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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2013
Paulist priest James Martin Gillis was highly influenced in his youth by his Boston Irish heritage, as well as Sulpician and Paulist clergy who imbued in him a sense of Catholic idealism that stressed the dignity and value of the human person. He perceived the world to be filled with the presence of God. Yet, as a commentator on America from his positions as editor of the Catholic World and a weekly syndicated column, Sursum Corda, Gillis saw his idyllic picture of America's role in god's plan in serious peril through the domestic and international policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Through his various organs Gillis championed the conservative Catholic voice in the period 1922 to 1948, speaking against statism and general government invasion in the domain of the individual. He thus represents a voice generally counter to the American Catholic mainstream of the period.
1 Halsey, William, The Survival of Innocence (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980).Google Scholar Halsey's thesis is that American Catholics sought to retain their innocence by maintenance of strong community bonds and a sense of optimism in being American and Catholic.
2 George Shuster and Michael Williams were editors of The Commonweal. John LaFarge, S.J. was an editor of America and Frederick Kenkel was editor of Central-Blatt and Social Justice.
3 Much of the material for this essay is drawn from my biography, Guardian of America: The Life of James Martin Gillis, C.S.P. (New York: Paulist, 1998.) Used with permission.
4 The only analysis of American Catholicism which attempts to categorize spirituality by historical period is Chinnici, Joseph P. O.F.M., Living Stones (New York: Macmillan, 1989).Google Scholar Chinnici uses the term “fractured inheritance” to describe twentieth century American Catholic spirituality as evidenced by John Ryan and Dorothy Day. The separation or fracture between the idealism of the Church and the reality of society described by Chinnici is evident in the spiritual worldview of James Gillis.
5 James F. Finley, C.S.P., Letter to the author, October 17, 1992. See also Finley, James F. C.S.P., James Gillis, Paulist (Garden City, NY: Hanover Press, 1958), 34–35.Google Scholar
6 Merwick, Donna. Boston Priests 1848–1910. A Study of Social and Intellectual Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), 99–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 Lord, Robert, Sexton, John and Harrington, Edward, History of the Archdiocese of Boston, Vol. 3 (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1944), 760.Google Scholar The authors speak of Gillis as one “whom we may claim.”
8 James Gillis, Diary, 11 February 1898, Gillis Papers, Archives of St. Paul's College (hereafter ASPC), Washington, DC Gillis referred to his fellow students as his rivals. In keeping with his Boston heritage, Gillis made every effort to be first in all that he did.
9 Ibid., 22 February 1897.
10 Ibid., 23 September 1896.
11 Ibid., 28 September 1896.
12 Retreat Notes, 16 September 1896, Gillis Papers, ASPC.
13 The influence of the Sulpician Community is fully discussed in Kauffman, Christopher J., Tradition and Transformation in Catholic Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1988).Google Scholar The history of the French church after the Council of Trent was driven by the power of the crown. The state's influence in church affairs was significant. The Gallican Articles of 1682 stated that kings were not subject to ecclesiastical power with respect to their temporal government. Additionally, the conciliar tradition as articulated at the Council of Constance (1418) was emphasized. The specific influence of Jacques-Andre Emory, ninth superior general of the Sulpicians, who is described by Kauffman as a “moderate Gallican,” was significant in the founding of St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore.
14 Between 1905 and 1908 Gigot and Driscoll were involved with The New York Review, a short-lived journal with modernist tendencies. Additionally, Gigot was one of the leading Scripture scholars of his day. John Hogan's book Clerical Studies was also modernist in flavor, although he died before the crisis was officially ended with the publication of Pascendi Dominici Gregis in 1907.
15 James Gillis, Retreat Notes, 24–31 August 1905 and 26 August-3 September 1910; Sermon, 15 March 1932, Gillis Papers, ASPC.
