is the case in the United States, than it is found that no class of men are more naturally disposed than the Catholics to transfuse the doctrine of the equality of conditions into the political world . . The Catholic clergy of the United States has never attempted to oppose this political tendency; but it seeks rather to justify its results. 
"The priests in America have divided the intellect-ual world into two parts; in the one they place the doc-trines of revealed religion, which command their assent; in the other they leave those truths, which they believe to have been freely left open, to the researches of political inquiry. Thus the Catholics of the United 



CATHOLICISM AND DEMOCRACY 53 
States are at the same time the most fai thful believers and the most zealous citizens." 

This is a tribute to the Catholic fai th which should 
encourage every heart that loves America. Catholicism— 
with its doctrines, its religious life, its profound idea of 
authority, its attitude of reverence towards those who 
exercise that authority, and with its spirit of obedience 
to the laws of the land; Catholicism—with its heroic 
American past, with Columbus and Las Casas, Cham-
plain, La Salle, and Marquette, Calvert, England, Hughes 
and Gibbons, and its long honor roll of great names who 
have given of their best for the foundation and the pres-
ervation of America; Catholicism—with its unbounded 
response at all times, both in peace and in war, when the 
country calls upon its citizens for aid; Catholicism, in 
fine, with its unbroken and unbreakable doctrine of allegi-
ance to the law of the land, has been America's one con-
stant and fai thful element down the aisle of the years 
that have elapsed since Freedom's day in 1776. 

Washington's Hope Not Yet Fulfilled 
Washington told us a century previously that he hoped 

our fellow citizens would never forget the patriotic part 
men and women of our fai th took in the accomplishment 
of the Revolution and in the establishment of our govern-
ment or the important assistance which was received 
"from a nation in which the Roman Catholic fai th is pro-
fessed." There are many within the fold of the Church 
who feel that Washington's hopes have never been gen-
erously fulfilled. 

They see the blackened ruins of convents and churches 
burnt by fanatic anti-Catholic mobs; they see news-
papers filled with diatribes and lies against the Faith, 
going to millions of homes in the United States; they 
realize that a process of anti-Catholic selection is always 
at work in the professions and in public places of t rus t ; 
they are disheartened by the ever recurrent anti-Catholic 
campaigning which shames so many of our State and 
Federal elections—but in spite of all this, in spite of the 
inevitable conclusion that many of those outside the Faith 
in America have not yet reached the height of the Amer-
ican ideal of religious equality and freedom, Catholics 



54 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
must always remember that the better elements of our 
people voice in more ways than one the belief of de Toc-
queville that "the Catholics of the United States are at 
the same time the most fai thful believers and the most 
zealous citizens." 

That heritage has been won for us by the devotion and 
piety of our Catholic ancestors in this country, and it 
is our duty, not only as loyal children of the Church, but 
more especially as loyal Americans, to keep the spirit of 
our Catholicism pure and undefiled from the irreligious 
and consequently undemocratic spirit of the sects around 
us. Catholicism in its dogmatic and in its moral teach-
ing is the surest bulwark America possesses against the 
disintegration of the nation's ideals and against the col-
lapse of America's prestige in the world as humanity's 
kindliest and tenderest mother—the home of equality, 
of liberty and of fraternal charity. 

Democracy's Debt to the Church 
A,striking thing it is, to notice with what compla-

cency in volume af ter volume on American political ideals, 
the false principle is enunciated that democracy is the 
"creative expression" of Protestantism. The most recent 
descant on this threadworn record is that a nation needs 
but to apply democracy to its system of government and 
immediately "all the f ru i t s of the Reformation will be 
realized, even in a Catholic community." Nothing could 
be far ther from the t ru th ; nothing more misleading to 
the impartial mind seeking for the real origins of 
democratic government. American Catholics are not 
blameless in the face of the persistency of this falsehood, 
for it is due in large measure to their lack of interest in 
the Catholic origins of democracy that those outside the 
Church are not halted in the thoroughly hackneyed and 
untenable theory of an essential identity between Pro-
testantism and democratic equality. A single reading of 
the volume "The State and the Church" by Fathers John 
A. Ryan and Moorhouse F. X. Millar, S. J., will reveal 
to all who are sincerely interested in this fundamental 
question of American history the extent of all that the 
United States owes to the Catholic Faith. 



CATHOLICISM AND DEMOCRACY 55 

Study Club Outline 
Who was Henry Dominic Lacordaire? Who was Charles-Alexis de Tocqueville? What did the latter rmd in America which astonished him? 
What were the four basic elements in de Tocqueville's analysis of Democracy in America? Discuss them. 
Whom did de Tocqueville consider "the most repub-lican and the most democratic" class of citizens in the U. S.? Why? 
Why is Catholicism favorable to Democracy' Why is Democracy favorable to Catholicism? Discuss this as a group. 
What was Washington's hope for religion in the U S.? Has it been fulfilled? Why is Catholicism the country s strongest bulwark? Discuss from what you have read so f a r and your own knowledge "Dem-ocracy's Debt to the Church." 



X! 
D e c l a r a t i o n o f I n d e p e n d e n c e 

Of all the challenges that may be given to those who 
fail to understand the "Catholic Question" in the United 
States, none can be made with such security as this: 
Catholic doctrine and practice alone possess the real 
origin of those political principles which are enunciated 
in the immortal Declaration that placed the United States 
among the free and independent nations of the world. 

It is customary to view the Declaration of Independ-
ence as the logical culmination of a long train of abuses 
and usurpations on the part of a despotic home govern-
ment which could not or would not understand colonial 
America. We have not made sufficient advance in the 
education of our citizens to expect that the colonial and 
revolutionary backgrounds to American independence are 
being adequately grasped today. Patriotic tradition and 
popular misinterpretation of the facts involved in our 
freedom prevent to a great extent the spread of a more 
accurate knowledge of these supreme facts in the nation's 
history. 

For that reason, not to stress many others, it will only 
be those whose acquaintance with our history has ad-
vanced beyond the elementary stage, who will be interest-
ed in recognizing the abrupt cleavage made by the Found-
ers of the American Republic in framing the Declaration 
of 1776 from the many acts and statutes passed by our 
colonial legislatures for the political and religious dis-
crimination of their fellow-colonists of other faiths and 
creeds. 

The Declaration of Independence has been described 
by Dr. William MacDonald, in his "Three Centuries Of 
American Democracy," as a document combining with 
rare skill and effectiveness a theory of government and a 
statement of grievances—"the theory of a free state, 
governed on a divine order of human equality, subsisting 
under forms of government sanctioned by the consent 
of the governed, operating for the maintenance of human 
rights and subject to change through revolution when the 
government ceased to serve the ends for which it had 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 57 
been created." The political philosophy which gave birth 
S J i f ^ theory of government is accredited by Dr. 
MacDonald to the writings of Rousseau and to the essen-
tia 1 f a c t i o n s of English political theory and practices. Neither of these two propositions stands up under an impartial scrutiny. 

Declaration an Abrupt Change of Policy 
S l f i H S n o + l h i n i i 8 0 c l e a r l y emphasizes their inher-ent falsity as the abrupt change from the English colo-nial narrowness of political vision as the central prin-ciples of the Declaration itself. These are the doctrine of human equality and the doctrine of the right of gov-ernment as derived from the consent of the governed No two pronouncements broke so thoroughly with the 
• S H E K M ! A C a r e f u I of the colonia charters and other organic laws of the period to 1776 in Thorpes great collection of seven volumes will reveal how closely intertwined were property and religious qual-ifications as legal restrictions on liberty. A list of the test oaths promulgated in the colonies 
H K M \ " T n y ° f t h e S t a t e Constitutions from 1776 to 1844, will show how f a r removed Puritan and Angli-
e a u a l f t v » n A W a % f f o r ? M " d i v i n e ° r d e r o f h u m a n B l K A / a ! e f u I ? t u d y o f t h e ^ n g struggle that followed the adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1787-1788, on the part of those free Americans who carried over into the new Republic the political and religious | S days, will prove to the hesitant stu-dent that the Declaration of Independence was at the time it was passed an astounding attempt to make America safe for democracy. In fact the twelve years of anarchy f a " d , Federal governments between 1776 and 1787—the least known of all the chapters in American h i s to ry -can rightly be interpreted by those seeking the actual conditions which then prevailed, as giving the lie to these two basic principles of the Declaration itself 

Ihe two principles which" constitute the very corner-
stone of the American Republic were copied into the 
preamble of the Declaration of Independence from the 
preamble of the Declaration of the Bill of Rights adopted 
by the Virginia convention on June 12, 1775 The pre-
amble of the Virginia Declaration was written by Jeffer-



68 THÉ CHÜRCH ÍN Ü. S. HISTORY 
son. It declared that all men are by nature equally f ree 
and are invested by nature with certain inalienable 
rights, among which are "the Enjoyment of Life and 
Liberty, with the means of accruing and possessing prop-
erty, and pursuing and obtaining Happiness and Safety," 
that "Power is, by God and nature, vested in, and con-
sequently derived from the People," and that "govern-
ment is, or ought to be, instituted for the common Benefit 
and Security of the People, nation, or Community." 

This preamble, as rewritten the following year by Jef-
ferson, is found in the Declaration of Independence in 
practically the same phrases: 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the con-sent of the governed." 
The problem of the historian is to ascertain with 

scrupulous exactitude the source whence Thomas Jeffer-
son drew his knowledge of these self-evident truths. 

The commonest (because the easiest) method of an-
swering this question will be seen in most of the popular 
manuals of American history in use today; namely, that 
the preamble of the Declaration came from the preamble 
to George Mason's Virginia Bill of Rights, and that this 
latter came from the English Bill of Rights of 1689. Evi-
dently the authors of these manuals never compared the 
two documents, for, the alleged English prototype of 1689 
contains in none of its parts these two foundation stones 
of American democracy. It is historically dishonest to 
make the claim that the Bill of Rights of 1689 is the 
model for the Declaration of Independence. 

Tracing Origin of Declaration's Principles 
One of the first Catholic scholars who successfully 

traced the origin of the preamble to the Virginia Bill of 
Rights and Declaration of Independence through Alger-
non Sidney, who was executed in 1683 for his democratic 
teachings, and John Locke, whose "Two Treatises on Gov-
ernment" appeared in 1689, to Suarez, Bellarmine, and 



DECLARATION OP INDEPENDENCE 59 
Persons, and to the Catholic political philosophers of the middle ages was the late Gaillard Hunt in an article he contributed shortly before his death (1921) to the "Cath Historical Review." In 1924 Dr John A H ^ L Father Moorhouse F. X. M i l l a t | | 
Church " e A n n f , 1 0 n I S V 0 l u m e : " T h e State and the Onurch. Another writer to deal with this question in a popular way is Sylvester McNamara, in h i s " 4 a n Democracy and Catholic Doctrine " American 
S c h a f f i f ^ / r T ^ ^ / V S h 0 r t e s s a ^ 1 Dr. David bchaff of the Union Theological Seminary, read before 
i L f e d - " T h n J 0 r t y - 0 f T C h U r c h H i s t o r ^ 1927, and 

' W ^ j S S T ^ generally i g n o r e d ^ 
And, it has been wiser to ignore it. For, there is a 

road W l t h t b e f o r e t h o g e w h o ¿ ^ p t Tn our late day to plead fur ther the tradition that American 
K f l H S H H & f l i Treacherous fn«S 
trace tn 1 1 1 9 I S ^ ! . s t u d e n t ™ho would endeavor to 
X u i ^ t L ^ * " 1 W r i t 6 r S t h G d ~ t i c i d e a l s 

Effect of Reformation on Democracy 
Democracy was all but annihilated by the so-called 

Reformation. Protestantism meant, for all practical pur-
E l l w d e ^ r u C t i o n of the right to life, ^ p e r t y and personal freedom; it meant the abolition of freedom of 
conscience, of speech, of the press. Its most appaHing 
consequence was the decay of education and the outlaw 
ing of charity. As McNamara has written 

It added nothing new to the sum of existing dem-ocratic thought; but, on the contrary, popular zed doe-mas productive of absolute and 
m teaching the union of Church and State and the divine right of k i n g s - t w o of the most pernicious doc! 
v Z l T l ^ T ™ ^ i n t h e m i n d o f men to d e X o y the 
political freedom of a people. Its dogma of private interpretation has been the actuating p r i n c i p l e d justification of every religious fanatic f n d p o E l an-archist who saw in himself an inspired prophet of God or the saviour of a people from political bondage Its teaching of passive obedience and denial of t h f r i g h t 



60 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
of legitimate rebellion against political tyranny, while illogical in view of its dogma of private interpretation, was the direct cause of the civil and industrial oppres-sion and exploitation of the masses. History records no greater political servility than that fostered and estab-lished by the so-called Protestant Reformation." 

Apparently, there are two lines of descent through 
the political philosophers of the past to the minds of 
Mason and Jefferson and all the Americans of their 
day who believed as they did on the question of inalien-
able rights and representative government. 

One of these lines is as old as the Catholic Faith and 
can be traced from the writings of the Fathers to the 
Scholastics and from their day on to the great Jesuit lead-
ers of political thought—Father Robert Persons, S. J., 
Blessed Robert Bellarmine, S. J., and Father Francis 
Suarez, S. J . The other line of descent begins with Hook-
er, who wrote his "Ecclesiastical Polity" in 1594, and can 
be traced through Prynne and Rutherford to Algernon 
Sidney, and to John Locke, whose "Two Treatises" were 
published in 1689. Sidney and Locke were the most 
popular political writers among the Americans, of the 
eighteenth century, and no American knew their works 
better than Jefferson. 

America's Debt to Catholicism 
The t ruth is that there are not two lines of descent. 

There is but one, and that is Catholic. Hooker gave his 
readers nothing more than he had found in Catholic writ-
ers who antedated his "Ecclesiastical Polity." Prynne, 
who publishd his "Sovereign Power of Parliament" in 
1643, admits that it is to Catholic writers he was obliged 
to go to find true democratic principles, and he was ac-
cused as a result of "plain and palpable Popery." No one 
has ever seriously claimed profound originality of 
thought for Sidney and Locke. Both copied largely from 
Medieval Catholic writers and both depend upon Bellar-
mine for their exposition of democratic government and 
the natural rights of man. 

It would take us too f a r afield here to enter into a 
detailed discussion on these points. Indeed, with Mc-
Namara's little treatise at hand it is not necessary. All 
that need be stressed for the surety of the continuance 



DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 6 1 

•sÊËmmvm 
i f l M M K f ê • W 
I ii ifT^rriMii 
W i m m M . 9 n d i n t h e Constitution of the Un S states would have never Via™ i,»™ • . u e c l 
authority in the birth of our nation ^ V 0 1 C e a n d 

Study Club Outline 

depenLyn°cUerwmîb?r » 1 D e c Î S ' o S ment" W l t h l a w s p a s s e d ^ colonial govern-^ B ^ ^ B ^ H of the Declaration of ixiuepenaence/ *rom whence were thev derived? From whom comes the right to rule? V e d ' 
• • • • H i * w . r i t i n g the Declaration of had? W h a t experience had he previously 
I f f i M l f l N H authorities whose writings in-

ence ° f t h e D e c l a r a t i o n of Independ-
5 " r i g h t s " ? N a ™ and discuss 

2. 

3. 

4. 



XVII 
Catho l i c P a r t i c i p a t i o n i n t h e R e v o l u t i o n 
High up among the so-called causes of the American 

Revolution must be placed the Puritan opposition of New 
England to the Quebec Act of 1774, granting religious 
freedom to the French Catholics of Canada. All the con-
temporary newsprints and pamphlet publications are so 
crowded with invective over the Quebec Act that Catho-
lic writers are within the strictest rules of historical 
criticism in emphasizing the predominant anti-Catholic 
sentiment of the decade which preceded American inde-
pendence. 

"No Popery" reigned then as seldom before in the 
land of future religious liberty. That such animosity ex-
isted is not surprising, for it was the logical result of a 
hundred and seventy years of abuse and misrepresenta-
tion. But what will always remain a question of great 
moment in American history is the astounding fact that 
af ter all these years—over a century and a half—of bit-
ter opposition to their presence and to their religion in 
the colonies, the Catholics leaped into the breach with 
their non-Catholic fellow-colonists, once the tocsin 
sounded for independence. 

Surely one might rightfully conclude that the dead 
weight of Puritan prejudice in the colonies when placed 
in'contrast with England's determination, as seen in the 
Quebec Bill, to do justice at last to the down-trodden 
Catholics, would have produced one leading Catholic 
Tory, one outstanding Catholic Loyalist, at the time of 
Revolution. But there was no Benedict Arnold, no Char-
les Lee, in the Catholic ranks. 

Foreign Catholic governments were too well-informed 
by their agents here not to be fully cognizant of the re-
ligious background to the Revolution; and yet, they, too, 
came to the aid of the struggling Americans at the dark-
est hour of the struggle. All the facts concerning Catho-
lic participation in the War need not be listed; for, while 
they remain up to the present time the glorious heritage 
of very Catholic American in the land and are his high-



CATHOLIC PARTICIPATION IN THE REVOLUTION 63 
est incentive to a noble patriotic love for his country, 
these facts are less interesting from the standpoint of thé 
'Catholic Question" in America than that outstanding 

phase of the Revolution—the gradual recognition by the 
Revolutionary leaders, the Assemblies, and by a part of 
the people, of the right of Catholics to complete civic and 
religious freedom. 

Father Carroll's Patriotism 
It was natural for the First Continental Congress to 

select Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and his cousin, Fath-
er John Carroll, as members of the Canadian mission 
along with Franklin and Chase. To win Canada over to 
the American cause af ter a flood of Puritan pamphlets 
had abused her people on account of their religion, was an 
impossible task; but even to have secured her neutrality 
in the approaching struggle would have been a strategic 
move of high importance. That the Canadian mission 
failed, and that Bishop Briand, who saved Canada to the 
British Empire, scorned Father John Carroll for taking 
part in a committee representing a Congress which the 
Quebec prelate believed to be inimical to Catholicism, are 
unpleasant facts in our history. 

Back of Bishop Briand's attitude toward Father Car-
roll stood Father John McKenna, who had been driven 
out of the Mohawk Valley, along with his colony of Cath-
olic Highlanders, on account of their Faith. John Car-
roll had no explanation to offer for the bigotry of the 
"Address to the People of Great Britain" and to the 
"Petition to the King," written in 1774 by a Congres-
sional committee. Still more difficult was it to explain the 
sublime hypocrisy of the "Address to the Inhabitants of 
Quebec." And we know from his letters to his mother 
before starting out on the Canadian mission, that he 
realized the futility of the long and hazardous journey to 
Quebec. But the leaders of his country asked him to per-
form this highly unpleasant task, and he went. 

By the time it became necessary to write the griev-
ances of the Americans into a Declaration of Independ-
ence from England, the founders of the future Republic 
had seen the wisdom of subduing the anti-Catholic senti-
ments which had fanned the flames of rebellion; and al-



64 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
though there is a hidden allusion to the Quebec Act in 
the final draf t of the Declaration, that cause had served 
its purpose. To have emphasized it a f te r it had accom-
plished this purpose, would have been impolitic in view of 
the assistance the colonists would need from foreign 
powers, particularly France, then the foremost Catholic 
nation of the world. The agent of the United States, 
Silas Deane, was even then in Paris trying to negotiate 
an alliance with the French Government. 

Charles Carroll's Letter Of Explanation 
Only one Catholic nam^ is signed to the immortal 

Declaration—Charles Carroll of Carrollton, then about 
forty years old, the leading Catholic in the colonies, and 
one of the wealthiest Americans of that period. Fif ty-
three years later (1829) when Carroll was ninety-two, he 
wrote to George Parke Custis, Washington's adopted son: 
"When I signed the Declaration of Independence, I had 
in view not only our independence from England, but the 
toleration of all sects professing the Christian religion 
and communicating to them all great rights. Happily, this 
wise and salutary measure has taken place for eradicat-
ing religious feuds and persecutions, and become a useful 
lesson to all governments. Reflecting, as you must, on the 
disabilities, I may truly say, of the proscription of Ro-
man Catholics in Maryland, you will not be surprised that 
I had much at heart this grand design founded on mu-
tual charity, the basis of our holy religion." 

It was Carroll's patriotism that largely influenced the 
Catholics of Maryland and Pennsylvania to give their 
whole-hearted support to a movement which needed 
every man it could count. 

Revolution Not Generally Supported 
We are not proud, for the most part, of speaking too 

openly to the boys and girls in our schools about the di-
vision of sentiment among the Americans at the outbreak 
of the War of Independence. The popular conception of 
a vast uprising of nearly 3,000,000 people to throw off 
British domination is f a r from the truth. The colonists 
were sharply divided into three groups—the Tories or 
Loyalists to the British crown, the Whigs, and the mid-
dle section of American society which looked upon the 



CATHOLIC PARTICIPATION IN THE REVOLUTION 83 
Tories with disdain and who feared the Whigs as radi-
cals, as agitators, or demagogues. 

Without being able to give the exact figures, Ameri-
can historians generally admit that almost two-thirds of 
our people not only held aloof from the Revolution but 
also took part within the land in harassing the American 
rebels. At the height of the War, there were over 200,-
000 men of military age upon whom Washington should 
have been free to call; and yet in the spring of 1777, he 
had not more than 4,000 regular soldiers at his command. 
Sabine estimates the number of American Tories enrolled 
during the Revolutionary War in English regiments op-
posing the Americans as 20,000. How many Tory fami-
lies fled the country before 1783 it is impossible to state, 
but it is certain that the number was large. 

Catholic Support of Washington 
The Catholics who co-operated in the success of the 

War of Independence were: those residing in the col-
onies; the Catholic Indians of Maine and of the old 
Northwest; Catholic Canadian volunteers in the Contin-
ental Army; France, by its alliance of 1778; and Spain, 
which also secretly aided the Americans in the loan of 
money and in keeping her colonists in Louisiana, Florida, 
and Cuba neutral while the issue was being brought to a 
climax. Many facts might be mentioned, but each of them 
would take a chapter in itself. There are dramatic mo-
ments of Catholic participation in the war for independ-
ence, and some names are particularly sacred to us: Fath-
er Peter Gibault, who assisted our forces in winning the 
Middle West; Commodore John Barry, the Father of the 
American Navy; Colonel Stephen Moylan, the Muster-
Master-General of the Army, and the brother of the Bis-
hop of Cork; Colonel John Fitzgerald, aide-de-camp and 
secretary to General Washington; Thomas FitzSimons, 
the right-hand of Robert Morris in financing the Revolu-
tion; Count Pulaski, who was killed at the siege of Sa-
vannah, in 1779; the gallant Pole, General Kosciusko; 
Commodore Grasse; Count Rochambeau; Admiral d'Es-
tang, and a host of others whose names are on the Catho-
lic role of honor of Founders of the Republic. In his "Hid-
den Phase of American History" Michael J. O'Brien has 



66 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
thrown a flood of light upon the splendid co-operation of 
Catholics in winning independence. 

The anti-Catholic spirit died out among the real pat-
riots of the Revolutionary War, but it lingered in the 
hearts of many who hated to see the colonies free and 
independent. This point is often overlooked by histor-
ians. Not all the Tories or Loyalists, that is those who 
wished to see our land remain subject to Great Britain, 
were self-exiled or driven out between 1781 and 1783. 
Many remained, silent and cautious lest their sentiments 
become known, and out of this group—each State had 
such a group—has come all down the decades the adher-
ents of anti-Catholic societies, who, under a hypocritical 
guise of patriotism, basely turn the liberty Catholics 
helped to win for them against the Catholics themselves. 

Benedict Arnold's Hatred of Catholics 
The anti-Catholicism of the Revolutionary War per-

iod has as its outstanding exponent, Benedict Arnold. 
After his treason (1780), Arnold published his "Address 
to the Inhabitants of America," justifying his dastardly 
act; and among the reasons he gives for his disloyalty to 
the American cause is the fact that he had seen "your 
mean and profligate Congress at Mass for the soul of a 
Roman Catholic in purgatory, and participating in the 
rites of a Church against whose anti-Christian corruption 
your pious ancestors would bear witness with their 
blood." 

With the war won and peace near at hand, Catholics 
could look forward with surety to the abolition of all 
legal and religious disabilities against those of their 
Faith. Some disillusionment was to follow, but the heart 
of the country was sound; and while it took another 
half-century to f ree American Catholics from all legal 
discrimination, religious and political equality came 
eventually, just at the time the Church was face to face 
with the problem of the Americanization of the Catholic 
immigrants from Europe. 



CATHOLIC PARTICIPATION IN THE REVOLUTION 67 

Study Club Outline 
1. What was one of the principal causes of the Revolu-tion? What was the Quebec Act of 1774? How did Catholics respond to the call to arms? Who were Benedict Arnold and Charles Lee? Discuss Arnold's attitude towards Catholics. 
2. What change do we see about this time in the preva-lent attitude towards Catholics? Discuss it. 
3. Who was Father John Carroll? On what important mission did he serve? Was the mission successful' Was Bishop Briand's reaction justified? 
4. Which was at this time the foremost Catholic nation in the world? What help did the Revolution obtain from it? From other Catholic nations and indi-viduals? 
5. How many Catholics signed the Declaration of Inde-pendence? Who? Was the Revolution unanimously supported? Were the people divided? How? 



XVIII 
The C o n s t i t u t i o n o f t h e U n i t e d States 

If the years of the War of Independence taught the 
rebelling colonies any one particular truth removed from 
the realm of pure politics, it was that the perpetuation 
of the colonial religious jealousies—Puritan for Angli-
can, Protestant for Catholic—would undoubtedly be a 
dangerous factor in the great work that lay ahead, name-
ly, the formation of the Union. A first plan for the 
United Government of the States was submitted by Ben-
jamin Franklin in July, 1775, but it was not until July, 
1778, that the Articles of Confederation were adopted and 
signed by the delegates of eight States. When Maryland 
signed the Articles on March 1, 1781, it may be said that 
the United States of America came at last into existence. 
Only one Catholic, so fa r as known, signed the Articles— 
Daniel Carroll. 

Religious equality is taken for granted in the Articles 
and is not mentioned except for a passing phrase linking 
it up with the possible causes of war against the "firm 
league of friendship" which the Articles created. The-
oretically, the Articles were the only binding power of 
general movement in the United States until the comple-
tion of the framing of the Constitution on September 17, 
1787. It was the Congress of the Confederation during 
this time (1778-1787) which issued the Ordinance for 
the government of the Northwest Territory (July 13, 
1787), and in this celebrated document we find for the 
first time enshrined in its first article the principle of 
religious freedom: 

"No person, demeaning himself in a peaceable and 
orderly manner, shall be molested on account of his mode 
of worship, or religious sentiments, in the said Terri-
tory." I t is in this same Ordinance that we find thè 
statement (Article III) which has brought honor to its 
f ramers : "Religion, morality and knowledge being nec-
essary to good government and the happiness of man-
kind, schools and the means of education shall forever 
be encouraged," 



THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 69 
Constitution Guards Against Religious Tests 

The Government Printing Office at Washington, D. C., 
has recently published a large volume entitled "Docu-
ments Illustrative of the Formation of the Union of the 
American States." We have, therefore, in this large 
collection of 1115 pages all the historical papers pertain-
ing to the debates which occurred in Philadelphia during 
the four summer months of 1787 when the Constitution 
was written. Reading over these historic pages, we real-
ize that complete religious liberty was never questioned 
by the delegates who were present, representatives of all 
but one of the thirteen original States. On Monday, Au-
gust 20, 1787, Charles Pinckney of South Carolina pre-
sented a number of resolutions, among them the follow-
ing: "No religious test or qualification shall ever be an-
nexed to any oath of office under the authority of the 
United States." In the discussion on this clause which 
did not come up until August 30, Pinckney moved to 
change the text to read: "No religious test shall ever be 
required as a qualification to any office or public t rust 
under the authority of the United States." It is this 
reading which was finally adopted. 

I t is interesting to note that Roger Sherman of Con-
necticut thought the clause unnecessary, owing to "the 
prevailing liberality being a sufficient security against 
such tests." The only State voting negatively on the 
clause was North Carolina. Daniel Carroll, who naturally 
voted in its favor, found himself opposed by his fellow-
delegates from Maryland, two of whom, Luther Martin 
and John Francis Mercer, refused to sign the Constitu-
tion af ter its adoption by the Constitutional convention. 

The direct application of this famous clause, which 
became part of the third section of Article six of the 
Constitution was to exclude all test oaths for federal 
office. The emphasis of the last sentence is on the word, 
federal, because in all the State Constitutions which had 
been written and adopted from 1776 to 1787, with the 
exception of Virginia, election to high office was barred 
to Catholics. 

Illiberalism of State Constitutions 
By virtue of these early State Constitutions, South 



70 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
Carolina declared the Christian Protestant Religion to be 
the established religion of that State; the Massachusetts 
Constitution permitted the taxation of Catholics and 
other non-Protestants for the support of Protestant 
teachers of religion; and in six other States—North and 
South Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, 
and Vermont—only Protestants could hold office. Dela-
ware, Maryland, Georgia, South Carolina and New York 
barred clergymen of all denominations from being elected 
to the legislature and other high offices in the common-
wealth. Rhode Island had not participated in the Consti-
tutional Convention, but so f a r as its Constitution con-
cerned religious freedom, it needed no change to enable 
Catholics to occupy places of public trust . New York ap-
plied the test oath to all its citizens. This barred Cath-
olics because the oath contained an abjuration of all 
foreign allegiance "ecclesiastical as well as civil," and 
was done for the express purpose of excluding Catholics 
from public office. New Jersey allowed only those who 
professed their belief "in the fai th of any Protestant 
Church" to hold office. Pennsylvania, Delaware and Mary-
land allowed Catholics the right to vote. 

When the Constitution came before the State Legis-
latures for consideration, the clause against the test oath 
in the sixth article aroused considerable discussion. I t 
would take us too f a r afield to describe the action of each 
of the thirteen Assemblies. In some of the State Legis-
latures it was decided that the sixth article did not go f a r 
enough in establishing religious equality. In other States, 
particularly in Massachusetts, fear, was expressed over 
such liberty being granted to Catholics. Major Lusk, a 
member of the Massachusetts Legislature, openly de-
clared that he "shuddered at the idea that the Roman 
Catholics might be introduced into office." 

Only two Catholics are Signers of the Constitution-^-
Thomas FitzSimons and Daniel Carroll. 

The Constitution was adopted by eleven States be-
tween December 7, 1787 and July 26, 1788. North Caro-
lina and Rhode Island came into the fold af ter the new 
government began its career (April 30, 1789), the former 
on November 21, 1789, the latter on May 29, 1790. The 
first Congress of the United States had as one of its first 



THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 71 
tasks the settlement of what has since been called the 
Bill of Rights, namely the acceptance of certain amend-
ments proposed by the States, at the time they adopted 
the Constitution, for the purpose of guaranteeing in-
dividual liberty. The first ten amendments were passed 
and declared to be in force December 15, 1791. 

Tolerance Provision in Bill of Rights 
It is highly significant that the very first statement 

in the American Bill of Rights reads: "Congress shall 
make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or 
prohibiting the free exercise thereof." From the outset, 
therefore, the government of the United States was de-
termined to proclaim and practice, so f a r as lay within its 
federal powers, full liberty of conscience to all the inhabi-
tants of our land, and was determined likewise that no 
restrictions, either on the franchise or on holding public 
office, should prevail against any man on account of his 
religious belief. 

Far otherwise was it with some of the States. So fa r 
as Catholics were concerned, they were free to vote and 
therefore to hold office in Rhode Island, Virginia, Penn-
sylvania, Delaware and Maryland. The franchise was 
denied them in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hamp-
shire, New York, New Jersey, North and South Carolina, 
and Georgia. The Constitutional Convention had done 
its utmost by the clearcut brevity of its attitude on religi-
ous equality throughout the land; but years were to pass 
before the eight States just enumerated were to accept 
complete religious freedom. 

The dates are well worth remembering. The first to 
enfranchise Catholics was South Carolina in its Constitu-
tion of 1790. Georgia followed in 1798. New York was 
the third State to broaden its religious liberty. Although 
the law of 1700 against "Popish priests and Jesuits" was 
repealed in 1784, the test oath, which no Catholic could 
in conscience take, was passed in 1801, and remained a 
law until 1806, when on the election of Francis Cooper, 
a Catholic, to the State Assembly, it was repealed. 

Connecticut's Established Church (Congregational) 
existed for a quarter century af ter it adopted the national 
Constitution. No State-Church was stable in the con-
flicting changes of politics and a new constitution of the 



72 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
State was drafted in 1818, in which freedom of worship 
was made the law. Delaware abolished religious tests by 
its Constitution of 1831. Puri tan bitterness died hard in 
Massachusetts, and it was only in 1833, forty-six years 
a f te r the f raming of the Constitution of the United 
States, that all religious tests for office were abolished 
and the Protestant Church disestablished from the State. 
Two years later (1835) North Carolina abolished its neg-
ative form of the test oath in order to allow that great 
Catholic, Judge William Gaston, to take his seat on the 
Supreme Bench of the State. The New Jersey Constitu-
tion of 1776 discriminated in favor of Protestants and re-
mained in force until 1844, when absolute freedom of 
worship was guaranteed by the Constitution of that year. 
The Constitution of New Hampshire of 1784 refused to 
abolish the test oath which excluded Catholics from high 
office in that State. In 1876, all religious disqualifications 
were abolished by the convention of that year, with one 
exception, namely the clause empowering towns to pro-
vide, at the expense of all citizens, Catholic and non-
Catholic, for the support of Protestant teachers of re-
ligion and morality. Various attempts have been made, 
especially in 1889, to abolish this discrimination but they 
have all ended in failure. The "Catholic Encyclopedia" 
justly says that this discrimination "still remains a blot 
on the fairest and first of all written American State 
Constitutions." 

American Spirit Tolerant 
The problem of the absence of power on the part of 

the national government to prevent State Established 
Churches, while always a grave one, is being met in other 
ways. What needs to be emphasized is that in every 
epoch of our national life there have been groups of 
malcontented individuals whose design it has been to 
bring back some of the political and religious disabilities 
which hindered the Catholic Church in colonial days from 
sharing her marvellous power for righteousness with the 
better statesmanship of the country. 

The American spirit is opposed to religious disabili-
ties of any kind, and every right-thinking citizen instinc-
tively feels that discrimination against any man for hold-
ing the highest offices in the land on account of his par-



THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 73 
ticular belief is the entering Wedge to what would 
eventually prove to be the undoing of the constitutional 
guarantees upon which the American Republic is found-
ed. The Federal government has echoed this feeling more 
than once. In establishing the Northwest Territory 
(1787) as we have seen, in the legislation for newly-
acquired lands, such as Louisiana (1803), Florida (1819), 
Texas (1848), Alaska (1867), and Porto Rico, Guam and 
the Philippines (1898), the principle of religious equality 
has been embodied in the treaties that made these terri-
tories parts of the Union. 

Study Club Outline 
1. When did the United States come into existence? What were the Articles of Confederation ? How many Catholics signed them? Who? What do they say about religion? 
2. Who was Charles Pinckney? What did he propose? How was his proposal accepted? By North Carolina? By Maryland? Were the State Constitutions favor-able to Catholics? Discuss. 
3. How many Catholics signed the Constitution? Who? Which was the last State to ra t i fy it? What is the Bill of Rights? Is it important to Catholics? Dis-cuss it. 
4. Who was Judge William Gaston? What was done to enable him to hold office? Discuss the gradual grant-ing of equality to Catholics in the several States which refused it. 
5. Have one of your group give an appreciation of thi-l l S. Constitution. Discuss the talk. 



XVII 
B i s h o p J o h n E n g l a n d 

When Bishop John England reached his episcopal See 
of Charleston at the end of December, 1820, the political 
and religious condition of the Catholics had changed 
considerably. Some of the original States preserved their 
religious test oaths for office and others held to certain 
property qualifications for the exercise of the franchise. 
Among these was one State over whose Catholics he had 
been given spiritual jurisdiction—North Carolina. 

John England was entering upon a territory where 
social and political intolerance towards Catholics was 
deeply imbedded in the life of the people; and yet, the 
very first year of his episcopate proved that there was a 
way and a manner of reaching Protestant American 
minds and hearts—and that was a thorough-going spirit 
of unity, harmony, and understanding of American patri-
otic ideals. He proved within a year that Protestant 
doors, private, public and ecclesiastical, would be opened 
to Catholic leaders whose hearts were patriotically de-
termined to give the best there was in Catholicism for 
the moral and intellectual uplift of the people, regardless 
of creed or social status. 

