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Popular Catholicism in Irish New York, c1900*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
In 1905 was published one of the most interesting books ever written about New York. It was a study by Elsa Herzfeld of twenty-four working-class families living on Manhattan’s West Side. All too briefly, yet with many tantalizing quotations and anecdotes, she discussed a whole series of themes that most previous students of New York life had taken for granted, or perhaps regarded as too trivial to be worth recording: the pictures people had on their walls, the music they liked, relations between spouses and between parents and children, beliefs about good and bad luck, funeral customs, and attitudes to physicians and hospitals. The families all included at least two generations, the older of which was predominantly European born. Most were of Irish or German descent. The purpose of the volume was to identify the distinguishing characteristics of what it termed Tenement-House Man’. There is thus a tendency to stress what is common to the families studied, and to suggest a shared pattern of life. Time and time again, though, there are hints that religion was a differentiating factor within this allegedly homogeneous culture. In particular there are frequent references to Catholics as in some sense a group apart—a very large group apart, as they made up about 40 per cent of the city’s population at that time.
- Type
- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1989
Footnotes
*
I wish to thank the British Academy and Social Science Research Council for research grants.
References
1 Herzfeld, E., Family Monographs (New York, 1905), pp. 15–28, 118, 120, 139 Google Scholar.
2 See for instance Goldmark, P. (ed.), West Side Studies, 2 Vols (New York, 1914)Google Scholar; Jones, T.J., The Sociology of a New York City Block (New York, 1904), pp. 95–7, 116 Google Scholar.
3 Parish histories often present the period c. 1880-1930 as a golden age of New York Catholicism. See Kelly, G. A., The Parish (New York, 1973)Google Scholar.
4 See McLeod, H., ‘Catholicism and the New York Irish 1880-1910’, Roper, L., Obelkevich, J., and Samuel, R. (eds). Disciplines of Faith (London, 1987), pp. 337–50 Google Scholar.
5 Curran, R. E., Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Shaping of Conservative Catholicism in America (New York, 1978)Google Scholar; McLeod, H., ‘Building the “Catholic Ghetto”: Catholic Organisations c.1870-1914’, SCH 23, pp. 411–44 Google Scholar. See also the excellent new general history, which is relevant to many of the themes in this paper Dolan, J. P., The American Catholic Experience (New York, 1985)Google Scholar.
6 For Catholic novels see Messbarger, P., Fiction with a Parochial Purpose (Boston, 1971)Google Scholar; for the Catholic publishing boom more generally, A. Taves, ‘Relocating the Sacred: Roman Catholic Devotions in mid-nineteenth-century America’ (Ph.D. thesis, Chicago University, 1083).
7 Dolan, Catholic Experience, pp. 205-6.
8 See especially Orsi, R., The Madonna of 115th Street (New Haven, 1985)Google Scholar.
9 McLeod, , ‘New York Irish’, pp. 343–4 Google Scholar; Jones, , New York City Block, p. 116 Google Scholar.
10 Questionnaire on the history of Sacred Heart parish (kept at Sacred Heart rectory, New York).
11 Noted in the file on ‘Irish Customs’ in the W.P.A. collection on ‘The Irish in New York’; New York Municipal Archives, which dates from the later 1930s.
12 Herzfeld, Monographs, pp. 44-6.
13 Calendar of the Church of St Paul the Apostle, January 1908. (Copies at the church.)
14 For discussions of die role of clergy in strikes, covering favourable, hostile, and ambiguous responses, see C. Shanabruch, Chicago’s Catholics (Notre Dame, 1981), pp. 150-1; V. R. Greene, 7713 Slavic Community on Strike (Notre Dame, 1968), pp. 106-7, 167, 192; J.J. Bukowczyk, ‘Steeples and Smokestacks: Class, Religion and Ideology in the Polish Immigrant Settlements of Greenpoint and Williamsburg, Brooklyn 1880-1929 (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1980), pp. 173-80.
15 The best discussion of this is Taves, ‘Relocating the Sacred’, pp. 44-9, 72-5.
16 Orsi, Madonna, pp. 84-5; H. R. Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America (Baltimore, 1983), p. 130; Dolan, Catholic Experience, p. 290.
