The Hierarchy in the between the Third Plenary Council and the Condemnation of Author(s): Gerald P. Fogarty Source: U.S. Catholic Historian, Vol. 11, No. 3, The Americanist Controversy: Recent Historical and Theological Perspectives (Summer, 1993), pp. 19-35 Published by: Catholic University of America Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25153985 . Accessed: 22/10/2014 15:19

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This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:19:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Catholic Hierarchy in the United States Between the Third Plenary Council and the Condemnation of Americanism

Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J.

BETWEEN THE CONVOCATIONOF THE THIRD PLENARY COUNCIL OF BALTIMORE in 1884 and the condemnation of Americanism in 1899, the American Catholic hierarchy was divided on a series of issues. Several factors con tributed to this division. First, the last national council or legislative assembly of the American was summoned by Roman officials, and not at American initiative, as was the case in the nine previous national councils. The agenda was largely set in and did not address some of the nascent issues in the American Church. Second, the Church in the United States was itself undergoing a serious change in its relationship to American society. Finally, a new theological wind was beginning to blow from Rome that caught many American prelates unaware. In retrospect, nothing better represented the future tension than the 's decision to convoke the council. The American Church was still subject to the Congregation of Propaganda, the Roman bureau in charge of missionary countries. The congregation delegated Cardinal Johann Baptist Franzelin, S.J., to draw up the proposed agenda for the council. A leading theologian at the and one of the foremost proponents of the new Thomistic revival that received Leo XIIFs formal encouragement in 1879, Franzelin pre sented an analysis of the American Church that was decidedly Roman in its origin and orientation. Despite priest- tension in some places, the cardi nal noted that several dioceses had extraordinarily good relations between priests and bishops, and he praised the seminaries in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Troy, New York, and Milwaukee. Philadelphia, however, he singled out as "preferable for Roman instruction." He acknowledged that, although some priests were poorly educated in theology, many were distinguished in Baltimore, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and , but the last two sees were most outstanding, because "graduates of Rome are in good number." He brought to his fellow cardinals' attention, however, that ,

19

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Bishops and theologians at the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, St. Mary's Seminary, 1884 (Courtesy ofSulpician Archives, Baltimore.)

named of Baltimore in 1877, with two burses at the American College in Rome, preferred to send his students to St. Mary's Seminary in his see city, where they were taught by the Sulpicians.1 Franzelin also addressed a series of other issues from the need to work for the conversion of African Americans to the appointment of a permanent apos tolic delegate to keep the Holy See informed of American affairs. In prepara tion for the council, the congregation had summoned the American archbish ops to Rome to discuss the agenda. Before their arrival, however, the congre gation met and recommended a change in the practice of the previous plenary councils, at which the Archbishop of Baltimore presided as apostolic delegate. Instead, the congregation proposed to Leo XIII that an Italian consultor to the congregation, Bishop Luigi Sepiacci, be appointed as delegate and be elevated to the rank of archbishop. The pope approved this recommendation.2 The appointment of an Italian delegate, which was later rescinded in favor of Gibbons, was symptomatic of the Roman desire to curb some of the inde pendent spirit of the American bishops. But Roman officials were also intent on bringing American canon law more into line with universal Church law. Only at the insistence of Propaganda did the American bishops provide in the council for irremovable rectors, that is, for quasi-pastors with tenure in their posts. The Americans linked this irremovability to another Roman request for parochial schools. Only a or "mission" with a school could be constitut ed a benefice and hence enjoy irremovability. The bishops at the council also followed Propaganda's insistence that these new irremovable rectors and the diocesan consultors draw up a list of three names of candidates for vacant dio ceses. This list was then to be examined by the bishops of the metropolitan

1.APF, Acta, 252 (1883), 1088-1089. 2. Ibid. 1080, Audience, Aug. 26, 1883.

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province in which the vacancy occurred. For the first time since the election of John Carroll by his fellow priests, priests again had a say in the choice of their bishops and now at Roman insistence. Only on a few points did the bishops actually initiate legislation at the coun cil, most notably in their decree calling for the establishment of the Catholic University of America. In retrospect, however, the council addressed few of the problems then coming to the surface in the United States Church, not the least among which was the ethnic tension between Irish and German-Americans.

