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Building the “Catholic Ghetto”: Catholic Organisations 1870–1914*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Hugh McLeod
Hugh McLeod*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
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Extract

It was a ghetto, undeniably,’ concluded the American political journalist, Garry Wills, when recalling from the safe distance of 1971 his ‘Catholic Boyhood’. ‘But not a bad ghetto to grow up in.’ Wills’s ghetto was defined by the great body of shared experiences, rituals, relationships, which gave Catholics a strongly felt common identity, and separated them from their Protestant and Jewish neighbours who knew none of these things. Wills talked about priests and nuns, incense and rosary beads, cards of saints and statues of the Virgin, but in this essay said very little about Catholic organisations (apart from a brief reference to the Legion of Decency). In many European countries, by contrast, any reference to the ‘ghetto’ from which many Catholics were seeking to escape in the 1960s and ’70s inevitably focused on the network of specifically Catholic organisations which was so characteristic of central and north-west European societies in the first half of the twentieth century. The Germans even have a pair of words to describe this phenomenon, Vereins- or Verbandskatholizismus, which can be defined as the multiplication of organisations intended to champion the interests of Catholics as a body, and to meet the special needs, spiritual, economic or recreational, of every identifiable group within the Catholic population. So when in 1972 the Swiss historian Urs Altermatt wrote a book on the origins of the highly self-conscious and disciplined Swiss Catholic sub-culture, the result was an organisational history, as stolid and as soberly objective as Wills’s book was whimsical and partisan. Its purpose was to determine how it came about that so many a Catholic ‘was born in a Catholic hospital, went to Catholic schools (from kindergarten to university), read Catholic periodicals and newspapers, later voted for candidates of the Catholic Party and took part as an active member in numerous Catholic societies’, being also ‘insured against accident and illness with a Catholic benefit organisation, and placing his money in a Catholic savings bank’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 23: Voluntary Religion , 1986 , pp. 411 - 444
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1986

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Footnotes

*

I wish to thank the British Academy and Social Science Research Council for research grants, and Elizabeth Roberts for permission to quote from oral history interviews.

References

1 Wills, G., Bare Ruined Choirs (New York 1974) p. 37.Google Scholar

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5 Rogier, L.-J. and Brachin, P., Histoire du catholicisme hollandais depuis le XVIe siècle (French trans Paris 1974) pp. 84–5, 105–34.Google Scholar

6 For a useful summary, see the relevant sections of Jedin, H. ed Handbuch der Kirchengescbichte 7 vols (Freiburg im Breisgau 1962-77) 6 part 2, ‘Die Kirche zwischen Anpassung und Widerstand, 1878 bis 1914’.Google Scholar

7 See for instance Wahl, A., ‘Confession et comportement dans les campagnes d’Alsace et de Bade, 1871-1939’, Metz University doctoral thesis 2 vols (1980) 2 PP. 794–5.Google Scholar

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9 Altermatt, , Der Weg der Schweizer Katholiken pp. 254–75.Google Scholar

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11 Coleman, , Dutch Catholicism p. 64. Marty, M.E., ‘The Catholic Ghetto and all the Other Ghettos,’ Catholic Historical Review 68 (1982) pp. 185–205, convincingly challenges this type of argument, so far as the U.S.A. is concerned. For a lively overview of Catholicism in Britain, Australia and the U.S.A., see Gilley, S., ‘The Roman Catholic Church and the Nineteenth-Century Irish Diaspora’ JEH 35 (1984) pp. 188–207.Google Scholar

12 See for instance McLeod, H., Class and Religion in the Late Victorian City (London 1974) pp. 40–1.Google Scholar

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15 See for instance Tornasi, S.M., Piety and Power: The Role of the Italian Parishes in the New York Metropolitan Area 1880-1930 (Staten Island 1975) pp. 74–105.Google Scholar

16 Browne, H.J., One Stop above Hell’s Kitchen: Sacred Heart Parish in Clinton (New York 1977) p. 58 Google Scholar; Gibbs, H., Box On (London 1981) p. 23.Google Scholar

17 See Gehrmann, S., ‘Fussball in einer Industrieregion’, Reulecke, J. and Weber, W. eds Fabrik Familie Feierabend (Wuppertal 1978) pp. 382, 395–7.Google Scholar

18 Handley, J.E., The Celtic Story (London 1960) pp. 28–9, J.E. 80–2, 168–80 Google Scholar, discusses the relationship between Celtic and its Catholic supporters.

