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... Bishop Chatard: Secret Societies, Irish Nationalists, Americanists, and Modernists, 1878-1918 This chapter deals with a set of movements that Bishop Chatard, a religious, social, and political conservative, had to deal with. Born into comfort, rector of the American College in Rome, Chatard, so far as he was able, operated as a brakeman to some of and the salient developments of Gilded Age America, in particular, trade unionism, Irish nationalism, and the efforts of the Modernists to bring the Church up to date and escape from medieval scholasticism. Nor did he share the confidence of the Americanist bishops who reveled in the freedom found in the United States and believed that here the Church had nothing to fear from the state. In resisting such efforts in his lifetime Chatard was on the winning side, with the exception of trade unionism, whose legitimacy was accepted by the Church in the encyclical, Rerum Novarum. In dealing with the laity Chatards habit was to lay down the law. Nothing unusual in that for a bishop of that era or later. As for the citys Irish nationalists, however, with Irelands independence as their goal and by force, if need be, the clergy would get respect but not docility. The outstanding Irish revolutionary movement of the era in the United States was the Clan na Gael, chiefly, but not solely a money raising operation. In Indianapolis, the Clan included among its active members the leaders of the Irish community. In 1899 Chatard suffered a stroke which affected his vision. Given an auxiliary bishop in 1900, Denis ODonaghue, a decade of limited activity followed. In 1910, ODonaghue named bishop of Louisville, Kentucky, Joseph Chartrand was named Chatards co-adjutor with the right of succession. Chatards health continued to worsen and he died in 1918. The chapter ends with a discussion of Chatards standing among his episcopal contemporaries. Copyright, 2018, William Doherty. All rights reserved. 1 Bishop Chatard: Secret Societies, Irish Nationalists, Americanists and Modernists, 1878-1918 Centuries of oppression and misgovernment have generated a deep-rooted and cordial hatred of the English name and nation in the minds of the vast majority of the Irish.1 A Catholic cannot be an anarchist, socialist or that sort of revolutionary. He is forbidden to take part in mob rule, in riots, in lynchings . . . . He is bound to be patriotic.2 A salient feature of American society in the last third of the nineteenth century was the disproportionate number of Catholic immigrants who worked as laborers. Added to the many Germans and Irish already settled, came the rising tide in the 1880s of the new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, many of them Catholic, mostly poor, young, and male with little or no English. Whether old or new, immigrant Catholics in the main attended Mass, knew their priest, and identified with their parish. As a way of bridging the old country with the new, it promised that the clergy and bishops would wield considerable influence over them. (It was quite otherwise for Protestants; as one minister admitted, in 1887, the Protestant churches, as a rule, have no following among the workingmen. Everybody knows it.) 3 Rome, never a friend of Enlightenment secularity, had long established its bona fides as an enemy of social and political radicalism of any sort. It was natural then that the American bishops, especially the conservatives among them, saw the path to acceptance through presenting the Church not as an alien element in a Protestant nation, but as a bulwark of the existing social order. Confidence that they could do so rested in the well-nigh unquestioned status of their own hierarchical authority and the series of miniature hierarchies, including the pastor within the parish, the father within the family, and the employer within the firm, [that] remained cornerstones of the Catholic vision.4 It was as a conservative bulwark that Bishop Francis Silas Chatards first pastoral, sent to Indianapolis from Rome, May 1878, dealt with Church authority and the importance of education: Good citizens, he wrote, were "a most desirable thing in this republic of ours, inasmuch as this form of government allows the greatest liberty--license, in fact, where there arises danger to the safety of the country . . . . Religion . . . is therefore the 1 Jay P. Dolan, The Irish Americans (Bloomsbury Press: New York, 2008), 50. 2 Catholic Columbian Record, 14 May 1909, 4. 3 Samuel Lane Loomis, Modern Cities and Their Religious Problems, 1887, quoted in McGreevey, Catholics and American Freedom, 128. 4 McGreevey, Catholics and American Freedom, 137. 2 more necessary, the freer is the form of government."5 Such warnings that American liberty might lurch into license became the boilerplate of the hierarchy.6 Thirty years later, the Catholic Columbian Record was just as blunt about the Churchs role as defender of the existing order: Noting the increase of its laity in recent decades, it argued that its power over its members are occasions for thanksgiving on the part of the government for the Church steadfastly teaches respect for law and order, obedience to authorities, and enjoins its communicants to be law-abiding and industrious. A Catholic cannot be an anarchist, socialist or that sort of revolutionary. He is forbidden to take part in mob rule, in riots, in lynchings . . . . He is bound to be patriotic.7 Beyond its unhappy experience with secularism and revolution over the last century and a half, was that in the Gilded Age and later, socially and economically, the American bishops were themselves successful men. They lived well, crossing the Atlantic almost with the frequency of the rich, and were accepted generally by influential non-Catholics as standing with them on the top rungs of the social ladder.8 Even their clothes-frock coat, cravat, silk hat--made them indistinguishable from the merchant banker or captain of industry of the day. The diocesan clergy, with room, board, and the services of a cook-housemaid provided, with no family to support or children to educate, were likewise generally seen as respectable, educated men who lived comparatively well on their salaries. Msgr. August Bessonies, 44 years an influential and beloved Indianapolis resident who enjoyed great prestige, made seven voyages to Europe in his first four decades as a priest; his last, in 1900, the year before his death, was to visit the Paris World Exposition.9 In 1879 the yearly salary of Fr. Denis ODonaghue, parish priest of St. Patrick, was $400, while common laborers on the city payroll made but a $1.00 a day and policemen and firemen $1.25.10 Nor were clergy subject to the vicissitudes of slack times, layoffs, and factory closings. In 1894, while most parishioners were of the manual labor class and worked for meager wages, the pastor and his assistant at St. Johns Church earned $400 and $300 a year, 5 Blanchard, Catholic Church in Indiana, 112. 6 After the failure of the New Record in 1910 the Columbian Record [Columbus, Ohio] served as the Indianapolis diocesan paper. The bishop of Peoria in 1877, John Lancaster Spalding, in an 1876 article in The Catholic World, likewise claimed that only the Catholic Church could hold the line against social upheaval. OBrien, Public Catholicism, 82, 83. 7 Catholic Columbian Record, 14 May 1909, 4. 8 OBrien, Public Catholicism, 82, 83. 9 Western Citizen, 20 November 1880; Indianapolis Star Magazine, 20 September 1959, 45. Bessonies long residence, character, and popularity explain the Board of Healths permission to bury him in St. Johns at the foot of its Sacred Heart chapel. A bronze plaque marks the grave. Indianapolis News, 23 February 1901, 16. 10 Council Proceedings, 1870-1878, passim. 3 respectively.11 Despite low salaries, their education, professional rank, and social standing placed priests in the respectable middle class. Lacking any sympathy with socialism and kindred novelties, some bishops, Chatard not least, bore considerable animosity toward any organization which mixed Catholics and non-Catholics or Catholic groups not under the chaplaincy of a priest and therefore not under the control of the hierarchy.12 Such promiscuous association of the faithful with non-Catholics the Church denominated perverse and a danger to the Catholic. In addition, the quasi-religious rituals common to trade unions of the periodinfluenced by or borrowed from freemasonryalso constituted a challenge to church authority: By driving a wedge between the bishop and the union member it threatened schism or heresy and rendered the sacrament of confession problematic. As the priest-author of A Thousand and One Objections to Secret Societies, 1893, argued, because the Church has charge of souls, through the confessional it had the right to know what Catholics did and how they did it; otherwise, how could it judge and keep the conscience of the faithful?13 Beyond the problem posed by the quasi-religious rituals of trade unions, their resort to strikes not only challenged property, but to protect members from reprisals from their employers, unions were usually secret, oath-bound societies. In much of Europe such organizations targeted the Catholic Church and attacked the papacy. The most important of these was Freemasonry: first condemned by Clement VIIs, encycliucal, In Eminenti (1738), seven subsequent popes forbade membership on penalty of automatic excommunication. Accounts differ on whether continental freemasonry was anti-Catholic as such or because the Catholic Church was hostile to it: Did the freemasons of Italy, France, and Spain set out to destroy Catholicism or was this a fanciful picture that the popes adopted that became tradition? The truth, according to one scholar of the question, is at present beyond the reach of accurate historical inquiry. And if continental freemasonry was as hostile as the popes believed, was it also true of masonry in England, Canada, and the United States?14 It was 11 Western Citizen, 15 February 1879, 1; Horan, Old St. Johns, 183. By contrast, in 1878 the mayor received $1,800 a year, the city attorney, $1500, the police chief $1000, and the fire chief $1200. Mainline Protestant ministers in Indianapolis did very well, with salaries running to $2000 and $3000 a year 12 David Montgomery, Beyond Equality (New York, 1972), 124-128; Catholics made up at least half of the A.F. of L. in 1900-1910, yet the Church did little to support unions. OBrien, Public Catholicism, has a good discussion of these matters 137-151. 13 Cited in Mecklin, Ku Klux Klan, 213-215. 14 Chadwick, History of the Popes, 304, was convinced that Canadian and American masonry were as mild as Englands. In Ireland, too, masonry existed, not as some Orange Order to suppress Catholicism, but as a convivial club. Daniel OConnell (1775-1847), the Irish Liberator, was an active freemason, master of his Dublin lodge, and founder of a lodge in Tralee. T. Desmond Williams, The Freemasons, in Williams, ed., Secret Societies in Ireland (Harper & Row: New 4 enough that Leo XIII (1878-1905), believing that masonry represented the kingdom of Satan, excommunicated Catholics who joined. Still, there are secret societies and secret societies: since neither the Odd Fellows nor the Sons of Temperance appeared to be conspiratorial, banning them did not seem fair. That was why the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1866, declared that no one in any ecclesiastical dignity should condemn by name any society [unless it was a] certainty and beyond all doubt that it was clearly one of those intended by the Holy See. The Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884, agreed that any condemnation be reserved to a committee of all the American archbishops. If unanimity was lacking, Rome would decide the m1918atter (as happened in a vote in 1886 not to ban Knights of Labor, and in 1892 regarding the Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, and the Sons of Temperance). The Holy Office wanted the faithful kept from them, but Pope Leo XIII left execution of the decree to each U.S. archbishop. Ultimately, it was decided that rather than have Catholics lose their insurance benefits, they could be passive members. What is not in doubt is the popularity of secret fraternal societies in Gilded Age America: between 1880 and 1900 nearly 500 new ones were founded and by the latter date enrolled over six million.15 The irony of the Churchs reservations about trade unions was that its immigrant, working class laity provided a majority of the leadership and much of the backbone of the American labor movement. In the Knights of Labors heyday, the 1870s to the mid-1880s, Catholics were at least two-thirds of the membership; by 1900, with Catholics about sixteen percent of the population, they were fully half of the American Federation of Labor (AF of L) which had replaced the Knights. That the rank and file and the officers were overwhelmingly Irish (as was the hierarchy and most of the clergy) mattered, too, for secret societies were no novelty to Irish Catholics immigrants: As a colonized people, centuries of English rule had tutored them in clandestine resistance. Responding to the confiscation of Irish property by the Tudors in the seventeenth century and the penal laws16 of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, secret radical societies-outlaw Tories and Rapparees flourished. Rural grievances in the 1740s--absentee landlords, rack rents, ditching the commons for pasturage rather than tillage, tithes for the Protestant Church of Ireland, and hearth York, 1973), 50. Terrence V. Powderly, Master Workman of the Knights of Labor, joined the Masons in 1900. The 1917 revision of the Canon Law, however, repeated the 1738 ban that Catholic masons and others of the same sort which plot against the Church or legal civil authority incur excommunication. Since then, Church authorities have oscillated between quiet acceptance and condemnation of freemasony. 15 Ellis, ed., Documents in Catholic History, f.n., 434. Parliamentary legislation in the early 18 th century sought to exclude Catholics from public life and politics; for example, Catholic education was illegal, priests had to leave the country, nor could Catholics buy land or obtain a mortgage on it. Catholic estates were subject to partible inheritance, meaning that at the owners death each son received an equal portion (except if one turned Protestant he would inherit the lot). This insured that over time the size and percentage of Catholic landholdings would diminish, and with it Catholic economic well-being and influence. Robert Kee, The Green Flag: The Turbulent History of the Irish National Movement (Delacourte Press: New York, 1972), 19, 20. 16 5 moneycreated the Whiteboys. Hard put peasants set hayricks and manor houses ablaze, maimed cattle, and assaulted landlords, their agents, and even clergymen. (Not all landlords were Protestant and since the Catholic clergy levied relatively high fees for marriages, baptisms, etc., the lay and clerical leaders of the Catholic community might also come under attack). The particular contribution of the Whiteboys to Irelands secret societies that followed was the oath--total observance of secrecy and also absolute obedience to the organization and those in charge of it.17 The Whiteboys were succeeded by the Rightboys (1780s), United Irishmen (1790s), and Ribbonmen (early 1800s). In 1825, a contributor to the Edinburgh Review admitted, Centuries of oppression and misgovernment have generated a deep-rooted and cordial hatred of the English name and nation in the minds of the vast majority of the Irish.18 Cognizant of Irish hatred and the desire of many for revenge, in 1860 the London Times observed We must gird our loins to encounter the Nemesis of seven centuries misgovernment.19 It is not a compliment, but it is a fact that the Irish are reputed to be good haters. Dont get mad, get even, is part of the lore. In any case, Irish nationalism among its ex-patriots flourished wherever they ended up: No other immigrant groups in nineteenth century America developed so passionate a devotion to the land of their birth as did the sons and daughters of Erin. Other immigrants maintained an interest, but only among the Irish was this interest so deeply rooted that it was transmitted to the second, third and even fourth generations, . . . It was a savage hatred of England which animated the great body of Irish emigrants and their descendents.20 As Yeats put it: Out of Ireland we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mothers womb a fanatic heart.21 A new group, the Fenian Brotherhood, by combining the rebel Irish at home and in America, would have long-lasting consequences. Its name derived from Fianna, the warrior caste of Irish legend led by Fionn MacCuchail (Finn MacCool), it was co-founded in 1858 by two veterans of the 1848 Young Ireland uprising, John OMahony in New York City and James Stephens in Dublin. The first mass nationalist organization in Irish-American history, physical force was its means toward achieving an independent Irish republic. In true Whiteboy fashion, members swore in the presence of God to renounce allegiance to the Queen, to take arms . . . at a moments warning and to make Ireland an Independent Democratic Republic, and to yield implicit obedience to the commanders and superiors of 17 T. Desmond Williams, ed., Secret Societies in Ireland (Harper&Row: New York, 1973), 8. Dolan, Irish Americans, 50. 19 Cited in Arnold Schrier, Ireland and American Emigration, 1850-1900 (University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis 1958), 123, 124. 18 produced eager subscribers to the dynamite funds. OConnor, Parnell Movement, 117. 21 Lecky attributed it to the great clearances and the unaided emigration following the famine. As another put it, it was those events that sowed in Irish breasts the feeling that in due time produced eager subscribers to the dynamite funds. OConnor, Parnell Movement, 117. 6 the society.22 By 1865 the Fenians claimed 25,000 members in America alone. Working in tandem with Stephens organization, the American Fenians raised almost $500,000 between 1858 and 1866, much of it used for raids on British customhouses, posts, and forts in Canada; the idea was to seize territory to pressure England to withdraw from Ireland. Five such raids, mustering anywhere from a few dozen men to a thousand or more, were launched from American soil between 1866 and 1871. None had any great success, although the threat of additional raids on Canada continued into the 1880s. Among the difficulties the Fenians faced was that Irelands Catholic bishops were adamantly opposed to the nationalist movement (having proscribed the United Irishmen decades before the Fenians appeared). The great majority of the hierarchy continued to favor the Irish Parliamentary party and the British connection. Popes Gregory XVI, Pius IX, and Leo XIII all condemned secret societies--Pius IX the Fenians by name in 1870, a decree promulgated in every United States diocese. In many parishes Fenianism was denounced from the pulpit and absolution withheld in the confessional if the penitent refused to abjure it. Yet denunciations and threats of excommunication were often ineffective: Holding that the clergy, having little experience of the world, were bad guides, Fenians wanted No priest in politics. Moreover, the clergy, being under episcopal discipline were therefore not free agents.23 For these and other reasons, as a revolutionary political movement the Brotherhood did not scruple to oppose the hierarchy. When it came to the Fenian Brotherhood, Indiana was in on the ground floor in the person of Fr. Edward OFlaherty: Born at Dingle, County Kerry, ca. 1818, ordained in Ireland, ca. 1844, OFlaherty arrived in Buffalo, New York in the late 1840s and came to Indiana in 1854. Appointed the first resident priest at Crawfordsville, in 1859, he built St Bernards, the first church and rectory there. Thanks to the railroad constructed between Lafayette and New Albany in the late 1840s, the area had attracted a good many Irish immigrants: St. Bernards marriage records of the 1850s and 1860s are replete with Seans and Brigids, Patricks and Kates uniting Meehan and Murphy, Brennan and Bresnahan, OConnell and OSullivan. (Of the fourteen marriages in 1860, at least twelve both bride and groom had Irish surnames.) Given this shared ethnicity, priest and parishioners celebrated St. Patricks Day with parades and encouraged the Irish in their fight for independence. It was OFlaherty who organized the Indianapolis Circle of the Fenian Brotherhood in 1859 and traveled the state recruiting members.24 When the priest went home in 1861 for five months to see family and friends, no doubt Fenian business was done as well. When OFlaherty died of consumption, 8 August 1863, age 46, the whole Crawfordsville parish accompanied his remains to Lafayette for the funeral.25 The Fenians provided the gravestone, which reads, in part: In memory of Rev. Fr. Edward OFlaherty, elected 22 Robert Kee, The Green Flag, 300-302. 23 Williams, ed., Secret Societies in Ireland, ch. 7. Jack W. Porter and William F. Stineman, The Catholic Church in Greencastle, Indiana, 1848-1978 (Greencastle, Indiana, 1978), 21. 24 7 State Couter [?] of the Fenian Brotherhood of Indiana . . . . [A]lways popular with the people, he was praised for his service to the church, his eloquence as a defender of liberty, and his personal sacrifices in the cause of Irish emancipation. The Poor Mans Friend/The Oppressors Foe/In silence moulders here below. 26 His parishioners may have loved him, but not his bishop. On 13 November 1859, Ft. Wayne Bishop John Luers wrote to Cincinnati Archbishop John B. Purcell that he had temporarily withdrawn all faculties from OFlaherty--for having excommunicated two Irishmen and refusing to say Mass the following Sunday until they left the church; for cursing and driving away another man who lacked the dollar demanded in addition to the pew rent at Christmas and Easter; and for buying two lots in his own name with proceeds from money from the railroads and not deeding them to the parish. In sum, OFlaherty had rendered himself odious and given scandal. Again, in January 1863, Bishop Leurs, noting that the Fenian movement was popular with threefourths of the Irish, was determined to forbid OFlaherty from joining the Phoenix Society, another group agitating for Irelands independence. Even after OFlahertys death, Luers counted the priests influence on his congregation as having done much harm there.27 That influence could be seen in 1866, three years after his death: at one of the largest meetings ever held in Indianapolis to that time, the Fenians raised funds to strike at England by invading Canada. Led by Captain James Hagerty, 130 men of the city (part of a breakaway faction) joined an invasion of Canada at Buffalo, New York, the first of two cross border raids that year; although they defeated a raw Canadian militia upon their return to Buffalo the men were arrested by federal authorities. Its failure and ensuing discord led to the disbanding of the local organization about 1869.28 Fr. OFlaherty was but one of many Fenians to draw the worried attention of the American bishops. The decade from 1864 to 1873 saw a lively correspondence among them and with Rome regarding the order. Cincinnati Archbishop Purcell, under whom the Vincennes Diocese fell, received more than a dozen letters on the subject. Bishop Luers, for one, judged Fenianism strongest in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, especially in congregations whose pastors lack influence due to their own improper conduct.29 Most bishops were convinced of the movements evil spirit, but some were also certain that clerical attacks against the Fenians would boomerang,30 for it was known that not a few priests were secret members and many others 26 Buried in St. Patricks addition, St. Marys Cemetery, Lafayette, Indiana; Porter and Stineman, The Catholic Church in Greencastle, 21; Giffin, The Irish, 72. Letter to Fr. Stineman from Patricia J. Fitzsimons, sexton, St. Marys Cemetery, 2122 Old Romney Road, Lafayette, Indiana, 47905. Copy in authors possession. 28 Peopling Indiana, 266. The Fenians held a state convention in Indianapolis in 1868; When further dissension caused the organization to disband, ca. 1869, Indianapolis nationalists joined the Emmet Guards. Giffin, The Irish, 72; See also Holloway, 280. 29 Luers to Purcell, 23 March 1864, Notre Dame Archives. 30 Denver Bishop Joseph Machebouef (26 March 1868) complained that because of his opposition to Fenianism, members refuse to contribute to his support and it has hurt finances. Buffalo Bishop John Timon (8 December 1865) wrote that though the Fenians gave much trouble he hasnt denounced them, but rather instructed his priests to discourage adhesion to them as much as they can. 8 were sympathizers.31 Being of different minds as how to proceed, the bishops were unable to unite against it: Archbishop James Woods of Philadelphia wrote Purcell of his conviction that hard blows was what were needed (6 April 1865), while Baltimores Martin Spalding (11 August 1865) thought if left alone it would die out. Purcell himself was reluctant to denounce the society, believing that the greater part of the Fenians were simply good Catholics animated by hatred of England for its centuries-long persecution of Ireland. He explained to Rome (16 September 1870) that he wished to hold off executing the decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition denouncing the society (12 January 1870), citing a New York priest who, having attacked the Fenians in a sermon at Mass, saw his congregation abandon the service. When Rome insisted that the Inquisitions decree be enforced in America (January 1871), Bishop William McCloskey of Louisville, like Purcell, saw great trouble ahead unless Rome freed them from the obligation (letter to Purcell, 25 April 1871). Those bishops who believed that time worked against the Fenians had reason on their side: Irelands Catholic bishops were opposed to the nationalist movement, the peasantry was apathetic, and the English well informed.32 The Fenians held their last congress, in 1876, and the organization collapsed with John OMahonys death in 1877. The name Fenianism lives on as generic for those Irishmen devoted to uniting the whole of the Island under a republic by any means possible. *** Secret societies would take up much of Bishop Chatards time, beginning with his first synod in December 1878, a pastoral issued on the Feast of the Epiphany, 1879, and in a published essay, Catholic Societies, April 1879.33 In the latter Chatard warned the faithful against joining any oath-bound society which excluded directly or indirectly the supervision of the Church . . . . Any who did so would be excommunicated.34 He, and others like him, saw secret societies in the United States through a European lens--selfish, lawless, violent, in their spirit Protestant--meaning of private judgment and self-assertion, which leads men to condemn authority which is ultimately from God.35 Chatard saved his darkest fears for his commonplace book--his belief that secret societies assassinate their opponents and that Joseph Mazzini (the liberal Italian nationalist) had given a passport and a dagger to an assassin.36 That was the sort of people the Church believed it was dealing with. 31 Bishop Amadeus Rappe of Cleveland wrote Purcell (13 September 1865) that many St. Louis priests secretly encouraged the Fenians, that bad cause. Leurs also believed that not a few clergy were secretly in the movement. (23 March 1864 to Purcell) 32 Schrier, Ireland and American Emigration, 125. 33 Published in the American Quarterly Review and later collected in Occasional Essays (New York, 1894), 166-181. 34 Browne, Knights of Labor, 27. 35 Occasional Essays, 1894, 173-175. 36 Chatard papers, commonplace book, Box A-10. DUnita Cattolica was his source. 9 Beyond freemasonry and other secret societies, the bishops consistently condemned socialism, partly on moral grounds (socialists regarded divorce as a root reform), but also as a source of class conflict and for representing the leveling tendency of the day.37 Chatard, not blind to labors hardships, blamed the wealthy class, whose grasping at wealth has brought about this uprising against them. But like the laissez-faire theorists of that day (and ours), he attributed the differences between rich and poor to talent or its lack.38 Though he understood that capitalists were often unjust and the poor hardworking man were only seeking support in combinations and in his numbers, but that introduced its own evils, for bound by oath woe to those who will not strike when ordered: The man who continues to work [during a strike] is made to understand that he must desist on pain of risk to life or limb, and the threat is very often carried out. What then was the worker to do in the face of the greed of the rich? Chatards advice to labor was simply stifle their envy of capitalists by looking to heaven, . . .39 But shouldnt the Church champion the poor? And how far should [the Church] wield its influence in temporal matters? That, Chatard admitted, was a delicate question.40 The earthly alternative to a secular trade union was a Catholic one. Realizing that unless a man belong to some secret trade union, he will hardly be able to find employment, Chatard wanted Catholic workmen to band together in self-defense in Catholic insurance, burial, and employment societies.41 There the chaplain would keep the Catholic workingman from false notions. To set an example, in March 1879, Chatard joined the recently founded Society of Catholic Knights of America. Waiving all claims for insurance benefits, his purpose was to draw attention to an approved Catholic benefit society and away from nonCatholic ones.42 But a Catholic trade union suffered under severe limitations: In labor question disputes-taken to mean strikes and conflict over wages, a Catholic trade union could withdraw its labor if dissatisfied with the wages offered, but even then only in moderation because of the danger of civil strife: For Chatard, in reality, the laborer has no right to a cent more than he has contracted for. He is at liberty not to enter into the contract; once he has done so he must keep his word [or you have the doctrine of the] community of goods. 43 Chatards formulation did not differ greatly, if at all, from that of the leading Social Darwinists of the day, the Englishman, Herbert Spencer and the American, William Graham Sumner. On the one hand, workers were to 37 OBrien, Public Catholicism, 70. 38 Occasional Essays, 175, 176. 39 American Quarterly Review, IV (April 1879), 220, quoted in Browne, Knights of Labor, 27, 28. 40 Occasional Essays, 178, 179. 41 Occasional Essays, 172. 42 Indiana Central Catholic, 22 March 1879, 4; Chatard papers, Box-9, file 12. Founded in July 1877 in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1879 it claimed 2,000 members in 80 branches. 43 Occasional Essays, 177-180. Chatard was quoting Leo XIIIs Rerum Novarum , #12, . . . that the main tenet of Socialism, the community of goods, must be utterly rejected; . . . Ital. orig.]. 10 be submissive to authority in the hope of eventual eternal bliss and on the other, forbidden to break a contract (which they had never signed) for small pay. In holding both with Marx on the function of religion (Religion is the sigh of the creature overwhelmed by misfortune, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people), and with the laissez-faire school on the inviolability of the market, the bishop of Vincennes might be said to have compassed the political economy of the day. *** The practice of establishing Catholic institutions in parallel with secular or Protestant ones resulted in what was later labeled the Catholic ghetto. Unfortunately for the Catholic Knights of America, a trade union ghetto was one not many Catholic workers were prepared to enter. They were attracted instead to the Knights of Labor (K of L). Founded in Philadelphia, December 1869, the Knights was a secret society whose name was uttered by members only in a whisper, seldom aloud, except at the initiation of new members, and never published. Such secrecy had become the rule because open and public associations, . . . after a struggle of centuries to protect or advance the interests of labor had failed.44 An idiosyncratic union eschewing the strike, the Knights advanced the idea of cooperatives and admitted all producers to membership, excluding only lawyers, bankers, rum sellers, professional gamblers, and the Chinese. (Its bar against rum sellers was a nod to the weakness for liquor of many workmen, a concern also commonly expressed in the by-laws of Irish societies. Lawyers, bankers, and gamblers were not producers, and the Chinese worked for wages so trifling that non-Chinese could not compete.)45 Its ranks were open to women, blacks, the new immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europeeven employers and shopkeepers if they had once been wage earners and if they provided union standards of wages and working conditions to their employees. The Knights aimed at making knowledge and industrial and moral worth, not wealth, the true standard, while securing for labor its proper share of wealth and leisure. Its demands included weekly wage payments, mechanics lien laws, abolition of child, contract, and convict labor, the eight-hour day, equal pay for equal work for women, public lands for actual settlers, arbitration rather than the strike, and consumer and producer cooperatives. In 1878, the year Bishop Chatard arrived in Indianapolis, membership in the Knights 44 Zwierlein, II, 437. 45 Terence V. Powderlys The Path I Trod: Thirty Years of Labor (Columbia University Press: New York, 1940) devoted a chapter (A Visit to Hell) to the temperance issue. Having seen what drink did to workingmen (Powderly blamed the Mollie Maquire depredations on drink), he was a total abstainer until age 45, when his doctor prescribed an occasional drink. Even beer was prohibited at K of L sponsored picnics. 11 was under 10,000, but it grew rapidly, doubling and tripling annually, reaching its high point of 700,000 in 1886. Its first leader, Uriah Stevens, had an extensive background in fraternal societiesMasons, Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias. Consequently, the Knights were steeped in ritualism--sworn oaths, Bible readings of a strong Protestant bent, and its secret work--not murder or bombings--but signs, handshake, passwords, and symbols committed to memory and peculiar to it. Members took a solemn vow obligating the initiate to secrecy, obedience, and mutual assistance.46 Vatican policy toward secret societies was based on an 1846 decree of the Sacred and Universal Inquisition. A circular letter to Canadas bishops, 1 July 1870 (a copy is found in Chatards papers), mentioned freemasons, socialists, the Odd Fellows, and secret oaths directed at church or government or which promote strikes that give rise to the danger of riot or bloodshed and are dangerous to souls.47 Some priests denied the sacraments and even Christian burial to members. After 1879, when Terence V. Powderly succeeded Stevens as Grand Master Workman, the Churchs opposition was a tremendous problem for him. Practicing Catholic and first generation Irish-American, under Powderly, the first American working-class hero of national stature,48 the Knights became a kind of fusion of labor, Irish nationalism, and social reform.49 If the Irish as a group and much of the Catholic press stood firmly behind the labor movement, 50 the bishop of Vincennes did not: In response to a priests inquiry about the coopers union (barrel makers), Chatard informed him that it was an oath-bound society and therefore I declare them included in the condemnation of the pastoral of Epiphany, 1879.51 It was probably this that sparked the rumor reaching Powderly that the Knights of Labor had been condemned by name in the Indianapolis diocese that December.52 Chatards support of Catholic societies and his condemnation of secret ones won praise from the Vatican Office of Propaganda.53 He also discovered that in certain cases the Churchs opposition to secret societies could be to the laitys advantage: In December 1881 he was told by a locomotive engineer, a Catholic who had balked at being blindfolded and required to swear the oath of secrecy, that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers was like the freemasons. Since the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, the man informed 46 The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly (Columbia University Press: New York, 1940), 49-54. Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 17. 48 Craig Phelan, Grand Master Workman: Terence Powderly and the Knights of Labor (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000), 1. 49 Powderly was up to his neck in Irish revolutionary politics; he was an officer in the Clan na Gael and the Land League, the latter an expression of the New Departure, a policy combining revolutionary force and constitutionalism into one. 47 50 Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 330, 331; Of the 503 men and women listed from the colonial era to the 1990s in Gary Fink, Biographical Dictionary of American Labor, (1990s), one-quarter are Irish or Irish descent; the Irish were also the most eminent leaders. 51 Chatard papers, Box A-11, File 26. 52 Browne, Knights of Labor, 75. Undated document from the Office of Propaganda, Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 15. 53 12 Chatard, railroad management preferred to hire Catholics like himself who were at a premium. Belonging to the Brotherhood was a reason for not getting a place.54 Beyond secrecy and its attendant problems, part of the difficulties between Powderly and the clergy had a personal dimension: Accused of atheism, of attacking the Church, and of associating with socialists, in the longest chapter of his autobiography Powderly complained that The attitude of many influential priests of the church was decidedly unfriendly [and] in many places subjected the Knights to scathing criticisms and condemnation. Powderlys disputes with priests and bishops occasionally assumed shocking proportions: In 1871, his Knights of Labor badge mistaken for a Freemasons, he was denied entry to Mass; once, in the confessional, a priest recognized his voice and, in the belief that he was a Mason, told him to kneel and threatened to horsewhip him. Enraged, Powderly called him out intending to thrash him in the street, but the priest demurred; Scrantons bishop, William OHara, thinking Powderly had slandered him, named him at Mass a busybody and a slanderer, a fraud, an imposter, a person to be avoided by the congregation, all insults carried in the press. Meeting with OHara, the bishop insisted Powderly had lied about him, demanded he kneel, and began to curse him with the cross. Refusing either to kneel or leave, Powderly retorted that OHara was a mere tenant in the house the laity had paid for and if he attacked him again at Mass, he would sue; Bishop James A. Healy of Maine once summoned Powderly to complain of his speaking in his diocese without his permission. Said Healy, Powderly was duty bound to consult your superiors in such matters. The labor leader again lost his temper. Such episodes would have been common gossip among the bishops. The problem was clericalism: his bishop-critics, persuaded that they had sufficient authority, believed they could dictate to the labor leader, who, they thought, as Grand Master Workman similarly reigned over the Knights.55 Chafing at clerical opposition, over time Powderly became decidedly anticlerical himself: Many a priest, he wrote, a tyrant by nature, was by holy orders given the opportunity to exercise, in a limited way, his tyrannous will. The clergy, he believed, were neither better nor worse than other men, and their lives in some instances, not so good as that of the ordinary workingmans.56 But not every bishop regarded the Knights with disfavor: In 1873 Louisvilles William McCloskey sought guidance from Archbishop Purcell on the secret oath problem. McCloskey saw no problem if the object was to keep secret their proceedings, the secrets being harmless, and that if anything objectionable were introduced (such as an attempt to ally with forbidden societies), Catholics, he was sure, would abandon the 54 Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 15. The Path I Trod, 320-328. A further discordance with the Church his run-ins with clerics may have led to was Powderlys support of the public schools: I am in favor of them, God bless them. As the bulwark of the nations safety and protector of our republican institutions, Powderly would give his right arm for them. Naturally, this gave still more ammunition to his Catholic critics. Path I Trod, 362. 56 Having never found a good reason for the Churchs criticism of masonry, preferring it to the Knights of Columbus, in 1901 Powderly joined the York and Scottish Rite in Washington D. C., rising to the 32nd degree, the highest rank but one. His belief in God never shaken, Powderly looked forward with confidence at the last when he would stand alone before God. Path I Trod, 371; 378, 379; 381. 55 13 Knights. He reported the view of one of his priests that, given the popularity of the K of L, if the Church did not accommodate the men in this we might as well close our churches. Because the workers had so little protection, McCloskey wanted to give them all that can be yield[ed] and they claim. But to insist that the oath must be taken without the workman first seeing it, he instructed his clergy, was not acceptable. [But an oath that could be reneged after hearing it would not remain secret, which was the whole point.] McCloskey thought the conditions set out by the Council of Baltimore go pretty far but were not always clear; could Purcell advise him before he made his position public?57 The question of what to do about the Knights of Labor came to a head in 1884 when, at the request of archbishop of Quebec, Rome condemned the Canadian Knights of Labor. James Gibbons, archbishop of Baltimore and dean of the American hierarchy chosen by the pope to preside over the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore scheduled for 1884, held that the ban was not binding in the United States. New Yorks Archbishop Michael Corrigan was sure that it was.58 Chatard, in Rome the previous year as one of the ten American bishops preparing for the council, wanted specific rules regarding secret societies adopted, but he found himself in the minority. When he continued to campaign against secret societies and trade unions at the Plenary Council itself, Chatard aroused violent disagreement in proposing that the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH) be condemned, a step he had already taken in the Indianapolis diocese in 1882.59 In the end, the bishops Baltimore pastoral was an unequal compromise reflecting their division: It supported Catholic trade unions, warned against Masonic and kindred societies, and noted that care must be taken lest workingmens societies induce members to break the laws of justice, by withholding labor . . . or by otherwise unlawfully violating the rights of their employers.60 While it did not condemn unions, Gibbons admitted that had a vote been taken at Baltimore a majority of the archbishops would have favored banning the Knights.61 57 58 Notre Dame Archives. William V. Shannon, The American Irish (MacMillan Comp.: New York, 1963), 126-130. 59 Browne, Knights of Labor, 99, 100, 115-117; Curran, Corrigan, 104. 60 Bishops Pastorals, Vol. 1, 233-236. 61 OBrien, Public Catholicism, 88. Reher, Catholic Intellectuals in America, 68. In other actions taken at the 1884 Baltimore Council, on the question how much philosophy and theology was needed at major seminaries, Chatard argued that Latin be encouraged in teaching Biblical exegesis. Out of some seventy votes cast, Chatards position only garnered eleven. He had better luck in carrying the day in arguing that a Catholic school was one held to be such by the bishop; that nuns be examined for competence by their orders, that no mention of attendance at Mass of non-Catholics in Catholic schools be made (as a practical matter, if non-Catholics were kept out of Catholic schools, the schools would not be viable). Almost all of the bishops accepted this view even though public schools were seen as Protestant and propaganda for religious indifferentismthe bishops were worried that friendships developed across denominational lines would lead to mixed marriages. Cassidy, Catholic Historical Review, 414, 415, 418, 420, 421; 301, 302. 14 The Vatican, having twice condemned the Canadian Knights of Labor by 1886, seemed to have shifted decisively against the American Knights as well. That year, on May 5th, at a crowded gathering of labor demonstrating for the eight-hour day at Chicagos Haymarket, seven policemen and four bystanders were killed by an unknown bomb thrower. Scores more were injured, adding guilt by association to the weight of opinion against trade unions. The reaction was so intense in the city and the nation that eight labor leaders, some not even present at the rally, were found guilty of conspiring to commit murder and condemned to death. In all, four were executed, one committed suicide, and the remaining three pardoned by Illinois governor Peter Altgeld in 1893, a courageous act that ended Altgelds political career. Dubbed a riot or a massacre, the Haymarket Affair added to the fears of those bishops who supported the Knights that its enemies among the hierarchy would pressure Rome to ban it.62 Chatard needed no convincing that the Knights of Labor was condemnatory on the grounds of socialism and anarchism, the latter for Powderlys opposition to capitalisms wage system. In October 1886, in a letter to Cincinnati Archbishop William H. Elder, Chatard held that it was undeniable that the Knights used strikes, boycotts, and persecuted non-union men and scabs. Still, while convinced that such organizations could not be trusted to be truthful to the bishops, still, even he counseled that the prudent path was to avoid giving the Knights any countenance. Catholic workers were to be enticed away not by denying them the sacraments, but arguments calculated to show that they were making themselves the servants of men. 63 In November he privately congratulated his friend, New Yorks Michael Corrigan, for his pastoral condemning assaults against the rights of property as most opportune and will do more for the Church in America, than the liberal Priests can do harm.64 In his own December pastoral, Chatard, the perennial foe of the Knights, was more circumspect regarding mutual advancement societies, as long as they do not take up false principles of action hurtful to society, there is no harm in them.65 To the Indianapolis bishop, however, all strikes and boycotts were hurtful to society. Testifying to the division that existed among the American bishops, Corrigan and Chatard won a scathing rebuke, albeit private, from San Francisco Archbishop Patrick Riordan in a January 1887 letter to the liberal bishop of Richmond, John Keane: I would wish that this constant interference with societies and labor unions should cease, and if some of the Bishops have leisure time for pastorals let them attack, if they must 62 Morris, American Catholics, 86, 87. 63 Browne, Knights of Labor, 202, 203. 64 Chatard to Corrigan, 23 November 1886, Browne, Knights of Labor, 224, 225. Corrigan returned the compliment, writing, the more we strengthen each others hands the better for discipline, and better for the faithful. Curran, Corrigan, 206. 65 Browne, Knights of Labor, 224, 225, f.n. 143. Riordan to Keane, 22 January 1887. 15 attack somebody, the gigantic corporations and monopolies of the land and say a kind and tender word for the great army of the laboring classes, that in our large cities are being reduced to the condition of slaves. 66 In the center of the dispute between the Knights of Labor and the bishops stood Baltimores Archbishop James Gibbons. To satisfy himself about the Knights, Gibbons had been meeting with the labor leader since 1880. Powderly had succeeded in persuading the unions general assembly to substitute ones word of honor for the secret oath, to make the name public, and to drop the words nobly and holy from the ritual--all steps designed to remove the Churchs opposition. However, since secrecy remained an important part of its activities, opposition continued.67 In October 1886, Gibbons told Powderly of his intention to go to Rome where he would place the Knights in a favorable light; in turn, Powderly reassured Gibbons that as a practicing Catholic who regularly received the sacraments, he was neither a Mason nor a member of any other society that the Church condemned. He did point out the difficulties that the Churchs condemnation of the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias presented to his members. Protestant Knights were understandably upset, and in opposing the Knights of Labor, non-Catholic and Catholic members alike felt that the Catholic Church was targeting their material well-being.68 When the prefect of the Propaganda Fide requested that the American archbishops meet to consider whether to condemn the Unions Civil War veterans organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, Gibbons widened the agenda to include the Knights of Labor and the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOL). Persuaded that the secrecy of the K of L was for job protection and did not prevent members from making good confessions, at Gibbons invitation, Powderly met with nine of the twelve American archbishops and repeated assurances that the Knights obligation of secrecy was not an oath, but a pledge to protect the worker and union business from enemies or strangers. It left the Catholic Knight free to reveal everything at confession and did not prevent the leaders from giving information to ecclesiastical authorities outside the confessional. 69 Gibbons own argument to his fellow bishops was always the same: there were 500,000 Catholic Knights of Labor and to alienate them would be a grave matter. Variations on the theme appeared in letters to fellow bishops: He warned Archbishop Elder that the bishops should be careful not to be too hard on Knights, otherwise they would suspect us of siding with the moneyed corporations and employers. Elder wrote Archbishop Gilmour of Cleveland that if the Knights were used harshly or condemned we lose them and they will hate and suspect Americas bishops as workers in France do their hierarchy. I would regard the condemnation of the Knights of Labor, as a signal calamity to the Catholic Church of America. 70 The minutes 66 67 Browne, Knights of Labor, 225. Path I Trod, 328, 329; Browne, Knights of Labor, 35. 68 Powderly, Path I Trod, 348, 349. 69 The Path I Trod, 316, n. 2. 70 William V. Shannon, The American Irish (MacMillan Comp.: New York, 1963), 126-130. 16 of the archbishops meeting with Powderly made the same point: Labor has rights as well as capital. We should not condemn labor and let capital go free--would regard condemnation of K. of L. as disastrous to the Church. Further, if objectionable features are eliminated K. of L. should be tolerated, should not be condemned. The archbishops were unanimous that the Grand Army and the Hibernians should not be condemned, but two of the nine archbishops voted to condemn the Knights and New Yorks Michael Corrigan expressed reservations as well. Under the rules of the Roman Propaganda which governed the United States as a mission church, the question of condemning the Knights of Labor had to be carried to Rome.71 Scheduled to receive his Cardinals hat in Rome on St. Patricks Day, 1887, in late January Gibbons joined Minnesotas Archbishop John Ireland, John Keane, rector designate of the new Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and Denis OConnell, rector of the North American College. Ireland and Keane had prepared a comprehensive memo for his use--a long-rehearsed battery of reasons against condemning the Knights of Labor, in line with those Gibbons had employed with the bishops: Such a proscription would be: dangerous for the reputation of the American church and possibly even arouse persecution; ineffectual with Catholic workers who would regard it as false and unjust; destructive because workers would be impelled to disobey and even to join condemned societies heretofore shunned; ruinous for the finances of the American church; and a cruel blow to the authority of the American bishops who were known to oppose such a condemnation. Nativist anti-Catholics would be aroused against Vatican interference, and church revenues, including Peters pence, would be hurt. In any case, the Knights were declining in numbers and influence72 and to lose the heart of the people would be a misfortune for which the friendship of the few rich and powerful would be no compensation.73 Gibbons exertions on behalf of his brief included buttonholing every member of the Congregation of the Holy Office. During a heated argument with its head, he threatened to hold the man responsible for the loss of souls if the Knights were proscribed. On such prudential and expedient grounds, in 1888 the Propaganda concluded that the Knights may be allowed for the time being, conditional on amendments to its constitution omitting references which seem to savor of socialism and communism.74 71 Morris, American Catholics, 87-93; Allen Sinclair Will, Life of Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore (E. P. Dutton: New York, 1922), 327-329. 72 In 1886 business unionism appeared with the founding of the American Federation of Labor, 1886; by fall 1887 the Knights began to lose strikes and declined. 73 Will, Life of Gibbons, 332. Browne, Knights of Labor, 374. Browne has the full text of Gibbons submission to the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda, The Question of the Knights of Labor, 365-378. Reher, Catholic Intellectuals, 68. The similarity with the arguments used in the case of the Fenians are obvious. 74 Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 332,333. Copies of the letter from the prefect of the Propaganda to Gibbons in Latin and two translations can be found in Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 26. 17 Gibbons successful defense of the Knights of Labor (and through it, trade unions in general) had enormous consequences. Having prevented the Vatican from publicly denouncing the economic reformer Henry George or his 1879 book, Progress and Poverty),75 Gibbons argued for an encyclical on social problems. This would become Rerum Novarum, 1891 (Of new things). A mixture of the medieval with the modern, Leo XIII accepted the need for state intervention to secure justice and fair wages and spoke against the excesses of capitalism and individualism.76 Workers were to be treated with dignity, never as objects, and had the right to form unions (on a guild model, for the strikingly pre-modern purpose of encouraging piety). Because they hurt both sides and usually ended in violence, strikes were not acceptable and the state had the duty of preventing such strife.77 Whatever its limitations, in getting beyond condemnations of socialism Rerum Novarum is the most important encyclical of the nineteenth century.78 Gibbons arguments for prudence and expediency proved sound: in the United States the working class was saved for the American Church, and with the labor movement open wide to a faithful Catholic laity, the trade union movement was more moderate than it would otherwise have been. Unlike Europe, in the United States labor would not be divided between secular unions and inconsequential Catholic ones. With the Knights of Labor issue settled and Rerum Novarum, for the first time the bishops stood behind the people in their commitment to the cause of labor, marking the first step in the formation of a Catholic social-gospel tradition.79 To that end, Chatard made no contribution. Rerum Novarum was not Romes last word on secret societies; In August 1894, Cardinal Francesco Satolli, recently appointed as Romes first apostolic delegate to the United States, instructed the American bishops to condemn by name the Sons of Temperance, Odd Fellows, and Knights of Pythias. No Catholic could be a member of them on pain of denial of the sacraments. Gibbons and Ireland resisted the order; Chatard and other conservatives argued that it was already in effect. In November Satolli insisted it was the 75 The Roman Congregation did condemn the views of Henry George, but it was not made public. McAvoy, Americanist Heresy, 14. When George stood for New York mayor in 1886, five years before Rerum Novarum, his issue was social justice: economic inequality, poverty-level wages, crowded, unhealthy tenements, lack of playgrounds for the poor, and high infant mortality in immigrant neighborhoods. He supported equal pay for equal work and heavier taxes for absentee landlords. Ironically, at the time Archbishop Corrigan was embroiled in a dispute with K of L cemetery workers threatening to strike for better wages. 76 Jay P. Dolan, The Irish Americans (Bloomsbury Press: New York, 2008), 272. 77 Gibbons also opposed boycotts and strikes except for desperate causes and he often failed to support labor in its disputes with capital, for example, the use of non-union labor on church construction. Thomas W. Spalding, The Premier See: A History of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, 1789-1989 (Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1989), 287. He also disdained feminists and had little confidence in the talents of blacks. 78 Chadwick, Popes, 1830-1914, 315. 79 Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 333; see also Morris, American Catholics, 92, and Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, 75. 18 popes wish that the decree be published. Ireland and Gibbons continued to protest and did not publish it, Chatard did.80 In the [Indianapolis] Catholic Records version, the diocesan paper has Chatard availing himself of a two-month delay in promulgating it in an effort to win some modification for those Catholics who . . . had joined them in good faith and had found nothing in them against the Church. The Catholic Record praised Chatard for his pastoral approach so different from those bishops who had simply laid down the law by promulgating it immediately. Still, Rome has spoken and thus all the Churchs loyal and reverent children must submit. Catholic societies exist: join them.81 *** The Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH)82 posed many of the same problems for Chatard as did trade unions. Its origins go back to Ulster secret societies, such as the Defenders, which became allied with the Society of United Irishmen. Such societies were called forth by the penal laws--vengeful congeries of draconian Parliamentary enactments designed to keep Irish Catholics in a position of social, economic, and political inferiority.83 Catholics could not buy or inherit land, join the army, vote, or hold any office of state. Religious order priests and bishops were exiled, Catholic education forbidden, and the Gaelic language outlawed. According to tradition, the Hibernians took root in Ireland in the seventeenth century, guarding the priests who said Mass in the fields in secret. Present in America in 1793, as a public organization in the United States the Hibernians date to 1825 as the St. Patrick Fraternal Society, which, in 1836, issued a charter to a group of New York City Irishmen. The AOH held its first national convention in the city that year, the date usually given for its founding in the U.S. Requirements for membership included male, age 18 to 45, good health (membership conferred sickness and death benefits), a parent of Irish descent, and by being a practical Catholic (receiving communion at Easter). In the eastern U.S. in the 1840s and 1850s, a time and place of virulent anti-Catholicism, it was the Hibernians whom Bishop Dagger John Hughes mobilized to protect the Catholic churches in New York City from arsonists.84 The Hibernians grew rapidly after the Civil War, the bulk of its membership urban laborers, and until World War I, heavily Irish-born. Although subject to church authority and approbation (bishops appointed priest-chaplains to guide each division (parish),85 most of the AOH leaders were Fenians who gave support and money to the cause of an independent republican Ireland. 80 81 82 McAvoy, Americanist Heresy, 77. Catholic Record, 10 January; 7 March 1895. Timothy Meagher, The Columbia Guide to Irish American History (Columbia University Press: New York, 2005). Until 1851 the AOH was known as the Friendly Sons of Erin. 83 J. C. Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 1603-1923 (Faber and Faber: London, 1966), 159. 84 Kauffman, Faith and Fraternity, 7, 8. 85 Constitution of AOH, Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 17. William W. Giffin, The Irish, 58, 59, has it that you had to be Irish-born to be a member; this was dropped in 1884, and Irish descent qualified. 19 Brought to Indiana by Pennsylvania coal miners just after the Civil War, tradition gives St. Patricks Day, 1870, as the Hibernians founding date in Indianapolis,86 with Fr. Denis ODonaghue its spiritual advisor. Hibernian fortunes in the capital city waxed and waned: its two lodges in 1874 met weekly and the benevolent side of the order was organized in 1878. A year later, there were six lodges in the city, each with a president and secretary. In the 1880s the number of lodges fell to two (partly due to the founding of other Irish organizations and partly to Chatards expressed displeasure with the Hibernians), then rose to three in 1889 and to six again in 1900.87 The AOH came to Terre Haute in 1879, Lafayette and Logansport, 1883, and South Bend, in 1885. By 1892 it counted some 1,100 members in Indiana; by 1910 Indianapolis alone had a thousand members in eight divisions and nine female auxiliaries of 1,100 (the first female auxiliary organized in Indianapolis, 9 May 1899). In 1894 the Ancient Order of Hibernians claimed 93,000 members nationwide.88 As a benevolent society, the AOH was uncontroversial--ethnic mutual benefit societies had long been common in America. Advancing the principles of Irish nationality was also acceptable, and its motto Fidelity to Faith and Fatherland promised acceptance of clerical leadership. But a secret society of Fenians devoted to securing Irelands independence by force with ties to other banned societies, was another matter entirely. In February 1880 three AOH members complained to Chatard that P. H. McNelis, state delegate and a director to the national Hibernians, had told them that there were laws binding members beyond the constitution and the by-laws known only to state and national officers like himself. In a letter hand-delivered by Fr. Bessonies, Chatard summoned McNelis to the bishops residence to answer the charges. McNelis denied that the AOH was a secret society deserving to be banned. The secrets, he explained, were only coded marks on correspondence--in AOH parlance, the merchandise,89 perfectly mundane, known only to its high officials and of interest only to them. There was nothing to worry about. Its unlikely that Chatard believed him. Chatards other problem with the Hibernians now seems trivial--their habit of holding dancing balls and like entertainments to raise funds. Not dancing as such, but a Catholic society under Church authority holding dancing parties provided, in Chatards view, the scandal.90 His pastoral in 1879 on the feast of the Epiphany 86 Phillips, Indiana in Transition, 465; Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, 622, Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, 104; Blanchard (Indiana Catholic Church, 616-628), however, gives its organization in Indiana at Knightsville, Clay Co., 1871 and 1872 for Marion county. Peopling Indiana, 261, also credits Knightsville, Clay County, 1871, as the first, organized by a Thomas McGovern, the first Indiana AOH delegate; then Indianapolis, 1873, Terre Haute, 1879, Lafayette and Logansport, 1883, and South Bend, 1885. The publication marking the 25th Year celebration of the Indiana Catholic and Record publication followed Blanchard. 87 Giffin, The Irish, 59. 88 Peopling Indiana, 829; Twenty-Fifth Year Anniversary issue, Indiana Catholic and Record, 58. 89 Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 17. 90 Chatards draft letter to John Bryne, AOH state delegate, 16 June 1880. Chatard papers. 20 had expressly forbidden such dances, but he soon discovered that the AOH continued to hold them under assumed names or as private entertainments. Angered over the indocile spirit shown, Chatard admonished the Hibernians for their disobedience and disrespect to the authority of the Church, and of the consequent scandal given to all. Such subterfuge would not work; he would hold the societies responsible.91 Notwithstanding the warning, eighteen months later, August 1880, perhaps in the hope that time had faded memory sufficiently, the Indiana Hibernians held a picnic-excursion. Learning of the event, Chatard wrote the state commander ordering the suspension of the contumacious Hibernians for two months and banning the wearing of regalia and badges at church services (only the Daviess County Lodge was exempt). The Western Citizen supported the bishop: Dancing was fine at home where parents could watch, but public balls, in commingling good and bad elements were not respectable.92 If picnics and dances had been unprofitable the ban might have fared better, but the August picnic raised $400. Consequently, reports from parish priests of dancing balls continued to filter in, along with comments that some AOH members did not attend Mass or take communion.93 Deeply suspicious of the Hibernians, his patience exhausted by the continuing excursions, dancing parties, and grand balls, in February 1882 Chatard withdrew the chaplains, ending any connection between the organization and the diocese and prohibiting the wearing of AOH regalia at Mass. While it was not unlawful for a Catholic to belong, the Ancient Organization of Hibernians was reduced to the condition of any other association of laymen with which the Catholic Church has nothing to do; . . .94 Confirmation that distancing the diocese from the Hibernians had been wise came two months later, 6 May 1882. A group of Dublin Fenians, The Invincibles, its leaders formed and funded by London Fenians, stabbed to death two high British officials in Dublins Phoenix Park. The murders sparked universal outrage: The Indianapolis Western Citizen called the deed diabolical and the perpetrators dastardly cowards. Indianapolis Irishmen met a week later to condemn the act, although Fr. Denis Donaghue, revealing his own Fenian sympathies, found it suspicious that no arrests had been made, and was quoted as saying it was likely that enemies of Ireland were responsible, not Irishmen at all.95 For Chatard, the murders strengthened his animus against the AOH, and at Rome in 1883 and at the 1884 Baltimore Council itself, he tried but failed to get the Hibernians banned. 91 Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 17; 8 February 1879. Western Citizen, 4 Sept 1880, 4. As for picnics, Finley Peter Dunne once observed If Ireland could be freed by a picnic, shed be an empire by now. Jay P. Dolan, The Irish Americans: A History (New York, 2008), 189. 92 93 For examples, see Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 17. 94 Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 17 Western Citizen, 13 May 1882, 1. 95 21 There were worse things than Hibernian dancing balls and Chatard knew it: By 1878, the year he was named bishop, the Ancient Order of Hibernians had been conflated in the public mind, the courts, and the Catholic Church with the Mollie Maguires,96 an organization judged responsible for beatings, arson, and murder in the anthracite coal mining district of Pennsylvania. More than fifty men--all of them Catholic and Irish, most of them Hibernians, stood accused of belonging to the Mollies and of the deaths of mine owners, foremen, and public officials immediately after the Civil War--and of a second group in 1875 after the failure of a year and a half long strike. In all, the Mollies were blamed for sixteen murders. The Pennsylvania AOH was implicated in having provided institutional cover (Hibernian meeting halls had been used by the Mollies).97 So great did hostility to the Mollies grow that the at its March 1877 convention in New York the Hibernians repudiated them (that terrible band of misguided men) and revised its constitution so as to make our rules in harmony with the teachings of our Holy Church.98 The war between the Pennsylvania establishment and the Mollies proved to be a one-sided affair: Arrested by the coal owners private police, on the testimony of Pinkerton detectives and informers, at trials in which the companys lawyers themselves served as the prosecution, conviction was inevitable. Ten were hanged, June 1877, ten more by December 1879, and another twenty imprisoned. Though the trials were not fair, and while some scholars doubt that the Mollie Maquires ever existed as an organization (Powderly and others denied it and a priest who heard the confessions of two of the executed men stated his belief in their innocence), a secret group of Irish workmen who did not blanch at murderous violence doubtless existed. But that only the guilty suffered execution is unlikely and the hangings, by inspiring sympathy for the condemned, had something of the effect of the British executions of the Irish rebels in the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. But not everyone sympathized: The bishops of Scranton and Philadelphia excommunicated AOH members and the Mollies and some parish priests refused burial to those suspected of belonging. Philadelphia Archbishop James Wood even congratulated the mine owners on the verdicts. And when the Hibernians met in Philadelphia in 1880, Wood denounced the order and refused permission to have Mass said at the convention. Not everyone abjured the Mollies (the Indianapolis Western Citizen, for one, lamented the hostility shown them),99 but Chatard, McQuaid of Rochester, Gilmour of Cleveland, and other bishops pursued the 96 The name of a secret violent society active in Ireland in the 1840s which exacted revenge for tenants against the depredations of landlords. The mythic Molly Maquire symbolized the struggle against injustice. 97 Browne, Knights of Labor, 22, 23. Western Citizen, 5 May 1877, 7. M. J. Ward of Indiana was one of eight on the AOH national board. 99 Western Citizen, 15 May 1880, 4;19 June 1880, 4. Zwierlein, McQuaid, Vol II, ch. 24. 98 22 AOH as the real society of the Molly Maquires, and they were intolerant of all secret societies as breeders of anarchy, socialism, and irreligion.100 Stung by the bishops opposition, riven by factions, the national Hibernians worked to get its 53,000 members back in the hierarchys good graces. In 1886 the New York Hibernians, desirous of having Bishop Michael Corrigan reappoint chaplains, stipulated that it was not oath-bound to withhold information from Church authorities or its membership, had no connection with Mollie Maquires or Ribbonmen or any other revolutionary society and, as an independent benevolent society, had nothing to do with politics, foreign or domestic.101 (It had severed its ties with the Board of Erin--under an 1887 treaty the AOH was in control of the movement for Irish independence in America and the Board of Erin in control in Europe.)102 Archbishop Gibbons strongly supported the Hibernians to his colleagues and in 1894 the bishops were prepared to state that the AOH was a most admirable society,103 though its unlikely the Bishop of Vincennes thought so. In 1900 Chatard suffered a serious stroke and rendered incapacitated; the pastor of St. Patricks, Denis ODonoghue, was appointed auxiliary bishop. It was ODonoghue, a former chaplain of the AOH, who lifted the ban on regalia in church during the 1908 Hibernian national convention in Indianapolis.104 Indianapolis Hibernians did bestir themselves in 1903 to defend James Lynchehaun, an escaped Irish convict-rebel arrested in the city and facing extradition to Great Britain. Mass meetings were held at Tomlinson Hall, at which Indianas two senators and the mayor spoke, a sign of the political importance of the Irish community. The top lawyer hired by the national AOH to defend Lynchehaun succeeded: extradition was denied on the grounds that the defendant had been convicted of a political crime.105 *** 100 McAvoy, Americanist Heresy, 11, 12, 89. In 1979 the executed men were posthumously pardoned and praised for their efforts on behalf of labor. Coogan, Irish Diaspora, 321, 322. 101 AOH letter to Corrigan, 23 March 1886, Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 17. Also see Zwierlein, vol. II, chaper 28. 102 Printed circular, Chatard papers, Box A-11, file 17. 103 Blanchard, Catholicism in Indiana, 620. Its membership, 94,000 in 1894, rose to 132,000 in 1908; counting the ladies auxiliaries, youths, and rifles, WHAT? 195,000. Glazier, Irish Encyclopedia. 104 Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, 672. See Indiana Catholic Columbian, 23 July 1908, 1. Is this right? Peopling Indiana, 261. Chatard recovered well enough by June 1903 to celebrate his 25 years as priest, but the deterioration of his eyesight and general health led Joseph Chartrand (Cathedral rector and vicar) to be named co-adjutor with the right of succession, July 1910, the same time ODonoghue became bishop of Louisville. Sr. Frances Assisi Kennedy, OSF, The Archdiocese of Indianapolis, 1834-2009: Like a Mustard Seed Growing (Editions du Sign: Strausbourg, France, 2009). 105 Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, 831; Indianapolis News, 28 August 1903. 23 Complicating relations between the Catholic Church, Irish secret societies, and the movement for Irelands independence were two organizations whose natures were far more worrisome than the Hibernians-the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), (founded in Dublin and New York in 1858 and the successor to the Fenians), and the Clan na Gael (the tribe or family of the Irish). Secret and extremist, a society of elaborate rites and communications, the Clan was founded in New York in 1867 on the birthday of the patriot Wolfe Tone, the father of Irish republicanism.106 Nationally, the AOH was closely associated with the IRB, as it had been with the Fenians, and there was also much dual membership of Hibernians and the Clan. The head of the Clan, the Irish-born journalist John Devoy (1842-1928), became the leading Irish revolutionary in America. His rebel roots went deep: a grandfather took part in Irelands 1898 Rising and his father was an active nationalist. He himself, educated by the Christian Brothers, at age ten was beaten by a teacher for refusing to sing God Save the Queen. A member of the IRB, at nineteen he enlisted in the French Foreign Legion to get military training (the reason many Irish-Americans fought on both sides in the American Civil War). After serving a year in Algeria, he returned to Ireland to join the British Army. As a Fenian organizer, he was tasked by IRB head James Stephens with persuading Irishmen serving as British soldiers to swear an oath to overthrow English rule in Ireland. Over nearly five years, Devoy administered the oath to thousands; orchestrated the prison escape of one of the Fenian founders, James Stephens, in 1865; and took part in the 1866 Fenian uprising in Ireland. Imprisoned five years, he was released on condition that he leave the country; he arrived in New York, January 1871, to a perfervid welcome from huge numbers of the citys Irish. In 1876, he established a formal alliance of the Clan in the U.S. and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) in Ireland under a common directorate (three from the Clan, three from the IRB). In 1877 the Clan counted 10,000 American members.107 With the poet and newspaper editor, John Boyle OReilly,108 Devoy organized the famous escape of six Irish prisoners from Australia in 1879. Supporting himself in America as a journalist, first on the New York Herald and after 1903 in his own weekly newspaper, the influential Gaelic American (circulation 30,000), he spread the Gospel according to the Clan na Gael.109 The most important revolutionary . . . nationalist organization in Irish American history, for more than fifty years the Clan kept the cause of violent overthrow of British rule in Ireland and the establishment of an 106 Theobald Wolfe Tone, Protestant, was a founder and leader of the Society of United Irishmen, 1791; Catholics and Presbyterians in a common cause to bring self-government to Ireland by breaking the British connection. Allying with France, the Rising of 1898 failed. Captured, his request to be shot rather than hung like a thief denied, Tone committed suicide. He established, and later came almost to personify, a tradition of revolutionary violence in Irelands politics. J.C. Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 1603-1922 (Faber and Faber: London, 1969), 267. 107 F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland Since the Famine (Fontana/Collins: Glasgow, Scotland, 1973), 160, 161, 166. OReilly (1844-1890), like Devoy, joined the British Army to enlist Irish recruits to the cause of the IRB. Unlike Devoy, he was convinced by the failure of the 1870 invasion of Canada that force would not free Ireland, but that raising the status and esteem of the people would. 109 Golway, Irish Rebel, 183. 108 24 independent Irish Republic alive.110 It was the main support of the IRB and contributed greatly to the success of the Land League (f. 1879)--the agitation for reform of Irish tenant rights uniting the peaceful methods of the Irish parliamentary party with the Fenian threat of violence.111 It also funded John P. Hollands successful submarine experiments, with the result that In the 1890s the worlds most advanced submarines were being built in America by an immigrant Irish nationalist devoted to designing and building weapons to sink British warships. To Holland belongs the credit for bringing the submarine to a state of practical value. By World War I most of the 400 submarines in the inventory of the sixteen navies who had them were evolutionary progressions from Hollands original designs.112 The Clan na Gael existed in Indianapolis in numbers: In 1883 the diocesan newspaper, the Catholic New Record, noted that fifty-five members of the Irish National Land League meeting at the Emerald Hall had accepted a $200 check from the Clan to forward to League headquarters. That Chatard was aware of the presence of the Clan and the Irish Brotherhood is evidenced by two notes, ominous in tone and in his own hand: the first, March 1884, read, The Clan-na-Gael exists in this city, and has a large membership--It is not allowed to take the oath of obligation to the society out of the roomsto shew it to any one. It is a secret oathbound political society. The second note, December 1886, read, Irish Brotherhood exists in this city. It is secret; obedience is blind; the members are known by numbers [emph. orig.]. It is to help Ireland, and the members must be ready to do anything ordered.113 Even the most unrelenting and radical of Irelands nationalist rebels, Jeremiah ODonovan Rossa, had a foothold in Indianapolis: In November 1882 an item in 110 Meagher, The Columbia Guide to Irish American History (Columbia University Press: New York, 2005), 240. J.C. Beckett, The Making of Modern Ireland, 1603-1923 (Faber and Faber: London, 1966), 385, 386, 390. The 1881 Land Act won the three Fs; fair rent (assessed by arbitration), fixity of tenure (while the rent was paid), and the tenants freedom to sell right of tenancy at market value. 111 112 Robert Massie, Castles of Steel, 122; Golway, Irish Rebel, 205. John Philip Holland, born County Clare (1841-1914); when his father died the mother moved the family to Limerick. Educated at the national schools and the Christian Brothers, he joined the Brothers in 1858 and taught until he resigned in 1873 due to ill health, whereupon he joined his mother and brothers in Boston. A school teacher in Paterson, New Jersey, Holland entered a U.S. Navy contest to design a submersible. Two brothers being Fenians, they introduced him to the revolutionary group which used skirmishing funds to finance his efforts. The Clans $60,000 freed Holland from teaching and in 1881 he produced the Fenian Ram, a successful design launched in the Hudson River. A number of improved models followed, winning design contests along the way. Having lost Fenian money in 1883 over disagreements, in 1897 he went on to produce the Holland VI for his own company. The first submarine bought by the U.S. Navy, it was renamed the USS Holland. Japan, Great Britain, and the Netherlands bought Hollands designs. He died a poor man during the Guns of August of 1914, a war in which the submarine would bring the participation of the United States. His company was the forerunner of the Electric Boat Company. As the USS Holland is the prototype for virtually all submarines, Holland is the father of the modern submarine. 113 Chatard papers, Box A-11, folder 17. 25 the Western Citizen headlined The Irish Skirmishing Fund, referred to the weekly meeting of its subscribers . . . .114 This was Rossas organization for the liberation of Ireland through force of arms--a liberation that took the form of terror dynamite campaigns against targets in Great Britain and Canada throughout the 1880s.115 As with any oath-bound secret society, the Churchs chief worry was where did the members ultimate loyalty lay, with the Church, or in this case, the Clan na Gael? Would he be guided by the bishops or was his allegiance to the organization? On this point an April 1877 letter to Devoy from one of his Clan colleagues, Dr. William Carroll, was explicit: the Chicago physician wrote that it was a mans duty to be an Irishman first whether that prevented his being a Catholic or not. Some priests were supportive of the cause, while others are sending people to h-ll for belonging to it, . . . the fact is no people appreciate manliness better than ours and the more they see of it among revolutionists the better they will like us.116 It was this attitude that if the patriot had to choose between the Church and the revolutionary movement, the movement took precedence, that so worried the bishops. Devoy himself was called both an infidel not a Catholic and a pillar of the faith.117 The Clan na Gael would come to have a particularly close connection to the Indianapolis diocese in the person of Joseph Patrick OMahony, in 1910, a founder and the editor of the diocesan paper, the Indiana Catholic. Arriving in the United States from Tralee in 1890, he carried a coded letter of introduction to Devoy, proof that he was trusted, and evidence, too, that he was an active member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. (At Devoys death in 1928, OMahony attested that he had known the revolutionary intimately for thirty years and claimed association with him in every phase of the movement for Irish independence.) 118 As the Indianapolis Star noted at the Indiana Catholics birth, OMahony was not only an experienced 114 Western Citizen, 18 November 1882, 4. Rossa (10 September 1831-29 June 1915), was, by turns, a Fenian, Clan na Gael, and IRB member. Rossa, Devoy, and three others were the five released from British prisons in 1870 on condition they went into exile. 115 116 117 Devoy, Post Bag, vol. 1, 249. Post Bag, vol. 2, 195, 196. 118 Indiana Catholic and Record, 12 October 1928, 4. Devoys published correspondence, Devoys Post Bag, does not contain any correspondence of OMahonys, and in the absence of any papers of the latter it is impossible to gauge what OMahony did for Irelands independence. His claim of intimate association with Devoy is likely to be true since there would be plenty of other Irishmen around in 1928 to deny it if false; Peter Costello, The Irish 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Irish Men and Women of All Time (Citadel Press: New York, 2001) placed St. Patrick at number one and Gerry Adams at 100); Devoy is 43rd, just behind James Cardinal Gibbons and ahead of Eugene ONeill; John F. Kennedy was 4th. 26 newspaperman but also well known in fraternal circles . . . .119 Most of his memberships were Irish-related: besides the Knights of Columbus, he was an active member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a founder of the Indianapolis Emmett Club (after Robert Emmett, the Irish patriot and martyr of the early nineteenth century),120 and in 1893 founded the first John Barry Club (b. County Wexford, 1745), to promote the commodores recognition as Father of the American Navy. OMahonys campaign succeeded: Congress voted $50,000 to erect a monument to Barry in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated by President Woodrow Wilson and the secretary of the Navy, 16 May 1914.121 Given OMahonys memberships and the coded letter he carried to Devoy,122 there can be little doubt they included the Clan na Gael. Such multiple memberships in Irish nationalist societies in America was common; nor would he have been unusual in supporting insurrection as the way to win Irelands independence. As Humbert Pagani, the newspapers business manager, who worked with him for nearly twenty years testified at OMahonys death: His personal interest in the freedom of his native land was hardly equaled by any man in the country. He was in the thick of every local and national movement that stood for free Ireland.123 And OMahony wasnt the only Indianapolis Irishman in close touch with the insurrectionists: In December 1914, John T. Keating of Chicago wrote to Devoy: Did you note in Indiana Catholic letter from 119 Indianapolis Star, 4 February 1910, 3. OMahony was in on the founding of the Catholic Press Association the next June 1911. 120 Another in a long line of Protestant-Irish patriots, in 1803 Emmett intended an attack on Dublin Castle, the center of English government in Ireland, to spark an uprising. His efforts was a fiasco, a mere affray on a Dublin street. His words in the dock, however, proved lasting: Let no man write my epitaph; . . . When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. He was hanged, decapitated, his head displayed to the crowd. 121 Indiana Catholic and Record, 16 October 1925, 4. The title of father of the American navy is contentious. As late as 1959 the AOH complained of a movie depicting John Paul Jones as holding the title. IC&R, 15 May 1959, 7. Wilsons dedication of the Barry monument did him little good among the Irish when he failed to support Irish independence after the war. Devoy, Post Bag, vol. 2, 402. 122 In 1803 Robert Emmett, a Protestant and Irish republican, hoped to spark an uprising against Englands rule by seizing the center of English rule, Dublin Castle. The attempt was an abject failure, but his speech at his trial (Let no man write my epitaph . . . . until other times and other men can do justice to my character, when my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then and not till then let my epitaph be written, made him one of the best remembered of Irelands martyrs. He was hung, drawn, and quartered. OMahony was the founder of the Indianapolis club, but there had been an Emmet Guards in the city earlier, a military drilling organization. The Western Citizen, 1 March 1879, 1, carried a portrait engraving of Emmett, as well as quoting his peroration on the scaffold. 123 Humbert Pagani, The Indianapolis Star, 5 March 1935, 1, 3. 27 Rory [i.e., Roger Casement] to Maurice Donnelly of Indianapolis?124 The significance of this is that the Great War, 1914-1918 has broken out, and Casement, a famous journalist, took part in the 1916 Easter Rising, was captured and executed by the British. Donnelly had been president of the AOH and clearly an Irish nationalist working for Irish independeance from England. *** Besides secret societies and trade unions, Bishop Chatard found himself at odds with his liberal confreres in the quarrel over Americanism, the name given to a supposedly liberal movement intended to render Catholicism more agreeable to American non-Catholics. The two main charges American Protestants leveled against the Catholic Church was that the faithful owed primary allegiance to a foreign ruler and were as sheep voting as the clergy directed. In a sweeping pastoral letter of 1837 the hierarchy had countered the first criticism by declaring the freedom of the Church from any religious allegiance to any government, state or federal, and freedom, too, from claims of governments of any supremacy or any dominion over us in our spiritual or ecclesiastical concerns. Nor do we acknowledge any civil or political supremacy or power over us in any foreign potentate, though that potentate might be the chief pastor of our church. Three years later the bishops addressed the second charge by disclaiming any right to interfere with the laitys judgments in political affairs.125 As Catholic immigrants flooded in, Protestant suspicions were not allayed, and a halfcentury later, during the Gilded Age, the Church was caught between contending critics outside and within: Protestants continued to see Catholics as not American enough, while conservative Catholics, at home and at Rome, considered the Church in the United States as all too American.126 There were real differences among the hierarchy between liberal Americanists and their conservative opponents, the Ultramontanes (tellingly, the latter term of European origin). Chatard and likeminded conservatives saw the modern world in harsh, negative terms and as a threat to the laitys faith. The remedy was forceful reiteration of traditional teaching, loyalty to the pope, tightened ecclesiastical discipline, and to bolster the morale of the faithful, vigorous polemic against infidelity. Liberals also saw modernity as a danger, but not an unalloyed one for it also nurtured human freedom and an understanding of nature and society. Discrimination was called for. Accept the good, integrate it with the Churchs teaching, employ its insights as a resource for evangelization and the Churchs salvific mission. This, liberals believed, was in line with Rerum novarum.127 124 Devoy, Post Bag, vol. 2, 471. 125 Brynes, Bishops and American Politics, 15. 126 See OBrien, Public Catholicism, 124-128, for a nuanced discussion of this dualism. A paraphrase of Philip Gleason, Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 7, 8. 127 28 The leading Americanists were archbishops John Ireland and James Gibbons. Given to patriotic utterance, neither saw any conflict in principle between the Church and the United States: At the time of the 1884 Baltimore Plenary Council, in a lecture on The Catholic Church and Civil Society, Ireland held that far from being in conflict, the principles of the Church are in thorough harmony with the interests of the Republic. In his 1888 sermon at Fr. Edward Sorins 50th priest jubilee, the founder of Notre Dame, Ireland asserted that in America the Church is as free as a bird, flying withersoever it will; free to put forth all her powers and tempt the realization of her most ambitious projects for the welfare, natural and supernatural, of men. . . . Bound to no enervating conservatism, no old-time traditions repressing her movements, she can encounter with the liberty of action which insures success . . . . In Rome in 1887 to receive his red hat,128 Gibbons delivered his own heartfelt encomium: For myself, as a citizen of the United state, without closing my eyes to our defects as a nation, I proclaim, with a deep sense of pride and gratitude, . . . that I belong to a country where the civil government holds over us the aegis of its protection without interference in the legitimate exercise of our sublime mission as ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But while we are acknowledged to have a free government, we do not perhaps receive due credit for possessing also a strong government. Yes, our nation is strong, and her strength lies under Providence, in the majesty and supremacy of the law in the loyalty of its citizens to that law, and in the affection of our people for their free institutions. It was with a deep sense of pride and gratitude, that he belonged to a country that protected religion while leaving it free to fulfill its mission. Thanks to the First Amendment, the United States has liberty without license, authority without despotism. Hers is no spirit of exclusiveness. [A]t peace with all the world, she welcomed the honest immigrant who comes to advance his temporal interest and to find a peaceful home.129 Gibbons and Ireland and like-minded others, wanted the Church to embrace an American ethos, which meant separating church and state and embracing its corollaries--religious liberty, cooperation with Protestants, and the use of English in worship to speed the assimilation of immigrants. Conservatives wanted no truck with Protestants, regarded the public schools as both Protestant and godless, and wanted to build a 128 In another of the many signs of the esteem with which Gibbons was held, immediately before his departure for Rome he was received in the White House by President Grover Cleveland. 129 Michael Glazier and Thomas J. Shelly, eds., The Encyclopedia of American Catholic History (Liturgical Press: Collegeville, Minnesota, 1997), 588. Gibbons statement is a point-by-point refutation of Chatards position that the U.S. Government was too weak for safety. 29 parallel Catholic worldits own schools, hospitals, fraternal societies, and other institutions--a self-imposed ghetto. Regarding the modern age, liberals said understand it; conservatives said, its evil, avoid it.130 It is impossible to imagine Chatard speaking of America in the manner of Gibbons and Ireland. As an ultramontane, Chatard was personally and ideologically the close ally of the leader of the conservative bishops in America, New York Archbishop Michael Corrigan, a long-time friend and member of the first class of the American College in Rome in 1859. He supported Corrigan in his nearly two-decade battle with Fr. Edward McGlynn, an outspoken champion of the ideas of Henry George, who Chatard and Corrigan also condemned. Returning the sentiment, McGlynn recognized in Chatard an enemy, charging him and other bishops with not accepting the Declaration of Independence and interfering in politics to promote the pecuniary and temporal objects of the ecclesiastical machine.131 In the struggle between Americanists and Ultramontanes the intervention of Rome on the side of the latter proved decisive. The Vatican was already wary of the liberals for a number of reasons, among them their participation in interfaith activities: Archbishop John J. Keane, rector of Catholic University, spoke twice at Harvard University, 1891 and 1893, and, with other leading Catholic clergy and laity, addressed the Worlds Parliament of Religions (held in conjunction with Chicagos 1892 Columbian Exposition). Cardinal Gibbons also represented the Church at the Exposition, mixed with Protestants, Buddhists, and Muslims, and closed the proceedings by leading the Lords Prayer and giving the Apostolic Blessing.132 This was ecumenism avante de lettre! threatening communicatio in sacris, religious indifferentism, and other evils. Rome reflected a strain of European and Canadian opinion that believed the American clergy to be Protestant priests and lacking confidence in God. The Americanists church was active, pragmatic, materialist--just like the nation, and these were held to be weaknesses.133 The discordance, as the Holy See saw it, between itself and liberal American Catholics showed itself in a series of papal encyclicals beginning with Immortale Dei, 1885: While accepting that governments might rightly, to avoid worse evils, tolerate religions that were not Catholic, Leo XIII also held that it was absurd that men were free to think what they want on any subject; liberty of thought and a free press caused much social harm. One year later the encyclical Libertas blamed toleration for producing all sorts of evils. 130 Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 312-314. OConnell, Sorin, 705. See McGlynns article in North American Review (August 1887), 182-205, and McGreevey, Catholics and American Freedom, 133 ff, for discussion of the three men. 131 132 Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 241, 290. This shocked the newly named papal delegate to the U.S., the first such, and Leo XIII in a public letter opposed further participation in such, promiscuous religious meetings. In 1896 Keane was removed as rector of Catholic University by the pope, according to the apostolic delegate because his speeches contradicted the Syllabus of Errors. Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, 740. 133 White, US Seminaries, 234. 30 Consequently, the state had the right to limit freedom of opinion;134 Longinqua oceani (wide expanse of the ocean), 1895, addressed specifically to the American bishops, marked the first step in the undermining the foundational ideas of the Americanists. While strongly endorsing the new Catholic University of America (whose founding was largely the work of the Americanists), Leo XIII insisted on submission to papal authority and warned against the view that separation of church and state and religious liberty were good in themselves and applicable to other countries: It would be very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. In praising the American church for growing under circumstances of religious liberty, the pope asserted that it would develop even more if she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority. As Ireland observed to Gibbons, That unfortunate allusion to Church and State cannot be explained to Americans.135 The publication in 1897 of an abridged French translation of an admiring 1891 biography of Fr. Isaac Hecker (1819-1888), the founder of the Congregation of St. Paul the Apostlethe Paulists,136 marked the second step: With the Church under attack in France by the anticlerical Third Republic, some French churchmen sought to more closely imitate the American Church, seeing in it a confidence, activity, and openness absent elsewhere. For example, the religious diversity of the United States meant that faith and conversion would have to be a matter of personal conviction, neither pressure nor fiat. Hecker had thought this a good thing.137 Characteristically, he would say he was a better Catholic because he was an American, and a better American because he was a Catholic. European liberals praised Heckers approach as an effective response to the modern age, while conservatives there found laxness, even heresy, in such a view. With conservative churchmen in France violently attacking what they took to be Heckers ideas, a polemical war in Europe erupted. Conservatives argued that even a limited accommodation with modern ideals, such as freedom and democracy, would wound the Church. The uproar was such that Leo XIII stepped in a personal letter to Gibbons, 22 January 1899, with the ironic title Testem benevolentiae (testament or witness of benevolence). In it the pope condemned certain opinions which some comprise under the head of Americanism, which Pope Leo reduced to the proposition that, in order the more easily to bring over to Catholic doctrine those who dissent from it, the Church ought to 134 Chadwick, The Popes, 1830-1914, 293, 294. 135 John Tracy Ellis, ed., Documents of American Catholic History (Bruce Publishing Company: Milwaukee, 1956), 517, 518; OConnell, Ireland, 404. 136 A convert to Catholicism in 1844, Hecker, a warm and effective preacher, intended the order as an evangelizing effort to bring non-Catholics into the Church. He was disappointed with the defensive tone of Vatican I, which he attended, and the continued nay saying of the Church subsequently. Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, 98. 137 Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, 625. 31 adapt herself somewhat to our advanced civilization, and relaxing her ancient rigor, show some indulgence to modern popular theories and methods. Pope Leo saw this as reprehensible. The Church admitted no such modification as to time or place for it has constantly adhered to the same doctrine, in the same sense and in the same mind [ital. orig.]. Specifically condemned were supposed efforts to make the American Catholic Church different from the rest of the Church; the conviction that the Church should show more indulgence to modern theories and methods; and the belief that individuals can act confidently and independently based on their natural capacities in such a way that the Churchs power to demand obedience would be limited, and by implication that Americanists, following Hecker, denied the need for grace.138 The Church had nothing to learn from anyone, while the world needed the pope in order to safeguard the minds of the Churchs children from the dangers of these present Times.139 Ireland, Gibbons, and their supporters denied that heresy was involved while the Corrigans of the hierarchy thanked the pope for eradicating the heresy.140 Intending to demonstrate the emptiness of the charge of heresy, at their annual meeting Ireland proposed that the bishops be polled on the existence of any Americanist heresy in [their] diocese, and if so, where and who taught it. The vote on Irelands proposal was a tie that Gibbons, presiding, broke by voting against it. Ireland wanted to continue the battle; Gibbons, preferring peacewanted to end the matter.141 Amid the controversy Chatard seems to have stood on the sidelines: He did not sign a letter of submission to Archbishop Elder regarding Testem benevolentiae, as did the bishops of Louisville, Grand Rapids, Covington, Detroit, and Cleveland.142 His failure to publicly align with his ultramontane friends may have been personal--the memory of the friendship Hecker had shown him in the winter of 1857, 1858: Chatard had gone sightseeing in Rome with Hecker and others to the place where St. Peter and St. Paul were imprisoned; in his diary he wrote of several very instructive, interesting and encouraging conversations with [Hecker].143 And five years before Testem, in the preface to his 1894 essay collection, Chatard had credited the kind words of Very Rev. Father Hecker for first inspiring him to put pen to paper to write for the public. 138 Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, Americanism, 98, 97-103. 139 Reher, Catholic Intellectual in America, 85. By children the pope meant the laity. 140 McCarthy, 20th Century Church, 44, 45. Some have seen Testem benevolentiae as a reproach for the U.S. victory over Spain; others that ever since the 1854 definition of the Immaculate Conception put European conservatives and Americanists on a collision course for if only Mary sinless, then what of democracy? If with original sin the result is a weakened intellect and disordered will, then democracy is a positively dangerous illusion. What is needed, therefore, is an authoritarian, repressive, and preventive government, a Leviathon for a Hobbesian world. As for separating church and state, it is irreligious and leads to atheism. Reher, Catholic Intellectuals in America, 82-84. 141 Article on Catholic bishops as patriots, Criterion, 3 Nov 1989, 2. 142 McAvoy, American Heresy, 247. 143 Chatard Papers, Box A-10, page 52 of diary, 1857, 1858. 32 Moreover, Chatards articles first appeared in the Catholic World, a monthly review of literature, religion, and the arts founded by Heckers Paulists, and his collected essays were published by the Catholic Publication Society, also founded by Hecker. Of course, there was never any question of Chatards orthodoxy, his loyalty to the papacy, or his willing obedience to authority. He went out of his way to be explicit: In his 1881 essay collection he submitted all he had written to the pope, ready to correct any error into which I may have fallen; . . . In the 1894 preface he repeated his willingness to submit to the judgment and correction, if need be, of Holy Mother Church.144 For one so devoted to the Holy See, Chatard received a sharp reprimand from Rome during the Americanist imbroglio. It happened this way: Chatard allied with the Corrigan-McQuaid faction against the Americanist Gibbons-Ireland bloc. As evidence of a supposed papal delegations cabal against Corrigan, in an 1893 letter to a high Vatican official, Chatard enclosed an article from a Minnesota paper purporting that Corrigan would be removed as New Yorks archbishop--the implication being that Ireland, the Minnesota archbishop, was behind the rumor. The official scolded Chatard, noting that the delegation was established to end debate on the school question, that Satolli, the newly appointed papal delegates friendship with Ireland had begun in Rome, and that if Chatard could cite one newspaper which took against Corrigan, there were others claiming Corrigans support who criticized Satolli. Corrigan denied any association with such articles.145 Whether Americanism was a phantom heresy or not, historians of Catholicism in the U.S. have viewed the consequences as extremely serious: Beyond the indecent damage done to Heckers reputation, perhaps the most significant was that even liberal American bishops became alertly submissive to Vatican decisions. Gibbons and Ireland hastened to declare their support for Rome: the former, while denying the evils charged to the American church, affirmed that the papacy had not in the whole world bishops, clergy, and laity more fundamentally Catholic, firmer in their faith, and more devoted to the Holy See than Americas. In a letter to the Vatican secretary of state, Ireland declared that he and all the other bishops have only one system--that of the Holy See; have only one kind of ideas--that of the Holy See. The American bishops obey the least word that comes from Rome.146 Some bishops denied the reality of the heresy, some, while not admitting that the heresy existed, thanked the pope. Conservatives, following Corrigan, profusely congratulated the pope for having identified the multiplicity of fallacies and errors.147 In concrete terms, debate on parochial schools ended and the hierarchy became more secretive and more Roman as Vaticanoriented clergy were named to American sees; dialogue with non-Catholics became more suspect; and 144 Christian Truths: Lectures (The Catholic Publication Society Co.: New York, 1881). Occasional Essays, (Catholic Publication Society: New York, 1894). 145 Fogarty, title???, 130, suggests Corrigan might have lied in this. 146 Fogarty, Vatican and the American Hierarchy, 180, 181; John F. Fink, When a pope condemned Americanism (II), Criterion, 5 March 2004, 12. 147 Fogarty, Vatican and American Hierarchy, 181, 182 33 intellectual reflection on American experience circumscribed. Not for another sixty years would there be an opportunity to reexamine the Catholic position on religious liberty.148 As a sign of the times, the year previous to Testem benevolentiae, Fr. John A. Zahm of Notre Dame, professor of physics and chemistry and an evolutionist, was silenced and his 1896 book, Evolution and Dogma withdrawn from circulation and placed on the Index (although that was not made public).149 Zahm, the most able Catholic scientist of his day, gave his last scientific paper, Evolution and Teleology, Fribourg, Switzerland, August 1897. He turned from scientific treatises to writing travel books the last 24 years of his life.150 Privately, he predicted that nine of ten thinkers would be evolutionists as opposed to the special creationists. The capstone of the Churchs liberal-conservative conflict was an ensuing controversy over modernism. While having something of a family resemblance with Americanism, modernism was primarily a European matter, and constituted a more serious crisis by reinforcing the chilling effect of Immortale, Libertas, Lonquinqua, and Testem. An equivocal term that defies precise definition,151 a modernist was any Christian . . . who is convinced that the essential truths of his religion and the essential truths of modern society can enter into a synthesis,152 an effort to accommodate Catholic teaching to a collective change in mentality of the nineteenth century. Modernists raised a great many questions; the nature of revelation, biblical inspiration, religious knowledge, the personality of Christ and his role in establishing the Church, the limits of the evolution of dogma, authority of the magisterium, the status of scholasticism. As a movement 148 Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, 98. Another has written that with Testem benevolentiae and Pascendi Dominici, 1907, the lights went out for American Catholic intellectuals. American Catholicism, in World Catholicism in Transition, 235. Still another in the mid-1950s wrote that the 1899 letter did not condemn anything in America, but by killing off the dialogue which Hecker, Archbishop Ireland, Orestes Brownson, and others had initiated, it did deal a blow to American Catholic self-confidence from which the American Catholic mind has never effectively recovered. Walter J. Ong, S.J., The Intellectual Frontier, in Louis J. Putz, ed., The Catholic Church, U.S.A. (Chicago, 1956), 415. 149 Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 317. Zahm, convinced of the truth of evolution, had lectured widely in the U.S. on the topic and in his book had called Lamarck, Darwin, and Mivart pioneers. St. George Jackson Mivart (d. 1 April 1900), FRS, English scientist and modernist whose writings on evolution were condemned and he himself excommunicated. His views on hell and eternal punishment were also found heretical and his writings on the subject placed on the Index, ca. 1893.) 150 Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 317; Reher, Catholic Intellectuals in America, 79, 80. Zahm was later ousted as provincial of Holy Cross; his distinction as a scientist and shared interest in nature and exploration led to friendship with Theodore Roosevelt and together they planned their 1914 expedition to explore Amazonia. 151 OConnell, Critics on Trial, xi. 152 OConnell, Critics on Trial, xi. 34 dealing with esoteric matters--philosophy, theology, and biblical exegesisit was a matter for experts and of little interest to the laity at-large.153 The English modernist George Tyrrell saw the task as seeking to help the Church reconcile itself with what they felt was best of intellectual culture as it had evolved into the present.154 Not an organized movement, but theologians who, in attempting to develop a synthesis between Catholicism and modern scientific, political, and social ideas, rejected neo-scholastic metaphysics in favor of nineteenth century historical methodology.155 Some deemed modernists disliked the enthronement of Aquinas, or thought Darwin right, or wanted an end to compulsory celibacy, desired Mass in the vernacular, or were hostile to Curial control, papal infallibility, the Index of Prohibited Books, and so on. No one could doubt that the ultramontane Church stood in conflict with the modern world; modernists thought the conflict unnecessary. One should be free to enquire, especially to read Protestant scholars.156 Completing the project of centralizing power in the Vatican and the rout of whatever vestiges of liberalism remained in the Church was the work of Pius X (1903-1914).157 Dedicating his papacy to restore all things in Christ, he branded modernism a synthesis of all heresies. He especially disliked modern scholarship and historical studies that showed that doctrine had developed and that the scriptures could not be taken literally.158 In July 1907 the Holy Office issued Lamentabili sane exitu (a lamentable departure indeed). In the spirit of the 1864 Syllabus of Errors, Lamentabili condemned 65 propositions as modernist, including those having to do with the nature of the church, biblical exegesis, revelation, the sacraments, and the divinity 153 154 155 Gleason, Catholic Higher Education, 6, 13, 16. OMalley, What Happened at Vatican II, 68. Rehrer, Catholic Intellectual Life in America, 94; Evidence that in the Church nothing is ever completely lost, in 2002 the Curias understanding of modernism was revealed in a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) condemning two books by Fr. Thomas P. Aldworth, an American Franciscan priest. Interestingly, the CDF found the circumstances in the U.S. of a muchness with those prevalent during the modernist crisis in Western Europe, in the late 1800s. Then, the theological misdirections of some English and Continental authors threatened to unsettle the faith of the laity. Like the small group of authors in England and on the continent a century ago, Fr. Aldworths books spread half-truths . . . and promote[s] skeptical attitudes toward the pastors of the church, as well as toward the magisterium. National Catholic Reporter, 16 August 2002, 22. 156 The first use of modernism in the sense of a dangerous theological movement was December 1905. Chadwick, History of the Popes, 347-349, 354. 157 Canonized in 1954, only forty years after his death, Pius X was the first pope made a saint since the 1500s. 158 Pius Xs condemnation of modernism was 47th on John F. Finks list of the 50 most important events in Catholic history. As the former Criterion editor observed, scholars were forbidden to question: Moses authorship of the first five books of the Old Testament; that Isaiah had only one author; that Matthew was the first Gospel written; or that Paul wrote the Letter to the Hebrews--all now known to be wrong. Criterion, 19 September 2003, 12. 35 of Christ. This was followed in September by the encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis, (feeding the Lords flock). Far from pastoral, in violent language Pius X called on bishops to root out modernists in their seminaries. Specifically condemned were agnosticism, evolutionism, symbolism, and the claim of academics for freedom of inquiry. Finally, in September 1910 came Sacrorum antistitum, an oath against modernism required of all clergy: I firmly embrace and accept anything and everything defined, asserted, and declared by the inerrant magisterium of the church, especially those articles of doctrine that are directly opposed to the errors of the present time. (Worldwide, less than fifty clergy refused to take the oath.) 159 Bishops were to report triennially to Rome on the thought and action current among their clergy . . . .160 Excommunications, dismissal from office, and an epidemic of book banning followed. Given Pascendi, the lesson for scholars was Keep your mouth shut, your pen idle, and your mind at rest.161 To enforce the oath Pius X established diocesan councils of vigilance, a kind of ecclesiastical secret police to spy on modernists. (Presumably, one was set up in the Indianapolis Archdiocese.) 162 By 1907 Rome thereby defined itself by what it was--authoritarian, hierarchical, monarchical, traditional--and by what it was not--democratic, progressive, pragmatic, open to autonomous science.163 As Pius X put it in Vehementer nos (on the French law of separation, 1906), the Church was an unequal society with but two classes, the pastors and their flocks. All authority lies with the former as the people have no other duty than to let themselves be governed by their pastors and to follow obediently.164 A key enforcer of the popes program, Msgr. Umberto Benigni, a minor official of the Curia credited with coining the term modernism, was an ardent monarchist and confidant of Pius X. An enemy of anything liberal, Benigni created the League of Pius V, a society of informers whose reports on what the seminaries and universities were teaching, what the bishops were saying and writing produced lists of suspect clergy and laity that flowed to Rome.165 Benigni fa tuttoBenigni does everything, became a saying. He developed his 159 Required until 1967, the oath was dropped by Pope Paul VI. Chadwick, History of Popes, 355. 160 Coppa, The Modern Papacy Since 1789, 147. 161 OMalley, What Happened at Vatican II, 271. 162 John Fink, Criterion, 22 October 1999, 10, refers to the requirement that every diocese set up a vigilance committee. This writer has not found anything about a vigilance committee in the Indianapolis archdiocesan archives, but that proves nothing. Such committees were still on the books until 1967. Chadwick, History of Popes, 355. 163 R. Scott Appleby, Church and Age Unite! The Modernist Impulse in American Catholicism (University of Notre Dame: Notre Dame, Indiana, 1992), 53. 164 Chadwick, Popes, 1830-1914, 395. 165 Benigni knew his man: Pius V (1566-1572), Grand Inquisitor under his predecessor as pope, was known for his savage use of the Inquisition and harsh treatment of Jews. He sought with inexhaustible zeal to extirpate every trace of 36 own news service, a series of journals, and the Sodalitium Pianum (Fellowship of Pius V), a way for conservatives to attack their modernist enemies. For Benigni (who ended a Fascist), history is nothing but a continual desperate effort to vomit. For this sort of human being there is only one remedy: The Inquisition.166 Angelo Roncalli, the future John XXIII, was denounced for encouraging his church history students to read a suspect book. No one was safe. Real Catholics were intransigent integralists. Pius X declared that some wanted modernists treated with oil, soap, and caresses: but they should be beaten with fists. 167 Upon his death, his successor, Benedict XV, discovering his own name on a list of suspect modernists, stopped the practice. At Vatican II the archbishop of Turin said that this must never happen in the Church again.168 The effect of the oath on Catholic scholarship was devastating. Across the country intellectual curiosity was discouraged and a climate of fear gripped the academy. Some scholars turned away from theology. Fr. Francis P. Duffys work at the New York Review, a Catholic theological journal, made his orthodoxy suspect. In 1909 when his archbishop, Michael Corrigan, dismissed the rector of Dunwoodie Seminary, he almost fired Duffy as well. Four years later Corrigan told the apostolic delegate that while Duffy was a good, intelligent priest, he had a strong leaning toward the liberal tendency called modernism.169 Witch hunts took place: Security, safety, conservatism became imperative, as the fear of heresy settled over episcopal residences, chanceries, seminaries, and Catholic colleges and universities. Free intellectual inquiry in ecclesiastical circles came to a virtual standstill. A half-century later American Catholics wondered why the church produced so few intellectuals.170 It is doubtful that Bishop Chatard found anything in Pascendi objectionable. In any case, Roma locuta est, causa finita est--Rome had spoken, the matter is closed. Under his rectorship at the American College dissent and encouraged French Catholics to take no Huguenot prisoner, but instantly kill any that fell into their hands. Convinced always of his rightness, he never mitigated punishment, believing that if only a few in a town were punished it was because the authorities were lax. He bore the very bitterest hatred to all who would not accept his tenets. Leopold von Ranke, History of the Popes: Their Church and State, vol. 1 (New York, 1901, 1966), 258. Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 170. 166 Chadwick, History of Popes, 357. Benigni is described by OConnell, Critics on Trial, 361-364, as sinister, grossly fat, with small, cunning eyes . . . the spy-master of a ragtag crew of informers and fanatics. An internet search for Benigni, Eponymous flower paints a very different picture. 167 Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 250, 251. 168 Bosler, New Wine, 75. 169 Sheeley, What the Hell, 93. 170 Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 319. For example, until the 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (Inspired by the Holy Spirit) gave permission to embrace modern methods, Catholic biblical scholarship lagged. 37 seminary life had been one of discipline and strict attention to clerical propriety. Even then, forty years before Pascendi, one studied philosophy not by way of reason but authority; professors of scripture ignored biblical criticism just then coming to the fore and theology was dogmatic, a priori. As applied to seminaries, Pascendi was taken to mean dont pursue wide learning.171 In short, the intellectual atmosphere of the North American College in Rome in the 1860s and 1870s was that of St. Meinrad and most other seminaries until after World War II. Seminarians were to avoid the laity, especially women. To set them off as a class apart, Pius X wanted them in cassocks in public and discouraged home visits at vacation times.172 Mail was censored. Newspapers, journals, and magazines were forbidden to seminarians and their superiors were to see to the ban. Significantly, it made seminaries a matter for Rome not the local ordinary.173 In the 1920s and 30s, St. Meinrads library offered carefully screened novels and only those books of theology, philosophy, and church history that presented the Catholic point of view. While the students could read National Geographic, photographs of naked savages were expunged. Devotional reading and theological works were available, although even Catholic books were subject to proscription by the Roman Congregation of Seminaries and Studies. (Some seminarians got around the censors when their parents lined the boxes from home with newspapers, comics, and magazines.) Kneeling out in the aisle was the punishment for miscreants discovered with contraband radios or secular magazines; more severe was campusing (confinement to campus for days, weeks, or months), and paddling [!] for smoking or drinking beer. (Bosler, prior to his graduate schooling, found a conservative St. Meinrad wonderful, providing a great education and full of great spirit.)174 As Chartrand put it in his 1922 Lenten pastoral, priests were Men, specially chosen, duly prepared, divinely commissioned in the Sacrament of Holy Orders, . . . set apart to act as Gods ambassadors in the performance of duties most exalted.175 The goal was to build an abstemious, clerical man, independent of social contacts, whose main job was sacramental.176 Ideally, a manly, affable, obedient, anti-intellectual priest.177 *** 171 White, United States Seminaries, 96, 97. 172 Chadwick, Popes, 1830-1914, 366. Wearing the cassock in public has become a sign of a priests rejection of Vatican II reforms since the 1990s. 173 White, U.S. Seminaries, 157, 263. As late as 1950, the Library at Notre Dame refused to carry Time magazine. 174 Bosler, New Wine, 1, 10. 175 IC&R, 7 April 1922, 5. 176 White, U.S. Seminaries, 127-135. 177 Kennedy, Bernardin, 32. 38 As it happened, a fortnight after the promulgation of the oath against modernism Vicar- General Joseph Chartrand was consecrated coadjutor-bishop of Indianapolis at Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral.178 The installation of a bishop is an occasion for the Catholic community to impress themselves and outsiders with numbers and ritual, and Chartrands installation was no exception. The largest gathering of clergy and religious in the city to that time overflowed the hotels, requiring the laity to open their homes to accommodate the numbers.179 A great throng gathered an hour before the doors of the cathedral were opened at 9:00 A.M. and, with the church crowded beyond its capacity, Meridian Street rendered nearly impassible. Three hundred secular and regular clergy, followed by abbots, monsignors, eighteen bishops and the apostolic delegate processed into the church between the ranks of a hundred Knights of Columbus. (With a self-effacement typical of the period, 125 nuns had quietly made their way to their places in the church a half-hour before.) The local press provided a step-by-step narrative of the three-and-a-half-hour Mass, including a full listing of the major participants and their function--cross bearer, book bearer, mitre bearer, thurifer--as well as parts of the ritual verbatim and explanations of the symbols: the mitre, "the helmet of protection and salvation, so that . . . [the bishop] may seem terrible to the opponents of truth . . . . "; the reading of the Papal Bull of appointment--six parchments in manuscript ("each had the great seal of St. Peter attached"). 180 The secular press emphasized the magnificence and variety of the vestments--the "sweet smell of incense," "the music of organ, cornet and a chorus of male voices,"181 and gushed over the "magnificence, solemnly impressive and imposing as the great event it clothed, characterized the consecration . . . . In all, a picture of beauty, set gorgeously in a frame of rich liturgy, inspiring music and color, . . . the greatest Catholic ceremony that can transpire in the United States," a spectacle that has not been equaled in Indianapolis for many years."182 Many non-Catholics attended, among them former vice-president Charles Warren Fairbanks, a friend of both Chatard and Chartrand. Completing the day was a banquet for 350 clergy at the Denison Hotel (the religious sisters lunched less sumptuously--and out of public view--at St. Mary's Academy). The occasion was also notable for the sermon by the Jesuit provincial of the St. Louis province, Very Rev. Rudolph J. Meyers. A full-throated ultramontane,183 Fr. Meyers scored the modernists for secretly 178 It was the lead story in both the evening Indianapolis News, with large photographs of Chartrand (News), and the sanctuary-filled celebrants (the morning Indianapolis Star, with additional photographs on the inside). The News spent some 2,400 words to describe the ceremonies, the Star some 3,200 words. 179 Catholic Columbian Record, 16 September 1910, 1. 180 Indianapolis News, 15 September 1910. 181 News, 15 Sept 1910. 182 Indianapolis Star, 16 Sept 1910. 183 The Society of Jesus was the vanguard of the ultramontanes at this time. The order had been expelled in 1847 from Switzerland, and from Italy, Spain, Germany, and France between 1859-1880, many European Jesuits going to St. Louis. 39 spreading "a most insidious heresy" of impugning the authority of the hierarchy, of asserting that the truths of the church are not immutable, of holding that some truths of revelation may become obsolete and be supplanted by higher truths "in accordance with some real or fancied progress of natural science" or having a meaning different from that given them by the hierarchy. Others, said the homilist, wished to limit the teaching authority of the Church to definitions of faith and claimed the right to set aside her decisions and "make light of her censures," thus belittling her authority, "especially that of the 'Roman congregations'." He accused them of arguing that the laity, by right, should share in the government of the church as in civil affairs, as if the Church were a democracy. Such people feel no attraction to religious worship unless it appeals to their "esthetic sense" as if they were attending a "theatrical performance,"184 and look with distrust at popular piety and the devotions approved by the Church. Reform is always a great need, the priest concluded, but not in "the divine element the Church, in her dogmas, her moral laws, her means of sanctification and organization, but in her human element. Shallow rationalism in the Catholic Church must come to an end. . . . The love of a paganized civilization and culture must not taint the childlike simplicity of Catholic devotion."185 Chartrands own views were of a piece with Fr. Meyers, as shown in the title of his 1913 Easter pastoral, addressed to Venerable Brethren of the Clergy, Beloved Children of the Laity.186 Indianapolis Catholics were no doubt gratified by the respectful tone, expansive coverage, and unstinting praise in the press coverage of Chartrand's investiture; the most devoted diocesan newspaper could not have bettered it. But what did Protestants really think of it all? Non-Catholics tended to be both fascinated and repelled by the elaborate rituals of Roman Catholicism. Witnessing a Mass in Philadelphia in 1774, John Adams found it most awful and affecting: the poor wretches fingering their beads, chanting Latin, not a word of which they understood, their Paternosters and Ave Marias, their holy water; their crossing themselves perpetually; their bowing and kneeling and genuflecting before the altar.187 Similarly, press accounts of Chartrands consecration enlarged on the exotic, costly vestments, the incense, candles in abundance, arcane rituals, Gregorian chant, and not least, the conferral of episcopal powers by Rome must have awakened and confirmed long-held fears of popery (wasnt this proof of allegiance to a "foreign potentate?"). Jesuits taught the degeneracy of the world and the loss of the virtue of true obedience. After the 1848 revolutions the Jesuits founded and edited Civilta Cattolica. McGreevey, Catholics and American Freedom, 24. The papacy suppressed the order in 1773, lifting the ban in 1814. 184 The irony here is that from the press reports that for sheer theatricality few if any theatres in the city could have put on a show to match Chartrands consecration rites. 185 Indianapolis Star, 16 September 1910. 186 Indiana Catholic, 21 March 1913, 1. 187 Cogley, Catholic America, 5. 40 Fr. Meyer's attack on modernism would be similarly disturbing--and confirming--of what even some Catholics would identify as the Churchs monarchic disposition--Notre Dames Fr. Zahm, for one: in a letter to Archbishop Ireland following the banning of his book on evolution Zahm characterized his conflict with Rome as a fight for progress, for true Americanism, . . . a fight against Jesuitical tyranny, against obscurantism and medievalism, language and sentiment identical with that of educated non-Catholic critics of the Church.188 In his belief that society is sick . . . and the one hope, the one remedy, is the Pope, Pius X took a very different view: the Church was an unequal society comprised of two categories of persons, the pastors and the flocks. . . . The duty of the multitudes [the laity] is to suffer itself to be governed and to carry out in a submissive spirit the orders of those in control [the hierarchy].189 *** From the beginning of his years in Indiana, Chatards health gave warning of not being of the best. His 1877 trip to the United States had been made on the advice of his physician and upon arrival he spent the first weeks among his Baltimore friends and relatives recovering from the arduous journey which had somewhat impaired his health.190 Never robust, in January 1899 he suffered a stroke from which he never completely recovered, ending any further consideration for other sees.191 His eyesight being impaired, Fr. Denis ODonaghue was named his auxiliary, April 1900. Ten more years of limited activity followed. When ODonoghue was named bishop of Louisville, in 1910, Joseph Chartrand became co-adjutor with the right of succession. As a seminarian during Chatards last years, many years later Msgr. John J. Doyle remembered him as being completely hidden. His health was poor, and Doyle was not sure he had ever even seen him; He did not enter into diocesan matters at all,192 that being left to Chartrand. Confined to his room by ill health the last eight months of his life, Francis Silas Chatard died 7 September 1918. Chatards obituary in the Indianapolis Star strongly suggests an ascetic, standoffish man, very conscious of his superiority: Though he has numerous friends and admirers among Protestants, it was through acquaintance sought by them rather than by himself, for he never mingled generally in society and was commonly regarded as rather coldly intellectual and exclusive. Always in touch with the highest officials of the Church, not excepting the Pope, he might have felt something of an alien in the Indiana diocese, where men of his scholarship and attainments are few, and have felt the limitations of congenial companionship. 188 Appleby, Church and Age Unite, 49, 50. 189 Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 246, 249. 190 Western Citizen, 17 August 1878, 1. 191 Catholic Columbian, 30 December 1899. The trip combined an ad limina visit and doctors orders for reasons of health. Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, 407. The steamship in the nineteenth century made it possible for ad limina visits to be every three years. After 1909 Pius set them every five years for Europeans and ten years for bishops outside Europe. Once air travel became common, it was made five years for all. Chadwick, Popes, 1830-1914, 374. 192 Msgr. John J. Doyle, Criterion, 11 January 1980, 29. 41 The writer, feeling he might have offended against the adage to say nothing ill of the dead (nihil bonum de mortuis), explained that the bishops seeming aloofness might have been due to ill health and his retirement of many years or the burden of duty, and noted that those who knew him found him companionable.193 Blanchards 1898 history of the diocese used Firmness, force of character, great executive ability, rare culture, refinement and charm of manner to limn Chatards character; yet even Blanchard felt constrained to add that he was serious almost to the point of severity and the admission, While all may not love Bishop Chatard . . . .194 Severity and humorlessness had been his hallmark as rector of the American College. On the other hand, he promoted music and singing at the college, introduced new devotions such as forty hours (in America it would become a tradition as an occasion for priests to socialize together), and he insisted that the students be given a pint of wine at the noon and evening meals, for health, it was said, but perhaps also for sophistication, training the future clerics to hold their drink in company.195 All in all, Chatards standing with his confreres and impact on the American Church does not seem to have been overly influential: He is given partial credit for the proposal for irremovable status for pastors as a defense against tyrannous bishops, which practice Chatard believed formed the basis of the eventual Instruction on the matter after 1878.196 But for one so well connected in Rome, he was unable to persuade his fellow bishops to ban either the Knights of Labor or the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Even his desire to see biblical studies in the seminaries conducted in Latin got short shrift at the Baltimore Council--for a former rector of the American College, this seems a sharp rebuff.197 He is never listed with his contemporaries-Gibbons, Ireland, Keane, John Lancaster Spalding, Corrigan, McQuaid--as a leader of the American hierarchy.198 Between 1877 and 1883 his name was put forward as one of the three names (ternas) submitted for other, more important sees--Richmond, Cincinnati, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. He was one of the three listed for Cincinnati, but when the other two withdrew and Rome asked for a new list, it was seen as a rejection of Chatard. Later, when it was a question of succeeding Alemany in San Francisco, Rochesters Bernard McQuaid, who thought highly of Chatard, recommended him as having all the necessary qualities for 193 Cited in the Indiana Catholic and Record, 13 Sept 1918, 2. 194 Blanchard, History of Catholic Church in Indiana, 106-109; In his welcome of Chatard to the city Fr. Bessonies was also hagiagraphical--a very elegant and courtly gentlemen, a man of consummate administrative abilitiesbut also that the new bishop was a strict but considerate disciplinarian [emphasis added]. Alerding, History of . . . Diocese of Vincennes, 219. 195 McNamara, American College, ch. 7. 196 Curran, Corrigan, 13n., 15. 197 White, U.S. Seminaries, 157. 198 Cassadys list of outstanding churchmen of the period, includes Gibbons, Ireland, Gilmour, Ryan, Spalding, Keane, Corrigan, McQuaid, and Kenrick; Catholic Historical Review, 435. 42 that See, 199 but Gibbons and Archbishop John J. Williams of Boston preferred John Lancaster Spalding to Chatard. As for Philadelphia, in 1884, Louisville Bishop William George McCloskey believed neither Spalding nor Chatard should get it, preferred Patrick J. Ryan, the eventual nominee.200 Chiefly known for his opposition to secret societies, although he kept in touch with Corrigan and other bishops, Chatard is absent or inconspicuous in the biographies of notable contemporaries, Corrigans being the exception. The same is true of general histories of the Church, as well as monographs on such subjects as the Knights of Columbus or the National War Council; he has not found a biographer. He is mentioned on thirteen pages of Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy, but has no entry in Encyclopedia of American Catholic History. 199 McGoin, Alemany, 307. 200 Fogarty, Vatican and the American Hierarchy, 21, 32. In a letter to Corrigan, Williams (having been asked by the Propaganda for his views) admitted to knowing Chatard well, but did not think him scarcely large enough for [Philadelphia]. Spaulding he knew less well, but he seems to me a strong man--you must know him well. Sweeney, Life of J. L. Spalding, 155, f.n. 42. 43 A note on the ground rules for papal audiences Use with anti-Catholicism, protestant-Catholic tensions, manners, protocol. One product of Italian unification in 1870 was the Vaticans embroilment in controversy over its ground rules for papal audiences. It was, and remains, common for prominent Catholics and non-Catholics alike, when in Rome, to seek an audience with the pope. After Italys unification in 1870, Vatican etiquette required that visiting heads of Catholic countries should call on the pope, but it was deemed offensive to also call on the King of Italy. In April 1904, the French president visited the king (in hope of detaching Italy from its alliance with Germany and Austria and cement it to France). But when the Italians put on an anti-papal show, the pope refused to see him and there were insults all round. France then broke relations with the Holy See (not restored until 1921). Kaiser Wilhelm also visited King Humbert in 1904, and though he was not supposed to go straight from the pope to the king, he did so. This was forgiven as the Kaiser was a Protestant and therefore taken to be ignorant of Catholic protocol. A few years later the Catholic king, Carlos of Portugal, was threatened that if he visited King Humbert, the pope would withdraw his representative to Portugal and refuse to receive him. In the circumstances, the king decided not to visit Italy at all.201 A second bone in the Vaticans throat was the proselytizing efforts of the American Methodist Episcopal Mission in Rome, beginning shortly after the Italian government captured the city, 20 September 1870. As if to nail its colors to the mast, the Methodist Mission chose to locate its headquarters on the Via Venti Settembre itself! Supported by funds from the United States, in sermons, pamphlets, and lectures the Methodists vilified the Church and on Christmas Day, 1875, opened the first Protestant church inside the walls. In the 1880s, the Methodists continued to aggressively pursue converts in the Holy City, especially among poor Italian youths, using what struck Catholics as deplorable methods--bribes of food, clothing, and shoes, sponsoring soccer clubs and distributing books filled with slander and misrepresentation of the Church and the pope.202 In response, the Vatican established a policy that no visitor who countenanced Romes Methodists by meeting with them could meet with the pope.203 201 Chadwick, History of the Popes. 202 Kauffman, Faith and Fraternity, 235, 236; Robert F. McNamara, The American College in Rome, 1855-1955 (Rochester, New York, 1956), 428. 203 In 1909 the American political and social reformer Seth Low, an Episcopalian, (mayor of Brooklyn, 1881-1885, president of Columbia University, 1890-1901, mayor of New York, 1902-03), visited the pope and then went on to the Methodist Association to deliver a eulogy to Garibaldi! Thus, the protocol was established that the pope would not receive Catholics or non-Catholics who manifest[ed] public sympathy with one or another of the notoriously anti-papal groups, which included the Methodists. Catholics who visited the King of Sardinia would not be received, nor Protestants who visited the king first. Protestant sovereigns who visited the king had to wait a day before being received by the pope). 203 44 In February 1910, Charles W. Fairbanks, U.S. senator (1897-1905), vice-president (1905-1909), future vice-presidential nominee (1916), and good friend of Bishop Chatard, sought such an audience. That Fairbanks, a Methodist, met with the King of Italy was bad enough, but by also meeting with the Methodists was unforgivable. As the diocesan Catholic Columbian Record put it: A Protestant who requests a Papal audience and yet consorts with the Churchs enemies cannot be surprised if the Vatican withdraws its hospitality.204 Three days after the story appeared in the Indianapolis Star,205 Fairbanks wrote My dear Bishop Chatard to explain: He had been granted a papal audience, but when the Italian newspapers carried the information that he was also to speak to the Methodists later in the day the Vatican stipulated that either his address to the Methodists be cancelled or have the papal meeting abandoned. Fairbanks noted that his luncheon remarks along patristic and Christian lines to 140 Catholic seminarians at the North American College had gone over well. Hed spoken of the good work the Catholic Church was doing and with the utmost pleasure, and had decried intolerance and denominational strife. I said that some of the best friends I had in the world were in the Catholic Church and that I never withheld from them or their Church my hearty commendation for what they were accomplishing for the betterment of mankind. As the Star reported, Fairbanks told the seminarians that the Catholic Church had accomplished great things for God and humanity, for [Catholics] were ever at the front when the integrity of the country had to be defended or its dignity to be upheld. Apprised after the lunch that the papal audience might still be on if he cancelled his address to the Methodists, Fairbanks refused: When he did speak to them he catechized his co-religionists that he held all Christian churches worthy of support and that narrow jealousies toward each other were unseemly.206 The Indianapolis Star praised Fairbanks believing that Even Catholics will hardly hold him open to criticism and would understand why he acted as he did.207 Unfortunately for good relations, the Methodists of Washington, D.C. exploited the episode, praising Fairbanks for not canceling his talk with them and asserting that the affair showed Roman Catholicism in its true colors of intolerance: Wherever papal power is dominant it is a distinct menace to religious liberty . . . 390, 480. See also OConnell, Critics on Trial, 32, 308. Pope Benedict in 1919 removed the ban on Rome visits of Catholic heads of state, Coppa, Modern Papacy, 167. 204 Catholic Columbian Record, 25 February 1910, 3. 205 Star, 7 February 1910, 2. 206 Fairbanks to Chatard, 10 February 1910, Chatard papers, Box 9, file 12; Star, 7 February 1910, 2. 207 Star, 8 February 1910, 2, 6. 45 .208 Chatard declined to comment publicly, and in a brief reply to Fairbanks was cordial, but gave no quarter: It gives me great pleasure to hear from you, but I deeply regret the instances that made you forego the audience with the Sovereign Pontiff who was personally well disposed towards you, but compelled by the necessities of the case to ask as he did.209 Joseph Patrick OMahony, founding editor of the new Indiana Catholic and Record, was not assuaged either. Dismissing congratulations for Fairbanks tolerance as so much hot air, he singled out the Rome Methodists for their hatred of the papacy: They stand for antagonism of the Catholic Church by fair means or foul. And Mr. Fairbanks preferred their company to that of the Pope.210 Using the occasion to demand full disclosure of their deceitful methods, OMahony went on to criticize the YMCAs influence on the U.S. military, Protestant missionary efforts in Latin America, and drew a contrast between the Paulists who, according to him, never condemned other churches with the nefariousness of Protestants.211 Before the Fairbanks episode had faded, two months later a rerun featured the most conspicuous and probably the most popular person in the world, former president Theodore Roosevelt.212 The worlds press, including the Indianapolis Star, closely followed the former presidents doings from February through April, with datelines from Cairo, Berlin, Naples, and other places. Fresh from a years slaughter of East African fauna, Roosevelt arranged his extensive itinerary on the way home to include a stop in Rome and an audience with Pius X. The Vatican expressed its delight at the prospect and the hope that nothing will arise to prevent it, mentioning the much regretted incident which had made the reception of Mr. Fairbanks impossible. Roosevelt, however, declined to submit to conditions which would limit my freedom of conduct.213 In March, the Catholic Columbian Record carried the notice that the Methodist Association in Rome, working through Mrs. Roosevelt, was trying to get her husband to address them. OMahony was sure, however, that Roosevelt 208 Star, 8 February 1910, 2. 209 Chatard papers, Box 9, file 12. This is a draft; it is likely that a version of it was sent. No real breach occurred: Fairbanks attended Chartrands consecration as bishop-adjutor later that September; was on the stage at the 1913 Tomlinson Hall celebration of St. Patricks Day; the featured speaker at the Knights of Columbus banquet at the Claypool Hotel on Discovery Day that October; and one of the main speakers at the banquet honoring Msgr. Gavisk that year for his election as head of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections. Indiana Catholic, 10, 17 October 1913, 1; White, mss. 2 of 3, 5. 210 Catholic Columbian Record, 11 February 1910, 4. As a Republican himself, OMahony had to have been unhappy that the quarrel with the Vatican involved such distinguished members of his party. 211 Catholic Columbian Record, 11 February 1910, 2; 25 February 1910, 3; 4, 11 March 1910, 1. 212 Dalton, T.R.: A Strenuous Life, 348. McNamara, The American College, 430-437, has a full account. 213 46 would not go to that city to insult the Pope.214 As with Fairbanks, the Vatican stipulated that Roosevelt not meet with the Methodists, one having recently called Pius X the whore of Babylon.215 Roosevelt visited the king and his refusal of the Vaticans condition set off what he termed an elegant row. In a letter to Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge he confessed to experiencing a very great satisfaction in administering a needed lesson to the Vatican, while making it clear that he feared the most powerful Protestant Church as little as he did the Roman Catholic. (Roosevelt admitted that, given the power of both churches. it was a good thing his candidate days [he thought] were over.) As it happened, when the Rome Methodists celebrated Roosevelts decision by issuing a scurrilous note exulting in the rebuff to the pope, contrary to their promise to Roosevelt, he refused to see them as well.216 The enormous interest in Europe and America in Roosevelt was further inflamed when he released the telegrams concerning the papal audience to the press.217 Roosevelt believed that he could not have acted other than he had and while he wanted no rancor or bitterness218 no man is a good American who fails heartily to support me for it.219 Actually, his attitude toward the Catholic Church and its adherents was, at best, ambivalent: In 1904 he had publicly expressed the view that a Catholic would one day be president and, like many another public man, was impressed with the Churchs influence with immigrants (for instance, in the temperance movement). In private, however, he had no sympathy with the doctrine of papal infallibility or the Churchs authoritarian structure,220 expressing the then standard Protestant view that the Catholic Church is in no way suited to this country . . . for its thought is Latin and entirely at variance with the democratic thought 214 McNamara, The American College, 431; Catholic Columbian Record, 11 March 1910, 4. 215 Harbaugh, Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, 357. 216 Harbaugh, Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, 357, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, vol. 7, 66. Of course, he ran again on the Progressive Bull Moose ticket in 1912. 217 It dwarfed all other news, Catholic Columbian Record, 15 April 1910, 1. Roosevelts cancellation of the audience was the lead story in the Star, 4 April 1910, 1, 5. The Star, 6 April 1910, 2, carried the story that even Catholic laity and members of the Vatican hierarchy, including some cardinals, believed that the Vatican had blundered. Sharing that view, Peoria Bishop John Lancaster Spalding later invited Roosevelt, at the time the Bull Moose candidate for president, to his Columbus Day banquet and endorsed him as the next president of the U.S. and the countrys most remarkable man. At the banquet Roosevelt repeated his prediction of an eventual Catholic president. XXXX Sweeney, Life of John Lancaster Spalding, 362-365. YEAR?? 218 Star, 4 April 1910, 1, 5. 219 Brands, Theodore Roosevelt: Last Romantic, 661. 220 William H. Harbaugh, Writings of Theodore Roosevelt, 228; Harbaugh, The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, new rev. ed. (Collier Books: New York, 1966), 216. 47 of our country and institutions.221 (By Latin he meant the supposed difference between the putatively backward Spanish and Italians versus the progressive and virile Anglo-Saxonsthe English, Germans, and northern Europeans generally.) As a result of the quarrels with Fairbanks and Roosevelt, Pius Xs popularity in the United States plummeted.222 OMahony, having first declared both the Vatican and Roosevelt within their rights on April 8th,223 the next week found him excoriating Roosevelt for his exaggerated ego [which] imagined that the chief representative of God on Earth would yield to his imperious megalomania, and sacrifice his dignity to do it. Worse, Roosevelt proceeded to meet with a deputation of local Free Masons, made a speech in praise of freemasonry, and accepted a decoration from them: This was an insult deliberately flung in the face of the Holy Father. The time, the place, the circumstances, all intensified its malice.224 Had OMahony known Roosevelts opinion of Pius X (a worthy, narrowly limited parish priest; completely under the control of . . . [Secretary of State] Merry del Val,),225 he would have been angrier still. An exchange between Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Methodist bishop of Southern Minnesota, Robert McIntyre, perhaps struck the lowest note: Ireland had led the way in condemning the Rome Methodists as vile, dishonest, and calumnious. In return, McIntyre branded Ireland a double tongued falsifier of Gods people, a cowardly accuser of men better than himself, . . . .226 When McIntyre challenged him to debate, Ireland responded by saying that McIntyres language had proved his point. By 1910 anti-Catholicism might have receded from the heyday of the American Protective Association, but mutual respect between Catholic and non-Catholic as exhibited by a Charles W. Fairbanks remained uncommon. As 221 Veverka, God and Country, 57. 222 McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 353. The Vatican placed only the Methodist Association beyond the pale; Episcopalians and Presbyterians were acceptable. Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Maryland, Dr. William Paret and wife, with a letter of introduction from Cardinal Gibbons, was received by the pope in May 1910. At first OMahony carried the report that Paret had been refused an audience, and published what was purported to be Merry del Vals statement that the Pope was neither a picture nor a statue to be inspected and criticized, nor one of the sights of Rome. Paret himself denied that he had been refused an audience in a cable to the Baltimore Sun. Catholic Columbian Record, 6 May 1910, 4; 20 May 1910, 4. 223 Catholic Columbian Record, 8 April 1910, 4. 224 Catholic Columbian Record, 15 April 1910, 4. Archbishop W. H. OConnell of Boston weighed in with an attack on Roosevelt, Why did you insult the Pope? and criticized the Catholic American Ambassador to Italy, John Callan OLaughlin for incompetence, as did the Catholic Columbian Record, 6 May 1910, 1. 225 Harbaugh, Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt, 357. 226 Star, 6 April 1910, 2. 48 a postscript, in 1921 Pope Benedict XV called on the Knights of Columbus to fight the Protestant evangels in Rome; the Knights responded by endowing an Italian Welfare Fund with a million dollars. With permission from Pius XI, between 1924 and 1927 the Knights established five recreation centers in the Holy City.227 ... 227 Knights of Columbus, Irish Encyclopedia. 49  ...