Hardly had the Third Plenary Council gained Roman approval than the first sign of tension appeared. In response to a query from Propaganda, the bishops of dioceses with sizable German populations had agreed that German parishes could have irremovable rectors, that is, that there could be more than one parish within a given territory to provide for the pastoral care of those who did not speak English. Before Propaganda could issue instructions on this, howev er, Father Peter Abbelen of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee arrived in Rome

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late in 1886 with a petition in behalf of German-American Catholics for a series of changes in the American Church. Claiming the Irish hierarchy dis criminated against German-speakers, the petition asked that national parishes ? be established for German and other language groups the point already ? agreed upon by the American hierarchy that children of German parentage be bound to these parishes even after reaching adulthood, and that German vicars general be appointed in dioceses where there was a German-speaking population. The reaction to Abbelen's memorial was the first step in forming the liberal party in the American hierarchy. John Keane, the Bishop of Richmond and rector designate of the Catholic University of America, was then in Rome seeking papal approbation of the new university. With him was , Bishop of St. Paul, seeking to have his diocese elevated to metropolitan status, partly to escape the German domination, as he saw it, of the Metropolitan Province of Milwaukee of which he was a suffragan. Aiding them was Denis J. O'Connell, named rector of the American College in Rome the year before.

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Ireland, Keane, and O'Connell lost no time in protesting Abbelen's memorial to the Congregation of Propaganda and in notifying the American hierarchy of the challenge to its authority. In the meantime, other issues soon became intertwined. In the fall of 1886, the American , in accordance with the council's legislation pertain ing to suspect secret societies, had conferred in regard to approval of Catholic membership in the , a labor union that the Holy Office had already condemned in Quebec. WTien they failed to reach unanimous agree ment, however, the case had to go to the Holy See. To complicate the issue fur ther, Father Edward McGlynn of New York had violated the orders of his ordi nary, jArchbishop Michael A. Corrigan, and had campaigned for as mayor of New York. George appeared to Corrigan and others to be a social ist because of his advocacy of a single tax on the unearned increase in property value. For his actions, McGlynn was, amid public protests against Corrigan, first suspended from the priesthood, then removed as pastor of St. Stephen's Church, and, finally, in the summer of 1887, excommunicated. The cases of

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George and McGlynn directly related to the Knights of Labor, because their leader, Terence V. Powderly, had also campaigned for George. The nationality and social questions, both occurring simultaneously, drew the sympathetic attention of the new emerging liberal party. Late in 1886, Gibbons had been named the nation's second cardinal. In February, 1887, he arrived in Rome to receive his red hat. He joined Keane, Ireland, and O'Connell in countering Abbelen's demands. As a cardinal, he was named to the Congregation of Propaganda and attended its meeting that rejected Abbelen's requests, except for the earlier recommendations of the American bishops that there could be German-speaking as well as English-speaking parishes with irremovability. He then presented a memorial to the congregation in favor of the Knights of Labor. In a passage omitted in the version he pub lished, he asked, if the disciplining of McGlynn, regarded as a friend of the people, caused such confusion, how much greater would be the reaction to the condemnation of the people themselves. When the full version of his petition was published in a New York paper, he thus appeared to disagree with

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Corrigan over the handling of clerical discipline. In a second memorial, Gibbons further distanced himself from Corrigan, who favored a condemna tion of the works of Henry George. Rather than a condemnation of a socialist thinker, Gibbons recommended an encyclical on the rights of labor and thus set in motion the process that would culminate in Leo XIII's in 1891. Underlying Gibbons' disagreements with Corrigan and the convictions he shared with Ireland, Keane, and O'Connell was a different ecclesiology and an optimistic view of the Church's potential role in American society.3 Gibbons

