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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Contrary to widely held assumptions, American Catholics in the nineteenth century made some interesting and even original contributions to religious thought. This essay serves as an introductory resource for this significant body of writing. Surveying the period between 1840 and 1907, it identifies distinctive and self-aware American Catholic contributions to theology in three areas, the church question, Catholic Americanism, and modernism. Finally it draws attention to some of the unfinished agenda left to us by this largely forgotten tradition.
1 Hennesey, James S.J., “American History and the Theological Enterprise,” Catholic Theological Society of America Proceedings, 26 (1971), 91–115.Google Scholar
2 Hennesey, James S.J., “Roman Catholic Theology in the United States,” Louvain Studies 6 (1976), 11–22Google Scholar, and idem, “American Catholic Bibliography 1970-1982,” University of Notre Dame, Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, Working Papers, 12/1 (Fall 1982).
3 Ahlstrom, Sydney E., A Religious History of the American People (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Image, 1975), 2:15–73.Google Scholar
4 Walworth, Clarence E., The Oxford Movement in America, United States Catholic Historical Society Monograph Series, 30 (New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1974 [1895]).Google Scholar
5 Hennesey, James S.J.,, “A Prelude to Vatican I: American Bishops and the Definition of the Immaculate Conception,” Theological Studies 25 (1964), 412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 “Kenrick's manuals of theology in their time, were justly ranked among the best theological textbooks in the Catholic world and were frequently cited by European theologians”: Nolan, Hugh J., The Most Reverend Francis Patrick Kenrick Third Bishop of Philadelphia (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1948), p. ix.Google Scholar In the same vein, see Marschall, John P., “Francis Patrick Kenrick, 1851-1863: The Baltimore Years” (Washington, DC: unpublished doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1965), p. 180.Google Scholar
7 On Kenrick as biblical scholar, see Marschall, pp. 305ff.
8 In 1837 the Anglican Bishop of Vermont, John Henry Hopkins, had addressed a series of letters to the Roman Catholic hierarchy in the interests of church unity. Kenrick's replies to Hopkins' letters became the basis for his work on the primacy. This work, revised significantly in 1848, went through at least seven American editions.
9 “Short Notices,” The Rambler 5 (1980), 292.Google Scholar
10 Henessey, , “A Prelude to Vatican I,” p.413.Google Scholar For the text to which Hennesey refers, see Kenrick, F. P., Theologia Dogmaticae Tractatus Tres, De Revelatione, De Ecclesia, et De Verbo Dei (Philadelphia: L. Johnson, 1839), pp. 283–84;Google Scholar compare Kenrick's, Primacy (1845 edition), p. 357.Google Scholar It has been pointed out that, remarkable though it may be, Kenrick's statement on collegiality is identical to an earlier one by John England. See Lebuffe, Leon A., “Tensions in American Catholicism, 1820-1879, An Intellectual History” (Washington, DC: unpublished doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1973), p. 151.Google Scholar
11 Ippolito, Robert F., “Archbishop Kenrick of Baltimore: Preface to Infallibility,” American Ecclesiastical Review 169 (1974), 328.Google Scholar These two characterizations conflict only if Vatican I is interpreted in an excessively ultramontane sense. Kenrick probably would have stated the limits of the papal prerogative much more explicitly than does Pastor Aeternus. See chapter 21 of the 1845 edition of Primacy and chapter 17 of the 1848 edition for Kenrick's position on the pope's personal infallibility.
12 See Peter Richard Kenrick, “Speech” (Concio) in Clancy, Raymond T., “American Prelates in the Vatican Council,” Historical Records and Studies 28 (1937), 93–113Google Scholar, and the account in Schlaud, Barbara S.S.J., “Peter Richard Kenrick and Martin John Spalding: A Study of their Positions on Papal Infallibility” (Toronto: unpublished master's thesis, University of St. Michael's College, 1979).Google Scholar The younger Kenrick raised the question of whether the bishops had been given the opportunity to exercise their office, i.e., whether, in view of the conditions under which the debate took place, their approval would be genuine.