... Priestly Celibacy and the Rise of National Priests Associations since Vatican II This chapter briefly traces the history of priestly celibacy in the Catholic Church, its reasons, and the crisis in vocations the discipline created, partly as a result of the Second Vatican Councils praise of sexuality in marriage. A collateral movement questioned how authority should be distributed among the hierarchy, the clergy, and the laity, that is, what sort of ecclesiology should obtain? In response to the priest shortage, and the Councils call collaboration and greater respect for the laity came novel structures, among them priests senates and parish councils, as well as voluntary national priest associations. Strictly top down demands from the hierarchy were not acceptable as in the old days, but that those most affected had, at least, to be heard. In the United States, it was the National Federation of Priest Associations, a diocesan based organization. Employing the social science to accumulate data on opinions and preferences regarding possible reforms was another novelty. Rather than end mandatory celibacy the Churchs solution to the growing shortage of priests was to reestablish the permanent male diaconate. It was halfway measure and a source, for an increasing number of women in the Church, of dissatisfaction. In addition to the permanent diaconate, parish life coordinators would manage parishes without pastors; for the rest, priests would work harder, retired priests pressed into service on weekends, and dioceses looked abroad to Europe, South America, Africa, the Philippines and elsewhere for priests to encardinate. William Doherty, 2018, All rights reserved. 1 Priestly Celibacy and the Rise of National Priests Associations since Vatican II Now a bishop must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, dignified, hospitable, an apt teacher, not quarrelsome, and no lover of money. He must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way, for if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how can he care for Gods Church? 1 Tim. 3:2, quoted by a reader from Versailles, Indiana, Criterion, 20 November 1998, 5. If anyone says that it is not better and more godly to live in virginity or in the unmarried state than to marry, let him be anathema.1 Council of Trent In the Old Testament, sexual intercourse was seen as conflicted. On the one hand, fruitfulness in marriage was honorable and compulsory for all. On the other, even when not sinful, it was regarded as defiling (as was menstruation). Rabbis, whose priesthood was hereditary, were required to observe continence during their period of temple service and recent mothers underwent a rite of purification, a practice rooted in Leviticus. Similarly, in many Catholic countries from the Middle Ages even to the twentieth century new mothers underwent churching, a rite readmitting them to the community and attendance at Mass. In the New Testament (I Cor. 7: 32-35), St. Paul praised celibacy and virginity as a more perfect state, freeing men and women from the anxieties consequent to marriage (necessarily taken to mean a division of both love and obligation).2 In Matthews Gospel celibacy is the way, if freely accepted, to consecrate oneself to God for the sake of the kingdom of God . . . . It required special grace and therefore was not for everyone--He that can take it, let him take it (Matt. 19:11, 12, 19.). Thus, the idea of celibacy--embracing a life that precluded sexual intimacy--had been present in the Church since apostolic times. And yet nearly all the Apostles were married, as were many priests and bishops in the early Church, Catholic Encyclopedia, (1908), 487. Peter Hebblethwaite also notes that in the 1100s there were a number of monk popes (e.g., Hildebrand, Gregory VII), for whom celibacy was a matter of extending the monastic ideal. Paul VI: The First Modern Pope, (Paulist Press, 1993), 497. The early nineteenth century also saw efforts to get rid of celibacy in parts of 1 Germany, but the movement was condemned by Gregory XVI, in 1832. 2 I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction. For those who could not bear the weight of celibacy, it is better to marry than to burn (I Cor 7: 2-6, 9, 27-28, 36). 2 as Timothy shows. Some forty popes were legally married, and some, including Gregory the Great (590604), were the children or descendants of married priests, bishops, and popes.3 From the end of the fourth century to the last years of the tenth, three popes had sons who succeeded them as pope, one pope was the son of a bishop, and seven popes were the offspring of priests. While for the first three centuries it was a matter of choice, most bishops were unmarried or left their marriages after ordination. Generally speaking, marriage was permissible if priests were married before the deaconate, but it had to be monogamic--no remarriage if the wife died. The first general laws binding priesthood to celibacy were papal decrees and declarations of regional councils in Europe and Africa. The Spanish Synod of Elvira, 300 (near Granada), imposed celibacy on bishops, priests, and deacons, and ordered married clergy to live in continence under pain of deposition.4 In 325, however, the Council of Nicea overwhelmingly rejected compulsory celibacy for all. If married before ordination, the wife did not have to be put aside; but if celibate at ordination, then no marriage. This was followed by the first papal decree to hold clerical marriage unlawful of Pope Damasus (366-384): That since intercourse is a defilement, surely the priest must undertake his duties with heavenly aid.5 In the fifth century Nicea again obtained: married clerics need not dismiss their wives, but were obliged to live together without the act of love--a spiritual marriage replaced a carnal one.6 However, since other councils disagreed the question remained unsettled. Synods of the sixth and seventh centuries, while recognizing the position of clergy wives, laid down strict rules for bishops--their wives should not live in the house of their former husbands, while actual separation seems not to have been required for lower clergy. Still, for some centuries to come, clergy marriages, while unlawful, were deemed valid. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Carolingian Empire, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, with Norsemen and other invaders running amok, the papacy was in eclipse, the plaything of powerful Italian or German families (as would happen again in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries). Episcopal sees were given to rude soldiers as fiefs, inheritable by their sons. Clerical immorality was endemic, priests and bishops openly married and begot children who then inherited benefices, leading Peter Damien (1007-1072), to condemn the times in his Liber Gommorrhianus. Papal campaigns against corruption ensued. Under Benedict VIII, c. 1018, clerics were forbidden to marry or cohabit with a woman, Joseph Fichter, S.J., Wives of Catholic Clergy (Sheed & Ward: Kansas City, Kansas, 1992), 46. Criterion readers learned that a pope, St. Hormisdas, died in 523, fathered the 3 martyred pope St. Silverius, d. 538. Adrian II, d. 872, was perhaps the last married pope. Fr. John Dietzens Question Corner, Criterion, 9 November 1990, 17. 4 5 6 Indiana Catholic and Record (hereafter, IC&R), 22 June 1951, 4. Criterion, 2 July 1999, 2;, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d ed., 325. New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2d ed., 322-328. 3 and if they did, their children were declared serfs of the Church with no claim to ecclesiastical property. This was to stop the families of priests secularizing ecclesiastical holdings--parish lands and property; it is still thought by many to be the real reason for an unmarried clergy. The great reformer Gregory VII (1073-1085), whose vision for the Church was to have it free, chaste, and catholic, is regarded as the true restorer of celibacy through enforcement of existing laws by his legates and his frequent letters to bishops. In line with Gregorys efforts, the first and second Lateran Councils declared clerical marriages illicit and invalid, and this time it stuck; the first, in 1123, in declaring marriages of subdeacons and priests invalid, marks the victory of the cause of celibacy. 7 Innocent II called the second Lateran Council in 1139 to get rid of an anti-pope and to enforce celibacy for those in holy orders, beginning with the subdeaconate. Henceforth, all clerical conjugal relationships were reduced to concubinage. The fourth Lateran Council confirmed the rule. The period from the 1200s to the 1500s, however, was again one of decline. For example, in England the Royal Almoner and future cardinal, Thomas Wolsey, was given a large house and gardens in 1510 by Henry VII. There he lived with his wife, Joan Larke, in a non canonical marriage that produced two children. This was no hole and corner relationship, and when Joan publicly wed a wealthy landowner, Wolsey gave her in marriage as a father might--even fixing on her a dowry . . . .8 With married clergy and concubinage common (in England unchaste clergy merely paid a fine, a good source of Church revenue), with Luther and Calvin opposing celibacy, and despite powerful rulers agitating for changing the discipline, the Council of Trent (1543-1565) reaffirmed the Lateran ban on a married clergy: If anyone says that it is not better and more godly to live in virginity or in the unmarried state than to marry, let him be anathema.9 In America, the connection between celibacy and the celebration of the Eucharist found emphasis in the 1829 pastoral of the provincial council of Baltimore; that in undertaking Holy Orders priests renounced the prospects of worldly gain and the claim of worldly enjoyment. The exalted status and set- Catholic Encyclopedia (1908), 485. The girl was placed in a nunnery, but the boy, known as Thomas Wynter, was given every preferment from Wolsey. Even the archbishop of Canterbury of the day, Warham, was said by Erasmus to have had a wife who was not excluded from the knowledge and society of his friends. Charles W. Ferguson, Naked to Mine Enemies: The Life of Cardinal Wolsey (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1958), 86-88. 9 Catholic Encyclopedia, (1908), 487. Hebblethwaite also notes that in the 1100s there were a number of monk popes (e.g., Hildebrand, Gregory VII), for whom celibacy was a matter of extending the monastic ideal. Paul VI, 497. The early nineteenth century also saw 7 8 efforts to get rid of celibacy in parts of Germany, but the movement was condemned by Gregory XVI, in 1832. 4 apartness of the clergy was recompense for what had been given up, paid for in the coin of goodness and justice and truth signified by purity. [W]hen the sacred vessels were placed in our hands, we were charged to have the altar . . . decorated with purity of virtue . . . . to bear and watch the tabernacle in the holy attire of virtue, . . . exhibiting spiritual cleanliness, splendor, purity, and charity . . . .10 It is worth noting that celibacys rigors were always well understood: The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia observed, The one serious objection [against celibacy] is the difficulty which it presents for all but men of exceptionally strong character and high principle. Candidates for the subdeaconate on their way to priesthood were to anxiously to consider again and again what sort of burden this is which you are taking upon you of your own accord. Up to this you are free. Once ordained, however, it is no longer lawful to turn back from your purpose. Having taken on chastity, one is unable to contract a valid marriage. Hence, for such a one sexual activity is not only a sin, it is a sacrilege.11 To summarize: the principal reasons advanced for celibacy are: it is a perfect consecration to God, permitting of no division of love and effort in that the absence of family responsibilities frees the priest for the work of the kingdom; ritual purity is maintained, as intercourse is judged unseemly with the celebration of the Eucharistas a virgin had brought forth Christ, so only virgins should bring forth Christ in the Eucharist.12 As the New Catholic Encyclopedia puts it, clerical celibacy is most proper to sacerdotal ministry; it is not depreciative of marriage, but rather is the condition for greater freedom in the service of God.13 This is the Pauline utilitarian argument against the divided effort that marriage entails where family comes first, not parishioners. As a practical matter, it also obviates the threat of an heirs claim to Church property. Besides the expense of family there are the problem of the seal of confession and the compromise of effort that married missionaries would entail. Nonetheless, celibacy is a Church law--a discipline, and therefore subject to change. Faced with a shortage of clergy in many countries, the Second Vatican Council (19621965) gave permission for a deaconate of married men of mature years and proven life. Since then the papacy has found it useful to dispense from celibacy married Protestant ministers who convert and seek ordination. *** As concerns about a shortage of priests began to appear early in the twentieth century, some fixed on mandatory celibacy as the cause, optional celibacy the cure. The issue had been before the Holy 10 11 12 13 Bishops Pastorals, Vol. I, 1792-1940, 56, 57 Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1908), vol. III, 481. Gary Wills, Papal Sins, ch. 9, 133. Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908, 483. 5 See at least since Pius X (1903-1914), and in 1920 Benedict XV found it necessary to solemnly testify that the Holy See would never . . . mitigate, much less abolish, this most sacred and salutary law [of celibacy].14 Two years later the clergy shortage in Italy and elsewhere inspired Pius XI in his encyclical Ubi arcano, not to change the rule, but to call for Catholic Action by the laity to take up the slack in vocations. In 1926 Indianapolis Bishop Joseph Chartrand complained that there were barely enough priests for the dioceses requirements,15 and in 1954 Archbishop Paul C. Schulte also drew attention to the dearth of priests, blaming parents for failure to inculcate compelling faith in their children. Schulte also cited celibacy and an unwillingness to break strong filial ties at home for the decline (presumably a consequence of smaller families).16 The year before Pope John XXIII surprised everyone with his call for a Vatican council, the Indiana Catholic and Record decried parental opposition to vocations, especially for girls (grace is being abused).17 The problem was real: in 1960 Schulte again spoke of the dire need for an increasing number of vocations. In a letter to the archdiocese he observed that in 1946 there were 221 priests for its 100,000 people (a ratio of 1:453); in 1960 the archdiocese had but 263 priests for 190,000 communicants (1:722).18 Given the situation, it is surprising that not until 1962, the very eve of the council, did the American bishops establish a vocations committee.19 At the council itself, the great obstacle to frank discussion of celibacy was that it would open to the light of day the existence of thousands of clerical concubines around the world, not least in Italy. Nonetheless, in 1963, before and throughout the councils second session, there was speculation in the European press that celibacy might be dropped; the French were seen to be pushing the issue. The situation was such as to bestir some 70 bishops, worried at the possible abolition of this law, to rally to its support. Yet momentum for change grew, and by the fourth and last council session the press had drawn attention to the thousands of priests requesting the Holy Office to release them from celibacy. Some bishops wanted it made optional--a married clergy coexisting with a celibate one. Belgiums Cardinal Augustin Bea was one who pointed out that celibacy was a law and therefore open to change; moreover, in the Eastern Rite married clergy were not seen as second class. The well-informed council observer, the pseudonymous Xavier Rynne, believed that had the issue come to a vote the bishops might have split more or less evenly, as they had on a married diaconate.20 14 Blanchard, Catholic Power, 328, f.n. 44. IC&R, 26 March 1926, typescript box. 16 IC&R, 16 July 1954, 1. 17 IC&R, July 1959, 4. 15 18 19 20 Criterion, 14 October 1960. IC&R, 11 May 1962, 12. Rynne, 2d sess. 104; 3d sess., 84, 85; 4th sess., 148-150. 6 During the 1964 session the Criterion noted that while celibacy is purely ecclesiastical law, and therefore changeable, it has its roots in the Gospelsthe example of Christ, early Christian tradition, and was formulated into law at the council of Elvira, early fourth century. Although married deacons were much discussed, none of the Vatican II fathers proposed to weaken celibacy. Pope John XXIII had said he could abolish celibacy but would never do it because the Church has taken this sacrifice upon itself freely, generously and heroically. At the third session the council voted 1,364 to 830 against proposal to permit young men to be ordained as deacons without the requirement of celibacy. LOsservatore Romano: We are authorized to say definitively that the law [of celibacy] remains in all its vigor.21 A year later, to head off the growing movement among those bishops who wanted to deal with the issue it was still necessary for Pope Paul VI to forbid the council to discuss celibacy as not opportune.22 Regarding it as most appropriate today, especially today, in helping priests to consecrate all their love completely and generously to Christ, Paul VI announced his intention not only to preserve this ancient law as far as possible, but to strengthen its observance.23 Consonant with the popes wishes, the decree on priestly life issued the last day of the council confirmed the law. Yet something had to be done to deal with the clergy shortage and that something was to revive the permanent deaconate, opening a new role for the male laity.24 As ordained laymen, they could perform the duties of priests except for the sacrament of reconciliation, anointing the sick, and consecrating the Eucharist. (While it was particularly intended for poor countries where the priest shortage was most acute, by 1997 four of five deacons labored in affluent nations, fully half in the U.S.)25 Concerned over the millennial-long link between celibacy and the priesthood, unmarried candidates (at least 25 years of age) were to swear to celibacy; married candidates (at least 35 years of age, with their wifes permission); those whose spouse later dies ordinarily are not to remarry without giving up their clerical status as deacons. It 21 Criterion, 9 October 1964, 3, 12; 16 October 1964, 8. 22 Interestingly, inopportune was the argument of those at the first Vatican Council opposed to the declaration of papal infallibility. Now the shoe was on the other foot. 23 Rynne, Fourth Session, 148-150. There was plenty of discussion among the bishops in private conversations, but they were extremely reticent in public. 24 It is styled permanent to distinguish it from the temporary stage of deacon for seminarians on the way to the priesthood itself. 25 Criterion, 19 November 1999, 10. 7 was not necessary to state that the priesthood remained restricted to males.26 Two years after the council (June 1967), the Pope Paul VI composed a prayer for vocations and issued Sacerdotalis Caelibatus (On the Sacredness of Celibacy), pronouncing this heavy and sweet burden a total gift to God, a dazzling jewel.27 Three days later, on his own authority (mortu proprio), the pope permitted (if territorial bishops agreed), single and married laymen to officiate at marriages, funerals, distribute communion, preach, and read the scriptures.28 Although Indianapolis would be among the last American dioceses to accept the male deaconate, early on it extended the reading of scripture and the distribution of communion to women. To lighten the clerical load in parishes where the numbers are great, the priest feeble or absent, in 1971 Indianapolis Archbishop George J. Biskup announced that the Holy See had authorized lay Eucharistic ministers as a privilege.29 For fear of endangering the male celibate priesthood (serving at Mass seen as one of the most important ways to foster such vocations), more than two decades would pass before Romes acceptance of altar girls. In retrospect, the issues that led to the crisis in the Catholic Church following the Second Vatican Council in the United States and elsewhere, a crisis that persists into the twenty-first century, were in the main two: authority and reform, or put another way, democratic governance and change. Concretely, they appeared first as birth control and priestly celibacy. Partly as a result of the councils open praise of sexuality in marriage, discussion of priestly celibacy appeared almost as soon as the close of the council, December 1965. As celibacy is the greatest obstacle to priestly vocations, this was not surprising. So confident were many priests that it would be made optional, a seminarian of the Evansville diocese studying in Rome married during the council.30 What followed was a kind of point-counterpoint duel between statements of the pope and the bishops on one side and reformers, often armed with poll results, on the other. This was not lost on the laity. In December 1966, Criterion readers learned of a survey financed by the liberal bi-weekly National Catholic Reporter highlighting the salience of the authority and celibacy issues. Sent to nearly 6,000 priests, 86 percent of respondents saw the need for diocesan personnel 26 The first lay deacon in the U.S., a married Anglican priest with four children, was appointed in 1969 by Bishop Fulton Sheen of Rochester, New York. Criterion, 1 June 1969, 4. A widowed deacon might remarry for obligations to young children, aged or infirm parents, or the deacon met some great need of the Church. 27 McCarthy, Catholic Tradition in 20th Century, 15. Of course virginity cannot be a requirement for priesthood given the early practice of the Church and the Eastern Church. 28 Criterion, 30 June 1967, 1. 29 Criterion, 26 Feb 1971, 1. In 1994 Rome left girls as Mass servers up to the bishops; many pastors had used altar girls long before. 30 Conversation with Fr. Francis Bryan, 13 June 2008. Doubtless there were others. 8 committees, with half citing a lack of communication with their bishops; another large majority (62%) favored making celibacy optional.31 The next year Fr. Hillary Ottensmeyer, O.S.B., rector of St. Meinrad Seminary, serving, as it were, on the front lines, was quoted in the Indianapolis Star as blaming the fall-off in vocations on the over-rigid structure imposed by the Church. He reported that nearly all the students and faculty at Meinrad were progressives, with most of the seminarians of the opinion that celibacy should be optional, as did Ottensmeyer himself.32 The rector was on to something: Six months later a survey of 17,000 priests by the National Association for Pastoral Renewal found that 55 percent of the respondents wanting the freedom to marry.33 Higher-ups were of a different mind than seminary rectors or polls. Having failed to quiet discussion and debate (the heritage of priestly celibacy would in no way be abandoned or compromised), in 1967 at their annual November meeting the American bishops issued a major doctrinal pronouncement, The Church in Our Day. Admitting that the priesthood was in crisis (it may not be too much to say that countless priests today dwell in the desert of their temptations),34 the bishops reasserted their support of celibacy and lamented the expectation of change: It would . . . be irresponsible on our part to hold out any hope that this discipline will be changed35 and rebuked priests who called for optional celibacy, declaring reports of change in the discipline without foundation.36 Publicly marching with the popes June statement, celibacy was an obedience, a matter of good order in the Church, and should be seen by clergy and laity alike as Gods Will for his Church at this time (ital. added).37 As for poll results: there is never sound reason to believe that the voice of the layman [n.b. the masculine] concerning the faith is heard . . . in any mere counting of hands. . . . Numbers count only if those who compose the total really know.38 The bishops also voiced their concern about the attitude of some priests, seminarians, and laity in regard to the traditional discipline of priestly celibacy, citing relevant council documents and 31 It received 3,000 returns, or 51 percent. Excluded from the survey were pastors and monsignors, older, settled, and less likely to marry. Criterion, 16 December 1966, 1. 32 33 Star, 12 October 1967, sec. 1, 1. Star, 17 November 1967, sec. 2, 31. No opinion, 7 percent. 34 Bishops Pastoral letters, vol. III, 122. 35 36 Bishops Pastoral Letters, vol. III, 52, 201-211. Bishops Pastoral Letters, vol. III, 92. 37 Bishops Pastoral Letters, vol. III, 149. At this time would seem to be leaving the door open to change, but the whole tenor of The Church in Our Day on freedom, authority, infallibility, and religious assent (140-150), undercut any ground for any individual to go against bishop, pope or the Church. Yet Human Life in Our Day, November 1968, the bishops response to the outcry over Paul VIs birth control encyclical, opened the door for licit dissent which The Church in Our Day had closed. 38 Bishops Pastoral Letters, Vol. III, 120, 121. Judging by the polling done by CARA, the bishops are as dedicated to polling as any. 9 the popes June encyclical reaffirming the discipline. United with the pope, the U.S. bishops proclaim with a single voice the same teaching . . . without reservation.39 The teaching of Vatican II was clear and unmistakable, though, admittedly, not necessarily infallible teaching.40 Behind the scenes it was not so simple. Since the bishops were far from being of one mind on the subject, few probably shared the assertion of Sacerdotalis that celibacy was not a barrier to vocations. Some were not happy with their November 1967 statement and a real debate had erupted at the meeting; one in three bishops (68 of 213) did not want to make the statement public, unmistakable evidence that many favored changing the rule. And if the matter was really closed, why had the bishops used the expression at this time and two years later declare that they did not intend to foreclose free and responsible discussion of these issues . . . .?41 As growing numbers of priests left, polls continued to show significant numbers of laity and clergy favoring optional celibacy (42 percent of Catholics polled by Gallup in 1969 agreed that priests should be allowed to marry, versus 49 percent opposed). The pressure for change in the decade following the council was immense and persistent. Not even service in the papal household was proof against the chafing of celibacy: In March 1969, the Indianapolis Star carried news of a 50-year-old prelate, the popes chaplain no less, who, desirous of becoming a father, was released from his vows by Paul VI to marry a 37-year-old during Lent. Msgr. Geovanni Musante was but one of a thousand priests who asked papal permission to marry that year.42 In April 1969, the American bishops tried again to scotch any hope that celibacy would be made optional. While noting the organized systematic opposition to celibacy, they resolved that in no way would it be abandoned or compromised and promised a full treatment in short order. An eleven-page paper was ready by their November meeting. Pastoral in tone, stipulating a crisis existed, the bishops held to the tradition in emphasizing the value of the celibates total availability. To abandon it would raise cultural, economic, educational, and pastoral problems of the gravest kind without proportionate gain.43 At the same time, the bishops commended the efforts of those priests who were helping those who left to continue their commitment to Christ in the lay state, an attitude, as we shall see, the Indianapolis Priest Association attached great importance to.44 Bishops Pastoral, vol. III, 91, 92. The suggestion of unanimity was disingenuous: There had been great debate at the meeting and nothing like consensus. 39 40 Criterion, 24 November 1967, 3; Bishops Pastoral Letters, vol. III, 91. Criterion, 31 November 1969, 3. In 1969 Paul VI authorized the ordination of four former Anglican priests who were married. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 496. 42 Star, 13 March 1969, 29; 30 March 1969. 41 43 44 Bishops Pastoral Letters, Vol. III, 205, 208. Bishops Pastorals, Vol. III, 209. 10 If the stand of the American bishops in public was all that the Vatican could rightly expect, others were not so amenable: In January 1970 the Pastoral Council of the Netherlands (priests, monks, nuns, and laymen) voted 93-2 for optional celibacy. When all eight Dutch bishops supported the pastoral council, Paul VI ordered them to withdraw it: Celibacy could not be abandoned or even discussed, and the Vatican ordered all priests to repeat the vow of celibacy and obedience to superiors.45 Yet later that July the president of the Indianapolis Serra Club (the laymens organization to encourage young men to become priests) stated that celibacy was not a settled matter. Thomas Murphy (a local attorney, president of the International Serra Club, and ordained for the archdiocese in 1985), pointed to the Dutch pastoral councils action and the large number of Chicago priests who voted for optional celibacy, as had the Indianapolis priest council.46 In April 1971 Gallup found that by 52 to 41 percent priests asked if they should be permitted to marry answered yes. In 1967, when the impetus for reform provided by the Vatican Council was still robust, the American bishops had directed its committee on pastoral research and practices to undertake various studies. Eight areas had been contemplated, but only three--the historical, psychological, and sociological studies--were ever published.47 The sociological study, the most comprehensive and professional study of the American Catholic priesthood ever made, sampled nearly 6,000 clergy out of 64,000, with a 70 percent response, for a survey an extremely high rate of return.48 Its release in April 1971 caused the sponsoring bishops considerable embarrassment, for its salient finding was the dangerous gap between bishops and priests on almost every issue:49 On accepting remarriage after divorce, 82 percent of the bishops were willing to exclude all possibility of it, while only half as many--a minority of the diocesan priests agreed. Nor did the majority of priests accept the hierarchys position on birth control, a gap which grew after Humanae Vitae, the encyclical intended to obtain the clergys assent: While the percentage of bishops who believed artificial birth control was morally wrong held steady before and after the encyclical (84 to 83 percent, respectively), the 51 percent of priests who had agreed with the hierarchy before its issuance fell to 40 percent afterwards. Similar percentages reflected the relative unwillingness of bishops 45 Sent privately to bishops November 1969, in February 1970 the order was announced. Indianapolis Star, 2, 4, 10 February 1970. 46 Biskup, Box 18, Serra Club file. 47 The other five areas were: doctrinal, spiritual, pastoral, ecumenical, and liturgical. The theological and sociological studies were conducted by the National Opinion Research Council (NORC), but at their meeting in Detroit the bishops opposed the theological section. Greeley, Priests and Sociology, IV. The survey was discussed in detail in Criterion, 23 April 1971, 1. 48 49 3,045 diocesan, 2,110 regular, 165 bishops, and 464 resigned priests. Pastoral Letters, vol. III, 1962-1974, 1. 11 compared to that of priests, especially young priests, to accept the judgement of penitents regarding their conscience in the matter. Worse, while 72 percent of bishops saw Humanae Vitae as a competent and appropriate exercise of papal teaching authority, only 36 percent of priests did so, and only 14 percent of priests age 26 to 35.50 More than four of five priests would not insist on the standard of Humanae Vitae in the confessional and were also much less likely to encourage vocations, reflecting an occupational satisfaction of associate pastors no higher than contemporary semi-skilled workers.51 The issue of obligatory celibacy continued the surveys pattern of a significant gap between bishops and priests, and again especially young priests. Before World War II resignations from the priesthood had been rare. In the years immediately after Vatican II, one in five priests were planning, with varying degrees of certainty, to leave. Those who left or were contemplating leaving cited problems with the Churchs structure (authority), the work they were doing, and to get married. For religious women contemplating resignation, seeking greater self-fulfillment, not so much marriage, was primary.52 Nevertheless, 85 percent of the hierarchy disapproved of making celibacy optional, versus only 38 percent of priests (and only 11 percent of clergy age 26-35) who disapproved of changing the law. Although a vast majority of the clergy said they would not marry were celibacy made optional (only 1 percent of bishops would while 22 percent of priests would marry), fully 24 percent of the bishops agreed strongly or somewhat that mandatory celibacy kept many potentially excellent priests from ordination, as did 55 percent of priests (72 percent age 26 to 35). The answers to Was celibacy actually harmful to some priests? were particularly revealing: Almost one in five bishops thought so, as did more than half the priests, and nearly three of four priests age 26 to 35.53 Ominous, too, in light of the decades which followed, was that almost one in five bishops who expected change in the law of celibacy as did more than half of the clergy, while more than seven in ten priests age 26 to 35 thought that change would come. In all, in 1972 three of five priests believed that the Church would in time agree to optional celibacy within ten years, too.54 50 51 52 53 54 Greeley, Priests Study, 1972, 101, 113, 116. Greeley, Catholic Myths, 216, 217. Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 438. The respective percentages were 19, 53, and 73. Greeley, 1972 Priests Study, chapter 12. 12 The belief of many that mandatory celibacy was on its way out explains the large number of resignations when it became clear that that would not happen soon, if at all. Dissent over celibacy and birth control raised questions about the hierarchys authority. While the sociological survey found that only 15 percent of the bishops strongly or somewhat agreed that There were times when a person had to put his personal conscience above the Churchs teaching, 52 percent of active, diocesan priests did so. Strikingly, while only 22 percent of priests over 55 agreed that at times ones conscience trumped the magisterium, versus the 80 percent of priests age 26 to 35 who thought so.55 All the bishops surveyed saw premarital sex as always wrong, as did 80 percent of priests, but only 62 percent of priests age 26 to 35 agreed with their elders.56 All in all, the discordant views and expectations regarding celibacy and sexuality, and authority and dissent that the survey data revealed made for an explosive situation. Actually, by the time the sociology report was issued in 1971 the dynamite had already detonated. In the United States, from 1966 to 1970, over 3,400 priests--about five percent, resigned. Those who left cited multiple reasons: their inability to continue as a priest given the institutional structure of the Church (53%); the desire to marry (largely because of loneliness), (47%); personal growth, (46%); the Churchs failure to face the relevant problems of the day, (39%); disagreement with some of the ethical or moral teachings of the Church, (35%); disagreement with some of its theological teachings, (29%). Notably, within seven years after the Council, 70 percent of the resigned priests had married, and another eight percent were engaged.57 Three-fourths of the active diocesan clergy had had friends leave the priesthood; over half had more than three friends resign. Nearly half of diocesan priests re-thought their own status as a result of their friends leaving. Moreover, while clerical dissatisfaction showed itself in the number of those uncertain of staying, it also heralded a significant decline of clerical enthusiasm in encouraging vocations. The self-confessed net loss in active recruitment between 1965 and 1970 among priests was 34 percent, and lower still among young priests, the best recruiters. This was serious.58 Many hoped that the 1971 Roman Synod might show movement on obligatory celibacy. Despite the meetings of laity, nuns, and priests in spring 1971 in all the dioceses and the statements and resolutions they produced, in the event, the five-week celibacy synod (the first to consult the laity in advance), came to very little, although the majority of the elected members believed some change was needed and a number of hierarchs asked to be allowed to ordain married men of mature and proven life. Contrary to the expectations of the council reformers, as set out in Apostolica Sollicitudo, synods are wholly a papal operation: The pope calls it when he chooses, confirms its membership, settles where it will 55 56 57 58 Greeley, 1972 Priests Study, 312, 313; 268, 269. Greeley, 1972 Priests Study, 101-103. Greeley, 1972 Priests Study, 283, 284. Greeley, 1972 Priests Study, chapter 13. 13 meet, sets its agenda, appoints the president and secretary, decides how the results will be communicated, and presides over it through his delegate. Immediately subject to the Roman Pontiff, synods are a consultative body, not a decision-making one.59 Given the papal synods stranglehold and the position of Paul VI on celibacy, few should have expected change: The crucial resolution: It belongs solely to the Supreme pontiff, in particular cases, by reason of the needs and the good of the universal Church to allow the priestly ordination of married men who are of mature age and proven life, was defeated by the popes delegates, 107 to 87.60 Having swept their well-meant advice aside, the losing bishops found the popes assertion that the bishops of the entire Catholic world wanted to keep consecrated celibacy galling.61 Criticism of the synod was harsh: The Criterion cited a British priest who said it had been an appalling muddle; Newsweek and Time magazines judged it a failure.62 So did Msgr. Raymond T. Bosler, Criterion editor, member of the archdiocesan priests association, and an observer at the synod. Bosler found the synods position on justice meaningful, especially its call for lay participation and for an increased role for women; yet the first week of the synod was chaotic and it was not representative enough. Worse, its stand on priesthood was a disaster and dogmatic, in part because it upheld the churchs 12th century law forbidding priests to marry.63 A few months on Bosler will tell the Serra Club that the document on the priesthood was completely disappointing. Unlike Vatican II, the progressives were a minority and the whole nature of synods had to be rethought.64 *** In the years immediately following the Vatican Council (1962-1965), the group most affected by it was the diocesan clergy. Closest to the people in the pews, priests (assuming that they themselves had been imbued with the spirit of the council) had the job of bringing the laity to an acceptance of new practices and new thinking. Many, having been tutored in their seminary days in the ideas that underlay the council documents, followed the sessions in Rome closely and were excited, even giddy, by the prospect of wholesale change. In summer 1966, an ad hoc group of some twenty Indianapolis area priests met at Marian College to discuss the documents and what actions might be taken in their light. Similar 59 Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 433. Denis E. Hurley, in Hastings, Vatican II and After, 147, 206. Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 436, says that many bishops at the synod urged getting rid of celibacy. The majority voted for a formula forbidding married male ordination, even in particular cases, excepting always the rights of the Supreme Pontiff. The minority voted for admitting that the pope had the power, by reason of the needs and the good of the Church, to ordain married men of mature age and proven life. 61 Hebblethwaites characterization, Paul VI, 585. 60 62 15 November 1971 issues. 63 Indianapolis News, November 30, 1971. See also Criterion, 22 Oct 1971, 1, for Boslers views. 64 Biskup, Box 18, Serra Notes, January 10, 1972.** 14 groups of priests were meeting elsewhere in the archdiocese and across the country, all with the aim of integrating the spirit and practices of Vatican II into the lives of the participants and the work of the diocese.65 Reform was in the air; in October the American Canon Law Society proposed for study and experimentation giving the laity a role in the election of bishops; eliminating the practice of transferring bishops to other dioceses without grave necessity; abolishing prior censorship of books and magazines; reformulating the laws to favor persons rather than institutions; and support for the full participation of women in the church (for some, full participation meant ordination).66 Convinced that the Church in future would become participatory, less top down, in November 1966, following the example of Chicagos clergy, eight Indianapolis priests met with Archbishop Schulte and received his full approval to establish a priest association. Later that month, responding to their call, eighty-three of the 285 priests of the archdiocese met at the Latin School to choose a steering group of a dozen made up of pastors, assistant pastors, college instructors, and a chaplain.67 That January the archdiocesan clergy elected twenty-four priests as the Coordinating Committee of the Priests Association. An augur of the controversies that would soon erupt in the post-council Church, was the open opposition to the archdiocesan priest association of Fr. Paul Courtney, pastor of St. Lukes on Indianapolis north side and associate editor of the archdiocesan paper from 1948 to 1966, who had resigned from the Criterion about the time other priests were meeting to seek ways to put the councils message into practice. Fr. Bosler never understood what happened to change his long time editorial partner from the moderate liberal Courtney had been to the enflamed traditionalist that suddenly emerged.68 A young priest at the time remembered hearing that Courtney was the greatest hater of Vatican II among the local clergy.69 Whatever the reasons, the St. Luke pastor broke with his past, publishing in 1966 a series of satiric poems deriding the council. One, The Updated Church (A Conservatives Lament), reads Latins gone--peace is too/Singin and shoutin from every pew. Altars turned around--Priest is too/Commentaters yellinpage 22. Communion rails goin/Stand up straight!/Kneelin suddenly/Went outa date. Processions are forming/In every aisle/Salvations organized/Single file. 65 Biskup, Box 25. Indianapolis Catholic Archives. Criterion, 14 October 1966, 1. 67 Criterion, 18 November 1966, 1. 68 Doubtless, it owed something to the liberal stands Bosler took. Authors interview with Fr. Thomas Murphy, date?? 69 Jim Doherty interview, no relation, 28 April 2005. Doherty left the priesthood in 1968. 66 15 Rosarys out/ Psalms are in/Hardly ever hear, A word against sin. Listen to the Lector/Hear how he reads/Please stop rattlin/them rosary beads. Padres lookin puzzled/Doesnt know his part/Used to know the whole deal/In Latin by heart. I hope all changes/Are just about done/That they dont drop Bingo/Before Ive won! A second Courtney burlesque, The Emerging Layman, was equally witty and dismissive: The laymans emerging/Who let him out? Hes going to cause confusion/Without any doubt. Hes going to start checking/If things are right. He may even wonder/If Fathers real bright. Who taught that chap/To pray out loud? He was easier to handle/In a nice quiet crowd. Someone grab his missal/Swipe his hymn book too. Nudge him off the lectern/Back into the pew. Submerge that layman/Lower the boom. Well have this Church again/Quiet as a TOMB.70 On Good Shepherd Sunday, 1967, Fr. Courtney delivered a sermon filled with wholesale condemnations of what he saw as the bad tendencies of the day. Deeply unhappy with the Vatican Council, citing Pope Paul VIs criticism of the Catholic press for giving currency to every kind of error, Courtney counted certain Catholic magazines--Commonweal, Jubilee, and America--as contributors to the doubt and confusion if not outright loss of Faith he saw all around him. As for the Criterion, Courtney advised reading it selectively, as he suspected the Archbishop himself reads it. According to the St. Luke pastor, the laity could no longer rely on the old-time assurance that all priests preached and taught the doctrines of the Church. Some have succumbed to a frenzied urge to question everything and to change whatever is older than the latest hit record, and he advised the laity to listen instead to the Holy Father and the Archbishop. The main target of Courtneys jeremiad was the priest union. Pushed by brighteyed reformers, the unfortunate union was a wholly unjustified infringement upon the archbishops authority and has no authority whatever. Noting that by a curious mischance he had been elected to 70 Its not clear where or when these poems were published, except it was in 1966. Xeroxed copy in authors possession. A third poem lampooned the Cursillo movement. 16 some board or committee of this union--despite my vocal opposition. He would participate in it solely to destroy it--and he expected to be soon ejected.71 Courtneys vehemence was a measure of his fears for doctrine, especially the Real Presence in the Eucharist. He opposed the reception of Communion while standing instead of kneeling and singing instead of walking quietly to and from the altar; standing and singing, he felt, would lessen respectful devotion. He warned his parishioners to beware of false prophets and those who would loosen the bonds of matrimony, make light of impurity, and ridicule the noble ideal of dedicated celibacy. He abjured the lay person to stop your ear against those who attack the Papacy, the Blessed Sacrament, the Blessed Virgin, the Christian ideals of purity. Bewilderingly, given his furious language, Courtney concluded by assuring the laity that while he and many of his brother priests reacted differently to the changes in the Church, we are all good friends and entertain the greatest respect for each others sincerity and priestly dedication. Professing the highest regard for the many sincere and devoted priests who are promoting this union (i.e. the priests association), nonetheless, he believed them on the wrong trail completely.72 To spread his message, Courtney distributed copies of the sermon and saw it published in the Criterion (hed resigned from the Criterion the year before). The newspaper revealed that it published it at the wish of higher authorities, that is, the archbishop, proof that Schulte agreed with its substance. For its part, the Criterion limited its criticism of the sermon (and its author) by calling it the work of a traditionalist.73 Courtneys indictment resonated with many besides the archbishop. As everyone knows, then and later, after the council Catholics divided between conservative-traditionalists and progressiveliberals more or less on the grounds Courtney had listed. The priests associations coordinating committee responded to Courtneys attack through its chairman, Fr. Robert J. Walpole, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, Jeffersonville. Walpole noted that he and Fr. Courtney were two of twenty-four priests of a committee chosen in an election in which 83 percent of the clergy voted. It was formed because 180 priests of the archdiocese expressed a desire for a clerical association . . . in accordance with the spirit of renewal as suggested by Vatican II. Walpole drew attention to the Vatican decrees on the Bishops Pastoral Office and the Ministry and Life of Priests, and to Archbishop Schultes own letter of January 1967, calling upon the association to help form our Archdiocesan Senate.74 71 72 73 74 Criterion, 5 May 1967, 2. Criterion, 5 May 1967, 2. Criterion, 12 May 1967, 5. Raps Priests Association: A traditionalists sermon on Good Shepherd Sunday, Criterion, 5 May 1967, 2. Should this be 12 May 1967, 5?? 17 Contrary to Courtneys hopes, after a near yearlong effort, the Priests Association of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis (P.A.A.I.) held its first general assembly on Columbus Day, 1967. The 200 clergy in attendance at the Marott Hotel in Indianapolis elected a governing board of twelve, with annual general meetings to debate and pass resolutions. Five permanent committees--priestly life and training, personnel, communication, social action, and church and parish--reflected Vatican II concerns. Annual dues were $15. The association existed to establish communication among the clergy, provide mutual assistance and solutions to the problems of priestly life, communicate with their archbishop, promote dialogue among the members and with the laity, and encourage the professional growth of the members. The meetings keynote was that clergy, ridding themselves of infantile notions of authority, must speak up. Both Schulte and his coadjutor Biskup were present and were said to be positive, even effusive, in their reaction.75 Albeit an ad hoc, unofficial group unknown to Canon Law, in its first two years the association enrolled nearly all of the diocesan priests and a goodly number of the clergy in religious orders in the archdiocese.76 Armed with knowledge accumulated before and during the council, the animating spirit of the Priests Association looked to reform longstanding practices. One change, in the spirit of the Church as the people of God, was to give the laity a larger role. An association position paper noted that in the Medieval Era laymen had played important roles in the Lateran Councils of the twelfth century, even on the parish level where wardens elected by adult parishioners oversaw the financing and maintenance of buildings. But the traumatic experience of the Reformation, with its over-emphasis on the priesthood of the laity and de-emphasis of sacramental authority, drove the clergy in reaction to eliminate almost entirely the democratic social structures developed in the Medieval Church.77 Greater participation for the laity (participatory democracy was the slogan of the time) would also mean greater influence and participation for the clergy vis-a-vis the bishops. Priests problems--personnel matters, assignments, clergy relief fund, etc.--were part of it. For example, when representatives of priests from all five Indiana dioceses met to pool ideas in December 1968, the two major issues were continuing education for priests and better communication with their ordinaries.78 75 Constitution, sec. I, art. 2; Biskup Collection, Box 25, Archdiocesan Archives; Criterion, 20 October 1967, 1, 7. Fr. Daniel Buechlein, later bishop of Memphis and after 1992 archbishop of Indianapolis, served on the church and parish committee. 76 The monks were never very active and connected through a single liaison-representative. Fr. Marty Peter interview, 29 November 2005. 77 Church and Parish, Biskup, Box 16, Priest Association Coordinating Committee. 78 Bishop Biskup, Box 25. 18 As priest associations proliferated across the nation, in February 1968 the National Federation of Priest Councils (NFPC) was founded in Chicago, with 120 of the nations 153 dioceses represented, including all of Indianas except Fort Wayne-South Bend. The issues that concerned the NFPC were due process in the Church, lay apostolate, canon law reform, special ministries, and communication with the hierarchy. The Indianapolis priest association would be well represented in the NFPC: Fr. Kenny C. Sweeney, president of the Indianapolis association, with two other priest-members, attended the NFPCs founding meeting. Indianapolis routinely sent two or three priests to NFPC annual meetings and some served as officers and on the board.79 Fr. Marty Peter was especially active, serving on the NFPC board from 1973-1977, two terms as secretary, and a term as vice-president. As outgoing vice-president at the 1977 Louisville meeting, Fr. Peter served as program chairman. By then, the priests senate having replaced the association in the archdiocese, Indianapolis sent two other representatives of the priests senate to NFPC meetings, Frs. Joseph Beechem and Richard Lawler, the latter a member of the NFPC board of directors.80 By late fall, 1968, influenced by the nations civil rights movement and the controversy sparked by Humanae Vitae, the interests of the Indianapolis priest association had broadened to include virtually every issue broached in the heady atmosphere subsequent to the council. Among the nineteen resolutions adopted at its November 1968 general assembly, the members not only urged the archdiocese to be more positive on liturgical reform, secure Romes permission to experiment with new rites for penance and the sick, establish parish councils, and embrace the collegiality of Vatican II; it also urged the archdiocese to make social justice a priority and create an office for the poor. 81 The archdiocese should impose no grave limits on the laicization of priests (resignations were already rife), adopt due process in governance, and prepare for an archdiocesan synod. Meeting with bishops Schulte and Biskup later that November (billed as informational), the board received no definite answers either on a liturgy initiative or the recommendation for an apostolate to the poor.82 The vigor of the concerns of the archdioceses clergy also owed something to the suspension of nineteen Washington, D.C. priests by their Cardinal, John J. OBoyle, in September 1968: The nineteens refusal to repudiate their signed statement opposing the encyclical Humanae Vitae raised the issue of due process for priests at the hands of the hierarchy. Concerns soon expanded to include the whole question of the governing structures of the church. Parish councils and even diocesan pastoral councils, with clergy and laity sharing power with bishops, began to be discussed. 79 Criterion, 16 February 1968,1. Criterion, 1 April 1977, 5. 81 In April 1969, the association urged that every parish establish a St. Vincent de Paul Society and devote one percent of parish income to a central office for the poor. Criterion, 18 April 1969,1. 82 Biskup, Box 25. 80 19 In October 1969, two years after the founding of the Indianapolis Priest Association, a delegation of ten met with Schulte and Biskup to discuss a broad range of issues. Assuring the bishops that they intended no confrontation, the delegation nevertheless pressed their views. Optional celibacy was the first item. As an alarming number of their friends and classmates and throughout the nation were leaving the priesthood, the association had voted 90-52 (63.4%) to urge Schulte and Biskup to support in every way open to them to make celibacy optional.83 Since the vote for optional celibacy was so overwhelming, the delegation noted that the resolution did not call for a study, as many groups were doing, but comes right out and states the feelings of the priests . . . . Archbishop Schulte replied that the pope and the American bishops were 100 per cent opposed to such a change and neither Schulte nor Biskup, each made clear, could in conscience or conviction support the resolution. Rather, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops study being made would be geared to a more positive view of celibacy. It would treat all aspects of priestly life, a necessity, Bishop Biskup felt, otherwise such studies were a disservice, precisely his concern with the NFPC study.84 The bishops were adamant: they could not support optional celibacy. In the boards view, on this point, the meeting was a failure. In early 1970 Paul VI will declare celibacy a fundamental principle of the Church.85 Other matters raised in the two-hour meeting were the resolves of the association to unanimously support training priests, religious, and laity as community organizers (fine with the archbishop as long as parish involvement was not taken as official archdiocesan approval and the role of priests and religious was limited to motivating the laity); to cease holding meetings at places which racially discriminate (the Indianapolis Athletic Club and Knights of Columbus clubhouses); to conduct a survey and study to create genuine Christian communities in the parishes (the bishops approved); the need for an archdiocesan synod (Schulte said it would have to wait for the revision of Canon Law); real consultation in clerical assignments, (adopted 117 to 1; Schulte replied that he customarily discussed pastor appointments and usually associates, too, with the person to be appointed);86 experiments in non-rectory residence to deal with the problem of residential incompatibility (97-35, the bishops approved a study only); and to leave clerical dress up to priests (87-36). Bothered that priests might not want to be recognized as such, the bishops emphasized that they should dress as professional men. The association also voted 117-10 to 83 Criterion, 3 October 1969, 1. The 142 priests who voted on the resolution made up almost exactly half of the diocesan clergy of 283 listed in The Yearbook, 1969, 1970. 84 Report of the Meeting . . . October 20, 1969, Biskup, Box 25, 1970 file. Kennedy, Bernardin, 87; Criterion, 6 February 1970, 1. 86 The priest association later elected four to the personnel board, all acceptable to Biskup. Criterion, 23 April 1971, 1. 85 20 condemn the shooting death of a prisoner and wounding of 46 inmates at the state prison at Pendleton (that was the associations prerogative, observed Schulte). Contrary to the report that Archbishop Schulte was effusive at the prospect of the priest association, he was never pleased with it, early on calling it a priest union, just as Courtney had. Schultes coadjutor bishop, George J. Biskup, likewise felt threatened. In meetings with association representatives the two bishops were polite, but nothing would come of them. As the association passed more resolutions, more and more it seemed to be talking to itself.87 Taken all in all, the association, fairly represented by its delegation, was a liberal group. The bishops were not. And while there was no formal presentation of the purposes of the association, Biskup, who saw its main task as creating unity among the priests, thought it should concentrate on establishing structures and programs that did so. Above all, Biskup hoped that the association might help avoid a polarity that could harm the priesthood and the Church.88 While the organization of the priest association of the Indianapolis archdiocese began with the overwhelming support of the clergy, in due course fractures appeared between the conservatives, moderates, and progressives. As the latter became dominant, the association became more controversial with the result that membership fell. Not entirely a generational matter of older priests at odds with younger ones, in that many leaders of the association were of Courtneys generation,89 it was the progressives willingness to confront archbishops Schulte and Biskup provided the greatest reason for the conservatives defection; next was the associations strong stand on social justice, meaning the poor and especially African-Americans, when few of the latter were Catholic. The laity were perceived as quite conservative, and many priests did not want to go against their parishioners. Celibacy was another important issue and the progressives wanted the men who left the priesthood treated well.90 By spring 1970, the progressive-conservative polarity that had emerged three years earlier with Courtneys criticism, immeasurably deepened. In an April letter to Bishop Biskup, the erstwhile defender of the association, Fr. Robert Walpole, apprised Biskup that he and six other priests (all ordained before World War II) had met to discuss whether something could be done to counteract the present trend being taken by the Priests Association. They suspected that some of the associations statements and motions did not express the views of a majority--perhaps a silent majority91 of the archdiocesan clergy. The seven had discussed several possible tactics: establishing a competing group, boycotting the association and 87 Peter interview, 29 Nov 2005. Criterion, 3 October 1969, 1. 89 Peter interview, 29 November 2005. 90 Peter interview, 29 November 2005. 91 President Nixons term at the time regarding supporters of the Vietnam War. 88 21 withholding dues, or encouraging all priests to join and, using voting proxies, take the association over. Faute de milleaux, they suggested that a priest senate might be the solution.92 Later that April, at the fifth general assembly of the priests association, Bishop Biskup repeated his hope for unity and noted that a priest senate was in the works. Then, in a studied rebuke of the association, the bishop did not stay to hear the guest speakerthe president of the National Federation of Priests Councils, nor the report of the Indianapolis delegates to the NFPC meeting in San Diego on the due process case of the nineteen priests suspended by Washingtons Cardinal OBoyle. Undismayed, the members endorsed the establishment of an archdiocesan-wide pastoral council, the employment of a human relations professional to head the personnel office, continuing education for priests, and resolved to support individual conscience regarding military service [the Vietnam War], and archdiocesan cooperation in draft counseling.93 Conservative priests likely found none of these palatable. The following meeting in November would be even less to their taste, but clearly, few conservatives attended. Those present resolved to petition the archbishop to give favorable consideration to and use his good influence to permit priests to marry and still remain priests (70 yea; 17 nay; 6 abstentions); to form teams expert on conscientious objection to speak in high schools and colleges; to have the new priest senate invite a professional personnel expert to guide it (77-0-3); to set up a committee to consider and vote on married clergy (64-0-4); and that the association respect the consciences of those who left the priesthood, thank them for their work, and support them in establishing themselves in society (70-0-3).94 Of the many clergy who remained active in the national and local priests associations, their alienation from the bishops and from Rome seemed only to increase. This was something the Curia had to address. In preparation for an October 1971 synod of bishop-delegates from all over the world, the Vatican Secretariat had prepared the schema The Ministerial Priesthood. To gain a sense of the thinking of priests, nuns, and laity regarding the crisis that exists in the priesthood, separate meetings for each were to be held in all the parishes.95 Diocesan-wide meetings were scheduled for February, followed by regional meetings in March (Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin comprised Region VII), with the American bishops themselves to meet in April. The outlines provided for the parish meetings of nuns and the laity permitted clerical celibacy to be discussed, but only in the ways celibacy contributed to ministry by freeing the priest of competing responsibilities. Despite the effort to preclude discussion on its merits, nuns and laity alike overwhelmingly favored optional celibacy for priests (59 to 41%). They also wanted parish 92 The seven were Kavanagh (d. 2010), Carey (d. 1999)), Courtney (d.1997), Mode (d.1971), Higgins (d.1993), Senefield (d.1987), and Walpole (d.1971). Biskup, Box 25. 93 Criterion, 1 May 1970, 1; Biskup, Box 25, Indianapolis Catholic Archdiocesan Archives. 94 Criterion, 20 November 1970, 12; Biskup, Box 17, file Priest Association General Meeting,1971. 95 News release, 26 February 1971, Catholic Information Center, Catholics Discuss Crisis in the Priesthood, Biskup, Box 27. 22 councils, with many groups also holding strong opinions on shared responsibility between priests and bishops (i.e., delegation of authority, collegiality, and the principle of subsidiarity). Among the priests there was general agreement that celibacy and the priesthood were not necessarily related and there were no theological barriers to a married Catholic clergy. Furthermore, the large majority held that celibacy should not be required for priesthood and whatever problems existed regarding it should not stand in the way in changing the law. Celibacy, if truly voluntary, is a valuable witness to Christ, but since it may also be an occasion of selfishness it does not, of itself, provide such witness. Finally, a significant number were of the opinion that priests who have resigned and married should be reinstated. Obviously, given the changing attitudes regarding it, celibacy must be discussed at the Synod. As the Region VII report dryly observed, Traditional arguments which are persuasive to older men have little meaning and no convincing power for younger men.96 The statement on the priesthood adopted at the National Federation of Priest Councils (NFPC) at its March 1971 convention, Moment of Truth, mirrored the stands taken by Indianapolis archdiocesan nuns, laity, and clergy a few weeks before. Based on its own survey on celibacy, the NFPC faulted what it regarded as the hierarchys lack of leadership and slowness to change, their outdated structures and called for shared responsibility, limited terms for bishops, experiments in church structures (including an official ministry by women), and due process at every level in the Church. While celibacy is a precious tradition and must be preserved, it must be made optional immediately, with married men accepted as priest-candidates and resigned and married priests invited to resume the active ministry. The statement called on the National Council of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), the American delegates to the Synod, and the Synod itself to initiate the NFPCs recommendations (That moment is now!).97 Fr. James P. Dooley and Fr. Marty Peter represented the Indianapolis priest association at the Baltimore meeting, helping to swell the majority that adopted the Moment of Truth statement. At their 3 May 1971 meeting, the Indianapolis priest association responded with a series of seven resolutions, five of which touched on Romes sixty-page Ministerial Schema concerning priestly life. As the church fathers at the Second Vatican Council had refused to accept the Curias prepared schemas, the priest association, while acknowledging that itcontained some positive elements, they rejected it, 54 to 1 (9 abstentions) as 96 Biskup, Box 17, Pastoral Binders, 1970-1972. The 13 page report listed four choices for the Synods consideration: optional celibacy throughout life; optional celibacy to ordination; ordain mature married men; reaffirm status quo. 97 Biskup, Box 25, 1971 file. 23 predominantly juridical and negative, and therefore an inadequate beginning for the discussion of the priesthood in the modern world. Instead, the priest association endorsed The Moment of Truth, which argued for optional celibacy (61-1-5) and provided a litany of the inadequacies of the hierarchy. It protested three of the four bishops delegated to attend the Rome Synod98 as incapable of representing fairly the views widely expressed by clergy and laity supporting optional celibacy. In light of the American bishops disregard of the theological, sociological, and psychological studies they themselves had commissioned, it charged the U.S. hierarchy with being inadequately informed and insufficiently sensitive on the issue (42-15-7). In a letter to Biskup, Fr. Jim Dooley cited the vote on celibacy in the hopes that it will give you a means of understanding the feelings of one group of priests in the United States. While promising to withhold publicizing their criticisms of the bishops, the resolutions would be sent to all the bishops and to the Roman Secretariat; the association would poll the priests in the archdiocese on The Moment of Truth statement and send the names of all those who supported it to the four American synodal delegates (377-11). Beyond the celibacy issue, the priest association voted to support the U.S. Senate resolution to withdraw American troops from Vietnam by 31 December 1971 (52-2-4) and to ask Congress to make humane provision for selective conscientious objection for persons who saw the Vietnam War as immoral (46-6-9).99 It was an agenda breathtaking in its liberalism. It was not a program that many bishops would embrace, and if that was the kind of thing priests associations produced, well . . . . As it happened, in its decree on Ministry and Life of Priests (Presbyterorum Ordinis), Vatican II had called for the formation of priests senates to aid the bishops in running dioceses. Vatican directives and the bishops synod of 1967 were followed in May 1970 by continued Vatican urgings for such senates.100 Rather than acting aggrieved, the Indianapolis priest association cooperated in setting up the senate. Work on a senate constitution began in early 1971. Hammered out by a committee of eight (five members elected from the priest association and three non-association members named by Archbishop 98 The objections were to Cardinals Krol and Carberry and Archbishop Brynne--Bernardin was the fourth member. 99 Priests Association of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Resolutions, May 3, 1971, Biskup Box 25, 1971 file. Note the decline in the number voting at this meeting, 61, versus the 142 in 1969; this meeting never went over 64 total votes on any resolution, indicating that some had lost interest and others balked at challenging the hierarchy, leaving the field to the liberals. Still, at its demise in 1973 about half of the diocesan priests remained members of the association. 100 Criterion, 15 May 1970. 24 Biskup), the constitution was overwhelmingly adopted, 272-10, in mid-October 1971,101 and its first meeting held in December. In the new senate, two priests were nominated by each of the eleven deaneries, but elected by all the priests; retired priests elected one representative as did the religious orders; two were ex-officio (vicar general and chancellor), with four priests appointed by the archbishop. The archbishop could be said to control seven votes of the twenty members (his own and six others). Fr. Bernard Head, of the Marian College theology department and a member of the priest association, was elected senate president, along with a seventeen-member board.102 Strictly advisory, the new senate was to voice the interests and concerns of the priests to the archbishop. Fr. Head expressed the hope that it would lead to a diocesan pastoral council, while Biskup declared that the expertise it represented would be invaluable to him.103 Meeting once a month with Biskup, in the first year of its existence the senates concerns paralleled those of the priest association: financial support for retired priests and the setting of retirement policies; discussion of methods for choosing bishops; ecumenism and social action (asking Catholic organizations to shun facilities and clubs which practiced racial segregation); and pushing for parish councils.104 In view of the preparations for a senate, the archdiocesan priest association at its eighth general meeting, December 1971, voted 68-0 (the membership roll stood at 139), to change its constitution, looking to develop the professional competencies of its members and to soldier on despite the creation of the new body.105 Within two years, however, the priest association ended its affairs: It had lost membership and Schulte and Biskup ignored its resolutions. In 1973, in one of its last acts, the association sponsored a survey of twelve parishes (six within and six outside Indianapolis) on the laitys willingness to accept resigned priests, laicized or not, married or not. When it came to continuing full priestly ministry, laicization and marriage mattered a great deal to the 1,234 respondents: 47.2% were willing to see a laicized, unmarried man exercising full priestly ministry; 34.6% would accept a laicized, married man; but only 22.4% found a non-laicized married priest acceptable. It would seem that disobedience (non-laicization) rather than celibacy was the more important consideration.106 While those 101 102 103 Biskup binder, 1970-1972. Eight were elected by age cohort, eight by geography, and one from the religious orders. Criterion, 3 December 1971, Biskup, Box 21. The senate met with 150 of the presbyteriate at the Latin School, 14 February 1972. Criterion, 18 February 1972, 1. 104 Criterion, 15 December 1972, 1. Criterion, 3 December 1971. 106 Criterion, 9 November 1973, 5. 105 25 willing to keep resigned priests as ministers were in the minority, the percentage in favor of doing so were not insignificant. As an organization of, by, and for priests, the association had been frank in putting forth what priests wanted and not much concerned at whats the bishops going to think about this.107 The senate, by contrast, had the advantage of official status, being the bishops organization; it met with the bishop and represented all the clergy. Given its origin and makeup, having to build consensus, it was politically cautious. Compared with the association it replaced, the senate was more how am I going to relate to my boss, taking care not to break communication with the bishops by threatening them. As one leader of the old association put it, priests are trained in the seminary to defer to the bishop, and when they know the bishop doesnt like something, they will dance around it.108 The senate had its accomplishments: internally, it achieved an elected personnel board to set policies, salaries, and benefits. The matter of assignments was not a small concern. Priests used to rue Schultes habit of filling the deceaseds post from among the attendants at the cemetery: Come here Father, Schulte would say, I want you to take Fr. so and sos place. As a consequence, some priests, happy with their present duties (or fearful of risking an assignment they might like even less), began to avoid the cemetery rites. Alternatively, it was not unusual to find out in the Criterion you had been shifted.109 Some priests had favored the senate as a democratic element; as late as 1975, Boslers replacement as Criterion editor, Fr. Thomas Widner, had been one.110 But two years later Widner concluded that the senate was useless: Many priests having lost interest, it was hard to get them to stand for election. Believing that the clergy lacked discipline, leadership abilities (for example, the senates failure to discuss the future of the Latin School), and hesitant to make a decision, Widner moved that the senate dissolve itself.111 Precisely because the bishop was part of the mechanism and it did not take an adversary role, over time the senate proved more effective than the association, though much less progressive. In the end, the senate was superseded by a still newer organization, the priests council, a structure mandated by the 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law. More official still than the senate it 107 108 Peter interview, 29 November 2005. Peter interview, 29 November 2005. 109 Peter interview, 29 November 2005. Criterion, 15, 22 August 1975, 4. 111 Priests, wrote Widner, can do what they do best--talk behind ones back, gripe, etc. Criterion, 16 December 1977, 4. 110 26 replaced (senates had been called into being by the American bishops, not Canon Law), the new councils were consultative bodies of priests elected by peers. Its dual roles were to advise the archbishop and supply the needs of priests. Under the 1983 provisions at least half the members were elected by the priests (in Indianapolis, three-fourths). The council, a body of seventeen or eighteen, with the archbishop able to appoint up to six, was a near carbon copy of the senate it replaced. The officers (chairman, vice chairman, and secretary), were elected by the members while the president (by Canon Law, the bishop) chairs the meeting. In Indianapolis the elected officers, with the bishop, set the agenda. The urgent issues in Indianapolis were clergy morale and their relationship to the archbishop, agencies, and offices especially regarding parish life.112 While discussion appears to have been open and candid under Archbishop Edward T. OMeara (1980-1992), he would not countenance putting birth control, optional celibacy, or womens ordination on the agenda.113 What had begun in 1966 as a grass-roots movement of the clergya diocesan-wide priest association--had morphed by the late 1980s into a priest council that, in its deference to the hierarchy, appeared as rubber-stamping what it was told the archbishop wanted. On the national level the National Federation of Priests Councils (NFPC) similarly declined in membership and reformist zeal. One cause of the decline in zeal was that NFPC membership is not individual, but through membership on the priest councils of the dioceses. In the new century, the NFPC still spoke for priests, but had to be careful not to alienate the bishops. From its founding in the late 1960s to the 1980s the NFPC adopted progressive resolutions, but they came to nothing at the bishops synods held in Rome. In the 1990s and later the NFPC no longer passed many resolutions; rather, it tried to dialogue with the bishops, but found it difficult to do so.114 *** As the expectation that optional celibacy would be one of the Vatican Councils reforms proved illusory, the initial exuberance of many priests following its close in 1965 quickly faded. Disappointment has been marked by a significant decline in vocations of priests and religious in the United States, a decline that has not abated in the decades since the council. The biggest decrease came in the first dozen years. From 1966 to 1978, in the United States nearly 10,000 priests resigned.115 They were not replaced: Between 1967 and 1974 seminarians (47,500 112 Criterion, 28 October 1994, 1. OMeara, Pastoral letters, 1984, 1985. 