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expressed this view in his address when taking possession of his of Santa Maria in Trastevere. His words laid the groundwork for the future debate over Americanism. He attributed the great progress of the American Church, "under God and the fostering vigilance of the Holy See, to the civil liberty we enjoy in our enlightened republic." Appealing to Leo XIII's encycli cal Immortale Dei, he asserted that "the Church is not committed to any form of civil government." In contrast to those governments that hindered the Church's divine mission, he continued, in the United States, "the civil govern ment holds over us the aegis of its protection, without interfering with us in the legitimate exercise of our sublime mission as ministers of the of Christ. Our country has liberty without license, and authority without despotism."4 By the fall of 1887, a little over two years after the council, the liberal party was virtually a coherent group. Gibbons, as the nation's only cardinal, was the titular head. Ireland, who became the first Archbishop of St. Paul in 1888, was the strategist and most eloquent spokesman. Keane was more of the gentle dis ciple of Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulists and spiritual father of the move ment that became known as Americanism. But during his rectorship of the Catholic University, the institution became the intellectual bastion of his friends from his Roman sojourn. O'Connell was the unofficial agent for the American bishops, but this meant for him particularly Gibbons and Ireland. Ireland, with his charismatic eloquence and boisterous patriotism, did not help smooth the troubled waters. When Archbishop of Milwaukee died in 1890, Ireland used all his newly obtained position as an archbishop to overturn both the priests' and bishops' list, both of which had Frederick Katzer in first place. On this point he lost and won a Roman rebuke. But the nationality question would not go away. In December 1890, the St. Raphael Societies, originally founded in Germany by Peter Paul Cahensly, met in Lucerne and drafted a memorial for Propaganda concerning care of immi grants in the United States. Reminiscent of Abbelen's petition, the memorial, among other things, called for national parishes and parochial schools. In a proposal destined to arouse the ire of the American liberals, it called for repre sentation of each nationality in the hierarchy. As events unfolded, Cahensly alone presented the memorial to Propaganda and thus gave the issue the name, Cahenslyism, by which it is known. Ireland and O'Connell then made one of the earliest ecclesiastical uses of the emerging mass media by having stories written in Rome but transmitted from European cities over the Associated Press cables to make it appear there was a European conspiracy against the

3. See Margaret M. Reher, "The Church and the Kingdom of God in America: The Ecclesiology of the Americanists," (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, , N.Y., 1972). 4. John Tracy Ellis (ed.), Documents of American Catholic History (3 vols.; Wilmington, Del, 1987), II, 462-463.

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American Church. To compound matters, Cahensly and an associate submitted a second memorial charging that 16 million immigrants and their descendants were lost to the American Church through neglect. The Holy See rejected all these proposals. And the American archbishops, in one of their few unanimous ? ? decisions Corrigan and even Katzer joined in repudiated this foreign intrusion into American ecclesiastical affairs. Not satisfied with the support of Rome and his fellow metropolitans, Ireland still managed to have the issue mentioned on the floor of the United States Senate.5 The German question was one of the few issues on which Ireland and Corrigan could agree. Unfortunately, another one also pertained to nationalities ? Eastern Rite Catholics. Providing for Catholic immigrants from Eastern ? ? Europe, with their different liturgy and a married clergy occupied as much space in the minutes of the annual archbishops' meetings as any other issue. Ireland's solution was simple. He refused faculties to an Eastern Rite priest, who was a widower, and created an apostle for the Orthodox. Ireland, Corrigan, and, for that matter, Katzer and other German-Americans could agree on resisting foreign intrusion into the American Church and the introduction of foreign customs, such as a married clergy. WTiat was needed to mold Corrigan and other bishops into a coherent opposition to the liberals was an issue that would provide common ground for conservative Irish-American prelates and German ones. Ireland came to their rescue in 1890 first in an address praising public schools and then in a school plan, according to which the public school board would lease parochial school buildings during class hours, supervise the instruction, and pass on the qualifications of the instruc ? tors. It was not that his plan was revolutionary in itself it was already in operation in Poughkeepsie in the Archdiocese of New York. Rather it was the tone Ireland used and the European situation in the background that caused his plan to become controversial. The explanation of Ireland's school plan to the American archbishops was preceded by a pamphlet war between Rene Holaind, S.J., of Georgetown and Woodstock College, and Thomas Bouquillon of the Catholic University. Holaind argued that in a non-Catholic society only the Church had the right to educate. Bouquillon asserted that the state had the right to guarantee the literacy of its future citizens. Within this context, Ireland's plan was construed as surrendering to the state what the church in was ? Europe fighting to preserve the right to educate. At the archbishops' meeting in 1891, Ireland explained his arrangements with the local school boards, but the prelates were not asked to vote on his proposals. All may have been well, if Ireland was not campaigning in favor of the Bennett Law inWisconsin that mandated English as the language of instruc

5. For the finest treatment of Ireland and this issue, see Marvin R. O'Connell, John Ireland and the American (St. Paul, 1988), pp. 287-316.