19 See for instance Diamant, A., Austrian Catholics and the First Republic (Princeton 1960) pp. 73–80.Google Scholar

20 Kossmann, E.H., The Low Countries 1780-1940 (Oxford 1978) pp. 302–7.Google Scholar

21 For discussion of the religious affiliations and attitudes of the bourgeoisie, see for instance, Wandruszka, and Urbanitsch, , Habsburgermonarchie 4 pp. 128–31 Google Scholar; Sperber, J., Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth Century Germany (Princeton 1984) pp. 44–7 Google Scholar; Jensen, R., ‘Metropolitan Elites in the Midwest 1907-29.’ Jaher, F. ed The Rich, The Well-Born and the Powerful (Urbana 1973) p. 292.Google Scholar

22 See for instance Cholvy, G., Religion et société au XIXe siècle: Le diocèse de Montpellier 2 vols (Lille 1973) pp. 1441–6.Google Scholar

23 For examples of youth or sports clubs sponsored by government or employers around the end of the nineteenth century, see Margadant, T., ‘Primary Schools and Youth Groups in Pre-War Paris: Les’Petites AV Journal of Contemporary History 13 (1978) pp. 323–36 Google Scholar; Korr, C., ‘West Ham United Football Club 1895-1914’ Ibid. pp. 211–32.Google Scholar

For the hostility of German socialists and Catholics to the ‘liberal-Protestant-bourgeois’ Turnvereine, see Eichel, W. ed Die Kõrperkultur in Deutschland 3 vols (East Berlin 1964-5) 2 p. 421 Google Scholar and passim; Schwank, W., Kirche und Sport in Deutschland von 1848 bis 7920 (Hochheim-am-Main 1979) pp. 32–4.Google Scholar

24 See for instance Barth, G., City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (New York 1980).Google Scholar

25 See Visitation Returns in parish files at the Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark. In 1897 the Bishop’s questionnaire asked for an estimate of the percentage of boys aged 14-21 who were ‘satisfactory Catholics’; in 1912 pastors were asked ‘Have secret societies, spiritualism or socialism obtained any footing among your people?’ The answer to the latter question was invariably (in the returns I have seen) ‘No’. Answers to the former question included estimates varying between 10% and 50%; comments were frequently pessimistic.

26 On the role of the clergy in elections, see G. Lewis, Kirche und Partei im Politischen Katholizismus (Vienna 1977) cap 4; M.L. Anderson,” Windthorst: A Political Biography (Oxford 1981) cap 9; Wahl, ‘Confession et comportement’ 2 pp. 1002-4.

27 Wahl, ‘Confession et comportement’ 1 pp. 388, 614-53 2 pp. 958, 1254-70; E. Hoffmann-Krayer ed Handwórterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens 9 vols (Berlin 1927-38) 5 p. 180, referring to ‘die Redensart “du bist katholisch” = “du bist verrückt, dumm”’.