Protestant Pulpits Opened to Catholic Bishop 
During that first year he travelled everywhere in the 

three "Protestant States" of his diocese, and found court 
houses, public halls, and above all the pulpits of every 
Protestant denomination opened with a hearty welcome 
to the Catholic bishop. Protestant ministers vied with 
one another to secure him for their churches and often, 
to keep the good will of all, he had to remain long enough 
in these towns, where probably only a handful of his own 
people lived, to occupy all its pulpits, and he never 
preached anything but Catholic doctrine, honestly, with-
out minimizing religious differences between his own 
fai th and the audiences he faced, and with such sincerity 
of purpose that he won friends everywhere, among those 
who had never heard the Catholic religion spoken of 
except in terms of bitter prejudice. 



BISHOP JOHN ENGLAND 75 
Had the Catholic Church in the United States pos-

sessed at this time a hierarchy trained in the same mold 
as John England, and had we had, at each strategic point 
where episcopal Sees had been erected, bishops who were 
able to catch in its fulness the new nationalism which 
followed the War of 1812, it is quite possible that the era 
of anti-Catholicism which set in about 1830 might not 
have dawned. Within less than two years the enemies 
of the Church within the Fold, the turbulent trustees 
of Charleston and other cities, were forced to surrender 
to a prelate who used two weapons in the swift, short 
struggle he had with the rebels—the discipline of the 
Church and the laws of the American Republic. 

Bishop's Patriotism Won Good Will 
In founding his diocesan Seminary he stressed in no 

uncertain terms that only those young men would be ad-
vanced to the priesthood who joined to sound faith, tried 
virtue, and extensive knowledge, "an attachment to our 
republican institutions—men who could be easily assim-
ilated to the climate, and who would feel that they are, as 
it were, a part of the country itself." There was never 
any flamboyant patriotism in his speeches and sermons, 
never any narrow, chauvinistic viewpoint of America's 
future. The t ruth was that he loved this new land to 
which he had come in order to devote his energies to the 
spiritual advancement of its Catholic citizens, and loved 
it in such a way that by his very sincerity he won the 
good-will and even the co-operation of thousands outside 
the Faith. 

His Address to Congress 
Probably, the high point in his career as a bishop 

came when he stood before President John Quincy Adams 
and Congress, at its invitation, on Sunday, January 8, 
1826, to deliver a sermon two and a half hours in length. 
Here was an occasion when many a less prudent cleric 
might have taken as his subject the usual patriotic 
themes we hear at such assemblies; but those two hours 
and a half were devoted to a defense of the Catholic doc-
trine on the meaning of religion, on the duty of Tyorship-
ping God, and on the obligation of searching af ter God's 
truth. And this before a gathering of the legislators of 
the nation, practically all of whom were Protestants and 



76 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
who had been fully imbued with the popular idea of the 
incompatibility of v the Roman Catholic Faith and the re-publican institutions of America. The only reference he 
made to the growing animosity of Protestants towards 
his Church, came at the end: "In these happy and free States we stand upon the equal ground of religious r ight ; 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." 

If all of John England's writings may be summed up 
in a phrase, it is this: that America should be the land 
where all hatreds expire. 

July fourth of that year, 1826, saw the passing into 
eternity of two of the three surviving signers of the Dec-
laration of Independence—John Adams and Thomas Jef-
ferson, who died a few hours apart on the Golden Jubilee 
of American freedom. Bishop England could point out 
to the growing hosts of those who seemed bent upon de-
stroying the Catholic Church in the United States, that 
the last signer, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, then eighty-
nine years old, was a living proof of the harmony that 
existed between the doctrines of the Church and the 
ideals of the Republic. Two years later (1829), in his 
alarm over the growing intolerance in the land, Charles 
Carroll of Carrollton wrote to George Parke Custis, 
Washington's adopted son, that when he signed the Dec-
laration, he had in view not only our independence from 
England, "but the toleration of all sects professing the 
Christian religion and communicating to them all great 
rights." "God grant," he wrote that same year to a Pro-
testant minister of New York City, "that this religious 
liberty may be preserved in these States to the end of all 
time," and that charity and mutual respect should pre-
vail among all Christian sects. 

Turning Point in Protestant Attitude 
But that year (1829-30) was to be the turning-point 

in the Protestant attitude towards Catholicism; and the 



BISHOP JOHN ENGLAND 77 
reader who is interested in the history of religious 
equality in this country, should compare the "Pastoral 
Letter to the Laity" which John England wrote at the 
First Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1829, with the 
"Pastoral Letter of the Bishops of the Protestant Episco-
pal Church of the United States," issued at their General 
Convention in Philadelphia just a month previous. In the 
first, the Catholic bishops of the country imposed upon 
the fai thful the duty of charity and forbearance in the 
face of the almost nation-wide assault being made upon 
the Catholic religion. In the other, there is an insidious 
appeal to force and violence as the best "preventative 
against Popery." In January, 1830, the "Metropolitan" 
was founded by Archbishop Whitfield for the purpose of 
keeping the "Catholic Question" on a higher plane. That 
same month saw the first issue of the "Protestant" in 
New York City, and its first page contained an appeal 
to Protestants to throw off the morbid affection of charity 
towards Catholics, "if they would not sink under the in-
fluence of the papal pestilence." 

During the next twelve years, Bishop England ex-
pended every effort and used to the utmost all his own 
personal influence, which was national, to offset what he 
saw only too visibly on the horizon of American social 
and religious life—the creation of political parties to 
drive Catholics out of the land and to foment among the 
uncultured Protestant bodies a mob spirit which would 
use violence towards that end. 

What he hoped for was that the triennial meetings of 
the American Bishops at Baltimore in Provincial Councils 
would bring about a united f ront against the increase of 
an evil which could easily plunge the country into civil 
war; but in this he was disappointed. All along the years 
when unity of action was so badly needed, Bishop Eng-
land believed that one phrase summed up the Catholic 
situation—"Fighting in Detached Squads." He did not 
hold to the policy taken by his colleagues in the American 
episcopate of allowing the fai thful Catholics of their 
period to lie at the mercy of mob rule. He believed in 
charity and in the doctrine of loving one's neighbor, but 
the American in him rose in its anger more than once 
when he saw that under the guise of exterminating Cath-



78 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
olicism in the land, the intolerant Protestants who were 
abetting mob violence were striking secretly at the Amer-
ican Constitution by endeavoring to create a union of 
Church and State in this country. 

He Defines Catholic Attitude 
And it was the American in him that spoke through 

the "Pastoral Letter" of 1837, at the height of the frenzy 
of Protestant bigotry, when he wrote: 

"We owe no religious allegiance to any State in this Union, nor to its general government. No one of them claims any supremacy or dominion over us in our spiritual or ecclesiastical concerns; nor does it claim any such right or power over any of our fellow-citizens nor would we submit thereto. They and we, by our constitutional principle are free to give this ecclesiasti-cal supremacy to whom we please, or to refuse it to every one, if we so think proper; but, they and we owe civil and political allegiance to the several States in which we reside, and also to our general government. When, therefore, using our undoubted right, we ac-knowledge the spiritual and ecclesiastical supremacy of the chief bishop of our universal church, the Pope or bishop of Rome, we do not thereby forfeit our claim to the civil and political protection of the common-wealth; for, we do not detract from the allegiance to which the temporal governments are plainly entitled, and which we cheerfully give; nor do we acknowledge any civil or political supremacy or power over us in any foreign potentate or power, though that potentate might be the chief pastor of our church." 
Study Club Outline 

1. Have one of your group outline the career of Bishop England." Discuss his ability to win an audience, his patriotism and good will. 2. What was unique about Bishop England's address to Congress ? 3. What phrase sums up all of Bishop England's writ-ings? 4. What two signers of the Declaration of Independence died on the same day? Who then remained the sole survivor of the signers? 5. What may be called the turning point in the Protes-tant attitude towards Catholicism? Discuss. Define the Catholic teaching on allegiance to Church and State. 



XVII 
A n t i - C a t h o l i c L i t e r a t u r e 

No two facts are more outstanding in what is now 
known as the period of Jacksonian Democracy (1829-
1841) than the advent of the "common man" in party 
politics and the sudden rise and growth of scurrilous lit-
erature against the Catholic Faith. By the time the 
American Protestant Association was organized in New 
York (18&0), the Protestant press had so swollen the 
"Catholic Question" out of proportion that it would be 
difficult to describe the revivals that had occurred in 
Protestant denominational churches without centering 
them around the inherent fear of the Catholic Church 
which somehow the descendants of the Puritans had not 
been able to overcome. The very elements in the social 
and intellectual life of the United States which should 
have lowered the barriers of intolerance—the spread of 
democratic ideas, a more widely diffused knowledge of 
Catholic life, as lived by the thousands of immigrants 
who flocked to our country, the growth of industrial life, 
of business and of commerce, in all three of which there 
was little if any spur to mark off creed from creed— 
these factors apparently failed to produce a better feel-
ing among the younger and more vigorous-minded 
Americans of the day. 

Out of the same Middle West whence had come the 
hosts which had sent John Quincy Adams and his New 
England Puritan backing down to defeat in 1828, and 
had forced into the Presidency the "Man of the People," 
Andrew Jackson, came a goodly group of religious leaders 
who meant to save the East from another kind of cor-
ruption—"Romanism." It was an idle fancy of the edi-
tors of our Catholic newspapers to hope that the points 
of controversy on the "Catholic Question", would keep to 
the high, dignified, and intelligent plane of pure contro-
versy. There had been controversies where the evident 
purpose on both sides was to clarify the question at issue. 

Carroll-Wharton Controversy 
Nothing nobler in the English language exists than 



80 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
the controversy which occurred in 1784 between our first 
bishop, John Carroll, and his apostate cousin, the former 
Jesuit, Charles Wharton. The subjects discussed were in-
fallibility, transubstantiation, and the problem of salva-
tion outside the Catholic Church. Carroll's "Address to 
the Roman Catholics of the United States" is by f a r the 
most brilliant controversial tract of its day. The con-
troversy between the noted Boston convert, Father John 
Thayer, and the Rev. George Leslie, a Congregationalist 
minister, in 1793, again centered around the question of 
infallibility, and both opponents displayed an uncommon 
erudition and ability of presentation. A controversy in 
1819, between Father Leonard Edelen, S. J., and the Rev. 
John Brady, of the Episcopal Church, was on the 
;Church's attitude towards the Bible. During the next 
decade and a half (1820-1836), the Catholic newspapers 
were practically all engaged in controversy with local 
Protestant ministers, and among these weekly papers, 
the one which bore the brunt of the nation-wide opposi-
tion to Catholicism was Bishop England's "United States 
Catholic Miscellany," which he founded in 1822. Even he, 
gallant and courteous fighter though he was, soon realized 
that the gentlemanly days of theological dispute were 
gone. 

A definite date cannot be given to the change. But it 
is part of that great frontier movement which historians 
today accept as the explanation of all nineteenth-century 
American history. The trek westward had begun before 
the American Revolution and grew in volume as the ter-
ritories in the Middle West became States. A working 
theory for the political and religious situation at the 
time (1830-1835) would be that the cities in the East 
were already throbbing with Catholic life and that the 
Middle West, the "Valley," as it was called, was to be 
saved by all means from the inroads of the Catholic im-
migrant. 

Bishop England has a paragraph in the "Catholic 
Miscellany" for July 4, 1835, which describes this atti-
tude of mind: 

"How common has been the expedient, employed by missionaries from the west, in the eastern states, of raising money for education or for religion, upon the 



ANTI-CATHOLIC LITERATURE 81 
allegation that it was necessary to prevent the ascend-ancy of the Catholics ? How often has it been asserted, throughout the last ten years, that this was the chosen field on which the papists had erected their standard, and where the battle must be fought for civil and re-ligious liberty? What tales of horror have been poured into the ears of the confiding children of the pilgrims, of young men emigrating to the west, marrying Catho-lic ladies, and collapsing without a struggle into the arms of Romanism; of splendid edifices undermined by profound dungeons, prepared for the reception of here-tic Republicans; of boxes of firearms secretly trans-ported into hidden receptacles, in the very bosom of our flourishing cities; of vast and widely ramified Euro-pean conspiracies by which Irish Catholics are sudden-ly converted into lovers of monarchy and obedient in-struments of King!" 

The Abuse of Catholics 
The abuse of Catholics had by this time become a 

trade and into the whirlpool of the animosities created 
there was flung a host of anti-Catholic tracts and books 
which dragged the old-time controversies into a base and 
obscene slough. In vain did the better-minded Protestant 
leaders, cleric and lay, strive to prevent this degradation 
of what they believed to be a legitimate method of com-
bating the advancing hosts of Catholicism. 

The Catholics in 1835 formed a minority of less than 
one twenty-fifth part of the population of the United 
States, and by many liberal-minded Protestant editors, it 
was acknowledged to be the height of the ridiculous to see 
the anti-Catholic press constantly repeating the charge 
that 500,000 American Catholics could be a menace to the 
liberty of nearly 12,000,000 American Protestants, while, 
as one editor puts it, "the great elements of power, phys-
ical and moral, such as the wealth, the literature, the edu-
cation, the press, the government of the country, are 
almost exclusively in Protestant hands. It is useless to 
accumulate arguments on such premises." 

Political Aspects of Anti-Catholic Campaign 
The political aspect of the abuse heaped upon the 

Catholics was subordinated at this period to the crusade 
against the moral character of Catholics, especially in 
regard to the clergy and the nuns. Another passage from 



82 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
John England's usually restrained pen reveals the hide-
ousness of the attack: 

"We are so tired and disgusted with the relentless outpourings of fanaticism, and rank, loathsome filth collected and swept to our doors by every vehicle of revolting bigotry, that we are wearied with the task imposed upon us, of refuting today the charge we must meet afresh tomorrow. . . . If we destroy our altars, demolish our churches, burn our records, our olden doc-uments—stand forth tomorrow as ready to embrace what we are told we knew not before, the correct knowl-edge of what the Redeemer taught, and what is worse if we be, as we are, told to seek for that amongst wrangling, jarr ing sects, before what tribunal in the United States must the 'Catholic Question' in America receive the final decision? It is high time to answer this 'Question'. Misrepresentation and calumny and slander have had their long day. . . Let the sect of Pro-testantism be named to which we must adhere in pref-erence to all others, and thus claim for itself the pre-rogative of infallibility, we then shall find something tangible, something beyond the mere empty sound of the Religion of the Bible and such loose phraseology, and then and not till then can we wi th ' tha t sect, the Ajax of the Protestant religion, adjust the difference between it and mother church and thus decide the 'Catholic Question' in America." The Catholic Church in the United States, a century ago, was in a somewhat singular situation. From Maine to Florida and westward to the Mississippi, Catholics were assailed by every species of calumny and vitupera-tion. What the opposition wanted to produce, no man knew then, no man knows now. What was expected as a result of the wave upon wave of slander and misrepre-sentation that swept the Barque of Peter, no man who reads this contemporary literature can form the least logical idea. 
Scurrilous Attacks on Priests and Nuns 

No complete study has ever been made of the anti-
Catholic literature in the United States during the nine-
teenth century. Bishop England listed the number of 
Protestant newspapers devoted to scurrilous attacks upon 
the Catholic clergy and sisterhood as almost four hun-
dred. 



ANTI-CATHOLIC LITERATURE 83 
But the chief weapon was the printed book and 

pamphlet. To list all that were issued during the period 
previous to the Civil War would fill several pages. Ly-
man Beecher, who was principally responsible for the mob 
that burned the Ursuline Convent at Charlestown, Mass., 
in 1834, wrote his "Plea for the West," the following year 
in order to arouse Protestants to the danger the "Valley" 
ran from Romanism; and two years later Maria Monk's 
"Awful Disclosures" appeared, fostered by a publishing 
house of New York City which later became quite promi-
nent. Other volumes published during this period of 
frenzied attack on the Church were: "The Convents' 
Doom," "Party Spirit and Popery, or the Beast and his 
Rider," "Romanism Incompatible with Republican Insti-
tutions," "A Treatise on the Jesuits," "Pope or Presi-
dent," "Six Hours in a Convent," "The Master Key to 
Popery," "A Letter from Rome Showing the Exact con-
formity of Popery and Paganism," "Popery Unmasked," 
"Nunneries as They Are," "Six Months in a Convent," 
and a number of novels, chief of which were: "Rosamund 
Culbertson," "Hannah Corcoran," "Louise, a Canadian 
Nun," and "Father Clement." 

There could be but one logical outcome from the flood 
of abuse these volumes created. Read with avidity in the 
backwoods and in the rural districts where the hawkers' 
and peddlers stopped on their journey where they filled 
a want in minds that were stagnant from the lack of 
external interests, this literature sold as did no other 
kind in the United States before this time. The Yankee 
peddler was never at a loss to sell his stock of books, and 
wandering preachers and colporteurs of the American 
Tract Society visited an amazing number of families dis-
tributing volumes that were almost without exception 
breeders of a prejudice and error against the Catholic 
Faith which have never been eradicated. 

The Puritan Literature 
Probably nothing has done so much to create anti-

Catholic sentiment in the whole history of the Church as 
the Puritan literature in the United States during the 
first half of the nineteenth century. The alarm had been 
sounded af ter the War of 1812, when Catholic immigra-
tion became a formidable social and religious factor in 



84 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
national life, and the steady stream of villification coming 
from the Protestant religious newspapers, f rom vicious 
and obscene pamphlets, tracts, and books, inevitably 
brought the issue of Americanism and Catholicism to 
what is probably its highest level in our history. Preju-
dice that had become ingrained as the result of centuries 
of abuse and misrepresentation in Protestant England 
and Scotland needed little impetus towards the violent 
outbreaks of the two decades immediately before the 
Civil War. It is all a sad commentary on the message 
George Washington gave to his Catholic fellow-citizens 
in 1790: 

"As mankind become more liberal they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the Community are equally entitled to the protection of civil Government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost Nations in example of justice and liberality. And I presume that your fel-low-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution, and the establishment of their Government; or the important assistance which they received from a Na-tion in which the Roman Catholic fa i th is professed. 
¡Study Club Outline 

1 What threatened to remove from its high plane the 
Catholic-Protestant controversy? What effect did 
the frontier movement have? 

2 How many Catholics were there in the U. S. in 1835? How many are there today? Who controlled the press, education and government a century ago? Who does today? (A knowledge of present conditions is needed here. If necessary ask your study club leader to discuss these questions.) 
3 Why did the anti-Catholic attack become especially 

obnoxious at this time? Discuss Bishop England's 
protest. 

4. How many anti-Catholic papers were there 100 years ago? What was the Catholic defense of scurrilous attacks? What was the effect of the attacks? 
5 What message to Catholics from George Washington is here printed? What other friendliness did he evi-dence towards our forefathers? 



XVII 
The P i o n e e r Ca tho l i c P ress 

No chapter in the history of the "Catholic Question" 
in the United States is more important than that describ-
ing the origin and progress of our American Catholic 
newspapers and periodicals. 

Here is a noble theme awaiting a just and adequate 
study at the hands of a competent historian. 

In the story of the Catholic Press in this country we 
reach what may well be called the first heroic heights 
of the gallant efforts Catholics have always made to pro-
mote harmony in American social and religious life. The 
purpose of the Catholic newspaper from the beginning 
was not only to make known to its readers items of cur-
rent interest, but also to assist the clergy in clearing 
away that uncommon mass of prejudice and animosity 
towards the Church which the colonial period had so 
deliberately and so successfully fostered. 

No country in the world depends more largely than 
our own upon the public press for the formation of public 
opinion. As in every other land where Protestantism 
counts its adherents in greater numbers than the Catholic 
Church, the power of the press in the United States has 
always been an uncertain factor in the promotion of re-
ligious equality. 

In colonial times, from the year 1690 onwards, there 
were newspapers in many of the leading cities and towns, 
and it is safe to say that, apart from scattered notices 
which help us to follow the story of Catholic immigration 
into the colonies, all these newspapers were dominated by 
the "No Popery" spirit of the colonial charters and legis-
lation. 

After the War of Independence American newspapers 
and periodicals of a religious character sprang up all 
over the new Republic. These were in most cases violent-
ly anti-Catholic. They were founded for the express pur-
pose of carrying the prejudices and hatreds of the Puri-
tan colonial mind into our national life. With rare ex-
ceptions, the ethics of these Protestant editors seldom 
rose above the range of misrepresentation and unfairness 



86 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
in dealing with Catholic topics. If the secular press of 
the early decades of the nineteenth century was anti-
English, it was also anti-Irish. The religious fai th of 
the Irish newcomers was too closely bound up with the 
political struggle for Catholic freedom in Great Britain 
and Ireland for our newspapers to treat them with justice 
and fairness. 

Catholic Press Started by Irish 
The first newspapers under Catholic management, 

therefore, were Irish journals founded by exiles from 
Erin who realized the power of the press in keeping the 
American mind properly informed on the fight for politi-
cal and religious freedom across the seas. The earliest of 
these weeklies was the "Shamrock or Hibernian Chron-
icle," begun in New York, on December 10, 1810, by 
Thomas O'Conor, the father of the great jurist, Charles 
O'Conor. The chief questions dealt with in its columns 
were the agitation for the Repeal of the Union and Cath-
olic Emancipation. In treating these, its editor had to 
cope week by week with malignant prejudices against 
Ireland and the Catholic Faith. The illustrious Doctor 
William MacNeven, who contributed to its columns, says 
that such a periodical was then a vital necessity in the 
United States, because "the same violence and invective, 
the same violation of truth, the same distortion of the 
past, that marked the conduct of the British faction to-
wards the United Irishmen in Europe, have been revived 
here by the retainers and hirelings of the same enemy." 

First Distinctively Catholic Weekly 
In June, 1822, appeared the first issue of our first 

distinctively religious weekly—the "United States Cath-
olic Miscellany," founded by Bishop John England of 
Charleston. 

It was in a very real sense the forerunner of OUR 
SUNDAY VISITOR. Like O. S. V. its object was to meet a 
well-recognized need in Catholic American life. At the 
time Bishop England ventured to enter the precariously-
supported field of Catholic journalism, the Protestant re-
ligious newspapers were not only numerous, but were 
busily fanning the smoldering flames of religious bigotry. 
With but few exceptions in those days, the ranks of the 



THE PIONEER CATHOLIC PRESS 87 
Protestant ministry were filled with men whose best asset 
was their forensic power of denunciation of all things 
Catholic. Dr. England's "Miscellany" was quickly under-
stood by these defamers of the Catholic Faith as a cour-
ageous effort to place before the reading public answers 
to the charges that formed the warp and woof of the Pro-
testant press and as a keen and profound attack upon 
what undoubtedly has never died out in the Puritan mind 
of America—the determination to form a union of Pro-
testant Church and American State. It was not without 
vision into that fu ture which is part of our immediate 
present that led the young Bishop of Charleston to place 
as a motto to the "Miscellany" the first amendment to the 
Federal Constitution: "Congress shall make no law re-
specting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the 
free exercise thereof." 

Bishop England's example was not lost upon his 
fellow-priests, and during the twenty years of his editor-
ship of the "Miscellany" other Catholic weekly news-
papers were founded in the more populous centers of the 
country. Among these were the "Truth Teller," founded 
by his life-long friend, Father John Power, in New York 
City in 1825; the "Catholic Press," started at Hartford 
Conn., in 1829, under Bishop Fenwick's guidance, the 
first number of which was greeted by the editor of the 
"Connecticut Observer" with the appeal, "How will it 
read in history that in 1829, Hartford in the State of 
Connecticut, was made the center of a Roman Catholic 
Mission?" 

A year later, when the "Observer" had failed to 
arouse the readers to rise up and destroy the little Cath-
olic church in that city, every street was placarded with 
the following printed notice: "To the Public. Be it known 
unto f a r and near that all Catholics and all persons in 
favor of the Catholic church are a set of vile impostors, 
liars, villains and cowardly cutthroats. I bid defiance to 
that villain, the Pope. A True American." 

Beginning of Boston Pilot 
The "Catholic Press" was followed by the "Jesuit and 

Catholic Sentinel" founded that same year (1829) by 
Bishop Fenwick of Boston. In the files of the "Jesuit" 



88 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
we find the best historical material for that outrage upon 
the Ursuline nuns of Charlestown, which Bishop England 
always called the "Shame of Massachusetts." In 1835, 
the title of the Boston weekly was changed to the "Liter-
ary and Catholic Sentinel," and the following year it be-
came the "Boston Pilot," now the oldest and one of the 
most influential Catholic diocesan newspapers in the 
United States. 

Meanwhile, in other cities, Catholic weeklies were 
started. In Cincinnati, the "Catholic Telegraph" began 
its long and successful career in 1831, and two years 
later under the direction of the fu ture Archbishop of 
New York, Father John Hughes, the "Catholic Herald" 
was established in Philadelphia. Out in St. Louis, the 
"Shepherd of the Valley" was begun in 1832, and in 1835 
at Bardstown, Ky., the "Catholic Advocate" was founded. 
In 1837, the first German Catholic weekly, "Der Wahr-
heitsfreund," was started in Cincinnati. In 1840, the 
"Freeman's Journal" was established in New York City, 
and in 1842, the first successful French weekly, "La 
Propagateur Gatholique," was begun in New Orleans. 

In 1844, the Pittsburgh "Catholic" was launched by 
Bishop O'Connor, and the "Catholic Mirror" of Balti-
more, which made its appearance in 1849, was to last up 
to 1908, when it was succeeded by the "Baltimore Catholic 
Review." In 1852, Thomas O'Arcy McGee began publish-
ing his "American Celt," which became five years later 
the "New York Tablet," the most literary of all our week-
lies in the years immediately preceding the Civil War. At 
the time the Civil War broke out, each Catholic center of 
importance had its weekly or monthly newspaper. Accu-
rate data concerning all these periodicals is not easily 
ascertained; but from a list published in 1893 by the late 
Rev. Dr. Middleton, O. S. A., of Villanova, it is evident 
that the Catholic press suffered many failures owing to 
the economic crisis of the decade before the war. 

During this first period of Catholic journalism (1810-
1865) many other ventures were made with weekly and 
monthly periodicals, but only the few of the newspapers 
mentioned above have lasted until our day. When the 
time comes to write the complete history of the "Catholic 
Question" in this country, all these periodicals will be 



THE PIONEER CATHOLIC PRESS 89 
found to contain valuable material on the progress of 
the ideal of religious equality in the United States. Leadership of the "Catholic Miscellany" 

Among all these weeklies founded before the Civil 
War, the "Catholic Miscellany" of Charleston never lost 
its leadership in Catholic journalism. In 1856, Arch-
bishop Hughes could write in his "Reflections on the 
Catholic Press in the United States" that the "Miscel-
lany" had sustained itself throughout with a dignity and 
an erudition such as had not been surpassed by any Cath-
olic periodical in the country. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Who founded the first Catholic papers in the U. S . ? • Why were such papers necessary? Name the first distinctively Catholic weekly. Who was its founder? 
2. In what way did "The United States Catholic Mis-cellany" compare with OUR SUNDAY VISITOR? See Chapter 37. 
3. Which is the oldest Catholic paper published today? Name some of the first papers. Why did many of the papers fail? 
4. Have one of your group or your study club leader discuss Catholic journalism in the U. S. today. 
5. Have another member discuss the necessity of a strong Catholic Press. Are you in duty bound to support the Catholic Press? Why? 



XVII 
N a t i v e A m e r i c a n i s m 

Stripped of all its lies and subterfuges, Native-Amer-
icanism means nothing less than this: the United States 
is a Protestant country; Catholics are permitted to come 
here, and to make their homes, and to enjoy that which 
apparently is of supreme importance to them, namely, 
the free exercise of their religious worship; but beyond 
this right which is written into the Constitution, they 
are to be thwarted in every legitimate or illegitimate way 
from political equality with their fellow-citizens of non-
Catholic faiths. 

The origin of the Native-American Party is not 
known with certainty. Much has been written on this 
Politico-religious group and on its successor in the field, 
the Know-Nothings. i f their own histories are to be 
trusted, the first meeting held was that at Germantown, 
Pa., in 1837, when a constitution was framed and adopt-
ed, and the platform of the Party expressed in these 
words: 

"While, at the same time, we invite the stranger, worn down by opposition at home, to come and share with us the blessings of our native land—here find an asylum for his distress, and partake of the plenty a kind Providence has so bountifully given us, we deny his right (hereby meaning as foreigner any immigrant who may hereafter arrive in our country) to have a voice in our legislative halls, his eligibility to office under any circumstances, and we ask a repeal of that Naturalization Law (1790), which, it must be apparent to every reflecting mind, to every true son of America, has now become an evil." 
This initial stage was not followed up with sufficient 

zest, and, as the "Nativists" saw, had no effect on keep-
ing the Catholic Irish from offices of trust and profit 
under the Constitution. The leaders of the movement 
were always somewhat boisterous in their assurance that 
nothing was contemplated which would interfere with 
the religious tenets of the Church. It was simply an 
effort to save America for those who founded it—the 
Protestant churches. 



NATIVE AMERICANISM 91 
American Republican Association 

A second meeting took place in Philadelphia in De-
cember, 1843, and a society was formed—The American 
Republican Association. In its Declaration of Principles 
we read : "We hold that native Americans, only, should 
be appointed to office, to legislate, administer, or execute 
the laws of their own country." A similar organization 
was created in New York the following year and soon 
gained sufficient force to elect James Harper mayor of 
the city. In Philadelphia there was a deliberate baiting 
of Irish Catholics and only a spark was needed to set 
ablaze the smouldering enmities of years. Kirlin well 
says in his "Catholicity in Philadelphia" that "the year 
1844 is written black in the history of Philadelphia, be-
cause of the un-American and un-Christian scenes of'vio-
lence that disgraced the traditions of the'City of Brother-
ly Love." That the Philadelphia situation was deliberate-
ly created by ministers and members of the Presbyterian 
church no one who reads the contemporary sources will 
deny. The secular press of Philadelphia added to tlje tur-
moil by abusing day af ter day the "Irish Papists," the 
"miscreant Irish," the "degraded slaves of the Pope." It 
was a new, fresh, vigorous and deadly chorus from Colo-
nial days, and the refrain was always : "No Popery." 

The riots that took place in Philadelphia in May and 
July, 1844, and the fearful disorders and bloodshed that 
ensued, we need not stop to describe. When calm came,. 
St. Augustine's church was a blackened ruin and in thé 
ashes were the remains of one of the finest libraries in 
the United States. St. Michael's church had been burned 
and looted the day before, and it looked for a while as if 
every Catholic institution in the city would be destroyed. 
Bishop Kenrick took refuge with a Protestant clergyman 
and the Blessed Sacrament was removed from St. John's 
church to the house of another Protestant gentleman. "I t 
was a heart-sickening sight," one of the newspapers said, 
"the like of which we hope we may never again look upon 
in this or arty other city—a sight mortifying and humil-
iating to those who have been taught to believe that our 
laws afford equal and efficient protection to all." 

Let the t ruth be told—there was no remorse in the 
ranks of the Native Americans. Their three newspapers, 



92 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
"The Native Eagle," "The Native American," and "The 
Daily Sun," continued to' cry for more violence and out-
rage upon the Catholics of the city. 

Terrorism of Nativists 
All efforts were now to be directed towards a great 

public demonstration on July Fourth, 1844. That day and 
night all Catholic churches and rectories were protected 
by the police and by volunteer bands, and during the next 
week the city was terrorized by the marauding Nativ-
ists" clamoring for a show of force. Bloodshed again oc-
curred, and the situation became so unmanageable that a 
messenger was sent to Washington to ask the President 
to dispatch troops at the earliest moment. Fortunately, 
the military forces in the city were able to enforce a ces-
sation of the mob violence: 

The Philadelphia riots frightened the entire country 
and Nativism was never able to recover its influence in 
local or national politics. A national convention of the 
Party was held at Philadelphia m July, 1845 and the 
principle was adopted that "no foreigner hereafter com-
ing to these United States, shall be allowed to exercise the 
elective franchise, until he shall have become a resident 
here at least twenty-five years." This was to become a 
plank in the platform of the Know-Nothing Par ty within 
the next decade. ' 

This first attempt to settle the "Catholic Question m 
the United States by an appeal to force ended in noting, 
burning of churches, and bloodshed. All t rue Americans 
of the day were ashamed. Good men of all Protestant 
denominations deplored the fearful deeds of the fanatics 
who were responsible. The "Shame of Massachusetts 
had grown more forbidding as the "Shame of Philadel-
phia" arose, and the shadow of intolerance lay heavy 
upon the land. Only one good result came out of it all— 
the league against Catholicism was discredited af ter five 
months of existence. There were those in Protestant 
circles who recalled for the benefit of the fanatics that 
the Gordon Riots in London in 1780 marked the precise 
beginning of Catholic growth and prosperity in England. 



NATIVE AMERICANISM 93 

Study Club Outline 
1. What does "Native-Americanism" really mean? What was the Native American Party? The Know-Nothing Party? (See Chapter 19.) The Ku Klux Klan?. (See Chapter 35.) 
2. Discuss the disorders in Philadelphia and the burning of St. Augustine's Church. 
3. What was the effect of the Philadelphia riots on the rest of the country? On the influence of Nativism? 
4. Can you recall from a past chapter what was termed the "shame of Massachusetts"? 
5. Ask one of your group to give a brief review of what you have so fa r studied in this book. 



XVIII 
A r c h b i s h o p J o h n H u g h e s 

The first period of the history of our American hier-
archy (1790-1815) belongs to John Carroll as its out-
standing figure. The second period (1820-1842) belongs 
to the ablest exponent of the Catholic Faith in the Uni-
ted States up to the present, Bishop John England. The 
third period (1842-1864) is unquestionably that of John 
Hughes, first Archbishop of New York. 

John Hughes had a singularly attractive career. He 
was born in Ireland in 1797, came to the United States 
in 1817, and in 1820 entered Mount St. Mary's College, 
Emmittsburg, to study for the priesthood. Ordained by 
Bishop Carroll for the Diocese of Philadelphia in 1826, 
he was successively stationed at St. Augustine's, St. 
Mary's, St. Joseph's, and St. John's, the last of which he 
built in 1832. The following three years witnessed his 
victory over the Rev. Jo^n Breckenridge, a Presbyterian 
minister of Baltimore, in a controversy which gave 
Father Hughes national fame. 

I t is to be lamented that Catholics today are not 
familiar with the "Discussion of the Question: Is the 
Roman Catholic Religion in any or in all its Principles or 
Doctrines, inimical to Civil or Religious Liberty?" which 
was published as "Oral Discussion," in 1836. This volume 
contains both sides of the controversy and is in reality an 
encyclopedia of objections against the Church by Breck-
enridge and of answers by Father Hughes. For the first 
time in the history of the Faith in this country, the doc-
trines of the Catholic Church obtained a hearing in al-
most every section of the Protestant public. Father 
Hughes was well liked in Philadelphia, and his many 
friends in Protestant circles could not fail to contrast the 
gentlemanly Christian spirit with which he met his oppo-
nent and the scurrilous language to which Breckenridge 
soon descended, when he saw that the controversy was 
lost to his side of the argument. 

Becomes Coadjutor Bishop of New York 
In 1837, John Hughes was appointed Coadjutor-Bis-

hop of New York and was consecrated on January 7, 



ARCHBISHOP JOHN HUGHES 95 
1838, in old St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City. He succeeded Bishop Dubois on the latter's death. December 20, 1842. 

The great fight of Bishop Hughes' episcopate was 
over the common school system. The public funds for ele-
mentary education in New York were entrusted to the 
Public School Society and theoretically the object was 
"to teach religion without sectarianism." But the prac-
tice of the Society was even worse. The influence of the 
public school commissioners, the text-books used and the 
bulk of the teaching body, were all highly anti-Catholic in 
spirit. So much so, that the school system of New York, 
supported by public money raised by taxes, was a weapon 
of antagonism against the Catholic Faith. For two years, 
Bishop Hughes led the Catholics of New York against 
the iniquities of so un-American a situation and won his 
case against the Public School Society which finally went 
out of existence. 

Exclusion of Catholics From Office 
In the midst of the excitement caused by the school 

controversy came the first organized party-movement 
towards the exclusion of Catholics from public office. Bis-
hop Hughes had gained such extraordinary influence in 
Irish circles in New York that he was naturally singled 
out by the Native-Americans as their chief foe. In April, 
1844, the Native-Americans paraded New York City, 
carrying illuminated banners with the words, "No Pop-
ery," on them, and with hidden arms, trying to provoke 
a riot with the Catholics. Nothing untoward occurred, 
since Bishop Hughes had strictly ordered his people to 
avoid all contact with the anti-Catholic mob. The Native-
American success in Philadelphia, between May and 
July, 1844, in destroying several churches and in creating 
an unforgettable condition of rioting and bloodshed in 
that city, made them more eager than ever to repeat their 
villainous outrages in New York City. Only the valiant 
stand of Bishop Hughes prevented a massacre in what 
was then America's leading city. The Mayor, Robert H. 
Morris, had evidently no intention of protecting the lives 
and property of the Catholic citizens, until Bishop 
Hughes warned him that there were laws in the State 
Constitution which permitted such protection and hinted 



96 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
that were these laws not carried out, Catholics would pro-
tect themselves in a legal manner. This could have only 
one meaning, and Morris fortunately understoodj-there 
was no disturbance in New York City. 