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tion in all public and private schools. Granting the state the right to educate and to determine the language of instruction now melded conservative Irish-Americans and German-Americans into a cohesive opposition. German-Americans viewed the German language as essential for preserving their faith.

It was not only the conservatives who opposed Ireland. Some of his sup porters on other issues, such as Bishop John Lancaster Spalding, joined in protesting his apparent denigration of parochial schools under complete Church control. With the controversy dividing the hierarchy in the United States, the issue moved across the Atlantic. The Jesuit periodical, Civilta cat tolica, took up the attacks on Ireland. In February 1892, he took his case per sonally to Rome. The Congregation of Propaganda issued a measured decision in his favor by saying the arrangement "can be tolerated." But Ireland had won his case at great cost. Propaganda also decided to send a representative to meet with the archbishops at their annual meeting in November and to discuss the religious education of children who did not attend parochial schools. The con gregation chose Archbishop Francesco Satolli, a leading Thomistic theologian and friend of Leo XIII. Ireland and O'Connell knew that Satolli was to do more than discuss the school question with the archbishops; he was to remain as the first permanent apostolic delegate to the United States hierarchy.6 Accompanied by O'Connell as his secretary, Satolli arrived in New York harbor on October 12, 1892, Columbus Day. O'Connell and Ireland had pur posely arranged for that date of arrival, since most of the other bishops would have to be in their own dioceses for observance of the national holiday. But the date was only part of their arrangements. At the eleventh hour, they had obtained from the United States government an invitation to the Holy See to send a representative to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. They could therefore, officially say that Satolli came as a guest of the government. Ireland further devised a two-fold stratagem. First, he had a government cutter, with a delegation from Baltimore on board, to meet Satolli's ship outside the New York harbor and accord him diplomatic courtesy. Second, he and O'Connell kept Corrigan ignorant of the ship's arrival and thus absent from the reception committee. Corrigan's absence was construed as a slight to the papal represen tative, which even the dinner he hosted later did little to assuage.7 After meeting with government officials in Washington, Satolli and O'Connell spent a month with Ireland before returning to New York for the archbishops' meeting in November. There, Satolli presented fourteen points on the school question. He claimed to be using his own words to express the

6. For the most recent treatment ofthe school question, see ibid., pp. 317-374. 7. I have treated this more fully in my Vatican and the Americanist Crisis: Denis J. O'Connell, American Agent in Rome, 1885-1903 (Rome: Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1974), pp. 227-234.

This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:19:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Catholic Hierarchy in the United States 29 pope's sentiments, which agreed with Ireland's position and had, in fact, been drafted by O'Connell. Satolli then asked the archbishops for their opinion on establishing a permanent apostolic delegation. All but Ireland, voted to thank the pope for the suggestion, but to reject it as inopportune. Even Gibbons, whom Ireland was supposed to have informed of the possibility of a delega tion, voted with the majority. The meeting did little to cement Satolli's rela tions with Corrigan, and soon he took other actions that alienated him from the Archbishop of New York. In December, he reconciled McGlynn to the church, after the priest had written out a statement, examined by faculty members at the Catholic University, that he was in basic agreement with the papal teaching in Rerum Novarum. Corrigan learned this from reading the New York newspa pers on Christmas Eve.8 In January 1893, Leo XIII made the official announcement that he was establishing a permanent apostolic delegation with Satolli as the first delegate.9 For almost two more years, Satolli seemed the ardent supporter of the liberal cause. At a Catholic Congress in Chicago in September 1893, he told the crowd "to go forward, in one hand bearing the book of Christian truth and in the other the constitution of the United States."10 But gradually, his romance with Ireland's liberal movement went sour. Like other Roman officials, Satolli looked askance at the participation of Catholic prelates in the World Parliament of Religions, held at the closing of the Chicago exposition. But even in this instance, he singled out Gibbons more than Ireland for criticism for taking part in this early effort at ecumenism. There were other signs of his growing disenchantment. In April 1895, he attended the laying of the cornerstone of a German parish in Pottsville, Pennsylvania. In a banquet address, he praised the work of German-American Catholics, some of whom, he carefully added, were the "subject of false charges and accusations.11 Present also, incidentally, was Monsignor Augustine J. Schulte, then professor at St. Charles Seminary, Overbrook, Pennsylvania. Schulte had been pro-rector of the American College with every expectation of becoming rector, when Gibbons had O'Connell appointed.12 His great-nephew, Francis J. Schulte, the current Archbishop of New Orleans, recalls that "Uncle Gus" never quite forgot the treatment he received.13