28 Blankenberg, H., Politischer Katholizismus in Frankfurt am Main 1918-33 (Mainz 1981) pp. 7, 13–4.Google Scholar

29 MacLean, I., The Myth of Red Clydeside (Edinburgh 1983) p. 181 Google Scholar; Campbell, A.B., The Lanarkshire Miners: A Social History of their Trade Unions, 1775-1874 (Edinburgh 1979) p. 157.Google Scholar

30 Ibid. p. 223; Joyce, P., Work, Society and Politics (Brighton 1980) pp. 172–7.Google Scholar

31 Shanabruch, C., Chicago’s Catholics (Notre Dame 1981) pp. 132–7.Google Scholar

32 Prospectus in ‘Societies pre-1900’ file, Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark.

33 See for instance the death notices column of the New Yorker Staatszeitung, the city’s leading German-language newspaper. In a sample of forty notices from April 1888, sixteen included invitations to fellow-members of organisations to which the deceased or his/her spouse had belonged to attend the funeral. A sample of sixty from March 1910 included twenty-three such invitations. Sometimes the organisation itself published an instruction to members to attend the funeral of ‘our dead brother’.

34 See for instance Loreck, J., Wie man früber Sozialdemokrat wurde (Bonn 1977) pp. 145–56.Google Scholar

35 Schwank, , Kirche und Sport, p. 35 Google Scholar; Dowe, D., ‘The Working Men’s Choral Movement in Germany before the First World War’ Journal of Contemporary History 13 (1978) p. 275.Google Scholar

36 Holt, R., Sport and Society in Modern France (London 1981) p. 201 Google Scholar; Wheeler, R.F., ‘Organised Sport and Organised Labour’ Journal of Contemporary History 13 (1978) pp. 200–2.Google Scholar

37 Hilaire, Y.-M., Une chrétienté au XIXe siècle? La vie religieuse des populations du diocèse d’Arras, 1840-1914 2 vols (Lille 1977) 2 p. 773.Google Scholar

38 Sperber, , Popular Catholicism pp. 224–5; Baumer, I., ‘Kulturkampf und Katholizismus im Berner Jura’ Wiegelmann, G. ed Kultureller Wandel im 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen 1973) pp. 88–101; Dansette, A., Histoire religieuse de la France contemporaine 2 vols (Paris 1948-51) 1 pp. 442–4, 454–5.Google Scholar

39 The best general discussion of pilgrimages in this period is M. Marrus, ‘Pilger auf dem Weg: Wallfahrten im Frankreich des 19. Jahrhunderts’ Geschichte und Gesellschaft 3 (1977) pp. 324-51; also relevant are G. Korff, ‘Formierung der Frömmigkeit: Zur sozial-politischen Intention der Trierer Rockwallfahrten 1891’ Geschichte und Gesellschaft 3 (1977) pp. 352-83; W.K. Blessing, Staat und Kirche in der Gesellschaft (Göttingen 1982) p. 241; Wandruszka and Urbanitsch, Habsburgermonarchie 4 pp. 134-6.

40 Broch, E.-D., Katholische Arbeitervereine in der Stadt Köln 1890-1901 (Hamburg 1977) PP. 98–102.Google Scholar

41 The Parish Monthly of Our Lady of Good Counsel Roman Catholic church, New York, Dec. 1910, Feb. 1905. (Copies in New York Public Library).

42 Calendar of the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle, New York, Dec. 1895. (Copy in the Archives of the Paulist Fathers, Saint Paul’s rectory, New York.)

43 Sperber, Popular Catholicism pp. 225-7. See also the account of the ‘pope-cult’ in 1890s Bavarian Catholicism in Blessing, Staat und Kirche pp. 239-40.

44 See the collections of photographs of Roman Catholic processions in Southwark and Tower Hamlets local history libraries.

45 In parish file for Corpus Christi, Brixton, Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark.

46 Kelly, G. A., The Story of St Monica’s Parish, New York City, 1879-1954 (New York 1954) pp. 3, 25.Google Scholar

47 As one example, the parish registers of Holy Trinity Protestant Episcopal church, in the Yorkville section of New York, for 1897-1920 record the denomination in which confirmées had been baptised. No more than 40-50% had been baptised as Episcopalians or Anglicans. (Registers at the Church Office.) During the same period the Protestant journal, Federation, undertook surveys of the religious affiliations of New Yorkers. These showed great diversity among immigrants from predominantly Protestant countries, such as England, Scotland and Sweden, whereas immigrants from Ireland and Italy, and gentile immigrants from Poland were overwhelmingly Catholic.