113 Marty Peter interview, 29 November 2005. Fr. Peter was elected chair of the Archdiocesan Council of Priests; Frs. Richard Lawler and Paul Koetter, were vice chairman and secretary respectively. Criterion, 3 February 1984, 1. Fr. Marty Peter interview, 29 November 2005. Morris, American Catholic, 317. Nationally, 200 left in 1966; 750 in 1969; with steady declines in resignations to 181 in 1984. 114 115 27 in 1964), fell 54 percent, from 37,644 to 17,334.116 By 1984 they numbered only 12,000, by which time 241 seminaries had closed.117 From 1965 to 1999 ordinations fell from 994 to 460 a year; religious brothers, 12,271 to 5,728; religious sisters, 179,954 to 82,693. The nations 58,632 priests in 1965 stood at 43,304 in 2004. Given the increase in Catholics from 45.6 million to 64.3 million, the 1:778 ratio of priest to Catholics in 1965, fell to 1:1,484 in 2004.118 Even this understates the problem. For example, while there were 44,472 priests in 2006, active diocesan priests in 2005 were less than half that (19,290)119 because many diocesan priests had assignments rendering them unavailable for parish work. Consequently, the number of U.S. parishes lacking a resident priest in 1965 jumped more than five times, from 549 (of 17,637 parishes) to 3,157 (of 19,026 parishes) in 2004.120 In effect, the number of priests had been cut in half. Priests also got older: the average age of diocesan priests reached 59 in 1999, as the average age at ordination, 26 in 1975, moved to 36 in 2000. As large numbers of priests are assigned to nonparish jobs, to take up the slack, permanent deacons went from zero in 1965 to 12,184 in 1999.121 Without the deaconate and the foreign-born clergy providing 32 percent of the ordinands in 2002, matters would have been much worse.122 Matters were bad enough and the solution--recruiting foreign seminarians and priests from poorer nations despite their far greater need--was an unhappy one. In 1980 North America had 120 priests per 100,000 laity versus Latin Americas 15 per 100,000. While North America and Europe counted 77.2 percent of priests, but only 45 percent of Catholics, Latin America and the Philippines combined were 45 percent of the worlds Catholics, but only 12.6 percent of priests.123 Since both educational opportunity and the relatively high social status of priests in Asia, Africa, and Latin America remain what they had 116 CARA study, cited in Criterion, 1 February 1974, 1. 117 Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 436, 437. The peak year for priests was 59,892 in 1967. CARA Report, summer, vol. 4, no. 1, 5, 6; winter 2001, 5. The increase in parishes, despite the decline in priests, is explained by the movement to the suburbs and the difficulty of closing declining urban parishes. Another problem is that the Catholic Directory includes 118 missionaries abroad in the count. 119 CARA Reports, vol. 12, no. 1, summer 2006, 7; No. 3, winter 2007, 3. 120 As more Catholics moved to the suburbs, more new parishes had to be built; at the same time, city parishes continued to operate, though with fewer communicants. 121 CARA Report, summer, vol. 4, no 1, 5, 6; vol. 5, no. 1, 5; winter 2001, 5. Another problem is that the Catholic Directory includes missionaries abroad in the count. 122 National Catholic Reporter, 1 November 2002, 1. The priest to laity ratio in 1900 had been 1:899 and 1:652 in 1950; in 2000 it reached 1:1,257. 123 Criterion, 25 July 1980, 3. 28 been in the United States before World War II, vocations in those parts of the world grew.124 Yet in 2006, South America still counted but one priest for 7,138 Catholics; Central America and the Caribbean, 1 for 6,944; Africa, 1 for 4,694. From 1985 to the first years of the new century the U.S. attracted some 7,000 foreign priests from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. In 2006 alone, the 5,500 foreign priests working in the U.S. represented 16 percent of the clergy in the U.S.,125 with the 772 foreign-born seminarians constituting nearly one-fourth of all seminarians. Of the 772, 83 percent intended to work in the U.S rather than return to their native country.126 The decline in the ratio of priests to laity common throughout the U.S in the second half of the twentieth century was true of Indianapolis, as the archdiocesan directory attests: In 1950, the 119,095 laity could hear Mass in 118 parishes with a resident pastor, served by 219 diocesan clergy, a ratio of 1 priest to 544 laity; twenty years later, 261 diocesan priests served 209,412 in 144 parishes with a resident pastor, a ratio of 1 priest to 802 laity. By 2000 the number of laity in the archdiocese had reached 227,501, while parishes with a resident pastor had fallen to 106 (33 lacked resident pastors) and diocesan priests to 158, a ratio of 1 priest to 1,440 laity.127 Full-time diocesan parish priests173 in 1970, were 159 in 1980, 118 in 1990, and 109 in 2000 (and were expected to fall to 86 by 2010).128 As the new millennium beckoned, priests and nuns had also to be found to staff nine Newman Centers, nine hospitals (two Catholic and seven others), five homes for the aged, and chaplains for six public institutions (three prisons, the airport, plus the sheriff, the police, and fire departments of Indianapolis).129 According to one 124 125 126 Criterion, 3 November 1995, 24. National Catholic Reporter, 24 February 2006, 3a, 7a, article based on CARA research. See Dean R. Hoge and Aniedi Okure, O.P. International Priests in America: Challenges and Opportunities (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Maryland, 2006; CARA, vol. 11, no 4, spring 2006, 5. 2000 Archdiocesan Directory and Yearbook. There were 116 religious order priests, but few served in parishes; the religious order priests of 2000 would make the ratio one priest of 127 either sort to 830 laity. 128 Of 140 diocesan clergy listed on the archdioceses website, September 19, 2011, subtracting the 37 retirees, 15 administrators, and 6 on leave left only 82. Two-thirds of these were listed as having multi-tasksmore than one parish or other duties. Indeed, very few of the 82 did not have additional responsibilities. These 82 diocesans were bolstered by 27 other priestsreligious order priests and a dozen foreign priests (Hispanic, African, Indian), serving as pastors (10), associate pastors (9), and administrators of parishes (8). 129 2000 Archdiocesan Directory; Criterion, 3 August 1990, 1. 29 source, in 2006 (subtracting 46 retired, sick, or absent) there were only 106 diocesan priests available for assignment; of 139 parishes, only 91 had a priest in residence.130 Despite the problems the shortage of clergy caused, many laity, religious, and fellow priests were supportive of the resigned clergy. At times, however, the pain felt at the departures and the sense that they had abandoned their posts found voice: In 1971 the associate editor of the Criterion, Beatrice H. Acklemire, confessed to being tired of hearing that the best priests were leaving. While glad they were no longer treated with disdain and made to feel humiliated, she refused to see them as heroes, finding that repulsive. Echoing her remarks, in the next issue three letters praised the editorial, two from priests of the archdiocese. One, a Beech Grove priest, expressing something of the bitterness of some of those who remained, cautioned Acklemire that quitters, whether victims of concupiscence or intellectual pride, may loudly resent your rebuke.131 In a lighter vein a 1976 a cartoon in the Criterion showed a priest sitting alone at a restaurant, a banner in the background reading Happy Reunion, St. Marys Seminary Class of 56. The priest ruefully explains to the waiter, Im the only one left.132 It is indisputable that many of the best priests persevered; likewise, many of the best left. About a dozen years after the nations bishops established a vocation office, in 1975 the Indianapolis archdiocese got around to establishing its own. At first staffed by a single priest, two more were assigned full time in 1978. In the offices first five years 71 entered the seminary, about 14 a year. According to the vocation director, the great attraction remained the desire to serve people; the obstacles were still celibacy and the sense that the work was too demanding and the pay risible.133 Ironically, in March 1978 (one week after Vocation Week and after six years of worrying the issue), the priest senate voted 8 to 7 to close the Latin School, only 23 years after its founding. As a high school intended to nurture vocations, this was a bad sign. At the Criterion editor Fr. Widner lamented the action, believing the vote showed clerical ambivalence regarding vocations, with nuns and parents also lacking in enthusiasm.134 Seen more broadly, the Latin School closing was part of a general shakeout in Catholic education in Indianapolis, having been preceded by the Sisters of Providence closing their schools at St. Johns, 1959, and St. Agnes, 1969 (the latter merging with Ladywood Academy, which was then sold to Cathedral High School in 1976, and became co-ed). The Sisters of St. Francis (Oldenburg) closed St. Marys 130 131 132 133 134 FutureChurch website, 2006. Criterion, 17 September, 4; 24 September 1971, 5. Criterion, 21 May 1976, 4. Criterion, 12 October 1979, 25. There were lots of letters opposing the closing. Criterion, 10 March 1978, 1. 30 Academy, in 1977, as the Benedictine Sisters (Ferdinand) closed Our Lady of Grace, Beech Grove, June 1978. These closings ended the era of gender-segregated Catholic high schools In Indianapolis, a circumstance also expected to decrease vocations.135 Obviously, as the number of clergy declined, more work fell on those who remained. In 1976, Jean Jadot, the apostolic delegate to the U.S., in a wide-ranging talk to the bishops (the need for new forms of parochial life, the failure to promote social justice, the role of women, our arrogance [?!]), addressed the problem of overworked priests. Candidly, he observed that while priests in their 50s were dying from overwork, too many laity, clergy, and bishops were unconcerned. If something was not done, we will not be able to staff our parishes and institutions as in the past.136 Criterion editor Fr. Thomas Widner experienced first hand the consequences of the priest shortage in the physical and mental costs of the many demands levied on active clergy. In the early 1980s Widner left off writing columns and editorials during seven months in residence at the House of Affirmation, Whitinsville, Massachusetts, one of four such retreat centers in the U.S. He had come to the point where he could no longer cope with the demands I placed upon myself in ministry. At Whitinsville priests and nuns had time for reflection. Intensive psychological therapy led residents to look deeply within themselves, admit that one is human, and stop feeling so guilty. Widner saw the particular value of the nuns presence in supplying the womens perspective. The Churchs problem, he came to think, was that it was top heavy with male personnel . . . . Moreover, in positing a lack of confidence in the person, he regarded the older spirituality as wounding and no longer viable: In his mind, that clerical culture is dead. Young people are not interested in living a life in which they have to degrade themselves in order to be successful. Scores of people, he felt, had come to see religious life as demeaning.137 A little later Fr. Widner noted the pull and tug between the value of the witness of celibacy and its deleterious consequencesamong them, the vocation shortage. On the one hand, as he remarked in 1983, celibacy--the challenge of selfless living--was the only unique sacrifice that priests make, the only selling point. On the other, he believed that priests and nuns failed to embrace it; they merely accept and live with it. The tragedy is . . . we often cant face the loneliness which is ours as priests . . . .138 [W]e are killing ourselves with overwork under the false sense that priests and religious could do any task they 135 136 Criterion, 28 April 1978, 4. A Watchman for the House of Israel, cited in National Catholic Reporter, 6 February 2009, 5. 137 138 Criterion, 25 September 1981, 5.; 2 July 1982, 11. Criterion, 27 May 1983, 5. 31 were put to.139 As he had observed a few years earlier, priests were not necessarily better sociologists, or teachers, or preachersand in the movies and on stage actors played the role better than the real thing. Still, in 1979 Widner was not ready to make celibacy optional.140 In any case, it was not the only problem. He believed, and he thought priests generally believed, that sympathy and appreciation for their efforts was lacking, and hence, a felt sense of worthlessness.141 After hope died for optional celibacy, priests requests for laicization became wholesale. Pope Paul VI turned down very few--about seven percent of 32,000 granted. Between 1963 and 1983 the Vatican recorded 46,302 dispensations to marry, and it may well have been that for every dispensation an equal number were refused or did not bother to ask.142 John Paul I seemed destined to continue his predecessor Paul VIs policy on laicization, granting 50 in his 34 days as pope. His successor, John Paul II, immediately halted laicization, except for a few deathbed cases. Under John Paul II two kinds of cases were acceptable: long lapsed priests who wanted to remedy a situation they were not able to quit (marriage, concubinage), and those who lacked the freedom and responsibility to become a priest (the person should not have been ordained in the first place, having been pressured by parents or others). For John Paul II and his successor, Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger, former head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), laicization was not a right. The dispensation from celibacy must come initially from bishops or superiors. John Paul II would change many things, but not celibacy, a discipline he confirmed soon after becoming pope in separate letters to bishops and priests in April 1979.143 The Indianapolis archdiocese does not publish data on resignations, not even of those who obtain laicization. Like the Soviet Encyclopedia, photos and biographical sketches simply disappeared from the annual directory (though not from the necrology list).144 In 1995, one reader, aware of the resignation of a priest ordained but two years, complained of the failure of the Criterion to report it; she wanted the newspaper to publish all church news. By then the Criterion was under Archbishop Buechlein and it did not respond. In contrast, in the 1960s and 1970s the Lafayette diocesan paper would carry short items on 139 Criterion, 17 June 1983, 5. 140 Criterion, 20 April 1979, 4. His position was taken as criticism and much resented by some clergy and sisters (May God forgive you ran one), 4 May 1979, 4. 141 Criterion, 15 July 1977. 142 Hebblethwaite, Paul VI, 572, fn 2. 143 Criterion, 13 April 1979, 4, Pope John Paul II reconfirms celibacy. Criterion, 27 June 1980, 1. As the years passed, however, and as the American bishops requested in 1993, in 1994 Pope John Paul II accepted changes to make it easier for bishops to laicize sex offenders. 144 For instance, the vicar general who ran the archdiocese for a yearthe hiatus between the death of OMeara and the appointment of Buechlein--disappeared from the 2001 Directory upon his marriage. 32 resigning priests, cite their service to the diocese, and wish them well. Lacking such notices, information on resignations for Indianapolis is scattered, and compiling the data hit or miss. As one sympathetic priest put it: Archbishop George J. Biskup (coadjutor, 1967-1970; archbishop, 1970-1979) came at a difficult time when priests were leaving. It was kind of a scandal; there was some coverup. [Biskup] didnt want [Bosler at the Criterion] to announce that a priest was leaving. But he made it comparatively easy for someone who was unhappy to leave.145 Consequently, the hemorrhage of priests in the archdiocese passed unacknowledged, quietly, leaving the laity with little sense of the size of the defections.146 Some news did find its way into print: In an Indianapolis Star interview in 1971 Archbishop Biskup acknowledged that from 1966 to August 1971, twenty-seven priests had left--twelve in 1970 alone--all citing celibacy as the main issue.147 One priest has estimated that from 1962 to the mid-1980s about 125 Indianapolis diocesan priests resigned.148 Of Fr. Widners class of ten, a decade after ordination only five remained. From 1967 to 1981 the decline in numbers for Indianapolis theology students was 44 percent; for college seminarians 82 percent, with a fall in the number of Indianapolis archdiocesan priests of 20 percent. In 1981, while eleven priests died (eight had been active, three had retired), there were no ordinations in the archdiocese at all.149 That year Criterion readers discovered that besides death and retirement, some 70 priests had been lost to the archdiocese since 1965, most between the ages of 35 and 50, necessitating that the priests who remained had to wear two or three hats. Celibacy and the desire for a family topped the list of reasons for leaving.150 In still another pulse taking, in 1991 Fr. Jeffrey Godecker, assistant chancellor, reported that since 1970 the number of Indianapolis priests overall had declined 30 percent, with priests under 50 years of age halved. From 1981-1991 there had been a net loss of 44, about 20 to resignation. Were this to continue, by 2010 he estimated that only about 65 active priests would be available for assignment. In 1970 active priests numbered 225, with 150 under 50 years of age; in 1981, 177 were active, 111 under 145 Fr. Tom Carey, Criterion, 11 September 1992, B35. 146 Criterion, 7 July 1995, 5. There were two letters; the first in which she revealed the reason wasnt published. 147 Star, 15 August 1971, sec. 1, 1. Twenty-seven may have been an undercount; Fr. Widner in his column, Living the Questions, Criterion, 15 July 1977, 4, wrote that in 1970 and 1971 alone the archdiocese lost 24 priests through resignations. 148 Fr. Francis Bryan, conversation with author, 19 January 2007. This roughly agrees with the recollection of former priest Paul Dooley, who years ago made an estimate based on the diocesan directories. 149 Criterion, 11 December 1981, 4 150 Valerie R. Dillon, Criterion, 10 April 1981, 4. 33 50; in 1991, 142 were active, with 50 under 50.151 In line with Godeckers report, the Priests Councils 1991 report to the Archdiocesan Pastoral Council on various issues included the need to encourage the universal church to reconsider . . . who can be ordained.152 Of the six ordained in 1992, the largest class in thirteen years, only two remained by 2001. Of the five ordained in 1993, by 2001 two had resigned.153 Of the 111 theological students at St. Meinrad in 1992, only 17 were affiliated with the archdiocese.154 *** Bad enough that the quantity of priests was inadequate, questions about their quality were raised soon after the council. According to Georgetown Universitys Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), the research arm of the American bishops, among those who stayed were many theological conservativesgood news for the magisterium; less good in the eyes of Church authorities was that many were also thought to be gay or psychologically maladjusted. As part of their effort following the council to gather the facts, the bishops commissioned a psychologist and former priest, Eugene C. Kennedy, to ascertain the psychological health of priests. His report, The Catholic Priest in the United States, found only 7 percent of priests were emotionally developed, another 18 percent were developing, with 66 percent underdeveloped, and 8 percent maldeveloped. Delivered to the American bishops in 1971, Kennedys findings were never discussed by the bishops, let alone acted on.155 At a November 1978 workshop on vocations, some bishops worried aloud about the quality of seminarians. Cincinnati Archbishop Joseph Bernardin, for example, believed that the Church was getting weaker candidates for the priesthood.156 Six months after Bernardins comment, the Criterion asked Dr. John Nurnberger, head of the psychiatric department at the Indiana University Medical Center, Indianapolis, board member of St. Meinrad, and practicing Catholic, for his views on celibacy and laicization. In an unusually forthright article, 151 152 153 Criterion, 21 February 1992, 1, 8. Criterion, 17 May 1991, 1. Criterion, 5 June 1992, 1; 25 December 1992, 4; 11 June 1993, 1; Archdiocesan Directory, 2001. 154 Rudolph, Hoosier Faiths, 554. The study, by Fr. Eugene C. Kennedy, a psychiatrist, and Victor Heckler, was one of the eight sponsored by the bishops. Another study of priests in Western Europe and North America roughly tallied with the 1971 study. Fifteen percent of priests were found to be emotionally developed; another 20-25 percent had serious psychiatric difficulties often leading to alcoholism; leaving 60-70 percent with lesser degrees of emotional immaturity. 155 156 Criterion, 24 November 1978, 4. 34 Nurnberger, a pioneer in American psychiatry with impeccable credentials and experience,157 pointed out the obvious: family, not celibacy, is the normal social/psychological structure for a man. It is a deprivation. And while male celibacy is possible, some cannot in justice live a celibate life. On the other hand, seminary formation does change ones frame of reference and prayer was important. In Nurnbergers experience the problem with those priests who leave is that they never seemed to have seriously considered celibacy, had never made a decision about it; rather, it was a passive, unanalyzed decision to satisfy parental demands. As for laicization, putting a lid on it would save vocations and make those who leave more thoughtful about that choice. The downside is that those who leave without being laicized may turn against the Church. Why do some leave? In Nurnberger thought it was the perception of an environment of dogmatism, of ancient notions, and an inflexible institution. Leavings do hurt those who stay; morale suffers, especially the bishops morale. Granted, celibacy makes possible the freedom to give ones all--nonetheless, Dr. Nurnberger concluded that a married clergy was a good idea.158 More than a few of the U.S. bishops had been of Nurnbergers opinion for some time. As late as 1986--eight years after the start of Pope John Paul II restorationist reign--a survey of the bishops found that nearly one-fourth of the 145 who responded (of 312 bishops) would allow priests to marry; 20 percent approved of asking married and resigned priests to return to active ministry; 30 percent approved of ordaining women as deacons, and almost 8 percent wanted women ordained.159 In January 1989, the bishops Committee on Priestly Life admitted that mandatory celibacy was even more of a reason for leaving than it had been twenty years previously. Celibacy was the major reason for the lack of vocations, for leaving, and for the loneliness of those who stayed.160 With deadening consistency, study after study and poll after poll of the laity presented the same picture.161 In 1992 Gallup asked: Would it help [the priest shortage] to let married priests function again? 157 Lucy Jane King, M.D. and Alan D. Schmetzer, M.D., Dr. Edenharters Dream: How Science Improved the Humane Care of the Mentally Ill in Indiana, 1896-2012 (Hawthorne Publishing, Carmel, Indiana, 2012). 158 Criterion, 4 May 1979, 16. 159 A Fr. Sweeney did the survey. Rather than bow to Vatican pressure to suppress the results, he resigned from the priesthood. Hastings, Vatican II and After, 250. 160 Hastings, Vatican II and After, 250. 161 The common conservative response to unfavorable poll results is the reminder that the Church is not a democracy and that the Holy Spirit is the surest guide. The first is undeniable and the second a matter for theologians, not historians who have to stick to secular evidence. Were the data otherwise, conservatives would trumpet the poll results. In that, conservatives are just like everyone else. 35 Fifty-one percent said yes, 28 percent thought it would make no difference, with only 18 percent believing it would hurt. The shift in attitude over time was striking. The 49 percent in 1971 who had favored married priests became 70 percent in 1992, with the approval of 82 percent of women polled. (By 1992 there were an estimated 20,000 married Catholic priests in the U.S.) In an indication of his own bias, Criterion editor John Fink took the trouble to point out the scientific nature of Gallups polls.162 The Criterion also carried stories on the number of married Protestant ministers functioning as Catholic priests (about 70 of 34,000 diocesan priests) noting that it is quietly done to avoid the celibacy debate.163 In 1993 responding to the statement It would be a good thing if married men were allowed to be ordained as priests, 72 percent of the laity agreed strongly or somewhat, up 9 percent from 1987 and 20 percent from 1970. Asked: Do you approve of married clergy? 70 percent of both pre-Vatican and Vatican II cohorts said yes, as did 75 percent of post-Vatican II Catholics. What about women priests? By generation, 48 percent of pre-Vatican II, 66 percent of Vatican II, and 72 percent of post Vatican II laity cohorts approved.164 A 1999 report measuring laity support for expanding the priesthood found the same picture: 70 percent would accept married men as priests; 80 percent former priests now married; 63 percent celibate women; and 54 percent married women.165 The laitys willingness to open ordination widely is paralleled in the clergys. According to a survey of 1200 priests conducted by Catholic University sociologists early in the new century, 55 percent of priests think celibacy should be optional. Interestingly, if it were, only 12 percent said they would probably or certainly marry. Why so few? Most priests are now over 50, and since most of the late vocations had not married, why would they want to now? Secondly, younger ordinands now form the most conservative age cohort. The study found four principal reasons for the nine percent of the ordained who left within the first five years of ordination: Of heterosexual priests about 20-30 percent had fallen in love, with another 20-30 percent who felt lonely, unappreciated, and rejected celibacy (no specific woman involved); 30-40 percent of those who resigned, heterosexual or gay, were disillusioned with other priests or with the hierarchy. Five to fifteen percent who resigned were gays who rejected celibacy; as homosexuals, they shunned the double life, wanting an open relationship with a gay man. Another 5-10 percent had other reasons for resigning. What would have truly shocked the people in the pew, had it been generally known, 162 Criterion, 26 June 1992, 15. 163 Corps of Retired Priests: U.S. (CORPUS) was critical of what it saw as hypocrisy. See Criterion, 3 July 1992, 2, 15. This was also a common view of many priests. 164 DAntonio, Laity, 75, 121. 165 National Catholic Reporter, 1 November 2002, 1. 36 was that the study, noting that gay priests persevere in greater numbers than heterosexuals, suggested that perhaps up to half of the recently ordained were homosexual.166 Beyond mandatory celibacy and the sex abuse scandals that became known in the mid-1980s and festered into the new century, angering the laity, other factors made for fewer U.S. vocations. Perhaps the biggest is demographicCatholic families became smaller. The low birth rate of 1.85 children per family may produce one son, traditionally, the one who will perpetuate the family name. Giving a priest or nun to the Church is far more of a sacrifice when there are only two or three offspring, so vocations tend to come from families with four or more children.167 Nor is the priesthood or the religious life any longer almost the only way to get an education or achieve professional responsibilities, as it had been for the children of immigrants during the ghetto years of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century. As higher education and economic opportunity became far more available after World War II, the social status of priests and nuns correspondingly fell. In a secular society drenched with sexuality, the attractions of a celibate life dedicated to others, to say the least, are problematical, reinforcing the decline of clerical status.168 It is also true that in a society and a culture where everything is open to debate, the Churchs insistence that certain practices cannot be changed and certain issues even discussed does not sit well. For example, the high rate of divorce in America not only hurts vocations, but many divorced Catholics want to be able to remarry in the Church and to do so without having to lie or render the children of the failed marriage quasi-illegitimate. As it stands, if the previous marriage is judged valid, the answer to remarriage remains No. Demands for expanded roles for women, even ordination, as well as ordaining married men, and acceptance of homosexuality are questions regarded by the Church as closed.169 In the 1990s some Criterion readers registered strong reservations about vocations on this very ground. One, a mother of two devout sons, would not encourage them to be priests because they would not be free to express their dissent with church policies they find offensive. Since the hierarchy does not permit dissent, the result is hundreds of priests who dissent but are afraid to express it. Her sons could not survive in such an autocratic atmosphere . . . . The hierarchy does not have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit.170 166 National Catholic Reporter, 6 September 2002, 20, CARA Report, vol. 8 no 3, winter 2003, 3, 11. For priests attitudes toward celibacy see Dean R. Hoge and Jacqueline E. Wenger, Changing Commitments and Attitudes of Catholic Priests, 1970-2001, cited in National Catholic Reporter, 8 March 2002, 9. CARA Report, vol. 8, no. 3, winter 2003, 3. National Catholic Reporter, 23 May 2003, 27. 167 Cozzens, Priesthood, 134. Willis, Roman Catholic, 25 169 Hastings, Vatican II, and after, 248. 170 Criterion, 11 October 1996, 5. 168 37 Another reader wanted both women priests and a married clergy. Challenging Archbishop Daniel Buechleins claim that a married clergy would not solve the shortage, the writer pointed out that there was no lack of Protestant clergy either in the mainline churches or among the evangelicals. On the contrary, there was heavy competition for pulpits with Episcopalians having had to declare a moratorium on ordinations.171 A third letter writer observed that the bishop of New Ulm, Minnesota had strongly endorsed married priests in his diocesan newspaper, the Prairie Catholic.172 For decades, many parents had stopped actively encouraging vocations for their sons and daughters: In 1963, 67 percent of parents responded they would be very pleased to have a priest in the family; in 1974, 50 percent said so; in 1985, 55 percent. Asked in 2001 if they agreed with the statement, I have encouraged my child to consider becoming a priest, sister, or brother, 48 percent disagreed, another 19 percent disagreed strongly, exactly the reverse of the 67 percent of parents in 1963 who said they would be very pleased to have a priest in the family.173 Observed Criterion editor John Fink, The Church has a problem.174 None of this was good news to the hierarchy. Early in his papacy, in 1981, John Paul II pronounced the shortage of priests was due to a spiritual crisis. This the Catholic University of America sociologist Dean R. Hoge later that decade denied: Crisis there was, but it was institutional, not spiritual. Institutionally, a great many things could be done to remedy the shortage: redistribute priests, recruit more seminarians, expand the permanent deaconate, ordain women, make active ministry less permanent, reactivate priests who had left to get married. In Hoges view the most radical and dangerous tack would be to expand the role of the laity and do nothing to deal with the clerical shortfall. The danger was that Catholics might learn to do without the sacraments and bishops and become a congregational church. The safest path would be to ordain married men (which could be quickly done) and women; in the latter case, it would take longer and some claim that an all-male clergy is a doctrinal matter.175 John Paul II, of course, held to his position, telling the bishops of Canada in 1988 that the priest shortage might be a test that would strengthen and purify the priesthood and renew it.176 171 172 Criterion, 19 June 1998, 5. Bishop Raymond Lucker; Criterion, 30 October 1998, 5. 173 Criterion, 20 June 1986, 19. 174 John Fink, Criterion, 12 Jan 2001, 4, citing a CARA study. Criterion, 30 Oct 1987, 27. 176 Criterion, 18 November 1988, 28. 175 38 In the meantime, the news from the U.S. Bishops Committee on Priestly Life and Ministry was dire. Their report (a twenty-page pamphlet sent to the bishops in spring 1988, but not made public until January 1989), Reflections on the Morale of Priests, found that many priests, believing that Vatican II was being blunted or even betrayed, felt trapped, overworked, frustrated. In addition to the central problem of mandatory celibacy, were loneliness, sexual and gender issues (feminism, womens ordination, homosexual ministry), and polarization within the church. Worse, the committees mandate did not extend to discussion of possible solutions. This had a very bad effect. Priests were caught between those angry and disillusioned at the slow pace of renewal and the unreasoning and well-organized opposition of the self-styled orthodox . . . .177 In light of the situation, in March 1989, American bishops traveled to Rome to meet with the Curia, with Pope John Paul II holding a listening and watching brief. Ever the optimist, Indianapolis Archbishop OMeara offered that the Curia and John Paul II had learned much. Three weeks later, however, in his letter to the American bishops, the pope sharply criticized the United States for its radical feminism and polarization, and blamed the lack of vocations on the failure of the nuns to live up to their duty.178 Given the popes well-understood position, to no ones surprise a large majority of the over 200 delegates to the 1990 celibacy synod supported the practice, including each of its thirteen working groups, leaving only isolated voices to favor a married male clergy. One voice, (among many others), was neither isolated nor marginalized. In reporting the synod Criterion editor John Fink noted that in Oaxaca, Mexico, an estimated three-fourths of its 160 priests were not celibate, many with common law wives and having fathered children. Readers must have been far more shocked by the editors almost casual reference to estimates that one-half of U.S. priestshetero or homosexual--were similarly sexually active. After mentioning two recent highly publicized scandals (an archbishop involved with a woman and a priest, famous for his safe house ministry, for sexually exploiting young runaways),179 the Criterion drew attention to the popes permission for two married Brazilians to become priests after they agreed to 177 178 179 Criterion, 13 January 1989, 15. Criterion, 24 March 1989, 1; 7 April 1989, 1. Archbishop Marino and Fr. Bruce Ritter, respectively. In 1990 an estimated 20 percent of priests were in a relationship with a woman, with an added 8 to 10 percent exploring such intimacies. Another 20 percent of priests were homosexually oriented, half of them sexually active, and 80 percent of priests masturbated at least occasionally. These are said to be low estimates. Wills, Papal Sins, 186. 39 give up living with their wives (with the wives and their childrens consent). Fink, married, seven children, clearly favored a married clergy.180 So did the National Federation of Priest Councils: At its 1991 convention, noting that more than fifty former Protestant ministers were functioning as Catholic priests, NFPC delegates resolved 125 to 5 that the Church should ordain married men and women. Beyond morale and the problem of burnout, turning the argument that celibacy permitted the priest to give undivided love on its head, it was feared that overburdened clergy might lose touch with the laity, having to give up some tasks to continue to provide the Eucharist; priest-less parishes would see laity leaving the church. Fink regarded the NFPC as a representative body, a way of saying that it ought to be taken seriously. To Fink, while few bishops had spoken publicly, To both priests and laity, . . . the issue is simple; the Eucharist is more important than mandatory celibacy.181 However, as celibacy became understood as a given, no seminarian could feel misled. Consequently, while resignations continued to occur, their rate declined. By 1994 a Catholic University survey of priests sponsored by the National Federation of Priest Councils found fewer complaints. There were some: 27 percent found fault with the way authority was exercised; 18 percent cited unrealistic demands of the laity; 15 percent, overwork; 15 percent, loneliness; 14 percent having to express church teachings the priest dissented from. Another 14 percent cited celibacy as a problem: More than half of those polled said they would not marry if it were optional, 4 percent would certainly marry and another 13 percent probably would--about one in six, not a trivial number.182 One defender of celibacy, the sociologist/novelist Fr. Andrew Greeley of Chicago, estimated that the resignation rate in 1984 at 20 percent and that over 25 years, it would reach about 25 percent. Greeley pointed out that since 75 percent stick, the glass was more than half full and that dissatisfaction with the life was a greater influence on leaving than the desire to marry. About half simply discover that they dont like being priests. Why the decline in vocations? Fr. Greeley argued that recruitment by priests had declined--in places it had even ended because happy priests misperceive other priests as being unhappy, thanks to the loud unhappiness 180 181 Criterion, 12 October 1990; 26 October 1990, 24; 2 November 1990, 1. Criterion,10 May 1991, 9. OMeara died 10 January 1992. Buechlein was named 14 July 1992 and formally installed 9 September 1992. This reason for Buechleins remark regarding the Criterion was its shaky ecclesiology. 182 Criterion, 28 October 1994, 4. 40 of former priests. Abolish mandatory celibacy for good reasons, Greeley counseled, but it was not driving the vocation crisis.183 It was just possible that by the mid-1990s Fr. Greeley was more right than wrong. One difference between the Vatican II generation and later ordinands was that in 2001 priests under 35 were less likely to dissent, were more pre-Vatican II in attitude, and were happier than those under 35 in 1970 had reported. Fewer under 35 in 2001 thought they would marry if celibacy were optional. Tellingly, they embraced clericalism, something that had been anathema to the under 35s in 1970. Then half the clergy saw the notion of the priest as set apart as a barrier to true Christian community; in 2001, three decades later, only 15 percent of priests under 35 thought so, lower than every older age cohort.184 In 1970, 45 percent of those aged 26 to 35 had great difficulty in the way church authority was expressed; in 1994 less than 20 percent felt that way. In 1970 nearly 85 percent age 26 to 35 supported optional celibacy; in 1994 only about 45 percent did so, while over one-half of the older three age groups did so. In 1970 nearly 80 percent of the youngest priests supported inviting resigned and married priests to active ministry; in 1994 less than 40 percent did so, while 60 percent of middle-age priests wanted to invite them.185 Faced with unpleasant data gleaned from polls, it was the hierarchys habit to denigrate their message by insisting that the Church isnt a democracy, the laity dont know. For example, the U.S. bishops funded the work of sociologists Richard A. Schoenherr and Lawrence A. Young for nine years until 1990 when they were displeased with the authors third report on findings. Three bishops in a letter to other bishops denigrated the work, rejected its pessimism and Fr. Schoenherrs personal agenda of anti-celibacy, and the notion that grace and faith insufficient factors rather than sociology and data are the last words. Said Los Angeles Archbishop Roger Mahoney, We live by Gods grace, and our future is shaped by Gods design for his churchnot by sociologists.186 Thus, it was a surprise when Indianas bishops jumped into the polling business themselves in 1994. A three-year effort funded by the Lilly Foundation and led by a Purdue University sociologist, the 183 184 In Defense of Celibacy, America, 10 September 1994, 10-15. 185 Hoge-Wenger study, CARA, vol. 8, no 3, winter 2003, 3, 11. Criterion, 11 March 1994, 36. 186 Their study, Full Pews and Empty Altars: Demographics of the Priest Shortage in the United States Catholic Dioceses. (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1993), covers 1966 to 1984, with extrapolations to 2005, and has Indianapolis data. They had projected that priest numbers would fall to c. 21,000 in 2005; instead, 41 project had the full support of all five bishops. A lengthy questionnaire covering a wide field was distributed to registered parishioners of the states five dioceses. With every registered Catholic having an equal chance of being selected, the poll produced 2,636 usable responses (57 percent, a very high return). In addition, there were interviews with fifteen focus groups arranged by diocese and age cohort (50 and over, 30-49, and 18-29).187 The ratio of registered to unregistered Catholics at the time was estimated at about two to one; and since the latter are more inclined to disagree with some Church teaching (often the reason why they do not register in a parish), limiting the pool to registered parishioners produced a conservative bias. This is especially true of the post-Vatican II cohort (born after the council) with its tendency to be more liberal and two and a half times more likely to be non-registered, along with males, and the divorced, separated, and single. Despite the conservative bias of the respondent pool, the results generally were often liberal. On celibacy and the priest shortage, asked to respond to the statement It would be good if married men were allowed to be priests, 35 percent of the registered parishioners of the Indianapolis Archdiocese strongly agreed; 28 percent agreed somewhat; with 18 percent uncertain; leaving only 20 percent who disagreed somewhat (8 percent) or strongly disagreed (12 percent). Put another way, those who strongly supported a married priesthood outweighed those who strongly opposed it 35 percent to 12 percent, with the combined agrees 63 percent to the disagrees 20 percentin both cases about three to one. Since a married clergy is an issue on which the Vatican and the American hierarchy declared decided, if not decisive, opposition, it is clear that a solid majority of Indianas Catholics in 1994 were at odds with church authority on a celibate male priesthood. Among the reasons is that many laity have come to believe that clerical celibacy is either too hard a discipline for heterosexual men--perhaps even a wounding one--or that the rule attracts too many of the wrong sort to the priesthood, or both. For example, while 43 percent of the Indianapolis laity polled disagree somewhat or strongly disagree with the statement that they worry about the type of men going into the priesthood, 30 percent admitted to such worries, with another 27 percent uncertain. Such feelings, along with a decades publicity of clerical sexual abuse of minors and others in the United States and abroad, have led a majority of the laity to 187 Diocesan advisors were appointed by each of the bishops, with diocesan coordinators and a like number of independent advisors selected for their expert knowledge in theology or data analysis, all appointed by the research director, completing the leadership team. In 1997 James D. Davidson, et al., The Search for Common Ground: What Unites and Divides Catholic Americans (Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.: Huntington, Indiana, 1997), was one result of the project. 42 disagree with the hierarchy on celibacy.188 While raising other problems, a married priesthood would solve the priest shortage. A few years on, polls showing strong clerical support for optional celibacy mirrored that of the Indianapolis laity. In 2001 the National Federation of Priests Councils surveyed, Catholic Priests Attitudes Toward Celibacy and Homosexuality,189 asking if celibacy should be a matter of choice for diocesan priests; 53 percent of the diocesan priests and 60 percent of the religious priests said yes, 56 percent overall. Should resigned priests be invited to reapply as priests again? Fifty-two percent said yes (41 percent of diocesan priests, 54 percent of religious clergy). Seventy-two percent of all priests welcomed Episcopal priests, married or not, to function in the Church. If celibacy were optional, 12 percent of all priests said they would certainly or probably marry (15 percent of the diocesan, 7 percent of the religious). These were liberal results, but they held the promise of a more conservative clergy in future, for the older the cleric, the more accepting of optional celibacy. Younger priests were also less in favor of inviting resigned priests, married or single, to function. Those ordained after 1985--more likely to be delayed vocations--were more conservative and more accepting of the magisterium on social, moral, and theological issues. If celibacy were optional fewer of this group said they would marry. For priests ordained in the days of Vatican II or shortly thereafter, the rule had been the younger the priest the more liberal. That this reversed in the 1990s is not a surprise: Vatican II is ancient history to newly ordained priests, whether young or older, and they are theological conservatives. *** As for bishops, whatever gifts a man might bring to high ecclesiastical office, certain constraints were determinative; the greater the office, the more notoriety, the less freedom of expression. As one expert in these matters has observed, that an Edward T. OMeara or any man appointed bishop would disagree with Rome on a serious policy matter is extremely unlikely. In choosing a bishop, the Vatican distributes a questionnaire to bishops, priests, and laity of the diocese concerned, and others who know the candidate, asking for written answers in a dozen areas. One of the items queries the candidates docility--to the pope, the apostolic see, the hierarchy, and his adherence with conviction and loyalty to the magisterium. A candidate soft on the priestly ordination of women, birth control, or who supported optional male celibacy would not be made bishop.190 Bishops have privately acknowledged that John Paul II explicitly forbade them to discuss contraception, abortion, homosexuality, masturbation, a married 188 Davidson, 1994 unpublished study. The return rates were excellent; 72 percent for the 1,200 diocesan priests; 70 percent for the 600 religious. Summarized in CARA Reports, vol. 8, no. 4, spring 2003, 8. 190 Thomas J. Reese, Selection of Bishops, America (August 25, 1984), 68, 69. Not until the 19th century did popes claim the exclusive right to name bishops; previously, bishops were elected from the diocese by resident clergy and laity alike. For bishops or priests to transfer from city to city was forbidden by the canons of Nicea, 325, and Chalcidon, 451, and enforced in the late ninth century. National Catholic Reporter, 17 April 2009, 17, 20. 189 43 priesthood or womens ordination to the priesthood other than to defend the status quo.191 A few did and they paid for their temerity. Weakland of Milwaukee has reported that he was singled out for chastisement at every ad limina visit; Hunthausen of Seattle suffered the humiliation of having a bishop imposed on him and his authority reduced. At any rate, whatever a bishop felt or believed, few or none would publicly agitate for making celibacy optional or taking back resigned priests, married or not, or differed with the Vatican on birth control. Acceptance of celibacy as an essential qualification for becoming a bishop rendered many a priest ineligible for the post; failure to oppose contraception disqualified more. Complicating matters in OMearas case, however, was that he was a Jean Jadot bishop. Under Jadot, the apostolic delegate to the U.S. (1973-1980), nominees tended to be more liberal, favorably disposed to the work of Vatican II, and more pastoral than before. Being named national director of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in 1966 meant that when the genial OMeara came to Indianapolis, his parish work was a somewhat distant memory. In the judgment of one priest who came to know him well and loved him, when OMeara came to [Indianapolis] he was a theological and pastoral Rip Van Winkle, possessing an open heart but uninformed as could be about what parish ministry was like in the 1980s. Yet the executive committee of the priests council had many good discussions with the archbishop, the priest recalled. OMeara seems to have agreed with that assessment, on his deathbed telling the priest, Its such a shame that my health is failing me now at the time when I am finally learning what it really means to be a bishop.192 The celibacy issue made an early appearance on his plate: A summary and collation of age group reports showed that several priest age cohorts reporting low morale had argued the need to listen to priests about their concerns on issues confronting the Church. Two stood out: celibacy is a very real issue [ital. orig.], as was the real tension for the priest standing/mediating between Rome and the folks in the pews. Using resigned priests to meet the shortage was also raised.193 In his talk with the presbytery, 2 June 1980, OMeara admitted that the clergy shortage in the archdiocese was caused largely by an alarming number of resignations in recent years. Rather than bringing back resigned priests, the archbishop cited the possibility of moving to a permanent diaconate.194 Since celibacy was a given and womens ordination ruled out, using laymen to ease the burden on priests seemed the only viable path. 191 A. W. Richard Sipe, Sex, Priests, and Power (NY: Brunner/Mazel, 1995), 44, cited in Cozzens, Priesthood, 118, 119. 192 Fr. Marty Peter interview, 2005. As an officer of the priests council and later chairman of the personnel board, Fr. Peter met frequently with OMeara, finding that The man was open to growth. 193 OMeara papers. 194 OMeara papers, his talk with presbyteriat, June 2, 1980. 44 OMearas 1983 Quinquennial Report to Rome, his first, reported that celibacy [was] generally held in high esteem in the archdiocese. As for the priests who resigned, they did so because of difficulties with faith, authority and celibacy [albeit probably in the reverse of the order listed]. There was some comfort that while the majority of priests who had left since 1978 had not received dispensations, most continued to practice the faith.195 OMeara himself professed to having no doubts, telling the monks and seminarians at St. Meinrad Seminary in 1984 that My whole experience as a pastor . . . fills me with the growing conviction day by day of the need for the witness that celibacy offers both to the Church and to the world for the sake of the Kingdom of God.196 Nevertheless, OMearas 1988 Quinquennial Report was more pointed than the 1983 version, in admitting to a shortage of ordained clergy which becomes more acute each year. So many demands are made on those still active that it is difficult for them to choose to take a day or more off for a workshop, recollection day, and even a retreat. Overwork meant decline in physical and mental health over time.197 The 1988 USCC bishops committees report on priestly life and ministry, Reflections on the Morale of Priests, observed that every study or commentary on priests and the shortage of vocations mentions sexuality (and specifically mandatory celibacy) as a major reason for leaving the priesthood. Still, while celibacy explained both the vocation shortage and the personal unhappiness for many of those who stayed, the report did not countenance any change.198 During OMearas twelve years as archbishop editor Fr. Widner and his successor, John Fink, the celibacy issue was aired in the Criterion. In a long letter in April 1980 a priest from the diocese recalled that the vocation director a few years previously had told his fellow priests that as long as celibacy held so, too, would the shortage of vocations. Declaring the future bleak, the priest insisted that the issue must be openly discussed.199 Widner thought it obvious that men did not want to enter the Church as presently structured, and so the Church must change. The desire to serve was not lacking; the desire for ordination was. Despite the bleak statistics, trusting in God, Widner professed to be optimistic.200 In 1983, after extensive consultation with priests and laity (a series of eleven meetings in the deaneries of delegates from practically all parishes as well as observers), Archbishop OMeara moved to address a future with fewer priests in a time of growing numbers of new ministries and increasing pastoral demands. Ironically, the shortage loomed so great that what had been a three-man vocation team had to 195 Quinquennial Report, 1978-1982, p. 20. OMeara file, Homily convocation St. Meinrad, 7 September 1984. 197 OMeara papers. 198 Biskup, box 17. 199 Criterion, 4 April 1980, 6. It was not an easy issue: Two weeks later a reader responded unsympathetically to the notion that celibacy had to go. 18 April 1980, 6. 200 Criterion, 9 October 1981, 4. 196 45 be reduced to a single priest.201 Twenty diocesan priests would reach age 70 that year, eligible to retire, and there were only fourteen men at various stages in their seminary preparation. Of the twenty-six diocesan priests who had died since 1978, twelve had been in active ministry, while another thirteen had resigned, leaving the ratio of diocesan priests in parish ministry to the laity at 1:1278. It was anticipated that in 1987 there would be a net loss of twenty-six diocesan priests, with the ratio of priest to faithful reaching 1:1583. Some parishes would have to be closed and others clustered--priests serving two or more parishes.202 As it happened, for pastoral and political reasons (and in the hope of a quiet life), OMeara would never cluster parishes under a single priest; if unpopular decisions had to be made it was best to implicate clergy and, when possible, the laity. To do so, OMeara turned to three elected bodies: a council of priests, a priest personnel board, and an archdiocesan board of total Catholic education. In 1989, he initiated a new program, Parish Life Coordinators--lay or religious pastoral ministers (a nun or a brother appointed by the bishop), mentored by a pastor, to serve a parish or group of parishes. They would run the twenty-six parishes and seventeen missions that did not have resident pastors.203 In 1990 it was the turn of an archdiocesan pastoral council: Made up of a man and a woman from each of the eleven deaneries, two priests, one of whom served as chair, two nuns, two monks, the president of the board of education, the moderator of the curia, and up to six additional persons appointed by the bishop, it first convened in Nashville, Indiana, in September 1990. OMearas offered it as proof of his commitment to collegiality--I do believe in collaboration and sharing responsibility.204 Since neither parish life coordinators nor any other imaginable group could solve the priest shortage so long as male celibacy was sacrosanct, calls for change from influentials within the archdiocese and beyond continued to appear in the Criterion. In 1982, when Msgr. Joseph Brokhage left the post of personnel director of priests, he predicted that the Church would have to look at celibacy and at using resigned priests and women priests. Unfortunately, he believed Rome is more concerned about who administers the sacraments than those to whom sacraments are administered.205 After all, a sacramental church required an ordained clergy numerous enough to provide the faithful with the 201 202 Criterion, 7 October 1983, 11. Criterion, 4 March 1983, 4. While OMeara had agreed to clustering, Fr. Jeff Godecker in his 1992 report stated it was not implemented. Criterion, 21 February 1992, 1. 203 204 205 Criterion, 26 May 1989, 2. OMeara notes file; Criterion, 17 August 1990, 1. The full complement would be 33. Criterion, 16 July 1982, 4. 46 sacraments. This was the reason Englands Cardinal Basil Hume gave in 1985 in favor of ordaining married men and other mature men in those communities where the lack was greatest.206 Three years later, the American Canon Law Society established a task force to draw up a petition for a married clergy for consideration at their 1990 convention.207 It was just as obvious to Widners replacement as Criterion editor that Were in danger of losing the Eucharist. Noting that Protestants who ordain women and have a married clergy have trouble finding places for them, Fink wanted to know Which is more important, a celibate male priesthood or the sacrament of communion? Polls, he noted, showed a large majority of Catholics favored married clergy and just below 50 percent favored womens ordination. The danger of losing the real presence and Sunday Mass was real.208 A few months on, Fr. Bernard Head, twenty years earlier the elected president of the first archdiocesan senate, wanted celibacy made optional. Secular priests, wrote Fr. Head, were not really called to practice poverty, chastity, and obedience; these evangelical counsels were designed for an evil worlda world to be avoided--and to make living in religious community possible. Now we dont regard the world as evil and secular clergy do not live communally; rather, they live in the world and minister to those who do likewise. Efforts to make secular clergy live under the evangelical counsels having failed in the fourth and fifth centuries, he hoped the coming bishops synod would accept married clergy rather than see the number of clergy further reduced. Celibacy, he was sure, was the problem.209 In the Criterion the syndicated columnist, Fr. John Catoir (Light One Candle), weighed in by favoring the offer of the Corps of Resigned Priests, United States (CORPUS) and its thousand plus married members willing to function as priests once again.210 In January 1991 Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland went further: In a draft pastoral to his priests he would have parishes nominate married priests and as archbishop he would present them to the pope. While such a proposal had no chance of acceptance (Weaklands purpose was to keep the issue alive), his trial balloon won praise from Criterion editor John Fink. Fr. Head also saw Weakland as a prophetic voice. Publicly, the Vatican limited its comment on the Milwaukee archbishops demarche to stating that his suggestion was out of 206 207 Criterion, 21 June 1985, 24. Criterion, 28 Oct 1988, 23. 208 Criterion, 15 June 1990, 2. Criterion, 21 Sept 1990, 5. Disappointing to Fr. Head, in October the American bishops supported celibacy down the line. 209 210 Criterion, 5 Oct 1990, 5. 47 place.211 Agitation to drop mandatory celibacy continued into the early 1990s; for instance, 62,000 Europeans petitioned the Vatican for an end to the practice.212 The Vatican remained unmoved. *** Archbishop Edward T. OMeara died 10 January 1992 of respiratory disease (possibly a victim of his many travels for the Propagation of the Faith to third world countries). Under John Paul II the sine qua non for appointment to bishop was an alert willingness to demonstrate soundness in doctrinal and policy matters. Attracting favorable notice from those already in the episcopacy was another. As rector of St. Meinrad Seminary, Daniel Buechlein, O.S.B., came to the attention of his future colleagues during the annual November bishops meeting by hosting a dinner for those ordinaries with seminarians enrolled at St. Meinrad. He evidenced his soundness when, as bishop of Memphis, Tennessee (1986-1991), he and two co-authors produced a 39-page pamphlet, Celibacy for the Kingdom, Theological Reflections and Practical Perspectives.213 Aimed at ending the deafening silence on the positive role of celibacy, the customary theological and spiritual arguments in its favor were repeated. Reminding readers that celibacy was also for the married, it was both discipline and charism of the Church, one with long centuries to recommend it. As archbishop of Indianapolis, his appeals for vocations to the religious life and the priesthood in his Criterion columns were constant: The Church does not give up the ideal of priests living the celibate way of life as Jesus did. Celibacy is not the issue. Nor is marriage the solution. Believing this generation as generous as others, and there is always Gods grace,214 priests, by our way of life of pastoral love . . . signal a kingdom that is not of this world. Thats the fundamental reason Christ lived a celibate life. And we celibates are freer to love others.215 If fine words could close the gap between the number of priests needed and the number available, these might have done it. Where the 1983s statement read--Celibacy generally is held in high esteem, Buechleins first Quinquennial report, 1993, dropped high. It noted, however, 211 Criterion, 18 January 1991, 19; 25 January 1991, 2; 15 November 1991, 24. Fink cited Weaklands courage and his role in the 1986 economic pastoral. At the 1988 Synod in Rome, Weakland had been blunt in criticizing sexism in the Church. In retaliation, in 1990, Rome had acted to have an honorary degree for Weakland from the Swiss University of Freibourg withdrawn. While opposed to abortion, the Milwaukee archbishop had also criticized the Churchs position as too simplistic an answer to a complicated and emotional question. Criterion, 16 November 1990, 17. Sadly, Weakland was later caught up in sexual scandal himself, having paid a man some $400,000 for his silence. 212 Criterion, 10 July 1992, 29. 213 His co-authors were the executive director of vocations for the NCCB and the president-rector of St. Marys Seminary, Baltimore, Md. 214 Buechlein papers, 11 January 1992, column file. 215 Undated mss. of a , recorded interview with John Fink, Buechlein papers. 48 that between 1988 and 1992 there had been seventeen ordinations, twenty-three deaths, three resignations without dispensations, and ten retirements, for a net loss of nineteen. Putting the best face on the situation, it added, There is open and frank discussion which is strengthening in its effects on the practice of celibacy.216 Four years later the Criterion reported that between 1993 and 1997 there were ten ordinations, but gave no word on resignations, deaths, or retirements.217 In 2000, in response to a question at a West Deanery meeting of the priests, the archbishop stated that in his eight years as Indianapolis archbishop he had ordained twenty-three (not all stayed) and buried thirty-three.218 Again, there was no word on resignations or retirements. Under Buechlein, transparency suffered as bad news was to be avoided. Laymen and laywomen could replace priests and nuns in the schools, parish coordinators could stand in for pastors, ecclesiastical ministers could do the readings and distribute communion at Mass and to shut-ins at home, but if priesthood was to remain the preserve of celibate male clergy something more was needed. Among other important matters, in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen gentium), the Council fathers sought to deal with the worldwide clergy shortage by restoring the deaconate. In the early Church and long thereafter, deacons had a permanent role and did not go on to ordination--St Francis of Assisi, for instance, remained a deacon all his life. Later, the deaconate became a transitional stage on the path to ordination. Given the priest shortage and the needs in mission lands, the council saw that lay male deacons--married and single (if single, vowed to permanent celibacy), could perform vital roles: Although they cannot consecrate the Eucharist, serve as celebrant at Mass, anoint the sick or hear confessions, they can baptize, distribute communion, perform marriages, provide the viaticum to the dying, preside at funerals, proclaim the Gospel, preach at Mass, and minister in the parishes, hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons. The manifest benefits overcame the objections of council traditionalists worried that a permanent deaconate open to married men would hurt vocations to the celibate life.219 Following the councils close in 1965, some dioceses quickly embraced the newly permitted permanent deaconate; Indianapolis did not. In August 1972, an apostolic letter, Ad Pascendum, set the norms for the new office. For more than twenty years, however, Indianapolis remained one of two of the five dioceses in Indiana that did not embrace this grant of clerical status to married males. Discussed in 216 Buechlein papers. Criterion, 25 July 1997, 16, 17. Under Buechlein, especially after John Fink retired as editor, the Criterion, more and more, lacked both information and transparency. Candor about problems would jeopardize unity, which was Buechleins watchword. 218 Fr. Francis Bryan, conversation, 2007. There would also have been retirements. 217 219 Tracy, American Bishop at Vatican II, 115. 49 the archdiocese for over a decade, the consensus held that it would be better to develop a broader sense of service among the laity. By 1982, however, Criterion editor Widner and nine other priests of the archdiocese supported it, citing the need and the large number of permanent deacons of Chicago as evidence of its success.220 Officers of the priests council, however, demurred. Opposition came from both sides of the spectrum: archdiocesan conservatives, like their counterparts at the Second Vatican Council, feared undermining the celibate priesthood, opening the way for a married clergy; liberals--men and women--were put off by its reservation to males, seeing that as an insult to laywomen and the religious sisters. In November 1986 the Archdiocesan Council of Priests, following a presentation by a representative from the Chicago archdiocese, formed an ad hoc committee to examine the question. In letters to the Criterion, a Providence nun and a laywoman asked for deaconesses.221 Promising to listen to all views, Archbishop OMeara would make the decision. As debated in the pages of the Criterion, the majority of letter writers favored the deaconate in that it would provide ordained leadership, free priests to minister, promote vocations, enrich marriage preparation, encourage greater participation of women in the church, and expand existing ministries. Some argued it would be especially good for blacks and Hispanics.222 Already by 1988, fifty-four religious (42 nuns, two brothers) and laity (six men, four women) filled jobs usually done by priests in fifty-three parishes of the archdiocese.223 As part of the fact-gathering of the ad hoc committee, a deacon of twelve years standing in the Louisville, Kentucky diocese was asked about his experiences; they turned out to have been mixed: on the plus side, he provided real help to overburdened priests, giving three or four homilies a year, leading devotions at Lent and Advent, and much else. On the other hand, there was the problem of acceptance; at first some would not take communion from him.224 At a West Deanery meeting in April 1988, most of the women saw the male deaconate as simply more discrimination: It alienated nuns, was costly, and merely added another ministry.225 One letter writer, summing up most of the arguments against, objected that the diaconate was theologically and practically unnecessary. A short-term solution to a long-term problem, the issue was celibacy and life-long commitment. It was not a spiritual problem, the reader argued, as research had shown.226 220 221 Criterion, 6 August 1982, 4. Criterion, 10, 17 April 1987, 5; 5, 12, 26 June 1987, 5. 222 Criterion, 12, 22, 29 January 1988; 5 February 1988; 19 February 1988, 5. Criterion, 19 Feb 1988, 1. 224 Criterion, 5 Feb 1988, 1. 225 At the meeting held at Ritter High School, the pro and con were equally divided. Criterion, 29 April 1988, 1. 226 Criterion, 29 January 1988, 1, 25. 223 50 To help decide the matter the advisory group of the archbishop--the priests council-- polled the archdiocese. In summer 1988, 1,100 laity, 200 priests, and members of 30 special interest groups were mailed surveys; Criterion readers could also participate by mail by filling out the survey published in the paper. In all, 485 clergy, religious, and laity responded.227 Overall, 56 percent favored permanent male deacons, 33 percent opposed, with 11 percent no answer. Of the laity, 67 percent approved and only 15 percent disapproved. Of the 183 newspaper responses, the laity went 57 percent to 38 percent in favor. It had always been understood that whatever the laity and the religious nuns thought, the priests would have to support it; and they did not. Of 132 clergy responses, a plurality (46 to 42 percent) were opposed and in September the priests council recommended against, 12 to 7. Accepting the councils view OMeara, said no to the permanent deaconate at this time.228 Finally, ten years later, summer 2008, after four years of training, 25 men lay prostate before Archbishop Buechlein at Sts. Peter and Paul Cathedral and were ordained permanent deacons for the archdiocese.229 In the meantime, celibate vocations having somehow to be found, a number of strategems were pursued: a Call by Name program was adopted in July 1987. If young men would not sign up for the seminary, then friends, relatives, and fellow parishioners would draft them. A campaign of prayers, homilies, and ads in the Criterion invited the laity to nominate young men they believed had the makings of a good priest. The schemes attraction was that it would encourage those who had considered a vocation to think anew and for those who had not, plant the seed. In all, more than a thousand received invitations to attend information sessions held in New Albany, Batesville, and Indianapolis.230 Whatever success Call by Name might have had, little has been heard of it since. In the mid-1990s the archdiocesan Serra Club began giving religious aptitude tests to over 2,100 seventh and eleventh graders: of 1,381 seventh graders 446 (32%) showed an aptitude for service (236 for lay ministry, 210 for religious life or the priesthood). Of 749 eleventh graders, 98 (13%, 55 females, 43 males) showed an aptitude for service (44 for lay ministry and 54 as nuns or priests). Invited to dine with Archbishop Buechlein, contact with them was maintained by the vocation office.231 In the late 1990s CARA, the research arm of the American 227 228 Criterion, 3 June 1988, 3. The return of 14.9 percent of mailed surveys was seen as very good. Criterion, 30 September 1988, 1; 13 January 1989, 1. 229 Criterion, 19 December 2008, 2. The next class, of eighteen, is scheduled to be ordained in 2012. 230 231 Criterion, 17 July 1987, 1; 9 October 1987, 1; 30 October 1987, 1. Ministry Potential Discerner, a test developed by Serra International. Criterion, 27 October 1995, 2; 15 March 1996, 1. 51 bishops, conducted a study of the young men and women of southern Indiana regarding vocations for the areas Benedictine monks and religious. The 482 who responded cited as the primary reason for hesitation in choosing religious life was the sense of being called to follow other careers and the desire to marry.232 Deaconate or no, in the absence of priests the laity had to help make up the shortage: One way was as Eucharistic ministers distributing communion at Mass and to shut-ins. Nationally, by 2007, of 6,200 lay ecclesial ministers only one in five were men, about the number of priests lost to resignation, retirement or death between 1994 and 2005. The number of lay ecclesial ministers in 1990, 22,000 (again, the great majority women), reached 31,000 in 2007, surpassing the 29,000 diocesan priests.233 In 1993 at the first diocesan-wide Ministry Day, the Indianapolis archdiocese counted 350 paid lay ministers--parish life coordinators, pastoral associates, youth leaders, liturgical planners, religious educators, and archdiocesan officers.234 Perhaps the last word on priestly celibacy should be left to the long-time Criterion editor, Msgr. Raymond T. Bosler. Ordained in the late 1930s, like most priests of his generation in the 1960s Bosler supported priestly celibacy, albeit with increasing ambivalence over time. In 1967, he declared that the sacrifice of the right to marry, freely given, was justified because the dignity of the priest, being considerably greater than that of a nun or brother, was adequate compensation.235 Two years later, turning from psychic rewards to the mundane, Bosler thought the money for the greater expense of a married clergy could be found. Protestants and the Orthodox manage to do so and after all, most priests in the early church were married. But he still wanted celibacy kept because it was the example of celibate monasticism, he believed, that little by little had led the Western Church to recognize the advantages of celibacy for priests. Circumstances might force a change to optional celibacy, but he hoped not.236 Five years on, in 1974, in answering a question on deacons, Bosler noted that the Church insisted on celibacy 232 233 234 CARA Report, vol. 5, no 1, 5. National Catholic Reporter, 17 August 2007, 17. Criterion, 26 February 1993, 4. For the importance of women Eucharistic ministers, one only has to check their presence at the altar at Mass. 235 Criterion, Question Box, 16 June 1967, 4. What justified the sacrifice made by nuns and brothers Bosler did not say. 236 Criterion, 6 June 1969, 5. 52 because priests preside at the Eucharistic Sacrifice. This is surprising because nowhere else (as far as this writer is aware), did Bosler ever suggest that licit sex was in any way defiling. As for costs, while a married clergy might be financed, he believed that Catholic schools would have to close if nuns and brothers disappeared and lay teachers replaced them. In 1979, no longer editor, Bosler was finally ready to end celibacy in the Latin tradition, just as the Eastern Church united to Rome already had. Priests vows were not as binding as marriage vows, he argued--the latter is with God, the former a church-imposed discipline.237 He agreed with the reader who held that without celibacy the priesthood would be more attractive to young men. Even so, he still hedged: Whether our Church should go in that direction is a subject I leave to others for discussion. I get into enough trouble just answering direct questions.238 In his 1992 memoir, two years before his death, Msgr. Bosler admitted that there were times when he wished he had a wife and children and grandchildren. And he could still be excited by the bouncing breasts of women he passed on the street. If he were a young man now would he become a priest? I do not know. Marriage and family life were good things he had given up because he felt that his fulfillment was to be in the celibate priesthood. I still feel that way.239 Friendships with Protestant ministers, however, had shown him that it was possible to be fulfilled in marriage and priesthood at the same time. Bosler interpreted Vatican IIs shift on marriage from a license to have intercourse for procreation and to allay lust to a sacrament establishing a community of life best expressed through the marital act, as marking an advance in the Churchs understanding. Marriage was not simply a contract, but rather a covenant, a promise, a mutual giving. Priests and laityallwere called to seek perfection. Bosler had come to see this as the principal reason for separating priesthood from mandatory celibacy.240 A few years after Boslers death, in preparation for the Roman Synod of 1997 and in view of the fact that many Catholics had no opportunity for Mass and Eucharist on Sunday, the bishops of North and South America requested a study of the situation. The idea was dropped and no study made, lest it look like an opening for married priests.241 In 2014 and for the foreseeable future, that seems likely to be the last word. 237 238 239 240 241 Criterion, 9 March 1979, 4. Criterion, 21 September 1979, 6. New Wine, 15, 16. Bosler, New Wine, 14-16. Thomas J. Reese, The Synod Points Out Needs, America (3 January 1998), 5. 53  ...