13 During the nineteenth century thirty-four plenary and provincial councils were held in the United States. This represented one quarter of the total number held in the entire Latin Church. The decrees of the American councils became “paradigmatic” for councils in other countries. See Correcco, Eugenio, La Formazione della Chiesa cattolica negli Stati Uniti d'America attraverso l'attività sinodale (BRESCIA: Morcelliana, 1970), p. 26.Google Scholar Hennesey had earlier maintained that the American Church had “the strongest nineteenth-century conciliar tradition in the Western Church”: “The Baltimore Council of 1866: An American Syllabus,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 76 (1965), 165.Google Scholar
14 Denzinger-Schönmetzer (34th edition, 1967), 2955. For the American interpretation, see “Pastoral Letter of the Most Rev. Martin John Spalding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore, to the Clergy and Laity of the Archdiocese: Promulgating the Jubilee, together with the Late Encyclical of the Holy Father, and the Syllabus of Errors Condemned” (Baltimore, MD: Kelly & Piet, 1865), esp. p. 10Google Scholar and the commentary by his nephew, Spalding, John Lancaster in The Life of the Most Rev. Martin J. Spaiding, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore (Baltimore, MD: J. Murphy, 1873), p. 273.Google Scholar See also Battersby, Agnes C., “American Public Opinion of the Syllabus Errorum of Pius IX” (Washington, DC: unpublished master's thesis, Catholic University of America, 1952).Google Scholar
15 Keane, John J., “Monsignor Corcoran,” American Catholic Quarterly Review 14 (1983), 738.Google Scholar
16 Hennesey, James, “James A. Corcoran's Mission to Rome, 1868-1869,” Catholic Historical Review 48 (July 1962), 157–81.Google Scholar Corcoran's reactions to the European theologians with whom he served on the preparatory commissions are instructive as well as amusing.
17 On Spalding's proposal for a moderate definition, see Spalding, Thomas W. C.F.X., Martin John Spalding (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press1, 1973), pp. 298ff., and Schlaud, “Peter Richard Kenrick and Martin John Spalding,” chapter 3.Google Scholar
18 For some interesting glimpses into Corcoran's character, see Callahan, Nelson J., ed., The Diary of Richard L. Burtsell Priest of New York, The Early Years, 1865-1868 (New York: Arno Press, 1978).Google Scholar
19 On Hewit see McSorley, Joseph C.S.P., Isaac Hecker and His Friends (revised edition; New York: Paulist, 1972)Google Scholar and Hewit's, own Problems of the Age (New York: Catholic Publication House, 1868).Google Scholar
20 The standard study of Americanism is McAvoy, Thomas T. C.S.C., The Americanist Heresy in Roman Catholicism (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1963).Google Scholar Although indispensable, this work needs to be supplemented by the more recent studies which will be cited below.