When the Know-Nothing movement become a danger 
to Catholic peace ten years later, Archbishop Hughes 
again showed his consummate prudence in warning his 
flock to avoid every appearance of aggression, and to face 
the danger with confidence that no party so thoroughly 
un-American could long thrive in this country. I t is re-
markable that New York enjoyed peace all through the 
turbulent days of the Know-Nothing riots in other cities. 

Archbishop Hughes was the second Catholic prelate 
to be invited to address Congress. It was almost twenty 
years af ter John England had done so, when in 1847, 
Archbishop Hughes spoke to Congress on "Christianity, 
the Only Source of Moral, Social, and Political Regenera-
tion." This remarkable sermon, though much shorter 
than that of Bishop England, follows practically the same 
theme—the necessity of religion, the t ruth of the Chris-
tian religion, and the impossibility of government unless 
founded upon that respect for law and order which is an 
essential doctrine of Christian duty. • 

Sent as U. S. Envoy 
Archbishop Hughes holds one of the unique distinc-

tions which have come to members of our hierarchy—that 
of being entrusted as envoy extraordinary with a poli-
tical mission to the Court of Napoleon III. While in at-
tendance at the Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore 
(1846), he was called to Washington by Buchanan, then 
secretary of state, evidently for the purpose of being sent 
on a diplomatic mission to Mexico. This honor he politely 
declined, on the advice of the prelates of the Council, un-
less the Government gave him the full rank and title of a 
diplomatic representative. President Polk was unable to 
do this owing to the manner in which the Mexican gov-
ernment had treated our minister. The request made by 
Secretary Seward, in 1861, was of a similar kind, and 
this time no difficulty existed to prevent his acceptance of 
so high an honor. 

Archbishop Hughes left for Europe in November, 



ARCHBISHOP JOHN HUGHES 57 
1861, and, as his own letters indicate, it was chiefly 
through his consummate tact that France was prevented 
from following in the footsteps of England in recognizing 
the Confederacy. On his return to New York on August 
12, 1862, the whole city turned out to welcome him, and 
the mayor greeted him with a congratulatory address ex-
tolling the success he had in Europe in winning many 
statesmen to the Union cause. 

The journey to Europe exhausted his strength which 
had never been very robust. He went to Baltimore to 
attend the funeral of Archbishop Francis Patrick Ken-
rick, in July, 1863. On his return to New York from 
Baltimore he found his episcopal city in a frenzy of ex-
citement over the conscription quota, and at the height 
of the riots in July, 1863, Governor Horatio Seymour 
wrote to him, begging him to exert his powerful influence 
to put a stop to the disorder then reigning in the city. 
Although broken in health, Archbishop Hughes readily 
accepted this call to duty and addressed a crowd of five 
thousand persons, who had gathered to hear him, from 
the balcony of his house, at 218 Madison Ave. 

His Appeal for Order 
Mr. Thomas F. Meehan, in chronicling the sale of this 

house, thus describes the scene: 
"He came out on the balcony with Vicar-General Starrs and several other priests, but he was not able to stand up. Seated in a chair, he made a long and rambling speech that plainly indicated the ravages his fatal malady had made on him mentally as well as physically. At the end he was much exhausted and the crowd peacefully dispersed af ter he had given them his blessing. It was his last public appearance. He trav-elled during August and September in a vain search for strength, and passed the next months in a state of almost entire prostration, his vitality steadily waning until the end came as the year closed." 

He died on January 3, 1864. To quote from the bio-
graphical sketch penned by Cardinal Hayes, Archbishop 
Hughes "lived and passed away amid stirring times. It 
was providential for Church and country that he lived 
when he did. His natural gif ts of mind and heart, inde-
pendent of his education, were of a high order and made 



98 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
him pre-eminent in leadership. Not only was he a great 
ruler of an important diocese in a hierarchy remarkable 
for distinguished bishops, but also a master-builder of 
the Church in the United States and one of the most 
helpful and sagacious of the makers of America." 

Church and State will ever be indebted to John 
Hughes, the fearless priest of God and the loyal citizen 
of this country, for a life lived solely for the advance-
ment of his fellow-man. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Who were the Catholic leaders in the three periods of history up to 1864? Appoint three of your group to briefly discuss these men and their contribution to our Church and Country. 
2. What did Bishop Hughes attack in New York? Why? Ask one of your group to explain the Catholic attitude towards public schools today. 
3. Discuss the wisdom of Bishop Hughes in warning Catholics to avoid contact with the "Native Amer-icans." 
4. Name two events in the life of Archbishop Hughes which "made history." 
5. Let each of your members tell who in his or her opin-ion is the outstanding Catholic leader in the nation today. Give your reasons for your choice. 



XVII 
K N O W - N O T H I N G I S M 

"They never pardon, who have done the wrong!"—No 
phrase describes so well the persistent Puritan intoler-
ance which existed in the U. S. The "Shame of Mass-
achusetts" in 1834 was followed by the "Shame of Phila-
delphia" in 1844, and the end of the next decade was to 
witness the most striking anti-Catholic demonstration in 
our history. 

Cajetan Bedini, titular Archbishop of Thebes and 
Governor of the Papal State of Bologna, was appointed in 
1853 Apostolic Nuncio to the Court of Brazil. Instructed 
by Pope Pius IX to visit the United States on his journey 
to South America, Bedini arrived in New York on June 
30, 1853, and proceeded to Washington to present a 
friendly letter from the Holy Father to President Pierce. 
The animosity of the Protestant newspapers was imme-
diately aroused and Bedini was accused of trying to ob-
tain official recognition as papal envoy to this country. 
Even had this been his secret purpose in coming to the 
United States, Bedini would not have been violating diplo-
matic courtesy, since our country had its own Ministers 
accredited to the Court of Pius IX since 1847. The oppo-
sition to Bedini's presence here was led by Gavazzi, an 
apostate priest of Bologna, the leader of a band of Italian 
revolutionists in New York City. 

The Know-Nothing groups in our chief cities were 
then in a formative stage, and aided by Italian renegades 
and malcontent Irish, these anti-Catholic leaders deter-
mined to drive the Archbishop out of the country. Plots to 
assassinate him were formed, and public demonstrations 
against him were held in New York, Pittsburgh, Louis-
ville, Cincinnati, and elsewhere; but the noble courage 
of the Archbishop won the protection of local authorities, 
although the government of the United States took no 
measures to guard the envoy of the Holy See from these 
vile outbreaks. Bedini's visit may have been ill-timed, 
but his incomparable dignity and fearlessness made a 
profound impression on all the better classes of Proteg-



100 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
tants. He remained here until January, 1854, when he 
returned to Rome. 

Native-American Party Revived 
Bedini's visit was all that was needed to revive the 

animosity towards Catholics which had been sullenly 
quiet a f te r the bloodshed of 1844; and the old Native-
American Party was revived, under the name of Know-
Nothings, between 1853 and 1858. The Know-Nothing 
leaders had as their purpose the amalgamation into one 
political party of the various anti-Catholic organizations 
—Sons of the Sires, American Republicans, Order of 
United Americans, Sons of America, United American 
Mechanics, and others. The united group was called the 
Supreme Order of the Star Spangled Banner, and was 
familiarly known as "Sam." In its published ritual, it 
was stated that the aim of the Order was "to protect ev-
ery American citizen in the legal and proper exercise of 
his civil and religious rights and privileges; to resist 
the insidious policy of the Church of Rome and all other 
foreign influences against our republican institutions in 
all lawful ways; and to place in all offices of honor, t rus t 
or profit in the gif t of the people or by appointment none 
but Native-American Protestant citizens." 

The utmost secrecy was enjoined upon the members 
who were instructed to reply to all questions: "I don't 
know," thus winning for themselves the nickname "Know-
Nothing." Within a short time, Know-Nothingism was 
firmly established in thirty-five states and territories, and 
its leaders claimed control over a million and a half of the 
voting population. Its candidates had won municipal elec-
tions in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, San Fran-
cisco, New Orleans, and other cities, and in 1854 there 
were forty Know-Nothing representatives in Congress. 
The following year this number had grown to seventy-
five, and it was logical that the Know-Nothing Party 
should enter national politics. 

This opportunity came in the campaign of 1856. The 
two major parties at this time were the Republicans and 
Democrats, and the leaders of both parties realized that 
the entrance of the American or Know-Nothing Party 
into the contest was f raught with serious danger to the 
peace of the country. The Know-Nothing platform of 



KNOW-NOTHINGISM 101 
1856 contained an election slogan—"Americans must rule 
America." Article V of the platform reads: "No person 
should be selected for political station (whether of native 
or foreign bir th) , who recognizes any alliance or obliga-
tion of any description to any foreign prince, potentate or 
power." Article IX demanded a change in the laws of 
naturalization, making a continued residence of twenty-
one years an indispensable requirement for citizenship. 

Democrats Repudiated Know-Nothingism 
The Democratic party platform disavowed all con-nection with the Know-Nothing principles, and declared: "A political crusade in the nineteenth century, and in the United States of America, against Catholics and foreign-born is neither justified by the past history or the future prospects of the country, nor in unison with the spirit of toleration and enlarged freedom which peculiarly distinguishes the American system of popu-lar government." 
The Republican party, the legatee of the old Federal-

ist and Whig policies, had too many anti-Catholic inci-
dents in its career to repudiate openly the Know-Nothing 
platform, but it was generally known that the Republic-
ans meant to oppose any discrimination against Catholic 
citizens. 

The Know-Nothings nominated Millard Fillmore at 
Philadelphia in 1856 as their candidate for president. 
Opposed to Fillmore was James Buchanan, the candidate 
of the Democrats, and John C. Fremont, the Republican 
candidate. Fremont's father was a Catholic and he had 
himself given expression to his reverence for the Catho-
lic Church, although he had been reared an Episcopalian. 
This, with other facts of a similar nature, was used 
against the great Pathfinder in the campaign of 1856. 

The presidential election of 1856 was the first in 
which full rein was given to anti-Catholic politics in this 
country. There can be no doubt that the Know-Nothing 
party expected to win a tremendous vote. The result was 
an astounding revelation of the popular distaste for the 
injection of religion into politics. Rioting occurred dur-
ing the election and bloodshed also; but when the votes 
were counted, it was seen that the Know-Nothings had 



102 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
been crushed in every state in the Union, except one, 
Maryland. 

"The American people," writes Peter Condon, "had weighed the claims of the Know-Nothing party to be regarded as the saviours of the republic and had wit-nessed the criminal excesses to which that party had resorted in its effort to secure political control, and the sober sense of the great mass of the people had repudiated both." The Know-Nothing party now passed out of national politics to be succeeded some thirty years later by the American Protective Association. In local politics it held its ground until the outbreak of the Civil War and its history during these years is a long list of outrages, rowdyism, and bloodshed. 
From the standpoint of internal political peace in the 

United States, nothing is more regrettable than that the 
criminal excesses of the Know-Nothings, and of the Na-
tive Americans before them, should be forgotten by our 
Catholic and non-Catholic citizens. Each generation of 
Americans had witnessed the recrudescence of this Puri-
tan intolerance towards the Catholic Church, and if his-
tory is of any value at all to the average citizen, that 
value certainly is the lesson it teaches for the present 
problems in our national life. 

Were the outrages and public violations of the law 
by these anti-Catholic mobs known in all their details, 
there would be more hesitation on the part of non-Cath-
olics in joining similar organizations. Were Catholic 
citizens to know in all their details the pages that might 
be written on the action of the local police and civil au-
thority which so often refused to protect the lives and 
the property of their co-religionists, there would be more 
hesitation in accepting the benign and optimistic view 
that such outrages cannot happen in the future. This 
latter fact is so appallingly evident in the history of these 
anti-Catholic outbreaks that they must give every honest 
eitizen pause. Only the prudence and Christian forbear-
ance of our bishops during the reign of Know-Nothing 
terror from 1853 to 1860 kept the country from witness-
ing that worst of all political evils—a religious war. 

The Catholic Church in the United States came peril-



KNOW-NOTHINGISM 103 
ously close during these years to witnessing a constitu-
tional amendment denying the franchise to its children. 

Lincoln's Letter of Tolerance 
There was then as there has ever been in American 

life an overwhelming number of non-Catholics who real-
ized the threat to the permanency of our republican in-
stitutions in each anti-Catholic movement we have had 
during the past century. The reaction to Know-Nothing-
ism saw the formation of a society for the protection of 
civil and religious liberty in which many of the best 
citizens of the land secured membership. There is among 
the letters of Abraham Lincoln one written to a friend 
on August 24, 1855, which deserves to be cited: 

"I am not a Know-Nothing; that is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppres-sion of Negroes be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declar-ing that 'all men are created equal.' We now practical-ly read it 'all men are created equal, except Negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read, "all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pre-tense of loving liberty—to Russia for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." 
Two years later (February 23, 1857), George Wash-

ington Custis, the adopted son of the first President, 
wrote to the Society of the Friends of Civil and Religious 
Liberty: 

"The American people have forgotten the great principles of the Revolution for which their fathers fought and bled in the times that tried men's souls, and have introduced in modern times bigotry and in-tolerance where all should be kindliness and brotherly love. . . the adopted son and last sufvivor of the domes-tic family of the beloved chief, I speak to my country-men as with a voice from Mount Vernon, and I pray God that the Americans, seeing the error of their ways, may return to first principles; the spirit of the Revo-lution and civil and religious liberty." 
The anti-Catholic cry had been heard so long in the 

land that the Hon. J . R. Chandler of Pennsylvania made 



104 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
it the subject of an eloquent speech in the House of Rep-
resentatives on January 10, 1855. There was a charge of 
latent treason in the accusation that the religious fai th 
of Catholics "overrides all fealty to the government of 
the country and would render them unworthy of public 
truth—suspected citizens and dangerous officers." Mr. 
Chandler, a Catholic, replied to these words of Nathaniel 
Banks, representative from Massachusetts, taken from an 
address in which the latter said: "I will say that, if it be 
true that the Pope is held to be supreme in secular, as in 
sacred affairs, that he can absolve men from their rela-
tions with others not of the true faith, it is not strange 
that men should hesitate in support of his followers. I 
would not vote for any man holding to that doctrine, and 
I doubt not, other gentlemen here would concur with me 
in that feeling." 

Chandler's Answer to Banks 
Chandler's noble answer to this age-old charge—"as 

old," he says, "as the hostility of paganism to Christian-
ity," deserves to be read in full in these days. Quotations 
from the writings of Bishop England, Archbishop Ken-
rick, Archbishop Troy of Dublin, Archbishop Hughes and 
other prelates are given in his speech to prove the "entire 
political independence of every Roman Catholic outside 
of the Papal States." The famous Propositions of 1789 
sent by Pi t t to the Catholic Universities of Europe are 
introduced. One paragraph from Chandler's speech merits 
repetition for its timeliness: 

"I deny that the Bishop of Rome has, or that he claims for himself, the right to interfere with the poli-tical relations of any other country than that of which he is himself the sovereign. I mean—and I have no desire to conceal any point—I mean that I deny to the Bishop of Rome the right resulting from his divine office, to interfere in the relations between citizens and their governments. And while I make this denial, I acknowledge all my obligations to the Church of which I am an humble member, and I recognize all the right of the venerable head of that Church to the spir-itual deference of its children; and I desire that no part of what I may say, or what I may concede, in my remarks, may be considered as yielding a single dogma of the Catholic Church, or manifesting on my 



KNOW-NOTHINGISM 105 
part a desire to explain away, to suit the spirit of the times or the prejudices of my hearers, any doctrine of the Catholic Church." 

Mr. Chandler had no need to go fa r afield for his 
answer to Banks and other Protestant antagonists who 
held that Catholics could not be loyal to any but a Cath-
olic government. There were the Pastoral Letters of the 
American Bishops from 1829 to 1852 upon which to base 
his celebrated speech, the first, in fact to be heard in the 
House of Representatives from a Catholic in defense of 
the Church. 

The prelates of the First Plenary Council of 1852 wrote to the laity in their Pastoral Letter: 
"Attachment to the civil institutions under which you live has always marked your c o n d u c t . . . we cannot however, deem it altogether unnecessary to exhort you ever to discharge your civil duties from the higher mo-tives which religion suggests. . . . Thus will you refute the idle babbling of foolish men . . . and overcome by the sure test of practical patriotism, all the prejudices which a misapprehension, of your principles but too often produces." 

Chandler's speech lay almost forgotten for three quar-
ters of a century until interest in it was revived, because 
of its similarity with Governor A1 Smith's celebrated 
reply to Charles C. Marshall. 

Study Club Outline 
1. What event led to the revival of anti-Catholic ani-mosity and the beginning of the Know-Nothing party? What former party was the parent of this party? 
2. How did the Know-Nothing party get its name? What 

was the purpose of its leaders? What was known as "Sam"? How successful was the party? 
3. Who was nominated by the Know-Nothings? Was he elected? What encouraging attitude was evidenced towards Catholics in' the election. 
4. What was Lincoln's attitude towards Know-Nothing-ism? Was his attitude fairly general among the people? 
5. To what would you credit the ever increasing under-standing of Catholics by non-Catholics and the friend-lier spirit evidenced by all except professional bigots? 



XVII 
U. S. R e c o g n i t i o n o f t h e P a p a c y 

Few facts are more curious in the history of Amer-
ican intolerance towards the Church than the recognition 
given to the Papacy by our government during the most 
intense years of the anti-Catholic political agitation. 

From the eighth to the nineteenth century the Popes 
of Rome were recognized not only as the spiritual heads 
of the Catholic Church throughout the world but also 
as temporal lords of what was known as the State of the 
Church. 

On the question of the historical origin of the temp-
oral power of the papacy we do not need to enter here. 
Juridically based upon the free donations of Catholics 
and accepted by the leading governments of the eighth 
century, the Patrimony of Peter, or the States of the 
Church, as the territory became known, was ruled by the 
Popes all through the medieval period well on into mod-
ern times until the year 1870, when the Papacy was 
robbed by the force of Italian armies of its legal proprie-
tary rights to the city of Rome and the surrounding prin-
cipalities. As King and as Pope, the Roman Pontiffs had 
their representatives at different courts of Europe and 
America, and at the court of the Pope were the accredited 
ministers of many of the leading countries of the world. 

The principle of separation between church and state 
which was written into the American Constitution did not 
interfere with the presence of American consular agents 
at Rome. In fact, American consuls were also stationed 
at Civita Vecchia, Ancona, and other cities in Italy. The 
consular fees, however, were not attractive; and, as is the' 
custom today in many American cities, natives held these 
posts. There were, moreover, papal consular officers in 
some cities of the United States. The chief purpose of 
these consular agents was a commercial one, but so little 
exchange existed between the United States and the 
Papal State that the work involved in the office was al-
most negligible. 

President Polk's Recommendation 
In his annual message to Congress on December 7, 



U. S. RECOGNITION OF THE PAPACY 107 
1847, President Polk announced that the United States 
Government was considering the opening of diplomatic 
relations with the court of Rome, and a bill was intro-
duced to defray the necessary expenses of the office The 
proposition aroused intense feeling throughout the coun-
try, and the leader of the opposition was Representative 
Lewis C. Levin of Pennsylvania. Levin is now known to 
have been directly implicated in the Philadelphia riots of 
1844, and in a lengthy speech in the House of Represen-
tatives in 1848, he assailed the Church in a manner which 
brought upon him the stern displeasure of his colleagues 
irom Pennsylvania. 

On March 2, 1848, Levin who may well be taken as the 
prototype of the fanatical anti-Catholic, began an attack 
in the House on the bill with these words: "Mr. Chair-
man, I have been so often misrepresented by the paid 
agents of the Jesuits who hang around this Hall and who 
swarm over our land, that I have come prepared today " 
There follows a long speech filled with diatribe and cal-
umny against Pius IX and the Catholics of this country 
He openly accused President Polk of promoting the Roman 
legation because of a "wonderful and newly-awakened 
sympathy for Rome" which had as its cause "the increase 
of the Roman Catholic vote." Without mentioning the 
name of Archbishop Hughes, Levin claimed that the cre-
ation of the embassy at the Court of Pius IX was "the 
work of an intriguing, restless, grasping, and ambitious 
priest, who fans in his bosom the nefarious hope that he 
is himself to be the destined organ between a free repub-
lic and an absolute hierarchy." 

Rebuked by Henry W. Hillard, representative from 
Alabama, for his want of liberality in religious matters 
Lev in attempted to reply, when he was interrupted by 
Charles Brown of Pennsylvania who said: "Yes' He— 
(pointing to Mr. Levin)—the gentleman from Pennsyl-
vania—was the first to introduce the incendiary subject 
of religion into the politics of Philadelphia, and by his 
inflammatory harangues, produced all the incendiarism 
and bloodshed that for a while covered it with gloom and 
disgrace. Yes, sir, he was the author of all the incendiarv 
measures—" here the Speaker intervened and called 
Brown to order. Charles Jared Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania 



108 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
then arose to ask why Mr. Brown was out of order, and 
the session adjourned in "great confusion and excite-
ment," to use the words of the "Congressional Globe" of 
the day. 

A few days later (March 8, 1848), Ingersoll took the 
floor and made a spirited defense of Archbishop Hughes 
and of Pius IX, paying a glowing tribute to the Jesuits 
of Georgetown College. "For fifty years," he said, "those 
Jesuit Fathers have been disseminating the doctrines of 
human freedom, as well as the treasures of science to the 
youth of America, and not an instance has occurred of 
anything to their dishonor." 

Ingersoll's analysis of the Native-American riots in 
Philadelphia in 1844 was a crushing rejoinder to Levin 
whom he pilloried as a common bargainer in votes, using 
his influence with the Native American party at the be-
hest of the highest financial bidder. The bill to establish 
the legation in Rome passed by a vote of 137 to 15 in 
the House of Representatives and by an equally large ma-
jority in the Senate, and on April 1, 1848, Jacob L. Mar-
tin was appointed by Secretary Buchanan as American 
Minister to the Papal States. 

Relations With Vatican Lasted Twenty Years 
The diplomatic relations thus begun lasted for twenty 

years and the archives of the Secretary of State contain 
considerable material in the way of letters, despatches 
and reports which throw considerable light on American 
Catholic history and on the international problems creat-
ed by the "risorgimento" policy of Young Italy. In some 
of these state papers we find an expression of opinion 
which has a distinct connection with the history of the 
"Catholic Question" in the United States. For example, 
in Secretary Buchanan's earliest instructions to Minister 
Martin, we read: 

"There is one consideration which you ought al-ways to keep in view in your intercourse with the Papal States. Most, if not all, the governments which have diplomatic representatives at Rome, are connected with the Pope as the head of the Catholic Church. In this subject the government of the United States occu-pies an entirely different position. It possesses no pow-er whatever over the question of religion. All denomi-nations of Christians stand on the same footing in the 



U. S. RECOGNITION OF THE PAPACY 109 
country, and every man enjoys the inestimable right of worshipping his God according to the dictates of his own conscience." These are precious words from our government, since they were written at the very time Catholics were being assailed by antagonists who were bent on curtailing that right if possible. 

Minister Martin Captivated by Pope 
Martin's despatches show that he was captivated with 

the liberal-mindedness of Pius IX. Martin lived but a 
year, dying at Rome on August 26, 1848. He is buried 
there. His successor, Lewis Cass, Jr., served until 1858 
and was singularly fortunate in his attitude towards the 
unstable Republic which Mazzini had succeeded in creat-
ing at Rome in 1848. The eloquence and forcible logic 
of Archbishop Hughes of New York was bringing home 
to Catholic and non-Catholic alike at the time the irregu-
lar proceedings of the Italian revolutionists, and in a way 
his discourses on the flight of the Pope to Gaeta were a 
warning to our government that the sacrilegious invaders 
of the Eternal City did not merit recognition. 

Offer of Asylum to Pope 
Cass was succeeded by John Porter Stockton, who pre-

sented his credentials to Cardinal Antonelli, late in 1858. 
Pius IX had returned in triumph from Gaeta in 1850, but 
it was visible to all that the movement for the unification 
of Italy was too powerful to be stopped. After the fall 
of Naples in 1860, Stockton asked for his recall (April 2, 
1861), and Rufus King was appointed as his successor. 
Seward's instructions to King were explicit indications 
to the Holy See that the United States had no desire to 
violate friendship with the Papal States by taking any 
part in the political revolution which had the capture of 
Rome as its objective. 

King soon resigned to accept the post of Brigadier-
general in the Union Army, and was succeeded by Alex-
ander Randall, who remained but a short time, and by 
Richard W. Blatchford. General King was again appoint-
ed to the Holy See in October, 1863, and there was much 
question at the time whether it would not be prudent for 
Pius IX to take refuge in the United States. When the 
question was broached to King, the American Minister 



110 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
replied that the United States "was the home of civil and 
religious liberty as well as a refuge of all who fled from 
political and other troubles in the old world, and that His 
Holiness, should he see fit to go to the United States, 
would no doubt meet with a kind welcome and be left to 
pursue, unquestioned and unmolested, his great work as 
Head of the Catholic Church." Archbishop Hughes had 
already visited Pius IX when this matter was being seri-
ously discussed through diplomatic channels, and Pius 
IX expressed to the American Minister his great appre-
ciation that the New York prelate had been entrusted 
with a mission so f raught with noble possibilities for the 
preservation of the American Union. 

Approval of Confederacy 
It was during the incumbency of Minister King that 

the Holy See was approached by the Confederacy, not ex-
actly for recognition as a separate state, but as a sign 
that the Southern leaders fully appreciated the value of 
the sympathy of so great a liberal statesman as Pius IX. 
The occasion of the correspondence was an Apostolic 
Brief sent by the Pope to Archbishop Hughes of New 
York and to Archbishop Odin of New Orleans, on October 
18,1862, requesting these two prelates to use every possi-
ble means to bring the awful slaughter of the Civil War 
to an end. 

The Holy Father said in his letter: "Wherefore we write you this letter, in which we urge you, Venerable Brother, with all the force and earnestness of our mind, to exhort, with your eminent piety and episcopal zeal, your clergy and fai thful to offer up their prayers, and also apply all your study and exertion, with the people and their chief rulers, to re-store forthwith the desired tranquility and peace by which the happiness of both the Christian and the civil republic is principally maintained. Wherefore, omit nothing you can undertake and accomplish, by your wisdom, authority and exertions, as fa r as compatible with the nature of the holy ministry, to conciliate the minds of the combatants, pacify, reconcile, and bring back the desired tranquility and peace, by all the means that are most conducive to the best interests of the people. 
"Take every pains, besides, to cause the people and their chief rulers seriously to reflect on the grievous 



U. S. RECOGNITION OF THE PAPACY 111 
evils with which they are afflicted, and which are the result of civil war, the direst, most destructive and dis-mal of all the evils that befall a people or a nation. Neither omit to admonish and exhort the people and their supreme rulers, even in our name, that with con-ciliated minds they would embrace peace, and love each other with uninterrupted charity. For we are confident that they would comply with our paternal admonitions and hearken to our words the more willingly as of themselves they plainly and clearly understand that we are influenced by no political reasons, no earthly con-siderations, but impelled with your surpassing wisdom, to persuade all that true prosperity, even in this life, is sought for in vain outside of the true religion of Christ and its salutary doctrines. We have no hesitation, Ven-erable Brother, but that calling to your aid the services and assistance even of your associate bishops you would abundantly satisfy our wishes, and by your wise and prudent efforts bring a matter of such moment to a happy termination." Jefferson Davis' Letter to Pope 

On September 23, 1863, J. P. Benjamin, Secretary of 
State for the Confederacy, wrote to A. Dudly Mann, then 
Confederate Commissioner to Belgium, enclosing a letter 
from Jefferson Davis to the Holy Father, and ordering 
Mann to go to Rome at once and present the Confederate 
President's letter to Pius IX. This letter was as follows: 

"Executive Office, "Richmond, Sept. 23, 1863. "Most Venerable Chief of the Holy See and Sovereign Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church: "The letters which your Holiness addressed to the venerable chiefs of the Catholic clergy in New Orleans and New York have been brought to my attention; and I have read with emotion the terms in which you are pleased to express the deep sorrow with which you regard the slaughter, ruin and devastation consequent on the war now waged by the Government of the United States against the States and People over which I have been chosen to preside; and in which you direct them, and the clergy under their authority, to exhort the peo-ple and the rulers to the exercise of mutual charity and the love of peace. I am deeply sensible of the Christian charity and sympathy with which your Holiness has twice appealed to the venerable clergy of your church urging them to use and apply all study and exertion 



112 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
for the restoration of peace and tranquility. "I, therefore, deem it my duty to offer to your Holi-ness, in my own name and in that of the people of the < Confederate States, the expression of our sincere and cordial appreciation of the Christian charity and love by which your Holiness is actuated, and to assure you that this people, at whose hearth-stones the enemy is now pressing with threats of dire oppression and mer-ciless carnage, are now, and ever have been, earnestly desirous that this wicked war shall cease; that we have offered at the footstool of our Father Who is in Heaven prayers inspired "by the same feelings which animate your Holiness; that we desire no evil to our enemies, nor do we covet any of their possessions, but are only struggling to the end that they shall cease to devastate our land and inflict useless and cruel slaughter upon our people, and that we be permitted to live at peace with all mankind, under our own laws and institutions, which protect every man in the enjoyment not only of his temporal rights, but of worshipping God according to his own faith. "I, therefore, pray your Holiness to accept from me, and from the people of the Confederate States, this assurance of our sincere thanks for your effort to aid the cause of peace, and of our earnest wishes that your life may be prolonged and that God may have you in His holy keeping. "JEFFERSON DAVIS, "President Confederate States of North America." 

Pope's Reply to Davis 
The following December, Pius IX replied to Davis, 

addressing him by his title: "President of the Confeder-
ate States of America," and thanking him for the grati-
tude expressed in his letter of September 23. He wrote: 

"Would to God that the other inhabitants of these 
regions (the Northern people) and their rulers, seri-
ously reflecting upon the fearful nature of intestine 
warfare, might, in a dispassionate mood, hearken to 
and adopt the counsels of peace!" 

These words caused considerable excitement at the 
time and the old charge of the Catholic Church being 
leagued with the slave-owners was revived. The Draf t 
Riots in New York City in July, 1863, in which one thou-
sand persons were killed or wounded, gave the enemies 
of the Catholics another opportunity to press the charge 



U. S. RECOGNITION OF THE PAPACY 113 
of disloyalty, and the letter of Pius IX did not help to allay this suspicion. 

It was fortunate that we had a resident Minister at 
Rome at the time, for Rufus King was clear-headed 
enough to keep our government properly informed of the 
Holy Father's peaceful intentions. Davis and the other 
Southern leaders realized that Pius IX had not recognized 
the Confederacy by his letter. Secretary Benjamin, in 
fact, called the use of President Davis' title "a formula of 
politeness, not a political recognition of a fact." 

The American legation at the Court of Pius IX lasted 
through the War, but came to an official end in 1867, 
when Congress refused to appropriate the money neces-
sary for its upkeep. Had an American Minister been res-
ident in Rome in 1870 when the Italian army took the 
Eternal City, the question of the Pope's taking refuge in 
the United States might have been revived, and had Pius 
IX come here, the international complications involved in 
his presence outside of Rome might have produced an im-
mediate settlement of the Roman Question. As a young 
priest Pius IX had visited South America, and more than 
one of its Catholic governments hoped that he would re-
turn rather than submit to the indignity of an imprison-
ment which the New Italian state practically forced him 
to accept and which his successors since 1870 and until 
1929 shared, to the admiration of the Catholic world. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Under which President did the U. S. recognize the Papacy? Was he unopposed in this? Who was Lewis C. Levin ? Who was Charles Brown ? Who was Charles Ingersoll? What did these men do? 2. How long did the relations with the Vatican last? Discuss Secretary Buchanan's instructions to Minister Martin. 3. Who was Pope at this time ? How did he impress our ministers ? 4. Who invited the Pope to live in the U. S.? Why? (Consult a good Church History for fur ther informa-tion about conditions in Italy at this time. These con-ditions were settled in 1929 by the signing of the Lateran Treaty. Ask your study club leader to dis-cuss it.) 
5. What was Pope Pius IX's attitude towards the Civil War? Did he favor the North or the South? Was he neutral? Discuss. 



XXXVIII 
The S lave Q u e s t i o n 

That the Catholic Church in the United States should escape the fierce antagonisms created by the Abolition movement was hardly possible during those years of in-tense moral and political discussions on the slave ques-tion (1830-1861). 
Societies for the purpose of abolishing slavery in this country existed from the beginning of the Republic. Ben-jamin Franklin was president of one founded in Philadel-phia in 1775, and John Jay was president of another be-gun in New York in 1785. Other societies were organized in the different States and were to a slight degree instru-mental in the abolition of the slave trade by the Federal government in 1808. 
Eight years later the American Colonization Society 

was founded at Washington, D. C., for the purpose of se-
curing a home for free Negroes, preferably in Africa. 
The hidden object of the Society was to free the South 
of those free Negroes who were a menace to white control 
over the slaves. In 1820, during the presidency of Charles 
Carrollton, the Society sent out its first colony to Africa, 
and two years later a permanent settlement was made at 
Cape Mesurado. For the next quarter century the Society 
managed the colony, but on July 26, 1847, it declared it-
self an independent republic consisting of four counties 
one of which was called Maryland. The capital was called 
Monrovia af ter President Monore. 

Catholic Liberians 
Among the first colonists were Catholic Negroes from 

Maryland and Virginia, and their spiritual care was dis-
cussed at the Second Provincial Council of Baltimore 
(1833). While in Rome, in May, 1833, Bishop John Eng-
land submitted to the Holy See a memorial regarding the 
establishment of a Catholic Mission in Liberia, and al-
though his advice was not followed by the prelates of the 
Council, a decree was ordered stating that the care of the 
Catholic Liberians should be entrusted to the Society of 
Jesus. As a result nothing was done, and Bishop England 



THE SLAVE QUESTION 115 
chafed under what he considered the culpable neglect of 
our hierarchy in not providing for the growing problems 
created by Abolitionism. 

Bishop England was not unaware of the splendid 
pages that might be written on Catholic missionary activ-
ities among the colored people during the colonial and 
national periods of our country's history, but he believed 
that the whole force of Catholic doctrine should be 
brought to bear upon a question which was fast dividing 
the United States into two distinct territories. Personally 
he was opposed1 to slavery, but he knew that alone he 
could accomplish nothing. What he wished for was a re-
straining influence from Catholic leaders upon the radical 
demands of the Abolitionists and the infiltration, into this 
greatest problem the United States has had to solve, of 
the realization that only gradually might slavery be abol-
ished. He knew American politics too well not to see that 
the Abolition movement was strongly bound to the anti-
Catholic forces of the Nativists. 

Probably, it was his regret over the silence of the 
Council of 1833 which induced him to open a school for 
free Negroes in Charleston, in 1835. The Negro insurrec-
tion of 1820, under Denmark Vesey, and in 1831, under 
Nat Turner, had been put down with a cruel hand, and 
Southerners generally saw in the fearful massacre of 
whites committed by Turner and his followers the direct 
result of Abolition literature upon the Negroes. In Sep-
tember, 1836, a mob broke into the postoffice at Charles-
ton and destroyed all the Abolition literature in the mail 
which had arrived the day previous. The word got abroad 
that Bishop England had received and retained one of the 
anti-slavery tracts and for several days the Cathedral, 
Bishop's House, Seminary and Convent had to be 
guarded. 

Dr. England at this time was America's foremost 
Catholic citizen, and Southerners in general knew that his 
influence on the slave question was the strongest in Cath-
olic circles. He had won their approval by his published 
rebuke to his friend, Daniel O'Connell, some years before, 
in which he accused the Liberator of unwarranted inter-
ference in the domestic affairs of the United States 
through his alliance with the Abolitionists. 



116 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
Church's Dilemma Over Slave Problem 

The Catholic Church here was in a sore dilemma over 
the slave problem. The Holy See had repeatedly con-
demned the slave-trade from 1482 to 1839, but had not 
condemned slavery itself as a social institution. The Apos-
tolic Brief of Gregory XVI in 1839 made this distinction, 
and Bishop Kenrick in his "Moral Theology," which came 
out shortly afterwards, upheld slavery as permissible. 
The scholarly Bishop of Philadelphia regretted that so 
many Negroes should be held in bondage in the land of 
freedom, but he added that "nothing against the law 
should be attempted, done or said, which would make 
them (the slaves) bear their yoke unwillingly." This 
placed the Church on the side of the slave-owners and 
the reaction in Abolition circles was to increase the ani-
mosity then alive against American Catholics. This factor 
must be remembered in estimating the causes for the 
rapid spread of Native-Americanism and Know-Nothing-
ism from 1840 to 1861. 