48 Parish histories often contain a lot of information about priest-people relations and the distinctive qualities of particular priests, most commonly in the form of testimonials from satisfied customers, though sometimes in terms of veiled criticism. As one example, L.E. Whatmore, The Story of Dockhead Parish (London 1960) pp. 72-9 includes an interesting attempt to define the influence of Fr Murnane, a formidable Irish-born priest, with a reputation as a saint, who dominated Bermondsey Catholicism from the 1890s to the 1920s. ‘His influence over the people was phenomenal (it is hardly an overstatement to say they “worshipped” him) but was never obtained, as has been known, by bullying. He ruled it has been said, by revealed love and concealed discipline.’

49 London School of Economics Library, Booth Collection, B274 pp. 63-5, B280 pp. 3-5. The interviews with London priests by Charles Booth and his assistants in the 1890s include many comments about their relations with their parishioners. Recent oral history projects have provided a lot of new evidence about Catholic views of their clergy in this period. See below, footnotes 67 and 84.

50 Walker, W.M., Juteopolis: Dundee’s Textile Workers 1885-1923 (Edinburgh 1979) pp. 130–3, 137, provides a useful account of the role of the priest in Catholic parish organisations, and brief comments on priest-people relations in general. The latter have been studied mainly in situations where open conflict is endemic, as for instance in Zeldin, T. ed Conflicts in French Society (London 1970), or where hostile stereotypes of the clergy are widespread, as among the first and second generations of Italian immigrants in the U.S.A., whose religion has been interpreted in a fascinating study by Orsi, R.A., ‘The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880-1950,’ (Yale University Ph.D. thesis 1982) see esp. pp. 150–1 Google Scholar. For our period there has been little attempt to unravel the potentially more interesting situations where attitudes to the clergy were more varied and less clear cut.

51 Broch, Katholische Arbeitervereine p. 15 Google Scholar. For the 1860s and ’70s see Brose, E.D., Christian Labor and the Politics of Frustration in Imperial Germany (Washington D.C. 1985) pp. 46–60 Google Scholar.

52 Ibid. cap 10 and passim.

53 Wahl, ‘Confession et comportement’ 1 pp. 31-3, 623-39, 2 pp. 861-87.

54 Schauff, J., Das Wahlverhalten der deutschen Katholiken im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik (Mainz 1975) pp. 80–9.Google Scholar

55 Bakvis, H., Catholic Power in the Netherlands (Kingston, Ont. 1981) p. 151.Google Scholar

56 Lewis, G., ‘The Peasantry, Rural Change and Conservative Agrarianism: Lower Austria at the Turn of the Century,’ PP 81 (1978) pp. 119–43 Google Scholar; Kossmann, The Low Countries pp. 421, 467-8.

57 See Corbin, A., Archaïsme et modernité en Limousin au XIXe siècle 1845-1880 2 vols (Paris 1975) 1 pp. 688–90.Google Scholar

58 See McLeod, H., ‘Catholicism and the New York Irish’Google Scholar J. Obelkevich, L. Roper, R. Samuel eds Disciplines of Faith to be published in 1986.

59 Hickey, S., ‘Class Conflict and Class Consciousness: Coal Miners in the Bochum Area of the Ruhr, 1870-1914,’ (Oxford University D.Phil, thesis 1978) pp. 103–42 Google Scholar; Sperber, Popular Catholicism pp. 277-97 and passim; H. Heitzer, Der Volksverein für das Katholische Deutschland im Kaiserreich 1890-1914 (Mainz 1979) pp. 54-7, 313-7; M. Schneider, ‘Religion and Labour Organisation: The Christian Trade Unions in the Wilhelmine Empire’ European Studies Review 12 (1982) p. 351.