8. Robert Emmett Curran, S.J., Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Shaping of Conservative Catholicism in America, 1878-1902 (New York, 1978), p. 391. 9. For the best treatment of Satolli's mission and the early years of the delegation, see Robert James Wister, "The Establishment of the Apostolic Delegation in the United States of America: The Satolli Mission, 1892-1896," unpublished D.H.E dissertation, Gregorian University, Rome, 1981. 10. Francesco Satolli, Loyalty to Church and State, edited by John R. Slattery (Baltimore, 1895), p. 150 11. Colman J. Barry, O.S.B., The Catholic Church and German-Americans (Milwaukee, 1953), pp. 320-323. 12. Fogarty, Americanist Crisis, pp. 68-74. 13. Interview with Archbishop Schulte, Baltimore, Nov. 9, 1989.

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More important for events of the 1890s, however, was that Satolli was accompanied to Pottsville by Monsignor Joseph Schroeder, a conservative pro fessor of theology at the Catholic University. Satolli took advantage of their trip to ask Schroeder to report on how Scripture studies were taught at the uni versity. By June, Schroeder had complied with a scathing criticism of the openness of other professors toward the newly emerging biblical scholarship. Satolli used Schroeder's report in having Leo XIII demand the resignation of Keane from the rectorship of the university in the fall of 1896.14 By that time, the liberals had received a series of blows from the Roman front. In January 1895, Leo XIII addressed the apostolic letter, Longinqua Oceani to the American Church. While praising the progress of the Church under the protection of "equity of the laws," the pontiff warned that "it would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced." WTiile the pope stopped short of stating that there should be a union of church and state, he did say that the Church "would bring forth more abun dant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage ofthe public authority."15 Gibbons and Ireland were clearly put on notice that their praise of the American proposition did not meet with Roman favor. As if that was not enough, in May 1895, Gibbons went to Rome to repeat his victory of 1887 and gain Roman toleration for several suspect secret soci eties, about which the archbishops had again disagreed. This time Gibbons failed, and the reason for the Holy See's opposition was related to the ? Parliament of Religions the practice of Catholics joining non-Catholics in common prayer and quasi-religious rituals. More telling for the liberal cause, Leo XIII demanded that O'Connell resign as rector ofthe American College. These setbacks should have been sufficient for Ireland and his friends to turn to the defensive. Instead, they moved to internationalize and broaden their ? program a movement that seemed clearly opposite to the pope's warning in Longingua Oceani. First, after several months absence, O'Connell returned to Rome and set up an apartment as the vicar for Gibbons' titular church of Santa Maria in Trastevere. Next, Keane, now a titular archbishop, moved to Rome as a consultor to the Congregations of Propaganda and of Seminaries and Universities. O'Connell turned his apartment into a meeting place for a num ber of American and European intellectuals either resident in or visiting Rome. The motive for what, in retrospective, seems to have been a Quixotic gesture

14. Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Rub. 43 (1903), fasc. 2, 78-80, Schroeder to Satolli, Washington, June 18, 1895. On Keane's dismissal, see Patrick H. Ahern, The Life of John J. Keane, Educator and Archbishop, 1839-1918 (Milwaukee, 1955), 178-179. 15. John Tracy Ellis, (ed.), Documents of American Catholic History (Wilmington, Del, II, 502).

