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1976 Review of The mmiI grant Church: New Work's Irish and German Catholics, 1815-1865 by Jay P. Dolan. Frederick C. Luebke University of Nebraska-Lincoln, [email protected]

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This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the History, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications, Department of History by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Reviews in American History, Vol. 4, No.1 (Mar., 1976), pp. 68-72

CHURCH HISTORY FROM THE BOTTOM UP

Frederick C. Luebke

Jay P. Dolan. The Immigrant Church: New York's Irish and German Catholics, 1815-1865. Baltimore, Md.: The lohns Hopkins University Press, 1975. xv + 221 pp. Essay on sources, notes, and index. $10.00.

American church history, as practiced by its traditionalists, has recounted the intricacies of theological thought and debate, the mighty deeds of church fathers, and their positions on important social and political questions of the day. Despite the considerable influence of H. Richard Niebuhr's Social Sources of De­ nominationalism (1929), which illuminated the relationship between ethnicity and the growth of American churches, only rarely have professional historians focused their analytical skills on the foundational unit of American denominations, that is, the local congregation, , or synagogue. Similarly, immigration historians have described the contributions of this or that ethnic group to the composite American culture, and while they have long recognized the importance of the church for the newcomers, they have seldom identified the local congregation as the preeminent immigrant institution. The obscurity of the parish, moreover, was compounded by the fact that for years many historians refused to recognize either church history or immigration history as serious or important fields of study. Oscar Handlin was a notable exception. Having absorbed the insights of many sociologists, Handlin described in The Uprooted (1951) how alienated immigrants seized upon the parish as the most familiar and stable institution in their crumbling house of culture. In his view the parish provided security and identity for uprooted immigrants as they endured the passage from European to American life. Although Handlin's book was widely applauded, few scholarly efforts were made to test his sweeping generalizations until Rudolph Vecoli asserted in 1964 that they had little applicability to the Italians. 1 Specifically attacking the assimilationist interpreta­ tion of the role of the parish, Vecoli argued that intense particularistic loyalties as well as superstition, anticlericalism, and religious indifference among Italian immigrants greatly limited the capacity of the to absorb them. 2 Meanwhile, church historians also began to reexamine religious institutions to find their places in American social history. The perspective shifted from the pulpit to the pew as traditional interpretations were weighed and as the functions of ethnic parishes and denominations were analyzed. Jay P. Dolan's study of the Irish and German Catholics in New York City from 1815 to 1865 is a major contribution to this new literature. Dolan first charts the growth of New York Catholicism from two to thirty-two parishes. As ethnic enclaves developed in the city, the so-called national parish

