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Gutowski submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in History Signatures^of Committee: yy* Dean .of the College Date 1992 The American University 73/3 Washington, DC 20016 THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRAF? © c o p y rig h t 1992 James A. Gutowski all rights reserved JOHN COURTNEY MURRAY AND THE VINDICATION OF THE AMERICAN PROPOSITION BY James A. Gutowski ABSTRACT This work offers an explanation of how John Courtney Murray's theory of church/state relations metamorphosed from being theologi­ cally suspect to becoming official Catholic doctrine in just ten years. The basic thesis is that the world events of the last century had awakened leaders of the Roman Catholic Church to the value of popular sovereignty as a means of protecting human freedom. The abuses of totalitarian and anti-religious governments overshadowed the Church's fear of democracy instilled by the excesses of the French Revolution 150 years earlier. In contrast to this, the Catho­ lic Church in the United States had flourished spectacularly in an environment of church/state separation. As a result, the Second Vatican Council accepted the American concept of religious belief as a matter of individual conscience. Murray used his theological expertise to articulate this American ideal in terms understood by the Catholic Church. ii ACKNOW LEDGEMENT S Although this paper bears my name as its author, much of the credit for its completion is due to those people who have helped me in a variety of ways. For this reason I would like to express my gratitude to the following: Dr. Alan Kraut, for his advice and direction during the course of my studies and in the production of this thesis; Dr. Peter Kuznick, for his direction in the Research Seminar and for his work on the thesis committee. Bishop Edwin Broderick, for his role as the "vox vivens" about the cooperation between Fr. Murray and Cardinal Spellman. Bob Schrauf, for his support and commiseration about the difficulties of doing graduate work on a part- time basis. my confreres in the Capuchin Order, for allowing me to pursue the history degree and for paying the bills. the Special Collections Division of the Joseph Lauinger Library at Georgetown University for the assistance given me in my research. to my friends, for their constant encouragement and support; and, most of all, to Josephine and Henry Gutowski, my parents, for their love, wisdom, and guidance throughout all my years of education. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS A b stract .................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... i i i Introduction............................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1. The Development of Church/State Doctrine............................................ 6 2. The Development of the American Proposition...................................... 19 3. The Church a fte r Vatican 1......................................................................... 28 4. John Courtney Murray and the Church/State Debate........................... 46 5. The Second Vatican Council......................................................................... 81 6. John Courtney Murray's Contribution to Religious Freedom 107 INTRODUCTION On 7 December 1965, the Second Vatican Council overwhelmingly approved the Declaration on Religious Liberty, thereby canonizing an individual's right to religious freedom as part of the official doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. This approval was the culmination of a long process that witnessed a startling reversed of the original premise of the document and, in so doing, broke a tradition of caesaro-papism dating back to the Edict of Constantine proclaimed in 313 CE. The passage of this Declaration is widely considered to be the primary contribution of the American hierarchy to the Council, and the vindication of the document's chief architect, John Courtney Murray.1 John Courtney Murray (1904-1967) was an American Jesuit who spent most of his life as a theologian and teacher at Woodstock College in Maryland. As Editor of Theological Studies he tried to develop an understanding of church-state relations based on the American experience yet rooted in the theological tradition of the Church. His early efforts elicited a negative backlash from powerful conservative forces within the Church, resulting in his being effectively silenced by ecclesiastical authorities in 1954. ijay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience (Doubleday & Co.: Garden City, NY, 1985), 425. 1 2 Ironically, that which brought the Jesuit international acclaim in 1965 had been the catalyst for his silencing a decade earlier. As an American Catholic theologian Murray was interested in broadening his church's theology of church/state relations to where Rome could accept as valid the church/state separation practiced in the United States. Accordingly, he returned to the "two swords theory," a guiding principle of Catholic church/state theory for over a milennium, and reinterpreted it in light of the new understanding of human experience that had developed since the Enlightenment. Essentially, Murray recognized that religious belief is a matter of individual personal conscience and should thus be free of any external coercion. Consequently, the role of the state is to protect the freedom necessary for the conscience to make such an act of belief. In promoting this theory, the Jesuit had to confront the complicated melange of history and politics that had bogged the Church down in an ossified defensive posture toward the rest of the world. He had to overcome both, the negative residues left by the Church's bad experiences with popular revolutions and anti-Catholic governments, and the resistance of a powerful group of theological reactionaries who viewed any attempt to reconcile Catholicism with the modern world as a betrayal of the Church's mission. In the end, however, events conspired to give Murray an opportunity undreamed of to promote his theory to the leaders of the Church and they voted it into the Church's official body of doctrine. Today John Courtney Murray is one of the heroes of American Catholicism. In light of his later success, the circumstances of the 3 Jesuit's censure raise severed important questions. What were the reasons for his silencing? From whom did the order to submit to censorship originate? Given the normally elephantine pace of Church proceedings, how could Murray's writings metamorphose from almost heretical to become official Church doctrine in ten years? This paper will address these questions by arguing the thesis that the Declaration is the Church's response to a world in which most monarchies have been replaced by popular governments. Although the Declaration was the definitive articulation of this new under­ standing of government, the seeds from which this blossomed had been germinating throughout the 20th century as successive popes tried to develop a modus vivendi for the Church under all types of government, from fascism through American democracy to communism. In contrast to the evolution occurring in papal diplomacy, the American Proposition, which promoted the separation of church and state as beneficial to all citizens, remained fundamentally the same. Although John Courtney Murray, as a professional theologian, developed the theoretical principles of the American Proposition in greater detail, his basic understanding of the position is almost identical to that of the American bishops that was condemned by Leo XIII in 1895. Because of th is