After the appearance of Gregory XYI's letter on the 
slave-trade, it was immediately made use of as a party 
weapon by Forsyth, Van Buren's Secretary of State, in 
August, 1840, against General Harrison, the first presi-
dential candidate put forward by "the Whigs and the Anti-
Slavery party. Bishop England immediately took up the 
issue in favor of domestic slavery and interpreted the 
Holy Father 's letter as simply condemning the slave-
trade. There is little doubt that the stand taken by Bishop 
England tended considerably to influence American Cath-
olics in favor of domestic slavery. Dr. England's "Letters 
to Forsyth" are among the strongest from his pen, but 
the damage had already been done and Catholics were 
generally ranked with the slave-owners, as many con-
temporary letters and publications reveal. 

Bishop England's Position 
The silence of the other American prelates of the time 

gave strength to this belief and the election of William 
Henry Harrison as ninth President of ttie United States 
in 1840 was everywhere acclaimed as a victory over all 
slave-owning interests, the Catholic Church included. 
Bishop England was asked by many during the heat of 



THE SLAVE QUESTION 117 
the. campaign where he personally stood on the question, 
and he replied in the last of his letters to Forsyth (Feb-
ruary 23, 1842) : 

"I have been asked by many, a question which I may as well answer at once, namely: Whether I am friendly to the existence or continuation of slavery? I am not —but I 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." 
Pope Gregory's letter was read in the Fourth Prov-

incial Council of Baltimore (1840), but in spite of the 
widespread agitation it had caused, no action was taken 
by our prelates, and again their silence was misinter-
preted by anti-Catholic Abolitionists who found it difficult 
to see how the Church could remain neutral on a question 
that was fas t splitting the Union into two parts. 

As a result of the presidential election of 1840, Cath-
olics, who in the main had voted with the Democrats, 
were now regarded as traitors to that party; and the 
Republicans, many of whom had been instrumental in the 
formation of the Native-American party, felt no obliga-
tion towards them, although their vote had helped Harri-
son to win the election. The result was that Catholic in-
fluence with both parties was weakened during the very 
years when protection was badly needed for safeguarding 
their civic rights. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's deci-
sion in the Dred Scot case in 1857 added weight to the 
anti-Catholic attitude of the Abolitionists, since it clearly 
showed that America's first Catholic Chief Justice was a 
friend of the slave system. 

I t has been customary for Catholic writers to picture 
the Church here as entirely aloof from the intense agi-
tation on the slave question during the score of years be-
fore the Civil War and "to have emerged from the gloom 
of civil str ife presenting a united front to meet the new 
conditions that emancipation gave birth to." To accept 
this is to forget a famous passage at arms between Arch-
bishop Hughes and Dr. Brownson in 1861. 

Clash of Cdtholic Leaders 
Dr. Brownson's article, "Slavery and the War," rec-

ommending the immediate emancipation of slaves as a 
war measure, contained the following paragraph: 



118 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
"The Church is never content with simply disap-proving of slavery. She regards it as a wrong and an outrage upon humanity . . . She requires each and every individual to do what he can as a member of the com-munity to induce it to take action necessary for re-dressing it This is a point which Catholics too often overlook. Because the Church does not make the im-

m . f w T T V ? ? * 1 0 1 1 ^ 1 1 t h e s l a v e s a condition 'sine qua non of abolition, they are apt to conclude that she does not oppose slavery and that they are not required by their religion to make active efforts for its aboli-
I T h e r e w e r e o f course many Catholic Abolitionists in 
the North and South, and Brownson's utterances may be 
taken as the echo of their displeasure over the fact that 
M L O ? 8 B H F i r s t P l e n a r y C o » n c i l of Baltimore (1852) ignored the slave question. Archbishop Hughes lost no time in answering Dr. Brownson in his official organ, The Metropolitan Record." As a young man at Mount St Mary's College, Emmitsburg, he had been an ardent Abolitionist—one of his poems contains the strik-ing line: 

"—chase foul bondage from her Southern plain " but later in life he came to believe that emancipation would be a fatal social blunder. His answer to Brown-son is a severe arraignment of the great apologist's theological learning, and he went "to such lengths in the extenuation of slavery that he was accused of favoring the slave-trade." 
The t ruth is that Catholics on both sides of the ques-

tion were supporting their stand by an appeal to theo-
logica traditions and literature, and that "the ranks of 
Catholic leaders were to all practical purposes, as divided 
as those of other Christian churches in the United States. 

l h e action of our prelates in not facing the problem 
boldly and in not offering to a distracted country a plan 
of emancipation based upon the policy followed out by 
the Church in former ages for the gradual freedom of the 
slaves may have been prudent, but it was unfortunate 
that no great leader arose to win the attention of the pro-
tagonists on both sides of the problem. As a result the 
Church was alienated from the anti-slavery groups of the 
North and was not welcomed by the slave-owners of the 



THE SLAVE QUESTION 119 
South where anti-Catholic prejudices were too strong to 
be overcome. The Church in the United States was not 
at the time a relatively large one in proportion to the 
whole population, but it was the largest Christian relig-
ious society in the land. That Catholicism emerged from 
the conflict united was due to the unity of the Faith and 
to Church administrative principles. 

Second Plenary Council's Pronouncement 
When the war was over, the problems connected with 

the emancipated slaves were freely discussed at the Sec-
ond Plenary Council of Baltimore (1866), and in their 
Pastoral Letter to the Laity, the prelates said: "We could 
have wished that in accordance with the action of the 
Catholic Church in past ages, in regard to the serfs of 
Europe, a more gradual system of emancipation could 
have been adopted, so that they might have been in some 
measure prepared to make a better use of this freedom, 
than they are likely to do now." Had this message been 
given in the eight Councils preceding that of 1866, the 
Catholic Church would have found itself ranged alongside 
the best men of both parties; and with the Post-Civil 
War period in view, it is regrettable that our leaders did 
not analyze the slavery issue more adroitly. 

Nor must it be forgotten that, in spite of its admir-
able record in certain localities for the amelioration of 
the social and moral conditions of the slaves, the first 
organized effort in the United States^ to win the souls 
of the colored people af ter the Civil War was carried out 
by the priests of Mill Hill who came here from England 
in 1871. It was twenty-one years later (1892), before 
the American Church accepted the whole burden of the 
spiritual care of our colored citizens through the estab-
lishment of the Society of St. Joseph. There are few 
Catholic notes in the Reconstruction of the South be-
tween 1866 and 1876. 

Out of the difference of opinion on the slave question 
one effect which had already taken place was gradually 
made apparent in the field of politics, namely, the end of 
the identity between the Democratic party and Catholic 
voters, with the result that the "Catholic Question" in 
the United States was removed from politics for almost 
a generation. 



120 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 

Study Club Outline 
1. Was there an official Catholic stand taken on the slave question? What was Bishop England's attitude? 
2. What has been the stand of the Church through the centuries on freedom of all individuals? (See "Faith of Millions, 0.. S. V. Press, Huntington, Ind., $1.00.) How did Bishop Kenrick treat the slave question? 
3. Who was Roger B. Taney? Can you tell how many Catholics have served on the U. S. Supreme Court to the present day? Name them. Is a Catholic now a Supreme Justice ? Who ? 
4. How did the slave question aifect the Church in the North? In the South? Discuss. 
5. What brought about the removal of the "Catholic Question" from politics? 



XXI I 
The C i v i l W a r 

In a superb essay on "Obligations to America," Pro-fessor Carlton J. H. Hayes of Columbia University lays down a principle which cannot be too often repeated to Catholics in this country: 
"The loyalty of American Catholics to this country need not hang in the balance one instant, if they will take higher and firmer ground. Let them advance bold-ly and grasp the significant truth that America is the daughter of the Catholic Church . . . Turn wheresoever you will in these United States and study any institu-tion or any ideal which has been commonly regarded as an aspect of true Americanism and you will discover that no matter who is immediately responsible for its erection or formulation, its embryo and antitype are to be found in Catholic theory and practice. This is what I mean by insisting that America is a daughter of the Catholic Church." 

In a booklet on the subject, "American Democracy and Catholic Doctrine," Sylvester J. McNamara has sum-marized for us the immediate sources of our American free institutions and in particular the sources of the Declaration of Independence, and has shown conclusively that the political philosophy back of American freedom came to the Founders of the Republic straight from the heart of the Catholic Church. 
This fact has not, however, been sufficiently empha-

sized by our Catholic American writers, and instead of 
finding Catholic political philosophy held in esteem by all 
who are enjoying the f rui ts of American liberty, the 
Catholic Church in this country has had to face a decen-
nial madness composed of prejudice and ignorance in 
which her most sacred obligations to America are made 
the subject of vicious and unwarranted onslaught. None 
of these attacks strikes the Church more sensitively than 
the charge so often made against the loyalty of Catholic 
soldiers and sailors during our wars. Face to face with 
the glorious response of our Catholic citizens during the 
World War of 1914-1918, anti-Catholic antagonists dared 



122 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
not impugn the loyalty of those of the Household of the 
Faith. But they were not to be silenced. Records were 
searched to find occasional lapses on the part of Catholic 
soldiers, and the honor of the Catholic priests and sol-
diers of this last world conflict was attacked indirectly 
through those forgotten pages of the past. Two of these 
falsehoods appear periodically in the anti-Catholic press 

the desertion of Catholic soldiers in the Mexican War 
and the attempt to prove that seventy-two per cent of the 
deserters in the Civil War were Irish Catholics. Both 
charges have been answered by Mr. Thomas T. Meehan 
in the "Historical Records and Studies" of 1918-1919. But 
those who continue making these charges have no inten-
tion of learning the truth. 

Bigotry During Mexican War 
The recruiting for the Mexican War was made the 

avenue for an anti-Catholic campaign which had consid-
erable effect upon the Mexicans once actual warfare be-
gan. Referring to this John Gilmary Shea wrote: 

"When volunteers were called for, the feeling of hos-tility to the Catholic Church was manifest, and boasts were loudly made that our soldiers were to enrich them-selves with the spoils of the Catholic churches. The spirit even reached the regular army, and Catholic sol-diers near the frontier were, in utter disregard of the Constitution of the United States and the spirit of our institutions, compelled, under threats of severe punish-ment, to attend the services of the Protestant religion, established in the United States Army, and to listen to violent denunciations of their own faith." 
One good result of the bigotry, however, was the ap-

pointment of chaplains for the troops engaged in the War 
with Mexico, and two Jesuits, Father Anthony Rey, of 
Georgetown College, and Father John McElroy, of Fred-
erick, were sent to the front. 

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the first 
thought of those leading Catholic regiments, or regiments 
in which a large number of the soldiers was of the Faith, 
was to provide for their spiritual welfare. Among these 
Chaplains with the Union forces were Father John Ire-
land, the future Archbishop of St. Paul, who was with the 
F i f th Minnesota regiment; Father Louis A. Lambert, of 



THE CIVIL WAR 123 
the Eighteenth Illinois regiment; Father Lawrence Mc-
Mahon, later Bishop of Hart ford; Father Bernard Mc-
Quade, later Bishop of Rochester; the Jesuit Fathers 
O'Reilly, Ouilette, O'Hagan, and Tissot, and the great 
chaplain of the battle of Gettysburg, Father Corby, of 
Notre Dame. 

With the Confederate forces were Father Francis Le-
ray, later Archbishop of New Orleans; Father Abram 
Ryan, the "Poet Priest of the South;" Father Hamilton, 
of whom it was said at the time that he was the only 
clergyman with sufficient heart and charity to visit the 
33,000 prisoners in Andersonville prison of horrible 
fame; Father Peter Whelan, who was a chaplain-general 
of the Southern armies, and many others. 

Participation of Catholics in Civil War 
There is an excellent summary of participation of 

loyal Catholic Northerners and Southerners in the Civil 
War in an article by Dr. Henry Grattan Doyle in the 
"Catholic Builders of the Nation." The list of promi-
nent officers in both armies who were members of the 
Catholic Church is a surprisingly large one, and some of 
these names should be made familiar to the boys and girls 
in our Catholic schools—General Thomas F. Meagher, 
Colonel James A. Mulligan, General Philip H. Sheridan 
of whom Grant said that he had "no superior as a gen-
eral, either living or dead, and perhaps not an equal," 
General William Starke Rosecrans, one of the greatest 
soldiers the United States has ever had, and others in the 
Union Army. 

On the Southern side we meet with General P. G. T. 
Beauregard, one of the most picturesque figures of the 
War; General James Longstreet, who became a Catholic 
af ter the War was over; Stephen R. Mallory, Secretary of 
the Navy in Jefferson Davis' cabinet, and Captain (later 
Admiral) Raphael Semmes, who commanded the "Ala-
bama" from August, 1862, until she was sunk by the 
"Kearsarge" in June, 1864, but not before she had cap-
tured some sixty-five Northern warships and other vessels 
and had inflicted millions of dollars of damage on North-
ern commerce. 

By far , however, the greater glory of Catholic parti-



124 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
cipation in the Civil War has gone to the nuns of the 
battlefield. The Red Cross was unknown at the time, but 
Catholic nursing Sisters for the wounded and dying per-
formed so efficient a part in the struggle that there was 
erected some years ago by the Ladies' Auxiliary of the 
Ancient Order of Hibernians, in the city of Washington, 
a monument to the "Nuns of the Battlefield." Twelve 
different Sisterhoods are represented on the large bronze 
tablet on the front of the monument which bears the in-
scription: "Erected by the Ladies' Auxiliary of the An-
cient Order of Hibernians in America to the memory, 
and the honor of, the members of the various-Orders of 
Sisters who gave their services as nurses on battlefields, 
in hospitals, and on floating hospitals in the wars in 
which the United States has engaged." The monument 
faces the place where Rhode Island and Connecticut Ave-
nues meet and is across from St. Matthew's Catholic 
Church, where for many years Monsignor Thomas Simms 
Lee was pastor. 

Four Hundred Nuns Acted as War Nurses 
On March 18, 1918, Hon. Ambrose Kennedy of Rhode 

Island, spoke at length upon the resolution for the erec-
tion of this memorial. Mr. Kennedy was able to show by 
documentary evidence that nearly four hundred Catholic 
Sisters acted as war nurses from 1861 to 1865. He de-
scribed their work in these words: 

"They brought into the work a skill and discipline which had long been prominent features of their daily training and experience. Hence the unique character of the services they rendered during the entire period of the War. At the very moment of their enlistment they were admirably equipped for the task, and a hard and laborious task it was, but they met and discharged it as a duty of sacrifice every moment of the day and night, animated only by an undying love of country and the spirit of Christian charity and zeal." 
The Sisters whom he eulogized that day were mem-

bers of eight different religious congregations: Sisters of 
Mercy, Sisters of the Holy Cross, Daughters of Charity 
of New York and Cincinnati, Sisters of Charity of Em-
mitsburg, Sisters of St. Joseph, Sisters of Charity of 
Nazareth, and the Ursulines. "The records of the War," 



THE CIVIL WAR 125 
Mr. Kennedy says, "do not register a single instance of 
failure or shirking on the part of these Sisterhoods . . . 
No page in all our history can present nobler deeds of 
courage and devotion." 

One of the factors of the post-Civil War period which 
was brought to light by the researches of Dr. Scannell 
O'Neill is the large number of converts among army 
men who first came in contact with the Catholic Faith 
through the nuns of the battlefield. A list of these con-
verts reveals the names of twenty-nine officers of high 
rank in the Union Army and fourteen in the Confederate 
Army, who entered the Church during and af ter the Civil 
War. 

The great assembly of Archbishops and Bishops at 
Baltimore in October, 1866, for the Second Plenary Coun-
cil, was not unmindful of this aspect of the Sisters' pres-
ence at the front and in the hospitals, and in one of the 
most eloquent pages ever written to the laity, the prelates 
of the Council pay a tribute to the nuns which merits 
remembrance: 

"We discharge a grateful duty, in rendering a pub-lic testimony to the virtue and heroism of these Chris-tian Virgins, whose lives shed the good odor of Christ in every place, and whose devotedness and self-sacrifice have, perhaps more than any other cause, contributed to effect a favorable change in the minds of thousands estranged from the Faith." 
If ever the truest spirit of patriotic love of America 

and that great social force of Catholicism—love for one's 
neighbor—met to part no more in the history of our 
country, it was when Catholic nuns walked among the 
dead and dying of our battlefields. One who watched them 
the morning af ter quiet fell upon the terrible scenes at 
Gettysburg said of them: 

"After great difficulty they arrived. Never did hu-man eyes behold such a spectacle! Soldiers slain or half dead lay before them groaning in ghastly heaps, some calling for aid and other gasping alongside hundreds of breathless steeds whose nostrils no longer scented the 'gr imy smoke of battle. Here among these ruins of life thousands of guns, side arms, wheels, projectiles, and all sorts of military accoutrements were promiscu-



126 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
ously scattered. Into the midst of these grim ravages of war went these noble messengers of peace and char-ity, with hardly an inch of ground to step on, and helped to pick up the wounded and carry them to at-tending fa rm wagons which had been requisitioned as ambulances. From the labor of assisting on the battle-field, the Sisters proceeded to the town of Gettysburg, which had by this time become a hive of improvised hospitals." 

Lincoln's Tribute to Nuns of the Battlefield 
Many similar tributes might be recorded in memory 

of all that the Sisterhoods accomplished by their beauti-
ful lives and character during this greatest of all our 
political crisis. There is one that every Catholic should 
know by heart, for it comes from the heart of our most 
beloved American, Abraham Lincoln: 

"Of all the forms of charity and benevolence seen in the crowded wards of the hospitals, those of some Catholic Sisters were among the most efficient. I never knew whence they came or what was the name of their order. More lovely than anything I have ever seen in art, so long devoted to illustrations of love, mercy, and charity, are the pictures that remain of those modest Sisters going on their errands of mercy among the suf-fering and dying. Gentle and womanly, yet with the courage of soldiers, leading a forlorn hope, to sustain them in contact with such horrors. As they went from cot to cot, distributing the medicines prescribed, or administering the cooling, strengthening draughts as directed, they were veritable angels of mercy. Their words were suited to every sufferer. One they incited and encouraged, another they calmed and soothed. With every soldier they conversed about his home, his wife his children, all the loved ones he was soon to see again if he was obedient and patient. How many times have ! seen them exorcise pain by their presence or their words! How often has the hot forehead of the soldier grown cool as one of these Sisters bathed it! : How often has he been refreshed, encouraged, and assisted along the road to convalescence, when he would other-wise have fallen by the way, by the home memories with which these unpaid nurses filled his heart!" 
We who are the heirs of the legacy of devotion she 

created, need no other proof of the intimate relationship 
that is always existent between the Catholic Church and 



THE CIVIL WAR 127 
the American Republic. We need no other proof for the 
statement made a century ago by the eminent French 
scholar de Tocqueville, who wrote: "The Catholics of the 
United States are at the same time the most fai thful be-
lievers in God and the most zealous citizens of the Re-
public." 

Study Club Outline 
1. Discuss together with what is contained in the Intro-duction of this book Professor Hayes' assertion that America is the daughter of the Catholic Church. 
2. Have Catholics always evidenced loyalty to country in times of war? Has their loyalty been appreciated? Is it ever discounted? Name two falsehoods frequently asserted in this connection. 
3. What fu ture archbishop served as chaplain in the Civil War? What fu ture Bishops? Can you recall an interesting event in the life of Father Corby? Whose statue is erected at Gettysburg? 
4. What part did Catholic Sisters take in the war? Re-tell Ambrose Kennedy's, Lincoln's, and the Bishops appreciations of the work done by Sisters. What was the effect of their example on non-Catholics? 
5. Discuss among yourselves the respective merits and courage evidenced by the soldier, the chaplain and the nurses on the battlefields. Is one deserving of more credit than the other? 



XXI I I 
C h a r l e s O ' C o n o r 

The ten years following the Civil War were even more 
perilous to the nation's welfare than the conflict itself. 
Emerging from the greatest military struggle the mod-
ern world had seen, the United States was at the thresh-
old of a reconstruction period which demanded the en-
ergies and talents of her best statesmen, and the hearty 
co-operation of all on both sides of the Mason and 
Dixon dividing line. The South was placed under martial 
rule, and slowly out of the estrangement and the bitter-
ness caused by the war the eleven states of the old Con-
federacy struggled through unspeakable conditions back 
to normalcy. In the North, reconstruction was also nec-
essary, but it was mainly financial and industrial, owing 
to the turning back of nearly a million soldiers to civilian 
life. The presidential election of 1868 centered around 
General Grant, the successful Republican candidate, and 
Horatio Seymour, who led the Democrats to defeat. 

So fa r as the Catholic Church was concerned, these 
ten years (1865-1875) were a period of comparative quiet. 
The Northern dioceses, led by Archbishop Spalding, ap-
pealed to their priests and people for money to aid the 
stricken Southland, and to impartial historians of the 
United States—let us admit that in this respect it is hard 
to find one—there can be no more unique spectacle during 
the year af ter the war than the sight of seven archbishops 
and thirty-seven bishops of the Catholic Church from 
every part of the reunited Republic meeting at Baltimore 
in the Second Plenary Council (October, 1866) for the 
reconstruction of diocesan life and the revivifying of the 
Catholic piety and discipline. 

The One Tangible Unity 
Contemporary statesmen and political leaders looked 

on with amazement at this one tangible unity left af ter 
the war's wreckage. "The country had just come forth 
from a most terrible crisis in which many ancient land-
marks had been effaced," we read in the "Life of Arch-
bishop Spalding," and: 

"The very ship of state had been wrenched from its 



CHARLES O'CONOR 129 
moorings. House had been divided against house, brother's hand had been raised against brother. The sects had been torn asunder and still lay in disorder and confusion, helping to widen the abyss which had threatened to engulf the nation's life. Half the country was waste and desolate; the people crushed, bowed beneath their double weight of the memory of the past, which could no more return, and of the thought of a fu-ture which seemed hopeless. On the other side, there were the weariness and exhaustion which follow a su-preme effort and the longing for peace and happiness af ter so much bloodshed and misery. All were ready to applaud any power that had been able to live through that f r ight ful struggle unhurt and unharmed; and when the Catholic Church walked forth before the eyes of the nation, clothed in the panoply of undimin-ished strength and of unbroken amity, thousands, who but a while ago would have witnessed this manifesta-tion of her power with jealous concern, now hailed it with delight as a harbinger of good omen." 

Midway in the reconstruction period came the presi-
dential election of 1872. The widespread dissatisfaction 
among the Republicans over the political corruption 
which was vitiating the Grant administration led to a 
split in their ranks, and the Liberal Republican party 
nominated Horace Greeley as its candidate. Later in the 
year, the Democratic party met in convention at Balti-
more and also nominated Greeley as its candidate. This 
alliance met with considerable opposition in Democratic 
ranks, and at a convention held in Louisville, Ky., in 
September, 1872, these so-called "Straight-Out" Demo-
crats nominated the greatest legal light in the United 
States, Charles O'Conor, of New York City, as their can-
didate for President, and John Quincy Adams, the grand-
son of President John Quincy Adams, as Vice-President. 

Charles O'Conor was in his sixty-eighth year at this 
time. His father, Thomas O'Conor, was one of the Irish 
rebels of '98, and came to the United States in 1801. 
Soon af ter his arrival he became associated with William 
Kernan in the foundation of a colony in what is now Steu-
ben Co., N. Y. Early in 1803, he married the daughter 
of Hugh O'Connor, and on January 22, 1804, Charles, the 
eldest son, was born in New York City. When his colon-
ization scheme failed, Thomas O'Conor returned to New 



130 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
York, and in 1812, began a newspaper called "War." 
which lasted but ten issues. He then entered into part-
nership with Stephen Wall as editor of the "Military 
Monitor and American Register." In April, 1813, he 
severed his connection with this newspaper and spent a 
year writing his "History of the Revolutionary War in 
America," a small-sized volume of three hundred pages. 

The leading Irish-American newspaper of New York 
from 1810 to 1813 was the "Shamrock or Hibernian 
Chronicle," and was edited by Edward Gillespy. Reviv-
ing it in June, 1814, as the "Shamrock," Gillespy secured 
Thomas O'Conor's services as co-editor. In January, 
1815, O'ConOr became sole proprietor of the paper. In 
1816, the "Shamrock" was the organ of those Irish exiles 
who thoroughly revenged themselves by defeating Rufus 
King for the governorship of New York, thus heading 
him effectively from the presidency of the nation. 

Charles O'Conor's Rise to Eminence 
During these years, when his father was prominent 

in politics, young Charles O'Conor laid the foundation 
of his fu ture greatness by beginning the study of law. 
From the age of eleven until a few months af ter his 
twentieth birthday, when he was admitted to the New 
York bar, Charles O'Conor made use of every opportunity 
the city afforded to equip himself for his chosen profes-
sion. From the outset his practice was successful, and 
that success came, as Thomas F. Meehan has recently 
said, "from dogged persistent work, joined to great men-
tal ability, the wide extent of which may be judged from 
the collection of cases and opinions, making more than 
one hundred volumes, that can be found in the library 
of the Law Institute of New York." 

In 1843, his reputation for legal ability was enhanced 
by his brilliant defense of the invalidity of the Lispenard 
will. O'Conor took part in the New York State Constitu-
tional Convention in 1846. In 1848, he was the Demo-
cratic candidate for the office of Lieutenant-Governor of 
New York and was defeated. Four years later he was one 
of the electors in the successful Democratic election of 
1852 which gave the presidency to Franklin Pierce. He 
accepted unwillingly from Pierce the office of United 
States District Attorney for the southern district of New 



CHARLES O'CONOR 131 
York. In 1868, he was hailed in the Democratic news-
papers as a logical candidate for the presidency of the 
United States, but he made it quite clear that, even were-
the nomination tendered to him unanimously, he would 
not accept. "My reasons," he wrote at the time, "are of 
no public importance, and consequently, they need not be 
stated." 

O'Conor's Defense of Jefferson Davis 
O'Conor's reputation was now of national proportions, 

since he had in 1867 successfully defended Jefferson Davis 
at Richmond against coming to trial on the charge of 
treason. O'Conor shares with Horace Greeley the honor 
of signing the bail bond for the Confederate President. 
In the autumn of 1871, Charles O'Conor joined Evarts, 
Peckham, and Samuel J. Tilden, as State counsel for the 
prosecution of the notorious Tweed Ring. Efforts were 
made to remove him from the case since it involved some 
Catholic politicians of the city, but O'Conor's integrity 
was so well known that he was retained. There is no doubt 
that the destruction of the Ring was mainly due to his 
legal ability. 

His nomination ior the Presidency of the United 
States in September, 1872, by the Democratic party was 
a recognition of his great prominence in the legal and 
political affairs of the nation. When he was notified by 
telegraph of the honor, he immediately declined, stating 
that he did not choose to run for this highest office in 
the gif t of the people. The Louisville convention then 
nominated James Lyon of Virginia; he also declined. The 
delegates decided upon the former ticket of O'Conor and 
Adams, and in the campaign of 1872, the chief opponents 
to Grant were O'Conor and Greeley. Grant won the elec-
tion with a majority of 700,000. Greeley carried seven 
states and Charles O'Conor received 30,000 votes from 
twenty-three states. 

O'Conor's View of Convention System, 
The religious issue was not raised in the campaign 

of 1872, although no doubt could be cast upon the sterling 
loyalty of Charles O'Conor to the Catholic Faith. Nor 
did O'Conor decline the nomination because he feared 
that such an issue might be injected into pre-election 



132 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
activities. He did not believe that the Louisville seces-
sionists would succed in arousing sufficient influence to 
conquer those of the Democratic party who had agreed to 
the alliance with the Liberal Republicans. As he viewed 
the political situation, the Baltimore convention exhibited 
in their climax: 

"The vices of the nomination system, with its pledges and platforms. Shocking to honest pride and sound morals is the career of bargaining which is now generally required to precede such nominations. The platform is a thing gotten up for the emergency. On it the candidate is made to sit as on a stool of repentance, or as one placed in the stocks by way of holding him to pledges now forced upon him . . . Whatever I might do in respect to any other office, I could neither accept a nomination nor become a candidate for the successor-ship to Washington." 

Study Club Outline 
1. What was the only organization which readily fell back into normal relations between North and South af ter the Civil War? Why were political leaders amazed at the unity? Discuss Catholic unity. 
2. Did Catholics take an active part in the campaign of 1872? Who was Charles O'Conor? Give a brief sum-mary of his life. 
3. Why do you think O'Conor declined to run for the Presidency? 
4. What do you think of O'Conor's criticism of the nomi nation system? 
5. Up to the present time, how many Catholics have been candidates for the Presidency? Has there ever been a Catholic President? 



XXXVIII 
O r e s t e s A . B r o w n s o n 

Dr. Brownson's son divided the great American phil-
osopher's biography into three parts—early, middle, and 
later years. It is his later years (1856-1876) which 
interest us most at this stage of our study of the Church 
in the United States. 

Orestes A. Brownson was born in 1803 of strict Con-
gregationalist parents, but before his early youth was 
over, he had joined the Presbyterian church, quitting its 
membership in 1824, at the age of twenty to become a 
Universalist. In June, 1826, he was ordained a minister 
of that denomination, but within three years, he had lost 
all hold on Christian belief, and for the next ten years he 
was an acknowledged leader among American free think-
ers. In 1832 he accepted the pastorship of a Unitarian 
church in New Hampshire, leaving it two years af ter-
wards to return to the faith of his parents. In 1828 he 
founded the "Boston Quarterly Review," a literary and 
philosophical journal which soon attracted nation-wide 
attention on account of the radicalness of its views and 
especially because of its attack upon Democracy as a 
system of government. 

It is said that Van Buren blamed Brownson's article 
in the "Review" for July, 1840, on the Christian basis of 
the rights of property and on the necessity of abolishing 
all forms of Christianity, as a cause of his defeat for re-
election. Meanwhile Brownson's extreme views were 
driving him nearer and nearer to the necessity of accept-
ing some definite form of belief, and in October, 1844, 
af ter some time spent in study, he was received into the 
Catholic Church by Bishop John Bernard Fitzpatrick, of 
Boston. 

Many Eminent Converts 
The Oxford Movement was then at the height of its 

success in England—Newman was received into the 
Church on October 9, 1845, and the Church of England 
"reeled under the shock.", The years of 1844-1860 have 
often been spoken of as the Oxford Movement in America, 



134 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
but the conversions here during that period had causes 
different from those in England. Many eminent men 
entered the Faith during these years—Bishop Wadhams 
of Ogdensburg, Bishop Curtis of Wilmington, Dr. Levi 
S. Ives, Episcopal Bishop of North Carolina, Father Wal-
worth, Monsignor Preston, Rev. Donald McLeod, James 
A. MacMaster, Editor of the "Freeman's Journal," and 
that historic group, Fathers Deshon, Hewit, Baker and 
Lyman, who later founded the Paulist Congregation. But 
in all these cases the influences making for conversion 
were individual. 

Of all the converts of these years, Orestes Brownson 
was beyond doubt the greatest figure in a galaxy of the 
ablest defenders the Church has had in the United States. 
In January, 1844, he launched the "Brownson Quarterly 
Review," and af ter his conversion that same year, this 
magazine became the foremost Catholic periodical in the 
land. Brownson was a genius of the highest type. As a 
theologian, philosopher, literateur, and historian he had 
few equals in the Church. His profound grasp on the 
American character and mind made him a formidable foe 
of Puritan intolerance, ignorance, and prejudice on this 
side of the Atlantic. For the next twenty-two years, until 
his death in 1876, he was our leading Catholic apologist, 
and no other layman, with the sole exception of Dr. James 
J. Walsh, has approached him in intellectual power and 
versatility. 

Brownson's Great Gifts 
Great praise has been bestowed upon Brownson since 

his death. He has been called the "intellectual giant of his 
era," "Our most forceful writer of prose," and one who 
"has probably left a larger body of work than any other 
Catholic American." His conversion in 1844 had been 
styled "an epoch in the history of the Catholic Church 
in this country, just as that of NeWman, which took place 
a year later, is a milestone in the history of English 
Catholicism. Of all the distinguished converts to Rome 
in this country, Brownson is easily the first. In him the 
submerged Catholics found a champion who in intellectual 
power was the superior of any publicist in the land." 
Even a higher encomium might be cited—"he seems to 
share the energy of a Tertullian, the power of a Cyprian, 



ORESTES A. BROWNSON 135 
the polemic ability of an Athanasius, and the eloquence 
of a Chrysostom." 

Such is the man and the scholar upon whom many 
eyes Were fixed during those anxious days before and dur-
ing the Civil War. Brownson was America's foremost 
Catholic Abolitionist, and, as we have seen, his appeal 
for the immediate emancipation of the slaves in 1861 
brought down upon his head the anathemas of Archbishop 
Hughes. Probably, in no aspect of his twenty volumes 
of published writings, does he stand forth so clearly as 
the champion of America's great fu ture than in that 
dealing with our national ideals. Scattered throughout 
his works lie the gems of mighty sermons on the democ-
racy for which the United States stands four-squared to 
the world. And yet, he was never deceived by the spa-
cious republicanism of some of the statesmen contempor-
ary to himself. Unless the nation, he writes, is made to 
feel that there is a higher power than itself, and that it 
may lawfully do nothing in violation of God's commands, 
it will not last. Boldly he told the intellectual world of his 
day that the only hope for the American Republic lay in 
the spread of Catholic principles: 

"We render solid and imperishable our free insti-tutions," he wrote, "just in proportion as we extend the kingdom of God among our people and establish in their hearts the reign of justice and charity. And here is our answer to those who tell us Catholicity is incom-patible with free institutions. We tell them that they cannot maintain free institutions without it." 
To those who followed the leading principle of the 

Nativists or the Know-Nothings—that the triumph of the 
Catholic Church in the United States would mean the 
subversion of our political and civil Constitution—he said 
that the conversion of this country to the True Faith 
"would destroy, would change nothing in this admirable 
body, but would quicken it with the breath of the Al-
mighty and secure its continuance and its beneficient and 
successful operation." 

Our Democracy Needs Strong Defense 
Americans then, as now, were not favorable to anyone 

who reminded them that our republican institutions were 
in their final analysis' a political experiment, and it was 



136 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
amazing to Brownson how feebly the American public 
grasped the significant fact that the American Constitu-
tion was beyond all others ever written, the one formula 
of government which imposed a powerful restraint upon 
the dangers inherent in democracy. This Brownson 
taught without equivocation, and for it was gravely mis-
understood in his own day. It took the disillusionment 
which followed fast on the heels of the Peace of Versailles 
a f te r the World War to bring the t ruth home to all of 
us. Only when scholars of unblemished patriotism, such 
as Edward P. Cheyney, of the University of Pennsylvania, 
give utterance to thoughts identical to those of Brownson 
in the last century, do we realize the constant peril a 
democratic form of government runs when religion is 
undermined by the periodic bursts of hatred which, al-
though directed solely against the Catholic Church, can-
not fail to lessen the religious basis of our national life. 
Dr. Cheyney writes : 

"That democracy is the best form of government is not a self-evident proposition. A form of government in which the learned and the ignorant, the thr i f ty and the unthrifty, the experienced and the inexperienced, may all, so f a r as their votes go, exercise the same influence over the course of political events seems to need especially strong defense." 
What Brownson did for his generation was to empha-

size with hammer-blows the all-pervading necessity of 
religion—and by religion he meant the principles of doc-
trine as taught ana practised by the Catholic Church— 
for the perdurance of the American Republic. During 
the period of Nativism (1840-1861), he kept a course so 
straight in its principles that it is only now, more than 
a half-century af ter his death, that we are beginning to 
understand how logically he thought and wrote in defense 
of American freedom at the time when popular passions 
amongst Catholics and non-Catholics were clouding the 
issue created by the anti-Catholic movemnt of the day. 
In fact, for some years, while the movement was strong-
est, Dr. Brownson seems to have lost the confidence of 
Catholic leaders because his analysis of the Nativist 
principles seemed to be too highly tinged with his own 
untrammelled Americanism. From the outset, he had, 



ORESTES A. BROWNSON 137 
as a true American, no sympathy with Native-American-
ism; but where he won hostility in Catholic circles was 
in his appeal to those who were being defamed by the 
Nativists, the Irish Catholics, to forget the wrongs of 
Ireland in order to give of their best to the land of their 
adoption. Brownson believed that some of the newspapers 
of the day being edited by Irish Catholics manifested an 
unnecessary forgetfulness of the fact that they were 
writing for American citizens and showed occasionally 
"an offensive want of respect for American feelings." 