21 The literature on these controversies is too extensive to include here. Among them were: The Knights of Labor (secret societies), the school question, the McGlynn affair, the Parliament of Religions in Chicago, establishment of the Catholic University of America, Cahenslyism and the German question, the apostolic delegate and, to some extent, the temperance movement. See Cross, Robert D., The Emergence of Liberal Catholicisim (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958).Google Scholar
22 For the emphasis on ecclesiology, see Wangler, Thomas, “The Ecclesiology of Archbishop John Ireland: Its Nature, Development and Influence” (Milwaukee, WI: unpublished doctoral dissertation, Marquette University, 1968)Google Scholar and Reher, Margaret Mary, “The Church and the Kingdom of God in America: The Ecclesiology of the Americanists” (New York: unpublished doctoral dissertation, Fordham University, 1972).Google Scholar
23 A good example of such a proposal can be found in Denis J. O'Connell's 1897 Fribourg speech “A New Idea in the Life of Father Hecker.” For the text in which O'Connell proposes that Church law be modeled after Anglo-Saxon rather than Roman law, see the appendix to Fogarty, Gerald P. S.J.,, The Vatican and the Americanist Crisis: Denis J. O'Conneil, American Agent in Rome, 1885-1903, Miscellanea Historiae Pontificae, 36 (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1974).Google Scholar
24 On Americanism as an international movement, see the work of Fogarty cited above and Wangler, Thomas E., “The Birth of Americanism: ‘Westward the Apocalyptic Candelstick’,” Harvard Theological Review 65 (July 1972), 415–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Curran, R. Emmett S.J.,, Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Shaping of Conservative Catholicism in America, 1878-1902 (New York: Arno Press, 1978)Google Scholar and Ayers, Robert C., “The Americanists and Franz Xaver Kraus: An Historical Analysis of an International Liberal Catholic Combination, 1897-1898” (Syracuse: unpublished doctoral dissertation, Syracuse University, 1981).Google Scholar
25 See Jay Dolan's argument that continued emphasis on the role of the Americanists in the nineteenth-century Church distorts the religious landscape by ignoring “the pervasive strength of conservative evangelical piety that nurtured generations of Catholic Americans”: “American Catholics and Revival Religion,” Horizons 3/1 (1976), 56–57.Google Scholar
26 See Curran, Corrigan, pp. 21, 212, 483, and idem, “Prelude to ‘Americanism’: The New York Accademia and Clerical Radicalism in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Church History 47 (March 1978), 48-65.
27 Curran, , Corrigan, p. 490.Google Scholar
28 Callahan, , ed., Diary of Richard L. Burtsell, p. xviii.Google Scholar
29 See, e.g., Fogarty, , The Vatican and the Americanist Crisis, p. 250.Google Scholar
30 See Brownson's essays “Leroux on Humanity (Boston Quarterly Review, July, 1842), “The Mediatorial Life of Jesus” (1842), and “The Philosophy of History” (Democratic Review, May-June, 1843); all appear in Brownson, Henry F., ed., The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, 20 vols. (Detroit: Thorndike &Nourse, 1882), vol. 4.Google Scholar Also helpful is a section from Brownson's autiobiography, The Convert (1857) in Works 5:128–40.Google Scholar
31 Brownson's most dramatic statement of Catholic Americanism is found in “Mission of America” (1855) in Works, vol. 11.
32 Hecker's theology of history was expressed in his inner-Catholic writings, especially “The Present and Future Prospects of the Catholic Faith in the United States of North America,” Freeman's Journal, December 12, 19, 26 and January 2, 1857–1858Google Scholar (originally in Italian in Civiltà Caltolica); “The Future Triumph of the Church” in Sermons Delivered During the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore (Baltimore: Kelly & Piet, 1866), pp. 66–86;Google Scholar“La Situation Religieuse des États Unis,” Revue Générale (October 1867), 348–58;Google Scholar“An Exposition of the Church in View of Recent Difficulties and Controversies, and the Present Needs of the Age,” Catholic World 11 (April 1875), 117–38.Google Scholar See also my study of Hecker's, theology of history in “Providential Nation: An Historical-Theological Study of Isaac Hecker's ‘Americanism’,” (Toronto: unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of St. Michael's College, 1980).Google Scholar
33 For a further development of the ideas in this paragraph, see my “Isaac Hecker and Americanism,” Ecumenist 19 (November–December 1980), 9–12.Google Scholar
34 For a representative example see Keane, John J., “The Yorktown Centennial Celebration,” Catholic World 34 (November 1881), 274–84.Google Scholar In a letter to Hecker of October 22, 1881, Keane explicitly acknowledges Hecker's influence on the ideas in this, his first public espousal of Americanist ideas. The letter is preserved in the Paulist Archives. On Keane also see Wangler, Thomas E., “A Bibliography of the Writings of Archbishop John J. Keane,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 91 (1980), 60–73.Google Scholar
35 On this controversy, see McAvoy, , The Americanist Heresy in Roman Catholicism, pp. 300–22Google Scholar, and Reher, “The Church and the Kingdom of God in America,” chapter 4.
