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Prelude To ‘Americanism’: The New York Accademia and Clerical Radicalism in the Late Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Robert Emmett Curran
Robert Emmett Curran
Affiliation:
Mr. Curran is assistant professor of history inGeorgetown University, Washington, D. C.
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Extract

The Americanist crisis in the last decade of the nineteenth century climaxed the attempt of a group of liberal prelates and their associates to adapt Roman Catholicism to democratic institutions and values. Almost twenty years ago Robert Cross put this complex movement within the context of a growing American Catholic liberalism in the postbellum period. The full dimensions of that liberalism are still coming into focus as archival materials and unpublished sources become more available to the historian. The recent discovery of a remarkable association of New York priests shows another facet of the Americanist controversy that better enables us to appreciate the peculiar lines that the episcopal struggle assumed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 48 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1978

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References

1. The Emergence of Liberal Catholicism in America (Cambridge, 1958).Google Scholar

2. For an analysis of this development, see Dolan, Jay P., The Immigrant Church: New York's Irish and German Catholics, 1815–1865 (Baltimore, 1975), pp 163–166.Google Scholar Dolan considers nineteenth-century Catholic theology with its model of monarchial authority to have provided the rationale for the new style of episcopal government and urbanization to have fostered its implementation in America.

3. For a short account, see Callaghan, Nelson, A Case For Due Process in the Church: Father Eugene O'Callaghan, American Pioneer of Dissent (New York, 1971).Google Scholar

4. Both priests and bishops used the law when it suited their interests and ignored it when it did not. That, at least, was the conclusion of George Conroy, the Irish bishop who was sent on a fact finding mission to the United States in 1878 after Vatican officials decided they needed some better information to settle the numerous appeals they were getting from American priests against their ordinaries. Conroy found that few wished to abide by the body of laws set down by the old canon law or the Councils of Baltimore. For an excellent survey of this whole question of the relationship between episcopal and clerical rights, cf. Trisco, Robert, “Bishops and Their Priests in the United States,” in Ellis, John Tracy, ed. The Catholic Priest in the United States: Historical Investigations (Collegeville, Minn., 1971), pp. 111–292.Google Scholar

5. Archives of the Archdiocese of New York (hereafter AANY), Burtsell Diary (hereafter Diary), 2, April 17, 1866. Propagandists had two special privileges which tended to set them apart from their fellow clergy. They had the right of appeal to the pope upon being removed or disciplined by their ordinary. Second, their letters to Propaganda would not be returned to their ordinaries, as was the standard procedure. In fact they had the obligation of making annual reports to the Sared Congregation, a tradition that many American bishops considered an undermining of their own authority. A different version of the official Accademia's demise is given in an unsigned typed manuscript housed in the Archdiocesan Archives of New York and entitled “Private Record of the Case of Rev. Edward J. McGlynn.” According to this 1901 account McGlynn himself led the move to dissolve the society. Thereafter—in the “Private Record's” version—the Accademia, now limited to the McGlynn circle, drifted into heterodoxy (AANY 50–3, pp. 517–525).

6. AANY, Diary, 2, September 17, 1866.

7. AANY 50–3, “Private Record,” 521.

8. AANY, Diary, 3, January 25, 1867.

9. AANY, Diary, 2, September 10, 1866.

10. “Before and After Modernism: The Intellectual Isolation of the American Priest,” in Ellis, , Catholic Priest, pp. 311–312.Google Scholar

11. AANY, Diary, 1, May 31, 1865.

12. AANY, Diary,2, September 10, 1866.

13. AANY, Diary, 3, January 25, 1867.

14. “We doubted the inspiration of the history of our first parents' fall,” Burtsell recorded, “and thought that many Adams may have been created, as long as the whole human race fell from original justice. The reasoning [of] Rom[ans]. 5 about sin entering by one man, is not of faith…. St. Paul's reasoning there is very illogical” (AANY, Diary, 3, February 27, 1867). Strangely there is no mention of the theory of evolution although Hecker's Catholic World was taking up the issue during these years. This of course was before the publication of The Descent of Man in which Darwin explicitly included man within his theory.

15. AANY, Diary, 3, May 19, 1867. The theory of the pope's indirect temporal power asserted that while Church and State are independent societies, the pope has the right to intervene in temporal affairs, even to the point of deposing heretical rulers, when the faith and morals of the people are endangered.

16. “If anyone wishes special advice,” Burtsell suggested, “let him confess that special sin privately” (AANY, Diary, 3, January 23, 1867).

17. Nilan, McSweeny, and Burtsell agreed that “celibacy never allows priests to become men, marriage sobers men at once: Celibacy brings lonesome hours to the priest: marriage would give him a perpetual object to be loved; Celibacy makes priests selfish; marriage would make him more social.… So few choose celibacy, that few smart and good men become priests. The Protestant clergy has more social influence than the Catholic” (AANY, Diary, 2, July 21, 1866).

18. AANY, Diary, 3, December 31, 1866.

19. AANY, Diary, 1, June 20, 1865.

20. When some New York priests had approached Hughes about their rights under canon law, the prelate told them “that he would teach them [County] Monaghan canon law; he would send them back to the bogs whence they came” (AANY, Diary, 1, July 26, 1865).

