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John Ireland's Americanism After 1899: The Argument from History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Neil T. Stroch
Neil T. Stroch
Affiliation:
Mr. Storch is associate professor of history in the University of Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota.
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Extract

Historians of American Catholicism long have recognized that John Ireland, the aggressive archbishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota, was a leading exponent of the Americanist movement. At the turn of the twentieth century Ireland advocated a number of important ideas—religious liberty, separation of church and state, interfaith cooperation, and greater lay initiative—gleaned from the American experience. Reflecting his democratic convictions, Ireland declared, “Let there be individual action. Layman need not wait for priest, nor priest for bishop, nor bishop for pope.” Although there were differences on specific issues, Americanists in general took an optimistic view of American life and culture. In fact, they were eager to move their church into a more positive relationship with the political, cultural, and social climate of America.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , December 1982 , pp. 434 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1982

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References

1. Ireland, John, “The Mission of Catholics in America,” 10 11 1889, The Church and Modern Society, 2 vols. (St. Paul, 1904–1905), 1: 90.Google Scholar

2. Gleason, Philip, The Conservative Reformers: German-American Catholics and the Social Order (Notre Dame, 1968), pp. 29–31.Google Scholar

3. In addition to Gleason, Conservative Reformers, see also Rippley, La Vern J., “Archbishop Ireland and the School Language Controversy,” U.S. Catholic Historian 1 (Fall 1980): 1–16.Google Scholar Given today's interest in ethnic identity, it is not surprising that some have questioned Ireland's campaign to promote the rapid Americanization of Catholic immigrants. For an informative and well-balanced discussion of this controversial topic, see Dease, Dennis J., “The Theological Influence of Orestes Brownson and Isaac Hecker on John Ireland's Americanist Ecclesiology” (Ph.D., diss., The Catholic University of America, 1978), p. 243.Google Scholar Recently, this important topic has been raised in two conferences sponsored by Concordia College, Moorhead, Minnesota. See Colman J. Barry, “Religious and Language Experiences of German-Catholic Americans,” and Kloberdanz, Timothy J., “Cultural Integrity and the Role of Religion,” in A Heritage Deferred: The German-Americans in Minnesota, ed. Glasrud, Clarence A. (Moorhead, 1981), pp. 80–89, 90–93.Google Scholar

4. McGolrick to James Gibbons, 3 March 1892, in Barry, Colman J., The Catholic Church and German Americans (Washington, D.C., 1953), 198n.Google Scholar For more on the German-Americans in Minnesota, see Johnson, Hildegard Binder, “The Germans,” They Chose Minnesota: A Survey of the State's Ethnic Groups, ed. June, Drenning Holmquist (St. Paul, 1981), pp. 153, 167–169.Google Scholar

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6. Curran, Robert Emmett, Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Shaping of Conservative Catholicism in America, 1878–1902 (New York, 1978), pp. 355, 358–360, 369, 445;Google ScholarFogarty, Gerald P., The Vatican and the Americanist Crisis: Denis J. O'Connell, American Agent in Rome, 1885–1903 (Rome, 1974), pp. 229–230.Google Scholar

7. Kantowicz, Edward R., “Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century American Catholicsm,” The Journal of American History 68 06 1981): 63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For more information on Americanism and Testem benevolentiae, see McAvoy, Thomas T, The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895–1900 (Chicago, 1957);Google ScholarCross, Robert D., The Emergence of Liberal Catholicism in America (Cambridge, Mass., 1958);Google ScholarWangler, Thomas E., “The Birth of Americanism: ‘Westward the Apocalyptic Candlestick,’” Harvard Theological Review 65 (07 1972): 415–436;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, “The Americanism of J. St. Clair Etheridge,”Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 85 (March-June 1974): 88–105; Reher, Margaret Mary, “Pope Leo XIII and ‘Americanism,’” Theological Studies 34 (12 1973): 679–689;CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, “Americanism and Modernism: Continuity or Discontinuity?” U.S. Catholic Historian 1 (Summer 1981): 87–103; McGarry, Michael B., “Modernism in the United States: William Laurence Sullivan, 1872–1935,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 90 (03–12 1979): 33–52.Google Scholar

8. Ahern, Patrick Henry, The Life of John J. Keane: Educator and Archbishop, 1839–1918 (Milwaukee, 1955), p. 285.Google Scholar

9. Ireland, , “The Church in America,” 17 04 1901, The Church, 2: 221–223.Google Scholar

10. Ibid., pp. 233–234.

11. Ibid., pp. 234–235.

12. Ibid., pp. 235–238.

13. St. Cloud Daily Times, 13 September 1909, in the scrapbooks of the Archdiocese of St. Paul, Archives of the Catholic Historical Society of St. Paul Seminary, St. Paul, Minn. (hereafter cited as ACHSSP). See also Ireland's, “Funeral Sermon for John Shanley,” 06 1909,Google Scholar John Ireland's sermons, speeches, and papers, in the Welch Papers, Archives of the Diocese of Duluth, College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota.

14. Winona Republican-herald, 13 November 1906, scrapbooks, ACHSSP.

15. The New Cathedral Bulletin, June 1907.

16. Ireland, , “Fifty Years of Catholicity in the Northwest,” 2 07 1901, The Church, 2: 273–275.Google Scholar Ireland's thoughts on religious freedom clearly influenced his convictions in regard to religious controversy. On 5 July 1910 Ireland wrote to Rev. William Cox Pope, an Episcopalian, “The proper role in religious controversy I take to be this—to hold fast in one's own mind to the principles one's conscience dictates as the divine truth, meanwhile treating those who do not adopt those principles with all kindness and charity and willing always to know what they do hold and their reason for doing so. Truth is God's own creation and we should love it most earnestly but truth as coming from God is always united with kindest love for all of God's children.” Ireland, to Pope, 5 07 1910, vol. 4, p; 97,Google Scholar William Cox Pope and Family Papers, Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, Minnesota.