Became an Abolitionist 
Know-Nothingism was stifled in the presidential elec-

tion of 1856, and Brownson then threw himself into the 
question of Abolition. He recognized Chief Justice 
Taney's decision in the Dred Scott case the following year 
as the first act of the Southern Rebellion, and his "Re-
view" became an ardent partisan of anti-slavery agita-
tion. From 1856 to 1872, Brownson discontinued the "Re-
view," devoting himself during these years to literary 
works, the chief of which is his "American Republic" and 
some noteworthy contributions to the "Catholic World." 
which was founded by the Paulists in 1865. In 1873, 
Brownson revived the "Review" and it met with imme-
diate success, but two years later, he was obliged to dis-
continue it on account of his precarious state of health. 
His last published l i terary work, "The Philosophy of the 
Supernatural" appeared in the first number of the 
"American Quarterly Review" for January, 1876, in 
company with another by his intimate friend and neigh-
bor, "The Catholic Church in the United States," by John 
Gilmary Shea. 



138 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 

Study Club Outline 
1 Ask one of your number to give a brief appreciation of the life and work of Orestes Brownson. 
2 Who was the outstanding convert of the past century in the U. S.? In England? In the world? 
3 In what did Brownson hold lay the only hope for the American Republic? Why was he so gravely mis-understood? With what great Church leader did he engage in controversy? Concerning what question/ 
4 Why does a democracy need an especially strong de-fense? In what does it greatest defense lie? Discuss 
5. Discuss among yourselves or ask your leader to re-view the persecution of religion in dictatorship coun-tries today: Russia, Spain, Germany and Italy. What is the Church's attitude toward totalitarian States / Why? (Consult recent issues of OUR SUNDAY VISITOR.) 



X X V 
The P a u l i s t s 

In the year 1858, the Church in the United States 
consisted of seven provinces, divided into forty-seven 
dioceses and vicariates. Our Archbishops at that time 
were: John Hughes (New York), Francis Patrick Ken-
rick, (Baltimore), John Baptist Purcell (Cincinnati), 
Peter Richard Kenrick (St. Louis), Anthony Blanc (New 
Orleans), Joseph Sadoc Alemany (San Francisco), and 
Francis Norbert Blanchet (Oregon). We had in that year 
seventeen Catholic weekly newspapers, three monthly 
magazines, and one quarterly review (Brownson's). The 
religious orders at work in the parishes of the country or 
in our educational institutions were: The Jesuits, Re-
demptorists, Augustinians, Franciscans, Dominicans, Ob-
lates of Mary Immaculate, Vincentians, Benedictines, 
Passionists, Precious Blood Fathers, Holy Cross Fathers, 
Premonstratensians, and Sulpicians. Only by a careful 
and laborious search in the pages of the 1858 "Catholic 
Directory" would it be possible to ascertain the propor-
tion between the secular and regular clergy in the two 
thousand priests listed in that little volume. 

These religious Orders had many American-born 
priests in their ranks and all were busily engaged in mis-
sionary and educational work in every section of the 
United States. They had adapted themselves to some ex-
tent to the particular religious needs of our country; and, 
while dependent upon superiors in Europe, their progress 
was in whole-hearted sympathy with American ideals and 
customs. 

Founder of Paulists 
No one had apparently conceived the plan of an Amer-

ican religious community, until Father Hecker and his 
little group began to organize such a plan. On December 
22, 1857, Father Hecker had his first audience with Pius 
IX and laid before that august Pontiff a project which 
he proposed in his own name as well as in that of four 
of his close friends, who were like himself at the time 
members of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer. 

Father Isaac Hecker was then a man of about forty 



140 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
years, having been born in New York City in 1819. In 
August, 1844, he entered the Catholic Church and was 
baptized by the future Cardinal McCloskey. The following 
year he joined the Redemptorists and was sent to their 
novitiate at St. Trond, in Belgium. He was ordained to 
the priesthood on October 23, 1849, by the future Card-
inal Wiseman in London, and two years later began his 
ministry in New York City. With him were two other 
American converts, Father Hewit and Father Walworth, 
and later they were joined by Fathers Deshon and Baker. 
From 1852 to 1857 Father Hecker labored in the paro-
chial work assigned to him in giving missions in various 
cities of the United States. I t was while he was a Re-
demptorist that he published his "Questions of the Soul" 
in 1855, and two years later his "Aspirations of Nature." 
Both volumes were a restatement of Catholic doctrinal 
principles and were widely read at the time, owing to 
Father Hecker's participation in the celebrated Brook 
Farm movement. 

In the spring of 1857, the Redemptorists were con-
templating the foundation of a new house of the Order 
either in New York City or in Newark, and the wish was 
expressed that it should become the headquarters of the 
American members of the Order. Accordingly, to promote 
this plan, Father Hecker went to Rome in August, 1857, 
in order to lay the project before the General of the Or-
der. "This journey," writes Sedgwick in his biographical 
sketch of Father Hecker, "was a turning point in Heck-
er's life, and was the cause of founding the Paulist 
community." Back of this great decision—one of the 
most important in the whole history of the Catholic 
Church in the United States—lies an intensely inter-
esting page of American Catholic history. The result of 
the action of the Roman Congregations, was that Fathers 
Hecker, Walworth, Hewit, Deshon, and Baker were dis-
pensed from their vows as Redemptorists and were left 
f ree to carry out their hearts' desires—to devote them-
selves to missionary work among non-Catholics. 

Purposes of Paulists 
Father Hecker reached New York in May, 1858, and 

within a short time had founded the Missionary Priests 
of St. Paul the Apostle, familiarly known to us as the 



THE PAULISTS 141 
Paulists. Foremost among the purposes of the new re-
ligious Order thus created was the personal sanctification 
of its members: but where Father Hecker made a distinc-
tion that has since become historic, was in defining that 
perfection as being influenced by our national character-
istics and by the type of civilization in the United States. 
It would be a mistake not to emphasize all that this meant 
in a country like ours where at the time of which we are 
writing, one of the chief quarrels with Catholicism was 
that it was a foreign religion, administered by foreigners, 
and where it was alleged unfairly that its adherents, with 
only a few notable exceptions, had not seemed anxious 
or willing to identify themselves with the inherent values 
of American life and customs. 

In Father Hecker's diaries we learn the scope of the 
new plan he had evolved not only for bringing Catholic 
doctrines to the minds and hearts of his countrymen but 
also for infusing American life and progress with all the 
benefits of Catholic thought and action. He thoroughly 
accepted "American civilization with its usages and cus-
toms," because he believed that it was "the only way by 
which Catholicity can become the religion of our people." 
The character and spirit of our people and their institu-
tions, he wrote, "must find themselves at home in our 
Church in the way those of other nations have done; and 
it is on this basis alone that the Catholic religion can 
make progress in our country." 

Father Hecker's Americanism 
Father Hecker contributed more in one short para-

graph to the solution of the "Catholic Question" in the 
United States than all his contemporaries. He described 
the actual situation of his own day, as Bishop John Eng-
land had done a score of years before, in the following 
words: 

"The form of government of the United States is preferable to Catholics above other forms. I t is more favorable than others to the practice of those virtues which are the necessary conditions of the development of the religious life of man. This government leaves man a larger margin for liberty of action, and hence for cooperation with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, than any other government under the sun. With these popular institutions men enjoy greater liberty in work-



142 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
ing out their true destiny. The Catholic Church will, therefore, flourish all the more in this republican coun-try in proportion as her représentatives keep, in their civil life, to the lines of their republicanism." 

This thesis on the splendid opportunity for Catholi-
cism in the United States had been developed by Father 
Hecker in two articles which appeared in the Roman 
periodical "Civilta Cattolica" in 1857, and later in his 
"Church and the Age" (1867). 

The argument in these writings may be given in his 
own words: "During its three centuries of existence a repub-lican form of government has nowhere under Pro-testant ascendancy made its appearance . . . if Protes-tants have contributed to human freedom, it was not as Protestants; the motives which prompted them did not spring from their religious creed, for that was a foe to human rights and the grave of liberty . . . in no place where Protestantism prevailed among a people as their religion, has it given birth to a republic, and nowhere in the nineteenth century does there exist a republic in a Protestant land . . . Calvinism excludes republicanism in politics . . . that the pages of history testify to the close relationship existing between popu-lar governments and the Catholic fai th is shown by the fact that all republics since the Christian era have sprung into existence under the influence of the Cath-olic Church . . . the doctrines of the Catholic Church alone give to popular rights, and governments founded thereupon, an intellectual basis, and furnish their vital principle. What a Catholic believes as a member of the Catholic Church, he believes as a citizen of the republic. His religion consecrates his political convictions." 

This was a totally unexpected answer to those who 
had waged a violent warfare on the Church in the decade 
before the Civil War and to those who were waiting for 
normalcy af ter 1865 to renew the hostilities which had 
for sixty years injured America's good name abroad for 
religious equality and tolerance. To tell his generation, as 
Father Hecker did, that the relationship between Cath-
olicism and our republican ideals was so intimate and 
vital "that no attack can be made against the Church 
which is not equally a blow against the republic," was not 
a welcome political philosophy to the Nativist groups. 



THE PAULISTS 143 
The discerning mind on the contrary, Father Hecker 
stated, 

"will not fail to see that the republic and the Catholic Church are working together under the same divine guidance, forming the various races of men and na-tionalities into a homogeneous people, and by their united action giving a bright promise of a broader and higher development of man than has been heretofore accomplished." 
Work of the Paulists 

To bring this lesson, and warning, to the hearts of 
¡all Americans, the Paulists began their great work 
through three definite channels—parish work, missions to 
non-Catholics, and the apostolate of the press. In April, 
1865, the first number of the "Catholic World" appeared. 
In 1866, Father Hecker organized the Catholic Publica-
tion Society for the distribution of tracts and books on 
Catholic doctrine, and so vital a want did this Society 
fill in American Catholic life that the Second Plenary 
Council of Baltimore (October, 1866) ordered branches 
of the work to be established in all our diocesan centers 
and to be supported by an annual collection. In their 
Pastoral Letter, the prelates said: 

"We earnestly recommend to the fai thful of our charge the Catholic Publication Society, lately estab-lished in the City of New York by a zealous and devoted clergyman." 
They urged both the clergy and the laity to cooperate 

in the undertaking, "which is second to none in import-
ance among the auxiliary aids which the inventions of 
modern times supply to our ministry for the diffusion of 
Catholic t ruth." 

After Father Hecker's death in December, 1888, the 
work he inaugurated went on unabated in zeal and suc-
cess. In 1894, the Paulists began the work of training 
members of the diocesan clergy to carry on locally mis-
sions to non-Catholics, and in 1903, they opened the 
Apostolic Mission House at the Catholic University of 
America as a normal school for those priests who were 
selected for these missions. 



144 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 

Study Club Outline 
1. From your knowledge of the Church in the U. S. today, discuss its growth since 1858. (See the Cath-olic Directory. Your pastor will have a copy.) 
2. Who was Father Isaac Hecker? What religious order did he found? Have any others been founded in the U. S. ? Trace his life and works. 
3. Who are the Paulist Fathers ? What is their principal work? What is the full name of the order? How did Father Hecker believe the Church could best progress in this country? Discuss his intense patriotism. 
4. Why did Father Hecker believe the U. S. form of gov-ernment should be preferred by Catholics? From what you have read so f a r in this book, what do you think is the Church's attitude towards democracy? 
5. Why do you think a loyal Catholic is bound to be a loyal citizen? Discuss this question not only in the light of what you have read here, but from your other readings and knowledge of the subject. Familiarize yourselves with "The Catholic World" and compare it with the best secular magazines available. 



XXXVIII 
" T h e Fa i th o f O u r F a t h e r s " 

When the future historian of the Catholic Church in 
the United States comes to write the general history of 
Catholic literature in this country, he will undoubtedly 
make the centennial year of 1876 the great dividing line 
of his subject. Such a complete sketch has not yet been 
undertaken, if one excepts an article by John Gilmary 
Shea in the "Metropolitan" of Baltimore in 1854, the 
short account in John O'Kane Murray's "Popular History 
of the Catholic Church in the United States," which was 
published for the hundredth anniversary of American 
Independence in 1876, and the carefully written chapter 
"Catholic Contributions to American Prose" by Rev. 
James J. Daly, S. J., in the "Catholic Builders of the 
Nation." Father Daly well says that "there is room 
for a handbook of Catholic American literature." 

The first century of Catholic American life (1776-
1876) witnessed the publication of a very large number 
of Catholic books in this country on all important topics 
and in every part of the literary field. Many names might 
be cited of outstanding figures whose work still lives as 
an inspiration to this and succeeding generations. 

Cardinal Gibbons' Great Book 
The end of that first century saw the publication of the most remarkable book ever penned by an American Catholic—the "Faith of Our Fathers," by the late Card-inal Gibbons, the preface of which is dated Richmond, November 21, 1876, to which See he had been appointed in 1872. 
No writer of the times acknowledged more readily his debt to those who had gone before him than James Gib-bons. Back through the hundred years preceding the pub-lication of this popular presentation of Catholic t ruth were many who had prepared the way for the hearty ac-ceptance of such a book among thousands outside the Church seeking a more intimate knowledge of its doc-trines. 
Not to wander afield beyond the members of the 



146 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
American episcopate, to Archbishop Carroll, the Father 
of the American Church, is due the honor of having 
written the first apologetic written by a Catholic and pub-
lished here—his "Address to the Roman Catholics of the 
United States," issued at Annapolis in 1794. His suc-
cessor in the work of making our doctrines known to 
those outside the Church was Bishop John England of 
Charleston, whose published writings were reprinted in 
seven volumes in 1908, by Archbishop Messmer of Mil-
waukee. 

The works of Bishop David of Bardstown (1819-1841 % 
—the "Catechism of Christian Doctrine" (1825), "Vindi-
cation of Catholic Doctrine" (1827), "Spiritual Retreat" 
(1829), and other contributions, merit a place in the 
annals of the literary achievements of our bishops. 

The most prominent Catholic writer of the middle 
years of the century is Archbishop Francis P. Kenrick, 
who occupied the See of Philadelphia and later that of 
Baltimore (1830-1863) . Kenrick's Latin work in moral 
and dogmatic theology appeared during his years in 
Philadelphia and won the admiration of scholars here and 
abroad. Other volumes, "Commentary on the Book of 
Job," "The Primacy of Peter," and a translation of the 
New Testament, appeared from his pen and amazed all 
who knew how slight was the leisure at the disposal of an 
American bishop at the time. 

Contemporary with Archbishop Kenrick of Baltimore 
was the illustrious prelate of New York, Archbishop 
Hughes, whose "Works" were published in two volumes 
in New York in 1865. Among the many writings of Ken-
rick's successor, Archbishop Martin John Spalding, are 
"Sketches of the Early Catholic Missions of Kentucky," 
"The History of the Protestant Reformation," and a pop-
ular collection of essays and lectures, entitled "Miscel-
lanea." 

Archbishop Bayley, who succeeded to the See of Balti-
more on the death of Spalding, in 1872, is best known 
for some excellent historical works, "History of the Cath-
olic Church on the Island of New York" and "Memoirs of 
Bishop Brute," which are exceptional volumes because 
based upon original sources. 



"THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS" 147 
Bishop McGill, who died at Richmond in 1872, pub-

lished two brilliant apologies for Catholic doctrine, un-
fortunately forgotten now with the lapse of time,—"The 
True Church" and "Our Faith, the Victory." There is a 
resemblance between these two books and the "Faith of 
Our Fathers" which Cardinal Gibbons, then Bishop of 
Richmond and the successor of Bishop McGill, published 
in 1877. 

Over Million Copies Sold 
There is no need to describe the contents of "The 

Faith of Our Fathers." Before twenty-five years had 
passed, over a million and a quarter copies were sold, and 
it is fa i r to assume that the larger proportion of the buy-
ing public was of the Protestant and Jewish faiths. Edi-
tions were soon published in all foreign languages and 
the name of James Gibbons was spread fa r and wide over 
the world as one of the greatest defenders of the Faith 
in modern times. 

Naturally, the chapter most non-Catholics turned to at 
once on securing the book, was that entitled "Civil and 
Religious Liberty." It may be of value to remark here 
that a comparison of the first edition in 1877 and the last 
Edition of recent years shows no change, even of a 
comma, of this remarkable exposition of the spiritual and 
civil allegiance of Catholics. 

We needed guidance in the '70's. The promulgation 
of the dogma of Papal Infallibility in 1870, while the 
most blessed boon in modern times to the Catholic mind 
and heart, had caused so much misunderstanding not to 
speak of schism and heresy within the Church itself, 
that any clear and well-defined exposition of the dual 
allegiance every Catholic holds towards the Spouse of 
Christ and to his own native land, came as a staff of 
steadfastness. This exposition James Gibbons gave, as 
no Catholic prelate in the United States before or since 
has given, to many of the fai thful who needed it a perfect 
formula for their obedient attitude towards the Holy See. 

I t was a noble, and a courageous thing to say—not 
many months af te r the President of the United States 
had declared otherwise—that: 

"The Catholic Church has always been the zealous 



148 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
promoter of religious and civil liberty and that, when-ever any encroachments on these sacred rights of man were perpetrated by professing members of the Cath-olic faith, these wrongs, f a r from being sanctioned by the Church, were committed in palpable violation of her authority." 

Little wonder, then, that Archbishop Glennon, in his 
funeral oration over the great Cardinal, called the "Faith 
of Our Fathers"—our best "apologia" in the English lan-
guage, "the best when written fifty years ago, the best 
now, and we have reason to believe that even later historv 
will not record a better." 

This first work from Gibbons' pen was to remain all 
through the fifty years of his leadership of the Church 
in the United States his greatest book. No historian of 
our Church can venture to neglect its place in the hidden 
springs of Catholic life and in the thousands of conver-
sions to the Church since 1877. Never before, in so clear, 
and if the word is proper, in so American a way, Was 
the t ruth of the Catholic Faith placed before the people 
of this country with so much sincerity and calmness. 

The Cardinal's Arguments 
The argument the great Cardinal handled in this chapter was a current problem of the day: 

"Many Protestants seem to be very much disturbed by some such argument as this: Catholics are very ready now to proclaim freedom of conscience, because they are in the minority. When they once succeed in getting the upper hand in numbers and power they will destroy this freedom because their fai th teaches them to tolerate no doctrine other than the Catholic. It is then a matter of absolute necessity for us that they should never be allowed to get this advantage." 
This was a statement of the case in a language all 

could understand; and in answering it, there was a sim-
plicity of style and a serenity of treatment which made 
the "Faith of Our Fathers" acceptable to all. No con-
troversial treatise had been written up to that time in 
so broad and sympathetic a spirit. To the question of 
Catholic loyalty, or to use a much-abused phrase, "double-
allegiance," Bishop Gibbons replied from an entirely new 
viewpoint: 

"The Catholics of our generation have nobly emu-



"THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS" 149 
lated the patriotism and the spirit of toleration exhib-ited by their ancestors. They can neither be accused of disloyalty nor of intolerance to their dissenting brethren. In more than one instance of our nation's history our churches have been desecrated and burned to the ground, destroyed; our clergy have been exposed to insult and violence. These injuries have been in-flicted on us by incendiary mobs animated by hatred of Catholicism. Yet, in spite of these provocations, our Catholic citizens, though wielding an immense num-erical influence in the localities where they suffered, have never retaliated. I t is in a spirit of just pride that we can affirm that hitherto in the United States no Protestant house of worship or educational institution has been destroyed, nor violence offered to a Protestant minister by those who profess the Catholic faith. God grant that such may always be our record!" 

His Loiie for His Country After describing the persecution the Church was suf-fering in various parts of Europe, he contrasts with scenes of violence and injustice across the Atlantic the peace and security of the Catholic Faith under the Amer-ican Flag. It is in these pages that the future Cardinal stated clearly and boldly for the first time his preference for the policy of a separation of Church and State. 
"Thank God, we live in a country where liberty of conscience is respected, and where the civil institution holds over us the aegis of her protection, without inter-meddling with ecclesiastical affairs. From my heart I say: America, with all her faults, I love thee still! Perhaps, at this moment there is no nation on the face of the earth where the Church is less trammelled, and where she has more liberty to carry out her sublime destiny than in these United States. For my part, I much prefer the system which prevails in this country where the temporal needs of the Church are supplied by voluntary contributions of the faithful, to the system which obtains in some Catholic countries of Europe, where the Church is supported by the government." The "Faith of Our Fathers" brought into American Catholic apologetics a new note and a new method. Card-inal Gibbons' biographer has not exaggerated its value when he styles the volume "the most successful of all the formal statements of Catholic t ruth since the days of Canisius and the Council of Trent." 



150 THE CHURCH IN U. S. HISTORY 

Study Club Outline 
1. Review the progress made by Catholics in the literary field since Colonial days. Ask one of your number to discuss Catholic publications and books of today. 
2. Obtain a copy of "Faith of Our Fathers" and examine and discuss it. (O. S. V. Press, 35c.) The latest and best successor is Father John A. O'Brien's "Faith of Millions." Get and review it also. (0 . S. V. Press, 

$1.00.) 
3. How was Cardinal Gibbons' book accepted by Catho-lics? By non-Catholics? What has been its circula-tion? 
4. What does Papal Infallibility mean? (See either of the books mentioned above.) When was this dogma officially declared? Was it a new teaching of the Church? 
5. Give an appreciation of the life and work of Cardinal Gibbons. How did he treat the subjects of "double allegiance"? What was his stand on the question of separation of Church and State? 



XXXVIII 
1 8 7 6 A Cr i t i ca l Y e a r 

The Centennial Year (1876) of the American nation 
presents many confusing aspects of a social and political 
nature which continue to perplex our historians. 

The older portrayal of its last decade (1866-1876) as 
a glorious climax to a century of magnificent success in 
the ar t of government is now abandoned. As one of our 
recent historians, Allan Nevins, has written in his "Em-
ergence of Modern America (1865-1876)," Centennial 
Year came at the end of one of the most varied and com-
plex periods in the whole history of America. It was, he 
says, a period of striking contrasts between vice and 
virtue in practically all walks of life, of contending 
political aspirations, of new views of life crowding out 
the old. 

Probably the most striking anomaly in the curious 
paradoxes of that year was the Philadelphia Centennial 
Exposition. The evils of Reconstruction, the wave of 
disorder and outrage following in the wake of the Ku 
Klux Klan, the unspeakable scenes in some of the South-
ern legislatures, the reeking exposures of graf t and cor-
ruption in national and municipal politics, the moral dis-
grace which reached the presidential chair itself, the 
panic of 1873, the scandals of the Tweed Ring and the 
-Credit Nobilier,—these are some of the social factors 
which made the better classes of our people "painfully 
aware that in many respects the year of 1876 was an 
infelicitous time for America to place herself on exhibi-
tion." Dr. Nevins, whom we are quoting, avers that it 
was a year to make America ashamed rather than proud. 
Indeed, instead of celebrating a great anniversary, it was 
a year when national humiliation seemed to reach its 
highest peak. 

One salient aspect of American Protestantism at the 
time, apart from the pitiful moral collapse of its great 
leader Henry Ward Beecher—son of that Lyman Beecher 
whom we now know to be responsible for the outrage 
upon the Charlestown nuns in 1834—was secession in its 



152 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
churches into sectional religious jurisdictions, thus carry-
ing over to our own day an evil for the cessation of which 
politically we paid a fearful price during the Civil War. 
No stronger force was at work for the re-establishment 
of complete unity in the nation than the Catholic Church. 
The assembly of our prelates from North, South, East 
and West in the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in 
1866 was hailed with gladness by Catholic and non-Cath-
olic as a sign of a better union to come. The Catholic 
Church had made a steady progress between the First 
and Second Plenary Councils of Baltimore (1852-1866), 
and its spiritual growth during the next decade was un-
precedented in the annals of Catholicism. 

Bigotry of Stanton 
With the sole exception of the swift recrudescence of 

the anti-Catholic spirit through Secretary Stanton's un-
bridled bigotry—a history which stained the hands of the 
government with the blood of a possibly innocent woman 
—there was visible in the ten years following Appomattox 
a change in the general attitude of non-Catholics towards 
the Church. This change was revealed in a more subtle 
attack upon Catholic liberties. 

The century which had passed had proven beyond 
all shadow of doubt that down in the average American's 
mind, planted there by centuries of Puritan animosity 
and fostered by a Protestant ministry and a Protestant 
press that literally teemed with diatribe and challenge, 
there was an instinct which told him that the most power-
ful incentive to religious solidarity within his own ranks-
was unremitting insolence to the Catholic Church. It was 
disconcerting, however, to find that violence and outrage 
had failed to create political cohesion in Protestant cir-
cles in the United States. Protestant leaders here began 
to realize that vulgar and un-American methods of arrest-
ing the progress of the Church had only added to her 
strength, and that whenever members of the Church 
became victims of anti-Catholic f raud or lawlessness, the 
sympathy of thousands of honest, God-fearing members 
of their own sects was given whole-heartedly to their 
Catholic fellow-citizens. By 1876 Protestant leaders had 
recognized the strategy of curbing the religious preju-
dices of the uneducated masses who had crowded the 



1876 A CRITICAL YEAR 153 
lodges of the Know-Nothings, and of directing the attack 
upon Catholic citizens through measures of legislation. 

President Grant's Bid to Bigotry 
The prophet of this new hope was President Grant. 

Towards the close of his second term, some of the leaders 
of the Republican party urged him to run for a third 
term. Grant's immense popularity was considered a justi-
fiable excuse for breaking with the two-term tradition. 
The curruption which had sullied the honor of the Repub-
lican party gave the Democrats a unique chance for vic-
tory at the polls under the leadership of the distinguished 
Governor of New York, Samuel J. Tilden. Largely iden-
tified with the democratic party as the successor of the 
anti-Federalists, Catholic American citizens quickly be-
came the object of vile abuse in the national Congress 
and in the leading magazines and newspapers. Chief 
among these were "Harper's Weekly" and the "New York 
Times." 

On September 20, 1876, at Des Moines, before the 
veterans of the Army of the Tennessee, President Grant 
practically made a bid for a third term by outlining to 
that branch of the Grand Army of the Republic (then 
strongly anti-Catholic in its views) an organized attack 
upon the Church in this country through amendments 
to the Federal Constitution. The legislation thus pro-
jected by the President was to follow closely the success-
ful outlawing of the Catholic Faith in Germany through 
the May laws of 1873. 

As the initial step in this programme, Grant urged 
in his Seventh Annual Message to Congress (Dec. 7, 
1875) a constitutional amendment abolishing all religious 
teaching in the public schools and forbidding any public 
funds to be distributed to sectarian institutions. He rec-
ommended likewise a law compelling the States to tax 
church property. "The contemplation of so vast a prop-
erty as here alluded to, without taxation," said Grant, 
"may lead to sequestration without constitutional author-
ity and through blood." This, it need not be added, was 
the Kulturkampf method used in Germany during these 
years to crush the Catholic Church. 

The word "sectarian" is used in this part of Grant's 
Annual Message, but everyone knew that the Catholic 



154 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
Church was intended and was thus to be made to pay 
the penalty for its increase in numbers and in wealth. 

Attack on Catholic Loyalty 
The following year (1876) the Union Republican Con-

gressional Executive Committee, with headquarters in 
Washington, D. C., circulated f a r and wide a dastardly 
attack upon Catholic loyalty through a pamphlet entitled 
"Vaticanism in Germany and the United States." This 
was an imitation of the attack made by Gladstone, the 
Prime Minister of Great Britain, in 1875, through his 
"Vaticanism in its hearing on Civil Allegiance," thereby 
giving new life to the oldest Protestant shibboleth—Dou-
ble Allegiance. Cardinal Newman's answer, in what will 
ever be one of the greatest pamphlets in English litera-
ture-—the "Letter to the Duke of Norfolk"—appeared 
also in 1875. 

Not withstanding the fact that many American Pro-
testants realized that this was a stale and senseless 
charge against their Catholic fellow-citizens, some of the 
Republican leaders planned the presidential campaign of 
1876 upon this anti-Catholic platform. 

In pursuance of this design, the Republican pamphlet 
mentioned above held up as a model the anti-Catholic and 
infidelistic policy of Bismarck and the leaders of the Ger-
man Kulturkampf. "If knowledge of what has been done 
in Germany through priestism," we read, "will awaken 
our people to the depths of the same power in the United 
States, the firm stand of Bismarck has not been taken an 
hour too soon." 

A contemporary French observer of our political 
maneuvers that year says: 

"Without any provocation on the part of Catholics, and in spite of the blood which many of them shed dur-ing the war for the profit of the North, a notable frac-tion of the Republican party has declared open war against Catholics and what they call its social and political influence . . . Two journals, which are the spe-cial organs of President Grant, 'Harper's Weekly' and the 'New York Times,' subordinating national to party and sectarian interest, distinguished themselves in this disloyal war, and secret anti-Catholic associations have been recently founded under the same influence." 
That the constitutional guarantees which protect the 



1876 A CRITICAL YEAR 155 
liberty and independence of the Catholic Church in the 
United States were in grave jeopardy during the memor-
able Centennial Year of 1876, no one who had read the 
newspapers and periodicals of that day may deny. Cath-
olic leaders were not idle. There could be no question 
of forming here a Catholic Par ty for the protection of 
the Church, as Windthorst had then succeeded in accom-
plishing in Germany in the face of Bismarck's brutal at-
titude. Appeal could be made, however, to the saner 
element in Protestant circles by means of an objective, 
impartial presentation of Catholic doctrines. 

Catholic Quarterly Review Started 
This was done through the founding in January, 1876, 

of a new periodical, "The American Catholic Quarterly 
Review," by Monsignor Corcoran, Dr. James O'Connor 
and Mr. George Dering Wolff of Philadelphia. It is signi-
ficant that the first article deals with "Anti-Catholic Pre-
judice," by Dr. O'Connor, who was consecrated that same 
year as Vicar-Apostolic of Nebraska. Bishop O'Connor 
has contributed what must ever be the initial chapter in 
the psychological explanation of anti-Catholicism in this 
country. 

For over a decade of years, the "Catholic World" had 
been bearing single-handedly the burden of Catholic de-
fense and had been sending out month af ter month its 
appeal for a saner and truer understanding of Catholic 
truth. There was room for a quarterly of a high-class 
literary kind in the land, and Catholic writers of excellent 
taste and culture were ready for the task. 

American literature at that time was still decidedly 
anti-Catholic. It is true that the vulgar "No Popery" 
output of pamphlets and books had ceased to a large 
extent; but, as Bishop O'Connor said, there was hardly a 
standard work on history, or popular science, or general 
literature, known to American readers, which, where it 
touched on Catholic subjects, did not purposely or unin-
tentionally misrepresent us. 

Catholics were not blind to the crisis of 1876. They 
realized that their enemies in this country lacked only 
the power to do what Bismarck was accomplishing for 
the time in Germany—the enslavement of the Church for 
political purposes. "When a President of the United 



156 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
States," writes Bishop O'Connor, "is not ashamed to 
hound on against us the veterans of the Army of the 
Tennessee, what may we not apprehend from the bad in-
fluences that can be brought to bear on men, who would 
themselves bring into their ranks the very passions it 
should be their duty to quell in others ?" Fairness of Millions of Protestants 

Grant was eliminated from the third term by the 
action of the House of Representatives; and when the 
campaign of 1876 between Hayes and Tilden was 
launched, liberal Republicans found that a partisan at-
tack upon the Catholic Church would not win the support 
of the better class of Americans of other faiths. "The 
people of the United States were not prepared to combine 
in a gratuitous assault upon the liberties of a large num-
ber of citizens, whose fidelity to our Constitution and laws 
have been attested and confirmed by their uniform loyalty 
ever since the first settlement of our country, and who, 
in every crisis and struggle through which as a people 
we have had to pass, have proved uniformly faithful, and 
have borne in every emergency their full share of burdens 
and sacrifices." 

Again what threatened to be a national anti-Catholic 
crisis passed, owing to the noble American spirit of mil-
lions of sincere Protestants. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Discuss the year 1876 from the Catholic standpoint. Why was it a critical year? What was the condition of the Protestant Churches at that time? Do you think it changed today? 
2. Discuss the progress of the Church between 1852-1866. How account for the change in the non-Catho-lic attitude at this time? 
3. What did President Grant do to offend Catholics? What was his motive? 
4. What European country was at this time persecuting the Church? Who was its leader? What two journals still published were anti-Catholic during the 1876 campaign? 
5. How did Catholic leaders oppose their enemies? Were Catholics treated fairly in secular papers qnd maga-zines? Do you think they are today? 



XXXVIII 
The A t t a c k On Ca tho l i c Educa t ion 

The Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in 1876 is 
one of the clearest dividing lines in our national history. 
Its unexpected success can hardly be exaggerated. The 
curtain rose that year upon a people badly disillusioned 
by political corruption and went down upon a scene un-
paralleled in our annals. The Hayes-Tilden contest for 
the presidency brought the nation to the sheer edge of 
civil war and bloodshed. But once safely emerged from 
that danger, our people awakened for the first time to the 
marvelous progress we had made in these hundred years. 
One evidence of this awakening was the large number of 
societies devoted to our national and local history which 
were founded in many parts of the country. Since 1876 
these societies have multiplied until today there are more 
historical groups in the United States than in any other 
land in the world. 

Modern Civilization's Debt to Church 
No institution was to profit more from this renais-sance of historical interest in our past than the Catholic Church, since all impartial investigation heightened in the minds of scholars the immense debt modern civiliza-tion and culture owe to the Church. 
The hundred years that had run their course since 

the birth of the nation in 1776 had been an uneasy period 
for Catholics in the United States. We have several ret-
rospects or balance sheets written at the time by scholars 
such as John Gilmary Shea and others, and these display 
the fact that Protestant-American suspicion of the 
Church had not been confined to any particular social 
or political group. Catholicism had been denounced in 
season and out of season by leaders of powerful Protes-
tant sects as a danger to national unity on three counts— 
the old charge of divided allegiance, the separation of 
Catholics from the educational control of the States, and 
the dread of a tendency to social disunion as a result of 
the Catholic parochial school system. 

The gallantry of Catholics on the battlefields and on 



158 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
the sea, the noble courage of our priests and nuns, and 
the patriotic stand taken by Archbishop Hughes, our 
most prominent prelate at that time, as well as by all the 
prelates of the North and South during the Civil War, 
practically shattered for all time the charge of potential 
disloyalty to American ideals. Not that this charge would 
never be heard again, for nativism has never been honest 
in making i t ; but when the mighty conflict of the Civil 
War was over many of our sincere antagonists found to 
their surprise that of all the independently patriotic 
groups in the country, Catholics came first. 

The other two charges were directed against Cath-
olic independence in the matter of education, and with 
but few exceptions to the general rule, every attack upon 
the Church since 1876 has had this independence in view. 
The A. P. A. uprising in the nineties, like unto the Klan 
of our own day, disguised its real motive— a national 
drive on Catholic education—by a barrage of charges 
involving Catholic loyalty. The Spanish-American War 
(1898) silenced the first of these groups of bigots; the 
patriotism of Catholic soldiers, sailors, marines and chap-
lains in the World War (1917-1919) silenced, for a while, 
the second group. 

Antagonism to Catholic Education 
Where Catholic writers and publicists have failed to a 

considerable extent in their estimate of all these anti-
Catholic movements has been in not recognizing the fact 
that behind all the illogical opposition to the Church on 
the score, of patriotic Americanism lies the "No Popery" 
antagonism to Catholic independence in the field of educa-
tion. The anti-Catholic agitation both before i876 and 
since has followed a uniform strategy in order to hide 
the active trend of its nativist principles. That trend or 
tendency has been a constant and unwearied attempt to 
abridge religious and political liberty by acts of legisla-
tion which would prevent Catholics from educating their 
children in Catholic schools. 

Persecution of Catholics for non-conformity to State 
religions was halted in the United States by the liberty 
enshrined in the federal Constitution; but persecution 
for non-conformity to that kind of political religionism 
whose chief fetish is the public school has never ceased. 



THE ATTACK ON CATHOLIC EDUCATION 159 
It is still implied as legally possible and advisable in the 
various attempts with which we are familiar, either by 
outlawing the Catholic school as was recently tried in 
Oregon, or by so powerfully financing the public schools 
and by so regulating all educational advance that Cath-
olics would soon be out-distanced by their enemies. 

Here then is a "conflicting loyalty"—to use a phrase 
from Dr. John A. Ryan's, "The Catholic Church and the 
Citizen." Here is a difference of viewpoint on which the 
Church could not compromise. In fact, the Church must 
go down to utter defeat on the question of religious edu-
cation, rather than compromise with the secular or non-
religious system of training in our public schools. There 
have been partial compromises in the past, but "all have 
proven to be impracticable. "The Church," Dr. Ryan 
writes, "insists and must insist that religious training 
is an essential and, in fact, the most necessary element of 
education. Therefore she builds and maintains her own 
schools wherever the stat,e institutions do not provide 
instruction in religion. Consequently she opposes legisla-
tion which would give the state a monopoly of education." 