Copyright © 1975 by the fohns Hopkins University Press. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. Used by permission. LUEBKE / Church Historyfrom the BottomUp 69 emergedas a responseto theneeds of theimmigrant population. Although the nationalparishes were normally organized on a territorialbasis, their distinguish- ing characteristicwas languagerather than nationality. By 1865 twenty-three parisheswere English-speaking, chiefly Irish, while eight used theGerman lan- guage;and one French parish has retained its ethnic character to the present day. A handfulof Italianand NegroCatholics were essentially spiritual orphans without churchhomes of theirown. Next, Dolan examinesthe ethnicvillages of New York thatharbored the nationalparishes and relatesthem to thegrowth of thecity. Both the Irish and Germanneighborhoods exhibited indiscriminate land usage, withtenements, stores,group shops, factories, and slaughterhouses mingled together. Poverty and destitutionwere common to both,imposing conditions of filth and crowding that arescarcely imaginable. Dolan also offersuseful data on thehorizontal mobility of theNew York Catholics.By usingbaptismal registers and citydirectories, he calculatesan averageresidence period of the Irish at four years and two months and ofthe Germans at four years and six months.Persistence rates for the decade of the 1850sare calculated at 41 percentand 57 percent,respectively. The datastrongly suggestthat the Germans, for whom the bond between language and faithwas especiallyimportant, felt the influence of theethnic village more keenly than the Irish. The heartof Dolan's study,however, is his analysisof theethnic parish. Two congregations,one Irishand one German,are examinedin greatdetail. Concen- tratingon parishionersrather than on priests,Dolan pursuestheir social charac- teristics.Social stratificationwas presentin boththe Irish and Germanparishes, butboth were dominated by memberswith lower-class occupations-skilled and semiskilledworkers. Religious indifference on thepart of theimmigrants is also treated.Approximately 50 percentof the Irish, Dolan estimates, lived on thefringe ofparish life-Catholics by birth and heritage, but not in practice. In Dolan's view theIrish Catholics on theperiphery reflected the status of thechurch in Ireland, whereignorance and indifferencewere also common. Fascinatingcomparisons between Irish and GermanCatholics emerge from Dolan's study.Because theIrish used the same language as thehost society, their devotionto the ethnic parish as a solutionto the problem of religion and nationality was less intensethan among the Germans. Dolan describesdistinctive styles of worship,observing that "among Germans the sense of pageantry and the pomp of ceremonywere more evident" than among the Irish.Ethnoreligious organiza- tions,such as mutualaid associationsand militia societies, all ofwhich reinforced the senseof communityand separatism,seem to have had specialprominence amongthe Germans. Differences also existedin therelationships of prieststo people: whilethe Germans respected their pastors and maintaineda social dis- tance,the Irish developed warm personal and familialbonds. Because of itsmultiethnic character, the American Catholic church was bound to suffermuch conflict. But disagreements,according to Dolan, were rarely theological;instead they erupted over control of church property, the appointment of priests,and the recognitionof ethnictraditions and usages. Traditionally, 70 REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY / March 1976 historianshave emphasizedthe efforts of theGermans to escape or counterthe dominanceof theIrish prelates. By contrast,Dolan's ArchbishopJohn Hughes, customarilyidentified as thearchtypical Irish hierarch, was somewhatindifferent to theproblems of theGermans and seldominterfered in theirparochial affairs. Morefrequently, however, discord developed within the German community itself,with partisans of the local priestcontending with the advocatesof lay trusteeismand liberalism.Dolan also observesthat other clashes emerged from differencesbetween German Catholics and Lutherans,or betweenchurch Ger- mansand club Germans. Ofthe thirty-two parishes in New Yorkin 1865,many were ethnically mixed. In orderto illustratethe natureof conflictin such parishes,Dolan describesthe experiencesof St. Alphonsus,originally German but threatened by Irish invaders intoits territory. Although the Irish proved to be bettercontributors to the parish treasury,language usage remainedthe cruxof the issue. A compromiseplan was eventuallyworked out in whicheach ethnicgroup worshipped at a different time,but after a dozenyears the archbishop ended the German national character of theparish and openedit to fullparochial rights to all Catholicsin thearea. The developmentof parishschools, hospitals, and orphanagesis also treated. Dolan observesthat, again because of language,these institutions of cultural maintenancewere generally more important to theGermans than to the Irish, who weremotivated chiefly by religiousconcerns. Finally,the author studies the ideas and sermonsthat bound the ethnoreligious communitiestogether. The mostconspicuous bond of unityamong all ethnic groups,he insists,was anunquestioning commitment toCatholic doctrine. Yet the emergenceof " boss rule"'-each bishopa in hisown -insured the churchagainst fractionalization along ethnic lines. In generalDolan does not dissentfrom the standardinterpretation that the Catholicchurch succeeded in retaining the loyalty of immigrants and that it served admirablyas an institutiontoease theirtransition into American life. In contrastto RudophVecoli, who emphasized the half of the Italian immigrant population that rejectedthe church, and whotherefore discounted the effectiveness of theparish bothas an assimilatingagent and as a meansof social control, Dolan concentrates on theother half, those who wereactive in parishlife and who wereserved by parishministries. Hence, he comes to quitethe opposite conclusion. Yet both historiansare advocatesof churchhistory viewed from the bottom up; bothhave studiedethnic clash and accommodationwithin church structures, institutional responsesto the social needsof immigrants,and conflictsbetween people and prelates. Anotherstudent of the Catholic ethnic parish, Victor Greene, has challengeda differenttraditional interpretation of American Catholic church history. On ev- idencedrawn from the experiences of Polish Catholicsin Chicagoearly in the twentiethcentury Greene has arguedthat the control exercised by Irishprelates overother ethnic groups within the Catholic church was distantand not arbitrary or oppressive.3Although Greene admits that programs of Americanization may have beenreal enough for the Irish and Germans,he insiststhat the American church LUEBKE /Church Historyfrom the BottomUp 71 was an associationthat allowed for much cultural pluralism and thatthe Irish bishopscould even be encouragingof ethnic autonomy for Slavic peoples. Greene has notfound an Irish-Polishclash, but rather describes an intenseconflict that emergedfrom within the Polish Catholic community, as supportersof priest and diocesebattled with nationalists who demanded a moredecentralized church and moreethnic autonomy. Dolan's findings,as we haveseen, are similar to Greene's on all counts. Notall historiansof the Catholic church in America agree. Other times and other places produceddifferent relationships. Vecoli, forexample, found Irish domi- nance over Italiansto be strong.Timothy Smith, in his studyof Slovenian Catholicsin the distant iron mining country of Minnesota in the first decades of the twentiethcentury, noted that, in contrast to Greene'surban Poles, the immigrants founda cohesive,centralized church ready to servethem.4 Irish and German settlershad providedthe nuclei for parishes in thisregion, where the Catholic churchwas fullycommitted to a long-rangeprogram of Americanizationon the Irishmodel. Subsequent desultory efforts were made to establish national parishes forSlavic and Italiangroups, but theirnumbers were commonlytoo smallto establishcongregations as exclusiveethnic centers. When the melting-pot parishes failedto firedeep emotionsof kinshipand belonging,the immigrantscreated alternatevoluntary associations to servetheir needs. Ultimately,Smith found, religiousinstitutions were left on thefringes of immigrantlife, and identification withthe dominant American culture became the hallmark of theregion, as the secondgeneration placed theirhopes in educationand economicambition. Still,in Smith'sview, the congregation remains the primary institution in the historyof American religion. "Its usefulness,"he writes,"in fulfillingthe need forbelongingness, for personal identity, and for guidance in the adjustment of old customsto newconditions" was greatindeed.5 Probably no one has stressedthe importanceof the ethnic parish more than Silvano Tomasi, author of therecently publishedPiety and Power: The Role of theItalian Parishesin theNew York MetropolitanArea, 1880-1930. He asserts,contra Vecoli, thatthe ethnic parish was the"critically significant institution in linkingthe immigrants with the larger nationalsociety."6 Clearly the parishneeds muchfuller study if its role in Americansocial history is tobe understood.Other comparisons-for example, an Irishwith an Italianparish-would reveal more diversity within the American Catholicchurch than does Dolan's book. Similarly,German Catholic parishes shouldbe comparedto GermanLutheran, as well as Mennoniteand Evangelical parishes,just as GermanLutheran congregations should be measuredagainst Scandinavian,Finnish, and Slovakcounterparts. Moreover, as Smithhas urged, thecongregation and denominationshould be studiedas one of severalalternate agenciesaround which immigrants could organizetheir lives in the searchfor ethnicidentity.7 AlthoughAmerican immigrant denominations have receivedmore attention thanthe parishes they guide and support, they also needto be analyzedas products of social necessity.A varietyof conceptualmodels may be used. The parochial visionof theclergy, for example, may be comparedto themore cosmopolitan 72 REVIEWS IN AMERICAN HISTORY / March 1976 visionof the episcopate. Conflicts over Americanization also needfurther study, butwithin a comparativeframework. Like the Catholics,Lutherans and other Protestantshave also had theiron-going struggles between Americanizers and anti-Americanizers.8 In sum,major contributions to ourunderstanding of Americansocial history remainto be madethrough the study of immigrantchurches. Dolan has provided an excellentmodel and has seta highstandard of scholarship for others to follow. He hasnot given us theentire story of the immigrant Catholic church in New York; onemight wish, for example, that he haddevoted more attention to the parish as an institutionalweapon to fightthe nativismof the Know-Nothingera. Yet, by comparingthe experiences of theIrish and Germans,he showshow thechurch resolvedsome of its problems of unity and prepared itself to receive the enormous numbersof Italians,Poles, Slovenians,and otherswho came later.