This content downloaded from 66.31.143.47 on Wed, 22 Oct 2014 15:19:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Catholic Hierarchy in the United States 31 was the international interest the liberal program had drawn. Ireland's lectures and sermons were already being translated in France, where Catholics had been called to rally to the Third Republic and where Ireland's paeans to republican government had a particular relevance. Early in 1897, O'Connell urged Ireland to build a bridge with German progressives and to explain that he was not battling German-Americans as such, but only those who resisted what the American liberals interpreted to be Leo XIII's policy. At O'Connell's suggestion, Ireland applied to his opponents "refractaires," the term the pope had used for those French Catholics who had opposed support of the Third Republic.16 Franz X. Kraus, professor of Church history at Freiburg im Breisgau, who was visiting the United States when Ireland spoke and obtained a copy of the text, used it to attack Schroeder in his "Spectator" letters in the Munich Allgemeine Zeitung. Although O'Connell warned Ireland not to make it appear that there was any "understanding" between himself and German progressives, Ireland wrote to congratulate Herman Schell, professor of theology atWiirzburg, for his book attacking the Jesuits and other conserva tives. This not only set in motion a relationship between Schell and the Americanists,17 but also paved the way for Ireland to wage what he called his "War of 1897" to oust Schroeder from the Catholic University. In the meantime, O'Connell was further broadening the European participa tion in the movement. Early in 1897, he established contact with the Countess Sabina Parravicino di Revel inMilan, one of the leading proponents of concili ation between the Church and the . She and her associates contributed to La Rassegna nazionale, whose pages had already lauded Americanism, as it was now called, as a model for the solution of the Roman Question, the status of the pope between 1870, when Italian forces effectively ended papal temporal power by occupying the Eternal City, and 1929, when the Vatican and Italy signed the Lateran treaties. By the summer of 1897, she had translated into Italian Ireland's speeches with creative adaptation of his republicanism to a constitutional monarchy.18 Ireland and his friends displayed surprising naivete in thus ignoring Vatican sensitivities on the Roman Question and allying themselves not only with con ciliationists but also with German and French progressive thinkers. Moreover, while the Americanists were making their movement international, so was their opposition. Early in the summer of 1897, a French translation of Walter Elliott's Life of

16. Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C., The Great Crisis in American Catholic History: 1895-1900 (Chicago, 1957), pp. 102-103. 17. See David F. Sweeney, O.F.M., "Herman Schell, 1850-1906: A German Dimension to the Americanist Controversy," Catholic Historical Review, 56 (Jan., 1990), 44-70. 18. See my Vatican and the American Hierarchy from 1870 to 1965 (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 1982 and Wilmington, DE.: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1985), pp. 150-151.

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Father Hecker was published with a preface by Abbe Felix Klein, professor of literature at the Institut catholique in Paris and translator of Ireland's speeches. It was not so much that the translation was inaccurate as that it was impossible to translate from one culture to another. In the United States, Hecker was a deeply spiritual priest mediating between the Catholic Church and Protestant America. The original English biography even had Corrigan's imprimatur. In France, however, Hecker became the ideal priest of the future, harmonizing the church with modern science, emphasizing the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which some opponents construed to mean the denigration of external church authority, and praising the "active virtues" of the modern-day marketplace over the "passive virtues" of the monastery. He also spoke loosely of "natural virtues." La Vie du Pere Hecker now created controversy over Americanism not only in France but throughout Europe. O'Connell decided to offer his contribution to the literature of Americanism. Together with Keane, John A. Zahm, C.S.C., procurator of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, and two professors at the Catholic University, Charles A. Grannan and Edward A. Pace, he chose the Fourth International Catholic Scientific Congress in Fribourg, Switzerland, as the forum to address "A New Idea in the Life of Father Hecker." He distinguished between two forms of Americanism, political and ecclesiastical. "Political Americanism" he identified with the British and American Common Law, embodied in the Declaration of Independence. This form of law, he argued, could be summed up by the statement that "the remote source of all power and of every right is God, that the immediate source of power is the people, and that the officers of the government do not possess power for themselves, but only for the benefit of each individual among the people and for the community, and that the only limit placed upon the exercise of individual liberty is the obligation to respect the equal rights of others." He left no doubt that this type of law was not only preferable to the Roman Law but was also closer to the Christian belief in the dignity conferred upon each person in . Turning to "ecclesiastical Americanism," O'Connell trod into the thicket of confusion about the interpretation Felix Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, had given to the Syllabus of Errors in 1864. Dupanloup had argued that Pius IX was condemning a "thesis," an absolute norm, that church and state should always be separated, a situation that in Europe had, in fact, meant conflict between the two entities. But, continued the bishop, the pope was establishing as the Catholic "thesis," not a union of church and state, but harmony between the two. The "hypothesis" was the concrete historical realization of that har mony. By O'Connell's time, theologians had forgotten Dupanloup's original distinction and equated the "thesis" with the union of church and state. The "hypothesis" became whatever was tolerable in the concrete historical order as step toward a union of church and state. O'Connell reflected this misinterpre