Now, the important factor in the school question with 
which every American Catholic ought to be perfectly 
familiar is this: by an insight into the policy of these new 
"levellers," the Catholic bishops of the United States from 
Carroll's day to our own have sensed instinctively that 
back of the whole nativist movement was the design first 
to limit and then to abolish all Catholic education in the 
land. 

Abolition of Catholic School Sought 
Various stages may be discerned in the attack on the 

Catholic schools. During the early years of the nineteenth 
century, that is, up to the school controversy of 1840-42 
in New York in which Archbishop Hughes figured so 
prominently, bishops and priests were mainly concerned 
about two things; the justice of their claim that our 
Catholic schools should be supported out of the public 
taxes gathered for educational purposes; and the risk 
Catholic children underwent in the public schools, owing 
to the reading of the Protestant Bible, the use of anti-
Catholic text-books, and the undisguised Protestantism 
of these schools. Only occasionally, as can be seen in Dr. 



160 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
James A. Burns' two volumes on Catholic education in 
the United States, were subsidies allowed from public 
funds. But to expect the mass of the American people, 
shot through as it was with the venom of nativism, to 
vote for the support of our Catholic schools was futile. 
The platform of the two largest nativist parties—the 
Native-Americans of the forties and the Know-Nothings 
of the 'fifties—made this quite clear. What both parties 
sought was the abolition of the Catholic school, the en-
forced presence of Catholic children in the public schools, 
the use of the Protestant Bible "as a reading book," and 
the refusal to consider any change in text-books that 
violated truth and instilled doubt about religious belief. 

This'was more menacing to the progress of the Church 
than the violences and outrages which marked the rise 
and decline of nativist hatreds. At no moment from the 
first meeting of Bishop Carroll with his priests in 1791 
up to the present has the American hierarchy wavered 
on the necessity of Catholic education for Catholic chil-
dren in Catholic schools. Ably have they been aided by 
Catholic educators, religious and lay, all through these 
years. Indeed, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say 
that the greater part of our Catholic literature during 
this time has been devoted to the meaning and necessity 
of Catholic education. 

Hierarchy's Support of Religious Education 
The first seven Provincial Councils of Baltimore 

(1829-1849) legislated for the Church in all the dioceses 
then suffragan to Baltimore; and it is highly significant 
to see how, with each assembly, especially when anti-
Catholic fanaticism was at its peak, the realization grew 
that the essential point at issue in the "Catholic Ques-
tion" in the United States was the protection of our 
Catholic children from the evils of a non-religious educa-
tion. 

The three Plenary Councils of 1852, 1866, and 1884, 
carried this legislation to its logical end. The Fathers of 
the Third Plenary Council—the last we have had in this 
country—sent out an eloquent plea to the fai thful to real-
ize the grave evils of so-called non-sectarian education. 

"If in any age," we read in the decrees devoted to 
the education of youth, "surely in ours are the Church 



THE ATTACK ON CATHOLIC EDUCATION 161 
of God and the Spirit of the Age locked in fearful and bitter combat over the education of youth. Men wholly inspired by a worldly spirit for many years have left not a single effort untried to usurp the Church's office of teaching Catholic youth received from Christ, and to deliver it into the hands of civil society or subject it to the power of secular government." 

The Pastoral Letter of 1884 emphasized the same 
fac t : "Few, if any, will deny that a sound civilization must depend upon sound popular education—True civil-ization requires that not only the physical and intellec-ual but also the moral and religious well-being of the people should be promoted, and at least with equal care. Take away religion from a people, and morality would soon follow; morality gone, even their physical condi-tion will ere long degenerate into corruption which breeds decrepitude, while their intellectual attainments would only serve as a light to guide them to deeper depths of vice and ruin. This has been so often demon-strated in the history of the past, and is, in fact, so self-evident, that one is amazed to find any difference of opinion about it. A civilization without religion would be a civilization of 'the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest,' in which cunning and strength would become the substitutes for principle, virtue, con-science and duty. As a matter of fact, there never has been a civilization worthy of the name without re-ligion ; and from the facts of history the laws of human nature can easily be inferred." 

Catholic School Stronghold of Faith 
The nursery of Christian life is the Catholic home; 

its stronghold is the Catholic school—in these words the 
American hierarchy in its Pastoral Letter of 1919 con-
tinued the challenge to the ever-growing forgetfulness of 
God in our public school educational system. The so-
called "conflicting loyalties" which furnished a basis for 
so much of the anti-Catholic agitation of the past have 
lost their potency in the light of the magnificent loyalty 
of Catholics to the best ideals of our democratic system 
of government. But Catholics must ever be alert to the 
fact that with them, even more so than with others, 
eternal vigilance will be the price of their independence 
in educational affairs. 



162 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
The drive on Catholicism has never faltered in its 

intent and purpose since the sixteenth century. This gen-
eration may not see a recrudescence of the prejudice 
latent in millions of Protestant hearts, but the will to 
block Catholic education never dies. When that prejudice 
does reveal itself again, it will be under a new guise, but 
its method and purpose will be as old as the anti-Catholic 
struggle itself; and it will undoubtedly center its entire 
attack upon the freedom of the Catholic Church in the 
United States to maintain its stand upon religious edu-
cation. 

Study Club Outline 
1. What happening in and since 1876 brought to clearer light civilization's debt to the Catholic Church? What was revealed about the Church? 
2. What group came first in the U. S. for its patriotism? What do you think was almost invariably behind anti-Catholic attacks ? 
3. Why do you think the Catholic system of education has been so frequently assailed? Why cannot the Church compromise on the question of parochial and secular education ? 
4. What has been one of the main ends of all anti-Catholic groups? What has always been the Hier-archy's attitude towards parochial schools? 
5. Discuss the parochial school as the stronghold of the Catholic Faith. (See "Catholic Education" and "Christian Education," 0 . S. V. Press, 15 cents each.) 



XXXVIII 
The P l e n a r y Counc i l s o f B a l t i m o r e 

Three times during the latter half of the nineteenth 
century the Archbishops and Bishops of the Church in 
the United States met in a national plenary assembly 
at Baltimore. 

The story of the "Catholic Question" as it was consid-
ered by these prelates is filled with significance. 

It is natural to expect in periods of blatant nativism 
that a plenary council of our spiritual leaders would be 
led unavoidably to discuss the tantalizing problem of the 
persistence of anti-Catholicism in the nation. And yet, 
in all these solemn assemblies, in the private and public 
sessions of the prelates and theologians, no word of 
recrimination, no syllable which does not express the 
spirit of charity towards all who had outraged the 
Church, can be found. Attractive Chapter in Catholic History 

From the narrative of the deliberations at Baltimore, 
first in 1852, then fourteen years later in 1866, and eight-
een years afterwards in 1884, readers of today may learn 
one of the most attractive chapters in Catholic history. 
It is a chapter suffused with Christian love for our en-
emies, of sincere faith in God's designs upon the land, 
and of sublime trust that through His grace, as the years 
would pass, non-Catholics in general would be brought to 
a realization of the providential part Catholicism has had 
in the nation's development. 

The various problems discussed in the Council of 
1852 need not detain us; what interests us most is the 
attitude of the prelates and their theologians towards the 
growing power of the anti-Catholic political movements 
of the day. 

Eight years had passed since Archbishop Francis Pat-
rick Kenrick, who presided over the Council as Apostolic 
Delegate, had witnessed the reign of terror created by the 
Native-Americans in Philadelphia in 1844, when to escape 
maltreatment he was obliged to take refuge in the house 
of a friendly Protestant minister, Rev. Dr. Tyng, and 



164 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
when the Blessed Sacrament was taken to friendly Pro-testant homes for safety. 

Four years later (1848) when the anti-Catholic world 
sang a song of triumph over the capture of Rome by the 
Freemasons as well as over the flight of Pope Pius IX to 
Gaeta, Dr. Kenrick led his fellow-bishops in inviting the 
Sovereign Pontiff to come to the United States and make 
his temporary domicile with us. 

Kenrick was not deceived over the apparent disavowal 
of nativist policies by political leaders, and his t ransfer 
to the Archbishopric of Baltimore in 1851 af ter Dr. 
Eccleston's death placed him at the helm of the Barque 
of Peter in this country—a fitting reward for the scholar 
whose "Primacy of the Apostolic See-Vindicated"—holds 
today a high place in American Catholic apologetical lit-
erature. 

Bishops' Plea for Patriotism 
In 1852, some lingering echoes might still be heard 

of the anti-Catholic animosities which had crept into the 
war with Mexico (1846-1848). Nevertheless, the prelates 
of 1852 deemed silence the better weapon to use in 
thwarting the revival of "No Popery" in this day. They 
understood, however, that their people, scattered like the 
children of Israel all over the land and in daily conflict 
with those who considered their presence a menace to 
American institutions, would be heartened by a word of 
encouragement in the face of what they knew was a com-
ing storm of opposition to Catholic progress. And so, in 
their Pastoral Letter of 1852, we find a restatement of 
the meaning of civil allegiance which reveals the minds of 
the bishops of the Council: 

"Obey the public authorities, not only for wrath but also for conscience's sake. Show your attachment to the institutions of our beloved country by prompt compli-ance with all their requirements, and by the cautious jealousy with which you guard against the least devia-tion from the rules which they prescribe for the main-tenance of public order and private rights. Thus will you refute the idle babbling of foolish men, and will best approve yourselves worthy of the privileges which you enjoy, and overcome, by the sure test of practical patriotism, all the prejudices which a misapprehension of your principles but too often produces," 



THE PLENARY COUNCILS OF BALTIMORE 165 
Fourteen years were to pass before the convocation 

of the Second Plenary Council in 1866—fourteen years 
crowded with the disheartening scenes of another out-
break against the Church as well as with the supreme 
tragedy of our history, the Civil War. 

Outrages of Know-Nothing Mobs 
The Bedini incident of 1853-54 had been used as a 

plausible excuse for the founding of the Know-Nothing 
Party, though the actual reason was the coming presi-
dential election of 1856. Rioting was renewed, churches 
were sacked and burned. Priests and nuns were insulted 
and beaten, and a climax was reached in the unspeakable 
outrage committed by Protestant fanatics on Father John 
Bapst, S. J., of Ellsworth, Maine. Bills for the inspection 
of convents passed several legislatures and only the out-
break of the Civil War prevented the spread of fur ther 
violence. After the Civil War was over, the country un-
derwent another frenzy of anti-Catholic feeling in the 
trial of the conspirators who are alleged to have aided 
John Wilkes Booth. 

These are but a few of the salient facts which might 
be offered to prove the strength of an ever-latent anti-
Catholicism in the land between 1852 and 1866. 

The Council of 1866 was opened under the presidency 
of Archbishop Martin John Spalding, in whose elevation 
to the See of Baltimore af ter Kenrick's death (July 8, 
1863), the United States Government came dangerously 
near to unconstitutional interference in ecclesiastical af-
fairs. There were present during its sessions (October 
7-21, 1866) seven archbishops, thirty-nine bishops, and 
two mitred abbots, representing a Church composed of 
2770 priests, 2030 churches, and a Catholic population of 
3,842,000 souls. The Second Plenary Council has been 
called the largest assembly of its kind since the Council 
of Trent in the sixteenth century. The racial composition 
of the hierarchy was significant. Sixteen of the prelates 
were American born; twelve hailed from France; nine 
were from Ireland; three f rom Spain; two from Ger-
many; and one each from Austria, Switzerland and Bel-
gium. Three were converts—Bishop Wood (Philadel-
phia), Bayley (Newark), and Rosecrans (Cincinnati). 



166 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
An examination of all the private and public discus-

sions during the fortnight the Council was in session dis-
plays nowhere any foreboding on the part of the prelates 
over the "Catholic Question" in the United States. The 
loyalty of Catholic soldiers during the Civil War was 
indeed too well known to need discussion. Even in the 
Pastoral Letter, issued on October 21, 1866, there is no 
direct reference to the violent outbreaks under Know-
Nothing direction during the fourteen years which had 
passed since the assembly of 1852. The silence of the 
hierarchy is indeed significant. More significant still is 
the remarkable absence in the fourteen sermons delivered 
in the Cathedral of Baltimore of any reference to the 
abuse and villificatiofi which had signalized this period. 
There is but one interpretation of this silence—Christian 
charity and Christian prudence. It was a living potent 
example of the command of Christ—exemplified by these 
His apostles in the New World—to love their enemies, to 
do good to them with hate in their hearts, and to pray 
for them whose m ethods were persecution and calumnia-
tion. 

The beneficent effect of this Christian forbearance 
was visible during the eighteen years which separated the 
Second and Third Plenary Councils (1866-1884). With 
the sole exception of the crisis which occurred in the 
Centennial Year (1876), these years were comparatively 
free from the anti-Catholic propaganda of former decades 
and they stand out as a period when a fairer and more 
liberal approach was made by non-Catholics towards an 
understanding of the Mother Church of the ages. 

Third Plenary Council 
When the Third Plenary Council opened its sessions 

on November 9, 1884, under the presidency of the Apos-
tolic Delegate, Archbishop James Gibbons of Baltimore 
the progress revealed by that assembly was almost beyond 
belief. In eighteen years the number of our bishops had 
doubled. The American priesthood had increased from 
2770 to 7043; the churches and missions had multiplied 
from 2030 to 6626, with an additional 1895 stations where 
Mass was said at regular intervals; and from a Catholic 
population of about four million souls, the Church in the 



THE PLENARY COUNCILS OF BALTIMORE 167 
United States had grown to a mighty phalanx of nearly 
eight millions. 

Unquestionably, the Council of 1884 was one of the 
most remarkable assemblies of its kind in modern times. 
A recent biographer of Cardinal Gibbons has summed up 
the Council in these words: "Many subjects were consid-
ered in the Council, including changes in the discipline 
and administration of the Church in this country. The 
country was making such tremendous strides forward, 
and Catholicity was keeping pace with it, that such 
changes were demanded. The debates of the sessions cov-
ered all phases of the various questions discussed. There 
was an Ireland in that Council, a Ryan, a Keane, a Spald-
ing, men whose oratorical ability held the delegates spell-
bound by virtue of their eloquence and whose arguments 
provoked deep thought. With the greatest ecclesiastical 
minds of the United States there, all conscious of their 
responsibility before Almighty God, all loving the Church 
with a loyalty and devotion intense in quality, the Council 
reflected in all its proceedings the real spirit of the 
Church, and its work redounded to the greater honor and 
glory of God. So successful was it that it was taken as 
a model for similar Councils held in Ireland, Australia 
and other parts of the world." 

We have here one of the great turning points in the 
history of the Church in this country. There has been no 
Plenary Council since 1884, and in the fifty-four years 
which have passed since its sessions closed, its decrees 
and enactments have been the motive force which has car-
ried the American Church forward to a success unparal-
leled in Catholic history. 



168 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 

Study Club Outline 
1. What was the Church's attitude toward the "Catholic Question" as expressed by the Bishops in their Plen-ary Councils? Discuss. Which of Christ's teachings does this charity remind you of? 
2. Reread the Bishop's plea for patriotism and discuss it. Do you recall from a previous chapter what was the Bedini incident? 
3. What prevented the spread of anti-Catholic violence at this time? When did Archbishop Kenrick die? Who succeeded him? Where? How many bishops were there in the U. S. in 1866? How many priests? How many laymen? How many of each are there today? (See last Chapter.) 
4. What does the word "Catholic" mean? Do you think its meaning was exemplified in the Hierarchy in 1866? How many converts were there among the Bishops? Do you know how many converts have become bishops in this country? 
5. What was the effect of the bishops' charity in relation to the "Catholic Question"? Review the Church's progress from 1866-1884. 



XXXVIII 
The V o i c e o f t h e Ca fho l i c La i ty 

Three rather diversified anniversaries were celebrated 
in the year 1889. The first was the centennial of the Con-
stitution of the United States (April 30); the second was 
the hundredth anniversary of the birth of the French 
Revolution (May 5) ; and third was the jubilee of the 
foundation of our American Hierarchy (November 6, 
1789), when Father John Carroll was appointed first 
Bishop of Baltimore. 

The Baltimore Centennial was hailed by Catholic 
Americans with an enthusiasm which stands apart in our 
history. The jubilee of Bishop Carroll's appointment was 
celebrated on November 10, 1889, and was followed by a 
Lay Congress in Baltimore, one of the unique events in 
American Catholic annals. The festivities closed with 
the solemn dedication of the Catholic University of Amer-
ica in Washington, D. C. Of these three celebrations, the 
Lay Congress of November 11-12,1889, has a particularly 
important place in the history of the Church in the 
United States. 

To Archbishop Ireland and Major Henry F. Brown-
son, the son of Dr. Orestes A. Brownson, credit is due for 
the organization and the successful assembly of lay dele-
gates from all parts of the Union for a general meeting 
of the Catholic laity in this country. For the first time 
in our history the laity were given the opportunity of 
expressing their views collectively on subjects of prime 
importance to Catholic progress. 

Keynote of Lay Congress 
The keynote of the Congress was given by Cardinal 

Gibbons in his Pastoral Letter of October 8, 1889, an-
nouncing the celebration of the centennial of the Amer-
ican hierarchy: "The calm judgment of posterity recognizes John Carroll as a providential agent in molding the diverse elements in the United States into an organized Church. He did not wish the Church to vegetate as a delicate exotic plant; he wished it to become a sturdy tree, deeprooted in the soil, to grow with the bloom and 



170 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
the development of the country, inured to its climate, braving its storms and invigorated by them and yield-ing abundantly the f ru i t s of sanctification. Knowing as he did, the mischief bred by national rivalries, his aim was that the clergy and people—no matter from what country they sprang, should be thoroughly identi-fied with the land in which their lot is cast, they should study its laws and political constitution, and be in har-mony with its spirit; in a word, that they should be-come as soon as possible assimilated to the social body in all things appertaining to the domain of civil life." 

This note of true Americanism was not new in the 
utterances of Cardinal Gibbons. Twice before 1889 this 
greatest of our Catholic leaders had spoken in terms of 
the purest ~ patriotism; once, in his gallant defense of 
the Knights of Labor, and again when he took possession 
of his titular Church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in 
Rome. 

"For myself," he said on this latter occasion, "as a citizen of the United States, and without closing my eyes to our shortcomings as a nation, I say, with deep sense of pride and gratitude, that I belong to a country where the civil government holds over all of us the aegis of its protection without interfering with us in the legitimate exercises of our sublime mission as min-isters of the Gospel of Christ. Our country has liberty without license and authority without despotism." 
Much was made of these celebrated words at the time 

both in Rome and in the United States, and a wave of 
enthusiasm over his message sped across our country 
carrying all on its crest. On that day, Cardinal Gibbons 
won an affectionate place in the hearts of high-minded 
and patriotic Americans which he never lost. 

Archbishop Ryan's Prediction 
All who participated in the Baltimore Centennial dur-

ing those four days of November, 1889, echoed the spirit 
of the Cardinal. Enthusiasm for the Faith and patriotism 
for our country throbbed in every Catholic heart. In 
spite of divisions—and there were many of a racial, 
political and industrial kind—Catholic laymen and women 
in every part of the land hailed with joy the opportunity 
of proclaiming publicly through a great national lay con-
gress their allegiance to God and country. Even the con-



THE VOICE OF THE CATHOLIC LAITY 171 
servative Patrick John Ryan, the Chrysostom of the 
American Church, the successor of bishops who had wit-
nessed the sad results of lay interference in ecclesiastical 
affairs, said in his Centennial sermon: 

"It is now time that an active, educated laity should take and express interest in the great questions of the day affecting the Church and society. I believe that there is not in the world a more devoted laity than we have in the Church of these States. I find, too, that the best educated among them, and notably the converts, are sound on the great questions of the day and loyal to the Church . . . A magnificent fu ture is before the Church in this country, if we are only true to her, to the country, and to ourselves." 
There is no doubt that these sentiments struck a 

sympathetic chord in the hearts of the lay delegates who 
gathered for the Congress on November 11, 1889. They 
came away from the venerable Cathedral of Baltimore 
the evening before thrilled with the prophetic message 
of another great leader in the Church, Archbishop John 
Ireland. 

Need of Lay Action Stressed 
"The strength of the Church today in all countries," 

he told them, "particularly in America, is the people. 
This is essentially the age of democracy." In vibrant 
words he called the laymen present to Catholic Action: 

"Priests are officers. You are soldiers. The heaviest fighting is often done by the soldiers, and in the war-fare against error and sin, the soldier is not always near the officer, and he must be ready to strike without waiting for the command. Laymen are not anointed in Confirmation to the end that they merely save their own souls and pay their pew rent. They must think, work, organize, read, speak, act, as circumstances de-mand, ever anxious to serve the Church and to do good to their fellow-men. There is on the part of Catholic laymen too much leaning upon priests. If priests work, laymen imagine they can rest . . . In America, in the present age, lay action is particularly needed for the Church. Laymen in this age have a special vocation." 
It is not surprising then, to find in the various ses-

sions of the Lay Congress during the two following days 
an amazing enthusiasm for the work of the second cen-



172 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
tury of our organized hierarchical life than at its dawn. 
Under the leadership of a former Governor of Maryland, 
John Lee Carroll, who was president of the Congress, the 
objects of this first Catholic national assembly of men 
were clearly outlined and strictly adhered to. To the 
astonishment of all the non-Catholic organizations, polit-
ical and religious, in the country, it was demonstrated 
that Catholic men from every part of the United States 
could meet and discuss vital problems of the day without 
in any way encroaching upon political matters. Among 
the papers read were: "Catholic Congresses of Europe," 
by John Gilmary Shea; "Lay Action in the Church," by 
Henry Brownson; "The Independence of the Holy See.," 
by Charles J. Bonaparte; "The New Social Order," by 
Peter L. Foy; "The Catholic Press," by George Dering 
Wolff; "Catholic Literature," byConde B. Pallen; "Temp-
erance," by John H. Campbell; "Education," by Judge 
Dunne; and "Church Music," by Herman Allen. Not all 
these papers were of equal worth, and though all had 
been seen and revised beforehand by a special committee 
of which Archbishop Ireland was chairman, they give ex-
pression here and there to sentiments, opinions, and bold 
judgments which show conclusively that a perfect free-
dom of speech was allowed to the speakers. 

Daniel Dougherty's Address 
The opening address of the Congress, by the most 

dramatic orator in America at the time, Daniel Dougher-
ty, produced an indescribable effect upon the delegates. 
One passage merits repetition: 

"We assert that we are pre-eminently Americans, and had it not been for Catholics and the Catholic Church, there would have been no America; the con-tinent would be unknown. I t was to Catholics that that liberty which is the essence of all l iber ty^freedom to worship God—was established here by them, and by them alone. I t was priests, aye, Jesuits, Dominican missionaries, who first sought and explored our land, penetrated into the wilderness, tracked the streams and gave sainted names to localities, bays, lakes and rivers. It was the holy sacrifice of the Mass that was the first offering to the true God upon this continent. It was Catholic nations that came first to the rescue of the revolutionary fathers in the war against the greatest of 



THE VOICE OF THE CATHOLIC LAITY 173 
the Protestant powers. A signer of the Declaration of Independence was a Catholic. The name of the first Archbishop of Baltimore is linked with Benjamin Franklin. The Catholic Church has given to the repub-lic heroes in every war, and in every battle on field or flood Catholics have sealed their fidelity with their lives. We are here today, the Roman Catholic laity of the United States, to proclaim to all the world that our country is tied to every fibre of our hearts, and no hu-man power can shake our fidelity." 

Study Club Outline 
1. What three important anniversaries were celebrated in 1889? What was the lay congress of that year? Who were principally responsible for it? 
2. What was the keynote of the Congress ? By whom was it sounded? Discuss it. 
3. Do you think the remarkable future forecast for the Church in the U. S. by Archbishop Ryan has been or will be realized? On whom does the success of the Church depend? 
4. Discuss Archbishop Ireland's call to Catholic Action' What is Catholic Action ? Is it a new movement in the Church? Is your club doing a work of Catholic Action? (See "Catholic Action: What Is I t ?" O. S. V. Press, 10 cents.) 
5. What are the leading Catholic lay organizations of the present day? Are you a member of any of them? What can you tell about the National Council of Cath-olic Women, the National Council of Catholic Men? 



XXXVIII 
The A m e r i c a n P r o t e c t i v e A s s o c i a t i o n 

Two centennials had coincided in 1889. The one, the 
anniversary of Washington's assuming the presidency; 
the other, John Carroll's election as the first Bishop of 
Baltimore. The Baltimore Centennial had undoubtedly 
helped to create a more liberal understanding of the 
Catholic Church in the United States; but, in spite 
of the efforts made by Catholics and non-Catholics to lay 
forever the ghost of bigotry in the land, nativism was not 
dead. Indeed, all that was needed to fan again to vigorous 
life the flames of anti-Catholic prejudice was a pretext. 
Any pretext would do; and, as we shall see, the pretext 
chosen was the least expected of the many Catholic prog-
ress seemed to offer. 

American Party's Platform 
The year before the Baltimore Centennial was a presi-

dential year, and in addition to the three major parties, 
(Republican, Democrats, and Prohibitionists), several 
new groups appeared, one of which, a recrudescence of 
the old Know-Nothing spirit, called itself the American 
Party. Its platform, while not mentioning Catholics, 
called for the repeal of the naturalization laws, the aboli-
tion of private schools, and the exclusion of all who could 
not read English from the exercise of the suffrage. The 
insignificant vote cast for its candidates indicated clearly 
that the voters could no longer be marshalled into a dis-
tinct anti-Catholic party. From that time to this a new 
policy has been followed, first by the American Protective 
Association in 1893, and latterly by the Ku Klux Klan; 
namely, not to announce candidates of its own, but to sup-
port those of either of the major parties who were in 
accord with anti-Catholic policies. 

The Baltimore Centennial with the crowning glory of 
the establishment of the Catholic University of America 
and with the presence of a papal legate in the person of 
Archbishop Satolli aroused somewhat these latent ani-
mosities; but it was not until three years later (1892) 
when Satolli returned to the United States as the official 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION 175 
representative of the Holy See for the World's Fair at 
Chicago, that mutterings were heard about Roman en-
croachments in our public affairs. In January, 1893, 
Satolli was appointed Apostolic Delegate in the United 
States. Henry F. Bowers, founder of the American Pro-
tective Association, admitted that Satolli's presence was 
the cause of the rapid spread of this organization. "We 
looked upon Satolli," he writes, "as a representative of 
the Propaganda at Rome to direct and influence legisla-
tion in this country, more especially his settling down in 
the city of Washington, and several moves which were 
made, which I cannot just now call to mind, which gave 
rise to an opinion that he was interfering with the public 
institutions of this country." 

Spread of the A. P. A. 
The origin of the American Protective Association is 

traced to Clinton, Iowa, where a small group was organ-
ized as early as 1887. It had a lingering existence until 
1893, when it began to spread. Humphrey J. Desmond, 
whose monograph on the A. P. A. is the only authoritative 
account we have of the movement, claims that among the 
factors in the anti-Catholic situation which gave the new 
organization such rapid strength the following can be 
considered as causes: (1) the hereditary Protestant an-
tagonism and suspicion of the Catholic Church and Cath-
olic citizenship; (2) the prejudice frequently engendered 
by the conduct of Irish American politicians; (3) the 
Catholic attitude on the school question; and (4) the 
occasional Catholic society parade or demonstration, 
which was calculated to alarm the bigots who witnessed 
it. To these might be added the Catholic celebrations held 
all over the country in October, 1892, in memory of Co-
lumbus, the Catholic Discoverer of the New World. 

The American Protective Association began its active 
operations by a nation-wide distribution of two forged 
documents. One of these was an alleged papal encyclical, 
dated April, 1893, which contained explicit instructions 
to Catholics, absolving all members of the Church from 
their allegiance to the United States, and ordering the 
massacre of all Protestants "on or about the feast of St. 
Ignatius in the Year of our Lord, 1893." Every A. P. A. 



176 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
paper in the country believed or pretended to believe that 
this forgery was genuine. 

When July 31, 1893, came and went without the an-
nounced massacre, the scare was not over. Too many had 
prepared themselves with shot and shell and weapons to 
sell their lives dearly or be convinced that the massacre 
was a gigantic hoax. As a result, thousands poured into 
the American Protective Association until its member-
ship in 1896 is said to have reached a total of over four 
millions. 

The presidential campaign of 1896 gave the new na-
tivist organization its chance to influence national poli-
tics. The old nativist groups, the Native-Americans and 
the Know-Nothings, had striven for supremacy with their 
own candidates. The A. P. A. method was to work in 
secret to obtain a dominating voice in one of the existing 
political parties. Many local elections were carried in 
this way between 1893 and 1896, and the stage was set 
for larger successes in State and federal campaigns. 

The A. P. A. Oath 
The oath taken by the members of the A. P. A. was 

a revamping of the older Know-Nothing pledge: 
"I will use my utmost power to strike the shackles and chains of blind obedience to the Roman Catholic Church from the hampered and bound consciences of a priest-ridden and church oppressed people... I further-more promise and swear that I will not countenance • 

1 the nomination in any caucus or convention of a Roman Catholic for any office in the g i f t of the American people, and that I will not vote for, or counsel others to vote for, any Roman Catholic, but will vote only for a Protestant, so f a r as may lie in my power, that I will at all times endeavor to place the political positions of this government in the hands of Protestants to the entire exclusion of the Roman Catholic Church, of the members thereof, and the mandate of the Pope." 
The public avowals of the A. P. A. leaders were of 

course a blind to the real purpose of the organization, 
although sufficient was made public to emphasize the 
social and political anti-Catholicism of the group. Unlike 
the earlier nativists, the members of the A. P. A. were 
not all "simon-pure Americans." The organization opened 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION 177 
its ranks to every species, of anti-Catholic bigot and 
fanatic, and all these radical groups had particular ob-
jects in using the ever-growing power of the Association. 
Pressure was brought to bear upon men of the profes-
sional classes to become members, and it goes without 
saying that in the ranks were to be found thousands of 
Protestant ministers who saw a chance for a little extra 
emolument in becoming the official voices of the anti-
Catholicism the society had aroused. 

"Ex-Priests and "Ex-Nuns" Exploited 
With the A. P. A. movement originated many of the 

spectacular methods with which we have grown familiar 
in our days—lectures by "ex-priests" and "ex-nuns," 
bogus Jesuit oaths, church basements garrisoned with 
arms and ammunition, boycotting, sabotage, and the over-
shadowing spectre of the Pope directing our ballot-boxes. 

"Very naturally," says Desmond, who has painstak-ingly gathered all these facts, "Catholic citizens made a vigorous opposition to the A. P. A. and almost every-where they had the best of the battle in the open forum. Their press was unremitting in its assault upon the new movement. Large public meetings and anti-A. P. A. lectures and pamphlets were among the means em-ployed. Here and there counter associations were formed for purposes of defense; and in many places the council meetings of the A. P. A. were systematically watched and lists of the members procured and circu-lated. The Catholic agitation against it had localized it by driving it wholly out of the democratic party and advertising it as a thing hated and despised by all Catholics." 
Public opinion was decidedly against the secret meth-

ods of the new anti-Catholic organization, for it was felt 
that an oath-bound society could not be in strict con-
formity with the liberty, justice and equality of Amer-
ican institutions. "Birds of the night," wrote one Pro-
testant critic, "are never birds of wisdom . . . They are for 
the most part birds of prey. The fate of the Republic is 
sealed when bats take the lead of the eagles." The padded 
membership lists of the American Protective Association 
were gradually exposed, and both the major political 
parties, while not averse to using A. P. A. influence to 
win elections, saw their own autonomy placed in jeopardy 



178 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
should this latest anti-Catholic craze become so strong 
nationally as to dominate the presidential election in 
1896. "The small and ridiculous figure it cut in the cam-
paign," says Desmond, "was an eye-opener even to the 
most stupid politicians." 

A. P. A. Attack on McKinley 
In April, 1896, an attack was made in the A. P. A. 

press upon McKinley who was forced (through Mark 
Hanna), to deny that he was a member of the Ancient 
Order of Hibernians and that he was not connected with 
the Catholic Young Men's Institute, nor that he was ruled 
by Bishop Watterson of Columbus. Hanna himself did 
not escape the charge of being secretly a Roman Catholic. 
The national convention of the A. P. A. held in Washing-
ton, D. C., on May 12, 1896, scored McKinley and his 
leading supporters with Roman Catholic affiliations of 
some kind. All were swayed more or less, they said, by 
Archbishop Ireland of St. Paul, "the most Jesuitical and 
dangerous papal leader in this country." The tide of 
popular favor was, however, strongly set towards Mc-
Kinley, and was not stemmed by his public disavowal of 
all sympathy with A. P. A. policies, and he was nominated 
by the Republican convention at St. Louis, in June, 1896. 

All that was left to the discredited anti-Catholic bigots 
was the ludicrously unsuccessful attempt to have their 
principles embodied in the Republican platform. Failing 
at St. Louis, the A. P. A. lobbyists went to Chicago to the 
Democratic convention, but political leaders were too 
sagacious even to consider the request made to them. "In 
fact," as Desmond sagely says, "it seems probable that 
during the year 1895-1896, the A. P. A. was considerably 
more of a vexation to the leaders of the Republican party 
than to the prelates of the Catholic Church." 

Deserted by thousands in the campaign which followed 
the summer conventions of the two major parties, the 
American Protective Association sank into the dismal 
swamp of its anti-Catholic forebears. 



THE AMERICAN PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION 179 

Study Club Outline 
1. On what pretex was the American Protective Asso-ciation formed? What new policy is here adopted by anti-Catholic political groups? Who was Archbishop Satolli ? 
2. What did Humphrey Desmond call the causes of the spread of the A. P. A.? Discuss them. What forged documents were used by the A. P. A. ? 
3. Discuss the A. P. A. oath? How does the Church view such oaths? Would she permit her sons to take a similar oath in defense of the Church? 
4. How did Catholics oppose the A. P. A.? What does Desmond say about this? What was the general pub-lic opinion ? Which do you think has hurt the Church more in the U, S.: Open controversy and discussion of Catholic questions or under cover attacks on her? 
5. How did the political parties regard the A. P. A. ? Did they oppose it or accept its support? 



XXXI I 
C o n v e r s i o n s 

An impartial analysis of anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States during the nineteenth century discloses several factors which are seldom emphasized. One of these is the deadly monotony in the methods followed, in the purposes agreed upon, and in the general failure which attended these efforts to popularize religious bigotry. 
Few Americans are familiar with the anti-Catholic 

history of our country from the days of John Jay to 
Thomas Heflin. Fewer still realize that in this curious 
phenomenon of American social life there has been little 
change in "No Popery's" long life from colonial times to 
our own. Various names are indeed given to the anti-Cath-
olic groups—American Protestant Association, Native-
Americans, Know-Nothings, American Protective Associ-
ation, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Black Legion—but all 
have had practically identical aims and purposes. What-
ever differences there have been are too slight to need spe-
cial treatment. There is, however, one aspect of these anti-
Catholic movements which should be mentioned, not in-
deed for the purpose of reviving scandals long since for-
gotten, but to bring out into clearer light an important 
consequence of anti-Catholicism in the United States, 
namely its tremendous influence in the work of conver-
sions to the true Faith. 

The following is an excellent summary of the causes of conversion in the United States: 
"The American Convert Movement"—Father Ed-ward Mannix tells us "the strangest antithesis of all, and indicative of the lesson God would teach the subsequent generations, are the conversions occasioned by the example of bitter and public anti-Catholics. The history of the Faith in this country contains not a few relatives of such agitators—sometimes the agitators themselves. Anyone familiar with the events of the time, remembers the founder of the Native Americans, a proscriptive organization. Lewis C. Levin represented his party in Congress, defended it on the platform, and 



CONVERSIONS 181 
led rioters under circumstances we do not care to de-scribe. He was repaid by seeing his wife and her entire family embrace the Faith. The same return fell to Gen-eral Humphrey Marshall, leader of Know-Nothingism in Kentucky, whose wife, Francis McAllister Marshall, and daughter made their open profession of Faith. Miss Emma Etheridge will go down in history as the convert daughter of Emerson Etheridge, and Mrs. Edgar P. Thompson, the convert daughter of Benjamin H. Hill, both Know-Nothing leaders in Congress. General Wil-liam Russell Smith, \yhose bitter words are recorded in the 'Congressional Record' for January 15, 1855, lived to see the day when he himself, would, af ter the manner of Clovis, the proud King of the Franks, "burn what he had adored and adore what he had burned.' Rev. John J. Slocum was the one responsible for the publication of that unfortunate work known as 'Maria Monk's Revelations.' The baptismal records of Long Beach, New Jersey, contain the family name twice, Miss Susan Elizabeth Slocum and her sister, Mrs. Mal-vava Jemima Slocum Chamberlain, both nieces." 