ProfessorLuebke, Department of History, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, is the authorof Bonds of Loyalty:German-Americans in World War 1 (1974).

1. RudolphJ. Vecoli, "contadiniin Chicago:A Critiqueof The Uprooted,"Journal of American History 51 (December1864): 404-17. 2. RudolphJ. Vecoli, "Prelatesand Peasants:Italian Immigrants and theCatholic Church," Journal of Social History2 (Spring1969): 217-68. 3. VictorR. Greene,"For God and Country:The Originsof Slavic Self-consciousnessin America,"Church History35 (December1966): 446-60. 4. TimothyL. Smith,"Religious Denominationsas EthnicCommunities: A RegionalCase Study,"Church History35 (June1966): 207-26. 5. Ibid., p. 217. 6. Silvano Tomasi,Piety and Power: The Role of the Italian Parishes in theNew YorkMetropolitan Area, 1880-1930 (New York: Centerfor Migration Studies, 1975), p. 180. See also his "The EthnicChurch and the Integrationof ItalianImmigrants in the United States" in The Italian Experience in theUnited States, ed. SilvanoM. Tomasiand MadelineH. Engel (New York:Center for Migration Studies, 1970), pp. 163-93. 7. Smith,"Religious Denominations," p. 226. 8. AndrewM. Greeleyhas conceptualizedthe entire sweep of AmericanCatholic church history in theseterms. See his The CatholicExperience (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,1967).