Episcopal Leadership in a Time of Crisis the Elusive Attempt to Incardinate George Tyrrell Jonas Bognar
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Louvain Studies 41 (2018): 64-88 doi: 10.2143/LS.41.1.3284694 © 2018 by Louvain Studies, all rights reserved Episcopal Leadership in a Time of Crisis The Elusive Attempt to Incardinate George Tyrrell Jonas Bognar Abstract. — This article hones in on a particularly difficult and trying period in the Roman Catholic Church, namely that of episcopal leadership during the Mod- ernist Crisis. It explores not only the specific situation of the attempted incardina- tions of the expelled English Jesuit, George Tyrrell, into the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the Archdiocese of Mechelen-Brussels, but more importantly, it leads one to question just how this situation came to be and how it failed to be resolved in an institution where no priest is to be left without a home. Finally, this article articulates the pressure that members of the episcopacy faced, forcing them to walk the tightrope between the pastorally practical solution to these challenges, and the ongoing rigid and reactionary attitudes espoused by the Holy See. If one were to investigate the causes, needs, and procedures to incardi- nate a priest into a bishop’s see today, one would find all of the pertinent information in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, specifically Can. 265-272. These canons were naturally built upon the Codex Iuris Canonici of 1917, but prior to its promulgation by Benedict XV (1914-1922) vari- ous rules and regulations existed in a patchwork of decrees that came into existence as interpretations of the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545-1563). These included instructions that every cleric be attached to a bishop and not “homeless” or “wandering.”1 In the case of George Tyrrell (1861-1909), with his hopes of being incardinated into a diocese as a secular priest following his dismissal from the Society of Jesus in 1906, he encountered a situation of difficulty with a number of bishops whom he contacted, due in great part to his role in the Modernist Crisis. The entire exercise with the ecclesiastical authorities led Tyrrell to two prospective incardinating bishops, namely Patrick Riordan (1841-1914) of San Francisco and Désiré Cardinal Mercier (1851-1926) of Mechelen 1. Concilium Tridentinum, Sessio XXIII, Canon 16; Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 2 (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), 750. EPISCOPAL LEADERSHIP IN A TIME OF CRISIS 65 (Malines). Conversely, the bishops themselves also found themselves in a precarious situation, as they were to be charitable in accepting foreign priests into their respective sees, while following mandates from the Sacred Congregation of the Council and maintaining a certain degree of scrutiny into such requests. In the pages that follow, we shall first of all demonstrate that even though Tyrrell and Riordan came from different backgrounds during the condemnations of Americanism and Liberalism, they managed to forge a connection, thanks to Tyrrell’s The Soul’s Orbit2 and Riordan’s desire to acquire well-educated priests in the Archdiocese of San Francisco via incardination. Secondly, we shall explore Mercier and Tyrrell’s dialogue concerning incardination in the Archdiocese of Mechelen. Finally, we will compare Riordan and Mercier in their roles of episcopal authority during the Modernist Crisis in regards to Tyrrell. I. Introduction The name Désiré Mercier strikes a familiar tone in several avenues of theological, philosophical, and historical discourses. Hailing from the village of Braine-l’Alleud in Brabant, where his grandfather had been mayor for some thirty-four years, Mercier entered the Minor Seminary at Mechelen in 1868 and was ordained a priest for that diocese in 1874. He completed his Licentiate in Theology at the University of Louvain in 1877 and was assigned to teach and give spiritual direction back at the Minor Seminary. Following the promulgation of Aeterni Patris (1879) and to fill the philosophical void at Louvain, Mercier – who was already a Professor of Theology – was appointed Professor of Philosophy in 1882 and, at the behest of Leo XIII (1878-1903) to revive Thomism, founded the Higher Institute of Philosophy in 1889.3 His academic 2. William L. Portier, “George Tyrrell in America,” U.S. Catholic Historian 20, no. 3 (2002): 69-95, at 84-85. George Tyrrell, The Soul’s Orbit, or Man’s Journey to God, ed. Maude Petre (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1904). 3. Goyau points out that this void had existed since Rome’s ire against French traditionalism that had manifested itself in the person of Gerard-Casimir Ubaghs (1800- 1874), Professor of Philosophy at Louvain (Georges Goyau, Le Cardinal Mercier [Paris: E. Flammarion, 1930], 17-18). As early as 1834, Ubaghs attacked rationalism to an extreme degree in defence of the Church, and he was finally censured by the Holy Office in 1866. For more on this ‘semi-traditionalism’ supposedly upheld by Ubaghs and con- demned by Rome, see: C. Walker Gollar, “John Lancaster Spalding on Academic Freedom: The Influence of Louvain on an American Catholic Bishop,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 72, no. 1 (1996): 112-130. 