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tation. He reasoned that, though the thesis might be "beautiful and true" in the ory, it frequently resulted in the loss of the church's liberty. He, therefore, con cluded that the American hypothesis worked at least as well as the thesis, for "nowhere is the action of the church more free, and the exercise of Pontifical authority more untrammeled."19 O'Connell was not the only one to present "a new idea" at the Fribourg con ? gress incidentally the last one held. Zahm gave a paper showing the com patibility of evolution and doctrine. Marie-Joseph Lagrange, O.P., the famous exegete, delivered his first discourse on the historical criticism of the Pentateuch; and Baron Friedrich von Hugel had a paper read in his absence on the sources of the Hexateuch. Both papers on biblical criticism were published in the Catholic University Bulletin.20 The Bulletin's publication of these articles only intensified the fear of the conservatives, whether in Europe or in the United States, that the university, the intellectual mouthpiece of the American liberals, was part of their challenge to the old order. For the moment, however, Americanism occupied the attention of both parties. For the next year, the battle tilted back and forth. In the fall of 1897, Ireland led his successful campaign to remove Schroeder from the Catholic University. Then inMarch, 1898, a series of articles, entitled "L'Americanisme mystique" and signed "Martel" began to appear in La Verite. The author was Father Charles Maignen of the Society of the Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul. Maignen launched an all-out assault particularly on Hecker, Ireland, Keane, and O'Connell for claiming the superiority of the Saxon races and of republi can government over monarchies, for their praise of religious liberty, and for their irenic relations with Protestants. In early April, while he was still penning his final attacks, his war of words was fought against the background of the shooting war between the United States and . The conflict between cul tures had now become a conflict between nations, with Ireland, O'Connell, and their friends chauvinistically seeing divine providence at work in the American emergence into imperialism. Two months into the Spanish-American War, Maignen had published his original articles and some new ones as a book Le Pere Hecker: est-il un ? Refused an imprimatur in Paris by Cardinal Francis-Marie Richard, because of the attacks on members of the American hierarchy, Maignen obtained one in Rome from Alberto Lepidi, O.R, Master of the Sacred Palace. The Roman imprimatur was now construed as Roman approval of Maignen's views. Keane immediately protested, followed by Ireland and Gibbons. In the midst of this activity, O'Connell had several meetings with Lepidi, who seemed per

19. Fogarty, Vatican and the American Hierarchy, pp. 153-155. 20. Friedrich von Hiigel, "The Historical Method and the Documents of the Hexateuch," Catholic University Bulletin 4 (1898), 198-226. M.-J. Lagrange, "Miscellaneous: On the Pentateuch," The Catholic University Bulletin, 4 (1898), 115-121.