... The Prole and the Prelate The chapter opens with a discussion of the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 in which questions regarding the social order, class, equity, and like matters arise. The coincidental arrival in Indianapolis of Denis Kearney and the new bishop of the diocese, Francis Silas Chatard, on 17 August 1878, extends the discussion and the role that the Catholic Church and its laity would and should play. Kearney, an immigrant Irishman, at the time was notorious as an agitator for the working class, while the Chatard was a scion of a prominent Baltimore family. The contrast in their biographies and in the reception in the city each received in the next few days illustrates the alternatives at stake. What each thought the laity owed the hierarchy as well as their convictions about the social order were miles apart. Chatards family and educational history is discussed, especially the influence that a papal representative to the United States in the 1850s, Gaetano Bedini, had on his thinking. The attention given to the Irish is justified on the ground that during the Gilded Age and later, their numbers led to the habit of conflating Irish with Catholic, ordinarily to the benefit of neither. Their prominence in the trade union movement and in the secret societies working for Irelands independence (to be taken up in the next chapter), and the problems they caused Chatard, are other reasons. 2017 William Doherty. All rights reserved. 1 The central question Catholicism faced in nineteenth century United States, itself the product of a democratic revolution, was how to demonstrate that the Church, while ceding nothing of its belief in its unique possession of truth, was not an intolerable element beholden to an alien potentate, but reliably patriotic and therefore valuable? Its answer was to show itself as a conservative presence, a force for social stability influential with the very class--the working class--otherwise tempted to political and economic radicalism. Europes working class was being lost to religion; for the American Church to lose its immigrant parishioners would be to lose all real influence and condemn it to insignificance. At the same time, exerting a measure of control over the working class would be crucial to Churchs acceptance in the United States. For that the laity must be patriotic, shun sedition, and obedient to the civil and religious authorities. As well see, these would be the watchwords of the hierarchy. In the spring and summer of 1877, with the nation in the fourth year of an economic depression that began with the financial Panic of 73, the giant eastern railroadsthe Baltimore and Ohio, the New York Central, the Pennsylvania, the Erietwice conspired to cut wages by ten percent; many regional carriers, like the Indianapolis and St. Louis and the Vandalia railroads, followed suit. The result was the greatest explosion of labor unrest in the history of the United States. Forced to a miserable level of existence and incensed by the lordly arrogance of railroad officials, in mid-July railroad workers, first at Martinsburg, West Virginia, then Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and points west erupted in a spontaneous uprising that threatened to become an all-or-nothing struggle. Pittsburgh saw the most violence: when militiamen fired on a crowd killing forty, it so inflamed the situation that 39 buildings were torched and 104 locomotives and 1,245 freight cars destroyed. Reading and Philadelphia experienced similar violence, as did Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis, and San Francisco. Before the Great Railroad Strike had run its course, 100,000 workers in fourteen states were out on strike, property losses mounted to over $5 million, with a hundred dead and a thousand imprisoned. Federal troops were sent to major cities, states called out their national guard, and armed volunteer militias and legions mustered to restore the peace or prevent riot from breaking out anew. In all, half of the nations 75,000 miles of freight lines were at a standstill.1 Saturday, 21 July, the strike reached Indiana at Richmond and Ft. Wayne on Sunday. On Monday Indianapolis firemen and brakemen struck the Vandalia, followed by the men of the Indianapolis and St. Louis, the Jefferson, Madison, and Indianapolis, and the Panhandle railroads. Press and telegraph accounts of the disorder and death elsewhere added to the atmosphere of fear and dread. It was Indianapolis great good fortune that its union workers were determined to quash any hint of violence, leading Mayor John Caven to deputize 200 railroad strikers to protect railroad property. Wearing white ribbons, quiet, polite, disciplined, they had the situation at Union Depot in hand: Mail trains were not interfered with, but under the iron rule passenger and freight cars, guarded by conductors and porters, 1 Robert V. Bruce, 1877: Year of Violence, (Indianapolis, 1959), 180, 300; Philip Taft and Philip Ross, American Labor Violence, in Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, A Report . . . on the Causes and Prevention of Violence . . . (New York, 1969), 269. 2 were shunted to sidings.2 The strikes effect on business was serious: the citys wholesale merchants were hard hit; at the Board of Trade no market in futures existed since no one could quote realistic prices; in the absence of hogs Kingans meatpacking company shut down; with lumber in short supply at the Belt Railway under construction 25 carpenters were laid off; the stove works closed for lack of coal and iron; the citys water works and a number of millswood, flour, paperalso threatened to close. Breweries could not ship their product leaving 250 drays with nothing to transport.3 Although Indianapolis railroad union men never deviated from their abstention from force and violence, the citys movers and shakers divided between those sympathetic to the workers plight who supported the mayors effort to meliorate the dispute, and other establishment figures, among them Federal Judge Walter Q. Gresham and future president Benjamin Harrison, who were for gathering a military force to break the embargo on the movement of freight and passenger trains and overawe any persons tempted to engage in riot. In support of the Greshamites, on Tuesday evening, the second day of the strike, the Indianapolis News, believing that the communistic elements may require curbing, favored firing on crowds, there being no such thing as an innocent bystander.4 In fact, later that day the army signal corpsman on duty could telegraph Washington: Strikers orderly, no indication of violence. Nonetheless, Judge Greshams call next day for a committee of public safety to form a militia led by experienced military officers was successful, as more than a hundred men representing the professions, every branch of business, leading law and manufacture firms, and scores of young men [of] well-known families volunteered.5 By the end of the week, the city held five companies of federal troops (853 men), Lew Wallaces Montgomery County Guards (72), various companies under the command of Benjamin Harrison and other notables, and the Indiana Legion, a militia of 750, all marching and counter-marching in the streets. With police, sheriff officers, and deputized strikers added to the number, the armed forces for law and order in Indianapolis reached an estimated 5,000.6 In a city of 67,000, perhaps one in four adult males were actively responsible for protecting property and available to put down riot. In the days ahead the Democratic Sentinel proved sympathetic to labor, the Republican Journal became more and more hostile to the strikers, while the independent News never equivocated in its desire to have force brought to bear to end the work stoppage. When the strike ended a week later, the Indiana Central Catholic, self-described as sustained and read almost exclusively by Irish Catholics, in a rebuke of the railroad owners drew the lesson that the aggregation of great wealth in the hands of individuals [is] inimical to republics. The solution was not an intolerable dictation by labor of the terms of employment, but through taxation to strike at the great fortunes. At the point where wealth becomes excessive, taxation 2 Journal, 24 July; Sentinel, 24, 25 July; News, 24 July 1877. On the 25th the unions agreed to release passenger trains. News, 26 July1877. 3 Journal, 25-28 1877; Sentinel, 25 July; Gerald G. Eggert, Railroad Labor Disputes, the Beginnings of Federal Strike Policy (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1967), 12, 14. 4 News, 24 July 1877. 5 Journal, 26 July 1877. 6 Jacob Piatt Dunn, History of Greater Indianapolis (Chicago, 1910), 403. 3 ought to become excessive for no country prospers by individuals in possession of enormous wealth. The editor warned that that revolution would come to America if workingmen fared no better than European labor.7 In Indianapolis at least, during Great Railroad Strike the attachment to law and order held. *** A year later, 17 August 1878, two men of very different backgrounds with very different messages for very much the same audience arrived at the Union Station in Indianapolis. Detraining from Cincinnati at 6:00 p.m. was Irish-born Denis Kearney, age 31--drayman, labor agitator, and president and moving force behind the Workingmans Party of California (WPC). Having gone to sea as a cabin boy at age eleven, Kearney rose to chief mate of a clipper ship before settling in San Francisco in 1868 to pursue his opportunities on land. He married, in 1870, bought a draying business, in 1872, and by 1876 had become an American citizen and a middling prosperous businessman and property owner. Kearney was in the midst of a coast-to-coast speaking tour designed to spark a political workingmens movement on a national scale. His targets were crooked politicians beholden to powerful economic interestsbanking and the railroads. The economic effects of the Long Depression, 1873-1879, were aggravated in San Francisco by the explosive growth of Chinese coolie immigrants who were much resented by white laborers (and many businessmen). In contrast to peaceable Indianapolis in 1877, at San Francisco a mass meeting held in sympathy with the striking railroad workers degenerated into a three-day, spontaneous, anti-Chinese riot and arson. In the melee four died, fourteen were wounded, and a halfmillion dollars in property was lost. Far from joining the rampage, Kearney was one of thousands who joined a merchants militiathe pick-handle brigadeof the Committee of Public Safety that ended the violence, protected property, and restored order.8 The July riots and the hard times changed Kearney. Whether it was his stock market losses (which were considerable),9 or the contempt with which he and other draymen were treated when they sought redress from the citys customhouse monopoly (all too representative of the malfeasance that generally obtained in the city), Kearney put his drays in charge of a brother and went into politics. He would organize the oppressed laboring classes to obtain through the ballot a redress of wrongs which has afflicted the downtrodden laborer and drive the thieves and corrupt rascals from power. 10 He was soon a fixture at the Sand Lot (a large open meeting area across from San Franciscos new city hall) where he agitated against the Chinese and other grievances. Kearneys career as a tribune of the people was launched. 7 Indiana Central Catholic, 14 September 1877; 11 August 1877. Shumsky, Workingmens Party of California, 13 ff., 59. 9 This was the view of James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 431. 10 Shumsky, Workingmens Party, 148. 8 4 Arriving at the depot at 6:40 p.m. from Terre Haute came the new bishop of the Diocese of Vincennes, Francis Silas Chatard, age 44. Of French descent, he was born at Baltimore, the premier see of American Catholicism, to a prominent family of French descent.11 Having lost its Santo Domingo slave plantation in the uprising and revolution of 1793, the family had fled to Delaware in 1794 before settling in Baltimore three years later. Grandfather Pierre, medically trained at Toulouse, Montpellier, and Paris, became a distinguished physician and a corresponding member of the French Academy of Medicine. Silas father, Ferdinand, after study in Baltimore, Paris, London, and Edinburgh, also became a doctor. Having owned slaves proved no barrier to the familys acceptance in Maryland, Catholics there being twice as likely as Protestants to do so.12 Though late arrivals to Baltimore, the Chatards had readily found a place among the Carrolls, Darnelles, Shrivers, and Brentsthe citys Catholic elite, the elite of the city.13 Upon graduating from Emmetsburgs St. Mary College, June 1853, Silas followed his father and grandfather into medicine. As was common then, he began his studies in the office of a physicianpractitioner. He attended lectures at the College of Maryland, lived as a student at the citys infirmary, and spent a year as a resident physician at the citys almshouse hospital, receiving his degree in 1856.14 Following a religious retreat, feeling called to the priesthood, in 1857 Baltimore Archbishop Francis P. Kenrick found him a place at Romes Urban College of the Propaganda of the Faith. Ordained in 1862 at St. John Lateran, he was appointed vice-rector of the American College that year, the premier seminary for the American clergy, and then rector, 1868-1878.15 He was awarded the Doctorate in Divinity (D.D.) in 1863. Never physically robust, Chatard was sent to the United States to recoup and raise funds for the college, where news of his selection as the fifth bishop of Vincennes reached him. Consecrated in Rome, 12 May 1878, he returned to the U.S. and was welcomed to Cincinnati in August by Archbishop John Baptist Purcell and Fr. August Bessonies, the administrator of the Vincennes Diocese. The following days saw Chatard enthroned at St. Francis Xavier Cathedral at Vincennes, travel to St. Mary-of-the-Woods for the profession of vows by the novices of the Sisters of Providence, then to Indianapolis and residence at 11 The marriage of Eliza Anna Marean and Ferdinand E. Chatard produced eight children (four sons and four daughtersone, Juliana, entered the Daughters of Charity, August 1857, at age 24; During the Civil War she served as a nurse for the Army of Northern Virginia, a choice possibly reflective of a family preference for the slave owning South. 12 Charles Carroll of Carrolton, signer of the Declaration of Independence, owned over 300 slaves. Spalding, The Premier See, 57. 13 Thomas W. Spalding, The Premier See: History of Baltimore Archdiocese, 7, 57, 532 n. The Chatards were on the citys society visiting list, the Blue Book, among the Shrivers and other elite families. 14 Indiana Catholic and Record, 13 September 1918, 1. For his medical background, see Alerding, 213, and Blanchard, 106. 15 For a succinct biography of Chatard, see Bernard Strange, Meinrad Historical Essays, 134; York, Role of St. Meinrad; Indiana Catholic and Record, 13 September 1918, 1. 5 St. Johns on Georgia Street.16 With the antagonists, Kearney and Chatardthe prole and the prelate--in place, it remained to be seen what they would make of each otherand what Indianapolis would make of them. *** On the hustings, Kearney, in rough working-dress with shirtsleeves rolled and speaking up to two hours and more, employed what has been called the rhetoric of revolution.17 All the cull of vituperation of a thesaurus--harangue, rant, invective, abuse, truculence, denunciation, language bordering on--even crossing over into incendiary speech, he used.18 He had begun in San Francisco by attacking the Chinese, invariably beginning and ending his speeches with the cry The Chinese must go! Hostility to them had spread outside California, even to Indianapolis where few Chinese lived: In1880, for instance, the Indianapolis Western Citizen, its readership largely Irish Catholic, fully agreed with Kearney that the presence of Chinese itself pauperized white men--A class that can live on rice and rats ought certainly be ostracized from decent society.19 Something of the flavor of Kearneys performance comes through from the Chicago Tribune reporter who found in him a a model stump orator. His long-range adjectives poured forth thick and fast, cutting the air like balls from a 10-ton howitzer [condemning] those free trade, free rum, free love, Godforsaken, black-mailing, hatchet-faced cranks and profit mongering dudes, who know as much about the labor question as a hen does about heaven. 20 Kearneys central contention was the necessity of breaking the power of the boodlers and monopolists. What was needed was a new political party that would elect none but competent workingmen and their friends to any office whatever. The rich have ruled us until they have ruined us. The republic must be preserved and only workingmen will do it. And thered be no more chamber of commerce pick handle brigades, for while the Workingmans Party of California (WPC) would not encourage riot or outrage, neither would it repress, or put down, or arrest, or prosecute the hungry and impatient.21 16 Rev. H. Alerding, A History of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Vincennes (Carlon & Hollenbeck: Indianapolis, Indiana, 1883), ch. XVIII. Bishop de Saint Palais had received permission in 1873 to take up residence in Indianapolis, but did not exercise it. The see remained Vincennes until March 1898, when it became Indianapolis. When the Evansville diocese was carved from Indianapolis, in November 1944, Indianapolis was raised to an archdiocese. 17 Henry George, 443. 18 Shumsky, WPC, 186. 19 Western Citizen, 29 March 1880, 4. See also 19 April 1880, 4, and 22 April 1882, 4, for other of the Citizens anti-Chinese outbursts. 20 Cited in the New York Times, 9 July 1883. Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California (University of California Press: Los Angeles, 1971), 118. 21 6 Newspaper readers couldnt be blamed if they lacked confidence in Kearneys promise not to encourage riot or outrage, for he seemed to call on his hearers to do just that. In September 1877, Kearney was said to have urged all workingmen to get a musket; so armed, 20,000 of them could do what they wanted, even suggesting that a little selective hanging of the rich might be good thing. A few days later he observed that bullets were not wanting and if the Chinese were not driven off, San Francisco would become another Moscow.22 In October he carried his philippic to the Nob Hill residences of the citys magnatesthe Stanfords, Crockers, and Hopkinses. There he was said to have told workers to arm themselves with a musket and a hundred rounds of ammunition, for the dignity of labor must be sustained, even if we have to kill every wretch that opposes it. Judge Lynch. he cried, is the judge wanted by the workingmen of California.23 Then and later Kearney complained that reporters misrepresented his remarks, and he expressly denied that at Nob Hill he had use[d] any such language imputed to me.24 Whatever he said, a few days after that speech came the first of his several arrests for language having a tendency to cause a breach of the peace.25 Undeterred by jail or criticism, in January 1878 Kearney led 500 jobless men to City Hall to demand that they be given work, bread, or a place in the county jail. Fearful city authorities soon mustered three National Guard units and passed an ordinance suppressing public assemblies of any sort wherever held. Not to be outdone, the state legislature passed a draconian gag law making it a felony to incite riot, with two years in prison and a fine up to $5,000.26 That San Franciscos newspapers distorted what Kearney said was supported by people well positioned to assess Kearneys oratory: In California, Henry George--single taxer, reformer, and author of the influential Progress and Poverty found him a man of strict temperance in all except speech, and even there, In all Kearneys wild declamation there has been no direct incitement to violence. He has talked of wading through blood, hanging official thieves, burning the Chinese quarter, . . . [H]is rhetoric was always conditional, he always included an if. If something were not done, then bad things would happen. His statements were no more violent or incendiary than his critics.27 The English diplomat, Shumsky, WPC, 20. It was at this meeting that the Workingmens Party of California, WPC, was organized, with Kearney elected treasurer; two weeks later he was president. 23 Saxton, Indispensable Enemy,118. 22 24 James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, sec. ed. rev., vol. II (New York, 1889), 385-408. 25 He spent five days in jail, but on this and subsequent occasions the charges were either dropped or he was not convicted Shumsky, Workingmens Party of California, 186, 187; Dictionary of American Biography, 268, 269. His brother and two other WPC men were also arrested; Kearney counseled that the officers not be resisted and the arrests took place without incident, more evidence that the newspapers exaggerated Kearneys danger to the peace. 26 John R. Commons, History of Labor, 257, 258. Appletons Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1878, New series, Vol. III (D. Appleton & Company: New York, 1889), 73. Henry George, The Kearney Agitation in California, The Popular Science Monthly (August 1880), 433-453, 438, 440, 441. See also Kevin Jenks, Denis Kearney and the Chinese Exclusion Acts, Social Contract, vol. 6, no. 3 (spring 1996). Jenks blamed the unsupported allegations of careless writers. The solution to the question of what Kearney actually said 27 7 James Bryce, in a chapter of his study of the United States, The American Commonwealth, concurred.28 A later student of the period judged Kearneys speeches inflammatory at least, incendiary at most, but agreed that they never called for direct action; in nearly every speech Kearney insisted that workers use the ballot, not the bullet.29 No matter; that was not what his opponents wanted to believe. While Kearney knew little, if anything, about Chatard, the bishop very likely knew a great deal about him. In the year the Californian had agitated for Chinese exclusion and attacked political corruption, reports of his extreme rhetoric had made him notorious. The perception that he was a dangerous, lower class demagogue would be enough to earn condemnation from a man like Chatard, but there was more: Kearneys relationship to the Catholic Church was adversarial. An autodidact, he read Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, and like many another ambitious immigrant sought an education by attending selfimproving societiesin his case, San Franciscos Lyceum for Self Culture.30 Although a cradle Catholic (one of his five brothers was a member of the Christian Brothers teacher order), his frequent speeches at the lyceum were remembered for the bitter vulgarity of his attacks upon all forms of religion, especially that in which he had been reared, the Catholic, . . .31 This led to confusion as to his religion, if any; the Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph at first assumed him a Protestant and an Orangeman, only to receive information that Kearney and his family are Catholics.32 What would stand out in most in Chatards mind was that Kearney and his Workingmans Party of California (WPC), as the leading orator-agitator in San Francisco, had drawn the displeasure of its archbishop, the Catalan-born, Joseph Sadoc Alemany. The archbishop understood that the great influx of probably lies in recognizing that the press might well feature the incendiary parts and neglect or downplay the qualifying conditional ifs. 28 Kearneyism in California. Bryce, American Commonwealth, 385-408. Bryce admitted that Kearney never assailed the institution of property, and to say that the Workingmens Party of California (WPC) had a communistic character was mistaken. Kearney had no sordid personal ends to serve, and gained for himself nothing more solid than notoriety. Responding to Bryces characterization of him, chapter xc in the first edition, Kearneyism in California, he denied that he had sympathized with the Great railroad Strike of 1877; he was opposed to strikes because in a republic the ballot of a millionaires gardener or coachman cancels that of his master. 879. Shumsky, WPC, 173, 177. ff. As well see, Kearney used the same formula at Indianapolis. Kevin Jenks, Denis Kearney and the Chinese Exclusion Acts, Social Contract, vol. 6, no. 3 (spring 1996). 29 30 31 Ironically, they were remembered also for the venom with which he abused the [feckless among the] working classes. Henry George, The Kearney Agitation in California, The Popular Science Monthly (August 1880), 433-453, 438. Finks Biographical Directory of Labor Leaders lists Kearney as Roman Catholic. Meagher, Columbia Study of the Irish, 272. Kearney helped organized the WPC in 1877 and was president and editor of its organ, the Open Letter. 8 Chinese lowered wages and injured local workingmen (the majority Catholic and Irish), but in a series of pastorals in 1877 and 1878 Alemany reminded the laity of the storied distinction between liberty and license and the requirement to obey authority. Warning all classes of society . . . to discountenance and frown down all seditious designs, and evil plotters, he denounced the WPC and required all Catholics to stay away from such seditious, anti-social and anti-Christian meetings.33 Well aware that he was the seditious declaimer Alemany had in mind, Kearney replied that his organization, manned by the working poor, was only incidentally [a party] whose membership was largely Catholic, and asserted that he did not acknowledge the right of the Archbishop to interfere with the political sentiments of any person much less if that person is true to his country and his fellow men. As a Catholic I have openly rebelled against his assumption . . . .34 Lectures on the limits of clerical influence from laymen like Kearney was not the sort of thing the hierarchy had been trained to accept, let alone one formed by Rome and as imbued with Romanita as Francis Silas Chatard.35 Chatard would have known of Kearneys clash with Alemany and objected to him both as an agitator threatening social peace and, if not an apostate, an insolent layman of the lower class. And yet, as much as they differed in background, status and message, both were sufficiently distant from mainstream Protestant Indianapolis to qualify as outsiders. Moreover, their constituencies overlapped: Kearneys the working class, after five years of depression putative tinder to his match; Chatards the 120 priests and 90,000 Catholics of his diocese, among them the many working class Irish and German immigrants of Indianapolis.36 Their coincidental arrival in the city could not have been staged better. Kearneys national speaking tour had opened in Boston in early August 1878. Thousands packed Faneuil Hall with thousands more turned away. He did not disappoint: The Boston Globe testified that his speeches had to be seen and heard to be appreciated37 We cant be sure if Kearney used the conditional formif something is not done, then bad things would happenbut among the incendiary 32 Catholic Telegraph,15 August 1878, 4, 5. 33 John B. McGloin, S.J., Californias First Archbishop: The Life of Joseph Sadoc Alemany, O.P., 1814- 1888 (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966), 294, 295. 34 R. A. Burchell, The San Francisco Irish (University of California Press: Berkeley, Cal., 1980), 148, 152, 153. Note that Kearney was still calling himself a Catholic. 35 In the Oxford English Dictionary romanita is the spirit or influence of the central Roman authorities of the Catholic Church. OConnell in Critics on Trial, 212, describes it as the sense that upholding Romes sway is the most important and delicious profession. In its spiritual and cultural achievement, its grandeur, Rome is forever, while the sciences come and go. 36 [Indianapolis] Western Citizen: The Only Irish American and Catholic Newspaper in Indiana, 17 August 1878, 1. 37 Cited in Andrew Gyoty, Closing the Gate: Politics and the Chinese Exclusion Acts (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 112, 115. 9 sentiments reported were his stock references to Judge Lynch and the need to shoot politicians who break promisesstatements in keeping with what Kearney had been quoted as saying in San Francisco the previous twelve months. Making his way westward, at Cincinnati, the stop before Indianapolis, the Cincinnati Gazette had Kearney saying that the Workingmans Party of California must win, even if it had to wade knee deep in blood and perish in battle.38 In a surprise Kearney and Archbishop John Baptist Purcell met, but it had not gone well. In a letter to his diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Telegraph (edited by his brother, Fr. Edward Purcell), the archbishop (a fellow Corkman, born at Mallow, Kearney at Oakmont), called the Californian a foul-mouthed blackguard.39 At greater length, the Telegraph denominated Kearney a gutter orator, scored him for his incoherent, socialistic ravings, and reprinted the rich litany of insult that had appeared in the Boston Pilot, that citys archdiocesan newspaper: Kearney the Communist, foul and fetid blatherskite, blaspheming ruffian, even the charge that Kearney made personal uncleanliness a point of pride. In its own voice, the Telegraph named Kearny the modern Thersites (the low born, physically ugly Achaian of the Illiad, a braggart and shrill sedition monger abusive of his betters. For getting above himself, Odysseus gave poor Thersites a beating). An inspired reference (however wide of the mark), it caught perfectly the contempt in which Kearneys adversaries held him.40 In Indianapolis, the confrontation between the labor spokesman and the bishop proved wholly one-sided: Kearney alighted from his train on Saturday to a Union Station mobbed with people waiting to greet Chatard. His reception committee of socialists and local organizers missed him in the crush and so, accompanied by a reporter from the Indianapolis Sun, a Greenback paper, Kearney wandered over to a local hotel for his dinner, in marked contrast to other stops on his tour where he was met with a cordial, often tumultuous reception.41 Two hours later he appeared on schedule to speak from atop a dry goods box at the corner of Kentucky and Washington streets before a goodly crowd composed, according to the 38 Cited in Andrew Gyoty, Closing the Gate: Politics and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 112, 115. 39 Catholic Telegraph, 8 August, 4; 15 August, 4, 5; 22 August, 6; 29 August 1878, 3, 4. The Indiana Columbian Catholic contributed blasphemous communist, 7 September 1878, 5. Or the Central Catholic?? 40 Catholic Telegraph, 15 August 1878, 5; The Iliad, Book two; Indianapolis News, August 17, 1878. 41 News, 19 August; Journal, 19 August 1878. Ernest S. Griffith, A History of American City Government, 1870-1900 (New York, 1974), 17. That Chinese immigration was restricted in 1882, owed a good deal to Kearney. Kevin Jenks, Denis Kearney and the Chinese Exclusion Acts, The Social Contract, vol. 6, No. 3 (spring 1996). 10 Sun, "of all classes from the bloated bondholders down to the one dollar per day, bread and water workingmen."42 The new-minted Bishop of Vincenness reception was quite different: joined en train by Vicargeneral Bessonies,43 Chatard was welcomed by Governor James D. Williams, Mayor John Caven, and a crowd of a thousand. A procession of the faithful, led by the presidents of the various Catholic societies, the clergy, and the Knights of Fr. Mathew (the Irish temperance society) saw the bishop to his residence at St. Johns.44 Speaking from the church steps, Chatard wasted no time in setting out his theme: Promising always to endeavor to cooperate with the "civil authorities," he averred that the Catholic Church always teaches respect so as to make our people better citizens. . . . [Since] all authority comes from Almighty God, . . . no one among our people that is not a good citizen can be a good Catholic. The Church teaches its followers "to despise all those persons who in these days engage in socialistic and communistic movements." Many persons with "pet theories" for social betterment "are really the enemies" of society and the Church "warns its followers to beware [of them] and enjoins them to stand by the constituted authorities."45 That message--the Catholic Church as a bulwark of the existing social orderwas identical to Alemanys and would be voiced by the hierarchy again and again in the decades to come.46 Next day at the pontifical Mass at St. Johns crowded with standees, Catholicism put its patriotism on display: The Stars and Stripes hanging at both sides of the sanctuary, with the papal tiara and escutcheon and still more flags decorating the walls, asserted what many Protestants denied, that Catholics, without repudiating Rome, were loyal Americans. Chatard took Romans, 10, v. 15 for his text, And how shall they preach, unless they be sent? Citing his credentials to teach through the popes 42 Indianapolis Sun, August 24, 1878. The weekly Sun put Kearney's audience that Saturday night at a thousand, while the News, 19 August 1878, more hostile and the only major daily to mention the speech, estimated the crowd at only several hundred. 43 Of interest is that when Chatards predecessor, Maurice de St. Palais died, Purcell told the Indianapolis clergy that if they could unite on one candidate, that man might be made bishop. Although Fr. Bessonies was their unanimous choice, Chatard was named instead; rumor had it that Purcell favored a Fr. Albrinck of Cincinnati. Western Citizen, 17 August 1878, 1. Typical of Fr. Bessonies, there seems to have been no unhappiness on his part. 44 Rose Angela Horan, S.P., The Story of Old St. Johns (Indianapolis, 1971), 143. Support for temperance was another way the hierarchy made known its conservative credentials. When the Total Abstinence Catholic Union met in the city a bare eleven days after his arrival, Chatard celebrated the opening Mass and gave the sermon. Western Citizen, 31 August 1878, 1. 45 Indiana Central Catholic, 24 Auqust 1878. For remarks of the governor, mayor, and other dignitaries see Charles Blanchard, History of the Catholic Church in Indiana, Vol. 1 (Logansport, Indiana, 1898), 94-99. 46 A backhanded example was Cardinal James Gibbons appeal in 1918 to Charles A. Schwab, a Catholic and head of United States Steel Corporation, asking that the company donate land and fund a church on it: wrote Gibbons, I do not have to urge that a Catholic church, especially in places made up of workingmen, is a tremendous power for conservatism, virtue and industry. Spalding, The Premier See, 287. 11 commission, Let us bend every effort to preserve our faith, obey cheerfully our directors and rulers, who come in the name of Christ, because we know that all authority comes from on high.47 As for social stability, in regard to the dangers inherent in trade unions (organized at the time as secret societies to protect their members from retaliation from employers), he admonished the faithful to satisfy their spiritual advisers in all they did, never "to do anything without their approval and cooperation."48 As for radical agitators, "When you see a commotion going on, and people seek to put wrong ideas before you, don't listen to them; don't go to hear them talk. Let them waste their words on air, and the air will blow them away before any harm is done.49 The rest of the Chatards day was more of the same. The afternoon parade in his honor at 4:00 p.m., a real show of strength, mustered an estimated 4,000 and stretched nearly a mile. The five parishes in the city together counted over fifty organized societies of all sorts--benevolent, rosary, music, altar, sodality, choir, temperance, schools, with the Ancient Order of Hibernians itself mounting six divisions. 50 Fr. Denis ODonaghue, addressing Chatard and the people from a carriage at the bishops residence at St. Johns, reverted to the theme of Church-as-defender-of-civil order, asserting that European statesmen and philosophers were beginning to recognize the great truth that the Catholic church is the strongest conservative element that human governments can find to rely upon. Equally, in the United States, infidelity is overleaping the barriers that held it in check . . . and those who would escape the ravages are looking to the church as the only power to stay its progress.51 Chatard responded in kind. Press coverage of the bishops investiture was detailed and respectful. The sermon was "very impressive," reported the Journal. "For genuine merit and purity of style it has never been equaled . . . from that pulpit, ventured the Sentinel, and the "solemnity and grandeur" of the Mass the editor found deeply impressive. The bishop was "a gentlemen of exceeding fine presence and address," commented the News, the parade of Catholic societies "one of the finest ever witnessed in the city." That Chatard was an American as his father and grandfather before him, and that he was said to be "the best educated man 47 Blanchard, Catholic Church in Indiana, vol 1, 98. 48 Sentinel, 19 August 1878. 49 Journal, August 18, 1878; Western Citizen, 24 August 1878, 1; Catholic Church in Indiana, 98, 99. 50 Western Citizen, 15 February 1879, 6. 51 Blanchard, Catholic Church in Indiana, 98. 99. Horan, Old St. Johns, 144. Only ordained in 1874, ODonoghues rise was exceptional: chancellor, 1878, vicar-general, 1899, auxiliary bishop of Indianapolis 1900, bishop of Louisville, 1910. For the crowd estimate, possibly exaggerated, see Western Citizen, 24 August 1878, 1. 12 in the Catholic Church in America . . . his coming presages good not only to his church but to the whole people.52 Compared to Chatards reception by press and public, Kearneys Sunday was far from a triumph. The organizers for his visit had planned their own parade through the city to Moores' Wood for a picnic and speechmaking on the grounds. But the Mass at St. Johns in the morning competed with the workingmen's parade at 10:00 a.m., and the preparations for the Catholic parade at 4:00 p.m. subtracted from Kearneys speech at 2:00 p.m. The consequences for the Californian were dreary. Reflecting the hopes of the sponsors, the published order of the workingmens march had listed as participants the bricklayer's union, the coopers, machinists and blacksmiths, "all" railroad workers, lumber workers, draymen, leather workers, printers, painters, cigar makers, bookbinders, Socialist Labor Party sections (both English- and German-speaking), as well as "unorganized labor." Numerous banners had been readied, among them "Production belongs to the Producer--the tools to the toilers"; "no masters--no slaves, no rich--no poor," and liberty, equality, fraternity, the slogan of the French Revolution.53 In the event, less than eighty people and not a single workingmen's union stepped off behind the "Red Flag" and the Capital City Band ("colored"). There were barely enough to carry the banners.54 At the picnic grove about four hundred gathered, at least half "substantial" citizens driven by "curiosity"55 to hear Kearney, Peter H. Clark, principal of Cincinnati's colored schools and nominee of the Workingmen's Party in 1877 for Ohios superintendent of schools, and Socialist Labor Party leaders, Albert R. Parsons and Philip Van Patten of Chicago. Kearney began his address by reading the fifth chapter of the epistle of James in which "wicked rich men [are] warned of God's judgment": Go to now, ye rich men: weep and howl in your miseries, which shall come upon you. 2. Your riches are corrupted: and your garments are moth-eaten. 3. Your gold and silver is cankered: and the rust of them shall be for a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh like fire. You have stored up to yourselves wrath against the last days. 4. Behold the hire of the labourers, who have reaped down your fields, which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. 5. You have feasted upon earth: 52Journal; Sentinel; News, 19 August 1878. The Indianapolis Saturday Herald, 24 August 1878, did question the propriety of the civil authorities meeting the bishop at the depot on separation of church and state grounds. 53 News, 17 August 1878. 54 Journal, August 19, 1878. 55 Journal, 19 August 1878. 13 and in riotousness you have nourished our hearts, in the day of slaughter. 6. You have condemned and put to death the Just One, and he resisted you not.56 Jesus Christ, said Kearney, had been a tramp and a communist, had taught communism, and was therefore on the side of communists and tramps. The Savior, after all, had seen the necessity of driving the moneychangers from the temple. Condemning the major parties, he enjoined laboring men to "pool the issues" to achieve political success. Although the Indianapolis Sun reported him to have dealt "liberally in epithets and wholesale denunciations," to its credit it drew attention to Kearneys emphasis on the difference that the opportunity for workingmen to vote meant in the United States and his repudiation of the red flag--the "starry banner is all the flag the laborers in this country need."57 The Sun also credited him with being "without doubt, earnest in his efforts for labor reform." Yet patriotic sentiments aside, the radical talk, the presence of the red flag, and the availability of beer led to numerous fights and scuffles.58 A hostile press took every advantage of the debacle, if debacle it was. One report contrasted the neglect Kearney received with the warmth with which Chatard was met as demonstrating that the blatant Communist from California can expect neither comfort nor countenance from the great body of the Catholic Church. Met on Sunday with conspicuous contempt, his parade number[ing] but sixty-eight by actual count, Kearney could not help but feel the chill; he complained of fatigue, and his speech to a small crowd in the grove was brief and spiritless. He is a failure as a sensationalist in this longitude, and ought to lose no time in returning to the open arms of the Frisco hoodlums.59 The Democratic Sentinel thought the crowds lack of deportment "disgraceful to the highest degree," nor did the editor detect any evidence of enthusiasm for speeches filled with the "usual amount of billingsgate" and "bold threats and nonsensical utterances." Quoting Mayor Caven who, after talking with Kearney, pronounced him "shallow. [R]esidents, scoffed the Sentinel, didnt seem to be "interested in the Chinaman." It congratulated the Irish for their good sense in absenting themselves from the labor parade.60 The News was blunter and more personal: Kearney, the "chuckleheaded communist of California," wearing a hat with a "greasy 56 As an Irishman from Cork, Kearney may have used the Catholic Douay-Rheims Bible, used here, but whatever Bible he used, in this instance the Catholic and the King James versions are so close as to have made no difference to his hearers or to us. Kearney was in good company--much good it did him. A dozen years later Leo XIII also quoted from James, 4 in his noted encyclical on the condition of labor, Rerum Novarum. Its a popular passage with trade unionists and their sympathizers; for instance, Albert Parsons, one of the falsely accused men in the Haymarket Affair, 1886, used James, 5, 1-3, to conclude his autobiography. 57 Indianapolis Sun, 24 August 1878. 58 Sentinel, News, Journal, 19 August 1878; Indianapolis Sun, 24 August 1878. Unatributed contemporary newspaper item labeled Bishop Chatard D.D., Kearney and the Bishop, [folder 4; item 4] [1878?] CAV I , University of Notre Dame Archives. 59 60 Sentinel, 19 August 1878. 14 hatband, speaking with a "slight Milesian accent,"61 a "laboring man" without "callouses," was "laughed at" by the crowd. Albert R. Parsons, active in the railroad strike in Chicago the previous year (and one of the four men unjustly executed subsequent to the 1886 Haymarket affair) was the "shrieker from Chicago." As far as the News was concerned, Kearney was "not a force . . . . He has no ideas, no suggestions, no purpose."62 In contrast to the antipathy to Kearney displayed in the secular press, the Indiana Central Catholic was mild. Its editorial, "Capital and Labor," did brand the man who sought to "antagonize the different elements of society" a "dangerous dishonest character" and an "enemy to the workingman." There could be no repeal of the laws of supply and demand and after all, "here the poorest man may become a capitalist." But Kearney was not mentioned by name and the editor went on to muse, if only capital would intervene to "get labor favorable legislation."63 Surprisingly, the Indianapolis Western Citizen, "A Journal Published in the Interests of the Irish Race," did not mention Kearney nor the meeting in its 24 August issue, limiting itself to observing a week later that Some of the Irish papers praise Denis Kearney, others condemn him. Great men will differ.64 Whatever his merits as an orator, Denis Kearney, foreign-born, without formal education, sought to speak to the working class, to form its ideas, and to lead it. So did Chatard. Unlike the bishop, Kearney was of the working class and sought to "evangelize" none but that class. His analysis of existing social wrongs--given as radical an expression as he could muster--was not so distant from that of other reformers of the era. Yet as a layman and an associate of men deemed radicals and socialists--the most detested set of white men in the city--he was well nigh universally reviled in his stay in Indianapolis of less than three days. Whether "ghastly" or "sickly," to the "eight or ten local communists" who escorted Keaney to the train on Monday the meeting was denoted a failure. To that result the investiture of the bishop of Vincennes contributed greatly. Sensing--sharing--the widespread fear of social unrest, Chatard played to it. His reception in Indianapolis was tribute to an awareness on the part of mainline American society that the hierarchical Church, no friend to radicalism in the Old World, just might be a force for stability in the New. 61 Milesian after Milesius, legendary ancestor of the Irish people; as to Kearneys accent, a Californian source called it a pronounced brogue. Jerome Hart, In Our Second Century: From an Editors Notebook (San Francisco: The Pioneer Press, 1931), 64-75. 62 News, 19, 22 August 1878. 63 Indiana Central Catholic, 24 August 1878, 4. 64 Western Citizen, 31 August 1878, 8. The Citizen (The only Irish-American and Catholic newspaper in Indiana) did carry a brief account of Kearneyhis family, marriage, children. 3 August 1878, 7. 15 Kearneys political prominence proved short-lived; by summer 1880 he was back in the draying business, explaining, I was poor, with a helpless family, and I went to work to provide for their comfort. 65 He not only provided, he prospered: Before the decade was out he was described in the publication, Californias Men and Events, 1889, as a prosperous speculator in wheat, sugar, and oil. He had built up his cartage business, owned an employment agency, and was invested in real estate. Ironically, he came to be on friendly terms with some of the thieving millionaires he had once condemned: Leland Stanfords wife counted him an ardent, most devoted and loyal friend of her husband; he knew Charles Crockers son, and would drop into the Crocker Bank to see his good friend Will.66 When he died at Alemeda, California, 24 April 1907, his three daughtershaving been provided with education and comfort, were abroadone was in Paris, another Japan, and the third, a concert singer, was touring Europe. Denis Kearney, ambitious and energetic, was the very exemplar of the American dream. In wanting to save the Republic, in his own way he was a conservative. Not a proletarian at all. *** Given his familys social status and the Churchs unhappy experience with the secular revolutions, that Bishop Chatard or any member of the hierarchy should be found among the chorus upholding civil order and social stability is no surprise. Providing particularity and nuance to such a stance was a Vaticansponsored report on the condition of the American Church of the mid-1850s. Amazed at the growth of the Church in the United States and largely ignorant of conditions there, Rome dispatched Msgr. Gaetano Bedini to investigate and judge the wisdom of establishing a nunciature--a resident papal delegate for the United States.67 From July 1853 to early February 1854, Bedini visited over 20 cities in the United States and Canada--every major city in the northeast, the west as far as Detroit, and south to Cincinnati and Louisville. His impressions were a mixed bag: He found the Protestants he met courteous, respectable, middle class, more to his liking than the Catholics, and noted that rich non-Catholics frequently supported Catholic institutions financially.68 Bedini himself was well received in Protestant households and by public officials, dining with President Franklin Pierce and an honored guest of the U. S. Senate. Yet he also charged many non-Catholics with having a diabolical hatred of the Church so that bishops routinely advised their priests to wear secular clothes to avoid insults.69 He thought German Catholicism endangered by the many infidels among them, a hostile German language press, and was himself 65 66 67 Bryce, American Commonwealth, sec. ed., rev., 385-408. John R. Commons, History of Labor, 264; New York Times, 26 April 1907, 9. In general, the American bishops, feeling that Bedini was sent to investigate them, were reserved; liking their independence, a good many even ignored him. Bedini judged the establishment of a nunciature a necessity (it would protect Catholic interests and keep the bishops united to the Holy See), but inopportune; Rome waited until 1893 to do so. 68 Connolly, 199. 69 Connolly, 92. 16 harassed by German liberal 48ers and Italian nationalists who stalked him during his tour, which came as a shock.70 On the other hand, Catholic bishops and clergy were usually respected and some laymen were rich and of respectable rank; for example, Baltimore counted a considerable number of these. But this is an exception.71 Moreover, the public schools functioned as Protestant schools, and government jobs, political office, the diplomatic corps, and the legal profession were monopolized by Protestants. All in all, the United States Catholicism is the religion of the poor.72 And when it came to poverty, the Irish were exhibit A. Bedini both praised and dispraised the Irish at length: There were the dirty and often malodorous Catholic [Irish] underclass who perform the most menial work, live in abject poverty, and retain for the longest time the meanest and sometimes repellent appearance. Consequently, Protestants equated Catholicism with the Irish who are all destined to be servants holding the most laborious and miserable jobs, living poorly amid conditions, at times, of a revolting aspect. And it had to be admitted, the Irish in particular have the habit of drunkenness and laziness.73 And yet, and yet--with rare exceptions, they were almost entirely Catholic and when under the influence of a priest as faithful to him as a martyr . . . .74 While not so well educated as others, the Irish cleric was unsurpassed in love for their people and submission to their bishop and to Rome. How much did U. S. Catholicism owe the Irish? Everything! Everything! Without their piety, their zeal, without their learning, the most precious qualities which now shine especially in the more distinguished Bishops of the United States, the Catholic religion would not find . . . [such] growth and well-being . . . .75 What influence Bedinis report had on the young Chatard is conjectural, but it attracted great interest and remained the most extensive commentary on American Catholicism for more than a generation. It was widely discussed and would have been a must read for any American seminarian in Rome, such as Chatard. The two may even have met when Bedini visited Baltimores St. Marys College in July 1853; and 70 71 Connolly, 199. Connolly, 282. 72 Massimo Franco, Parallel Empires: The Vatican and the United States, Two Centuries of Alliance and Conflict, trans. Roland Flamini (Doubleday: New York, 2007), 8. Bedini was the moving spirit for the founding of the North American College and Chatard, as its vice-rector and rector, 1863-1878, would have known him. For any American, Bedinis Report, the most extensive evaluation of Catholicism in the United States for more than a generation, would be a must read. And if Chatard, recently graduated from St. Marys did not meet Bedini during the latters visit to the college, his father may have been in the group of prominent Baltimore Catholics who did meet him in Washington. Certainly, Chatards harshest criticisms of the American Church echo Bedinis, albeit lacking the latters positive comments. Connolly, 199. Connolly, 208. Connolly, 207, 209, 240. 75 Connolly, 250, 251. 73 74 17 if Chatard, newly graduated from St. Marys, did not meet him then, his father was likely among the prominent Baltimore Catholics who saw Bedini there or in Washington. Moreover, in 1859 Bedini was the moving spirit in founding the American College in Rome; Chatard (then a student at Urban College), as an American, would have taken a close interest in the new institutions fortunes, and when Chatard was tapped as vice-rector in 1862, he and Bedini would have worked closely in the two years before the latters death, September 1864.76 At any rate, in 1876, Chatard could have been channeling Bedinis more caustic criticisms of America in a letter to Michael Corrigan (bishop of Newark and soon archbishop of New York). Praising the American Church as it existed in 1800 for what he imagined to have been, the simplicity that distinguished [its] golden age . . . . Now, at the centennial of the Declaration of Independence, our clergy is too numerous, too heterogeneous, . . . too much indoctrinated in the ideas of today to be guided by that earlier simplicity.77 As for the laity, like Bedini (albeit lacking his positive comments), Chatard blamed the Irish for the transformation of the American Church from a small, respected, genteel Catholicism within American society to a crowd featuring illiterate Irishmen in their shanties and saloons.78 Chatards idealization of the Church of the early republic wasnt entirely imaginary: Before 1800 and for some time after, Roman Catholicism in the U.S. was a small sect of about 35,000 people centered in Maryland and Pennsylvania. The Catholics in the pews, like the bishops themselves, were apt to be socially elite and converts usually cultivated people, often High Episcopalians. By the 1840s, 35,000 communicants had grown to 663,000, mostly Irish and German, and from one diocese to twenty-two. Seen as an inferior race, violent and savage, this great influx of the disputatious Irish frightened the average Protestant American of the 1850s . . . trained from birth to hate Catholicism anyway. Many did not even regard Catholics as Christians.79 Ironically, it was precisely that the Irish was almost universally Catholic that offered Bedini grounds for optimism for the Churchs eventual acceptance in America. Of the Irish who fetched up on American shores during and after Irelands Great Famine, 1845-1850, most were desperately poor. The typical Irish laborer--unskilled, unmarried, and under 35was perfectly fitted for the dangerous, transient work on the railroads and canals. Having little or nothing of the worlds goods, they were inclined to faction fights between Fardowners (Connaughtmen from that province in the west of Ireland) and Corkonians of the south). Neither a matter of recreational fighting nor sectarian religious differences, wherever canals were dug or railroad tracks laid the factions functioned as protective job associations. The game was to drive the other from the job site and monopolize the available work. Headquartered in saloons, each faction organized branches at construction sites, recruited new Pursuing the Vaticans strategy of papal centralization of the Church, Pius IX bought the building on Via dellUmilta (Humility Street), formerly a Visitation convent. Opened on 7 December 1859, it served as a residence for seminarians from United States designated by their bishops, for priests pursuing advanced studies in Rome, and as an Institute for continuing theological education. 77 Curran, Corrigan, 19. 78 Curran, Corrigan. 19. 76 18 immigrants, collected dues, employed secret handshakes and passwordsall practices inherited from secret societies in Ireland.80 As for violence, an Indiana canal commissioner wrote Governor James Noble of their deadly hatred toward each other and the merciless beatings of their set-tos.81 The hottest points of contention were along the Central Canal and the Madison and Indiana Railroad project near Vernon. In March 1837, a faction battle at the latter place left one dead and several wounded. While Bedini and Chatard differed in some matters, most striking was their shared conviction that in America Catholicism was the necessary bulwark of social stability, a heaven-sent corrective to Protestantisms fissiparous nature: A Protestant pastor (Bedini: who seemed somewhat learned and tolerant), frankly told Bedini that the lack of authority of his own church and other sects in dogmatic matters was the reason for so many separations and wanderings in Protestantism; if one wants . . . authority in these matters, the minister admitted, he must look to the Catholic Church. A distinguished Senator similarly confessed alarm that in political matters an excessive liberty would bring a day when the Government itself . . . no longer know[ing] how to bridle and direct it, . . . will have to recognize that the only safe means rests in the Catholic Religion, which alone has the basis of true authority, indispensable for every Government; and what is more important, it alone can sustain and defend genuine liberty in every country.82 The indispensability of Catholicism for the achievement of social order was Chatards bedrock belief. As he observed in the American Catholic Quarterly Review, in 1894 (a year after a financial panic and ensuing depression), a concordat between church and state would not be necessary in the United States where the church enjoys the fullest liberty . . . . It is far more likely that the state, in the possible troubles which may result from the unrestricted importation of the refuse of Europe, and extension of the right of suffragemay have to call on the church to keep her simple people from the delusions of socialisms abroad in the land, . . .83 In keeping with his prejudices, on his first day in the city Chatard intimated that he regarded Indianapolis as something of a hardship post. Drawing attention to his long residence in Rome--a city . . . of the deepest interest to all classes of people throughout the civilized world . . . . offer[ing] the most abundant facilities to the scholar and theologian, yet notwithstanding all this I have cheerfully left my home in that city, where I have lived so many years, to come here and labor for the good of those who are Dolan, The Irish American, 60. See also Calvin Fletchers Diary; Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964), 345. 79 Jay M. Parry, The Irish Wars: Laborer Feuds on Indiana Canals and Railroads in the 1830s (Indiana Magazine of History),vol. 109, no. 3, September 2013) 224-256. 81 Jay P. Dolan, The Irish Americans: A History (New York, 2008), 44. Parry, 227, 243, 247; see also Gayle Thornbrough, ed., The Diary of Calvin Fletcher, Vol. 1: 1817-1838 (Indianapolis, Ind., 1972) 267. 80 82 James F. Connally, The Visit of Archbishop Gaetano Bedini to the USA, June 1853-February 1854 (Rome, 1960). 198. Connally suspects the statesman was Edward Everitt. 83 Occasional Essays, 1894, 231. 19 committed to my care . . . . 84 Next morning before Mass, the dean of the clergy, Fr. August Bessonies, in an otherwise fulsome welcome85 took exception to Chatards implicit disparagement of the city and its citizens: Allowing that the local clergy, if not as polished and so well used to etiquette as those among whom you have been living in the Eternal City, yet they were disinterested and a credit to you and the church. As for the laity, if poor in goods, they were rich in faith [and] obedient to their prelates and the priesthood, . . .86 Chatard responded that satisfied as he was that the laity have been devout and zealous in the past it is no guarantee that they will continue so in the future unless they depend upon God and prayer. As for the clergy, he already knew them to be full of zeal . . .87 If the social status of the laity had deteriorated over the course of the nineteenth century (given endemic complaints about the clergy, they were often no bargain either), the bishops of Gilded Age America remained in great part well-educated men, sophisticated, well traveled, multi-lingual, a substantial socio-economic cut above the generation of prelates who followed them who were much more likely to be the sons of workingmen.88 What was said of Cincinnatis Archbishop John Baptist Purcell, that he was Accustomed to the best society of the Old and New World,89 was true of Chatard. As a close neighbor and frequent visitor to the home of Benjamin Harrison on Delaware Street,90 Chatard fit the pattern. According to the Indianapolis Western Citizen even his physiognomy bespoke aristocracy, tall, erect with a large head well poised on broad shoulders, . . . a powerful frame, . . . clear, cheerful grayish brow[n] eyes looking out from behind a pair of spectacles, a high, full forehead, a small mouth, with a look of keen intelligence over his features, and the bearing of an educated gentlemen and you have Bishop Chatard.91 Another contemporary credited his polish and refinement to long residence in Rome and his 84 Western Citizen, 24 August 1878, 1. Although Blanchard, vol. I, 95, 96, quotes Chatard in extenso, he does so in a way that conceals Chatards sense of hardship. 85 He called Chatard a very elegant and courtly gentlemen, a man of consummate administrative abilities, blanchard?? [cite???] p 33, f.n. 132. 86 Western Citizen, 24 August 1878, 1. Bessonies also included the description of Chatard that appeared in the newspaper Western Watchman. a very elegant and courtly gentleman, a man of consummate administrative abilities, and a strict but considerate disciplinarian. Rev. H. Alerding, A History of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Vincennes (Carlon & Hollenbeck: Indianapolis, 1883), 218, 219. Alerding and Blanchard selectively quoted the remarks of Chatard and Bessonies; they included the flattery, but not the critical parts. 87 Blanchard, History of Catholicity in Indiana, Vol. I, 97; Alerding, Diocese of Vincennes, 218, 219. At the door of the church before the Mass, 18 August, Bessonies formally relinquished his administrators office. 88 Morris, American Catholics, 15, notes that all of the post WW II cardinals were sons of workingmen, Morris, 116. ??? 89 Sr. Mary Agnes McCann, M.A., Archbishop Purcell and the Archdiocese of Cincinnati (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America: Washington, D.C.1918), 99. 90 Interview with Fr. Henry Seivers, S.J., biographer of Harrison, IC&R, 30 October 1952, 13. 91 Western Citizen, 24 August 1878, 1. A sketch of Chatard in the Western Citizen, 17 August 1978, 1, is consistent with a description given a week later, which may well have been based on the drawing. A similar photograph can be found in Blanchard, History of the Catholic Church, facing p. 93. See also the 20 fine traits (chivalrous nature and a true gentlemen), to his French lineage.92 His journals were filled with entries in French, Italian, and Latin, as well as the occasional Greek and even Hebrew; he spoke German, Italian, and French (despite his descent, he confessed his command of spoken French shaky). At Rome Chatard mingled with the greatest men of his day93 and his travel diaries filled with high ecclesial political gossip. Together they detail a rich social calendar of visits and meals with the great and good of the Catholic families of Europe: Lord Playfair, the Duke of Norfolk, Lady Herbert, the Comtesse de Montalembert, Viconte de Meaux, Prince and Princess Altieri, as well as Borgheses, de Medicis, and Piombinos. The bishops ad limina visits to Rome (Chatard went twice in the 1880s, thrice in the 1890s, and at least once more in 1909), always took on something of the aspect of a grand tour--London, Dublin, Paris, Cologne, Venice, Florence, Lausanne, as well as St.Moritz-Bad for the waters, mountains for the climb, and museums and churches for the paintings, sculptures, and architecture.94 Chatards decades in Rome as seminarian and rector did more than mark him with polish and refinement. There was his intense, ardent devotion and loyalty to the Holy See.95 Wholly in character, was his rush to publish what must have been one of the earliest articles on The First Oecumenical Council of the Vatican, September 1870. Similarly, as the forces of the Kingdom of Italy menaced Rome, Chatards feelings led him to propose arming his seminarians to defend the pope at the Vatican. (Pius IX declined the offer, advising that they pray for him and carry on with their studies as best they could in such trying times.) As a champion of the popes temporal power, Chatards articles on that subject stretched etching of Chatard in the front of Alerdings History of the Vincennes Diocese; and Robert Emmett Curran, S.J., Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Shaping of Conservative Catholicism in America, 1878-1902 (Arno Press: New York, 1978), 35. 92 Humbert P. Pagani, 200 Years of Catholicism in Indiana (a self-published pamphlet printed by the Indianapolis Times, 1934), 27. Pagani was the business manager of the diocesan paper from ca. 1910s to the 1930s. 93 Blanchard, History of Catholicity, 107. 94 Chatard papers, Box A-10 passim; Journals, 1857-1888. Steamships and railroads made possible regular ad limina trips to Rome, as they had made possible for the first time the large gatherings of bishops and priests from around the world--China, India, Africa, and the Americas, in 1862 and 1867. They fulfilled a need consistent with the worldwide presence of the Church. Chadwick, Popes, 1830-1914, 181 ff. 95 Indiana Catholic and Record, 13 September 1918, 2, 4; In Meinrad Historical Essays, 163, Fr. Bernard Strange observed, Perhaps the most conspicuous characteristic which marked [Chatards]episcopacy was his loyalty to the Holy See. My colleague Professor James Divita saw a letter from a cardinal (Antonelli?) in the American College museum in 1962, the centenary of Chatards rectorship. Chatards reward was a large gold medal from the pope in 1870. 21 over decades.96 In 1895, the 25th anniversary of the new Kingdom of Italy, in a letter read at all the Masses, Chatard was still calling for special prayers and collecting signatures to be sent to the Pope protesting the loss of the papal territories.97 Wanting no daylight between himself and the Holy See, in prefaces to his collected lectures and essays he rendered all he had written to the supreme and infallible authority of the Head of the Church, the Vicar of Christ on earth ready to correct any error into which I may have fallen. Invoking the Virgin Marys intercession so that readers may more ardently love the faith, without which it is impossible to please God, he submitted to the judgment and correction, if need be, of Holy Mother Church.98 In Rome as one of the delegates preparing for the 1884 Baltimore Council, in a letter to Cincinnati Archbishop Joseph Elder, Chatard effusively praised the pope and the curia and later confessed delight that the Baltimore Councils first decree was a ringing affirmation of papal infallibility.99 As rector of the American College meant that Chatard was known equally to the American bishops and to Vatican officials, and not least to Pius IX with whom he would meet on college business, assist at Mass, and converse privately. As the American bishops agent, he was their go-between to the Vatican, for example, turning their communications to the Holy See into Latin.100 When the United States withdrew its legate from Rome, in 1867, Chatard was put in charge of arranging audiences for visiting American dignitaries. In this way, on separate occasions he introduced Union generals Sherman, Sheridan, and Grant to Pius IX. He knew well both Fr. Isaac Hecker, founder of the Paulists, and Don Bosco, founder of the Salesian Order, received Catholic and non-Catholic royal visitors to Rome, and was in common intercourse with the Propagation de Fide (under whose authority the American College stood). Made a papal chamberlain in 1875, Chatards sermons drew large Roman audiences and he was unusually popular amongst the English and American colony and with the blacks--the pro-Papal, ultramontane party.101 He was said to have been the confidant of three Popes--Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X. Back in America, the issues that Chatard will confront as bishop were secret societies (especially Irish ones), trade unions (in which the Irish played a prominent role), and the split among the hierarchy between Americanists, who reveled in the civil and religious freedoms of the Constitution and the 96 The Catholic World. These six and eighteen others were gathered in his 1894 volume Occasional Essays; earlier he had gathered another volume of his essays into Christian Truths: Lectures, 1881. 97 Catholic Record, 12 September 1895, 4. In 1884 Leo XIII ordered that prayers be said for the return of the papal states. Only In 1964 were the Leonine prayers abolished as liturgically inappropriate. It was left to John Paul I, in his very brief reign, to eliminate the triple crown, the final trappings of temporal power as bishop of Rome, head of the Church, and ruler of the papal states. Criterion, 13 October 1978, 4. 98 Christian Truths Lectures: The Catholic Publication Society (New York, 1881); Occasional Essays, 1894. 99 Curran, Corrigan, 110. 100 Fogarty, Vatican and the American Hierarchy, 5. 101 McNamara, American College, 210, 211. 22 Ultramontanes, those who looked across the mountain to Rome and to the papacy. It is to these that we next turn. 23  ...