60 Schauff, , Das Wahlverhalten pp. 137–42, 200–1 Google Scholar; Blankenberg, Politischer Katholizismus pp. 250, 273.

61 Brand, H.J., ‘Kirchliche Vereinswesen und Freizeitgestaltungen in einer Arbeitergemeinde: Das Beispie] Schalke, 1872-1933’ Huck, G. ed Sozialgescbichte der Freizeit (Wuppertal 1980) pp. 208–11 Google Scholar provides membership figures for parish societies between 1909 and 1927 in a working class suburb of Gelsenkirchen, where nearly half the Catholic population attended mass regularly and about half belonged to Catholic organisations. These showed that the Frauen- und Mutterverein always had at least twice as many members as the male Arbeiterverein, and that the organisation for young women always had considerably more members than that for young men. In south London where both mass attendance and membership of organisations was lower, the Bishop of Southwark asked in the Visitation Returns for 1897 and 1912 for the membership of confraternities. In the five parishes for which I have seen figures organisations for women always had more members than those for men, though the difference was sometimes fairly narrow.

62 Hilaire, , Une chrétienté? 2 pp. 763–79.Google Scholar

63 Kaufmann, D., ‘Vom Vaterland zum Mutterland: Frauen im katholischen Milieu der Weimarer Republik’ Hausen, K. ed Frauen suchen ihre Geschichte (Munich 1983) p. 263.Google Scholar Similar comments on Catholic organisations for women workers in Bavaria are made by W.K. Blessing in Staat und Kirche p. 242.

64 The Year Book and Book of Customs of Our Lady of Lourdes, Washington Heights (New York 1916) p. 106; interviews with Miss Caroline Kolb, New York City, 21 Nov. and 5 Dec. 1983.

65 See replies to questionnaire on history of Sacred Heart parish, New York, at Sacred Heart rectory. One reply stated that in the inter-war years the church was ‘hand in glove with the McManus Democratic Club, which could furnish jobs at the drop of a hat’. A priest who was assistant from 1947-57 stated that the McManus club gave food baskets on the church’s recommendation.

66 New York, Archives of the Community Service Society, case-files of the AICP and COS, R-127, 130, 133, 136, 138.

67 Centre for North-West Regional Studies, University of Lancaster, Oral History Archive: Interview by Elizabeth Roberts with Mrs PIP, p. 30.

68 Rogier, and Brachin, , Histoire du catholicisme bollandais p. 143.Google Scholar

69 Parish bulletins and other parish publications gave a lot of space to explaining the necessity for Catholic schools and answering criticisms. See the Calendar of Saint Paul’s parish, September 1908; Parish Monthly of Our Lady of Good Counsel, April 1908; Year Book and Book of Customs of Our Lady of Lourdes pp. 41-4. For examples of the more flexible views of some parents see M.J. Oates, ‘Organised Voluntaryism: The Catholic Sisters in Massachussets 1870-1940,’ J.W.James ed Women in American Religion (Philadelphia 1980) p. 161; J.J. Bukowczyk, ‘Steeples and Smokestacks: Class, Religion and Ideology in the Polish Immigrant Settlements of Brooklyn 1880-1929’ (Harvard University Ph.D. thesis 1980) pp. 108-11.

70 Reports of the Immigration Commission 41 vols (Washington D.C. 1911) 32 p. 619. For statistics of school attendance in New York from 1800 to 1970, see D. Ravitch, The Great School Wars (New York 1974) p. 405. Attendance at Catholic schools peaked at about 25 per cent of the total in 1960.

71 Rogier, and Brachin, , Histoire du catholicisme bollandais pp. 116–8.Google Scholar

72 For a general discussion see McLeod, H., ‘The Dechristianisation of the Working Class in Western Europe (1850-1900)’ Social Compass 27 (1980) pp. 191–214.Google Scholar

73 Boyer, J. W., Political Radicalism in Late Imperial Vienna: Origins of the Christian Social Movement 1848-1897 (Chicago 1981) pp. 181–2 Google Scholar; Lewis, Kirche und Partei pp. 217-56.