Work of Pioneer Priests 
There are several high water marks in the history of 

conversions in the United States. We forget too easily 
that for two and a half centuries before the birth of our 
nation in 1776, the Catholic Church through its priests 
had been actively engaged upon the work of converting 
and civilizing the Indians in all parts of our country. 
That glorious epoch of apostolic labor and hardships for 
the cause of Christ was a fitting prelude to the almost 
unbelievable work of conversion which has gone on with-
out a break ever since. By sacrifices unnumerable and by 
Martyrdoms for the Faith which literally baptized every 
section of the United States in blood, the harvest of con-
versions among the savages can only be justly likened to 
the great missionary labors among the barbarian tribes 
of the fifth and sixth centuries. With hearts ablaze for 
the Cross of Christ, these pioneer priests of America 
travelled the wilderness of the New World, preaching the 
gospel to the natives and winning a conquest for the 
Church and for civilization which has never been honestly 
appreciated by American historians. Franciscans, Dom-
inicans, Jesuits, Sulpicians, Oblates and Secular priests 
have shared in the immortal record. 



182 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
Some Notable Conversions 

Not only among the Indians but among the white 
Protestant settlers as well was the work of conversion 
carried on. Maryland itself, the foundation of the con-
vert son of a convert father, was the scene of our earliest 
conversions. In the other colonies, in spite of laws pro-
scribing the Faith, there are records of conversions that 
have about them a veritable touch of the supernatural. 
The conversion of Colonel Lionel Brittin of Philadelphia, 
(1707), of the Congregational minister, the Rev. John 
Thayer of Boston (1783), of Prince Demetrius Gallitzin, 
the second priest to be ordained by Bishop Carroll 
(1795), of Governor Thomas Sim Lee of Maryland 
(1800), of Mother Seton (1805), and of the remarkable 
Barber family of New Hampshire (1817), are among the 
better known examples of the gif t of Faith in these early 
times. 

Everywhere in the young States where Protestant 
diatribe was voiced from non-Catholic pulpits, men and 
women of intelligence and of social standing were led to 
investigate the claims of Catholicism, and strangely 
enough, a great proportion of those who entered the 
Church in consequence were ministers of the Protestant 
churches. The Native-American movement (1837-44) 
aroused thousands to learn more about an institution 
which was being pilloried in hundreds of Protestant 
newspapers as a blight upon society and as thoroughly 
incompatible with American ideals, with the result that 
a wonderful harvest of conversions was reaped during 
these years. 

Some names should be mentioned, since their accession 
to Catholic ranks brought to the Church a new vitality 
which prepared her for the mad frenzy of know-nothing 
days. Chief among these converts were: Orestes A. 
Brownson, who was received into the Church by Bishop 
Fitzpatrick of Boston in 1844; Bishop Levi Stillman Ives 
of the Protestant Episcopal church of North Carolina, 
who became a Catholic in 1852, and whose "Trials of the 
Mind" (Boston, 1854), was revived when the Protestant 
Episcopal Bishop of Delaware, Dr. Frederick Joseph 
Kinsman, published the story of his conversion in that 
remarkable book "Salve Mater" (1920); and James 



CONVERSIONS 183 
Roosevelt Bayley, the nephew of Mother Seton, who was 
received into the Church at Rome in 1842 and who became 
Archbishop of Baltimore in 1872. 

About this time also (1844-46) occurred that series 
of remarkable conversions—Hecker, Hewit, Baker, De-
shon, and Walworth, who founded the Congregation of St. 
Paul (Paulists) in 1858. Vitality of the Faith 

The trial-balance of the good and the evil which have 
come out of the anti-Catholic movements up to the present 
gives an overwhelming proof of the vitality of the Cath-
olic Faith to attract all who are seeking the true Church 
of Christ. Not all those who became Catholics during 
these turbulent periods of the past are known to the his-
torian ; but anyone who will study the sources at his dis-
posal will find that "the ranks of the converts have been 
marshalled from the morally and intellectually superior 
class of our American people." As a result of the social 
and literary activities of our converts, the Protestant 
anti-papal tradition has in course of time become greatly 
mitigated among the better educated classes of non-Cath-
olics. Most Protestants today—to use a phrase from 
Chesterton's "Catholic Church and Conversions," are just 
sufficiently enlightened to be out of the reach of Maria 
Monk. 

Study Club Outline 
1 In what way did persecution of the Church redound to her benefit? Is this usually the case? Discuss this. 
2. Together with what is contained in this Chapter and in the Introduction to this work review the zeal for souls evidenced by Catholic missionaries. 
3. Name several notable converts of the latter part of the 19th century. 
4. What do you think is responsible for the conversion of many of the leading intellectuals of both the U. S. and England to Catholicism? Discuss. (See "Faith of Millions," O. S. V. Press, $1.00.) 
5. Is this statement t rue: "No sincere student of relig-ion and history can refrain from adopting the Cath-olic Faith"? What part does the Church teach the grace of God plays in conversions to the true Faith? 



XXXVIII 
Catho l i c i sm a n d A m e r i c a n i s m 

Under this title may justly be placed all the sermons and addresses delivered by Archbishop John Ireland dur-ing the thirty years he was one of the truly great figures in the American hierarchy. 
From John Carroll to John England, from John 

Hughes to John Ireland, the span of Catholic life in the 
United States stretches like a great road with over one 
hundred and thirty years as milestones along the way. 
Carroll found his counterpart a half-century af ter his 
death when another great Marylander, James Gibbons, 
began his phenomenal career as a churchman. John Eng-
land and John Hughes found their logical successor in the 
first Archbishop of St. Paul. In the history of the Catho-
lic Church in the United States, John Ireland stands 
apart from all the leaders of his own day and from all 
who preceded him in the American hierarchy. 

Tribute of Cardinal Gibbons 
Whatever may be the characteristics which render 

him a difficult subject for the biographer, John Ireland's 
part in the gradual softening of the "No-Popery" spirit 
in the United States was as important in its own sphere 
as was that of his life-long friend, Cardinal Gibbons. 
Only two years af ter John Ireland became Archbishop 
of St. Paul (1888), the Cardinal wrote to Pope Leo XIII : 

"There is no prelate in the United States who has done more to elevate and advance the Catholic religion here than Archbishop Ireland. He is honored and ad-mired by the whole community. Protestants regard him as a peerless and uncompromising advocate of the Catholic faith, and Catholics venerate him as a grand and eloquent exponent of their religion. They almost idolize him." 
Archbishop Ireland published very few of his ad-

dresses and sermons during his lifetime, but in his 
"Church and Modern Society" his clean-cut Americanism 
will remain forever undimmed. He approached the "Cath-olic Question" with the same spirit but in a quite differ-



CATHOLICISM AND AMERICANISM 185 
ent manner from Cardinal Gibbons. The Cardinal was not 
an eloquent orator as was his distinguished colleague. 

His First Great Public Speech 
His first great public speech was given in the Balti-

more Cathedral at the opening of the Congress of Cath-
olic Laymen at Baltimore in 1889. Every word of that 
remarkable discourse deserves to be known by those who 
are still blinded by the false light of the Puritan "No-
Popery" sentiment. John Ireland swept aside the old 
moorings of the past in this most eloquent of all his dis-
courses. It took sublime courage in that day to tell his 
hearers-—and indeed all America was his audience—that 
"the great work which in God's providence the Catholics 
of the United States are called to do within the coming 
century" was "to make America Catholic and to solve 
for the Church Universal the all-absorbing problem with 
which the age confronts her." 

To make America Catholic—because the Catholic 
Faith alone is the dispenser of the truths and graces of 
salvation; because the Church alone can pour upon the 
souls of our fellow-citizens the gif ts of the Incarnate 
God; because the touch of her divine-made hand can 
strengthen the rich heritage of natural virtues in the 
hearts of the American people; because she can superadd 
to these the deifying "treasures of supernatural life; be-
cause she can confirm and preserve, as no human church 
can, the liberties of the Republic. 

This is the theme in his own words. The logic of his 
discourse is close and trenchant. There is no escaping his 
argument. "The centre of gravity for human action," he 
said nearly fifty years ago, "is rapidly shifting, and in 
the not distant fu ture America will lead the world." With 
the Church triumphant in America, "Catholic t ruth will 
travel on the wings of American influence, and with it 
encircle the universe." He believed America to be at heart 
a Christian country. 

"As a religious system," he said, "Protestantism is in hopeless dissolution, utterly valueless as a doctrinal or moral power, and no longer to be considered a foe with which we must c o u n t . . . the American people need the Church for the preservation and complete develop-ment of their natural character and their social order 



186 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
. . . the American people must look to her to maintain for them in the conscience of citizens the principles of natural equity and of law, without which a self-govern-ing people will not exist, falling ultimately into chaotic anarchy, a prey to ambitious despotism." 

Prospect of Conquest for Christ 
Assuredly was this a new note in those days; new, not 

to Protestants only, but to Catholics also. Catholics had 
thought of little else but the defense of the Church from 
the potential, and sometimes actual, violence of the Na-
tivistic groups. Here was a new vision—a vision which 
contrasted the Church with the dominant tendencies of 
the age and which held out to Catholic America a con-
quest for Christ that could be paralleled only in Apostolic 
times. 

In the thirty years that remained to John Ireland af-
ter the Congress of 1889, these principles were ever stres-
sed in his sermons and discourses. To him, the typical 
Catholic layman needed in the United States was one who, 
imbued with a lively fai th in Christ and with a childlike 
obedience to the Church, measured his patriotism to our 
country by his efforts to make America the foremost 
Christian nation in the world. As Dr. Moynihan pointed 
out shortly af ter Ireland's death, the greatest task he set 
himself to accomplish was to "bring the Church and the 
country into close contact, to dissipate misconceptions, to 
make the Church understood by his fellow-countrymen." 

John Ireland never wavered in his belief that the 
American people would never allow discrimination against 
any class of citizens on the ground of religion. Like New-
man and Manning in England, Mercier in Belgium, and 
Von Ketteler in Germany, Ireland won the hearts of the 
nation he loved. 

His Pledge of Patriotism 
His best known address on the "Catholic Question" 

is one entitled "Catholicism and Americanism," given 
some six years before his death. It is in this famous 
speech that the oft-quoted paragraphs occur: 

"My religious fai th is that of the Catholic Church— Catholicism, integral and unalloyed—Catholicism, un-swerving and soul-swaying—the Catholicism taught by the supreme chieftain of the Catholic Church, the Pope, 



CATHOLICISM AND AMERICANISM 187 
the Bishop of Rome. My civil and political fai th is that of the republic of the United States of America— Americanism, purest and brightest, yielding in strength and loyalty to the Americanism of none other Amer-ican, surpassed in spirit of obedience and sacrifice by that of none other citizen, none other soldier, sworn to uphold in peace and in war America's Star Spangled Banner!" 

Between his religious fai th and his civil and political 
faith, between his creed and his country, John Ireland 
could see no possible cause for discord or contradiction. 
"What is to be feared from the Catholic Church?" he 
asks. Unwillingly, he takes up the hypothesis that priest, 
bishop or Pope might attempt to rule in matters civil and 
political in the United States, or might attempt to influ-
ence Catholic citizens beyond the range of their own orbit 
of spiritual jurisdiction. "The answer is quickly made," 
he says, "back to your own sphere of rights and duties— 
back to the things of God!" 

"They know the Catholic Church little," he adds, , "who accuse us of coveting civil and political power that we may dim the splendor of Americanism. • Our combats, if combats there be, are never against the lib-erties of America, but in defense of them; never against America, but against such of its sons whose souls never yet have thrilled in full response to its teachings and inspirations." 
His Life-Long Message 

To make America Catholic in order that the political 
ideals of the nation shall be ever safeguarded from the 
evils that throng in the wake of religious error—this was 
John Ireland's life-long message to his people. He was 
not so ignorant of history he avers, or of present condi-
tions as to imagine that the goal was within reach. Mean-
while, the lesson he would teach was that "to the civil 
and political constitutions of America no harm can come 
from the spread of Catholicism. Yea—to those institu-
tions Catholicism brings elements most vital to their life 
and growth—those of a positive, authoritative religion." 
With the voice of divine authority, he concluded, the 
Church teaches in season and out of season all those doc-
trines without which the United States as a nation will 



188 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
one day inevitably decay and become a by-word among 
the peoples of the earth. 

The central purpose of John Ireland's life was to 
emphasize the harmony and correlation between true 
Americanism and the doctrines of the Catholic Church. 
He succeeded fa r better than those of our generation 
realize. His influence was felt in intellectual and political 
circles where few of his colleagues in the American hier-
archy were heard. His own American spirit was so un-
alloyed, so uncompromisingly whole-hearted that none 
who listened to his words could doubt the great sincerity 
of the man and the priest behind him. His life and work 
proved that the American national genius can find at all 
times in the Catholic spirit, those great civic assets— 
obedience to authority, respect for another's rights, and 
love for one's fellowman. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Who was Archbishop Ireland? Discuss his life and works? What did Cardinal Gibbons say about him? 
2. Do you think America will ever become a .truly Catho-lic nation? What in your opinion are the principal obstacles which would prevent widespread conversions among Americans? 
3. Discuss Archbishop Ireland's belief that America is at heart a Christian country. 
4. If all Catholics were of the kind Archbishop Ireland desired would it not be an easy task to convert Amer-ica? Ask one of your number to discuss the effects of good and bad example given by Catholics? 
5. Reread and discuss Archbishop Ireland's pledge of patriotism. 



XXXVIII 
The Chu rch a n d t h e R e p u b l i c 

From the death of John Carroll, the first Archbishop of Baltimore, to our own times, the individual who con-tributed most to the lessening of the asperity of anti-Catholic intolerance in the United States was Cardinal Gibbons. 
The glamour of the Centennial celebration was still 

over the land in the autumn of 1877, when James Gibbons 
entered upon his long residence of forty-three years in 
Baltimore. His "Faith of our Fathers" was already 
carrying his name across the country into thousands of 
homes where few Catholic books had entered. During 
these years up to the last publication—an article on the 
"Constitution and George Washington," which appeared 
in the "Baltimore Catholic Review" in February, 1921— 
there runs in all his utterances and writings, like a thread 
of silk, one continuous strain—love of God and of Holy 
Church and love for the American nation. All this time 
he stood before the world, Catholic and non-Catholic, as 
America's foremost example in thought, word and action 
of that spirit of Christian equality and justice upon 
which the cherished institutions of our country are firmly 
based. 

Cardinal Gibbons' Love of America 
One phase of his life stands out today four-squared 

to the winds that s if t so many careers af ter death—his 
honest, whole-hearted and judicious love for America. 
No man of his age proved so conclusively the harmony 
which exists between Catholic doctrine and discipline and 
the political idealism which made and has preserved the 
United States a nation. No man within or without the 
Catholic Church knew the pulse and temper of America 
as James Gibbons did. His keen sense of perception en-
abled him to realize that the most pressing social prob-
lem in Church progress was the alleged contradiction 
between Catholic doctrine on Church and State and the 
pragmatic political situation of the United States. 

Until the "Catholic Question" of the United States 
was settled, the Cardinal knew that the century-old 



190 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
charge of double allegiance and of political disloyalty 
would continue to be made by those who saw profit, poli-
tical or financial, in its furtherance. He accepted every 
opportunity to present Catholic principles in their proper 
light to his fellow-citizens of other faiths on this much-
abused question; and his whole life can easily be summed 
up in a phrase—he loved the Catholic Church and the 
American Republic with an affection that knew no divid-
ing line. 

His first important public utterance upon the mutual 
relations of Church and State in this country was made 
at the very peak of his ecclesiastical career on the day 
of his installation in his titular church in Rome, March 
25, 1887. With Pope Leo's great encyclical on the Consti-
tution of Christian States as his text, the Cardinal ap-
plied to conditions in the United States the principle that 
the Catholic Church is not committed to any form of civil 
government, that she adapts herself to all, and that where 
true liberty exists as in America, her great work of leav-
ening society with the sacred leaven of the Gospel goes 
on unimpeded, strengthening the arm of legitimate au-
thority and tightening the bonds of peace, happiness and 
mutual love between the citizens of the nation. 

From this day forward the "Catholic Question" in the 
United States was to form the main theme of most of 
the Cardinal's public discourses, and many occasions were 
to arise in the thirty-four years that followed when his 
solution of the problem on Church and State effectually 
settled misunderstandings between the two great Chris-
tian groups in our country. With an insight into human 
life which ranked him above all our leaders during these 
years, Cardinal Gibbons never made the mistake of choos-
ing the wrong moment to inculcate sound teaching on 
the "Catholic Question." 

His Patriotic Appeal in Milwaukee -
Toward the true concept of that Americanism which 

Pope Leo XIII praised in his celebrated letter of January 
22, 1889, the Cardinal had more than once contributed 
by his remarkable power of political vision. About eight 
years before (August 20, 1891), in his address at Arch-
bishop Katzer's reception of the pallium at Milwaukee, 
Cardinal Gibbons reviewed deftly and accurately certain 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC 191 
problems of a domestic nature then under discussion in 
ecclesiastical circles and stirred his audience with an 
eloquent plea for union in the face of the gigantic task 
the Catholic Church had to assume in the Americaniza-
tion of the foreign-born: 

"God and our country!—this our watchword. Loyal-ty to God's Church and to our country!—this our religious and political fai th . . . Next to love for God should be our love for our country . . . Let us glory in the title of American citizen. We owe our allegiance to one country, and that country is America. We must be in harmony with our political institutions. I t mat-ters not whether this is the land of our birth or the land of our adoption. I t is the land of our destiny. Here we intend to live and here we hope to die." 
Checked Progress of A. P. A. 

There is no doubt that the Cardinal's crystal clear 
patriotism did more to check the progress of the A. P. A. 
movement than any other influence in the land. The ignor-
ant and intolerant, of course, could not be reached, even 
by his eloquent voice; and the massing of the lingering 
groups of "No-Popery" adherents went on until it became 
a menace to national peace. When the movement threat-
ened to create the evil of Know-Nothing days, Cardinal 
Gibbons gave the nation a message which should be re-
peated : 

"I t is the duty of leaders of political parties to express themselves without any equivocation on the principles of religious, 'freedom which underlie our Constitution . . . We are proud to say that in.-the United States the great Catholic Church has never used or perverted its acknowledged power by seeking to make politics subservient to its own advancement. Moreover, it is our proud boast that we have never interfered with the civil or political rights of any who may have differed from us in religion. We demand the same rights of any who may have differed from us in religion. We demand the same rights for ourselves and nothing more, and we will be content with nothing less." 
The Church and the Republic 

The great Cardinal's best known pronouncement on 
the "Catholic Question" in the United States is contained 
in an article entitled "The Church and the Republic" 



192 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
which appeared in the "North American Review" for 
March, 1919. This article is the most searching analysis 
of the "Catholic Question" ever given by an American. 
All that every Catholic citizen should know upon the quesr 
tion which political Nativism attempted to answer by vio-
lence, intolerance and proscription, is explained in these 
limpid pages with complete frankness: 

"Fifteen millions of Catholics live their lives in our land with undisturbed belief in the perfect harmony existing between their religion and their duties as American citizens. It never occurs to their minds to question the truth of a belief which all their experience confirms. Love of religion and love of country burn together in their hearts. They love their Church as the divine spiritual society set up by Jesus Chr is t . . . They love their country with the spontaneous and ardent love of all patriots, because it is their country and the source to them of untold blessings. They prefer its form of government before any other. They admire its laws. They accept the Constitution without reserve, with no desire, as Catholics, to see it changed in any feature. They can with a clear conscience swear to uphold it." 
Answered Charges Against Church 

One by one the Cardinal takes up all the charges 
against the Church made familiar by the "No-Popery" 
campaigns of the past. These charges were then being 
reiterated by two synods of Lutheran and Baptist minis-
ters. Chief among the points of attack was one which 
these ministers deemed it just and wise to proclaim to the 
country: 

"That Catholics cannot be trusted with political office; that they cannot sincerely subscribe to the Fed-eral Constitution; that their loyalty is illogical, being contrary to the teaching of the Church; that their re-ligion is opposed to American liberties; and that they themselves, kept in the dark by their religious guides, are ignorant of the true nature of their Church's doc-trines. In sounding forth these charges to American Catholics and to the country in general, they declare themselves inspired, not by religious antagonism or the desire to profit by a good opportunity, but solely by patriotic solicitude for the permanence of American institutions." The Cardinal assured his readers that the Catholic 



THE CHURCH AND THE REPUBLIC 193 
Church had nothing to fear over the pretended collision 
between Catholicism and loyalty to the government. His 
confidence, he writes, had never wavered in the belief 
that, 

"God destines the Catholic Church in this country to be the bulwark of law and order, of liberty, of social justice and purity. I speak that I may put forth what-ever strength I have to crush this detestable spirit of intolerance which, if it gained strength, would wreck the peace of the country and root out charity from the hearts of men." 
That a "certain dread of Catholicism" existed in this 

country, in spite of the loyalty of Catholics, the Cardinal 
well recognized; and it was known among those with 
whom he was intimate that he had small hope of the 
reign of a more liberal spirit among certain non-Catholic 
groups in this generation. Certainly, if one can judge 
by the literature on the "Catholic Question" f rom Pro-
testant writers during and since the year of 1928, the 
Cardinal's judgment holds good. He describes this ele-
ment as follows: 

"They acknowledge that the Catholic Church in this country is an immense force for the public welfare, raising up native Catholics as patriotic Americans and moulding her foreign-born elements into a homogen-eous people. The very sense of her strength, indeed, is in great part the cause of her dread; they fear the dan-ger of a collision between the State and a Church whose head is a foreigner and believes himself the representa-tive of God on earth. Catholic teaching, American principles of Government and the existing facts will show how baseless is this apprehension." 
Discussed "Twilight Zone'' 

There follows in this remarkable essay one of the 
clearest expositions we possess in English on the distinc-
tion between the civil and ecclesiastical powers. No an-
swer from any reputable source was made to this part 
of "The Church and the Republic," although the Card-
inal's phrase, a "twilight zone"—he is said to have coined 
the phrase—was made the object of considerable specu-
lation. The concept of a twilight zone wherein conflict 
might arise is a false one, thp Cardinal asserts, since such 
a collision between the two powers will never arise so long 



194 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
as our American liberties are preserved by the State in their fulness. 

"The admission, however, of the merely theoretical possibility of such a collision," he writes, "keeps alive the apprehension of timid Protestants and is sufficient to determine some of them to deprive Catholics forever of the honor of the Presidency. But if no man were to be considered eligible for the Presidency unless we were certain that under no conceivable circumstances would his conscience come into conflict with any possi-ble legislation, then the first consideration to qualify a man as candidate for the office would be that he should have no conscience at all." 
Little wonder then, that at the time of the Smith-

Marshall letters, the "Commonweal" should publish an 
editorial, "A Voice from the Grave," pointing out that 
"The Church and the Republic" was a most effective reply 
to Mr. Marshall's strictures. "Upon the day," the editor 
wrote, "which decides that a Catholic citizen of the 
United States, possessing all the qualifications which the 
Constitution lays down, and commanding the unlimited 
respect of his own commonwealth among free states, is 
ineligible for the highest federal office because he is a 
Catholic, the American Constitution may still remain the 
last imperfect instrument of government in an admittedly 
imperfect world. But it will not, for any practical pur-
pose, be the Constitution that the old Maryland Cardinal 
who thought he knew it, died believing and loving." 

Study Club Outline 
1. Review Cardinal Gibbons' contribution to the lessen-ing of anti-Catholic prejudice. 
2. Is the Catholic Church officially committed to any par-ticular form of government? What form is most favorable for her growth? 
3. How did Cardinal Gibbons' patriotism affect the A. P. A.? 
4. Discuss Cardinal Gibbons' treatment of the question of double allegiance? Discuss the Church as the bul-wark of Americanism, of law and order, of civiliza-tion. 
5. Distinguish between civil and ecclesiastical powers. What did Cardinal Gibbons mean by "the twilight zone"? 



X X X V 
The K u K l u x K l a n 

It has become the fashion to speak of the Klan in 
the past tense. Since the Klan's entrance into national 
politics fourteen years ago, it has undoubtedly suffered 
the fate of those other anti-Catholic movements which 
preceded its rise in 1915. Its anti-Catholic programme, 
however, has not been the sole cause of the Klan's eclipse, 
but also popular indignation over the social evils with 
which the organization is charged. 

There are several aspects of the rise of the Ku Klux 
Klan that contain a lesson for the readers of this book. 

When Colonel William Joseph Simmons stood in the 
midst of his well-chosen group of thirty-four friends on 
the top of Stone Mountain, near Atlanta, on the night 
of that day we Americans have set aside to thank Al-
mighty God for those precious blessings of life, liberty, 
happiness and prosperity, it is a question whether he 
foresaw in his financial dreams the fu ture development 
of his design. "Bathed," he said, "in the sacred glow 
of the fiery cross, the Invisible Empire was called back 
from its slumber of a half century to take up a new task 
and fulfill a new mission for humanity's good and to call 
back to mortal habitation the good angel of practical f ra -
ternity among men.". During the next five years (1915-
1920), however, the Klan appears to have slumbered on, 
although occasionally local Klansmen directed their activ-
ities against so-called alien enemies, slackers, draft-
dodgers, strike-leaders, and unfortunate women, espe-
cially the last. For a time, it looked to the outsider as 
if the new society would disappear, but the ferment was 
not idle. Many curious reasons have been given for the 
gradual spread of Klan sympathizers. The gamut has 
been struck from "inferiority complex" which is said to 
thrive in certain rural sections of the country, to salaci-
ous interpretations of social life based upon Freudian 
ethics. 

Genesis of the Klan 
If one agrees with such careful studies of the Klan 

as that published in 1924 by Professor Mecklin of Dart-



196 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
mouth, it is clear that the Klan was the logical outcome 
of one and only one cause—the continuance of anti-
Catholic fears, hatreds and prejudices which had not died 
with the death of the A. P. A. in the 'nineties. The score 
of years that followed this event was not a closed season 
to the anti-Catholic mind. Many societies of this nature 
sprang up in various parts of the country, and some suc-
ceeded in gaining national attention for a time. Among 
these were the Guardians of Liberty, the Knights of 
Luther, the Stonemen, the Covenanters, and the American 
Pathfinders. These anti-Catholic groups bridged over the 
period between the A. P. A. and the reorganized Klan of 
1920. The effect of these intermediate societies was seen 
in the number of newspapers founded or subsidized for 
the purpose of attacking the Catholic Church. In a pam-
phlet entitled "Defamers of the Church," issued by OUR 
SUNDAY VISITOR, there is a list of over 1 3 0 of these peri-
odicals. It was to meet this growing evil that the Knights 
of Columbus created in 1914 its Commission on Religious 
Prejudices. 

This first official effort to make a trial balance of the 
conflict is now twenty-three years old; and if it be meas-
ured by the anti-Catholicism which the nation has wit-
nessed since 1915, there is a salutary lesson to all of us 
who deplore the continuance of the Puritan blight in the 
land. 

Benedict Elder has written for the "Catholic Builders 
of the Nation" an excellent account of the Commission on 
Religious Prejudices which he styles, and rightly so, one 
of the most notable contributions to the cause of religious 
liberty since Lord Baltimore's Act of Toleration. 

Object of the Inquiry 
The object of the Commission's inquiry was not to 

catalogue all the objections against Catholicism nor was 
it the selection of some of the more virulent charges 
for rebuttal. The. object was principally to awaken 
American citizens everywhere "to the sinister evil of 
organized bigotry, which divides the people into warring 
groups and classes and destroys all prospect, all hope, 
of preserving the mutuality of good will which has been 
the triumph of American democracy." 

The appeal of the Commission was not to Catholics 



THE KU KLUX KLAN 197 
alone, but to the entire country to unite in putting an end 
forever to religious intolerance. 

The work of the Commission grew to such an unex-
pected volume that the final Report was not ready until 
August, 1917. Meetings were held in many cities. Men 
and women of standing in the various professions and in 
business were interviewed. Letters were sent out by the 
thousands, and millions of pamphlets and books were dis-
tributed; newspapers were enlisted in the cause, and 
"only the professional bigot, the paid propagandist, the 
unscrupulous politician, and those of like kidney who 
were in some way reaping profit or position, by the agita-
tion of hatred among men," were found missing among 
groups that lent cheerful assistance to this patriotic en-
terprise of the Knights of Columbus. 

The Commission found in its investigations that the 
"No-Popery" spirit was supported by three classes of 
Americans—those whose patriotism stops short of the 
constitutional provision regarding freedom of religious 
worship; those whose purpose is to destroy not only the 
Catholic religion, but all religion and all duly constituted 
government; and those who "despite their expressed mo-
tives of higher purpose, are actuated solely by sordid 
mercenary considerations." 

The guiding principles of the Commission were those 
which patriotic Americans of all classes might adopt, 
and in the general conclusion reached by the Commission 
all might well concur, namely, that an intolerant move-
ment "can do no harm to the Catholic Church and no good 
to any other religion; while it is the very ruin of peaceful 
life in communities." 

The entrance of the United States into the World War 
in April, 1917, scattered for a time the gathering storm-
clouds of anti-Catholicism in the land. As Maury says in 
his recent satirical book "The Wars of the Godly," the 
Kaiser usurped "the place of the Pope as Antichrist in 
American demonology, and reigned in his stead for nigh 
four years, or until Edward Young Clarke pulmotored the 
Klan out of bankruptcy." When this occurred the pro-
moters of the Guardians, the Pathfinders and other 
groups yielded the anti-Catholic field to the better organ-
ized Klansmen. 



198 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
This organization which for public consumption was 

to be based upon a threefold prejudice—the Catholic, the 
Jew, and the Negro—had in decency to wait until the war 
was over. There were too many gallant Catholics, Jews, 
and Negroes falling upon the field of battle across the 
seas to capitalize upon a large scale the prejudices linked 
with these sections of our people. Not that complete 
silence reigned. By no means. For, out from Aurora, 
Missouri, there were sent broadcast each week millions 
of copies of a disreputable newspaper whose sole purpose 
was the vilification of the Catholic fai th and the be-
smirching of Catholic loyalty. In all t ruth it may be held 
that between 1911 and 1919 this most vicious anti-
Catholic paper ever published in the United States sowed 
the seeds of hatred and violence which were to be reaped 
later by the Klan in a whirlwind of atrocities that black-
ened the fa i r name of American justice. 

The Colossal Campaign of Hate 
By the time demobilization was completed, the new 

leaders of the Klan—Edward Y. Clarke and Mrs. Eliza-
beth Tyler—were ready to begin their colossal campaign 
of hate. The rest of the Klan's history need not be re-
told. In spite of the famous exposure of its aims and 
activities by the New York World in 1921 and in spite of 
all that State and Federal investigators revealed of the 
Klan's palpable treason to American ideals, the society 
grew until it became a menace to national peace and se-
curity. In the autumn of 1922, its founder, Simmons, was 
retired with the title of Emperor For Life and was suc-
ceeded by Hiram Wesley Evans of Dallas, Texas, as Im-
perial Wizard. 

Maury's book is not worth quoting a second time, but the following description of the Klan's progress may be given: 
"Under Evans' leadership the Klan entered into the third, and at this writing apparently the last, phase of its earthly career. Simmons dreamed of leading a band of twentieth-century American Knights, without fear and without reproach. Clarke rounded up a crew of Negro-haters, harlot-floggers, Methodist and Baptist pastors, anti-Catholic monomaniacs, bootleggers, pea-nut politicians, dry agents and an indeterminate num-ber of honest people. Evans, dentist, thirty-third de-



THE KU KLUX KLAN 199 
gree Mason, he-man, go-getter, dealer in polysyllabic English, led the order into state and national politics." 

Klan's Platform in Campaign 
The part taken under cover by the Klan in the 1924 

presidential campaign brought the purpose of the organ-
ization before the country, and all keen observers knew 
then that by the law of politics its career would be brief 
and end in disintegration. The issues, writes Mecklin, 
that gave the Klan its temporary vitality did not lend 
themselves to political success "as is amply shown in the 
history of the Know-Nothings and the A. P. A. move-
ment." The Klan renewed activity during the presidential 
campaign of 1928. Mr. Evans, the Imperial Wizard, de-
clared, in an article entitled "The Ballots Behind the Ku 
Klux Klan," that "our work in the coming campaign will 
be like that of an evangelist; to spread the truth. We 
shall try to make the issue so clear that no one may mis-
take it. We shall show how Smith is inextricably allied 
with bossism, with nullification, with alienism, with 
priest-rule. We shall show what all these mean, what 
danger they carry—the year 1928 will see the greatest 
campaign for Americanization in our history." 

What part the Klan actually took in the organized 
bigotry of the 1928 campaign is set out in a subsequent 
chapter on that subject. 

The Klan occupied a large amount of space from 1920-
1928 in our Catholic press and in current literature, and 
there can be no doubt whatsoever, that the splendid 
defense of Catholic loyalty and tradition by the editors 
of our Catholic newspapers and periodicals, as well as 
the excellent writings of many priests, laymen and lay-
women, did much to arouse non-Catholic Americans to the 
growing danger in this anti-Catholic movement. Little 
by little the t ruth about Catholic doctrines penetrated 
minds that had been closed to all Catholic influence; for. 
the attack made by the Klan organs, whether against our 
loyalty to American political and social ideals, was so 
thoroughly at variance with Catholic life and action that 
many were led, as in all past anti-Catholic movements, to 
inquire into the history and organization of an institution 
so bitterly assailed. 

There is a fundamental spirit of fa i r play in the 



200 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
average American's heart which can always be counted 
upon to withhold judgment until both sides of an argu-
ment are heard. One of the surest proofs of this mental 
factor in our American life was seen at the time of Gov-
ernor A1 Smith's reply to Mr. Marshall. Practically all 
our leading newspapers rejoiced in that declaration of 
principles, not only because it was taken to be a complete 
answer to current anti-Catholic thought, but especially 
because it gave hope that at last the end of political con-
troversy on religious matters was near. 

That both these opinions were too optimistic, all now 
know. The anti-Catholic appeal made by the Klan and 
by those who adhered to its tenets, as undoubtedly in his 
more dignified way Mr. Marshall did, tapped sources of 
religious bigotry which can never be dried up, as long 
as ignorance of Catholicism reigns in a single American 
heart. The revival of Klan principles in the Black Legion 
in 1936, and of the Klan itself following the appointment 
of one of its former members, Hugo L. Black, to the 
Supreme Court in 1937, are proof of this. But f a r out-
weighing the approval of these measures among the big-
oted and ill-informed, was the wide and spontaneous re-
sentment so vividly shown by the vast majority of Ameri-
can citizens. 

Intellectual Mediocrity of Klansmen 
Mecklin writes in his history of the Klan: 

"If there is one outstanding fact to be noted of the majority of the Klan members, i t is their intellectual mediocrity. Neither the intellectual leaders of the com-munity nor the men of ability in the professions or business tend to identify themselves with the Klan— the Klan is conspicuously lacking in that refinement of sentiment and critical independence of thought which must be possessed by an individual or class that under-takes to shape public opinion in a democracy." 
If the Klan did nothing else, its animosity to the 

Catholic Church—and impartial writers on the subject 
admit that all other motives for its prejudicial cast of 
mind were but subterfuges for the same—created con-
siderable interest in Catholic doctrines and practices. 
The output of books on Catholicism in its relation to 
American ideals has increased considerably since the de-



THE KU KLUX KLAN 201 
cline of the Klan. No single aspect of the Klan attack 
was new to a generation that witnessed the A. P. A. 
movement or its forbears, the Know-Nothings and the 
Native-Americans. All that was brought forth by the 
Klan press and the Klan speechmakers was as old as the 
oldest "No-Popery" tracts of Elizabeth's day. The use of 
forgeries, the stirring up of plots against the govern-
ment, the charge of double allegiance, the cry that the. 
land must be saved for Protestantism—all these are now 
close to the hoary old age of four hundred years. 

I t is not a clash of ideals we are facing in such anti-
Catholic movements as the Ku Klux Klan. I t is not as if 
Catholicism means one thing and Americanism quite the 
opposite. It is the crude though shrewd capitalization 
of the "No-Popery" prejudice which apparently no 
amount of public education can fully eradicate. 

Flourished on Falsity 
The Klan or the Black Legion will not be the last of 

these anti-Catholic movements in the United States. Cita-
tions from books on the subject of non-Catholics might 
be given to show that the Klan never had any real justifi-
cation fo r - i t s existence, that it flourished by creating 
false issues, by magnifying hatred and prejudice, or by 
exploiting an exaggerated sense of patriotic duty, and 
that its leaders can point to no single constructive move-
ment which came from its ranks. 

But with these admissions the case is not closed. There 
will be other organizations of a similar nature in the 
future. There will be then, as too often in the past, only 
one weakness in our Catholic defense during these periods 
of what John Gilmary Shea called the "decennial mad-
ness" of the United States—a lack of knowledge on the 
part of our people, first, of what the Church teaches on 
all p.oints at issue in the controversy, and secondly, of the 
close connection between all such movements and the 
inner history of Puri tan life and progress. 