... The Church Besieged, the French Revolution, Nationalism, and the Battle over Modernity From the French Revolution, 1798, right through the nineteenth century and into the 20th Century, in nearly every major European country the Catholic Church found itself embattled. Its monopoly in religion ended or challenged by anti-clericalism, secularism, liberalism targeting the Churchs authority and putting its privileges, property, prestige, and independence under siege. Every pope from Pius VI (1775-1799) to Pius X (1903-1914) fought against the enemy--modernity. They revived the Index of Prohibited Books, declared monarchy the best polity, and condemned church-state separation, toleration, freedom of conscience, and any idea the Church needed reform. Copyright 2018 William Doherty. All rights reserved. 1 The Church Besieged: the French Revolution, Nationalism, and the Battle over Modernity In the nineteenth century, the Catholic Church saw the greatest threat to its well being arising out of the democratic revolutions of the previous century and the Enlightenment that inspired them. Whether denoted secularism, liberalism, or modernism, to Rome that habit of mind was its most dangerous enemy. In the standard narrative, The birth of secular universalism took the form of an assault on the intellectual and political edifice of Roman Catholicism, with the Renaissance and Reformation setting history on a new path from docile dependence on revealed knowledge toward religious freedom and freedom of opinion in general.1 Thus medieval feudal authoritarianism yielded to the nation-state as the feudal economy yielded first to mercantilism (states waging economic warfare through colonies, exports, and the accumulation of specie, gold and silver, to free markets, individual rights, private property, and withal science, maritime expeditions, nationalism, and the rise of the middle class. Of the French revolutionary era, 1789-1815, it has been famously said that it was the best and worst of times. For the Roman Catholic Church, it could never be said that it was the best of times and many would argue that the years after the fall of the Bastille to the end of the nineteenth century were the worst in its history. The French Revolution was notable for the bitter anti-clericalism it unleashed. As one Catholic historian has observed, with the exception of the Papal States and the United States, there was not a single country in the world where the Catholic religion was free to live fully its own life, and not a single country where there seemed any prospect but of further enslavement and gradual emasculation. 2 In France, Romes eldest daughter, the Church lost its privileged position, much of its land and revenues, and its monopoly of education; and when the revolution demanded that the clergy marry, sizeable numbers of curates and bishops did so with greater or lesser alacrity. Many of the priests who resisted the revolution were martyred and thousands of them--and a hundred bishops--went into exile. Pius VI (1775-1799) denounced the required oath of loyalty to the Revolution and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, and declared the ordination of new bishops by the state sacrilegious. Napoleon responded by invading the Papal States and forcing the pope to pay a huge indemnity in money and art. In February 1798, in poor health, the pope was arrested, taken out of Rome, to end up in Valence, France, where, 1 Micheline R. Ishay, The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2004), 64. 2 Philip Hughes, Catholic Church historian, quoted in Cogley, Catholic America, Two Centuries of American Life (Dial Press, 1973), 53. The year 1789 was not a complete loss; the Holy See established the diocese of Baltimore and made John Carroll the first American bishop. 2 after a captivity of eighteen months, he died in prison, 29 August 1799, age 81. Adding insult to insult, the local constitutional clergy refused to bury him in consecrated ground! Many believed that he would be the last pope. His successor, Pius VII (1800-1823), in addition to being forced to witness Napoleons selfcoronation as emperor in 1804, when, in 1808, he refused to abdicate as ruler of the Papal States, he was bundled into a locked carriage in aimless travels for forty days and forced to sign a draft renouncing the territories. For more than five years he was kept isolated and under Napoleons control. Incredibly, Pius VII was pressured into giving 15 August, the feast of the Assumption, to Saint Napoleon, although no one could give a convincing account of him.3 Pius IX (1846-1878), having sided with the Austrian authorities against Italian nationalists in the revolutionary year 1848, was forced to flee the Quirinale Palace to Gaeta, near Naples, disguised as an ordinary priest. He was luckier than the other two Piuses in that he was returned to Rome by Austrian and French troops the next year and would set the record for the longest papal reign. In the disappointment of defeat at the hands of Prussia, however, during the 1871 Paris Commune (communards, revolutionary nationalists who captured the city for a time), dozens of clergy, including the much-admired archbishop of Paris, were executed. Although the Third Republic, Frances new government, put down the Communards, the Church would face the unbending hostility of that anticlerical regime into the next century. What was true of France was true of Europe: Italys birth as a nation in 1860 meant the papacys permanent loss of the 16,000 square miles of papal territories, then almost all of Rome itself in a plebiscite ten years later.4 The new government ousted religious teachers from public schools, spied on seminaries, 3 E. E. Y. Hales, The Catholic Church in the Modern World: A Survey from the French Revolution to the Present (Hanover House, Garden City, New York: 1958), 30-49, 66. Eamon Duffy, Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes (Yale University Press: New Haven, Conn., 1997), 206-214. 4 At the time, very little hand wringing in the United States took place over the loss of the papal territories (most Catholics never gave it a thought, Marvin R. OConnell, John Ireland and the American Catholic Church), Minnesota Historical Society, 1968), 276; even fewer understood that the loss would liberate the church. Much later, Indianapolis Archbishop Paul C. Schulte, in a 1961 pastoral letter on the annual collection for the pope, observed that the loss freed the Vatican from all international entanglements which were the bane of many Popes during the Middle Ages and so, for Schulte, the popes dependence on the generosity of the Catholic Faithful, is the better one. This is just the position that Pius IX had declared erroneous in the 1864 Syllabus of Errors, number 76: The abolition of the temporal power . . . [that] the Apostolic See is possessed would contribute in the greatest degree to the liberty and prosperity of the Church. Schulte papers, Indianapolis Archdiocesan Archives. 3 and confiscated the property of religious orders. Marriage was secularized, as were education and charitable trusts. Holy Days disappeared from the calendar. After 1876 seminarians became subject to military conscription, outdoor religious processions forbidden, and state permission for bishops to take office required.5 While the Italian government assured the pope that his person was inviolable and that the Vatican and other buildings were his, Pius IX refused to accept the situation. With the Quirinale Palace in the citys center now the Kings Palace and Rome itself so anticlerical that he might not be safe in the streets, the pope regarded himself as a prisoner of the Vatican; no pope even appeared on the balcony in St. Peters Square to bless the people until Pius XI did so in February 1922. None would leave its environs--the palace and St. Peters--until the early morning hours of 20 December 1929 when Pius XI celebrated Mass at St. John Lateran on the fiftieth anniversary of his priestly ordination there. Elsewhere in Europe, Germany was no sooner united as a nation-state in 1871 than it inaugurated a twenty-year Kulturkampf--a cultural-religious war against the Catholic Church waged with efficient animosity: Over time, diplomatic relations with the Vatican were severed; the state given a veto over church appointments and supervision of the seminaries.6 Penalties for criticizing the state from the pulpit were enacted and religious education put under state control, with all schools subject to its inspection. The Jesuit Order was expelled, as were religious nuns except those working in hospitals. Civil marriage was made obligatory and all church property confiscated, with the tithe transferred to lay trustees elected by parishioners. By 1877 thousands of Catholic parishes were without pastors and nine of twelve bishops were exiled. Austria prosecuted its own los von Rom movement (freedom from Rome), by unilaterally ending its 1855 concordat with the Holy See, secularized marriage and the schools, and proclaimed the equality of all religious sects. Clergy appointments had to be registered with the state and church finances came under state supervision. Religious ordersRedemptorists, Vincentians, and Holy Ghost fathers--were 5 McNamara, American College, 222. Indiana Catholic and Record, 10 February 1922, 1. One last insult to Pio Nono remained: in July 1881, as his remains were being removed from St. Peters at night in procession to San Lorenzo Outside the Walls at Varano for permanent burial, a mob hurling stones and curses tried to seize his corpse to pitch it into the Tiber. The police unequal to the task of quelling the mob, troops had to intervene to let the hearse gallop away. Five culprits were found guilty but were given derisory sentences and cheered in court. Owen Chadwick, History of the Popes, 1830-1914 (Oxford University Press,1998), 271, 272; Marvin R. OConnell, Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis (Catholic University Press, 1994), 23. In Indianapolis the Journal and the Times interpreted the outrage as demonstrating the unpopularity of the papacy and clericalism in Italy. The Western Citizen cited the coverage as an excuse to insult Catholics. 23 July 1881, 4. 6 Chadwick, Popes, 1830-1914, 259 ff. 4 expelled and some bishops deposed, jailed, or exiled. (Austria being Austria, the laws were not strictly enforced.) In Switzerland, a government-supported schism racked the Church (one result was the founding of St. Meinrad Monastery, Indiana, 1854, by the Benedictine monks of Our Lady of Einsiedeln).7 Diplomatic relations with the Holy See were severed for a decade, bishops deposed, and the Jesuits and other orders expelled. New dioceses and monasteries required state approval. In their struggle with the Catholic Church, all three governments--Germany, Austria, and Switzerland--favored the Old Catholics, German speakers who resisted papal infallibility and the centralization of power in the Vatican. In Spain a new constitution broke the connection between church and state amid a series of violent anti-papal demonstrations.8 Throughout the Mediterranean most Catholic religious orders and seminaries were closed. Missionary work overseas was effectively suspended and nearly every Protestant or Orthodox country restricted the Catholic Church. Belgium banned religious orders and expelled Catholics from the teaching profession. So it went all over Europe. As for the Americas, Venezuela, Equador, Chile, and Brazil resisted papal claims and Pius IX found it necessary to denounce Columbia, 1852, and Mexico, 1861, for adopting anti-clerical legislation.9 Besieged, the Church fought back. Every pope from Pius VI (1775-1799) who accursed philosophers . . . [who] proclaim[ed] that men are born free, subject to no one,10 to Pius X (1903-1914), who termed modernism the synthesis of all the heresies, and all the popes in between armored the Church against modernity: Leo XII (1823-1829), condemned religious toleration, revivified the Index of Prohibited Books and the Holy Office (formerly the Inquisition), and reestablished feudal aristocracy in the Papal States. Confiscating Jewish property, Leo confined the Jewish community once again within walled ghettos enlarged for the purpose and fitted with lockable gates.11 In imitation of the policies of Austrias Prince Metternich, the papal territories--a harsh police state--became the most backward in Europe with its press censorship, capital punishment, and spies. Even in an abbreviated pontificate, Pius VIII (1829- 7 Swiss Catholic cantons formed a league to resist liberal Protestant demands on them, but in the 1847 civil war, the last religious war in Europe, the Protestants won. 8 OConnell, Critics on Trial, 25. 9 Frank A. Coppa, The Modern Papacy, 1798-1995 (Routledge, 1998),115. And see Chadwick, Popes, ch. 10, on Spain. On the plus side, bishoprics were recreated in England, Wales, and the Netherlands and concordats signed with Austria, Spain, Portugal, and some Latin American states. 10 Morris, American Catholics, 67-69. 11 Richard P. McBrien, Lives of the Popes: The Pontiffs from St. Peter to John Paul II (HarperCollins: San Francisco, 1997), 333, 334, and Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 217. 5 1830) found time to condemn indifferentism (the notion that one religion was apt to be as good as another), the Masons, and secret societies in general. Gregory XVI (1831-1846) was notably reactionary: He twice used Austrian troops to put down revolts in the papal territories, opposed Italian nationalism, and attacked such Enlightenment principles as freedom of the press and of religion, and the separation of church and state. He banned streetlights in Rome lest people gather to plot against the authorities, likewise railroads, calling them chemins denfer (roads of hell), rather than chemins de fer (roads of iron).12 His 1832 encyclical, Mirari Vos (You wonder) stipulated that monarchy, being of divine origin for which the papacy was the model, was the best polity. Gregory railed against the absurd . . . doctrine or rather delirium, that freedom of conscience is to be claimed and defended for all men and denounced the detestable and insolent malice [of those] who agitate against and upset the rights of rulers. The idea that the Church stood in need of restoration and regeneration, he labeled completely absurd and insulting . . . . Written to condemn the ideas of Lamennais, a French priest who thought the Church needed reform, Mirari Vos dismissed such notions, especially attacks on celibacy. Freedom of conscience led to ruin, freedom of the press was bad. What was needed was obedience to princes--like himself. In the longest papal reign in history, Pius IX (1846-1878), moved to buttress the centrality of the papacy. On his own he defined the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, 1854, and summoned the First Vatican Council (1869, 1870) to define papal infallibility.13 As part of the program to centralize power in the papacy, the old national seminaries in Rome were reorganized, new ones established, and the headquarters of religious communities moved there. Of particular importance to the United States, in 1855 the pope chose a seventeenth century Roman palace as the home of the American College and provided money for its purchase. Not only could the Vatican now exercise direct control over the religious orders, the training would be Roman and reliably supportive of the papacy as well. As the most promising 12 Richard P. McBrien, Lives of the Popes (HarperOn: San Francisco, 1997), 336. The last non-bishop and the last monk to be elected pope, in his favor Gregory XVI denounced slavery and the slave trade. 13 Very pastoral and personally warm, Pius IX, introduced gaslights and railways in the Papal States, and ended the requirement that Romes Jews attend weekly sermons. Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 222. Among his record 38 encyclicals, Ubi primum (Where first), 1847, anticipated his proclamation of the Immaculate Conception in 1854. Cum nuper (Lately with), 1859, defended the Holy Sees right to the Papal States, and Ubi Nos (Where we), 1871, repeated the papacys claim to those territories. In reaction to Vatican II, conservative elements in the Church seek to have him declared a saint. Recently, however, the scandal has been recalled of two Jewish children, secretly baptized by Catholic servants in Jewish households (Edgardo Mortara, 1858, and Giuseppe Coen, 1864). Since by law Jews could not raise Christian children, they were taken from their parents and raised in the Vatican; Mortaro became a monk. 6 candidates were sent to Rome and their clerical careers thenceforth favored, it almost guaranteed that future hierarchs would be similarly devoted to the Vatican, precisely what the pope intended.14 On the feast of the Immaculate Conception in 1864, Pius IX published Quanta Cura (how much care), a gatherum of the condemnations he had issued over the past seventeen years and statements of other popes since 1775. Quanta Cura repeated old denunciations of indifferentism, freemasonry, Gallicanism, rationalism, naturalism, pantheism, socialism, liberal capitalism (for having no other end than material gain), and freedom of religion. What was shocking was the syllabus of eighty errors attached to the encyclical which condemned as erroneous freedom of conscience and worship, freedom of speech and of the press, and such propositions as: every man is free to embrace and profess that religion . . . he shall consider true; that non-Catholics in Catholic countries shall enjoy the free exercise of their own worship; separation of church and state, and lastly, that the Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself to, and agree with, progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.15 These being evils, it followed that The state must recognize [the Roman Catholic Church] as supreme and submit to its influence. . . . The power of the state must be at [the Churchs] disposal and all who do not conform to its requirements must be compelled or punished. The syllabus still has the capacity to provoke. At the time the majority of Catholics were stupified and even the pope admitted that it was raw meat needing to be cooked.16 While not an infallible pronouncement, the syllabus was widely taken as dogmatic teaching, putting the Church in opposition to modern liberties on record in the strongest terms. It was not Pius IXs last word: The encyclical Pastor Aeternus (eternal pastor), 1870, serving as the constitution of the First Vatican Council, 1869, 1870, declared that the pope has full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the whole Church, not only in matters that pertain to faith and morals, but also in matters that pertain to the discipline and government of the Church throughout the whole world. This power was not delegated and it was immediate. The pope has the principal part and the absolute fullness of this supreme power, ordinary and immediate, over each of the churches, the pastors, and the faithful. Those who deny these things let them be accursed. Thanks to the divine assistance promised him 14 Frank J. Coppa, Modern Papacy, 98. 15 McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 346; Gary Wills, Papal Sins: Structures of Deceit (Image Books, New York, 2000), 239, 240. 16 E. E. Y. Hales, Catholic Church in the Modern World (Doubleday, 1958), 124, 125. For a nuanced discussion of the Syllabus of Errors see chapter 10. Hales argues that the syllablus was directed against Piedmonts anti-clerical laws and was intended to denounce the notion that the ideas condemned could be universally true. Chadwick, however, shows the pope very cavalier and unaware of details of his own encyclical. The reverse of Pius IXs assertion that it is wrong to think that if the pope lost the Papal State it would conduce to the freedom and happiness of the Church has proven true. Chadwick, History of the Popes, 1830-1914, 168 ff. 7 through Peter, the infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to be endowed in defining the doctrine concerning faith or morals was his. Moreover, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are therefore irreformable of themselves, not because of the consent of the Church.17 Taken all in all, in its own lights papal power was inviolable, unchallengeable, unalienable. Although the Italian government did not interfere with the papacy after 1870, Pius IX never got over the loss of his temporal powers. Barracking the Italian state as a collection of wolves, liars, satellites of Satan in human flesh, monsters of hell, he ordered Catholics neither to vote in elections nor take seats in parliament.18 His successor, Leo XIII, contemplating the anti-clericalism of Italian nationalists and worried that he might have to move out of Italy, continued the ban on Italys Catholics from holding office or voting and reiterated certain condemnations of his predecessors, as in Diuturnum (Origin of Civil Society, 1881), denying popular sovereignty in favor of divine right of Kings, and Au Milieu des Solicitudes (Church and State in France, 1892), pronouncing separation of church and state an absurdity.19 The authoritarian habit of mind continued into the new century: faced with renewed anticlericalism in France and Portugal, Pius X (1903-1914), in took the same view of the 1905 French separation laic law in Vehementer Nos (we strongly object, 1906), declaring separation of church and state a thesis absolutely false, a pernicious error. There were two categories, the pastor and the flock, and it was the task of the former to direct the latter (the multitude) whose function it is to obey. Notwithstanding papal assertions, the Churchs authority in Europe had waned. Rome responded by emphasizing morality and faith issues via centralization and clericalism: The syllogism the Vatican propounded was that as a societa perfecta (i.e., a complete society, not a perfect one),20 the Church is perfect in its nature and in its title since it possesses in itself and by itself, through the will and loving kindness of its Founder, all needful provision for its well being and its operation. Moreover, there was no 17 McBrien, Lives of the Popes, 347. See also Chadwick, History of the Popes, 1830-1914, 196 ff., for discussion of the Council. Pius IXs encyclical is not to be confused with Leo XIIIs of the same title. 18 Chadwick, History of the Popes, 235, 236, 247. The unintended consequence of the loss of the Papal States was the further centralization of the Church under pope and Curia, and the rise of the popes spiritual authority as his temporal power collapsed to nothing. As for voting, Pius X (1903-1914), left it to Italys bishops to decide if their parishioners should vote in parliamentary elections; Catholics had already been voting and by 1913 had moved into politics wholeheartedly. Chadwick, History of the Popes, 403, 404. 19 John W. OMalley, What Happened at Vatican II? (Belknap Press 2010), 53, 54, 59, 61. 20 In the best known formulation, Leo XIIIs Immortale Dei (Immortal God), in 1886: Neither inferior to civil society nor dependent on it, the Church differed from civil society in that it was spiritual and its end religious and eternal. 8 salvation outside the Church (nulla salus extra ecclesia),21 and error has no rights. The enemy was modernism, the name given to the movement born with the appearance of the rational sciences of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in the eighteenth century Enlightenment critique of received truths wherever found, not least religion.22 Enlightened thinkers concerned themselves with the progress of human life by controlling nature, by creating a perfect human society, by focusing on reason, dignity, and autonomy; in short, by rejecting religion, faith, and revelation.23 Within the Church itself, its modernists were far more modest, thinking only to adapt Catholic thought to take into account knowledge gained through biblical criticism, philosophy, and historical studies--to cite three among a number of disciplines in which knowledge had moved on since Medieval times.24 While almost every European Protestant or Eastern Orthodox country in the nineteenth century restricted the Church (even Catholic monarchs had dictated to Rome at least since the sixteenth century),25 in the United States, as the earliest biographer of Leo XIII observed, the papacy found no hostile or jealous secular authority to check or thwart his own [authority] in the full and free exercise of its prerogatives. And none ever interfered with the authority of Archbishop or Bishop in the government of his flock.26 Despite such facts, in the late 1800s the Vatican openly sympathized with Bourbon restorationists and other monarchist parties in Europe in the belief that pope and monarch, in occupying the top of the two hierarchical poles, weakness in one necessarily meant weakness in the other.27 As Leo XIII told a 21 The assertion of no salvation outside the [Catholic] Church goes back to Cyprian (ca. 206-253?). Yet the Council of Nicea (787) said Jews who did not want to convert could live openly as Jews, and in 1076 Pope Gregory VII wrote to the Muslim ruler of Mauretania that Christians and Muslims worshipped the same God. In 1302 Boniface VIII went back to Cyprian, adding that one must also submit to the pope for salvation; the Council of Florence, 1442, reiterated the formula. The retreat from Cyprian began at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) which spoke of baptism of desire as salvific. Pius IX (1846-1878) said that invincible ignorance was a cause for exoneration, and Pius XII, in Mystici Corporis (Of the Mystical Body of Christ), 1943, stated that non-Christians could be saved if bonded to the Church by some unconscious yearning or desire. Chester Gillis, Roman Catholicism in America (Columbia University Press: New York, 1999, 194. 22 See Happel and Tracy 1984, 163, quoted in McCarthy, 20th Century Church, 23. 23 Timothy McCarthy, The Catholic Tradition; The Church in the Twentieth Century (Loyola, 1997), 23, 24. 24 Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 249. 25 America (16 August 1997), 4, 5. Ironically, in the three way contest for pope in 1846, Austrias Prince Metternich sought to veto the election of Cardinal Mastoi-Ferretti, but his emissary arrived too late and the longest reign in papal history was launched. 26 Bernard OReilly, Life of Leo XIII (n. p., 1886), 646. 27 Morris, American Catholicism, 15. 9 French bishop, Im a monarchist myself.28 Romes position that the ideal was a Catholic Church in a Catholic state understandably raised American Protestant fears that if Catholics ever became politically dominant they would use it injure their non-Catholic neighbors.29 Through 1878 then, the year of Pius IXs death and Bishop Francis Silas Chatards coming to Indianapolis, and for decades after, the Church accepted its role as the church militant battling against the powerful forces unleashed in the eighteenth century. What arose was a Church of a devout papalismultramontanism (good Catholics looking to the pope in Rome on the other side of the mountain. Papal supremacy over the Church was the outstanding feature of this counter-movement against secularism. Aspects of ultramontanism included popular piety--devotions to Mary, the Sacred Heart, and the rosary, all identified with the centrality of the papacy. Another was its doctrinal and institutional side--narrow, aggressive, and intolerant (as exampled by the Jesuit publication, Civilta Cattolica, founded in 1850, busy swelling papal authority and denouncing the secular world and the nonultras in the Church).30 Ultramontanism saw a new emphasis on the pastoral, on missionary activity, on founding new religious orders and revitalizing old ones. It had its successes: vocations flourished in most Catholic countries as religious orders of men and women, some almost extinct in 1800, grew afterward at an astonishing rate. Missionaries from Europe went to Asia and Africa in large numbers converting many. Catholic popular magazines multiplied, as did learned journals, and Catholic schools founded where there were few or none before. Still, the papacy felt beleaguered, on the defensive. 28 Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 241. 29 America (16 August 1997), 4, 5. 30 Duffy, Saints and Sinners, 228. 10  ...

... The Indianapolis Catholic Press, 1876 to 1947 Copyright 2018 William Doherty The Indianapolis Catholic Press, 1876 to 1947 This chapter deals with the Indianapolis Catholic press in its various guises under a variety of managers from the Gilded Age to just after World War II. Given the damage of Martin Luthers printed placards and pamphlets, the Catholic Church has never been completely at peace with either books or newspapers. But to tell its story, it found it had to produce its own publications. The first newspaper written for Indianapolis Catholics, the Western Citizen, 1876-1882, was not sponsored by the diocese, but since its target audience was the Irish-Catholics of the city and its environs, it qualified well-enough. Layowned and edited, it defended the Church against Protestants, but was willing to criticize priests and bishops, too. The first official paper, the New Record, 1883-1899, lasted longer and was remarkable for the anti-Semitism of its French editor. After it failed, the Catholic Columbian Record, of Columbus, Ohio, filled the gap by providing an Indiana section. In 1910, Patrick Joseph OMahony founded, with others, and edited the Indiana Catholic and Record until 1932. OMahony, a talented journalist and outspoken defender of the Church and agitator for Ireland independence, was a sharp critic of Protestantism. The latters support of the Ku Klux Klan and birth control provided him with plenty of scope. He also adhered to the common view that a womans vocation was wife, mother, homemaker. After World War I, however, aware of the contributions women had made during it, their value to business, etc., OMahony concluded that in certain endeavers they were superior to men. Having employed his daughter and niece in responsible positions at the paper, he came to support young women working for wages for the independence it providedfor one thing, they need not marry the first man who asked. His last years were tragic: Beginning in the mid-1920s, financial pressure led to abuse of alcohol and drugs, to theft, mental collapse, and seven months in Central State Hospital for the insane. Once released, the last three years of his life were spent in desperate efforts to find more capital for the paper or different employment for himself to support his family. Nothing availed until the archbishop of Cincinnati, shortly before his death underwrote his expenses at a Catholic rest home. In 1932 the paper was taken over by a priest-board of diocesan clergy, a change soon reflected in its pages. For example, OMahony was relatively enlightened on womens capabilities, while the clergy-editors did not stray from patriarchy. 1 The Catholic Press in the Indianapolis Diocese, 1876 to 1947 The hagiographic approach to church history--nothing less than sweetness and light in all that pertained to the lives of churchmen, [is] a modus operandi that no self-repecting historian could or would respect. Msgr. John Tracy Ellis, Catholic Bishops: A Memoir [W]e ought to be willing to face facts. Let the truth be told. . . . Unfortunately, not all Catholic writers and editors have been sufficiently imbued with this spirit. They will suppress evidence for fear of giving scandal or causing harm. It is and always has been a mistaken course. Deus non eget mendacio (God doesnt need lies). Our duty is to tell the truth and the whole truth. E. Harold Smith, An Alarmist Speaks, Commonweal, January 1, 1937). Following upon the printing of books by moveable type in the 15th century came news sheets, printed matter of the gossip and doings of the day. Called avissa by the Romans, from the outset the Church looked with disfavor on this avatar of the journalists profession. In 1571 Pope Pius V issued Constitutio Contra Scribente condemning the writers of such newsheets then springing up in the Papal States. His successor, Pope Gregory XII, shared Pius dislike of newsmen and wasted little time in issuing a constitution of his own in 1572; in it Gregory described the budding journalists as, a new set of men illicitly curious who write of things they know or make up out of their own libidinous imaginations, mixing up the false, the true and the uncertain with no restraint whatever. Like Pius, Gregory banned newsheets, subjecting anyone who received, copied, disseminated, or transmitted them under penalty of perpetual infamy, prison, or hanging from a nearby Tiber River bridge. Pius IX (1846-1878) was the first pope to have anything good to say about newspapers, but even he did not take the fourth estate seriously.1 Yet, almost three centuries after Pius V and Gregory XII, Pio Nono had to bow to the inevitable: in 1861, LOsservatore Romano, the daily paper of the Vatican, was born during his pontificate. His successor, Leo XIII, did take the press seriously; a later commentator praised him, saying that the pope saw that the journalist, like the historian, labored under the same rule, to say nothing that is false 1 Chadwick, Popes, 1830-1914, 322 ff. 2 and to conceal nothing that is true. Leo XIII also was the one who opened the Vatican archives to scholars in 1881.2 Beyond question, in America the Catholic press would become of great importance to the Church. The distinguished reporter and editor John Cogley (1916-1976) held that absent the Catholic press the institutions of American Catholicism--schools, hospitals, orphanages--would not have survived.3 The first regularly published Catholic newspaper in the United States was the U.S. Catholic Miscellany, in 1822,4 founded by John England, bishop of Charleston, South Carolina. England took pains to show the compatibility between American Constitutional values and Catholicism, his theme when he became the first Catholic priest to speak before Congress.5 The newspapers purpose was to communicate with the thinly scattered Catholics of his diocese (the Carolinas and Georgia) and the non-Catholic alike. Bishop England, who had edited Catholic and secular newspapers in his native Cork, saw as the Miscellanys chief task the correction of inaccuracies regarding the doctrines and history of the Church. The American bishops in pastorals in 1829, 1833, and 1837 agreed to the grave need for a Catholic press to sustain . . . those journals . . . which explain our tenets . . . defend our rights and . . . vindicate our conduct.6 Put another way, the Catholic press existed to connect the laity to the Church, inform its members and those outside of its truths, and counter attacks from critics within and without, especially against the charge in the non-Catholic and the secular press that Catholicism was subversive of republican government and subservient to a foreign potentate. At a minimum, the Catholic press was an exercise in public relations, social calendar, and medium for disseminating the Catholic view on the issues of the day. Given its importance, it is perhaps surprising that in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Catholic periodicals were mainly lay owned, albeit usually operating in close association with the local ordinary.7 The first Indianapolis newspaper intended for a Catholic audience was the Central Catholic, founded in 1875 by Fr. Denis ODonaghue, a priest of the city. It was taken over by L. H. Bell the next 2 The American theologian, John Courtney Murray in a speech given in Rome in 1963. National Catholic Reporter, 22 October 2004, 23A. Leo XIII also read Marx and was the first pope to be filmed. The New Yorker magazine (January 3, 2011), 27. 3 Catholic America, 170. 4 Begun with 600 subscribers, the paper would last until1861. Jay P. Dolan, The Irish Americans: A History (New York, 2008), 57. 5 6 Catholic Press Annual, 23 January 1992, 32. 7 Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, 289, 290. 3 year and then moved to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1879, as the Central Catholic Advocate.8 In early 1876 the second appeared, the Western Citizen: A Journal Published in the Interests of the Irish Race. While not a religious paper as such, it did cover diocesan doings and its intended readership was the citys IrishCatholic community. Its principals were C. E. McSheehy, city editor, his brother Thomas, business manager, and Joseph Marshall, editor. When C. E. McSheehy and Marshall dropped out, March 1879, Thomas McSheehy was left sole owner and publisher.9 Born 29 September 1849 in County Kerry, Ireland, Thomas McSheehy attended a Christian Brothers school and became a bookbinders apprentice. He emigrated to New York, as others did, to better his condition, 10 to Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, Indiana where he worked on newspapers, and to Indianapolis in 1874 or 1875, marrying Mary (Maggie) Ryan in 1875. Irish-born immigrants, like McSheehy, already armed with the English language, found journalism a ready field of endeavor. 11 In 1880 the Western Citizen claimed a circulation of 10,000, but like many newspapers of the period, subscribers proved slow payers, so pleas alternated with frequent threats of dire consequences to those in arrears. As an Irish paper, it would always advocate the cause of Irish freedom at home and abroad. It was so Irish and anti-British in sentiment that its motto, For God and Our Country, might have left some readers unsure as to the country meant. At first a mere four pages, five cents a copy or a dollar a year, it soon doubled in size and yearly subscription rate. The Western Citizen sported an elaborate mast head more than four inches high, large enough for the emblems of its Irish and Catholic concerns: in the center, a medallion of a woman in contemplation, hand on cheek, amid a landscape of church, Celtic cross, and round tower (tenth century structures built as refuges from Viking raids), the whole crowned with the papal crest--tiara, stole, keys, crucifix, and all. On the left St. Patrick catechizes Irish warriors and the people; on the right Erin, with her harp, lifts a drape revealing a rising Sun to the maid America, armed with sword and shield. In addition, there are shamrocks, a second rising Sun, and two more harps.12 8 Fr. Thomas Widner, ed., Our Family Album, 1834-1984, Sketches of the People and Parishes of . . . Indianapolis Archdiocese . . . 150th Anniversary (Criterion Press, 1984). 9 10 John Miller, ed., Indiana Newspaper Bibliography. Western Citizen, 24 June 1882, 4. Other Indiana examples are John R. Dowling, a Catholic, printer, co-publisher, and editor of the Terre Haute Courier, ca. 1832-1841, the states printer in the 1850s, editor of the Terre Haute Journal, 1861-1873, and Washington correspondent for the Boston Pilot, 1873-1878.11 John F. Joyce started as a copyboy, then reporter and editor of the Terre Haute Gazette, 1876-1906,11 and in the early twentieth century Joseph Patrick OMahony, editor of the Indianapolis archdiocesan newspaper, the Indiana Catholic and Record. 11 12 Western Citizen, 23 November 1878, 1. 4 As a newspaper with an Irish-Catholic readership, England, naturally, was the enemy: Queen Victoria, then forty years on the throne, was an avaricious old woman and the English far from models of propriety. The Western Citizen drew attention to the immodesty of her ladies, its proof a London newspaper article involving a lady at a reception wearing a dress cut so low that in bending forward she lost the whole front and had to be covered with shawls. (For the period, let alone in an Irish-Catholic publication, the item was unusually racy, but apparently too good to pass up.) 13 The paper attacked Protestant ministers of the city who disparaged the Catholic Church, such as the Methodist Bulldog Bayless or a judge who held that the absolution of sins in the confessional rendered Catholic testimony under oath ridiculous. Other non-Catholics, such as Capt. J. W. Gordon, a prominent lawyer, the Rev. Myron W. Reed, and assorted governors and mayors who participated in the citys St. Patricks Day parades or publicly sympathized with Ireland in her troubles were praised.14 While references to Bishop Francis Silas Chatard were rare (possibly because he was usually absent at meetings and rallies held to express sympathy for Irelands difficulties), the two leading priests of the diocese, August Bessonies and Denis ODonaghue, openly sympathized with Ireland and much appreciated by the Western Citizen. In 1880 Bishop Chatard did take up a collection in all the parishes for Irish relief and gave a lecture at Masonic Hall to benefit that cause.15 The Citizens bona fides as a Catholic paper was its Catholic notes department--papal pronouncements, Lenten fast and abstinence rules, sermons, doings of the clergy, etc. It used a statement of Pius IX many times: The mission of the Catholic press was to preserve the principles of order and of faith, where they still prevail, and to promote them where impiety and cold indifference have caused them to be forgotten.16 Yet despite getting many letters on church matters, the editors refused to be drawn into doctrinal issues: They explained, [I]t is not within the province of the layman to interfere in ecclesiastical matters. The bishop and the clergy are the only parties interested, hence we have never tried to get any information; and therefore, cannot impart any to curiosity seekers.17 While its Religious Principles will be CATHOLIC, as a newspaper in a crowded field, it would not expound dogma nor spurn those who differ from us in matters of conscience. 18 Significantly, in November 1879 the elaborate masthead was replaced with a simple drawing of a handshake with nothing either Irish or religious about 13 14 Western Citizen, 8 May 1880, 4. Western Citizen, 17 March 1882, 1. 15 Western 16 Western Citizen, 8 June 1878, 1. 17 Western 18 Citizen, 24 Jan 1880, 7. Citizen, 6 September 1880, 4. Western Citizen, 7 April 1877, 1. 5 it. It even published sermons of Protestant ministers and news of the Young Mens Christian Association (YMCA). Such unwillingness to enroll wholeheartedly in the church militant brought attacks from a competitor, Ohios Catholic Columbian, which claimed that the Western Citizen was a wolf in sheeps clothing and no Catholic home should take it. The Citizen defended itself by saying that it had many nonCatholic readers and sought to serve them.19 Commerce makes for ecumenism. Yet the Western Citizen was Catholic enough to find the public school both ridiculous and vicious when it undertakes to teach one particular version of the scriptures to a number of pupils who are of various, and divers creeds or of no faith at all. A Catholic teacher in a public school should not be forced to teach the King James Bible, nor should Catholic pupils be taught from a Protestant one. Indeed, a public school was no place for a Catholic child of Catholic parents. Public schools should stick to only secular instruction . . . We cannot regard these schools at present as being anything but proselytizing institutions.20 The Western Citizens promise not to intrude in doctrinal issues still left it with considerable scope for controversy, much of it having to do with Ireland or the Irish. In the early 1880s Ireland was again facing hard times, even famine. In the good years of the early 1870s land rents had risen as had prices. In depression again in 1880, agitation for fair rents, fixity of tenure, and fair compensation for improvements were championed by a new organization, the Irish Land League. In 1882 the Western Citizen carried an editorial of the Evansville News that paralleled its own understanding: A Fr. Ryan had argued that no Irish-American had any right to dabble in political questions regarding land holdings in Ireland. The Evansville News, rejecting the bad logic of the sogorth aroon (dear priest), wanted to know when did love of liberty, love of home, love of family, and the right to recover lost liberty and resist a starving oppression become theological questions? If obedience to a church necessitates a surrender of present and future generations to the rapacity of men who do not of right own the soil for which they extort enormous rents, then it were better that the Irish race should die out, than live in one of the worst possible forms of slavery. This was strong stuff, and in printing it on page one the Citizen made it its own.21 Undermining what might be called the informal standing of the Western Citizens Catholic nature was its willingness to display eccelesiastical dirty laundry: An 1881 editorial admitted that many of the secular priests were not what they should be. For one thing, the crime of intemperence had brought so much scandal on the Church in the West, in the past decade . . . . Another deficiency espied by the 19 Western Ciizent, 31 Jan 1880, 4. Western Citizen, 16 Nov 1878, 4. 21 Western Citizen, 25 Feb 1882, 1. There are variant spellings for the Gaelic for dear priest: Sogarth aroon and Sagart aroon are two. My mother was born and grew up in Ballysaggart, priests town, outside Lismore, County Waterford. 20 6 newspaper were the seminaries which, as a rule, [were neither] thorough in discipline nor proficient in intellectual instruction. Consequently, many priests were crude and ungrammatical in speech. For this the Citizen blamed the laity for the lack of financial support for seminaries; An ignorant clergy means a lax, if not a corrupt, clergy.22 The Churchs Protestant critics couldnt have put it better. The Western Citizen was also as quick as any to take part in the intramural skirmishes in the Midwest between Irish and German Catholics, the two largest sources of Catholic immigrants. In 1882 the newspaper took the part of a Fr. Grogan, a priest from the Ft. Wayne diocese, suspended by Bishop Joseph Dwenger. As the Citizen saw it, Grogans fault lay in resisting pressure from his lordship of tyrannical notoriety (Dwenger), to increase collections to pay off the parish debt. Asserted the Citizen, Fr. Grogan had the sympathies of his parishioners, railroad workers earning a dollar a day. His people knew him to be a worthy gentleman, while the Bishop is a German tyrant and has favored priests of his own nationality. There were many Irish in Ft. Wayne, but not a single Irish priest. Taking great familiarity, the Citizen denominated Joe Dwenger . . . the most unpopular Bishop in America, and deservedly so. 23 Two weeks later Thomas McSheehy extended his complaint to include the American bishops for hav[ing] more power than they are entitled to. The Western Citizen was a real Catholic paper, but the bishops were not infallible: Out of jealousy, every week some poor priest is smitten down at the hands of the tyrant bishop. Citing Ft. Waynes suspended priests and a case where a bishop was deposed and the priest reinstated, the Citizen thundered, Let Bishop Dwenger, and others, take warning. 24 A month later McSheehy again raised the objection that some bishops discriminated against the Irish by foist[ing] German pastors on Irish parishes. What was wanted was Irish priests for Irish people. Understandable criticism of his attacks on the Ft. Wayne bishop and on bishops as a class prompted McSheehys admission that as editor he alone was responsible for what went into the paper. A Catholic because of his birth in Ireland, he believed the Church the true church--but Equal rights to all, exclusive privilege to none was his motto. The Western Citizen never asked for an ecclesiastical endorsement nor do we want any.25 In his rant against the Church McSheehy seems to have subscribed to The better the Catholic, the worse the Irishman, a common saying among Irish nationalists critical of the conservative influence of Irelands hierarchy when it came to independence from England. If Thomas McSheehys declaration of independence from ecclesiastical control was an anomaly, for an IrishCatholic he was also unusual in being a Republican. 26 The Citizen claimed to be politically 22 Western Citizen, 23 April 1881, 2. Western Citizen, 13 May 1882, 4. Dwenger was consecrated bishop of Ft. Wayne in 1872. 24 Western Citizen, 27 May 1882, 4. 25 24 June 1882, 4. 26 Western Citizen, 1 Nov 1879, 3, has him in Indianapolis in 1875, while the biographical directory of state legislators, has him in the city in 1874 and marrying Maggie in 1875. Thomas McSheey [sic.] Biographical Directory of the Indiana General Assembly, vol. 1. 23 7 independent, not identifying with either party, 27 but McSheehy was an ardent Republican, and under his editorship the paper was decidedly partisan. It was typical of the paper to have it that when it came to party nominations the Democratic motto was No Irish Need Apply, while the Republicans was All men are equal in the sight of the law.28 McSheehy contended that the Democrats shamefully abused the Irish habit of flocking to the party, while the GOP willingly put their Irish supporters in positions of trust. In the Republican Party, McSheehy claimed, race, color, or creed were not barriers. It was certainly true that Irishmen were overwhelmingly Democrats. McSheehy worked to change that in the 1878 and 1880 election campaigns. Perhaps that was what he meant in declaring the newspapers mission was to elevate the standard [status] of the Irish American citizen. 29 In 1880 McSheehy himself ran successfully for the Indiana House representing Marion County. As a legislator, he opposed a compulsory education bill as an invasion of the sacred rights of parent and child; moreover, since education and intelligence were not necessarily related, the former was not always necessary if the latter was absent. He also opposed the liquor prohibition amendment to the state constitution, arguing it would not be enforced and would increase drunkenness and crime. Women suffrage? The people were not ready, but let the agitation continue was McSheehys attitude.30 Two years later the editor was happy to carry the news that Fr. ODonoghue, chancellor of the diocese, solidly supported the Republican Party for its platforms stance on the Irish question. The time was past that the Irish were automatically Democrats, thought ODonoghue. The priest never understood why Irish Catholics voted the Democratic ticket, as the Republicans have always treated Catholics with equality and fairness while Irish Catholics on the Democratic ticket always ran behind the partys vote; it was not so on the GOP ticket. Nor was this Republican priest in favor of prohibition, despite all the temperance organizations in the world (a reform highly unpopular with most Irishmen).31 McSheehys efforts on behalf of the party of Lincoln paid off handsomely. Credited with converting a goodly number of Indiana Irishmen to the GOP, after his single term in the Indiana legislature he was rewarded with a post in the Treasury Department in Washington, D. C. at a salary of $1,500 a year. The Western Citizen was now on a paying basis and the plan was for McSheehy to place it and his other business interests (he was a local agent for the Cunard Shipping Line)32 in other hands 27 Western Citizen, 7 April 1877. Western Citizen, 4 Sept 1880, 4. 29 Western Citizen, 12 June 1880, 4. 30 Western Citizen, 2 April 1881, 2. 31 Western Citizen, 14 Oct 1882, 4. [Old joke: Mrs. Ryan to Mrs. ODoherty: Have you heard that Congressman OBrien has joined the Republican Party? That cant be true! Didnt I see him at Mass on Sunday!] 32 As a steamship agent for the Cunard Lines, among others, McSheehy issued sight drafts payable in Ireland (useful for those left behind or for passage money), for one English pound and upwards at lowest rates. The Citizen advertised passage from Queenstown, Cork, Ireland or Liverpool for $36.50, a not inconsiderable sum. Western Citizen, 31 Dec 1881, 1. 28 8 until his return a year hence. in May 1880, a Fr. Denis ODonovan was to have served as editor. But the arrangement lasted only one issue when ODonovan resigned, the job being too large a demand on his time. In McSheehys absence the paper lasted six weeks. With the number of pages cut in half to four, the newspaper became a farrago of items of little news value and no real editorials. The last issue of the Western Citizen appeared 30 December 1882. At a guess, McSheehy, an ambitious and competent man, found greater opportunities in the nations capital. *** Although the Western Citizen clearly had some title to be regarded as a Catholic paper, its independence from ecclesiastical authority and willingness to criticize the hierarchy and the clergy made it less than ideal from Bishop Francis Chatards point of view. Thus, McSheehys absence in Washington may not have been the only factor in its demise. In any case, the line of descent to the Criterion, after 1960 the present diocesan weekly, is traced to 1883, 33 the year the New Record appeared. From its offices in rooms 10 and 11 in the Union Building on West Maryland Street, in Indianapolis, the New Record, a Catholic newspaper for Indiana, undertook to defend Catholic principles and . . . furnish news interesting to Catholics in this city and state. As the official circular of Bishop Chatard, it served as the offical diocesan paper. The proprietors, Butler and McFarlane, approached it as a business enterprise in the belief that there were enough Catholics in the state for commercial success. In a swipe at the Columbian Catholic (distributed in Indiana but published at Columbus, Ohio), they asserted that no paper published in another state could be depended on to carry Indiana news. 34 Perhaps not, but the paper does not seem to have prospered, and on 29 January 1889, under the editorship of Alexander Chomel, the Catholic Record appeared as a continuation of the New Record. A native of France, Chomel had been educated there in Catholic schools. Landing at New Orleans in 1848, age 22 or 23, thence up river to New Albany, Indiana, where he was a merchant until 1860. He spent the next twenty years in merchandizing and publishing newspapers in Martin County, worked for the Washington (Indiana) Advertiser after 1884, before coming to Indianapolis in 1889 at the request of Bishop Chatard to purchase the New Record. Changing its name to the Catholic Record35 33 The source for the New Record as the distant progenitor of the Criterion is Archbishop OMearas pastoral letter of 27 May 1980. OMeara, Pastoral Letters, 1980-1981, Catholic Archives. 34 The New Record, 19 July 1883, 4. The Indianapolis Encyclopedia, 1183, has Richard Outler founding the New Record. The Criterion itself, 8 October 2010, calls the New Record, The Catholic Record, and considers it the first newspaper to serve Catholics in the diocese. 35 Blanchard, History of Catholic Church, vol. 2, 277, 278, and Indianapolis Star, 4 December 1933; The paper was printed on St. Johns property, where Bishop Chatard also had his residence. Indianapolis News, 4 December 1933. 9 (Approved by the bishops of Vincennes and Ft. Wayne), it boasted of being the only Catholic paper in Indiana.36 The paper circulated outside Indianapolis, going to Anderson, Aurora, Baldwin, Blue Grass, Danville, Decatur, Delphi, Elkhart, Elwood, as well as St. Marys, Seymour, South Bend, Terre Haute, and other places.37 Its credo was not to be a personal organ nor to air private opinions, but to defend the Church, promote the interest of Catholicity and diffuse Catholic knowledge; . . .38 In every era every newspaper, magazine, journalwhat have youexhibits the biases of its publisher and its editor. As a French Catholic at the end of the nineteenth century, Alexander Chomels bias was a deep fear and hatred of Jews. At the very time he complained of the robust anti-Catholicism of the nativist American Protestant Association (APA), Chomel expressed virulent, almost monomaniacal anti-Semitic sentiments.39 He made frequent references to the Masonic-Jewish French Republic, finding Jews guilty of bribing half the French parliament and the ruling ministry. 40 French Catholics, usually monarchist in politics and deeply entrenched in the military officer corps, regarded the Third Republic as dominated by Jews, Protestants, and Masons, so did Chomel.41 He also believed that Germanys Jews were the Churchs bitterest enemies during that nations attacks on Catholicism--the Kulturkampf of the 1870s. And when worry over their own persecution led German Jews to ask the Kaiser for protection, Chomel exulted that the chickens [had] come home to roost.42 36 Catholic Record, 5 May 1892, 4. 37 Catholic Record, 19 October 1893, 4. 38 Catholic Record, 9 August 1894, 4. 39 The years 1893 to 1895 saw the fallout from the Panama scandal and the beginnings of the Dreyfus Affair in France; each provided fuel for the anti-Semitism burgeoning in Europe at the time shown in the anti-clerical legislation of the French government in the early 1880s and again from 1900-1906. These laic laws had as their purpose to punish the Catholic Church for its political anti-Republic actions and to reduce--if possible, destroy--the Churchs influence in education both private and public: well over 10,000 Catholic schools, charitable institutions, and hospitals were closed as well as over a hundred religious orders. In 1904, the year France broke diplomatic relations with the Holy See, the right to teach was denied all of the Churchs religious congregations and tens of thousands of the clergy and religious became emigres. Gagnon, France Since 1789, 267. 40 Catholic Record, 5 January 1893, 4. The reference is to the Panama scandal in 1892, three years after the bankruptcy of Frances effort to build the canal linking the Mediterranean with South Asia. The chief publicists, fundraisers, and bagmen of the failed project were Dr. Cornelius Herz and Jacques de Reinach, both Jews; the latter committed suicide, Herz escaped punishment by fleeing to England. 41Alexander 42 Sedgwick, The Third Republic, 1870-1914 (Thomas Y. Crowell Company: New York, 1968), chs. 3, 4. Catholic Record, 19 Jan 1893, 4. 10 In 1893 Chomel devoted a long editorial to the views of the new Catholic archbishop of Olmutz, Germany, named Kohn [Cohen?], whose Jewish grandparents had converted to Catholicism and whose parents were peasants. Readers of the Catholic Record learned, according to Archbishop Kohn, that had Christians followed the Catholic Churchs regulations they would not [now] groan under the yoke of the Jews. Condemning anti-Semitism on one hand, on the other the archbishop maintained that the old rules governing relations between Christians and Jews in Europe should be reinstated: Christians, under pain of excommunication, ought not live or be servants in Jewish households, nor serve as wet-nurses, nor use Jewish doctors or medicines prescribed by Jews. They should never raise Jews to positions of power over Christians, nor eat with Jews, nor assist in Jewish marriages or feasts. Chomel went further: The French Revolution (the first to lift legal disabilities from Europes Jews) had brought persecution to the Church so that Today France is in the hands of the Jews. Moreover, circumstances of the day were highly favorable to the ambition and greediness of the Jewish race. They have corrupted Frances government and want to rule the world. Jews, Chomel warned, have an open field in [America], and if they predominate anywhere, it is certain they will do so here. 43 When Russias pogroms against the Jews found everybody showing concern for them, asked Chomel, How would it do to bestow a little of that sympathy on American Catholics who are now passing through the crucible of persecution from the American Protective Association? 44 When Tsar Alexander III died later that year Chomel expressed disgust at the rejoicings and exultations of the Jews. Yes, Jews were brutally driven out of Russia, had lost property, and experienced untold sufferings; alas, the innocent suffered with the guilty. But to the editors mind the Tsar was trying to free his people from the rapacity of Jewish usury. . . . Centuries of oppression have made the Jewish race meek, deceitful, humble, submissive. But give the Jew a chance and at once his velvet hand show its claws. As to the historic legal disabilities that Christians had placed upon the Jews, they testified to the superiority of the Jewish people for in open competition their rivals will go down in defeat. Non-Jews need protection against the capacity of Jews to acquire property. The Jewish aspiration of controlling the world by the acquisition of money is in a fair way of realization. 45 Another long editorial, The Jewish Question, summer 1895, blamed Jews and Freemasons for Frances secular laic laws which attacked the Catholic schools. Because Jews were a distinct race that did not belong to the nations in which they reside, the government of France, a Judaico-Freemasonic republic, was not French at all. Jews dream of universal power, and they actually dominate the world in 43 Catholic Record, 2 February 1893, 4. 44 Catholic Record, 10 May 1894, 4. 45 Catholic Record, 8 November 1894, 4. 11 a financial way. How were so few able to succeed so well? God had chosen them; they were a wonderful people, but they are deicides. Only Catholicism can meet Judaisms assaults and the Jewish Question solved when they are converted by the Church. After all, the whole Jewish people did not share in deicide; there were Jews at the foot of the cross, too. In the United States and England as yet there was no Jewish Question, probably due to a strong anti-Semitic feeling among English-speaking people; in France, however, they are a constant threat to Christian society.46 (Quite a feat for a people numbering only 80,000 at the time.) In the absence of letters to the editor, how Chomels anti-Semitic views were received by his readers are not discoverable, but they were widely shared in Europe and America. The latter decades of the nineteenth century were the seedtime of modern anti-Semitism, and in the few short years of Chomels editorship the diocesan paper touched on most of Nazisms racial themes. In 1899 the Catholic Record went out of existence, its subscribers given to the Catholic Columbian of Columbus, Ohio, now designated the Catholic Columbian Record. A saddened Alexander Chomel had to admit that despite his best efforts, lack of capital (and money is the nerve of business as well as war), falling collections, and now come old age and sickness to load the last straw on my back. I go out of the Record as light in purse as I came in . . . . The parting is sad to me, for my heart was in the work. He found some solace in that the Catholic Columbian Record would have an Indiana department.47 *** Joseph Patrick OMahony (Oh MA hoe nee) was the bridge that linked the Indiana department of the Ohio weekly, the Columbian Catholic, to a diocesan newspaper published in Indianapolis. Born 14 March 1870, a native of Tralee, like McSheey, he was a Kerryman. A graduate of Blackrock College, Dublin, 1889, OMahony came to the United States in 1890. As an Irish-born English speaker, journalismcommunicating with the larger societybeckoned. Journalism, a partisan and combative profession, and somewhat raffish, being articulate, quick thinking, and gregarious counted as virtues-traits often said to be found in Irishmen. His career began at the Philadelphia Ledger. Visiting Indianapolis, October 1890, the guest of a Sullivan cousin (his mother, Mary, was an OSullivan), he joined the Indianapolis Sentinel as a reporter, a telegraph operator for the Evansville Courier for two years, and still later a second stint at the Sentinel as a political editor (1903). Other stops included the Detroit Tribune; Baltimore Sun war correspondent in the Spanish-American War (1897, 1898); Baltimore 46 Catholic Record, 20 June 1895, 4. The editorial struck all the most prominent points characteristic of French anti- Semitism. Gagnon, France Since 1789, 260. 47 Catholic Record, 19 October 1899, 4, the last issue. 12 American (1899); Washington Post (1900) covering the state, war, and navy departments; and the Philadelphia Record (1901). He married Bridget M. Leane at St. John in Indiananapolis, 17 August 1893, and became a citizen at Baltimore, in 1895. From 1904 to 1907 OMahony worked as a traveling agent for State Home Life Insurance Company and then as their general agent for Indiana, 48 before taking over the management of the Indiana edition of the Catholic Columbian Record. In 1910, with money from five Irish-Catholic Indianapolis businessmen (all members of the Knights of Columbus and the Young Mens Institute), OMahony went into competition with his former employer. Incorporated as the Indiana Catholic Printing and Publishing Company, capitalized at $10,000, the first issue of the Indiana Catholic appeared 4 February 1910. A home journal devoted to the interests of the Catholic clergy and laity, as Indianas official and only Catholic Weekly Newspaper, it aimed to earn the esteem of its readers as a defender of the Faith and an exponent of Catholic opinion on all public matters.49 As the editor-founder of the diocesan paper, OMahony enjoyed a certain prestige and standing, a man to be reckoned with, and enough of a presence in newspaper circles to be in on the founding of the Catholic Press Association, 1911. Age forty, distinguished looking, grey-haired, thin, longheaded and except for a full mustache clean-shaven, OMahony was in his prime.50 Near bankruptcy in 1913, the newspaper was saved when Paul Martin, a recent University of Notre Dame graduate was hired, bringing with him $5,000 into the business. (The money came from the Martins Protestant grandfather; given OMahonys habitual disparagement of the separated brethern, this was high comedy.) When his paper absorbed the Catholic Columbian Record in March 1915, it became the Indiana Catholic and Record (IC&R). OMahony took pride in its success as a business proposition. Claiming to reach over three-quarters of the Catholic homes in Indianapolis, wholly owned by laymen (it is edited, printed, published and financed by Indianapolis men), it received no financial support from the 48 The details of Mahonys newspaper career are summarized in the obituary he prepared for the Indiana Catholic and Record, 8 March 1935, 1, and the Indianapolis Star, 5 March 1935, 1, 3. His physical descripton is based on the Stars obituary photograph. The Criterions review of the history (8 October 2010, 9) has the Indiana Catholic purchasing a small German newspaper in Evansville, in 1911, the name becoming The Indiana Catholic and Sternenbanner. In 1915, when it bought the subscriber list of the Catholic Columbian Record, it became the Indiana Catholic and Record. 49 The officers were: president, Michael F. Gill, treasurer, Charles L. Barry, secretary, C. J. Lenaghan. Star, 4 February 1910, 3. Its stationery later carried the date of its founding as February 1, 1910, consolidated with Catholic Columbian Record, March 1, 1915. Published each Friday by Indiana Catholic Printing and Publishing Cmpany, 223225 North New Jersey Street, Printcraft Building, tel. Riley 5922. 50 OMahonys physical descripton is based on the Stars obituary photograph, Indianapolis Star, 5 March 1935, 3. 13 Church.51 Ten years after founding, OMahony claimed for the IC&R the highest circulation of any diocesan paper in the U.S., save one.52 While every issue included a statement of support from bishops Joseph Chartrand and Joseph Alerding and the announcement Official Organ of the Dioceses of Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, the prelates seem to have exercised no influence over the paper. The newspapers motto, veritas omnia vincit (truth conquers all), expressed the Churchs conviction that its possession of the truth ensured its ultimate triumph. OMahony was not only an experienced newspaperman but also well known in fraternal circles . . . .53 Most of his memberships were Irish-related: besides the Knights of Columbus, he was an active member of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, a founder of the Emmett Club (after Robert Emmett, the Irish patriot and martyr of the early nineteenth century),54 and in 1893 founder of the first John Barry Club (b. County Wexford, 1745) to promote the commodores claim to the title, father of the American Navy. (His campaign succeeded: Congress voted $50,000 to erect a monument to Barry in Washington, D.C., which was dedicated by President Woodrow Wilson and the secretary of the Navy, 16 May 1914.) 55 OMahonys ethnic nationalism extended to actively working for Irelands independence: He had come to America carrying a coded letter for John Devoy, another Irish-born newspaperman and the head of the Clan na Gael, the Irish Republican Brotherhoods fundraising arm in the United States. The Clan and the IRB were dedicated to the liberation of Ireland through force. At Devoys death in 1928, OMahony revealed 51 Indiana Catholic, 4 September 1914, 5; White, Klan, 5-7. 52 Fr. John F. Noll of Ft. Wayne founded the weekly Our Sunday Visitor in 1912; it may have been the newspaper OMahony referred to as having a larger circulation than the IC&R. 53 Indianapolis Star, 4 February 1910, 3. OMahony was in on the founding of the Catholic Press Association the next June 1911. 54 Another in a long line of Protestant-Irish patriots, in 1803, Emmett intended an attack on Dublin Castle, the center of English government in Ireland, to spark an uprising. His efforts ended as a mere affray on a Dublin street, a fiasco. His words in the dock, however, proved memorable, among them: Let no man write my epitaph; . . . When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. He was hanged, his body cut down, and his head cut off and displayed to the crowd. 55 Indiana Catholic and Record, 16 October 1925, 4. The title of father of the American navy has been contended between Barry and John Paul Jones. As late as 1959 the AOH complained of a movie depicting Jones as holding the title. IC&R, 15 May 1959, 7. President Wilsons dedication of the Barry monument did him little good among the Irish when he failed to support Irielands independence after the Great War. Devoy, Post Bag, vol. 2, 402. 14 that he had known Devoy intimately for thirty years and had been associated with him in every phase of the independence movement.56 After the 1916 Easter Rising, in the competition for American money that developed between the Cohalon-Devoys Friends of Irish Freedom (FOIF) and Eamon de Valera (who was touring the states to raise funds), OMahony allied with Cohalan-Devoy, and was listed, Mr. OMahoney [sic] as subscribing $25,000 for Indiana, at the Irish race convention in Philadelphia.57 The battle between the Cohalon faction and De Valera continued at the 1920 Republican convention in Chicago over inclusion of an Irish plank in the platform. (As one of five members of the Cohalons committee, OMahonys national stature in Irish affairs is clear.) Cohalons plank would recognize the Irish peoples right to determine freely, without dictation from the outside their own governmental institutions and the international relations with other states and people; De Valeras resolution wanted full, formal, and official recognition of the elected government of the Republic of Ireland . . . . While the resolutions committee defeated De Valeras plank 12 to 1 and adopted Cohalans 7 to 6, thanks to the feud, no mention of Ireland appeared in the Republican platform.58 Unlike his contemporary, Vicar-general, Msgr. Francis H. Gavisk, 1918-1932, a son of Irish immigrants who labored in Indianapolis to establish ties with the citys non-Catholics, OMahony was a Hibernian triumphalist who emphasized the differences between Catholics and all others, remembered old wounds, and delighted in pricking Protestant sensibilities. He scorned their political efforts, especially those of the Church Federation of Indianapolis. For example, he interpreted Protestant efforts to close theaters on Sunday as a scheme to fill their empty churches: The Church Federation reformers should devote their attention to bringing their people to church, and there and then giving them some Christian instruction--if they have it to give, was a typical OMahony screed. 59 News that city Methodists had 56 Indiana Catholic and Record, 12 October 1928, 4. Devoys published correspondence, Devoys Post Bag, does not contain any correspondence of OMahonys, and in the absence of any papers of the latter it is impossible to gauge what OMahony did for Irelands independence. His claim of intimate association with Devoy is likely to be true since there would be plenty of other Irishmen around in 1928 to deny it if false; OMahony was almost certainly a member of the Clan na Gael. See chapter on Chatard and Secret Societies for more discussion of the Clan and the IRB. 57 Katharine ODoherty, Assignment: America, De Valeras Mission to the United States (De Tanko Publishing, Inc., New York, 1957), 29. 58 Patrick McCartan, With de Valera in America (New York: Brentano, 1932); Dave Hannigan, De Velera in America (Palgrave MacMillan: 2011), 155. 