17 The contrasr is illustrated in the W. PA collection on New York City Folk Lore (Library of Congress Folk Music Division, Washington D.C.), which includes jokes and songs current in the various ethnic communities. An elderly Slovak woman told a series of stories in which priests were presented as seducers or money-grubbers. However, a collection of songs that had been popular with Irish immigrants c. 1900 included one entitled ‘Father O’Flynn’, which is about an idealized country priest from County Kerry, and concludes ‘Och, Father O’Flynn, you’ve a wonderful way with you.’ See Mary Swenson and Patrick Quinlan folders.
18 P. J. Murnion, Towards Theopolitan Ministry: The changing Structure of the Pastoral Ministry, New York 1920-1970’ (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1972), pp. 86-7,132-3.
19 Ibid., pp. 3,132-3 and passim provides a useful discussion of the role and status of the priest in New York in die 1920s.
20 The ‘Studs Lonigan’ novels of J. T. Farrell present a brilliant (and totally unflattering) picture of the Irish Catholic community in Chicago in the 1920s. The main criticism of the clergy that was openly voiced by the characters was that they were obsessed with money. The main criticism implied by the author would seem to be lack of sincerity. They are prosperous and prestigious figures, more or less of a kind with politicians, but with no hint of spirituality about them.
21 During the great conflict between Archbishop Corrigan and the radical New York priest, Fr Edward McGlynn, Corrigan tried hard, though with inconclusive results, to prove that McGlynn had had at least one child and solicited women in the confessional. See Curran, Corrigan, pp. 276-86.
22 See reminiscences of a West Side priest who was said to tour his parish at night armed with a horse-whip, to be used on prosritutes and drinkers, and of an English-born priest who liked preaching on hell. H. J. Browne, One Stop above Hell’s Kitchen: Sacred Heart Parish in Clinton (Hackensack, 1977), p. 61; Dooley, P.J., Fifty Years in Yorkville (New York, 1917), pp. 103–5, 148 Google Scholar.
23 The most explicit example I have seen concerns a German priest who worked in a Lower East Side parish from 1866 to 1894. See Chronicles of Most Holy Redeemer Parish, Vol. 2, pp. 68-9 (Archives of the Redemptorist Fathers, Brooklyn). However, there are strong hints of a saint-cult in the kind of devotion inspired by Fr Edward McGlynn (though 1 know of no reported miracles). See my paper on McGlynn in S. P. Mews (ed.). Modern Religious Rebels (forthcoming).
24 Similar points are made in J. P. Dolan, Catholic Revivalism (Notre Dame, 1978), pp. 185-203, and Taves, ‘Relocating the Sacred’, pp. 258-61.
25 A useful general study on this issue is S. Wildon (ed.), Saints and their Cults (Cambridge, 1983). Specifically on later nineteenth-century America, see Taves, ‘Relocating the Sacred’, pp. 132-3, 148-60.
26 Parish magazines often carried articles about saints. These tended to stress their virtues, wise sayings associated with them, or causes of which they were patrons. Calendar of the Church of St Paul the Apostle, November 1886; Church Bulletin of St Ignatius parish, March 1905 (copies in parish library).
27 Browne, H.J., St Ann’s, New York City (New York, 1052), pp. 41–9 Google Scholar; Herzfeld, Monographs, p. 19; R. L. and Woods, H. F., Pilgrim Places in North America: A Guide to Catholic Shrines (New York, 1939), pp. 108–9 Google Scholar.
28 Analysis by Taves (‘Relocating the Sacred’, pp. 148-9) of dianks for favours received that were published in the Catholic papers, Ave Maria and The Messenger of the Sacred Heart, shows that prayers were most frequently for cures and conversions. Other subjects of answered prayers included the resolution of family difficulties, the reform of drunkards, and happy deaths.
29 This belief was sufficiently widespread to be singled out for criticism in an article on ‘Superstition’ in the Calendar of the Church of St Paul the Aposde, August 1898. The severest condemnation was of those who consulted fortune-tellers.
30 Marsh, M. C., ‘The Life and Work of the Church in an Interstitial Area’ (PhD. thesis. New York University, 1932), p. 439 Google Scholar; Wheeler, T. C. (ed.), The Immigrant Experience (New York, 1971), p. 21 Google Scholar.