202 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 

Study Club Outline 
1 When was the Ku Klux Klan revived? Why? Of what was it the outcome? What societies "bridged the gap between the A. P. A. and the K. K. K.? 
2. What paper paved the way for the Klan's campaign 

of hate? Who were its leaders? 
3. What act of the Klan forecast its eventual downfall'' 

Why? Discuss. 
4 Do you think it natural that the membership of the Klan should have been comprised of men of low and mediocre intelligence? Why? Do you think there will occur in the future organized campaigns against the Church? Why? Where will such campaigns most likely be successful in spreading hatred of the Church? Why? 
5. What was the K. of C. Committee on Religious Prej-

udice? What were its findings? 



X X X V I 
O u r S u n d a y V i s i t o r 

No discussion of the Catholic Church in America 
would be complete if mention of OUR SUNDAY VISITOR and 
its founder and editor, the Most Rev. John F. Noll, Bishop 
of Fort Wayne, were omitted. 

Most of the older readers of this book will recall the 
genesis of what within a year came to be the most 
widely circulated Catholic paper in the country, and the 
conditions of the times which brought it into being. A 
vehement anti-Catholic campaign was inaugurated in 
1910, and it was not successfully checked until our coun-
try entered the World War. The Socialist Party polled 
the heaviest vote of its history in 1908, and thus encour-
aged became even more active during the congressional 
elections of 1910, at which time it held a convention in 
Toledo, where its anti-Christian animus, which its lead-
ing promoters in this country had striven to hide, was 
disclosed by several speakers. The growth of Socialism 
was due mainly to its official organ, "The Appeal to 
Reason," which had considerably more than a million 
circulation per week. The party also published "The 
Melting Pot," edited by Tichenor and Eugene Debs, and 
"The American Socialist," published in Chicago. Because 
Catholic workmen in large numbers were included in its 
ranks these papers insisted that American Socialism had 
no more than a "bread and butter" program, although in 
their advertising columns, they strove to sell the works 
of Karl Marx, of Hegel and Liebknecht. 

Naturally the Catholic Press fought Socialism, and 
Socialism fought back through "The Appeal to Reason," 
until it discovered that it was alienating most of its 
Catholic readers. Its leading promoters decided to dis-
continue its attacks on the Church in the "Appeal" and 
to found another paper which would be professedly anti-
Catholic. Marvin Brown, who had been connected with 
the "Appeal" in Girard, Kansas, moved to Aurora, Mis-
souri, and founded "The Menace," which grew swiftly 
and stole most of the circulation of the "Appeal," because 
not only did the radicals among the Socialists begin to 



204 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
propagandize for "The Menace," but bigoted preachers all 
over the land got behind it and in a brief time there were 
more than one hundred men and women on the lecture 
platform capitalizing the wonderful opportunity which 
organized prejudice against the Church offered. Soon 
sister sheets of "The Menace" sprang up everywhere, 
notably "The Peril" in North Carolina, "Watson's Maga-
zine" in Georgia, "The Guardian of Liberty" in Chicago, 
"The Sentinel of Liberty" in Texas, "The Yellow Jacket" 
in North Carolina and "The Christian Standard" in Cin-
cinnati. 

The Catholic laity were much embarrassed by these 
papers and the wicked charges which they leveled against 
their Church, and clamored for a periodical of their own 
which might answer these charges and serve as an anti-
dote. The answer to this demand was the founding of 
OUR SUNDAY VISITOR in 1912 by the Rev. John F. Noll, 
then pastor of St. Mary's Church in Huntington, Indiana, 
in which city the paper is still published. 

Father Noll reproduced the first two pages of an 
April, 1912 issue of "The Menace" and sent them to all 
Bishops and Catholic pastors in the United States, and 
told them that he was prepared to publish a paper of 
equal size, at a lower price, and suggested that it be or-
dered in bundle lots for distribution in the churches. 
The suggestion was eagerly welcomed and on the first 
Sunday of May, 1 9 1 2 OUR SUNDAY VISITOR sent out its 
first issue, for which it had orders aggregating 35,000 
copies. 

OUR SUNDAY VISITOR carried from its very first issue 
the subtitle "The Harmonizer" and was a paper which 
was modeled in many respects af ter Bishop England's 
"Miscellany," which we have previously referred to as 
the first distinctively religious weekly in the United 
States. As was "The Miscellany," OUR SUNDAY VISITOR 
was immediately understood as a courageous effort to 
place before the reading public answers to the charges 
against the Church and to place in Catholic and non-Cath-
olic homes the true facts about Catholics and their Faith. 
The National Catholic Welfare Conference News Service 
had not yet been organized, and Father Noll's paper was 



OUR SUNDAY VISITOR 205 
the only organ in the United States which was capable of 
successfully combating the anti-Catholic movement. 

Practically all of the Bishops in the country wrote to 
Father Noll and encouraged their priests to aid in the 
circulation of the paper. The result was that before the 
end of the first year more than 2 0 0 , 0 0 0 copies of OUR 
SUNDAY VISITOR were being distributed each week, and 
the circulation mounted steadily until it reached the half-
million mark. 

While Father Noll did not dignify "The Menace" and 
the other anti-Catholic papers by mentioning them by 
name in his columns, he was, through OUR SUNDAY V I S I -
TOR, able to put most of them out of existence by exposing 
the character of the men who published them, and by 
offering a money reward for proof of any one of the fol-
lowing seventeen stock charges against Catholics and 
their Church: 

1. Catholics cannot be loyal to the United States gov-ernment, for they owe temporal allegiance to the Pope; 
2. The Pope seeks to control American politics; 
3. The Catholic Hierarchy controls a political ma-chine ; 
4. Catholics adore images and statues; 
5. Catholics are forbidden to read the Bible; 
6. Immorality is common in monasteries or convents; 
7. The Jesuits teach "The end justifies the means"; 
8. The Knights of Columbus take the so-called "K. of 

C. Oath"; 
9. The Jesuits take the "Jesuit Oath" circulated by 

their enemies; 
10. Girls are forced into the Sisterhoods or retained 

in them against their will; 
11. Catholics seek to destroy the public schools; 
12. The Catholic Church refuses to acknowledge as valid the marriages of Protestants; 
13. Catholics are given undue government patronage; 
14. Our country would be benefitted by closing the parochial schools; 
15. The assassins of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley were Catholic; 



206 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
16. Lincoln's "Dark Cloud" utterance is genuine; 17. Catholics believe that the Pope should rule in a temporal way over the world. 

The anti-Catholic campaign, which extended f rom the 
year 1908 and culminated in the Ku Klux Klan movement 
in 1922, afforded an opportunity to hundreds of men and 
women to take to the lecture platform and make an easy 
living by tirading against the Catholic Church. Many of 
these paraded falsely as "ex-priests" and "ex-nuns", and 
as fast as their names were presented to OUR SUNDAY 
VISITOR, as being booked in this or that city or town, 
circulars calling attention to the money reward offered 
by Father Noll—and very frequently containing a char-
acter sketch of the one who was to speak—were sent to 
the pastor of the church or to some layman in the congre-
gation for the nullification of the mountebank's record. 
Soon OUR SUNDAY VISITOR published in book form under 
the title "Defamers of the Church" a character sketch of 
almost one hundred of these unsavory "Saviors of our 
country from Rome." One of their chief topics was, of 
course, the "Catholic Question," and particularly during 
the anti-Catholic campaign of 1928 did they aver that 
Catholics owed civil allegiance to Rome, and then was 
revived more strongly than at any time in the past cen-
tury the claim that a Catholic cannot be a good citizen 
and that no Catholic can safely be entrusted with a 
responsible governmental office. 

During this campaign OUR SUNDAY VISITOR took the 
lead in answering all anti-Catholic tirades, but it stead-
fastly held itself aloof from politics, and, guided by its 
editor—then Bishop Noll—, won thousands of non-
Catholics to a better understanding of the Church by its 
simple and concise explanations of Catholic doctrine and 
practice. 

Termed "The Harmonizer," OUR SUNDAY VISITOR has 
always sought to reach non-Catholics as well as Catholics, 
and in 1920 began the publication of a special month-end 
edition intended primarily for the former. This edition 
was well received and was soon sent by direct mail to 
more than 50,000 non-Catholic homes. Today OUR SUN-
DAY VISITOR probably reaches more non-Catholics than 



OUR SUNDAY VISITOR 207 
does any one Protestant publication, for thousands of its 
readers pass it on af ter reading it. 

Bishop Noll, through his thousands of articles in OUR 
SUNDAY VISITOR has undoubtedly done more to dispel 
anti-Catholic bigotry than has any other one individual in 
the history of our country. As staunchly patriotic as 
were Bishops England and Ireland and Cardinal Gibbons, 
his writings have reached a fa r wider audience than did 
theirs and, like theirs, his have consistently carried a 
message of love of God and country. If the "Catholic 
Question" is little heard of today, much credit is due to 
Bishop Noll and OUR SUNDAY VISITOR. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Review the events leading to the founding of OUR 

SUNDAY VISITOR. How was it received? 
2. Assign to each of your members one or more of the 17 charges for proof of which 0 . S. V. offered a re-ward, and let them disprove them. (See "The Ques-tion Box" O. S. V. Press, 60 cents, and "The Faith of Millions".) 
3. Plan to bring a copy of 0 . S. V. to your next meeting and review the articles in it. 
4. Discuss O. S. V.'s plan of reaching non-Catholics with Catholic papers. 
5. What in your opinion has been the greatest good wrought through the publication of this popular Cath-olic weekly? 



X X X V I I 
B i g o t r y In 1 9 2 8 

The bitter waters of bigotry were not long permitted 
to lie stagnant. True to their threat of 1924 the leaders 
of the Ku Klux Klan—sensing the nomination of Alfred 
E. Smith for the Presidency of the United States on the 
Democratic ticket—made ready to be "the traitor to 
Democracy who will insure his defeat." The Klan had 
repeatedly boasted—and rightfully so—that it had pre-
vented Smith's nomination in 1924, and now they marsh-
alled all their forces to defeat him by appealing to latent 
anti-Catholic prejudice which still rankled in the hearts 
of the uninformed. 

Alone, it is not likely that the Klan would have been 
able to arouse the people of the nation against Smith, 
but early in that year there occurred an incident which 
proved that anti-Catholic animosity was not entertained 
only by Klansmen and that even among the well educated 
there existed a fear that a Catholic President could not 
conscientiously uphold the American principles of re-
ligious and civil liberty. It was a recurrence of the 
"Catholic Question," and this time was brought to the 
attention of the public through the publication in the 
April, 1928 edition of "The Atlantic Monthly" of an 
article by Charles C. Marshall, a lawyer and Episcopalian 
in New York. Mr. Marshall asked Smith to explain away, 
if he could, the question of double allegiance. In the fol-
lowing (May) issue of the same magazine appeared Gov-
ernor Smith's reply, which bore the editorial heading, 
"Catholic and Patriot : Governor Smith replies." 

Smith's reply to Marshall need not be treated here. 
In it he clearly outlined the Church's teaching on re-
ligious and temporal allegiance, as had been done previ-
ously by Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishops England, Ireland 
and many others. Smith undoubtedly triumphed in the 
controversy, as was evidenced by the comments in the 
daily papers, but he failed to convince Marshall and with 
him many others. Again it was the old question of a 
"man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion 
still." But such men were comparatively few. In the 



BIGOTRY IN 1928 209 
South, where anti-Catholic prejudice was most easily 
aroused because of the few Catholics who resided there 
and the almost universal lack of knowledge of Catholic 
teachings, not more than two or three percent of the daily 
papers deemed Smith's answer insincere or false. And, 
as the Catholic Laymen's Association of Georgia revealed 
af ter an extensive survey, those papers which sided with 
Marshall were consistently anti-Catholic in character. 
What was true of the South was generally true of the 
nation. 

But though Marshall's article did not greatly impress 
it did have a decided effect. Failing to bring the contro-
versy out into the open, it added strength to the whisper-
ing and clandestine anti-Catholic activities of the Klan. 

Among the worst of the bigots in the Klan was Sena-
tor Thomas J. Heflin, Democrat of Alabama. Opposed to 
the Smith candidacy in 1924, he resented his inevitable 
nomination in 1928. Repeatedly attacking Smith in the 
Senate, he assailed him as "the Roman candidate," selec-
ted by the "Roman Catholic political machine to be the 
Roman candidate for President of the United States." 
He consistently employed every argument used by anti-
Catholic antagonists since colonial days, and late in Octo-
ber bolted the Democratic party, declaring: "So help me 
God, I will vote against A1 Smith if they read me out 
of the Democratic party and drive me from every Senate 
committee." His bolt barred him from the 1930 Alabama 
primaries and eventually led to his downfall. In 1937 he 
was again a candidate for the Senate to fill the seat va-
cated by Hugo L. Black when he, a former Klansman, was 
named to the Supreme Court, but was overwhelmingly 
defeated. 

In the Senate Heflin's oratory was tolerated in amuse-
ment and scorn, but it undoubtedly had a great effect on 
those among the American citizens who were prone to 
believe all that was said against the Catholic Church. 

Important, however, in another respect were his anti-
Catholic outbursts. On January 18, Heflin in one of his 
typical harangues charged that the Catholic Church had 
inspired the publication in the Hearst papers of a set 
of forged documents in which he was named as the 
recipient of $350,000 from the Mexican treasury for 



210 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
conducting pro-Mexican activities in the United States. 
Disgusted by Heflin's tirade, Senator Joseph T. Robinson, 
Democratic party leader, denounced him as a purveyor 
of religious bigotry. This passage from Robinson's ad-
dress is worth recalling here: 

"I have heard the Senator from Alabama a dozen times during the last year make what he 'calls his anti-Catholic speech. I have heard him denounce the Cath-olic Church and the Pope of Rome and the cardinal and the bishop and the priest and the nun until I am sick and tired of it, as a Democrat . . . The Senator from Alabama has said that A1 Smith, because he is a Catholic, can not be nominated for President by the Democrats. He said that every Democrat ought to hang his head in shame when the name of A1 Smith is men-tioned. I have never been classed as an A1 Smith sup-porter, but I have not been one of that class which believed that Governor Smith should be excluded from the list of candidates because he is a Catholic. I do not believe in excluding a candidate on account of his re-ligion, nor do I believe in nominating a candidate on account of his religion. I believe, Mr. President, that one who is a Catholic has just as much right to apply for the favor of his party as one who is a Methodist or a Baptist, and I believe that when you deny that right, you deny a fundamental principle of this gov-ernment . . ." 
Heflin replied to Robinson by denouncing him as one 

who "fought the battle of the Roman Catholics everytime 
it is raised," and demanded his resignation as floor leader. 
With but one dissenting vote, the Democratic Senators 
approved Robinson, but they failed to rebuke Heflin. That 
same afternoon he made another speech against the Pope. 
Robinson's address proved to be one of the principal 
contributing reasons for his selection as running mate 
with Smith when they were chosen -as standard bearers 
by their party at the Houston convention. 

Smith Wins Nomination 
Alfred E. Smith had risen quickly in the ranks of the 

Democratic party and it was almost impossible to deprive 
him of the honor of the nomination for the Presidency. 
Born in New York City on December 30, 1873, the son of 
Alfgred E. and Catherine Mulvehill Smith, he was edu-
cated in the parochial schools and early began his busi-



BIGOTRY IN 1928 211 
ness life, being first employed at the Fulton Street Fish 
Market. Later he was clerk in the office of the Commis-
sioners of Jurors, a member of the New York Assembly 
from 1903-15; party leader in 1913; speaker in 1915, and 
sheriff of New York County from 1915-17, when he was 
elected president of the board of aldermen. He was four 
times Governor of New York, having been elected first in 
1919, and holding that office at the time of the 1928 cam-
paign. 

With the withdrawal of William Gibbs McAdoo, who 
was deadlocked with Smith in 1924, it was apparent that 
the latter would win the nomination. He was accordingly 
chosen by a wide majority on the first ballot of the 1928 
convention. While it had been anticipated that there 
would result an anti-Catholic campaign of hate, it is 
doubtful that even the leaders of the Klan and other 
bigoted groups entertained hopes of spreading their 
nefarious poison so widely. Never before in the history 
of the country was so bitter an attack waged against the 
Church. 

Immediately af ter Smith's nomination his choice of 
John J. Raskob, a Catholic and previously a Republican, 
as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, led 
to a revolt by the prohibition element within the party. 
An anti-Smith dry party within the Democratic forces 
was formed, but it became immediately evident that there 
were within its ranks a majority of workers who opposed 
Smith on religious grounds. It began its destructive 
propaganda work at once, and throughout the campaign 
was in direct contact with the Republican headquarters 
in Washington. 

Space does not permit a detailed treatment of the 
anti-Catholic animosity aroused during the campaign. 
At most we can list a few of the outstanding offenders. 
Four bishops of the Methodist Episcopal church were 
early found among the leaders. They were Bishops Ed-
ward Mouzan of Charlotte, North Carolina; John W. 
Moore of Dallas, Texas; Horace du Bose of Nashville, 
Tennessee; and, the most notorious of all, James Cannon, 
Jr., of Richmond, Virginia. 

Offending papers and other periodicals were legion 
and among them were found both religious and secular 



212 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
journals. The following from the "Wesleyan Christian 
Advocate" of Atlanta is typical of the more moderate 
assertions made against Smith and the Church : 

"Governor Smith has a constitutional right to run for President, even though a Catholic. This we confess. And we have a constitutional right to vote against him because he is a Catholic. This we assert . . . We are strongly persuaded that Catholicism is a degenerate type of Christianity, which ought everywhere to be dis-placed with a pure type of Christianity." 
But the leader among the bitterest publications was 

the "Fellowship Forum," published in Washington, D. C. 
In "The Shadow of the Pope" by Michael Williams and 
in a ''Book of Horrors" compiled by OUR SUNDAY VISITOR 
are reproduced some of the bitter and grossly libelous 
cartoons published in this notorious sheet and elsewhere 
used during the campaign. They portray in a vivid and 
unmistakable manner the extent to which the anti-Cath-
olics among Smith's enemies went in their effort to 
bring about his defeat. The editorial policy of the "Fel-
lowship Forum," under the direction of James E. Vance, 
like many of its smaller imitators, was bitterly anti-
Catholic. All such publications were enthusiastically sup-
ported by the Klan, and the "Forum" in its earlier days 
had established itself in the South as a Masonic organ. 
During the campaign its editors claimed a normal cir-
culation of approximately 360,000 per week, but millions 
of copies of its worst issues were circulated throughout 
the nation. 

Ministers by the hundreds expressed their fear—real 
or feigned—of Smith as President because, as the Rev. 
T. F. Calloway, Baptist, expressed it, "we are afraid of 
the political purposes of the hierarchy to which he owes 
his religious affiliation. We know that the Catholic Church 
is as much a political party as it is a religious body." 

Although Smith was badly defeated by the foes of 
"Rum, Romanism and Tammany," and despite the fact 
that he lost thousands of votes, particularly in the South-
ern States which had previously always voted Demo-
cratic, because of the religious prejudice aroused, he 
never permitted himself during the entire campaign to 
fight hate with hate. He referred to the religious ques-
tion only twice, at Oklahoma City, where intolerance was 



BIGOTRY IN 1928 213 
probably more intense than anywhere else in the nation, 
and at the end of the campaign in Baltimore. On the 
former occasion he pointed out that the anti-Catholic ani-
mosity being so needlessly aroused constituted a threat to 
the future life of our Republic, and emphasized the neces-
sity of killing it. "The best way to kill anything un-
American," he said, "is to drag it out in the open, because 
anything un-American cannot live in the sunlight." He 
continued: 

". . . Let me make myself perfectly clear. I do not want any Catholic in the United States of America to vote for me on the sixth of November simply because I am a Catholic. Any Catholic in this country who believes that the welfare, the well-being, the prosperity, the growth and the expansion of the United States is best conserved and best promoted by the election of Hoover, I want him to vote for Hoover and not for me. 
"But, on the other hand, I have the right to say that if there is any citizen in this country who believes that I can promote its welfare, that I am capable of steering the ship of state safely through the next four years and then votes against me because of my religion, he is not a real, pure, genuine American." 

As in all other instances the anti-Catholic attitude so 
bitterly evidenced in this campaign eventually redounded 
to the benefit of the Church. Thousands of sincere and 
fair-minded non-Catholics, disgusted with the treatment 
accorded Catholics even by their own ministers, sought 
a better and t ruer understanding of her, and many of 
them later found their way into the true fold. 

Study Club Outline 
1. What important happening early in 1928 brought the "Catholic Question" to the attention of the public? What controversy resulted? 2. Who was the victor, Smith or Marshall? How did Smith answer Marshall's charges? 3. Who was Thomas Heflin? How did a fellow Senator answer his anti-Catholic attacks? Who was this Senator ? 4. What do you think was most damaging to Smith in the 1928 campaign? Where did the anti-Catholic propaganda prove most effective? 5. How did Smith fight against the campaign of h a t e 9 Discuss his talk at Oklahoma City. Who in your opin-ion is America's outstanding Catholic layman ? 



XXXVIII 
The Church i n t h e U. S. T o d a y 

In these chapters an attempt has been made to make 
more clear the great progress which the Catholic Church 
has achieved in America. It has not been possible to treat 
our topic fully and there have, therefore, been many nota-
ble gaps in the events discussed; but they were unavoid-
able. The main purpose of our book has been to stir both 
Catholics and non-Catholics to a more thorough study of 
the many triumphs of the Church despite the fact that 
she was impeded at every turn by societies and individ-
uals whose main purpose it was to create prejudice 
against her. 

Many important personages, ecclesiastical and lay, 
have had to be passed over. Space has not permitted an 
appreciation of the work of great leaders like Bishop 
Fenwick of Boston, Judge Gaston of North Carolina, 
Doctor John McLoughlin, John Boyle O'Reilly, Charles 
B. Hebermann, William Burke Cockran and many others 
now dead whose contribution to the success of the Church 
and the breaking down of prejudice deserve a place in any 
extended history of the Church in the United States. 
Among those yet living mention should also be made of 
our four Cardinals, O'Connell, Dougherty, Mundelein and 
Hayes, Archbishops McNicholas, Mitty, Curley, and many 
other members of the hierarchy whose love of country is 
only exceeded by their love of God. 

To conclude this work without first pondering at least 
briefly on the question of how fa r we have travelled from 
our small beginnings and the bitter intolerance ,of colonial 
days, would leave our study of Catholic progress in the 
Republic unfinished. We have seen in our early chapters 
how few were our numbers and how difficult were the 
conditions under which they lived. Today the Church 
is by fa r the largest religious or lay organization in the 
country. Comprising it are some 23,000,000 members, 
who constitute one-sixth of the population of the nation. 
Serving the laity are 130 members of the hierarchy, 
among them four Cardinals, 20 Archbishops and 106 



THE CHURCH IN THE U. S. TODAY 215 
Bishops. Working with them are 31,650 priests, 9,000 of 
whom are members of religious orders and 21,650 mem-
bers of the secular clergy. There are in the nation more 
than 18,500 churches which have been erected at the 
sacrifice of and for the convenience of the laity. 

Great progress has also been made in the field of edu-
cation. "We judge it absolutely necessary that schools 
should be established, in which the young may be taught 
the principles of faith and morality, while being in-
structed in letters." Thus declared the members of the 
newly formed American hierarchy, meeting in the Firs t 
Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1829. The Bishops had 
taken cognizance of the fact that the children of many 
Catholic parents, particularly the poor, were exposed 
to the danger of loss of fai th and corruption of morals 
by reason of the fact that there was a dearth of Catholic 
educational facilities. The fai thful were increasing in 
numbers. Immigrants from distant lands were coming to 
these shores to enjoy the freedom and security that 
America symbolized. For their children and their chil-
dren's children they set forth to conquer the wilderness. 
Theirs was the vision of a new world, of a new social 
order, of a new civilization, in which fundamental human 
rights would be held sacred and the dignity of the human 
personality would be respected. Deeply religious people, 
they loved their Church. They were taking part in the 
building of a new nation. But they were wise builders, 
who knew that they must build with God and that the 
foundation stone must be Jesus Christ. Whatever the 
cost, they must pass on to posterity, the sacred heritage 
of their faith. 

The foundations of Catholic education in the United 
States had been laid in the early part of the seventeenth 
century. It was the Franciscan missionaries laboring 
in Florida and New Mexico who established the first 
schools within the present limits of the United States. 
Down in Saint Augustine as f a r back as 1606 there were 
a classical school and a preparatory seminary. The Cath-
olic sisterhoods (now numbering more than 100,000 mem-
bers in the U. S.) made the beginning of their magnifi-
cent contribution to American education when the Ursu-
lines came to New Orleans in 1727. We remember grate-



216 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
fully the arrival of the Jesuits 304 years ago in Maryland I t was this great teaching order that laid the foundation ior the present parish school system in the United States, for it was their plan to establish a school wherever they established a church. They began the tradition of making the maintenance of a school a primary responsibility of thé parish. 

Thus it was that long before the meeting of the 
First Provincial Council of Baltimore in 1829 Catholic 
education had sent its roots deep into American soil It 
was with the spread of Catholic education that the 
Council was concerned, as well as with its organization 
and direction. When the bishops insisted "that schools 
be established, in which the young may be taught the 
principles of fai th and morality, while being instructed 
in letters," they were emphasizing fundamental Catholic 
educational philosophy. 

More than fifty years passed—years of growth and 
development for Catholic eduçation—years of multipli-
cation of Catholic schools—years which saw the ranks 
of devoted men and women who had consecrated their 
lives to the mission of teaching constantly swe l l ing -
years that saw the Catholic schools in one diocese af ter 
another being organized for more effective work—years 
that bore witness to the zeal, not only of Bishops and 
pastors, but of the fai thful as well, for the promotion of 
Catholic education. 

In 1884 the American Hierarchy came together in the 
Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. One fourth of all 
the decrees adopted by the Council had to do with edu-
cation. "Two objects," the Bishops declared, "we have 
in view, namely, to multiply our schools, and to perfect 
them. We must multiply them, till every Catholic child 
in the land shall have the means of education within its 
reach. . . We must also perfect our schools. We re-
pudiate the idea that the Catholic school need be in any 
respect inferior to any other school whatsoever." 

The effectiveness of the legislation of this Third 
Plenary Council of Baltimore is amply demonstrated by 
the history of Catholic education from that day to this. 
Fif ty-four years have passed, and every year has signal-
ized progress and given evidence of greater vitality. Two 



THE CHURCH IN THE U. S. TODAY 217 
million, two hundred thousand children are now enrolled 
in more than eight thousand Catholic elementary schools. 
Twenty-two hundred high schools are taking care of 
three hundred thousand students. There are seventy-
five Catholic colleges for men and ninety-seven Catholic 
colleges for women. The former enroll eighty-six thous-
and students, the latter twenty-seven thousand students, 
a grand total of more than one hundred thousand young 
men and women pursuing higher studies under Catholic 
auspices. There are twenty-two Catholic universities 
offering graduate work and affording preparation for the 
various professions. In one hundred and seventy-eight 
major and preparatory seminaries twenty thousand 
young men are being prepared for the sacred responsibili-
ties of the priesthood. Teachers' colleges have multiplied, 
some under the auspices-of individual religious communi-
ties, others under the direction of the diocese. In them, 
four thousand students, mostly members of religious 
orders, are equipping themselves in accordance with the 
best contemporary standards for effective work in the 
classroom. 

One of the most important decrees of the Third Plen-
ary Council of Baltimore is that which embodied the 
decision on the part of the Bishops to found in the City 
of Washington a Catholic University. The University 
began its existence in 1889. In an Apostolic Letter Pope 
Leo XIII approved its constitution and statutes and de-
fined its scope "to provide instruction in every depart-
ment of learning to the end that the clergy and laity 
alike might have an opportunity to satisfy fully their 
laudable desire for knowledge." 

The Catholic University of America occupies a unique 
position among the Catholic schools of the country. It is 
under the direct control of the hierarchy and its support 
comes in large measure from the Catholic people of the 
United States. It is a pontifical university and as such its 
constitution and statutes must have the approval of the 
Holy See. Since its foundation each succeeding Pope, Leo 
XIII, Pius X, Benedict XV, and the now gloriously reign-
ing Pontiff, Pius XI, has given it special interest and 
fatherly concern. 

A feature that differentiates Catholic schools in the 



218 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
United States from Catholic schools in other parts of the 
world is the fact that the teaching is almost exclusively in 
the hands of members of religious orders. In other coun-
tries, where Catholic schools are supported by public 
funds, the rank and file of the teachers are laymen and 
laywomen, the religious orders for the most part con-
fining their activity to what might be called private 
schools. But here in the United States, where the Church 
has been denied any share in the public funds, the reli-
gious orders stepped into the breach and with a view only 
to the glory of God and the salvation of souls, with no 
thought of personal pecuniary reward, they have made 
the existence and expansion of Catholic education pos-
sible. All the while they have added something very spec-
ial and precious to our education, for they are what they 
teach and their consecrated lives serve to dramatize the 
ideals and attitudes they strive to inculcate. 

The record of the patriotic contribution of the Catho-
lic schools is an open book that he who runs may read. 
To begin with, the Catholics of the United States by 
building, equipping, and maintaining so many schools for 
their children, are relieving the American tax-payer of a 
considerable financial burden. Speaking in round num-
bers, there are two and one-half million children in our 
Catholic elementary and secondary schools. If these chil-
dren were not in Catholic schools, the government would 
have to take care of them. Most of our public schools are 
over-crowded now and consequently additional buildings 
would have to be provided. Assuming that its costs $300 
to house each school child, and this figure is low accord-
ing to the computations of the United States Office of 
Education, 750 million dollars would have to be expended 
on new school buildings. In addition, there would be an 
annual increase of 300 million dollars in instructional and 
maintenance cost throughout the country. 

In the end, however, the greatest service that the 
Catholic school is doing for the country, consists in the 
fact that it is giving a religious education. By so doing 
it is keeping within the American tradition and carrying 
on in the spirit of those who laid the foundations of our 
national life. Religion was the dominant element in the 
Colonial schools. After the Revolution, the earliest pro-



THE CHURCH IN THE U. S. TODAY 219 
nouncement of the new government on education is found 
in the third article of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, 
which insisted that "schools and the means of education 
shall forever be encouraged", because "religion, moral-
ity, and knowledge" are necessary to good government 
and the happiness of mankind. No thought here of sep-
arating religion from either morality or knowledge. 
Against a tide of secularism that rose in the middle of 
the last century and which has steadily increased in 
power and sweep, the Catholic school has stood like a 
rock. It gives testimony of the eternal values, apart 
from which temporal values lose their substance and 
their power to compel. It proclaims the testimony of 
history that no nation has long escaped disintegration 
and ultimate ruin that wandered f a r from God. It ap-
peals to the religious sense of the American people, a 
sense which though weakened still has strength to assert 
itself, to repair the harm before it is too late and restore 
to American children their right to know their Creator 
and their obligations to Him. 

Catholic Population an Urban One 
Nowhere in the world can Tertullian's famous plea 

for toleration be made with more appositeness than in 
the United States: "We are but yesterday; yet we fill 
your cities." The Catholic population of the United 
States is centered in what may be called the nerve centers 
of the nation, the large cities. While Catholics consti-
tute but one-sixth of the population of the nation, they 
comprise from one-third to one-half of the populations of 
our largest cities. Accordingly the inquiring non-Catho-
lic cannot escape—except in some of the smallest towns 
and agricultural districts—Catholics in this land of free-
dom and equality. The daily lives of Catholics are an 
open book wherein can be read all that the Church 
teaches. It is largely because of this fact that we can 
claim a real advance in the non-Catholic estimate of the 
Church, although it is true that the advance has been 
slow and too frequently retarded by waves of bigotry 
such as that experienced as recently as 1928. 

Encouragement is also had in the greatly increased 
patronage of an improved Catholic press. The Church in 
the United States has at the present time a host of well 



220 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
trained writers and scholars who are helping to bring 
about a better understanding of her position on all im-
portant questions. While their principal work is usually 
confined to Catholic educational institutions and the 
Catholic press, they frequently are called upon to refute 
in the secular publications libels against the Church 
which are even yet voiced by supposedly responsible pub-
lications. 

Through the press and radio the Church is today 
reaching millions who never before in the history of our 
nation were given an opportunity to readily learn and 
understand her teachings. Cooperating with the press 
are many Catholic radio lecturers whose messages are 
carried across the continent each week. Outstanding 
among them are the many scholars, particularly the Rt. 
Rev. Msgr. Fulton J. Sheen, Ph. D. and the Rev. James M. 
Gillis, C. S. P., who lecture on the Catholic Hour spon-
sored by the National Council of Catholic Men, and the 
Rev. Charles E. Coughlin, founder of the Radio League 
of the Little Flower, whose messages are heard regularly 
by millions of non-Catholics. 

The Church in the United States is also strengthened • 
by an intense loyalty on the part of the vast majority of 
her people. Unlike many other countries, Catholic leaders 
here are not troubled by dissension among the laity and 
there is no evidence of an anti-clerical attitude. 

The combination of all these things gives to the 
Church in the United States an exceptional opportunity. 
It has grown up largely with additions to its numbers 
through immigration from Catholic countries in Europe, 
but it is in no sense racial. There was a time, as we have 
seen, when it was criticised as being predominantly Irish, 
but the merging of new arrivals into the general mass of 
the people continually broadened and softened racial out-
lines. Since the flow of immigrants has been stopped, the 
younger generations have become fa r more American 
than Irish, Italian, Polish, etc., and this has added to the 
strength of the Church. 

In general it may be said that the Catholic body, well 
organized and strong, also through conviction and prac-
tice, has come to stand for something special in American 
life; but not something segregated. This situation 



THE CHURCH IN THE U. S. TODAY 221 
especially appealed to the noted English historian, Hilaire 
Belloc, who said that i t was not paralleled in any other 
nation. The Church derives additional strength, too, be-
cause—as elsewhere in the world today—she alone ans-
wers with certitude the great questions of the modern 
age. She teaches human equality, the sanctity of con-
tract, the right of property, the claim of every man to a 
sufficient livelihood, the mutual relations of man and the 
necessity of justice, as no other organization can teach 
them, for she makes of them a consistent whole. "And 
those whom she addresses," says Belloc, "know well that 
her definitions and assertions will not change," when all 
else is changing in a changing world. Even those who 
are reluctant to accept the authority of the Church feel 
that she speaks from the foundation of truth. 

But it is also due to the lack of certitude among non-
Catholic groups that the Church is opposed and misunder-
stood today. Unlike a century ago, she is now attacked 
not so much on the question of double allegiance as on her 
teachings on social and economic subjects. As elsewhere 
in the world Communists and Communistic organizations 
are endeavoring to spread their propaganda and make 
converts in the United States. And here, as elsewhere, 
they attack the Church because they find that she is their 
strongest opponent. The Church condemns Communism 
because it is in its very essence anti-religious and atheis-
tic. Its sworn purpose is to do away with all belief in 
God, although in every nation save Russia it hides that 
aim in order to more successfully play upon the inequali-
ties of the economic system and win adherents to its 
cause. 

The Church is also accused by enemies of Fascism of 
being the friend of that system of totalitarian govern-
ment. Of course, she is not. She equally condemns with 
Communism the usurpation of all power by any dictator. 
The Church is the protector of the individual and the 
family, and she will never approve a system of govern-
ment which takes away all individual and family rights. 

In the field of morals the Church demands the respect 
of millions of non-Catholics for her unswerving opposi-
tion to divorce, birth prevention and indecency in litera-
ture, motion pictures and other forms of entertainment. 



222 THE CHURCH IN' U. S. HISTORY 
At the same time she is opposed by the organizations and 
individuals advocating the wide dissemination of birth 
control information, easy divorce laws and a complete 
"freedom" of expression in all the arts. 

The Church will always be persecuted, and the Church 
in the United States will not prove an exception; but 
here she has a great opportunity for success in reaching 
non-Catholics despite many obstacles which seem insup-
erable. Whether or not she will be able to take full advan-
tage of that opportunity depends upon the Catholic laity. 

Study Club Outline 
1. Review the progress which the Church in the U. S. has made during the past 150 years. 
2. Discuss the Catholic teaching on education. Why does she maintain her own schools ? Review progress made during past 100 years. 
3. In what ways do Catholic schools serve the State? How much money does the Church save for the U. S. by maintaining her own schools? 
4. Why is the Church in an excellent position in the U. S-? Where are her members centered ? Should this be benficial or detrimental ? 
5. Discuss the opportunity afforded the Church by the press and radio. What is her attitude towards Com-munism? Fascism? On whom does the success of the Church ultimately depend?