21. “We agreed,” Burtsell wrote of a conversation he had with McGlynn in 1865, “that a different spirit is to he brought into the church's legislation. We have the country whence a new activity may spread throughout the whole Christian world. A little more democracy would be of use” (AANY, Diary, 1, March 30, 1865).

22. AANY, Diary, 3, April 28, 1867.

23. “The Church and Monarchy,” Catholic World 4, no. 23 (02 1867): 638.Google Scholar

24. AANY, Diary, 3, April 28, 1867.

25. Burtsell and McGlynn were arguing that the Catholic population of New York was at least 500,000 whereas the archbishop contended it was not above 300,000 (AANY, Diary, 1, May 25, 1865). Donna Merwick in her study of the Boston Archdiocese during this period finds a similar pattern of polarization between a rising group of IrishAmerican clerics and a native-born archbishop (John Williams) hesitant to endanger the Church's standing with the Yankee community by responding in a vigorous fashion to the challenges that a rapidly growing immigrant population was raising for the structures of the Church and the larger society Boston Priests, 1848–1910: A Study of Social and Intellectual Change [Cambridge, 1973], pp. 61–93.Google Scholar

26. AANY, Diary, 1, May 25, 1865. In that year seventy-five percent of the New York parishes had schools with a total student population of 16,000. This was an estimated one-third of the Catholic children (Dolan, , Immigrant Church, pp. 105–108).Google Scholar

27. When Burtsell and Nilan visited Fenian headquarters in Union Square, the officers there were surprised to encounter two sympathetic priests (AANY, Diary, 1, November 29, 1865). Rome subsequently condemned the Fenians as a secret society in January 1870.

28. Burtsell was appalled when Archbishop McCloskey refused to take part in an ecumenical service for Lincoln in April 1865 on the grounds that “it would not look well for him to be praying where Prot[estant] clergymen were present! Oh bright theology!” Burtsell commented, “Oh cowardice! Does the Catholic Church forbid us to bless our countrymen!” (AANY, Diary, 1, April 15, 1865)

29. AANY, 50–3, “Private Record,” pp. 522–523.

30. AANY, Diary, 3, February 18, 1867.

31. Ibid., May 15, 1867.

32. Ibid., October 8, 1867.

33. Ibid., September 10, 1867.

34. AANY, unclassified, cited in a letter from Archbishop Corrigan to Giovanni Cardinal Simeoni, October 12, 1888, draft.

35. AANY C-10, Nilan to Corrigan, Poughkeepsie, September 20, 1883.

36. Bell, Stephen, Rebel, Priest and Prophet: A Biography of Dr. Edward McGlynn (New York, 1937), pp. 26–27.Google Scholar By a fortuitous coincidence, Henry George's Progress and Poverty was published in the very year that the Land League was formed. The Land League was the result of the movement known as the “New Departure” that brought together the Home Rule forces of Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish proponents of social reform led by Michael Davitt, and the American Fenians under John Devoy. George's indictment of the land monopoly as the primary source of economic inequity had an enormous impact upon Irish-American reformers both here and in Ireland (Cf. Brown, Thomas N., Irish-American Nationalism, 1870–1890 [Philadelphia & New York, 1966].Google Scholar

37. AANY 1–41, Simeoni to Corrigan, Rome, August 9, 1882, Italian. Propaganda was sending similar directives concerning clergy political abstinence to the Irish hierarchy during this summer.

38. McGlynn later claimed that he had voluntarily promised to refrain from making Land League speeches “not because I acknowledge the right of any one to forbid me, but because I knew too well the power of my ecclesiastical superiors to impair and almost destroy my usefulness in the ministry of Christ's Church…” (New York Daily Tribune, February 4, 1887).

39. AANY, unclassified, [Corrigan] to [Simeoni], New York, November 24, 1886, draft.

40. AANY, unclassified, Corrigan to Simeoni, March 18, 1887, draft. The basis of Corrigan's charge was a letter which McGlynn had written to a Protestant minister at the time of Henry Ward Beecher's death. In his letter McGlynn had stated: “I am glad … that the theology of the old church agrees with his [Beecher's] in this, that the essence of religion is in communion with God through the love of Him for His own sake, and in loving all men for God's sake with the best love with which we love ourselves; and that while sacrifice and sacrament, creed and ritual prayer and sermon and song, may be and are powerful helps and necessary manipulations of this religion, which is love; without it they are a mockery, a sacrilege and a blasphemy…” (New York Daily Tribune, March 14, 1887).