31 Callahan, J., Man’s Crim Justice (New York, 1928), pp. 68–9 Google Scholar.
32 Farrell, J. T., The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (New York, 1977), pp. 288, 163 Google Scholar [firsr published 1934].
33 For discussion of kinship and neighbourhood ties, see Herzfeld, Monographs, pp. 33-5, 58-9; and on ways that these related to political attitudes, see Simkhovitch, M., The City Worker’s World in America (New York, 1917), p. 182 Google Scholar. For a somewhat earlier period, see Scherzer, K. A., ‘The Unbounded Community: Neighbourhood Life and Social Structure in New York City 1830-1875’ (PhD. thesis. Harvard University, 1982)Google Scholar. The classic statement on the role of ‘friendship’ in policies is Riordon, W. L., Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (New York, 1905)Google Scholar.
34 Calendar of the Church of St Paul the Apostle, March 1908. Notices given at mass in Sacred Heart church during 1919 included: information about a meeting in the church hall in support of Ireland’s claims at the peace conference, and a meeting of the Robert Emmert Society to call for recognition of the Irish Republic; announcement of a book, Ireland’s Case, available from the church office; and an appeal to contribute to the Irish Victory Fund, a collection for which was being held in the church vestibule after mass. See the Notice Book (Sacred Heart rectory).
35 Butler, D., Dock Walloper (New York, 1931), p. 40 Google Scholar.
36 Hapgood, H., Types from City Streets (New York, 1910), p. 57 Google Scholar.
37 The Parish Monthly of Our Lady of Good Counsel Church, February 1905 (copies in New York Public Library).
38 Browne, Sacred Heart, pp. 60-71; McLeod, ‘New York Irish’, pp. 346-7.
39 Doyle, D. N., ‘Catholicism, politics and Irish America since 1890: some critical considerations’, Irish Studies, 4 (1985), pp. 192–230 Google Scholar stresses the tensions between priests and politicians.
40 For a wide-ranging discussion of this theme see Whyte, J. H., Catholics in Western Democracies (Dublin, 1981)Google Scholar, a study of Catholic politics in thirteen countries, mainly between 1870 and 1960, which shows how the primary goal of protecting Catholic interests led the Church into a wide variety of alliances determined by die circumstances in specific countries. See also a valuable local study by S.J. Fielding, ‘The Irish Catholics of Manchester and Sal ford: Aspects of their Religious and Political History 1880-1939’ (PhD. thesis, University of Warwick, 1988), p. 263. Contrasting Catholicism with Nonconformity, he concludes that Catholicism ‘was a pragmatic religion which gave rise to a pragmatic polines’.
41 Herzfeld, Monographs, pp. 50-2; K. Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York (Philadelphia, 1986), pp. 16-33.
42 C. McDannell, “True Men as we need them”: Catholicism and the Irish-American Male’, American Studies, 27 no. 2 (1986), p. 29.
43 Calendar of the Church of St Paul the Apostle, March 1899, July 1898; McDannell, ‘“True Men”, p. 28.
44 Church Bulletin of St Ignatius parish, March 1905; McDannell, ‘“True Men”’, p. 28. See also Taves, ‘Relocating the Sacred’, p. 17s.
45 Kraditor, A. S., The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement 1890-1920 (New York, 1965), p. 94 Google Scholar; Kenealley, T.J., ‘Catholicism and Women’s Suffrage in Massachussets”, Catholic Historical Review, 53(1067), p. 54 Google Scholar.
46 McLeod, H., ‘Weibliche Frömmigkcit—mànnlicher Unglaube?’, Frevert, U. (ed.), Bùrgerinnen una Burger Gexhlechlerverhãllmsse lm lo. Jahrhunden (Göttingen, 1988), p. 137 Google Scholar.
47 The most vivid example is in the autobiography of a Boston-born criminal, Callahan, Grim Justice, pp. 2-3.
48 Hackenburg, F., A Solitary Parade (New York, 1929), p. 30 Google Scholar.
49 See, for instance, McLeod, “Catholic Ghetto”’, which includes references to much of the recent literature.
50 The outstanding essays on Catholicism by Connolly, Gilley, and Samuel in R. Swift and S. Gilley (eds), The Irish in the Victorian City (London, 1985), mark an important step in this direction. See also Fielding, ‘Catholics of Manchester’.
51 Wilson, Saints, p. 257.