59 Is the City Lawless? Indiana Catholic, 6 June 1913, 4; Stand Up for Indianapolis and Indiana, 14 October 1913, 4, and White Mss. Part 3 of 3. See also Good and Bad Motion Pictures, Indiana Catholic and Record, 31 January 1919, 4. 15 allocated $15,000 for a new mission to evangelize Italians, found him lamenting the neglect of the Millions of [Methodists] who dont go to church [and] need care.60 A headline in a local newspaper, Protestant Churches to become social centers brought the comment, Well, what else have they ever been?61 He was quick to headline news of slumps in Protestant numbers--Ministers Lament in Decline of Religion and Protestant Failure Admitted in Indiana.62 OMahony did not defend the saloon, but he believed prohibition had been passed into law by legislators intimidated by [Protestant] fanatics; it would not work, and predicted its repeal within eight or ten years.63 While he regularly mocked Protestantism, the fair-minded among them--those who had a good word for Catholics--were duly noted in his newspaper. Beyond the domestic religious wars, some of OMahonys opinions on other matters showed plenty of scope: Irish affairs at home and abroad were followed closely as were the doings of the Vatican. Favorite targets were socialism wherever espied, the anti-clerical government in Mexico, and of course England for its oppression of Ireland. There was extensive coverage of the outrages perpetrated on the Irish in the early 1920s by the Black and Tans.64 In his hatred for all things British he took real delight in publishing that part of Cecil Rhodes will which looked for the future British empire to include all of Africa, the Holy land, the Valley of the Euphrates, . . . the whole of South America, . . . the seaboard of China and Japan, [and] the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire.65 The Ku Klux Klan was a favorite and frequent target, likewise the Versailles Treaty, the League of Nations, and the World Court. OMahony was anti-Masonic, anti-Sacco-Vanzetti, and anti-Soviet. He didnt like the American Civil Liberties Union, radicals, anarchists, Bolshevists, or U.S. Senator Thomas Heflin of Alabama (an anti-Catholic bigot of national renown). The local press would be thumped for 60 IC&R, 8 Dec 1916. See James Divita, Holy Rosary [[needs cite]] 61 Indiana Catholic and Record, 28 March 1914, 4. 62 Indiana Catholic and Record, 27 February 1920, 4; 21 November 1919, 4. 63 Indiana Catholic and Record, Prohibition, 17 January 1919, 4. Sadly, in later yers he became an alcoholic. 64 Denied promised Home Rule, the IRA waged war against the English authorities. Black and tans referred to the mismatched uniforms of khaki and dark green worn by the ex-servicemen England sent to put down the guerilla war. The Irish, like my parents, claimed that the black and tans were recruited from the sweepings of English prisons. See the IC&R, 28 January 1921, 4, for Detroit Bishop Michael J. Gallagher denunciation of the U.S. State Department for deporting Donald OCallaghan, the Lord Mayor of Cork. OCallaghans predecessor, Terrence McSwiney, had famously died in Brixton prison on hunger strike a short while before; see 11 March 1921, for Msgr. Gavisks letter to the Indianapolis News. 65 IC&R, 13 December 1929, 4. 16 perceived slurs on the Church; his attacks on the Indianapolis Times (one of the most socialistic papers in America) was wide-ranging: according to OMahony it was anti-religious, pro-birth control, and the serial fiction it published bordered on the obscene. In supporting the cancellation of Europes war debts owed the United States, the Indianapolis Times was also un-American. In short, Catholics should not take the paper.66 Naturally, OMahonys IC&R lauded Al Smith, the Catholic parties in Germany and Austria, the influence of the Church in Ireland, the Knights of Columbus, the pope, and Mayor Lew Shank and Attorney-general Arthur L. Gilliom (both foes of the Ku Klux Klan). In the newspaper business questions about bias inevitably arise. For the ideological press there is the matter of the party line; for the secular, commercial press its what the publisher wants, which comes down to selling a lot of newspapers. In the case of the Catholic press, it has to do with the relationship between the editor and the diocesan bishop concerned, and the latters view of the independence proper to the former. Francis Satolli, soon after becoming the first apostolic delegate to the United States provided an authoritative view in 1893: a priest-editor in Colorado was engaged in a dispute with his bishop. Satolli ruled that it was not enough to be in accord with all the doctrines of the Church; also required was uniform respect, deference, and submission to the Bishops, but especially to ones own [bishop], for it is to them that the Holy Ghost has committed the government of the Church. 67 Having in OMahony no need to ride herd on an editor given to unorthodoxy, Bishop Joseph Chartrand took a commonsensical view: the Church exercised full authority on doctrine and faith and morals; on other matters Catholic editors are at liberty to express their own views and he praised the ten year old Indiana Catholic and Record for having nobly acquitted itself in every way. 68 When the Catholic Press Association convened in the city, February 1922, Chartrand told the delegates that it was indispensable that religion should use this modern vehicle of intelligence to spread the truth, to check and to crush that which is false and immoral . . . . As for editorial independence, while we might not always agree with the opinions . . . expressed in its columns, so long as faith and morals were not attacked, entire freedom of expression ought to be granted to editors. In largeness of mind we should be able to discriminate between essentials and mere personal opinion. 69 In a pastoral letter a year later Chartrand reiterated: To be broad-minded enough to know that editors should be left free, and, that as long as faith and morals are not at stake, their personal opinions may be taken for what they are worth, is surely not an unreasonable favor to be expected of the reader. 70 In their own 1922 pastoral the American bishops 66 IC&R, 3 September 1926, 4. 67 Catholic Record, 7 September 1893, 4. 68 IC&R, 17 September 1920, 1. 69 19 February 1922, pastoral letter, Chartrand papers, Box 18, Catholic Archives. 70 28 January 1923, pastoral letter, Box 18, Catholic Archives. 17 compared a Catholic editor to a teacher, with largest opportunity to instruct, to criticize, to fashion opinions and to direct movements. To this OMahony added that such an editor speaks to far greater numbers than can be reached in the largest church ever built.71 In OMahony, Chartrand had an editor who never gave trouble over questions of morals or doctrine, nor any sign that he was troubled by the Churchs stand on either. Regarding divorce, for example, OMahony shared the hierarchys loathing and harped again and again against it. Shocked that the federal census showed that one in twelve American marriages failed (one in ten, if you eliminated Catholic marriages from the equation), OMahony showed his Irish Jansenist side in wanting the divorced ostracized; as for the divorced remarrying, it was animalistic!72 His anger at divorce was nothing compared to his disgust for birth control. *** Birth control has been practiced since time immemorial and was widely used in France from the early 1800s (sent in the mail, condoms came to be called French letters), and in the rest of Europe and America from the late nineteenth century at the latest. Infant mortality in Europe was high; medical ignorance, food shortages, and poor nutrition meant that it took seven pregnancies to produce two adults, at a time when children from a young age were an agricultural asset. By the late 1800s lower mortality and greater urbanization reversed the pattern and more recourse to contraception followed. The practice was common enough in the United States to inspire the federal Comstock Law of 1873 (Anthony Comstock, 1844-1915, the nations semi-official crusader-moralist), banning pornography and the dissemination of objects or information for the prevention of conception. By 1914 twenty-two states had enacted little Comstock laws.73 For the Church, anything having to do with sex is never parvitas materiae (a small or slight matter). Sex is to be limited always to married partners and has as its primary end procreation; artificial means that frustrate nature are not permitted, but rather every conjugal sexual act to be licit must be open to the possibility of creating new life. There was neither dissent from--nor controversy among-Catholic moral theologians about the teaching, yet the Church was reluctant to discuss birth control in 71 IC&R, 3 February 1922, 4. 72 Catholic Columbian Record,The Horrors of Divorce, 4 December 1908, 4. Note also Indianas Disgrace, Indiana Catholic, 27 April 1910, 4; Divorce Figures a Disgrace to Indiana, Indiana Catholic and Record, 11 July 1919, 4; Alimony, Indiana Catholic and Record,10 March 1916, 4. 73 Jill Lapore, Birthright, The New Yorker magazine (November 14, 2011, 44-55. 18 public. Pope Leo XIIIs encyclical on marriage, Arcanum divinae sapientiae, 10 February 1880, made no mention of it, and although the first draft of Rerum Novarum, 1891, denounced contraception as a detestable act and called upon the pope to stop its growth in Catholic countries the reference was removed (Is it appropriate to remark on such depravity?). It has been said that before the 31 December 1930 encyclical Casti connubii (Chaste Marriage) the clergy were told not to trouble the laitys conscience on the matter.74 The chief challenger to Comstockery and the Catholic Church was Margaret Sanger, one of eleven children born of a devout Catholic mother and a freethinking, outspoken, atheist father. 75 Sanger came to family limitation having observed the effects of her mothers frequent pregnancies, the breakdown in health that excessive childbearing caused, and the botched abortions she had seen as a visiting nurse in New York City. Influenced by the radical socialists, Sanger saw contraception as a way to enrich womens sexual experience and deny exploitive capitalists an abundant and docile workforce. In 1912 and 1913 she wrote What Every Girl Should Know, for The Call, a socialist daily. In 1914, she began publishing The Woman Rebel, an eight-page feminist monthly, coining the term birth control. Six of seven issues were declared obscene and suppressed. Indicted, she fled to Europe, returning in 1915 after the charges were dropped (prosecutors having judged a jury trial would aid her cause). Now famous, Sanger spent much of 1916 traveling the country giving her birth control lecture over a hundred times, always before packed and enthusiastic crowds . . . . 76 She was certainly well received in Indianapolis in May 1916 at the Claypool Hotel: 77 The topic, her notoriety, and her picture on page one of The Indianapolis Star the day before her lecture brought a crowd--overwhelmingly women-that overflowed the aisles and had people sitting on the floor or standing in every available space. According to Sanger, 250,000 abortions were performed annually in the U.S., with 60,000 mothers dying during the procedure, and a further 300,000 infants dying of poverty and neglect. Wealthy women already 74 Greeley, Catholic Myth, 96. 75 Her Irish immigrant father, Michael Hennessy Higgins, a stone mason, sticking a sharp stick in the eye of the Church, named a son Henry George McGlynn Higgins, after Henry George, whose book was placed on the Index, and Georges champion, Fr. Edwin McGlynn, a thorn and a cross to his archbishop, New Yorks Michael Corrigan. 76 Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America (Simon and Shuster: New York, 1992), 141. 77 Sangers lecture came at the same time as the national convention on charities and corrections was held in the city, a circumstance that led many to mistakenly assume that Sangers lecture was part of the program for the charities convention! Beyond confusion, it involved some embarassment for Msgr. Gavisk, the vicar general, who, as president of the National Conference on Charities and Corrections, presided over the convention. 19 knew about birth control; working women did not have this knowledge and wanted and needed it. That her message was agreeable to the great majority of the audience could not be doubted. The first question came from a Catholic physician, Dr. Hannah M. Graham, who asked where the country would be if Lincolns mother had chosen birth control and recited the scriptural passage, Suffer the little children . . . This was hooted, hissed and ridiculed. 78 Hundreds of women immediately agreed to form a local birth control league with nearly 200 the following evening at the English Hotel to begin the work. Sanger, who was present, remarked that she had never been accorded such fine treatment as I have been here in Indianapolis.79 OMahony was outraged: Disgrace, Yes, Worse. Never mentioning Sanger by name, the Indiana Catholic and Record termed the lecture a message of Cain. While the speaker deplored the quarter million abortions, the editor wondered at her lack of shock at the millions of children lost to birth control without resource to surgery. Asserting that ensoulment takes place at the moment of conception, Those who practice this so-called birth control are murderers in the same degree as those who practice abortion a few months or weeks before birth . . . or those who take the life of an infant after it has been born.80 On 16 October 1916, on Amboy Street in Brooklyn, Sanger opened the first family limitation clinic.81 Its staff of three, Sanger, 37, and mother of three, her sister, Ethyl Brynne, a nurse, and a receptionist fluent in Yiddish saw the line stretch down the street and around the block. The police closed it down nine days later. Found guilty of violating the Comstock Law Sanger served thirty days in jail. The sentence and Sangers going on hunger strike publicized the movement even more. Its growing acceptance and a new frankness in discussing matters previously regarded as unsuitable for public mention meant that birth control became more openly discussed. By 1920 effective and inexpensive methods of contraception were available in the United States. No longer bohemian, in Indiana and elsewhere contraception was very common among the middle class, less so among the 78 Star, 16 May 1916, 5. 7938. Star, 17 May 1916, 5; Wherever [Sanger] spoke, she left a trail of ad hoc advocacy organizations behind her, . . . Chesler, Woman of Valor, 141. 80 Indiana Catholic and Record, 19 May 1916, 4. Theodore Roosevelt equated the practice with race death: a sin for which there is not atonement, another reason for OMahony to like him. Robert Divine, et. al., America Past and Present, vol. II (New York, 1999), 714. 81 Organizing the American Birth Control League in 1921, its membership tended to be well-to-do native white Protestant Republican women. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, eds. Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement Eight (Charles Scribners Sons: New York, 1988), 567, 568. 20 working class.82 The Great Depression of the 1930s spread the practice greatly with extensive support from doctors.83 Eleanor Roosevelt was typical of upper class Protestant women who supported the distribution of birth control information by physicians. She attracted national attention as chairwoman of the legislative committee of New Yorks Womens City Club when it came out in favor of such a policy in 1928. Eleanor Roosevelts understanding that the issue was a delicate one did not keep her from quietly joining the board of the American Birth Control League that year (she would become a life-long member) nor from speaking at a dinner honoring Margaret Sanger, in 1931. Normally, Mrs. Roosevelt avoided public discussion of birth control after her husbands election in 1932, but sent money anonymously to a clinic in Puerto Rico. In 1940 the The Indiana Catholic and Record carried the news of a press conference at which she supported the planning of children, and revealed her donations to a New York birth control clinic. She met privately with Sanger that year in the White House and at Hyde Park, the familys upstate New York home. Visiting the Washington, D.C. health department in 1940, Mrs. Roosevelt was told that the department could not legally maintain a birth control clinic. 84 While she refused to accept an award in 1942 for her birth control efforts, in July 1944 she spoke favorably of family planning in her Ladies Home Journal column and after her husbands death in April 1945 lent her name to international family planning efforts.85 The IC&R took great exception to her statement in March 1945 that families could be too large for parents to feed.86 A cradle Catholic, Margaret Sanger knew that the Church would be the chief enemy of family limitation. Moral theologian and social reformer Fr. John A. Ryan quickly accepted combat: While birth control was a new subject, wrote Ryan in a 1916 journal article, it was one on which there was no possibility of a difference of opinion. 87 The bishops in their September 1919 social justice pastoral saw true idealism as one that that sees in marriage the divinely appointed plan for cooperating with the 82 Madison, Tradition and Change, 392, based on the Lynds famous study of Muncie, Indiana (Middletown: A Study in American Culture (Harcourt, Brace and World: New York, 1929), 123-127. See also Tentler, Detroit, 479. 83 Madison, Tradition and Change, 340. 84 IC&R, 26 January 1940, 2. Surpringingly, there was no editorial response to this news from the priests who had edited the IC&R since 1933; OMahony would have. 86 Criterion, 9 March 1940, 1, 2. 87 Family Limitation, American Ecclesiastical Review 54 (1916), 684-696, cited in Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, 44. 21 Creator in perpetuating the race . . . The selfishness that leads to race suicide with or without the pretext of bettering the species, is, in Gods sight, a detestable thing. 88 OMahony took comfort that although the size of the average American family had declined in the previous fifty years, especially among the old settlers (from five to just under four children), the new immigrants were more fruitful. To him this was evidence that the Poles, Italians, Jews, and Russians will not stand for the rotten gospel of birth control.89 From time to time the Indiana Catholic and Record would denounce the practice90 and run news items such as: President Theodore Roosevelts order to federal officials in Puerto Rico to desist from teaching Birth Control; 91 the claim of a London doctor, formerly a professor at Royal College of Surgeons, that prevention of motherhood was a prevelant cause of cancer in women. If women would only revert to the habits of primitive races,--maternity at twenty and breastfeeding, it would bring down cancers in reproductive and digestive systems 92; and the judge who held that most divorces happened to childless couples or those with only one or two children. For the IC&Rs editor this was proof that children bring harmony to a marriage. In any case, God will punish.93 Yet OMahony treated birth control with great reluctance because he believed it a subject for the confessional or a priest conducting a parish mission from the pulpit,94 not spread in the pages of a newspaper, let alone a diocesan one. Among his fellow Irish the subject was unmentionable not from mere prudery, he explained, but in respect for the innocent pure and good. But perhaps we were oldfashioned in our Celtic conception of this matter.95 A year later found OMahony lamenting a proposed Washington state law to legalize the sale of contraceptives to married couples: Public decency will be outraged by discussions of something that should not be so much as even mentioned among Christians. Morals will be injured, everyone will have heard it discussed! 96 88 Pastoral Letters of the . . . Catholic Bishops, vol. I, 1792-1940 (National Conference of Catholic Bishops: Washington, D.C., 1984), 310. 89 IC&R, 2 December 1921, 4. 90 IC&R, 3 September 1926; 11 November 1932. 91 McGreevey, Catholics and American Freedom, 160. 92 IC&R, 25 December 1925, 2. 93 IC&R, 25 September 1931, 4. 94 A parish mission were evening retreats segregated by gender conducted usually by religious order priests, such as the Passionists, to rouse the piety and renew and inspire adults. 95 96 IC&R, 27 March 1931, 4. IC&R, 11 March 1932, 4, and again in 20 October 1933, 4, the editor noted his extreme reluctance even to talk about birth control. Still, the IC&R resisted the trend: Reticence reached depths never before plumbed when the IC&R 22 Irish prudery was a large part of OMahonys difficulties in sailing between his desire for reticence and his duty to inform the reader. As the Irish novelist John McGahern (1934-2006) explained in his memoir, thanks to the Churchs teaching, many Irish people at the time and even much later married without any knowledge of sex or of the person they were marrying. The men generally married for sex. There was no other way to have it. The result was a large family in a short time. Seeing the consequences, some determined not to marry and many more could not afford to wed. Long decades under English occupation and the lack of primogeniture meant that landholdings became too small to support a family or having to wait years to inherit. Thus, the ideal was the celibate priest: The love of God was greater than the love of man or woman; the sexual was seen as sin-infected and unclean. As late as the 1940s in rural Ireland, just as Muslims and Hassidic Jews today, males and females sat on different sides of the Church for Mass. As an altar boy McGahern took part in many churchings, the practice that women who had recently given birth came to the altar rail of the empty church after Mass to be cleansed and re-admitted into the full body of the faithful. 97 Beginning about 1910 articles on birth control and divorce appeared and references to prostitution and other words previously avoided came more and more into common use, as well as discussions of the works of Sigmund Freud and Havelock Ellis.98 By the end of the 1920s nearly everyone had heard contraception discussed, thanks in part to the Church of Englands 1908 qnd 1920 Lambeth Conferences that debated contraception. While refusing to countenance the practice in those years, in 1930, by a vote of 193-67, the Anglican Church permitted married couples to use artificial methods to limit births so long as their motives did not arise from selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience. In the U.S. the next March, the Federal Council of Churches (FCC) approved of contraception as valid and moral. Soon the Universalists, Unitarians, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis followed the Federal Council in favoring careful and restrained use of birth control by married couples.99 To the Jesuit weekly magazine America the decision, in its pitiful and craven surrender to the loose sex morality of the age, was a signal and melancholy proof that Protestantism in this country has abandoned all attempts to function as a religious and moral force. 100 The presidents of the Lutheran Church in America and the American Medical Association also condemned the Federal Councils decision. In its own condemnation of the FCC, the IC&Rs issue for 27 March 1931 contained criticized an article supporting birth control, but neither named the magazine nor the author, yet admonishing its readers not to encourage anyone to read it!? IC&R, 14 June 1940, 1, 2. 97 McGahern, A Memoir, 85, 56, 57. 98 Leider, Becoming Mae West, 49 99 McGreevey, Catholics and American Freedom, 161. 100 A National Scandal, America (4 April 1931), 614, 615. The article quoted the presidents of the Lutheran Church in America and the American Medical Association who also condemned the FCCs decision. 23 more on birth control than it had over the previous 21 years. The following week OMahony, recalling Theodore Roosevelts opposition to birth control, questioned President Herbert Hoovers silence. 101 The papal response to birth control was the wide-ranging encyclical, Casti connubii (Of Chaste Marriage), 31 December 1930. While nuanced, Pius XI seemed to cede no ground: Since the conjugal act is destined by nature primarily to beget children, to frustrate it is shameful and intrinsically vicious. No reason, however grave, neither the health of the mother or extreme poverty, can make it moral. Strengthened by Gods grace, whatever the difficulties, no marriage need have resort to birth control, for God does not ask the impossible. Priests were admonished not to lead the faithful into error in the confessional by approval or by guilty silence, and reminded, too, that they would also have to render an account to God.102 Sterilization and abortion were attacked as well, although the latter word was not used, rather the taking of the life of the offspring hidden in the mothers womb. 103 Within the family (and while unsaid, of particular importance with regard to intimacy) the husband held primacy, the wife a ready subjection . . . and willing obedience to her husband. 104 Yet Casti connubii opened the door to change. A single line in a document of some 40 pages that Christian law permitted virtuous continence was widely read as approving the rhythm method when both spouses consented; moreover, the encyclical explicitly approved of conjugal sex post-menopause.105 While the conjugal act is intrinsically tied to procreation, the unitive aspect is also licit. It is not against nature when, because of natural reasons either of time [a womans infertile period] or of certain defects [menopause and infertility] new life can not be brought forth. Secondary ends also existthe cultivation of mutual aid, and the quieting of concupiscence . . . so long as the intrinsic nature of the act is preserved. (Actually, this had been the Churchs view of the Sacred Penitentiary in 1853 and 1860, although some theologians did not agree.) Casti connubii began the shift toward putting the good of the unitive aspect of marriage on the same level as the procreative, though the former remained secondary to both procreation and the education of children. In October 1951, Pius XII in his Address to the Italian Society of Midwives reiterated the ban on contraception, but in the case of serious reason explicitly embraced the rhythm method. Still, until the Second Vatican Council, virginity and celibacy retained their traditional superior status. Vatican II saw the role of sexual expression as the blending of life as a whole 101 IC&R, 27 March, 1931; 3 April 1931, 1. 102 Seven Great Encyclicals, Casti Connubii, 92, 93. 103 Seven Great Encyclicals (Paulist Press: Glen Rock, New Jersey, 1963) secs. 53, 56-58. 104 Casti Connubii, sec. 26. 105 Casti Connubii, sec. 53. The encyclical also spoke gainst eugenics and abortion. 24 and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof.106 Until the mid-1960s then, the hierarchy continued to insist that laity hold to the teaching, asking married couples to be prophetic witnesses. As a priesthistorian has observed, Prophetic witness is by definition not a mass movement.107 At the time, while private Catholic behavior did not always square with Church teaching, public lay dissent on birth control did not exist in the 1940s and 1950s. Who would admit to sinning mortally? Nineteen-thirty also saw the discovery that fertility was limited to a few days in the menstrual cycle and that ovulation occurs 12 to 16 days before menstruation. 108 Independently, a researcher in Japan and in Austria published their findings. Leo J. Latz, M.D. of the Chicago-Loyola University Medical School soon championed the Ogino-Knaus method as disclosing a rational, natural, and ethical means to space births and . . . regulate intelligently the number of children. In 1932 Latz published The Rhythm of Sterility and Fertility in Women, the first use of the term rhythm in that context. Initially welcomed by the Church, it carried the Ecclesiastical Approbation in the Archdiocese of Chicago. The Jesuit who wrote the introduction enthused that Divine Providence had come to the assistance of mankind . . . by unfolding the secrets of nature. The new knowledge shows us the way out of a difficulty, without compromise of principle.109 The book was a big seller--more than 200,000 copies by 1942; by 1950 it had gone through six revised editions, 22 printings, and had sold 300,000 copies. Latz published pamphlets for priests to give to couples and parishes gave the book as a Bingo prize. The IC&R carried an article from the Michigan Catholic detailing the new findings, in February 1933,110 and a few months later Fr. John A. Ryan wrote approvingly of The Moral Aspects of Periodical Continence in the American Ecclesiastical Review. Judging rhythm comparable to intercourse during the sterile period of a pregnant or a menopausal woman, Fr. Ryan still condemned its use in the absence of a serious reason--grave 106 Thomas C. Fox, Sexuality and Catholicism (George Braziller: New York, 1995), 34-38. Fox regards this move as an historic shift. It opened the way at Vatican II to see conjugal sex as the blending of life as a whole and the mutual interchange and sharing thereof. 107 McGreevey, Catholics and American Freedom, 232, 233. After nearly 70 years of telling priests not to unduly trouble penitents over artificial birth control, after 2000 the American bishops once again insisted that confessors not mitigate its intrinsic moral evil. 108 The Ogino-Knaus theory: some of the Japanese findings were published as early as 1923; the Austrians work appeared in German medical journals in 1930. 109 Chesler, Sanger, 322, 323. The full subtitle: A discussion of the physiological, practical, and ethical aspects of the discovery of Dr. K. Ogino (Japan) and Prof. H. Knaus (Germany) regarding the periods when conception is impossible and when possible. 110 IC&R, 17 February 1933, 4. 25 danger to the mothers health or family destitution--and insisted on the subordination of sensual gratification to procreation.111 Fr. Ryans reservations were a harbinger of the Churchs more considered response. Despite the all but the unanimous approval of [Protestant] ministers and church organizations . . . advocacy of limited birth control, for the IC&R periodic continence was one thing, artificial birth control remained another. As the papers new editorial board of diocesesan priests observed (replacing OMahony in October 1932), contraception is like limited stealing, limited illegitimacy, limited murder, limited blasphemy.112 Latz himself, a devout Catholic who set aside the profits of his book for Loyola University, was summarily fired from its medical faculty in August 1934. When, in May 1936, the YWCA adopted a resolution that physicians should provide birth control information, the Indiana Catholic and Record objected: birth control remained a nasty subject, a filthy pagan practice indecent for women to even discuss.113 Catholic journalists and clergy rallied to the pope. On the national level, Fr. Daniel A. Lord, S.J., in his pamphlet, Speaking of Birth Control (by 1946 in its 22nd printing and available in most parish church vestibules) called wives who use birth control daughters of joy, that is to say, prostitutes. 114 The influence of the Catholic Church, suddenly marshaled in force and sound[ing] every possible alarm, succeeded in stopping legislation to lift the ban on birth control for more than a generation. With Catholic voters holding the balance of power in many urban congressional districts, many politicians, fearing political death, would not cross the hierarchy. 115 The American bishops, alarmed by a menacing decline in the birth rate, weighed in with a pastoral against the promotion of the godless, selfish, and inhuman propaganda of birth prevention. That the Great Depression provided economic justification for family limitation was dismissed as an argument for a criminal marital life [begotten by the] new paganism of our day.116 The Jesuit weekly America and the lay-edited Commonweal magazine outdid the bishops: For America, contraceptive intercourse was merely mutual masturbation; Commonweal claimed it for leading to sterility, frequent infections, cancer, and neurological and psychological disorders. 117 In the four volume, standard work on moral theology used in Catholic seminaries, defending birth control was one of four general reasons why a book would be placed on the Index of Prohibited Books: Books which 111 Burns, Notre Dame Story, 45, 46. 112 IC&R, 11 November 1932, 4. Note, in October OMahony had been bought out of the IC&R. 113 IC&R, 15 May 1936, 4. 114 Blanchard, Catholic Power, 141. 115 Emmanuel Cellar of Brooklyn, for example. Chesler, Sanger, 329, chapter 15. 116 Bishops Pastoral, 384. 117 Morris, American Catholics, 150, 154. 26 professedly treat of, narrate, or teach matters that are lewd or obscene, such as the defense of methods of birth control. For the publisher, seller, author, knowing readers or possessors, excommunication was ipso facto.118 For over a dozen years, right through 1945, the priest-editors of the IC&R attacked the practice of contraception, for example, reprinting an article by a priest in Liberty magazine comparing contraception with masturbation, biological rape, concubinage, and prostitution. Rejecting the arguments of the health of the mother or for economic reasons, the author expected that honest research by the medical profession would show its harmful effects. In any case, contraception was materialistic. 119 The IC&R, equating birth control clinics with brothels, defended New York Archbishop Francis Spellmans statement that its advocates were prophets of decadence against criticism from a group of New York ministers.120 In January 1941, the Indianapolis archdiocese was able to deny the Maternal Health Clinics inclusion in the citys Council of Social Agencies on the ground its presence on the council (comprised of all the welfare agencies in Marion County and the parent organization of the Indianapolis Community Fund) would create disharmony, as it was seen as just a birth control agency. 121 In 1942 the Indiana Catholic and Record fairly characterized the Churchs position when it editorialized, Even though contraception could be shown that the unholy interference with the laws of mans nature promoted the welfare of the individual and the good of the State, the Church would still maintain its condemnation. The morality of an act is not to be ascertained by its social or economic results. Birth control leads to ruin for nations that adopt it; they face the peril of depopulation. 122 The IC&R looked on ancient Rome as an example of an empire destroyed by the practice. It was the Catholic Church that saved Europe and only it still speaks authoritatively against birth control. Citing an Oxford University deans prediction, within the next century, America would be Catholic because American Catholics did not practice contraception.123 Only the Church defends the family, standing against birth control, companionate marriage, and divorce. She still believes that the wife is more than a harlot and that 118 Fr. Henry Davis, Moral and Pastoral Theology, vol. II (Sheed and Ward: New York, 1935), 418 ff., cited in Blanchard, Catholic Power, 184. 119 IC&R, 20 August 1937, 1. 120 IC&R, 21 June 1940, 4. 121 IC&R, 31 January 1941, 1. 122 IC&R, 20 February 1942, 4. 123 IC&R, 13 April 1945, 4. 27 no worldly career can compare with that of motherhood. Concluded the IC&Rs priest-editors, only Catholics and those who believe in her morality have a right to celebrate Mothers Day. 124 Yet there were signs that the question of artificially limiting births was not so easily resolved. One discordant note was a wide-ranging 1937 article, An Alarmist Speaks, in the lay-edited, Catholic weekly, Commonweal magazine.125 Fr. E. Harold Smith, a priest of the New York archdiocese, placed birth control in the larger context in what he judged the Churchs failure to embrace in sympathy the hardships of the working class. Even in the good times of the late 1920s, he noted, forty percent of the working class in America lived in poverty; moreover, birth control clinics reported that one-third of urban women seeking information were Catholic. Partly due to birth control [and the Great Depression] the parochial school population had already declined. More and more, for economic reasons Catholics were faced with the choice of practicing heroic virtue or of ceasing to be practical Catholics. Of sexual abstinence we know full well that this cannot be the normal mode of life. What was to be done? Contrary to the clerical habit of the time, the priest admitted he didnt have the answer: But it would seem at this late date we ought to be willing to face facts. Let the truth be told. This was the idea that Leo XIII set for historical writing. Unfortunately, not all Catholic writers and editors have been sufficiently imbued with this spirit. They will suppress evidence for fear of giving scandal or causing harm. It is and always has been a mistaken course. Deus non eget mendacio, (God doesnt need [the help of] lies). Our duty is to tell the truth and the whole truth.126 Fr. Smith was corrct in his belief that the practice of contraception was growing among Catholics: Between 1923 and 1931, the average client of birth control clinics was a native-born woman with only an elementary school education; married eight years, pregnant four times, with one in five pregnancies aborted. While Catholics were less than twenty percent of the population, they were twenty-six percent of the clinics clientele.127 As Fr. Smith saw the dilemma, all right, the teaching cannot be changed, but how can a poor worker have another child? He had no answer. 124 IC&R, 4 May 1945, 4, not the first time this claim was made. 125 Commonweal, An Alarmist Speaks (January 1, 1937). The editors admitted concern in publishing such a sensitive article for a general readership rather than limiting it to the clergy. What set the article in a special category was its criticism of the Church for its reactionary politics and the authors admission that he didnt have all the answers. 126 E. Harold Smith, An Alarmist Speaks, Commonweal (January 1, 1937), 263. 127 Chesler, Sanger, 294. 28 Loath to drop the subject, six weeks later Commonweal offered an analysis comparing prominent Catholics,--the 3,800 men and women listed in the American Catholics Whos Who (ACWW)--with those found in Whos Who in America (WWA). In the second half of the twentieth century, at least the better educated, knew that Catholic practice regarding divorce and birth control, to name two, was indistinguishable from Protestant behavior. The magazines data revealed that the fecundity of the upperclass Catholics was as lacking as their Protestant social equals: thirty percent of the ACWWs Catholic married men had no children (twenty-nine percent of those married over five years); only one prominent Catholic married man in twenty-five had seven children or more, with the average number of children for all married men listed at 2.3, only slightly more than the 2.1 average for married men in Whos Who in America. This was barely the replacement rate. Of the women in the ACWW only one-third were married; of these, one in three had no children. Of those women married in the last ten years those with no children were double those with children. Overall, the married women averaged only 1.9 offspring. Of the more than 200 Catholic women listed, only two had as many as six children. Obviously, with few or no children, it is easier to pursue a career or avocation and to become prominent. Turning from the Catholic elite, data drawn from a study of students in Catholic schools--a cross section of urban Catholic families from high to low social and economic standing--the average family had 4.3 children, twice the number of the Catholic Whos Who family. Commonweal concluded that the Catholic elite, just as the Protestant elite, thanks to birth control, was not reproducing itself. It was inescapable. 128 Also of interest, the Catholic Whos Who showed the unmistakable clericalism of the Church in that nearly forty percent of the male entries were bishops and other clergy--one for every 23 clergy in the nation versus one in every 6,000 of the adult laity). The Churchs patriarchal nature was also on display: the religious sisters, despite being several times the number of clergy and holding important responsibilities in running colleges, hospitals, and other institutions, nevertheless comprised fewer than two percent of the entries, (one for every twenty priests entries). In the 1930s and 1940s physicians and social workers commonly promoted contraception, although in some places with conditions. For example, in Indianapolis the Indiana Birth Control League (IBCL) initially served only poor married women with two or more children by referral from a physician or social service agency. If you could pay you would not be given access and there was no attempt to publicize the agency. That changed in the 1940s as the IBC League began to advertise. 129 There were 128 Commonweal, About Prominent Catholics (February 17, 1937), 459-461. 129 Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, 1118; In the 1950s the renamed organization, Planned Parenthood of America, had new offices in the English Foundation Building. 29 other signs of increasing acceptance of contraception: In 1935 the nations General Federation of Womens Clubs called for the repeal of the Comstock ban of birth control information and devices from the mails, and in 1937 the American Medical Association declared contraception a proper medical practice (a stand that the Catholic Physicians Guild, of course, condemned). 130 That year Puerto Rico legalized birth control despite objections by the Catholic Church. By then, 40 of the then 48 states either had no birth control law or already exempted physicians; by 1940 only Massachusetts and Connecticut restricted the sale of contraceptives, and the law there was frequently evaded. In the early 1940s Planned Parenthood of America (the name adopted in 1942 by the Birth Control Federation of America) distributed literature to 300,000 women in 794 Planned Parenthood centers in hospitals, health departments, and clinics, and reported that 21 of 77 medical schools give adequate instruction on conception control. 131 On the other hand, in February 1939, a bill that would have licensed the sale of contraceptive devices was withdrawn in the Indiana House of Representatives. Such sales continued to be banned in Indiana and federal law still prohibited the use of the mails to send such devices. 132 Legal setbacks in Massachusetts and Connecticut stood until 1965; only in 1970 would Congress rewrite Federal Comstock laws and remove the label of obscenity from contraception. 133 The shift toward acceptance of birth control was reflected in polls. When the Gallup Organization asked in 1936 if information on birth control should be made legal, 70 percent said yes. In 1940, asked if they would approve or disapprove having government health clinics furnish birth control information to married people who wanted it, 77 percent approved. That year the priest-editors of the Indiana Catholic and Record cited a poll more to their liking: at all-women College of New Rochelle, New York, marriage was a given for these Catholic young women who, on average, professed to hope for 6.6 children. Some wanted as many as fourteen, and a decided preference was expressed for twins. 134 While it is impossible to know whether they were sincere or joking, there is plenty of evidence that from the 1930s priests privately admitted contraception is the hardest problem of the confessional today. About onethird of married Catholics admitted to using birth control in the 1930s. In view of the Churchs condemnation, the practice was more common yet. *** 130 Tentler, Detroit, 480; IC&R, 18 June 1937, 1, 2. 131 IC&R, 12 March 1943, 1. 132 IC&R, 10 February 1939, 1. 133 Chesler, Sanger, 375, 376. 134 IC&R, 2 February 1940, 1. 30 A related issue to birth control was the proper place of women in society. In the years after the Civil War some American bishops favored the vote for women, but most did not. Even the motives of those bishops who favored it may have done so to balance the votes of freed black men, rather than simply to grant women their rights. This was the position of the white women reformers of the day who argued against the injustice of giving the vote to Negro men, often illiterate, while withholding it from them. But Catholic clergy and the male laity largely opposed votes for women: The Irish Catholic journalist and editor, Bostons John Boyle OReilly, championed many liberal causes but not womens rights. In 1871, with considerable heat, he called votes for women an unjust, unreasonable, unspiritual abnormality, . . . a hard, undigested, tasteless, devitalized proposition. It is a half-fledged, unmusical promethian abomination. It is a quack bolus to reduce masculinity even by the obliteration of femininity . . . it is the sediment, not the wave of the sex. 135 Cardinal James Gibbons was also notable for his denunciations of the womens suffrage movement, in 1904, declaring himself heartily glad that women could not vote--I hope the day will never come when she can vote, and if the right is granted to her, I hope she will regret it. Gibbons did support local suffrage for women who owned property (presumably such women were both conservative and genteel), but he opposed general suffrage on grounds similar to OReilly, saying, You are the queens of the domestic kingdom. Do not stain your garments with the soil of the political arena. Suffragettes were the worst enemies of the female sex, brazen, masculine. Men were by nature coarse, but participation in politics would coarsen women and lead to divorce. 136 In 1916 Gibbons sent a message of support to the First National Anti-Suffrage Convention and in a speech to a Catholic womens group, pronounced voting incompatible with the role of wife and mother: When a woman enters the political arena she goes outside the sphere for which she was intended. She gains nothing by the journey. On the other hand, she loses that exclusiveness, respect and dignity to which she is entitled in her home. 137 OBoyle and Gibbons expressed the storied Victorian Code, at that time the governing mores of English-speaking Protestants and Catholics alike. Under the cult of domesticity, women, at least of the middle and upper classes, were judged too good for the rough and tumble world; the home, womens sphere, was to be kept as a refuge for her husband and the school in which she instilled the virtues appropriate to sons and daughters. By nature, as Rerum Novarum had it, womens work was homework, for to mix the sexes in workshops and factories endangered morals. 135 136 137 Boston Pilot, 4 January 1871, 3, cited in Diner, Erins Daughters, 141. Life of Gibbons, Vol II, 782-784. Hastings, Vatican II and After, 260. 31 An extreme example of male chauvinism was the question that arose in 1909 whether women should be permitted to write for the proposed Jesuit magazine, America. In soliciting the views of the orders provincials, the editor found one wholly against the idea; another would permit it, but only under male pseudonyms, while the rest assented to having womens submissions appear over their own bylines. Having determined not to exclude women, the editor proposed only the most distinguished writers among them should be employed. Implicit in this solution was that women had to meet a higher standard for inclusion than men.138 Did such gynophobic objections to women authors have to do with their operating in the public sphere as such or that womens writings promiscuously appearing alongside male efforts would somehow render the magazine incelibate? By the 1890s in Europe, America, and even Japan, womens agitation for their rights grew apace. Feminist speakers of the day attacked the Catholic Church on the issue, saying that no other Western institution was so patriarchal or so confident of its right to legislate morals. In 1913 Joseph P. OMahony, editor of the Indiana Catholic, noticed the woman question and agreed that the Church had no dogma against women taking non-traditional roles in society; still, he wrote, their place was in the home. While OMahony believed that some public boards and commissions would greatly benefit from womens service--an important concession--he remained sure that only a small percentage would vote and of that small number the worst element--the Godless Socialistic element would control. Furthermore, he believed Catholic women did not want the vote. 139 A few years later, OMahony saw things differenty, American participation in the World War having intervened. In summer 1918 the Indiana Catholic and Record went so far as to proclaim, this is the age of the working girl. Women, it was now conceded, were valuable to business. According to OMahony, the unmarried woman who works was a thousand times to be preferred to one who lives off her fathers bounty and presides at pink teas. The good news was that such work did not spoil a woman for marriage and motherhood; rather her earnings save her from a marriage of convenience in order to procure a home and a wardrobe--presumably, a working girl could obtain clothes with her earnings and the husband she preferred.140 True to his new principles, in the 1920s and 1930s OMahony employed his adopted daughter and a niece (both unmarried) at the Indiana Catholic and Record. 138 America, 19 May 2008, 11. 139 Indiana Catholic, 26 September 1913, 4. 140 Indiana Catholic and Record, 9 June 1919, 4. OMahony was survived by his wife, a daughter, and a sister (Mrs. Thomas J. Doyle of Indianapolis), a sister in Galway, a nun, and a nephew, Fred OMahony. The daughter, Cecelia Agnes OMahony, lived at home at the time of OMahonys death. A good guess would be that the daughter never 32 In February 1919, the American bishops, in their Program for Social Reconstruction, admitted that womens war service had been second only to the soldiers contribution. Mere justice, to say nothing of chivalry, should see [women] suffer no more than necessary from unemployment. But the bishops had reservations: For reasons of health and morals women should no longer be employed as streetcar conductors or in cleaning locomotives as they had during the war. And while they should earn equal pay for equal work (a notably progressive view for the times), their presence in industry should be kept as low as possible.141 That September the bishops, noting the trend in civilized countries was to expand womens roles beyond the household toward a larger share in occupations traditionally left to men--the professions, industry, and with the vote--politics. They were willing to imagine that womens suffrage might prove an advantage in so far as she may purify and elevate our political life . . . . Failing that, however, they implied that womens suffrage was a mistake.142 True, the womens vote would raise the level of civil discourse, but most felt the costs outweighed the benefits. What the bishops may not have known is that Benedict XV privately said that he hoped to see women voting universally. 143 In September 1920, America magazine, trying to calculate the consequences of womens suffrage, also wondered if the contest with men in the grimy game of politics . . . vulgarize and coarsen womens fine nature, or will her love for purity and high ideals enable her to breathe without serious injury the air of the caucus room and the polling place? Time will tell.144 For its part, the IC&R pointed out that the bishops 1919 program for social reconstruction conceded the right to vote and also supported the principle of equal pay for equal work. By the early 1920s women were a quarter of the labor force. OMahony grasped, as many had not, that women who worked for wages did so to support their families, not for pin money. The old theory of women being the homemakers and men the providers no longer holds in practice. 145 In this OMahony was considerably advanced over that of the noted Fr. John A. Ryan: In his book, A Living Wage (his dissertation), Ryan held with Pope Leo XIII, Cardinal Gibbons, and the journalist John Boyle OReilly that it was imperative married, but she might have had qualities--perhaps even proved herself in the business world--and thus persuaded her father to take a liberal view of womens capacities. Many daughters (and wives) do. 141 Bishops Pastoral Letters, vol. I, 261. 142 Bishops Pastoral, 313, 314. Reher, Catholic Intellectual Life iln America, 104. Criterion, 16 March 2001, 13. 143 144 145 Cited in America, 13 April 2009, 51. IC&R, 20 July 1923, 4. 33 that the wife and mother should not engage in any labor except that of the household.146 Besides his obeisance to Rerum Novarum and traditional gender roles, Ryan thought that subtracting married women from the work force would increase the bargaining power of men and result in employers paying a family living wage. This was a point Pius XI had made in his 1931 encylical Quadragesimo Anno: Mothers should especially devote their energies to the home and the things connected with it. Most unfortunate, . . . is the abuse whereby mothers of families, because of the insufficiency of the Fathers salary, are forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the domestic walls to the neglect of their own proper cares and duties, particularly the education of their children. 147 By the mid-1920s, however, OMahony was ready to entertain views of womens capacities perfectly heretical in the nineteenth century and not much favored generations later. Among them was OMahonys conviction that in certain endeavors women were mens superior, in particular suggesting that Commercial and industrial opportunites based on scientific research have a peculiar appeal to the woman. If science-bent, a woman is even more stimulated than a man, he asserted, and she brings more patience to tasks. Embracing the ultimate heterodoxy, OMahony allowed that many women are the intellectual superiors of many men.148 That OMahoneys wifes niece worked at the newspaper in important capacities the last dozen years of its existence and his daughter was the bookkeeper, 19281932, helps explains his relatively enlightened views on women (and that neither were married made it easier). A few months later the editor seemed to be backsliding when he praised Wyomings female governor for saying that no success in business or politics approximates the success of a wife and mother. Declaring himself happy to hear such an old-fashioned thought from a woman, yet he was not responding to the praise of traditional female domesticity, but the governors rejection of defining success in those terms of wealth and celebrity, a rejection OMahony shared. He, too, believed too many men defined success in those terms, a view quite in keeping with Catholic social teaching. 149 146 McGreevey, Catholics and American Freedom, 154. In this and other ways (e.g., church and state relations), clergymen such as Ryan would have found the 1937 Irish Free State Constitution to their liking: With life within the home their rightful place and ambition, the Irish government had the power to exclude women from any industry. Mothers were actively discouraged from working outside the home; in practice, even married women without children were not employed. Note Booth Tarkingtons novel, Alice Adams. 147 Quadragesimo Anno, sec. 71. 148 IC&R, 28 May 1926, 4. 149 IC&R, 4 June 1926, 4. 34 Once the Nineteenth Amendment gave American women the suffrage in 1920, in due course twenty-nine other nations granted it before 1939. (Even so, in the 1930s twenty-six states had laws prohibiting the employment of married women.) Although Cardinal Gibbons called it a plunge into the deep, he nevertheless encouraged all Catholic women and nuns to exercise it, lest the influence of the church be reduced.150 In 1926 the IC&R agreed. While the majority of Catholics had opposed votes for women (and no one more than Gibbons), it was now a fact and Catholic women (who had not voted as often as Protestant women), must now do so. Those who do not vote are not only false to womanhood but recreant in a serious moral obligation. 151 Of course, women were to vote for men, as most traditionalists never imagined that women would, or should, hold political office. In 1928 Eleanor Roosevelt, unhappy that too many women who had fought for the suffrage had gone back to housekeeping, made that very complaint. To the degree women did not participate in public life, she declared, they were not equal. Although women understood the issues readily enough, the IC&R thought few found politics congenial or take to it naturally. Men have always run affairs of state; it was a natural function of the sex. Were women required to share that task on an equal basis, it would have been known long ago and acted on. It is highly improbable that the time will come when men will cease to run the parties or hold the reins of government. Nature seems to forbid it . . . 152 The deprecation of women was entirely in keeping with Pius XIs encyclical Castii Connubii two years later. Far from supporting womens emancipation, the pope warned against the neglect of husband, children, and family that such emanicipation entailed. A false liberty and unnatural equality with the husband is to the detriment of the woman herself, for if the woman descends from her truly regal throne to which she has been raised within the walls of the home . . . she will soon be reduced to the old state of slavery . . . and become as amongst the pagans the mere instrument of man. In the dignity of the human soul there was equality of rights, but in other things there must be a certain inequality and due accommodation.153 Someone has to decide, and the bishops were sure it is the man. *** In July 1931, the Indiana Catholic and Record announced that Joseph Patrick OMahony had retired as editor on account of continued illness. There were no further details. In fact, hed suffered a serious mental breakdown in early June; roaring drunk, his wife Bridget and adopted daughter Cecelia 150 151 Life of Gibbons, Vol II, 788. IC&R, 17 September 1926, 4; 26 September 1926, 4. 152 IC&R, 27 April 1928, 4. 153 Casti Connubii, secs. 26, 98, 76. 35 had him committed to Central State Hospital, the state asylum for the insane in Indianapolis. 154 In late July, Mrs. OMahony, responding to a sympathetic letter from Fr. John Cavanaugh, C.S.C., former president of the University of Notre Dame (1905-1919), with whom her husband had exchanged letters since 1926, confirmed her husbands nervous breakdown. The Doctors think with rest and care he may be restored to health again. In the meantime, she was helping in the office to keep expenses down and believed the newspapers future was very encouraging as the new editor, Paul Martin . . . is considered a very brilliant young man.155 People from all over the state had written that the heart is out of the paper when OMahonys gone, but I trust this will not be so as we need the paper to keep on. Now penniless, deprived of [her] husbands wages, I must try and hold the paper whilst he is alive. These themesher husbands indispensability to the IC&R, the odds for his return, hard economic times, the familys looming destitution, explicit and implicit calls for help--would be sounded repeatedly in her husbands subsequent letters to the Holy Cross priest. 156 Fr. Cavanaugh was worth knowing: an orator and essayist of national renown, he is credited by the universitys historian with being one of the two architects of the modern Notre Dame (his successor, James A. Burns, C.S.C., was the other).157 The relationship between the journalist and the priest was based on mutual advantageCavanaughs book reviews, sermons, and speeches provided matter for the IC&R and the IC&R provided the priest and the university good press. Beyond that, they shared a devotion to Irelands independence and a white-hot hatred of England. His father from Tyrone, his mother from Armaugh, the Ohio-born Cavanaugh and the Irish-born OMahony accepted totally the ideals and values of Irish nationalism.158 They would see each other when OMahony attended a religious retreat at Notre Dame or a speaking engagement brought Cavanaugh to Indianapolis and hed visit the OMahony home. With the benefit of hindsight, OMahonys first letter to Cavanaugh, 11 November 1926, hinted that all was not well either with the editor or the newspaper. OMahony wrote of some health concerns he was only 56--which made him desirous to sell the Indiana Catholic & Record or, failing that, attract Founded in the early 1890s as the Central Indiana Hospital for the Insane, Indianapolis, in 1927 the name was changed to Central Indiana Hospital. 154 155 27 July 1931. Martin, an Indianapolis native, was the Notre Dame alumnus who had persuaded his Protestant grandfather to give $5,000 to save the IC&R in 1913; he served as associate editor, 1914-1917. For several years drama critic for the Indianapolis Star, Martin had worked in Washington, D.C., for Chicago newspapers, and taught sociology and literature at Loyola University-Chicago. 156 27 July 1931. 157 Theirs were the critical years for Notre Dames development from a preparatory school-centered institution to a college-centered one. Robert E. Burns, Being Catholic, Being American: The Notre Dame Story, 18421934 (University of Notre Dame Press: Notre Dame, Indiana, 1999), 38, 66, 67. 158 Burns, The Notre Dame Story, 68. 36 new capital to it: Altho everything is going well with the paperand it is making money, I would like to retire and take a needed rest (emphasis orig.). Did Cavanaugh know anyone that might be interested? It is paying good salaries and a good dividend and discounts all its bills. I control the stock. Have you any Catholic young man inmind? A week later he mentioned that he would like additional capital; it would help to make a higher and better paper.159 Nothing came of these hints. Daughter Cecelia remembered 1926 as the year her father first showed signs of insanity. She told the doctors of her fathers forging, stealing, and bad checks; of taking the Keeley cure, but without benefit, (a popular program of the time for inebriates which combined drugs and residential living), his use of drugsverenol, allonol, and luminal, all the time; his treatment on three occasions at a St. Louis sanitarium and once at a French hospital for the insane, in 1925. Before his collapse in June 1931, she described his attacks of mental instability as continuous and use of alcohol excessive. Easily excited, at times violent and delusional, in the hospital OMahony believed he had been kidnapped and the victim of a frameup. At first, he blamed his wifeshe was persecuting him to get his money. Egotistical (he had a high opinion of his abilities), excitable, an incessant talker, he denied drinking to excess or experiencing delerium tremens or that anything was wrong with him mentally. His was a textbook case: mental disorder, persecution complex, alcohol, and drug abuse overlayed by financial anxieties that had predated the onset of the Great Depression. Four examining physicians agreed on a diagnosis of paranoia. After seven months at the state hospital, his conduct normal, with no hallucinations or delusions at this time, his wife asked for his discharge and he was furloughed Christmas Eve, 1931. Six days later, home, having just read Cavanaughs more than kind letters of the summer, OMahony dismissed the whole business as trivial: To put the priest at ease at once in your solicitation for me, there was no disaster to my mind, and no real tragedy in the matter. I simply had a domestic quarrel over finances and happened to go to indulging unduly and left home because of conditions into which I will not enter now. I did certain things that any intoxicated man will do, and the result was a vag-mental [mental vagrant] warrant sworn out by his daughter. 160 The rest was easy and I was railroaded out to Central Hospital as an Alcoholic paranoic of which of course there are thousands at large. I never was one 159 11 November; 18 November 1926. Quoted material hand-written postscripts. To avoid putting mental cases in jail until an inquest could be held, they would be charged with mental vagrancy (though there was no such charge), and sent to Central State Hospital. This was still the remedy in the 1940s in Indianapolis. See John Lewis Niblack, The Life and Times of a Hoosier Judge, Wheatland ed., 2012 (Hawthorne Publishing: Carmel, Indiana, 1973), 266, 267. 160 37 minute off my head. It was the most terrible experience and ordeal a sane man ever suffered. He professed wonderment at Poor Father Con Hegerty who had written him that he ought to have been put away twenty years ago. What do you think of that? But enough of that. Now hale and hearty, at five feet, 156 lbs. (hed weighed 115 lbs. at admission), he insisted he never felt so well in twenty-five years.161 As to his persecutors, having first fastened first on My poor wife and my very dear daughter, he absolved them for having unwittingly cooperated with his enemies (now both see the light). 162 Several others made his enemies list and never left. Singled out was my Italian Business manager, Humbert J. Pagani, for plotting, ingratitude, and incompetence. Despite all OMahony had done for him-taking him off the steets jobless seventeen years ago, giving him five shares [in the IC&R] for nothing and put[ting] him on the board, he was always trying to buy the paper or control it.163 [A] natural born Italian miser and you know what that means), that Pagani owned four double houses and other real estate especially vexed OMahony whose own bank balance was next to Nil. Yet it was, he, OMahony, who brought in ninety percent of the papers business. Paganis mismanagement has been awful and his business ability shown to be worthless and incompetent. 164 A second villain was Paul Martin, his replacement during his hospital stay. Martin, who had served before as IC&R associate editor, 1914-1917, it was he that Cavanaugh recommended when in 1926 OMahony asked if he knew of any good Catholic young man who might be interested im taking over the paper. OMahony dismissed the suggestion; while a splendid writer, Martin was a one story man, not an editor. He has contempt for little details and routine, which he would never get down to when he was here165 Now, five years later, OMahony found fault with the way his departure was handled. That streamer headline New editor for the Indiana Catholic, practically burried [sic] me before my time. As with Pagani, he had been Martins benefactorgetting him jobs with the Knights of Columbus, a press agency with the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and a writing contract with the bishops National Catholic Welfare Conference. That neither came to see him in the hospital in six long months 161 30 December 1931. 162 31 May 1932. 30 December 1931. 31 May 1932; 16 July 1932. 18 November 1926. 163 164 165 38 though everyone else did, also rankled. As the controlling owner of the paper, OMahony had his revenge: I am going back to the editorial desk. Paul will have to find something else.166 Barely two months after his return, however, disaster struck again in the form of a serious car accident, 6 March 1932. Suffering a broken leg and busted hip, OMahony spent seven weeks at St. Vincents Hospital. His letters to Cavanaugh grew more frequent (nine from May to November 1932), and more desperate. Home five weeks and editing the paper from there, he was still on crutches. In a twopage, single-spaced letter, much of it criticisms of Pagani, OMahony painted a bleak picture: The days when the newspaper had paid 6 percent interest to stockholders every year since 1911--sometimes more--were over. The paper,like many big corporations, had to pass on paying a dividend and to reduce salaries. Still, some years it had paid 10 percent and it can do so again with proper and loyal management.167 Desperate, he looked to draft this person or that institution to deliver him from his difficulties. First and last, Fr. Cavanaugh and the University of Notre Dame were the preferred nominees for the saviors role. To Cavanaugh he mused how he often wished that Notre Dame had the paper. It would be a great asset for the University . . . . or perhaps you can think of some other way of helping me out. 168 He hatched a plan to get the president of a Columbus, Ohio, savings and loan company to invest in the IC&R; as a very wealthy fellow patient at St. Vincent Hospital (we became great friends), and father to two recent Notre Dame graduates, OMahony wanted Cavanaugh to be his go-between. One son wanted to go into the Catholic newspaper business and the father seemed very anxious that he should. Let me hear from you on this at your earliest convenience. 169 Five weeks later, For the first time in thirty-nine years of married life, I find myself without any weekly salary income & and we have nothing saved. He could always say that I tried to do much for Notre Dame and particularly for the retreat movement. . . . I dont know anything you can do for me except remember me in your masses. . . . Confidentially[,] we would like to sell control of the paper. If you know of anyone . . . . 170 In August he continued to play up his 166 30 December 1931. Before leaving the IC&R, Martin took editorial aim at OMahonys practice of denigrating Protestants by admonishing Catholic editors not to antagonize our separated Brethren and to abstain from carping at or criticizing Protestant services. 167 168 31 May 1932. 31 May 1932. In this letter, for the first time, Chartrand, the good bishop, also came in for extended criticism. See below. 169 10 June 1932. 170 16 July 1932. 39 efforts on behalf of Notre DameYou will notice that we gave the retreat a pretty good noticehed had a nice letter of thanks from Fr. Duffy.171 OMahony finally resigned the editorship 25 June 1932 (he continued to write the editorials anonymously), and in early October the OMahonys were bought out. 172 Still clutching at straws, a kindly letter from Cavanaugh prompted him to ask the priest to suggest to the new manager and his clergy associates to retain him as a columnist or page editor, even providing the preist with a draft of his own letter of recommendation: Mr. OMahony has a great number of friends who have supported the paper for years, . . . I feel I am speaking for many of them when I say that they would feel more kindly towards the paper if he was in someway [sic] connected with it. . . . It would hold his friends [as subscribers] and they are legion. . . . You will excuse this intrusion, but I assure you it is written with the best intention by an old friend of the paper and a close personal friend of Mr. OMahony and his family. 173 Since the point of buying the OMahonys out was to get rid of him, there was no chance the new owner would agree to it. Ten days later, courage gone, he wrote Cavanaugh that his adopted daughter, poor little Cecelia, four years the book keeper, had been fired, her $17 a week salary lost leaving the family without income. And though Eileen Leane, his wifes niece, twelve years at the paper, was kept (they could not make up the paper without her), her salary was cut one-third. He didnt know what would become of them if something does not turn up for me soon. How often I have wished and prayed that . . . about this time of my life I could make myself useful in some place like Notre Dame? It would be a privelege [sic] to live there and work for nothing. But that I suppose is a vain hope with conditions as they are.174 Vain indeed. Fr. Cavanaugh replied: My dear Joe, 171 172 12 August 1932. Notice of his resignation appeared in the IC&R 1 July 1932; IC&R, 21 October 1932, 1, noted it as the sale meant he was obliged to relinquish the editorship. 173 19 October 1932. Perhaps I am going to [sic] far in asking you to do this for me. He ended, With great feelings of personal regard for your good works, . . . and best wishes from Mrs. OMahony and Cecelia, I am my dear Father Cavanaugh, Your old friend. 174 29 October 1932. 40 The misery of the present situation is that everybody seems flat on his back. If you can get through this depression I have no doubt there will be plenty of work for both you and Cecelia. The world was never so deep in sorrow, I think. Not a day passes without a number of pitiful letters, and alas, I cannot help.175 It is a measure of his disjunction with reality that OMahony persisted in looking to Cavanaugh and Notre Dame. His pleas became formulaic and repetitious: Feeling not yet done [emphasis orig.] at 63, he could do a great many things in the newspaper line, or in publicity if he gets a chance. The need being great, he did not want to cry quits especially with a poor wife and daughter . . . with no income whatever . . . August 1933, taken by a friend to the university, ostensibly to make a retreat, he tried twice to see Cavanaugh but failed. I had an idea there might be something at Notre Dame I could do even at smallest wage or none. Reminding the priest of spring 1933 when the OMahonys drove to up to see him, and had such a lovely time, he hoped for a line from you. . . . Your old friend. 