66 JONAS BOGNAR successes aside, Mercier quickly ascended the hierarchy with his appoint- ment as Archbishop of Mechelen in 1906, followed by the cardinalate in 1907.4 The academic background of Patrick Riordan was similar to that of Mercier, especially concerning Louvain. Riordan was born in Chatham, Canada, in 1841, and at a young age emigrated to Chicago with his family. At the age of seventeen and after a period of discernment at the University of Notre Dame, he entered the seminary for the Archdiocese of Chicago and was sent, after a brief stint in Rome and Paris, to Lou- vain for his philosophy and theology. It was the fall of 1861 when Riordan arrived at the American College of the Immaculate Conception,5 where he began his theological studies at the University of Louvain.6 In 1865, he was ordained by Cardinal Engelbert Sterckx (1792-1867) and he completed his licentiate in theology at Louvain in 1866. Upon his return to Chicago, Riordan was immediately named a professor of Canon Law and Church History at the seminary at the University of St. Mary of the Lake. In 1871, he was named the pastor of St. James Parish, and in 1884 he became Archbishop of San Francisco. George Tyrrell became an infamous figure to both Mercier and Riordan in the early twentieth century. Born in Dublin and a young convert from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, Tyrrell entered the novitiate of the English Province of the Society of Jesus on September 1, 1880. Agitated by the incessant immaturity of his brother novices, Tyrrell was also vexed by what he called the ‘Jesuitism’ of the Society, a view that he felt was blind to the rest of the Church’s theological tradi- tion. Later in his writings, Tyrrell would use Aquinas and the narrow Jesuit interpretation of the Angelic Doctor to prove his point, as he saw 4. For a brief biographical sketch on Mercier and a detailed historiography, see: Luc Courtois, “Le cardinal Mercier: introduction à l’étude d’une personnalité,” in Le cardinal Mercier (1851-1926): Un prélat d’avant-garde: Publications du Professeur Roger Aubert rassemblées à l’occasion de ses 80 ans, ed. Jean-Pierre Hendrickx, Jean Pirotte and Luc Courtois (Louvain-la-Neuve: Academia/Presses universitaires de Louvain, 1994), 79-97. 5. Riordan was one of a few Americans that actually lived and studied at the American College, which had been originally established as an institution to train Belgian missionaries to the United States. For more on this, see: Kevin A. Codd and Brian G. Dick, The American College of Louvain: America’s Seminary in the Heart of Europe (Leuven: The American College, 2007); John D. Sauter, The American College of Lou- vain (1857-1898), Recueil de Travaux d’Histoire et de Philologie (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain, 1959); Joseph Van der Heyden, The Louvain American Col- lege: 1857-1907 (Louvain: Fr. & R. Ceuterick, 1909); Kevin A. Codd, “The American College of Louvain,” The Catholic Historical Review 93, no. 1 (January 2007): 47-83. 6. James P. Gaffey, Citizen of No Mean City: Archbishop Patrick Riordan of San Francisco (1841-1914) (Wilmington, NC: Consortium Books, 1976), 16. EPISCOPAL LEADERSHIP IN A TIME OF CRISIS 67 that a pure view of Aquinas was necessary in theological studies in light of Leo XIII’s encyclical, Aeterni Patris (1879).7 After spending a number of years defending Thomism in its purist form, Tyrrell began a slow transformation to being an ever-critical author towards ecclesiastical authority. His critical turning-point came in September 1899, when a consultor of the Sacred Congregation of the Index, the then Archbishop Merry del Val (1865-1930), came across his latest book, External Reli- gion (1899), in a London bookshop.8 The result was a strict demand that all of his writings endure strict censorship by the Jesuits both in England and in Rome, which led to Tyrrell’s rejection of such tactics and his imminent dismissal from the Society of Jesus in 1906. After composing two articles in the Protestant-associated newspaper, The Times,9 ques- tioning and contesting Pius X’s encyclical condemning Modernism, Pas- cendi Dominici gregis (1907), Tyrrell was excommunicated on Octo- ber 22, 1907. II. Riordan and Tyrrell: The Context of Americanism and Liberalism towards Modernism Although Riordan and Tyrrell lived in different parts of the world, Rome’s condemnations of Americanism and Liberalism placed them in the camp of liberal Catholicism, leading up to the eventual condemna- tion of Modernism. For Riordan, it was Americanism that placed him in such a context. Americanism, specifically condemned by Leo XIII in Testem Benevolentiae (1899) as a response to the alleged theological errors contained in Walter Elliott’s The Life of Father Hecker (1894) – namely Hecker’s reliance on the guidance of the Holy Spirit to the extremity that it berated dogma and the deposit of faith (Heckerism) – was in essence a symbol of progressive liberal Catholicism as espoused by Archbishop John Ireland (1838-1918) of St.