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suaded that Americans held only political Americanism, but that the French had invented religious Americanism or "Heckerism," as they called it. Optimistic at his audiences with Lepidi, O'Connell wrote out his views for the Dominican, only to find them published as an appendix in a second edition of Maignen's book. What occurred in Rome during the summer of 1898 in regard to Americanism is still shrouded in mystery. A year after the official condemna tion, Vatican officials sought among themselves who had examined the ques tion.21 The Holy See, moreover, was simultaneously looking at Zahm's theory of evolution and Lagrange's Revue biblique. What is clear in regard to Amer icanism is that Lepidi defended granting Maignen an imprimatur in terms of what he now called "religious Americanism" that might lead to subjectivism, religious indifference, diminution of the church's external authority, and export of the American separation of church and state. Lurking in the background as Lepidi focused on Hecker's praise of "active" over "passive" virtues was the fear of at least semi-. Lepidi's defense of his actions became the basis for the response to Gibbons of Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, the secretary of state, who promised the American cardinal that Leo XIII would soon issue a pontifical letter on the question. In the meantime, Rampolla urged Gibbons to encourage his fellow bishops and assure them that they continued to enjoy the pope's "esteem and good will toward them."22 Leo XIII had a peculiar way of manifesting his "esteem and good will." When he addressed his letter to Gibbons, he expressed most of the conserva tive fears, European and American. While claiming to leave political Americanism untouched, the pontiff's treatment of religious Americanism left it vague whether or not he thought the Americans actually held it. He specifi cally questioned some of Hecker's supposed teaching on the role of the Holy Spirit within the individual Christian's life. On the one hand, he reproached those who seemed to imply that previous ages had "received a lesser outpour ing of the Holy Spirit." On the other hand, he asserted that "no one doubts that the Holy Ghost, by His secret incoming into the souls of the just, influences and arouses them by admonition and impulse." To confirm his point, the pope quoted from the Second Council of Orange, which had condemned semi-Pelagianism. Leo challenged what purpose the "more abundant influence of the Holy Ghost" served, if external guidance was abolished. Moreover, in case any reader missed the point of his reference to the Second Council of Orange, Leo asserted that those who spoke of this abundance of the Spirit seemed also to "extol beyond measure the natural virtues as more in accor dance with the ways and requirements of the present day, and consider it an

21. See my Vatican and the American Hierarchy, p. 175, n.88. 22. Ibid., 171-173.

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advantage to be richly endowed with them, because they make a man more ready and more strenuous in action." Praise of natural virtues, the pope contin ued, implied that "nature..., with grace added to it," was "weaker than when left to its own strength." Only with "some divine help," he asserted, could one observe "the whole ." "If we do not wish to lose sight of the eternal blessedness to which God in His goodness has destined us," Leo concluded, "of what use are the natural virtues unless the gift and strength of be added?"23 No one had been condemned by name, but the American liberals, if they knew church history, realized that they were suspect of an ancient heresy. In the fifteen years that separated the Third Plenary Council from the con demnation of Americanism, some of the most outstanding figures in the histo ry of the church in the United States had emerged into prominence only to fall under suspicion. John Ireland, speaker, preacher, entrepreneur, and friend of presidents, saw his program for the American Church dashed upon the shoals of European ecclesiastical politics. John Keane, the gentle of Isaac Hecker, witnessed his rectorship of the Catholic University, opened in 1889 with such optimism, wracked with the academic rancor that not only led to his dismissal but was the harbinger of Modernism. Denis O'Connell, protege of the nation's only cardinal, but as much a diplo mat and politician as a churchman, found his rectorship of the American College summarily ended and not the stepping stone to further advancement that it was for his successor, another O'Connell, William, who followed a dif ferent ecclesiological script in equally playing the roles of diplomat and politi cian. Only Gibbons remained relatively unscathed, but his red hat had already raised him to the greatest heights then possible. He had the longevity to bury all his colleagues, friend and foe alike, and outlived all the bishops present both at the Third Plenary Council and the First Vatican Council, as well. Even in his lifetime, he saw his vision of the American Church subsumed by an older European vision. , it is true, was the only Archbishop of New York since 1875 who was not named a cardinal, but his spirit would prevail. Americanism may indeed have been a "phantom heresy," as Klein termed it, but it was a specter haunting the American Church for generations to come.

23. Ellis, Documents, II, 541-542.

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