16 Gillis, James M. C.S.P., Christianity and Civilization (New York: Paulist, 1932), 97.Google Scholar
17 A good summary of the spiritual thought of Cardinal Newman is contained in Dessain, C.S., The Spirituality of John Henry Newman (New York: Winston, 1977).Google Scholar
18 Diary, 24 May 1897, Gillis Papers, ASPC.
19 Gillis, James, So Near is God (New York: Scribner's, 1953)Google Scholar, dedication. Gillis calls Elliott, “the inspiration of my youth.”
20 Diary, 24 May 1897, Gillis Papers, ASPC.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 14 and 16 August 1898.
23 Retreat Notes, 1 September 1899, Gillis Papers, ASPC. After his confession to Elliott Gillis wrote, “It was the most apparent and sensible manifestation I have ever experienced of God's mercy and love to me and of his request that I give myself to Him in love.”
24 Diary, 19 June 1898, Gillis Papers, ASPC.
25 Ibid., 24 May 1897.
26 Finley, , Gillis, 74.Google Scholar Finley claims Gillis discovered in Elliott what he truly wanted, namely, “to bring Catholicism to America.”
27 Quoted in Chinnici, , Living Stones, 114.Google Scholar
28 Ibid., 114–15. Keane was a devotee of Isaac Hecker and the only one in the “Americanist” camp who truly imbibed Hecker's spirituality. See O'Brien, David, Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic (New York: Paulist, 1992), 377–92.Google Scholar
29 Diary, 19 June 1898, Gillis Papers, ASPC. Gillis questioned his ability to succeed in the missionary life.
30 Gillis, James, The Paulists (New York: Macmillan, 1932), 11Google Scholar and “‘Americanism’: Fifty Years Later,” Catholic World 169 (July 1949): 246.
31 Klein, Abbe Felix, Americanism: A Phantom Heresy (Atchison, KS: Aquin Book Shop, 1951)Google Scholar and McAvoy, Thomas C.S.C., The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895–1900 (Chicago: Regnery, 1957).Google Scholar Gillis wrote the foreword to Klein's book. He summarized the events of the Americanist crisis and criticized the misapplication of heterodoxy to the American church which the crisis caused.
32 Gillis, James, “American and Catholic,” Sursum Corda No. 1312, 30 November 1953Google Scholar, Gillis Papers, ASPC. Gillis wrote, “I was brought up in that school [Americanist] and I have never had a temptation to abandon it.”
33 Testem Benevolentiae, an apostolic letter to Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore was issued on 22 January 1899. In the letter Pope Leo XIII condemned “certain contentions … which disturb the minds, if not of all, at least of many. …” Testem criticized the following aspects of Americanist philosophy: (1) the Holy Spirit is more active today than in the past, (2) direct inspiration obviates the need for spiritual direction, (3) natural virtues are preferred to supernatural virtues, (4) active virtues are preferred to passive virtues, (5) vows reduce human freedom and thus are not in step with modernity, (6) there is a need to alter methods of evangelization to be more in line with modernity so as to convert non-Catholics.
34 Gillis, , So Near is God, 58.Google Scholar
35 Ibid., 3–9; Gillis, Retreat Notes, 24–31 August 1905, Gillis Papers, ASPC.
36 James Gillis, Sermon to Non-Catholics, n.d. [approximately 1904–1906], Gillis Papers, ASPC.
37 Retreat Notes, 24–31 August 1905, Gillis Papers, ASPC. Gillis wrote, “How can He [God] be in me and yet not identical with me, near me and all others, as indispensable from me as myself.”