36 See Lienhard, Joseph S.J.,, “The New York Review and Modernism in America,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 82 (1971), 67–82;Google ScholarDeVito, Michael J., The New York Review (1905-1908), United States Catholic Historical Society Monograph Series, 34 (New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1977).Google Scholar
37 Hanna's, article appeared in the Review's first volume: 1/1 (August-September 1905), 303–16;Google Scholar 1/2 (October-November 1905), 425-36; 1/3 (December-January 1905-1906), 597-615.
38 DeVito, p. 305.
39 See John Tracy Ellis' discussion of Pascendi's aftermath in “The Formation of the American Priest: An Historical Perspective” in Ellis, John Tracy, ed., The Catholic Priest in the United States: Historical Investigations (Collegeville, MN: St. John's University Press, 1971), p. 70.Google Scholar
40 See Slattery, John R., “How My Priesthood Dropped From Me,” The Independent 61 (September 6, 1906), 565–71Google Scholar, and idem, “The Workings of Modernism,” American Journal of Theology 13 (October 1909), 555-74. For the best theological treatment of Sullivan, see McGarry, Michael B. C.S.P., “Modernism in the United States: William Laurence Sullivan, 1872-1935,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 90 (1979), 33–35;Google Scholar see also Ratté, John, Three Modernists: Alfred Loisy, George Tyrell, William L. Sullivan (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1967), pp. 259–336.Google Scholar
41 For a general account of the evolution question in Catholic thought at this time, see Gannon, Michael V., “Before and After Modernism: The Intellectual Isolation of the American Priest,” in Ellis, , ed., The Catholic Priest in the United States, pp. 313–18.Google Scholar
42 Zahm, John A. C.S.C., Evolution and Dogma (New York: Arno Press, 1978 [1896]), p. 75.Google Scholar On Zahm's life and work, see Weber, Ralph E., Notre Dame's John Zahm: American Catholic Apologist and Educator (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961).Google Scholar
43 Zahm, John A. C.S.C., Scientific Theory and Catholic Doctrine (Chicago: D. H. McBride, 1896), p. 170;Google Scholar see chapter 9 for a clear statement of Zahm's conclusions.
44 See Fogarty, p. 262, and Hennesey, James S.J.,, American Catholics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 201–202.Google Scholar
45 See Fogarty, pp. 286-87, and Gannon, pp. 317-18.
46 Noone, Bernard F.S.C., “American Catholic Periodicals and the Biblical Question, 1893-1908,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 91 (1980), 85–108.Google Scholar
47 Reher, Margaret Mary, “Pope Leo XIII and ‘Americanism’,” Theological Studies 34 (1973), 689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
48 Hennesey, , American Catholics, p. 203.Google Scholar
49 See Shea, William M., “The Subjectivity of the Theologian,” Thomist 45 (April 1981), 194–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
50 In his recent work, American Catholic Social Ethics: Twentieth-Century Approaches (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982)Google Scholar, Charles E. Curran both recognizes and fulfills the need for historical sensitivity in his own area of moral theology.
51 I am thinking of Braxton, Edward, The Wisdom Community (New York: Paulist, 1981)Google Scholar and “American Bishops Meet: A Theological Agenda,” America, May 22, 1872, pp. 393–96Google Scholar, and Dulles, Avery S.J.,, A Church to Believe In: Discipleship and the Dynamics of Freedom (New York: Crossroad, 1982), esp. chapter 8.Google Scholar
52 See the results of the Gallup poll on evangelical Christianity in the United States in Christianity Today, December 21,1979 and the discussion of evangelical theology in Ferm, Deane William, Contemporary American Theologies: A Critical Survey (New York: Seabury, 1981), chapter 6.Google Scholar Ferm works from a definition of the term “evangelical” by Sydney Ahlstrom who emphasizes that this movement embraces Christians from diverse confessional families (pp. 96-97).
53 See the exchanges in Williamson, Peter and Perrota, Kevin, eds., Christianity Confronts Modernity (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant Books, 1981).Google Scholar