17. Ireland, , “The Church in America,” The Church, 2: 246–248.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., pp. 233, 240–241.

19. Ibid., p. 242. See also Moynihan, James H., The Life of Archbishop John Ireland (New York, 1953), pp. 288–290.Google Scholar

20. Ireland, John, “Right Rev. Mathias Loras, First Bishop of Dubuque,” The Catholic World 68 (10 1898): 2–12;Google Scholaridem, “Fifty Years of Catholicity,” The Church, 2:256,264–266; idem, “Discourse at the Unveiling of the Statue of General James Shields in the Capital of Minnesota,” 20 October 1914, James Shields and Family Papers, Archives of the Minnesota Historical Society; idem, “Very Reverence Samuel Charles Mazzuchelli, OP.,” Acta et Dicta (July 1915): 13–20.

21. Ireland, , “The Church in America,” The Church, 2: 230–231.Google Scholar

22. Ireland, , “Fifty Years of Catholicity,” The Church, 2: 272–273.Google Scholar

23. Reardon, James M., The Catholic Church in the Diocese of St. Paul (St. Paul, 1952), pp. 214–218, 407–408.Google Scholar

24. Ireland, John, “Sermon at the Reinterment of Joseph Cretin,” 10 10 1884,Google Scholar Cretin Papers, ACHSSP.

25. This material is housed in both the Cretin Papers and the Ireland Papers, ACHSSP. See also Ireland to Peter Engel, 24 December 1896, Ireland Papers, Archives of St. John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota.

26. Acta et Dicta (07 1916); 187–218;Google Scholaribid. (July 1917): 3–66; ibid. (July 1918): 170–205. The Catholic Historical Society was founded in 1905 “ at the initiative of Archbishop Ireland and depended so much upon him that its decline followed after his death” in 1918; see “A Report by the Rev. William Busch, Editor of the Society's Publication, Acta et Dicta,” 10 March 1933, Minutes of the Catholic Historical Society of St. Paul, ACHSSP. The Society was revived under Archbishop John G. Murray in 1932. Father Reardon, who convened the meeting, reports that “it was voted to resume publication of Acta et Dicta and issues came from the press in October 1933, 1934, 1935 and 1936, when it ceased to appear and has not been resurrected” (Reardon, pp. 370–372).

27. For information on Ireland's illness, declining years, and death, see Ireland to Sister St. Rose, 26 January 1918, Ireland Papers, ACHSSP; Ireland to Thomas A. Welch, 16 January, 26 January, 18 February, 6 March, 1 April, 1918, Welch Papers, Archives of the Diocese of Duluth; The Catholic Bulletin, 28 09 1918; Reardon, pp. 425–429.Google Scholar

28. Ireland, , “Fifty Years of Catholicity,” The Church, 2:263–267;Google Scholaridem, “Right Rev. Mathias Loras,” p. 6.

29. Reardon, pp. 429–435.

30. The following report By Peter Guilday, the Secretary of the American Catholic Historical Association, is another indication of Ireland's continued historical interest in the twilight of his life: “It was Archbishop Ireland who persuaded the Catholic University administration in 1915 to permit our historical group to found the Catholic Historical Review, and it was again to John Ireland that the founder of the Association went for advice and direction in 1917 when this organization was first planned” (The Catholic Historical Review 18 [04 1932–01 1933]: 87).Google Scholar

31. James Gibbons, address at jubilee dinner, Baltimore, 20 October 1918, quoted in Ellis, John Tracy, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons: Archbishop of Baltimore, 1834–1921, 2 vols. (Milwaukee, 1952), 2; 432–433.Google Scholar

32. It should be noted that Ireland's lively interest in the history of the church in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest predated his involvement in the Americanist movement. As early as 1867, the young Father Ireland, an active member and later president of the Minnesota Historical Society, completed a “Memoir of Rev. Lucian Galtier: The First Catholic Priest of Saint Paul.” His 1867 piece on Galtier was published in the Collections of the Minnesota Historical Society 3 (1870–1880); 222–230.Google Scholar In addition to his interest in Galtier, Ireland was anxious to defend the veracity and reputation of the Franciscan missonary, Louis Hennepin. Of special interest is a letter written by John Gilmary Shea, the father of American Catholic church history, in which he describes Ireland's visit. During this visit Ireland renewed a request made earlier by John Fletcher Williams, secretary of the Minnesota Historical Society, so earnestly that Shea set to work on a translation of Hennepin's, A Description of Louisiana (Shea to Edward Jackson, 15 02 1880, Box 1, John Gilmary Shea Collection, University of Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame, Indiana).Google Scholar See also Ireland's address delivered in 1880 at a commemoration of the two hundredth anniversary of Hennepin's discovery of the Falls of Saint Anthony; this event was sponsored by the Minnesota Historical Society, and Ireland's remarks later appeared in the Society's Collections 6 (1894): 65–73.Google Scholar

33. Kantowicz, pp. 52–68.

34. Ireland, , “The Mission of Catholics in America,” The Church, 1:92.Google Scholar