38 Gillis, James, This Mysterious Human Nature (New York: Scribner's, 1956), 8–12Google Scholar; Gillis, , Christianity and Civilization, 27.Google Scholar
39 Gillis, James, “Your America and My America” in On Almost Everything (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955), 2.Google Scholar
40 Gillis, James, “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” Catholic Hour Radio Broadcast, 20 November 1938, Gillis Papers, ASPC.Google Scholar
41 James Gillis, Sermon to Family Life Conference, 8 March 1948, Gillis Papers, ASPC.
42 Gillis, James, “The Individual and the Organization,” Catholic Hour Radio Broadcast, 11 December 1932, Gillis Papers, ASPC.Google Scholar
43 James Gillis, Sermon, 29 February 1932, Gillis Papers, ASPC.
44 James Gillis, Sermon “True Spirit of Inquiry,” n.d. [approximately 1904–1906]; Gillis, “Nothing Human is Alien to the Church” Catholic Hour Radio Broadcast, November 4, 1934; Gillis, Editorial, Catholic World 137 (April 1933): 105.
45 Gillis, , So Near is God, 89, 83–89Google Scholar; Gillis, Sermons, “Confession” and “Judgment,” n.d., Gillis Papers, ASPC.
46 Gillis, James, My Last Book (New York: PJ. Kenedy, 1958), 158–65Google Scholar; Gillis, Diary, 20 October 1896, Gillis Papers, ASPC. Gillis' books and other writings contain numerous references to prayer as silence, meditation, the unburdening of the heart of humankind to God.
47 Gillis, James, Editorial, Catholic World, 116 (November 1922): 282–83Google Scholar; Gillis, , So Near is God, 100–06, 138–43.Google Scholar
48 Gillis, , Christianity and Civilization, 106.Google Scholar
49 Quoted in Finley, , Gillis, 147.Google Scholar
50 Woods, Thomas E. Jr., The Church Confronts Modernity: Catholic Intellectuals & The Progressive Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Woods further states, “Indeed, among men of prominence and good standing in the Church it is next to impossible to find anyone who dissented from what might be described as the Catholic program during the Progressive Era.” He sees this “program” as three-fold: (1) refusal to accept the ideological syncretism of Protestants, (2) a willingness to appropriate for the Church's benefit what good features the modern world had to offer and (3) the desire to convert America to Catholicism. See Woods, p. 20.
51 McShane, Joseph S.J., Sufficiently Radical: Catholicism, Progressivism and the Bishops Program of 1919 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1986), 64–65.Google Scholar McShane sees World War I as the event which brought Catholicism to an accepted position in America, through its sense of renewed episcopal unity.
52 Gillis, James, “The People's Foreign Policy,” Sursum Corda no. 1132, 19 June 1950Google Scholar, Gillis Papers, ASPC.
53 John Ryan, Francis Haas, Dorothy Day and others were advocates of organized labor. The labor priests, such as Peter Dietz, had become almost an institution in American Catholicism. Gillis' stand in opposition to the popular wave of organized labor sentiment in the church was part of his belief in telling the truth (as he understood it) so as to promote human dignity.
54 Gillis, James, Sursum Corda, nos. 1149 and 1224Google Scholar, 16 October 1950 and 24 March 1952, Gillis Papers, ASPC. Gillis stated that the public mind had become resentful of the unreasonable demands of organized labor. Additionally, Gillis felt that the individual citizen was being unreasonably inconvenienced by labor which was receiving fair treatment from capital employers.
55 Gillis, James, “Have We a Dictator?” Sursum Corda no. 234, 17 April 1933Google Scholar, Gillis Papers, ASPC; Gillis, , Editorial, Catholic World 138 (March 1934): 648Google Scholar; Flynn, , American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, 1932–1936, 36–60.Google Scholar Farley was appointed Postmaster General; Walsh served as Attorney General.
56 Gillis, James, Editorial, Catholic World 141 (July 1935): 388.Google Scholar
57 Flynn, , American Catholics and the Roosevelt Presidency, 1932–1936, 238.Google Scholar
58 Gillis, James, Editorial, Catholic World 145 (June 1937): 261.Google Scholar
59 Diary, 14 November 1897, Gillis Papers, ASPC.
60 Gillis, My Last Book, Preface.