41. AANY, unclassified, Corrigan to Preston, Nassau, Februaruy 11, 1887.

42. The definition of the Vatican Council that the archbishop was citing against McGlynn read in part: “If anyone therefore says that the Roman Pontiff has only the office of inspection or direction, but not the full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church, not only in matters that pertain to faith and morals, but also in matters that pertain to the discipline and government of the Church throughout the is hole world … or if anyone says that this power is not ordinary and immediate either over each and every church or over each and every shepherd and faithful member, let him be anathema” (Constitutio de Ecclesia Christi, Sessio 4, Conc. Vaticanum 1869– 1870, in Denziger, Henricus, Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitinum et Declarationum, De Rebus Fidei et Morum [Rahner, Karl, ed., Freiburg, 1955], p. 505.Google Scholar

43. Archives of the Diocese of Rochester (hereafter ADR), Corrigan to Bernard McQuaid, New York, October 4, 1888. For some reason this instruction was not carried out but another McGlynn supporter, Thomas Ducey, the pastor of St. Leo's on Twenty-Eighth Street, was subsequently ordered to turn over his books for examination. When the examination revealed a deficit of some forty thousand dollars a year, the diocesan consultors began to consider several options, including the removal of Ducey from St. Leo's and/or the closing of the parish. That the concern was not merely financial, however, is clearly evident in the minutes of the diocesan consultors for November 5, 1890, when they decided to defer action until they could study Ducey's next sermon (AANY C-18, Corrigan to Ducey, New York, January 31, 1888; Ibid., same to same, New York, April 5, 1889, copy; AANY, unclassified, Minutes of Meeting of Diocesan Consultors, Wednesday, November 5, 1890.

The financial condition of St. Stephen's was also one of the reasons given by Corrigan to Propaganda for removing McGlynn as pastor in January 1887. In 1886 St. Stephen's showed an indebtedness of $154,464.54. Even McGlynn's friends admitted he was a poor administrator but he had reduced his church's debt by more than $142,000 during his last four years as pastor (AANY, Financial Report of St. Stephen's Church, 1886).

44. From the available evidence it is clear that at least six assistants were moved for their support of McGlynn. Chancery officials obviously regarded three parishes as strategic centers of McGlynnites among the clergy: St. Stephen's, Epiphany (Burtsell's church) and St. Leo's. Thus James Curran, John Barry, Thomas McLoughlin, and P. F. Maughan were transferred from St. Stephen's, John Power from the Epiphany, and Daniel Burke from St. Leo's.

45. “The whole tendency of the book is … calculated to do harm,” Corrigan wrote his secretary, Charles McDonnell. What especially bothered the archbishop was a note inside the cover requesting recipients to send one dollar to a New York address for the creation of a fund which would be employed “for the defense of priests unjustly deprived of their ecclesiastical positions.” The archbishop ordered Burtsell to withdraw it from publication since he had not gotten his approval, but Burtsell claimed that he had not suspected that Corrigan would impose the normal regulations on a pamphlet that had already appeared in a Catholic newspaper (as a series of articles in the New York Tablet in the spring of 1887), had been privately printed, and was not for public sale (AANY C-18, Corrigan to McDonnell, New York, december 15, 1887, copy; Ibid., Corrigan to Burtsell, New York, December 14, 1887, copy; AANY, Diary, VI, December 16, 1887).

46. AANY, unclassified, Court Record, Philip McGuire vs. Trustees of St. Patrick's Cathedral, December 15, 1888, copy.

47. AANY C-18, Corrigan to Ella Edes, New York, October 29, 1889, copy.

48. In his Canonical Status of Priests in the United States Burtsell admitted that ordinary rectors like himself were removable at the will of the bishop but “natural equity and the Plenary Councils and the Propaganda,” he argued, “have interpreted that this ‘will’ must be determined by serious motives and be guided by anxious care to save the good name of any one affected by the removal.” Since his removal as rector of the Epiphany would inevitably be interpreted as a punishment for some “serious wrongdoing,” Burtsell contended that he had the right to a trial to preserve his reputation. Corrigan took shelter in the March 1887 declaration of Propaganda that American bishops were not bound to follow the canonical procedure, so long as there was “serious reason for such action, and full account taken of the past merits …” (Canonical Status, 46, 101; AANY C-18, Burtsell to Corrigan, New York, December 16th, 1889; ADR, Simeoni to Gibbons, Rome, May 20, 1887, Latin, printed copy; AANY C-18, Corrigan to Burtsell, New York, December 17, 1889; ibid., same to same, New York, December 21, 1889, copy).

49. AANY, unclassified, Relatio Translationis Statutae Quidem, Sed Nondum Peractae, Doctoris Richardi L. Burtsell, Rectoris Amovibilis Ad Nutum Ab Ecclcsia Epiphaniae Ad Ecclesiam Sanctae Mariae, Et Ejusdem Doctoris Recursus ad Superiorem (1890).

50. AANY S-l, Preston to Archbishop Domenico Jacobini, New York, January 2, 1890, copy.

51. Tribune, December 25, 1892.

52. For an analysis of this strategy see Curran, R. Emmett, S.J., Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Shaping of Conservative Catholicism in America, 1878–1902 (diss., New York, 1978), pp. 422–427.Google Scholar

53. AANY, Diary, 9, May 5, 1894.

54. Cf. Fogarty, Gerald P., S. J., The Vatican and the Americanist Crisis: Denis J. O'Connell, American Agent in Rome, 1885–1903 (Rome, 1973), pp. 263–265.Google Scholar

55. Hecker, , “Church and Monarchy,” 639.Google Scholar