74 See two contributions to the outstanding collection. F. Bédarida and J. Maitron eds Christianisme et monde ouvrier (Paris 1975): J. Bruhat, ‘Anti-cléricalisme et mouvement ouvrier en France avant 1914’ pp. 79-115, and Y.-M. Hilaire, ‘Les ouvriers de la région du Nord devant l’Eglise catholique’ pp. 230-3, 241-3.

75 Lewis, , Kirche und Partei p. 255.Google Scholar

76 Walker, W.M., ‘Irish Immigrants in Scotland: Their Priests, Politics and Social Life’ HJ 15 (1972) pp. 665–7 Google Scholar; W. Knox ed Scottish Labour Leaders 1918-39; A Biographical Dictionary (Edinburgh 1984) pp. 30-3, 94, 176, 275-7.

77 Browne, H.J., The Catholic Church and the Knights of Labor (Washington D.C. 1949)Google Scholar; Curran, Michael Augustine Corrigan.

78 Leinenweber, C., ‘The Class and Ethnic Bases of New York City Socialism, 1904-1915’ Labor History 22 (1981) pp. 29–56.Google Scholar

79 Foner, E., ‘Class, Ethnicity and Radicalism in the Gilded Age: the Land League and Irish America’ Marxist Perspectives (1978) pp. 37–8 Google Scholar; Shanabruch, Chicago’s Catholics pp. 149-151. Bukowczyk, ‘Steeples and Smokestacks’ pp. 173-80 tries to disentangle the role of Fr William Farrell of Saints Peter and Paul, Brooklyn, in the 1910 sugar strike: he declared his support for the strikers, but was suspected by many of them because he urged them to make concessions.

80 Nolan, M., Social Democracy and Society: Working Class Radicalism in Düsseldorf 1890-1920 (Cambridge 1981) pp. 44–7, 72–5, 118, 132, 160–4, 221–3 Google Scholar; for statistics of decline in Centre voting, and of Catholic support for other parties, see Schauff, Das Wahlverhalten pp. 74, 112-5, 132.

81 See parish file in Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark.

82 Wahl, , ‘Confession et comportement’ 2 pp. 764–5.Google Scholar

83 Ibid, 2 pp. 761-85.

84 Transcripts of interviews in Thompson and Vigne’s project are kept at the Department of Sociology, University of Essex.

85 Wahl, , ‘Confession et comportement’, 2 p. 784.Google Scholar

86 Ibid. 2 pp. 718-84. The same contrast is apparent in the Lancashire interviews.

87 Essex Oral History Archive, tape no. 68, pp. 47-9, informant born Manchester 1883; Elizabeth Roberts, interview with Mr EIP, pp. 6, 31, informant born Preston 1895, and interview with Mrs DIP, p. 33, informant born Preston 1908.

88 See for instance, Essex Oral History Archive, tape no. 72, informant born Bolton 1891, (she left the Catholic Church after being told by a nun that her dead brother was in hell or purgatory); Roberts, interview with Mr FIP, informant born Cumberland 1906 (gave up going to mass because of various slights received at church; claimed priests were only interested in his money).

89 Roberts, interview with Mrs PIP, pp. 32-6, 64.

90 The most spectacular drop was in the Netherlands, where weekly mass attendance fell from 64 per cent to 26 per cent between 1966 and 1979: see Bakvis, Catholic Power p. 117. In many other countries there was a sharp fall within a short period in the late ‘60s and early ’70s. See, for instance, F. Lebrun ed, Histoire des catholiques en France (Toulouse 1980) p. 488; and for Belgium, R.E.M. Irving, The Christian Democratic Parties of Western Europe (London 1979) p. 167.