XIX an ASPECT of the PROBLEM of RELIGIOUS FREEDOM in the FRENCH and AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS in the Year 1790 Two Men Were Consecrat
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XIX AN ASPECT OF THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THE FRENCH AND AMERICAN REVOLUTIONS In the year 1790 two men were consecrated bishops, one in the newly formed United States of America, John Carroll of Baltimore, and the other in the new French constitutional monarchy, the Abbé Henri Grégoire. Each faced the challenge of relating the Church to a revo lutionary and secular state. Carroll had to work out his solution first and under rather unique conditions. He was a Jesuit priest, trained in European institutions, who returned to America in 1774 after the Jesuits had been sup pressed. He arrived to find that his brother, cousin and other lead ing Catholics had thrown in their lot with the Revolutionaries. The Catholics in English-speaking America, who were a tiny minority of about one per cent of the population, largely opted for the Revo lutionary cause, primarily, I think, because they knew or suspected that England would extend to America its ban on Catholic worship. Daniel Carroll, the Bishop's brother, played important roles in revo lutionary affairs; his cousin, Charles, was the one Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence; both were involved in working out what later became thç First Amendment to the Constitution.1 It was John Carroll's task to organize and run the widely dispersed Catholic congregations. Especially in view of the fact that the Jesuits were suppressed, his genius in creating a viable, organized diocese out of the thirteen colonies and adjacent territories is a wonderful saga, but it is not our present concern. Rather, let us look at the way in which he reconciled Catholic support for a secular state and justified religious tolerance for all groups, while steadfastly maintaining that Catholicism is the only true religion and that its members should actively work toward bringing everyone into the bosom of the Church. See John Gilmary Shea, The Life and Times of the Most Rev. John Carroll (New York: J. G. Shea, 1988), chaps. 1-4; Peter Guilday, The Life and Times of John Carroll (New York: Encyclopedia Press, 1922), chaps. 1-7; and Annabelle M. Melville, John Carroll of Baltimore (New York: Scribners, 1955), chaps. 1-6. See also the articles on the members of the Carroll family in The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. Ill (1967), pp. 151-154. THE PROBLEM OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 309 I should like to compare Carroll's views, expressed in a few papers, to those of Henri Grégoire. Throughout it should be kept in mind that the Catholics were a tiny minority, legally recognized in only three colonies at the outset of the Revolution. Even after the Revolution, it was not clear that the new republic would tolerate Catholicism or Judaism until the First Amendment was ratified in the spring of 1789.2 Hence, Carroll had to fend off charges that Catholicism was subversive to the new state and show that religious freedom for Catholics would be a general benefit for the country as a whole, not simply a pleasant boon for its 30,000 Catholics. Early America had a fair share of anti-Catholic writers arguing that the Pope or the Church was the Anti-Christ.3 Possibly because of the small number of Catholics, these polemics in Amer ica do not seem to have carried as much weight as similar attacks in England. Undoubtedly, Carroll's expositions helped in the intel lectual sphere, while his brother's efforts did much to incorporate a clause in the Constitution stating that there shall be no religious qual ifications for public office, and another in the First Amendment to the effect that Congress shall pass no law establishing any religion. The first was in conflict with laws in several states forbidding Catholics and non-Christians from holding office; both Jews and Catholics had to fight these through the courts for the next forty or fifty years.4 It would appear that America, in contrast to other countries, was able to give Jews and Catholics political rights without a struggle because the Constitutional provision and the First Amendment applied only to what the Federal government could not do. This left the states with their exclusionary regulations and bigotry continuing for several decades. While Bishop Carroll was trying to nurture and protect the small widely dispersed flock, and make it a meaningful religious commu nity with schools, teachers, etc., Grégoire faced a totally different See William George Torpey, Judicial Doctrines of Religious Rights in America (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1948), pp. 3-26. The Jewish case was actually different for some of the American Protestant leaders such as President Ezra Stiles of Yale. These Millenarians viewed the few actual Jews and the possible Jewish Indians (The Lost Tribes) as potential creators of the Millennium. Hence, they felt no need or desire to exclude them from society. Some of this literature is dealt with in Thomas More Brown, "The Image of the Beast: Anti-Papal Rhetoric in Colonial America", in Richard O. Curry and Thomas M. Brown, Conspiracy, The Fear of Subversion in American History (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), pp. 1-20. 4 Torpey, Judicial Doctrines, p. 16, gives the religious qualifications for office- holding in each of the thirteen states. .