176 His last letter to Cavanaugh, St. Stephens Day, 1933, employed the same sad structure: lack of employment was a sad trial because, apart from a little lameness, as capable as I ever was . . . . and I must do some thing. . . . His wife and daughter are in a bad way, in Indianapolis [he was in Cincinnati] and they really need some little income from me as they have none. Feeling a forgotten man, hed be delighted and much comforted to hear from the priest, if he could spare the time. 177 OMahonys disappointment in the Holy Cross priest never showed in the letters; at worse, his tone was wistful. His displeasure with Bishop Joseph Chartrands failure to help, however, was unalloyed: Of thirteen letters to Cavanaugh, December 1931 to December 1933, eight complained of Chartrand (only three laid out Paganis sins). Nominating Cavanaugh in May 1932, to be his ambassador to The good bishop (OMahonys invariable ironic trope), Chartrand could easily help, yet he had never given the paper a dollar though he designates us the Diocesan paper, a situation OMahony believed unique to the Indiana Catholic and Record. He could tide us over until September when things normally picked up by taking $4,600 of unissued common stock backed by the OMahonys 82 shares (held in escrow) until the money was redeemed. This would assure the Diocese absolute control and the bishop could put some one on the Board of Drectors to represent him personally. 178 Chartrand knew of the IC&Rs situation as 175 4 November 1932. To Cavanaughs suggestion that he not lose courage and to try writing some good articles for magazines, OMahony responded that all the stress made it hard to get in the writing mood for magazines. 7 November 1932. 176 4 December 1933. 177 26 December 1933. 178 31 May 1932. 41 well as OMahonys personal situation and plight [emphasis orig.], but he never now or any other time offered any help of a practical nature. He could do it with the stroke of a pen. 179 Chartrand never had any intention of riding to the rescue: on 4 October 1932, two days prior to the OMahonys sale of the IC&R on unfavorable terms, without telling OMahony that two of his friends, Peter C. Reilly and William J. Mooney, had offered to pay the papers debts (about $9,500), give Chartrand the newspaper and finance it--provided OMahony was retained as editor. OMahony was astounded when The Bishop turned down the proposition flat [emphasis orig.], saying he wanted to have nothing to do with a paper. It was in his power to save me and the paper, and his word was all that was necessary. Still lame from the car accident and his insurance claim yet to be settled, after all the bishops verbal support . . . for twenty-two years, it seems strange that he would take such a course. It is the greatest cross of my life . . . . [I]n our talks in the confession box [?!] he always said Dont worry about the paper. It will come out right. 180 What made it all worse was that Chartrands habit of showering money on all and sundry was common knowledge; there were tips for altar servers, tuition for seminarians, financial aid for the penurious college-bound. His refusal to relieve OMahonys financial distress was thus doubly hard to take. What OMahony did not know was that Chartrand was sending money for cigars, and what have you, to Fr. Cavanaugh with insistent instructions that the money was for the priests personal use, yours absolutely, as you wish, etc. Particularly outsized was the $500 honorarium to the priest for his June 1932 Cathedral High School commencement address. While spared that knowledge, that he knew of Chartrands habitual largesse explains OMahonys sarcastic references to the good bishop. 181 If the paper went under it would be the fault of those who lauded it so much, but never gave any help whatever. The good bishop knows my situation and plight, but never now or at any other time offered any help of a practical nature. He could do it with one stroke of his pen. 182 A week later, late July 1932, the paper reduced in size due to fewer ads, his insurance settlement still held up, OMahony was on the anxious seat, waiting for something to happen, or something to drop. The good bishop was made aware of his situation but has done nothing. 183 In mid-August the paper was just hanging on and the family in a quandary and a very bad plight; they owned their house outright, But one cannot subsist on a house. The paper could be saved if someone came to the 179 16 July 1932, sentiments OMahony repeated 22 July 1932 and 12 August 1932. 12, 19 October 1932. Peter C. Reilly and William J. Mooney. 181 Nine of Chatrands 26 letters to Cavanaugh contained money which, except for the commencement, was never specified. Chartrand letters to Cavanaugh, University of Notre Dame archives, 1 November 1905 to 9 April 1933. 182 16 July 1932. Apparently, Cavanaugh also found Chartrands response inadequate, for OMahony praised Cavanaugh for hit[ing] the nail on the head. 183 22 July 1932. 180 42 rescue, and if I was not crippled up and confined to home as I am, he was sure he could pull it out. The bishop knows the situation, but has not heard any intimation that he would do anything for the paper.184 In contrast to Chartrands indifference, in November 1932, OMahony told Cavanaugh of a lovely letter from Cincinnati Archbishop John T. McNicholas who, knowing of his difficulties, had asked him to visit. A year later saw OMahony in residence at St. Theresas, a Catholic rest home in Silverton, Ohio, just outside Cincinnati.185 Having learned of my plight some months ago (most likely from OMahony himself), the good and great Cincnnati archbishop, a regular reader of the Indiana Catholic and admirer of what he called my Irish spunk as an editor, had tried to find him a newspaper job in Cincinnati. Failing that, MacNicholas arranged a place for him at St. Theresas. This was to be for three or four months, until things are better when he says he has something in view for me.186 As far as OMahony knew, McNicholas was footing the bill himself [emph. orig.], which was more than North Meridian Street [Chartrand] would do for this Veteran editor who served them so long and I never did anything for Archbishop McNicholas in my life that I know of!187 Chartrands refusal to help is easily explained: The Churchs aversion to scandal. The shame attached to mental illness then was far greater than today and as a public man well-known in the city, the nature of OMahonys collapse would have been widely discussed. And while we dont have Cavanaughs side of the correspondence with Chartrand, whatever confidence the Notre Dame priest had in OMahony had to be shaken by the increasing desperation with which he importuned him. However much or little Cavanaugh shared his reservations about the editor with Chartrand would not have been to OMahonys benefit. The proposal of OMahonys friends to pay the newspapers debt and give the IC&R to the diocese--providing only that he remain editorwas a non-starter; Chartrand didnt want OMahony on any terms. Of the manner and circumstance of his departure from the Indiana Catholic & Record, OMahony provided Cavanaugh with two versions. The first was a measured, straightforward account: John T. Harris of Washington, Indiana, a country newspaper man formerly, and more recently a newspaper broker, bought out the OMahonys and Pagani, 6 October 1932. The OMahonys received $1,000 in cash and given notes for $1,500 due in two years. The two biggest creditors, Pratt Printing and Pauley Typesetting, both owned by friends, urged OMahony to accept the offer (Harris having paid them $1,000 of what they were owed). It was either that or a receivership. Harris was associated with Fr. John OHare, 184 185 12 August 1932. 7 November 1932. 186 26 December 1933. 187 4 December 1933. 43 Washington, Indiana, Fr. Joseph P. Clancy, Loogootee, Fr. Elmer Ritter, and some others who get a share of stock each. They were to push the paper. 188 Fourteen months later a bitter OMahony saw the transaction as a swindle: If you knew the real story of how we were euchered out of the Indiana Catholic it would make the subject of a novel . . . . Two certain priests, OHare and Clancy, hired Harris to buy the newspaper and even gave him credentials and letters of introduction to me. After trying to wreck it and get it for nothing he finally offered $1000 in cash $2500 in notes for the OMahony stock and . . . we took the offer. Harris named a board of priests at the head of the Column and called it the Clergy paper. The week before the notes owed the OMahonys fell due, October 1933, Harris got a bogus receivership and beat us out of the $2,500 due. The receiver then sold the paper at public auction. Five priests met and approved Evansville Msgr. Francis P. Ryves as a committee of one to bring it in for them. Ryves bought it from the receiver for $1,800 at auction and then turned it over to the Board of reverend gentlemen who now run it. So your old friend and his poor family were chisleled out of $2,500 we expected to put us over this winter . . . It is all very tragic and hard to bear.189 Bishop Joseph Chartrand died on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, 1933. OMahony wrote Cavanaugh, it was tragic and sad how the bishop had failed so suddenly, but he had not been himself for a long time [emphasis orig.] and it was not unexpected news to me. He was a greater Saint than a Bishop, and though his endorsements of the paper through the years were wonderfully written [and] frankly too strong, but he never helped the paper financially even to the extent of a postage stamp, when he could easily have carried it in the early days of the depression when I met with that terrible accident. Turning, as always, to his own situation, OMahony confessed to feeling a forgotten man, and asked Cavanaugh to please write; he would be delighted and much comforted to hear from him.190 It was his last letter to the priest. Joseph Patrick OMahony died following surgery at St. Vincents Hospital, 4 March 1935, twentyfive years after the founding of the Indiana Catholic and Record.191 In the volume celebrating the 188 12 October 1932. 189 Emphasis orig., 4 December 1933; 26 December 1933. 190 26 December 1933. 191 During OMahoney breakdown and commitment to Central State Hospital, July to December 1931, Paul Martin was editor; OMahony, as the controlling owner, resumed the editorship until his serious car accident of 6 March 44 newspapers silver anniversary it was written that OMahony, typical of the school of editors of his day, he focused on the editorial where the charge of lack of vigor could be seldom made against him. Bishop Joseph E. Ritter called him one of the most fearless Catholic editors in the country. In the judgement of OMahonys bete noire, Humbert P. Pagani, the business manager who had worked with him for more than two decades: He always wore a literary cartridge belt and his masterful style was admired by those who shared his views, but feared and strongly condemned by his enemies. OMahony had admitted as much: In the mid-1920s--before his troubles--Cavanaugh wrote OMahony that he rated him as one who has always dealt kindly and gently with his friends and all the world. Calling the priest, a flatterer, OMahony denied it, it wasnt true, wasnt accurate. Even some of my best friends have accused me of being anything but gentle even in my editorial capacity, and I am afraid my trouble has been handling men and things without glovesand not gently.192 A gifted editor, but as one student of the period noted, his sharp criticisms of the Protestant establishment meant that he was in no position to exchange views with it, which limited his influence to the Catholic community. 193 *** A year after its sale the Indiana Catholic and Record was bankrupt and in the hands of a receiver, John Francis Madden, a certified public accountant. Reorganized under new management, a board of twelve priests would set policy; Madden functioned as overall editor, with editorials written by Fr. Joseph Clancy, vice-president, and Fr. Elmer Ritter, president.194 Under the new dispensation, clericalism reigned. That the newspaper was no longer owned and controlled by laymen was a a good thing, readers were told, since the most valuable auxiliary of the pulpit and the functions most important to it are those which custom and even ecclesiastical law decree belong by right to those in holy orders. In taking responsibility for the newspaper the priests were making a great sacrifice. And, since the world was godless, the Catholic press must wield both offensive and defensive weapons. In that spirit, any of our reader friends are welcome to express their views on any subject . . . freely, provided they do not conflict 1932; his resignation letter as editor, dated 25 June 1932, appeared in the IC&R, 1 July 1932, 1. When the OMahonys were bought out in early October, the IC&R, 21 October 1932, 1, noted he was obliged to relinquish the editorship. 192 11 November 1926. 193 The Indiana Catholic and Record, 25 Years (Indiana Catholic Press, Inc., 1935); Joseph White mss., part 3 of 3. 194 Elmer Ritter would become Joseph E. Ritter, and Chartrands successor, (died, 8 December 1933). Harris was gone by the 6 October 1933 issue, replaced by Madden. In 1934 Fr. Clancy wrote an editorial criticizing clergy appointments and Bishop Ritter fired him; he was replaced by Fr. Bernard X. OReilly. Criterion, 8 October 2010, 9. 45 with Catholic doctrine.195 True to its promise that all purely partisan issues, political or racial, 196 were out of bounds; no reference to the November 1932 presidential election appeared (except for a Franklin D. Roosevelt comment quoting Quadragesimo Anno). The new Indiana Catholic and Record would serve but one cause, the cause of God.197 In that spirit, the priest-editors exhibited the triumphalism then common in the Church: Bishop Joseph Chartrands 1933 Lenten pastoral had put it succinctly: The mind of the Church is the mind of God. The mind of the Church on anything, on everything, is the mind of God on anything, on everything.198 The clerics of the Indiana Catholic and Record denied that Catholics held mere religious opinions; rather, Their belief is in objective truth taught by the Church whose teachings are the absolute truth. As the sole judge of religious truth . . . conscience is subject to her judgement. 199 As the later long-time editor of the paper, Msgr. Raymond Bosler remembered his Jesuit textbook at Romes Angelicum in the 1930s, truth alone had the right to be protected, and since the Church alone possesses the whole truth, she alone had the right of protection. 200 Five years into the Great Depression the IC&R asserted that Church knew what was wrong and how to put it right, thanks to its set of right and just principles, its long unbroken experience of 2,000 years, its disinterested, unchangeable nature, and its assurance of Divine guidance. During World War II the IC&R declared that when the pope defines an article of faith or morals, he acts as the teacher of mankind and all must accept. 201 As an historian of American Catholicism has remarked, from the 1920s through the 1950s, its clergy and laity became publicly more aggressive each decade. In July 1940 America magazine 195 IC&R, 15 July 1932, 4. 196 At the time, race was commonly used to denote ethnicity--the Irish race, the English race, etc., and not necessarily white, black, etc. The reference was perhaps another veiled criticism of the Irishness of the paper under OMahony; or possibly, the tension between the ethnic communities. 197 IC&R, 21 October 1932, 1, 2, 4; 28 October 1932, 4. On 6 January 1933, the feast of the Epiphany, the three editorials dealt with the Holy Family, Catholic Charities, and the feast, respectively. Over time, the number of clerical board members shrunk from eleven, to eight, to three, and eventually to only two by April 1945. 197 Some years no editor was named. 198 IC&R, 24 February 1933, 1. Ten years later Bishop Ritter used the same formula (the mind of the Church, and it is the mind of God), IC&R, 6 August 1943, 1. Similar usages could be cited. 199 IC&R, 2 February 1934, 4. Crucially, this is where Vatican II departed from the old view. 200 Bosler, New Wine, 49, 50. 201 IC&R, 5 January1934, 4; 3 July 1942, 4. 46 boasted that as the only worldwide religion [sic], Catholicism possessed the only philosophy that makes sense and gives purpose to life. Only its principles can bring harmony. 202 In condemning birth control, divorce, and evil movies, the clergy unhesitatedly saw the Church as the nations moral conscience. It was a time when Catholic intellectuals hoped and expected that Thomistic scholasticism would soon permeate Americas culture making it Catholic, a time when Doubt was . . . scorned as a sign of weakness. Indeed, many American Catholic cultural leaders between the wars seemed to gloat over Catholicisms philosophical and moral certainty in contrast to the confusion, drift, and doubt outside the scholastic world.203 The indices of Catholic growth--numbers, bricks and mortar, vocationsalso made for confidence and optimism in pew and pulpit, (the novelist, Flannery OConnor, thought it made for smugness).204 Following OMahonys replacement by the priest-board the Indiana Catholic and Record retreated on womens suffrage and other gender issues. The IC&R scored the League of Women Voters for insisting that women be compelled to serve on juries; such service should be optional; modest women did not want to co-habit the jury box with men and it took them away from household chores. 205 As for the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) (first proposed in 1918), the priest-board saw women as fragile, needing to be protected from lifes rough and tumble. The National Council of Catholic Women likewise opposed the ERA. Fr. John A. Ryan, in his role as director of the bishops social action committee, testified before Congress that many, if not all of the female leadership supporting the amendment have genuine resentment and even envy of men.206 To be fair, both Fr. Ryan and the IC&R put more reliance on the argument that the amendment would endanger recent, painfully won legal protections of women workersminimum wages, maximum hours, rest periods, etc. During World War II and later this was not only the view of the National Conference of Catholic Women (NCCW), but of Eleanor Roosevelt and such national organizations as the Conference of Jewish Women, the Consumers League, Womens Trade Union League, League of Women Voters, and the American Association of University Women.207 Under its clerical auspices the Indiana Catholic and Record (IC&R) continued OMahonys practice of denigrating Protestants and Protestantism. If anything, the editorial board was more dismissive 202 E. W. Orchard, The Church in the States, America (13 July 1940), 368-370. 203 Edward Shaughnesy, ONeill, 196, quoting Arnold J. Sparr, Catholic Literary Review, 153; Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 351. 204 Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 352. 205 IC&R, 13 March 1936, 4. 206 IC&R, 11 February 1938, 1, 7. 207 IC&R, 26 February 1943,1; 12 March 1943,1; 16 April 1943,1; 11 February 1944,1. 47 of non-Catholics than OMahony had been--after all, he recognized well-disposed Protestants when he saw them; a 1939 editorial scoffed at the uneducated ministry in many rural Protestant churches, places where mere ability to read the Bible, provide weird interpretations of scripture, and possession of a loud pulpit voice are the only assets necessary.208 Since the Catholic Church is the one true church, it follows that all other churches are not from Christ and therefore are wrong. 209 Harking back to an OMahony pet theme--Protestant decline, a 1942 editorial,Doomed and Dying, sneered that Protestant ministers, having no touch of the divine and unable to fill the pews, the collapse of organized Protestantism drew nigh. The next year the IC&R offered that there was nothing narrow about Protestantism because its members may believe anything or nothing . . . . With nothing constructive in its theology . . . Protestants are making a gallant last stand for existence but the end is very near. 210 But wasnt America a Protestant nation, as the separated brethren claimed? Nonsense, argued the Indiana Catholic and Record, Catholicism had the better claim: its discoverer was Catholic and Mass was said in America before Protestantism was ever thought of; the Atlantic coast was discovered by a Catholic in the service of an English king and most of America west of the Alleghenies was discovered, explored, and settled by Catholics. The Common Law? It was an inheritance predating the English Reformation, and so Nearly all Americans, whether Protestant or Catholic, are of Catholic ancestry. 211 As to the future, an October 1941 editorial, Making America Catholic, admitted that the conversion of all its inhabitants was the very purpose for which the New World was discovered. It was no secret that the Church intended to bring all Americans to Rome and prophesied it will not be very long until America is Catholic.212 In the meantime, the problem of the Indiana Catholic & Record was not dissension over doctrine, but finances. Having been started on something of a shoestring in 1910, and although the circulation reached 10,050 by 1926, subscribers were too few and too slow paying. 213 OMahony had some success with a subscription contest in 1928 with its goal of 2,500 additional readers--the prizes five automobiles to the best salespersons and fifteen cents of every dollar raised kept by the sellers. 214 But matters worsened after the 1929 Wall Street crash. The priest-editors pleas for subscribers became constant, one such 208 IC&R, 1 September 1939, 4. 209 IC&R, 16 January 1942, 4; 23 January 1942, 4. 210 IC&R, 27 February 1942, 4; 10 July 1942, 4; 26 March 1943, 4.** 211 IC&R, 27 December 1940, 4. 212 IC&R, 31 October 1941, 4. See also Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 351, 352. 213 White, mss., Klan, v, vi, 3. 214 IC&R, 30 March 1928, 1. 48 appeal taking up a third of the front page. 215 Tiring of non-payment, the editors took to threatening to publish the names of those in arrears (it did not follow through). 216 In 1936 and some subsequent years, as an inducement, the editor distributed the paper gratis during Catholic Press Month. When it came to the newspaper many pastors dragged their feet. Fr. Omar Eisenman of St. Marys, North Vernon, was not one of them. A great booster of the Indiana Catholic and Record, in pulpit announcements throughout the 1930s Eisenman invariably stressed the importance of reading Catholic publications. An abundance of such reading material was available in the church vestibule; parishioners were asked to pay the pennies they cost if they could, but if not able, to take a copy of the IC&R, Our Sunday Visitor, or the Denver Register anyway. Alongside the newspapers were religious pamphlets, such as those of Fr. Daniel A. Lord, S.J., carried by every parish. 217 Yet champions of the Catholic press like Eisenman were the exception: In 1941 a survey of the reading matter subscribed by over 21,000 Catholic households in the diocese found that nearly all took a daily paper and a secular magazine. Of Catholic reading matter, Ft. Wayne Bishop Nolls Our Sunday Visitor came into the homes of 9,689--more than double the 4,284 who received the Indiana Catholic and Record, while only 177 households subscribed to America and 133 to Commonweal.218 Chartrands successor, Joseph E. Ritter (1933-1946), as noted, played a major role in the shift to clerical control of the diocesan newspaper. In his view, the laity needed instruction in the faith and a corrective to the pagan excesses of the secular press: Only a strong, vigorous Catholic Press, providing pure, wholesome, Christian thought could answer the need. 219 The IC&R subscribed to the Vatican view that the world was a vale of tears and the times, a world of secularism, communism, and other subversive movements, unusually calamitous. During Catholic Press Month, in 1937, in letters read at all the Masses, Ritter heralded Catholicism as a powerful antidote to counteract the effects of this poisonous atmosphere. People who do not possess the Faith even though they be well-intentioned, have distorted and biased viewpoints and it is the writings and opinions of these people, . . . that the secular press gives us.220 He blamed a century-long, irreligious education for the immoral magazines available at newsstands, at circulating libraries, and the publications dealing with Communism and other subversive 215 IC&R, 13 January 1933, 1. 216 IC&R, 1 September 1933, 1. 217 North Vernon, St. Marys, Box IX, pulpit announcements, 1939. 218 North Vernon, Box VI, Catholic literature file. The survey was taken by the Indianapolis branch of the National Council of Catholic Women; 177 took America and 133 subscribed to Commonweal magazine. 219 Ritter papers, 29 January 1936; 15 February 1937; 17 February 1938. Catholic Archives. 220 IC&R, 18 February 1937, 1. 49 activities. In a society which neither knows nor fears God, the pestilence of immoral literature takes a heavy toll.221 In vain will you build Churches, preach missions, found schools. All your efforts will be destroyed unless you can wield the defensive and offensive weapon of a press that is Catholic. 222 This was the Churchs image of itself--in the midst of battle and at its most militant, ceding no territory, giving no quarter, advancing the holy cause, the Church as fashioned four centuries earlier by the Council of Trent. 221 Ritter pastoral letter, 17 February 1938, Ritter papers. 222 IC&R, 3 February 1939, 1. 50  ...

... The Indianapolis Archdiocesan Newspaper in the Raymond T. Bosler Years, 1947-1976 This chapter deals with Msgr. Boslers relations with two archbishops-publishers with very different approaches with regard to their editors independence. Bosler held that a diocesan paper ought not be a company newsletter filled with nothing but what is of good report of the Church, but rather deal with the pressing public foreign and domestic issues. Under Boslers editorial hand, that meant the Cold War, NATO, the United Nations, immigration, medical care for the aged and disabled, right to work laws, race, housing, McCarthyism, the John Birch Society, Vietnam, the womens rights movement, and more. In conducting the Question Box for so many years, Bosler dealt with the laitys concerns he judged both trivial (the proper disposal of religious articles) and substantive (no salvation outside the Catholic Church). During and after the 50s and 60s, thanks in part to Alfred Kinsey, frank discussion of sex made its way onto the public agenda and into newspaper pages as never before. Abortion, birth control, homosexuality, AIDSall now grist to the journalists mill--found their way into Boslers Criterion. A second chapter on Boslers life and career, beginning with his dispatches on the four sessions of the Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965, is also available. As with his liberal views on other matters that had attracted charges of socialism, his championing of the councils progressivism found him out of step with conservative readers and later Archbishop George Biskup, not least in regard to his views on moral theology. Copyright William Doherty 2017. All rights reserved. 1 The Archdiocesan Newspaper in the Bosler Years, 1947-1976 The ideal Catholic newspaper has yet to be published, and one that satisfies everyone will never be printed. Archbishop Paul C. Schulte, Indiana Catholic and Record, 1947. A Catholic paper must speak out boldly on the social question or risk being deserters or dupes. Msgr. Raymond T. Bosler, Indiana Catholic and Record, 23 April 1954. After World War II, with increasing numbers of the laity graduating from college and rising from the working class to the middle class and beyond, the need for a quality Catholic press became ever more obvious. In 1946, newly installed Archbishop Paul C. Schulte, began plans for an improved archdiocesan newspaper in the hope of having every Catholic family subscribe.1 If the parish of St. Marys at North Vernon is any guide, getting parishioners to take the paper at a dollar a year was no easy sell: Fr. Omer Eisenman told his parishioners that he knew some were prejudiced against the Indiana Catholic and Record (IC&R) and he did appreciate your feelings. But our Archbishop intends to change it entirely and make it a real paper . . . , with coverage of all the parishes, and much improved in quality. To edit The Indiana Catholic and Record, in 1947 Archbishop Schulte chose Fr. Raymond T. Bosler. Convinced that nothing he did as archbishop was as important as seeing the archdiocesan newspaper in every home, Schulte instructed pastors that households that did not subscribe receive the paper anyway and the expense charged to the parish budget.2 In two years, with a reported ninety percent of the pastors cooperating, 32,000 of the 36,000 households in the archdiocese were on the rolls. Schultes predecessor, Joseph E. Ritter, in sending Bosler to Romes North American College, had marked him as a comer, even an episcobili. Ordained in Rome, July 1938, in 1939 Bosler received his licenciate in sacred theology, L.S.T., from the Gregorian University. Prevented by the war from pursuing further graduate study, he returned home to serve as an assistant pastor at Holy Rosary Parish, chaplain to the Little Sisters of the Poor, chancery secretary, matrimonial tribunal notary, and member of the archdiocesan Home and Foreign Missions Board. Sent back on the first civilian ship to Europe after the war, Bosler began postgraduate study at the Angelicum, earning a doctorate in sacred theology, S.T.D. Before accepting Schultes offer, still in Rome, Bosler set three conditions: that the archbishops 1 2 Ritter papers, Schulte letter, 18 January 1947. Schulte papers, 23 June 1949 letter, Box 29. 2 photograph not appear in the paper more than three or four times a year; that he could express his opinions freely as Catholic opinions, though not necessarily the Catholic opinion; and that the archbishop would not interfere unless he was confident that Boslers opinions were heretical. It meant that Bosler would have a free hand and Schulte hands off. Extraordinary terms for any editor to set to management, let alone a priest to his bishop, Schulte accepted the terms by the next post, writing that he expected Bosler home as soon as possible. Bosler later said to his closest friend, Schulte never bothered me one time.3 Schulte told the clergy and laity that he was convinced that of all his acts . . . as your Archbishop, none has been or will be more important or produce more good than putting the paper into every household in the diocese.4 As Bosler hurried to complete his doctorate, in June 1947, the IC&R announced that the new editor would work to make the paper one of the best of its kind in America.5 His appointment effective upon his return, Bosler took up his post in late August 1947, aided by a single assistant. What sort of editor would he be? In his 1992 memoir Bosler recalled that as a resident at the North American College in the 1930s he was an ultra-conservative, a Biblical fundamentalist who believed that Protestantism was corrupting Christianity. One who idolized the Pope and saw the Roman Catholic Church [as] the only bulwark against the evils spawned by the Age of Enlightenment. As chaplain to the Carmelites on Cold Spring Road his sermons were the old heartless rationalistic theology straight from Romes Gregorian University.6 As late as the early 1950s, he was uneasy even going into the offices of the Protestant Church Federation of Greater Indianapolis. There had been, in his eyes, no cooperation or relations between Catholics and Protestants: Actually, I was almost afraid to walk inside a public school.7 Such timidity didnt last: As one who worked with him at the newspaper recalled: Ray Boslers ideas were going to be there, that was true. He had a lot of things on his mind and wanted to express them.8 One idea was that if the paper was to be any good it had to move beyond the Catholic Authors interview, Fr. Thomas Murphy, 6 March 2006. See also Raymond T. Bosler, New Wine Bursting Old Skins: Memories of an Old Priest Longing for a New Church (self-published, Indianapolis, 1992), 53, 54. 3 4 Schulte letter, 23 June 1949, North Vernon, Box VI, Catholic newspaper file. 5 IC&R, 6 June 1947, 1. 6 New Wine, 43. 7 New Wine, 56. Fr. James Doherty (no relation to the author) worked as associate editor from the mid-1950s to 1962. If 8 Doherty showed Bosler something he didnt like, hed say No, Jim, thats not what we want. James Doherty interview, 28 April 2005. 3 ghetto and take an interest in the social and religious problems of the community. This would prove controversial. As to the spirit and style of the paper, in January 1948 Bosler announced his intention to follow the example of G. K. Chesterton: To amuse the reader and have something to say. The editorials may be flippant, breezy, but the plan was to popularize the teachings of recent popes on Christian democracy, socialism, communism, and the social problems which plague our world. . . . All this, plus the personal opinions of the editor, with which the readers may disagree vehemently and vociferously in letters to the editor designed for such a purpose. In fact, shorthanded as Bosler was for the first five months, the paper carried editorials by a conservative Illinois priest. Help arrived in May in the person of Fr. Paul Courtney as associate editor. A unique writer with a great sense of humor who could turn out editorials quickly,9 for the next eighteen years the two worked at matching desks. Publishing full-throated, expressive letters from unhappy readers never bothered Bosler; the real difficulty was that at first there were few letters and sometimes none. To disguise the dearth, the editor was not above having staff ghostwrite submissions. Judging Indiana Catholics overly timid, Bosler filled space (and hoped to prime the pump), by running letters published in other Catholic papers.10 When it wasnt the lack of genuine letters it was their triviality: The advantages and disadvantages of parochial school uniforms was debated every fall and complaints of babies crying in church ran throughout the year. When the IC&R criticized the University of Notre Dame for firing its young head football coach, the paper was attacked by both genuine alumni and the streetcar variety. That didnt bother Bosler; what did was that Catholics were shocked that Catholics would criticize Catholics. The IC&R wondered: Is it really necessary or desirable that Catholics present a united front on every issue that arises? That all Catholics think alike is what the Churchs critics say; its the Catholic bogeyman which bigots, honest and otherwise use to terrify the illiterate into anti-Catholicism.11 Citing Leo XIII and Pius XII in support, Bosler defended the policy of dealing with the issues of the day. Priests and a Catholic paper must speak out boldly on the social question or risk being deserters or dupes. Racial discrimination, unjust wages, dishonest labor tactics required the clergy to speak out. Anti-clerical attacks by readers proved that they 9 New Wine, 55. Courtney stayed for two decades until 1966 when he turned against Vatican II, becoming an ecclesiastical dyed-in-the-wool reactionary; his earlier liberalism followed by extreme conservatism is attested to by many priests of the succeeding generation. Until 1971 editorials, with few exceptions, went unsigned, but style and emphasis clearly differed, permitting educated guesses in assigning authorship. IC&R, 9 April 1948, 4. Have Indiana Catholics no opinions? IC&R, 2 January 1959, 4. In the 1950s triviality was the problem with queries to The Question Box, too. Is it a sin to take away hotel towels; is it wrong to go to drive-in theaters; do the poor souls know we pray for them. IC&R, 28 July, 4, 11, 25 August, 20 October 1950. 10 11 4 were doing their job. We could use a little more anti-clericalism.12 To deal with critics and educate subscribers, in January 1955 a disclaimer ran at the head of the editorial page for the first time: The opinions expressed in these editorials columns represent a Catholic viewpoint--not necessarily THE Catholic viewpoint [emphasis orig.]. They are efforts of the editors to serve public opinion within the Church and within the Nation.13 Mirroring the crankiness of the country in the immediate postwar, within a few years there was no shortage of hostile letters. A reader, characterizing President Harry S Truman as a whiskey-drinking, poker playing Baptist [failing to mention that the president was also a 32 degree Mason], condemned the newspaper for its support of the administrations hogwash. Anyway, the paper had no business in politics and Trumans attempt to appoint a representative to the Vatican was just a ploy to get the Catholic vote.14 T.T. of New Albany was sick of your attitude on labor questions.15 An Indianapolis businessman found the IC&R a pathetic example of Catholic journalism. It lacked a religious editor, and needed to fire the labor editor, the political editor, the United Nations editor, and your Racial Equality editor. It would be pleasant to find some religion in the paper instead of a lot of socialistic propaganda.16 That the diocesan newspaper purveyed socialist propaganda was a perennial complaint, because in contrast with other developed countries of the West, Americans preferred individualism far more and social programs designed to benefit the general public far less. On this side of the Atlantic the connotations of socialism and liberal are routinely negative, and the expression common good rarely used in political discussion. In the 1930s, corporate America, having been shown to have no idea what to do about the Great Depression and smarting from the New Deal and the rise of trade unions, launched a campaign to recruit organized religion to condemn the state as inefficient, wasteful, corrupt--even pagan. Led by the United States Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and such corporations such as Firestone, Hilton, Maytag, Luce, Hutton, General Motors, U.S. Steel, and Du Pont, influential Protestant ministers were recruited to conflate Christianity with capitalism and to promote what we now call the prosperity Gospel. Enlisting politicians was crucial in allying Christianity with business 12 IC&R, 23 April 1954, 4. IC&R, 14 January 1955, 4. 14 IC&R, 9 November 1951, 4. 15 IC&R, 26 November 1954, 4. The policy was not to publish anonymous letters, but names could be 13 withheld upon request. Consequently, many letters carried only initials, or a reader, a Catholic, a mother, etc. 16 IC&R, 28 October 1955, 4. 5 enterprise: In the 1940s the prayer breakfast was invented and both houses of Congress began weekly prayer meetings. At Protestant evangelist Billy Grahams urging, in 1952 Congress established an annual National Day of Prayer, bringing business and elites together in a common cause. The first was held in February 1953 with President Eisenhower in attendance; the next day the president opened a cabinet meeting with prayer, another first, and the Pentagon, State, and other federal agencies followed suit. The Catholic Church was not behindhand: The Knights of Columbus, always at pains to insist on its patriotism, outpaced the American Legion as the moving force to add under God to the pledge of allegiance, in 1954. In God We Trust was added to paper money the same year and two years later it became the nations official motto. Call something socialism or someone a socialist and you were nine-tenths of the way home.17 Consequently, the Indiana Catholic and Records opposition to loyalty oaths in the 1950s and to the resumption of nuclear testing in the early 1960s did nothing to burnish its reputation with self-styled patriots. An aggrieved reader wrote: If the Catholic Church is Gods own anti-Communist organization, it is so in spite of the Criterion.18 In the mid-1960s hostility to the civil rights movement called forth an open letter to the Clergy of the Indianapolis Archdiocese, the majority of whom unwittingly followed a small band of priests and bishops . . . dedicated to change and liberal causes . . . The writer indicted priests and nuns for openly violating established law and order, engaging in civil disorders, preaching civil disobedience, associating with and aiding known communists, fellow travelers and assorted deviates. 19 Bosler saw no point in denying that the paper was seen as soft on communism, too sympathetic to blacks, too supportive of more generous immigration laws and greater social justice in industry. This was necessary because, as he told readers, much of the Catholic and secular press took the opposite position.20 Responding to the charge that the Criterion was unrelievedly negative about cherished institutions, Bosler examined 53 editorials, September 1961 to January 1962, and found positive editorials outnumbered negative ones, 24 to 19, with 10 neutral. In his own defense, he had never said that the newspaper was unanswerably right and had printed very many severely critical letters.21 As for the charge of liberal bias, and at the request of many readers, in 1961 the paper began running the syndicated column of a conservative Arizona priest, John Doran. From his first column, an attack on freedom riders (blacks and whites, attempting to desegregate public transportation in the South), Doran 17 Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015). 18 Criterion, 2 June 1961, 4. The name of the paper was changed in October 1960. Criterion, 10 September 1965, 4. 20 IC&R, 4 July 1958, 4; 28 February 1958, 4. 21 Criterion, 26 January 1962, 4. 19 6 delivered as expected. Predictably, conservative readers praised Doran and liberal ones abused him.22 Running a conservative columnist didnt mollify all critics: One, unhappy with Boslers positions on race, right to work, low cost housing, capital punishment, federal aid, and the United Nations--reviled the celebrated Criterion for practicing a militant bigotry which will silence as far as it dares any dissenting opinion.23 The reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) produced a spate of new complaints: the loss of the Latin Mass, liberal theologians, heresy in religion textbooks, and a new triviality--shouldnt women cover their hair in church?for a time was the most frequent question asked.24 Not limiting itself to airing the Churchs minor intramural controversies (itself a source of scandal to many), worse, the newspaper drew attention to the existence of dissent, regularly carrying articles on both sides of issues-birth control, even abortionas well as theological and doctrinal controversies and disputes between nuns and bishops. Two issues of the paper in July 1971 featured articles dealing with a Belgian cardinal worried that a proposed fundamental law of the church constituted a denial of the spirit of Vatican II; another revealed forgeries in the ordination of four missionary priests; an archbishop unaware that one of his priests headed Chicagos American Civil Liberties Union (the scandal being the ACLUs secularity and its views on separating church and state); the Vaticans proceedings against theologian Hans Kung, and a long article by the cardinal-archbishop of St. Louis condemning Kungs book on papal infallibility.25 With Bosler as editor (1947-1976), and the conductor of the Question Box (1971-1984), there would be many occasions for conservatives to find fault. *** Unlike his clerical predecessors who had largely limited coverage to what was happening at Rome and in the archdiocese, Boslers interests ran more widely. A native Indianan raised and educated in Americas isolationist heartland, the Midwest, living in Rome from 1935 to 1939 and travel through Europe with other seminarians in the summer vacations, gave Bosler an education and an interest in foreign affairs. Those years saw Italy invade Abyssinia, Germany rearm and occupy the Rhineland, the Spanish Civil War, Germanys forced union with Austria, the Munich crisis, and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. World War II did nothing to narrow his sympathies and interests: He showed his 22 Criterion, 16 June 1961, 5. Doran appeared weekly from 1961 to 1970. In January 1967 the liberal John Cogley, editor of Commonweal, joined the Criterions columnists and after May 1974, Dale Francis, editor-publisher of the conservative National Catholic Register ran in the paper. Criterion, 16 October 1970, 4; 10 May 1974, 1. Criterion, 5 July 1963, 4. Such letters often carried the direction to cancel my subscription, e.g., 12 July 1963, 4. 24 Criterion, 17 July 1970, 4; 19 June 1970; 17 April 1970. 25 Criterion, 23, 30 July 1971. 23 7 internationalist colors in his support of the Truman Doctrine, March 1947, undertaken to support free governments [Greece and Turkey] from internal or external communist subversion. Given the postwar obstructionism of the USSR, Bosler thought it obvious that the United States needed to shore up its western allies and remain in Europe until recovery and stability are realized.26 Support for the United Nations was similarly axiomatic: True, the ideal of the United Nations had not been met, but the idea was sound. Neither isolationism nor imperialism could substitute for the UN.27 It was not a world government, as critics charged, but a needed international parliament essential to peace. Moreover, it had papal support.28 Congressmen who wanted to get out of the UN if Maos China became a member were silly, childish.29 A director of the Indianapolis Council on World Affairs, Bosler subscribed to what came to be called as foreign policy realism, essentially a liberal cold warrior of the Reinhold Niebuhr-Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) school. While holding no particular love for Spains Generalissimo Francisco Franco and his form of government, clearly Franco was right to overthrow the Communists; Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary provided the lesson.30 His internationalism brought Bosler to support a renewal of the draft, the Marshall Plan, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The latter might prevent war, although if war came to Europe, America could not stay out. Since the Monroe Doctrine was dead, that could not be helped; George Washingtons dictum no foreign entanglements was gone; NATO was the way to stop Russia from waging aggressive war.31 As for isolationism, it was basically unsuited to Catholic thought--the brotherhood of man, the popes peace plan, the United Nations.32 Having embraced Trumans containment policy, the IC&R supported the defense of South Korea (to demonstrate that that the U.S. is a dependable ally),33 while rejecting General Douglas MacArthurs adventurism.34 Foreign aid had the newspapers support as consistently as did the United Nations; the former was needed to raise standards of living if communism was to be kept at bay. Why, Bosler wondered, did some Catholic editors fail to understand this?35 There were limits: When Israel, Britain, and France conspired in 1956 to invade Egypt, humiliate President Gamal Abdul Nasser, and 26 IC&R, 24 October 1947, 4. IC&R, 7 November 1947, 4. 28 IC&R, 28 August 1953, 4. 29 IC&R, 9 July 1954, 4. 30 IC&R, 21 November 1947, 4, unsigned, probably Boslers. 31 IC&R, 25 March 1949, 4. 32 IC&R, 21 April 1950, 4. 33 IC&R, 30 June 1950, 4. 34 IC&R, 20 April 1951, 4. 35 IC&R, 20 March 1959, 4. 27 8 retake the Suez Canal, the IC&R condemned Israel as deserving of the unqualified censure of the whole world for its irresponsibility and appalling selfishness. Britain and France were equally reprehensible.36 When the Soviet tested a hydrogen bomb, in 1953, the IC&R joined the debate over the morality of employing nuclear weapons in war, an example of how politics and ethics intermingle. While many diocesan papers were happy to leave the issue to Catholic magazines and journals, not the IC&R: Boslers was the commonsense view that while nuclear bombs were terrible weapons their use could not be ruled out. Survival of the nation from an unbearable tyranny would justify their employment. They were a legitimate, though terrible, instrument of warfare, but not intrinsically evil. His reaction to the claim of a Catholic University ethicist that it would be immoral to retaliate if Russia used an H-Bomb was, that cant be right.37 Bosler understood that the entire rationale of nuclear weapons was to deter their use by an enemy, which required a credible willingness to use them in extremis. What also followed was the need to embrace peaceful co-existence, as Pius XII had (the IC&R printed the complete text of the popes January 1954 message endorsing it). After all, the pope cant be accused of swallowing the Communist line.38 Nuclear Weapons Use remained the gravest moral problem of our age: Can we defend ourselves? Still, the pope also held that atomic, biological, and chemical weapons, in making no distinction between combatant and noncombatant, were indiscriminate, and if they cannot be limited, immoral. Boslers tentative answer was that to renounce deterrence would be collective suicide and he called on Indianas Catholic theologians to take up the question. In March 1955, a Jesuit of the orders West Baden, Indiana, theologate did in defending hitting military targets, even if it meant the accidental loss of a sizeable segment of the civilian population.39 The implication was that a quick, preemptive area strike against an enemy armed with nuclear weapons would be moral. A few months later Bosler weighed in that mere retaliation or usage to intimidate survivors to surrender (a fair reading of the two Atom bombs dropped on Japan in August 1945) was immoral. On the other hand, bombing the enemys factories, vital communication centers, and heart of his war-making activities to save the nation from destruction while killing hundreds of thousands of non-combatants would be moral. The principle of the double effect remains sound.40 Three years later, in 1958, the pope, 36 IC&R, 2 November 1956, 4. IC&R, 24 September 1954, 4. 38 IC&R, 7 January 1955, 1. 39 IC&R, 18 March 1955, 4; 29 April 1955, 4. 40 IC&R, 24 June 1955, 4, 5. 37 9 in rejecting unilateral disarmament, accepted that atomic weapons could be used in a defensive, just war. To prevent war, it was necessary to possess nuclear weapons.41 *** Bosler proved as forthright a liberal on domestic matters as he was an internationalist in foreign affairs, one difference being that the former got him into more trouble. Using Leo XIII and Pius XII for support, he held that any priest-editor of a Catholic paper must speak out boldly on the social question or risk being deserters or dupes.42 Economic and social issues were political issues and the IC&R must not limit itself to religious questions.43 Worried from time to time whether he was doing enough, Bosler would resolve to be more outspoken in political matters: In 1950, dissatisfied with his own reluctance to criticize the parties (the Democrats for unfairly attacking Ohio Senator Robert H. Taft, and the Republicans for red-baiting the Democrats), tired of being shackled, he promised to have his say (after all, the editors dont speak for the Church, the bishops, or advertisers):44 The nation had awesome responsibilities, Catholics were a quarter of the population, and Catholic and universal were interchangeable terms.45 Subsequent editorials dealt with German unification, the Church in Poland, public aid to parochial schools, and charity and the welfare state. In the 1950s and 1960s the newspapers causes included support for trade unions as a matter of social justice: Since economic forces are blind to human needs and moral claims, [such forces] cannot be allowed to operate without some check or planning. Otherwise gross inequalities would result).46 Bosler opposed right to work laws and refused to attack union abuses because the citys secular press did little else. Capital punishment was as unacceptable as right to work, and he claimed, wrongly, that a large majority of Indianans opposed it.47 The IC&R opposed the death penalty, he wrote, not because murder was not so bad, but because of the evil effect it had on those who have to carry it out--wardens, guards, doctors, chaplains: No one in a civilized society should have as a duty a task that is essentially and intrinsically degrading and brutalizing.48 Bosler knew of no chaplain who had observed an execution 41 IC&R,6 June 1958, 4; in 1961, understanding that without continuing testing of nuclear bombs the growth in arsenals would be frozen and the arms race discouraged, the IC&R opposed the resumption of such tests. Criterion, 17 November 1961, 4. 42 IC&R, 23 April 1954, 4. 43 IC&R, 9 November 1951, 4. 44 IC&R, 12 January 1951, 4. 45 Criterion, 10 November 1961, 4. 46 4 November 1955, 4; 28 February 1958, 4. IC&R, 30 March 1956; 3 April 1959, 4. 48 IC&R, Nice Occupation, 4 December 1959, 4. 47 10 who supported death sentences nor did most prison officials. It is an exercise in cold calculated brutality, did not deter nor contribute to public safety, and was sometimes meted out to the innocent. Life imprisonment was the better way.49 One of the most heated issues of the postwar was the Truman Administration proposal for federally insured medical care for the aged and disabled. Citing traditional conservative reasons, the IC&R in the person of associate editor Fr. Courtney, who had a physician brother, was at first against it. The worry was the intrusion of the government into medicine. With federal aid would come state control, the consequence being little freedom and no individuality. Raising fears of anti-Catholicism, he warned, should the state fall into evil hands, we Catholics will be strictly back numbers.50 Rather than state action, voluntary organizations should be used to achieve purposes which individuals or families singly could not attain. Thus voluntary health groups were much better than government medicine and private charity was infinitely more desirable than government charity.51 The Kennedy Administration revival of Medicare found Bosler a sturdy supporter and a critic of the American Medical Association (AMA), with the result that he lost whatever physician-friends he had.52 When the Medicare bill was defeated, he blamed the doctors, the high priests of the age.53 Evidencing the intense feelings generated over the issue, a local Catholic physician had called the newspaper a propaganda organ for the betterment of the socialistic and, perhaps, communistic sympathizers who, though few, are present in this area. Purporting to speak for the archdioceses Catholic physicians, the doctor compared the administrations efforts to pass the bill as Hitlerian and charged the Criterion with having impugned our [physicianss] honor and soiled our heritage. Bosler, certain he no longer had doctor friends to lose, quoted Shaws preface to St. Joan where the playwright compared doctors unfavorably to Medieval priests: at least the priests had no pecuniary motives--they did not starve when people were well. Bosler resented (and he believed others did, too), the intemperate remarks of doctors in social gatherings, their irate letters to the editor, and their abuse of the doctor-patient relationship by proselytizing patients and ridiculing Medicares supporters. When Medicare became law in 1965 and the AMA continued hostile to it, the Criterion judged its opposition pathetic, and at times [a] frightening, display of arrogant irresponsibility.54 *** Criterion, Life at Stake,19 July 1963, 4; 22 January 1965, 4. IC&R, 10 June 1949, 4. 51 IC&R, 12 August 1949, 4. 49 50 52 Criterion, 30 December 1960, 2. A whole page was devoted to the issue, with a physician and a business professor on opposite sides. Criterion, 28 July 1961, 4. 53 20 July 1962, 4. 54 Criterion, 2 July 1965, 4. 11 Right to work laws, capital punishment, immigration, loyalty oaths, health insurancethese were the stuff of state and national politics shortly after World War II. Racial inequality was different in being an issue one might encounter every day walking out the door. For Bosler, racial justice was the centerpiece of the struggle for social justice. From the start his Indiana Catholic and Record dealt sympathetically with issues affecting the black community: Within weeks of becoming editor he praised Archbishop Joseph E. Ritters desegregation of Catholic high schools in St. Louis as showing the Churchs determination to lead the way against the race prejudice that makes our nation so vulnerable to Communist attacks, 55 an argument that cold war liberals used to convince Catholics otherwise indifferent to appeals for justice and decency.56 Likewise, he welcomed the Truman Administrations report, To Secure These Rights, on the same grounds.57 That racial injustice hurt Americas standing in the world was also the State Departments position. Naturally, the IC&R found the 1954 Brown decision that overturned the separate but equal standard in public education just and right.58 Two years later the IC&R denounced Louisiana Catholics who opposed New Orleans Archbishop Joseph Rummels desegregation of the diocesan schools. 59 When both the Indianapolis Star and the Indianapolis News characterized the federalization of the Arkansas National Guard to protect the handful of black students integrating Little Rock Central High School as an invasion, the IC&R pointed out, not for the first time, that it was the federal government, not the states, which is the defender of the rights of minorities.60 Racially, there was a lot that needed doing in Indianapolis, a place where Catholic organizations still put on black face minstrel shows61 and the citys Knights of Columbus councils remained lily-white well into the 1960s.62 The citys postwar racial climate was atrocious. Ray Bosler was one of a number of progressive clergymenmainline Protestants, a Unitarian, a rabbi, the liberal Episcopal bishop at the time, Paul Moore, and others, who met monthly to bewail the conservatism of the town.63 As a long-time 55 IC&R, 26 Sept 1947, 4. So, too, the recent desegregation of Catholic colleges. IC&R, 22 April 1949, 45. 57 IC&R, 26 December 1947, 4. The Truman Administration also began desegregating the military. 56 58 IC&R, 21 May 1954, 4. IC&R, 17 February 1956, 4. 60 IC&R, 27 September 1957, 1, 4. Both newspapers were owned by Eugene Pulliam. 59 61 IC&R, 28 Oct 1949, 4. 62 Criterion, 2 August 1963, 4. In 1954, when a southern Indiana K of C chapter refused to accept a black, the paper sarcastically deemed it no injustice since the K of C was not necessary for salvation. At the time, the Bloomington K of C had two black members and Tell City had one. IC&R, 5 March 1954, 4. To be fair, until the 1960s it took only one black ball to bar a prospective member, making it nigh impossible for even a well-meaning membership to accept black members. After 1964 one-third of the membership was needed to bar a person. Criterion, 28 August 1964, 1, 8. 63 New Wine, 56; Paul Moore, Presences: A Bishops Life in the City (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York, 1997), 156, 157. 12 Indianapolis Star newsman recalled, before the civil rights laws and the urban upheavals of the mid1960s, the Star paid very little attention to blacks in the city. It was common . . . to read a police report concerning a body floating in the Indianapolis Water Company canal that ran along the west side of downtown. [T]he first question asked by the desk editor . . . was, Is it black? If so, the response would be, Forget it. 64 When blacks were not being ignored, they were shunned. In close imitation of the South, most Indianapolis restaurants and drug store lunch counters refused to serve them, let alone employ them. As a youth, future NBA basketball star Oscar Robertson did not eat in a downtown restaurant nor venture downtown until his Crispus Attucks High School team was given lunch as part of the festivities of the 1955 state tournament basketball finals.65 (Until 1949 the tournament had been closed to black schools.) When Attucks won the title, the IC&R labeled them the first Real Champs. Remarking on white fears that if Attucks won there would be no living with them, Well, they won. In the event, the IC&R found the celebration was mannerly and too restrained and lamented that the new state champions were denied the traditional ride around Monument Circle. (The snub made for hard feelings and anger; a halfcentury later Robertson wrote, I cant forgive them. They took our innocence away.66 A sportswriter for The Indianapolis Star, Bob Collins, another white champion of the Attucks teams, also bore the brunt of the racism of the time: Letters to the editor called him a communist, phone callers expressed hopes that his young daughters would be raped by one of the black players, cars drove past his home honking their horns. In 1954, before Milan, the state champion that year faced Attucks in the tournament, shouts of encouragement from whites to the Milan players as they walked as a team downtown were laced with racial slurs against the Attucks team.67 That kind of racism led a group of Catholic men--lawyers, businessmen, educators--white and black, many of them Boslers friends, to found a Catholic Interracial Council (CIC) in Indianapolis in 1952. A movement begun in New York City in 1934, the Indianapolis CIC was one of the first ten CIC councils in the country. (That it took eighteen more years to add nine more cities to the movement is evidence of the 64 Lawrence (Bo) Connor, Star in the Hoosier Sky (Hawthorne Publishing: Carmel, Indiana, 2006), 51. Connor spent 41 years at the Indianapolis Star, rising from police reporter to managing editor. Until the 1960s or later, when it came to black homicide victims forget it was also the operating principle at the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun, and doubtless, almost all mainstream newspapers. For the Times, see Arthur Gelbs memoir, City Room (G.P. Putnam: New York, N.Y., 2003), 107. 65 The Big O (Rodale Press, 2003), chapter 3. 66 IC&R, 25 March 1954, 4. In his autobiography, Robertson describes the meeting of the Crispus Attucks principal, Dr. Russell Lane, and basketball coach, Ray Crowe, with Mayor Alex Clark. If Attucks won, the mayor feared a riot by its fans gathered on the Circle. Consequently, in 1955 and 1956 buses took the victorious Attucks team around the Circle before heading northward, which was not the tradition. The Big O (Rodale press, 2003, ch. 3. 67 Star, 8 March 2015, C1, 3. 13 size of the beam in Catholic eyes.) As expressed in its constitution and by-laws, the CICs long-term goal was to establish equality by eliminating the consideration of race in all human affairs; meanwhile, the primary effort would be to affect the minds and conduct of members of the Catholic Church. 68 Perhaps its greatest merit was providing a place where blacks and whites could speak openly about race. The CIC joined with the Church Federation and Jewish community leaders to demand that the city establish a commission on human rights. In 1955 both parties mayoral candidates having pledged to do so, the winner, Democrat Philip Bayt, Jr. followed through. Bosler served on the commission for eight years and believed it changed the racial atmosphere in Indianapolis. Its main job was to use moral suasion to educate realtors, restaurant owners, trade unionists, and others of the rightness and benefits of desegregation. One success was creating a board to review police court decisions regarding black complaints of police brutality.69 Bosler wanted to deal with The Race Problem with impatience--get rid of it now. The citydwelling Catholic, Bosler offered, was well placed to work on the race problem. It damaged the nations reputation in the world and nurtured anti-Americanism. It was the ultimate test of ones Christianity. Communism itself was punishment for the sins of social injustice, racism, and the preference for nationalism over internationalism. What should one do? Join the Catholic Interracial Council, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Urban League, work for Negro employment, work and socialize with Negroes, support fair housing, and pray.70 When the war on poverty was announced in 1964 the Criterion pronounced it overdue. [O]nly total victory will be acceptable.71 His efforts went well beyond complaints about the citys racial situation. A career- community activist, he joined the Marion County Health and Welfare Council, whose goal was to get prominent citizens interested in the social and welfare problems of the community. As a director of the welfare council he did considerable lobbying in the state legislature. Through such efforts and his editorials, Bosler gained a national reputation in civil rights, bringing him to the attention of national Catholic leaders, such as John La Farge, S.J., on race; Fr. George Higgins, director of social action for the American bishops, on labor; and the president of Notre Dame, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., on civil rights. Boslers service on the Catholic Interracial Council led Hesburgh to appoint him to the Indiana advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. The advisory committee held formal hearings in the Federal Building in 68 IC&R, 26 December 1954, 1. Tom Jordan, a business consultant then head of the CYO, took the lead and was its first president; Bosler served as chaplain. See chapter on Race for more on the CIC. 69 Bosler believed that under UNIGOV Mayor Richard Lugar appointed conservative suburbanites to the board and it slowly simply disappeared. New Wine, 57, 58. This was also the opinion of Alan Nolan, noted Indianapolis lawyer, novelist, and historian. 70 71 Criterion, 19, 26 May 1961, 4, 5. Criterion, 14 August 1964, 4. 14 Indianapolis to examine the conditions of migrant labor and prisoners at the Pendleton Reformatory.72 Invitations to workshops and conferences in New York from La Farge led to new friendships, among them Jewish and Protestant editors around the country.73 In May 1961 Boslers address to the National Conference of Catholic Men (The Challenge to the Apostolic Layman), was broadcast and rebroadcast on NBCs The Catholic Hour. Arguing that the biggest problem facing the country was not communism but racism, he asked that Catholics not join extremist anti-communist organizations, but rather attack communism by attacking the evils of segregation and discrimination. The National Council of Catholic Men was organized against indecent literature; why not organize against unjust racial practices? His talk elicited a greater national response than any other Catholic Hour address and was published in pamphlet form and distributed by the Catholic Interracial Council.74 The 1950s was perhaps the last decade in which the average white American felt free, if so inclined, to publicly express hatred of blacks without qualm (until the rise of the internet where alt right racists and extremists of all varieties could contact others of like views). The IC&R received hatefilled letters, which Bosler willingly published in the hope that showcasing such vitriol would repel other readers. A sampling from the early fifties included Mrs. C. of Indianapolis on acceptance of a black priest in their parish: No, we would NOT welcome a colored pastor. . . I believe in colored priests, but not in white peoples churches. This our non-Catholic husbands and wives would not accept.75 While the IC&R insisted that racism could not be squared with the teachings of Christ, E.D. agreed with Mrs. C: These churches are ours, [we whites] paid for them and we dont care to have Negro Priests forced on us. It was bad enough that blacks were in school with whites; the next thing will be intermarriage. If God wanted white and black to mix he wouldnt have made one black and one white. I say let them work with their own people.76 For months the letters that followed ran the gamut--most, but not all, taking Mr. C. to task and opposing race prejudice.77 Among them were such genre classics as the admission that blacks are Gods children but one better never ask my daughter for her phone number . . . In 1953 a Disgusted reader feared for her familys safety if she signed her name; What with the NAACP and other organizations, I would not welcome being knifed in the back some dark night, or have my throat slit from ear to ear with a sharp razor.78 Much later, in 1980, a reader suggested that one day both Martin Luther and his civil rights 72 73 New Wine, 58, 59; editorials followed, e.g., 15 February 1963, 4. New Wine, 58, 59, 56. 74 Bosler, New Wine, 58; Bosler papers, Catholic archives. 75 IC&R, 15 Feb 1952, 4. IC&R, 22 Feb 1952, 4. 77 IC&R, 22, 29 Feb, 4; 7, 28 March; 16 May 1952, 4. 78 IC&R, 16 October 1953. 76 15 namesake might become saints; Bosler agreed, denominating King a modern Christian martyr and, therefore, a saint rightly to be imitated by all who call themselves Christians.79 In the minds of many conservative Americans, full-blooded participation in the fight for civil rights for blacks went along with insufficient enthusiasm for anti-communism; they saw the movement not as the pursuit of justice, but part of the communist plot to sow division in America. That was the view of a Westerville, Ohio man who wrote Bosler to comprehensively complain of his incredibly inflammatory and pseudo-liberal address. He found it incomprehensible that a mere dupe could so assiduously adhere to the racist party line of . . . the Southern Conference Education Fund, Inc. You most certainly have done a wonderful job of parroting and passing on this Communist led . . . subversive line. Stating that he welcomed his many Negro friends to his home, but the door was always closed to provocateurs like Bosler concerned with devising ways . . .of causing racial strife while hiding behind the false faade of accelerated civil-rights acceptance. A pinko like Bosler should stay with theology and the precepts of our great Church . . . The writer imagined that Boslers next tirade would be an attack on the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senates Internal Security Sub-Committee. Isnt it strange . . . how all you who are opposed to anti-communism follow one straight undeviating line.80 Housing was another front in the battle. In 1954 the IC&R approached the citys inadequate stock of decent, inexpensive housing as a racial issue and a matter for Congress, suggesting that manpower and energy reflecting the fear of communist penetration of government would be better directed to dealing with housing problems. The biggest need was for low cost housing, especially for Negroes. 81 In 1960, a series of five investigative articles claimed that the shortage stood at 14,000 homes and faulted the city for refusing to take over the New Deal vintage Lockefield Gardens from the federal government. Of housing open to whites a quarter were substandard; of housing open to blacks, half were substandard.82 Federal money was available, but the city fathers refused to apply. Instead, the city tore down old buildings near downtown, replacing them with luxury apartments [Riley Towers]. The Criterion (after 7 October 1960 its new name) showed that tax dollars bought the land, cleared it, and sold it to a private corporation at a substantial loss to the taxpayers. Six years later housing conditions worsened when a new interstate highway displaced 20,000 people, many of them poor and minorities.83 79 Criterion, 7 March 1980, 8. 80 Indianapolis Catholic Archives, Bosler box. Bosler wrote on the letter, Typical of the mail from admirers. 81 IC&R, 2 April 1954, 4. 82 Indiana Catholic (an old name for the paper revived for a brief period before it became the Criterion), 12 February to 11 March 1960. 83 Criterion, 3 November 1961, 4; October 1966, 4. 16 In fall 1963 the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held hearings in Indianapolis. The Chamber of Commerce and the Pulliam press (the Star and its sister paper the evening News) refused to entertain applying for federal aid for housing. It took a federal subpoena to get white power brokers to sit down with Negro realtors. The hearings discovered that black realtors could not belong to the Indianapolis Real Estate Board and that white realtors were conducting a blockbusting campaign from Meridian Street to Fall Creek Boulevard on the north side (which led Bosler and others to form the Butler-Tarkington Neighborhood Association). In some areas blacks, red-lined by the banks, could not get financing; thanks to the hearings, that practice, the Criterion naively asserted, would stop. Instead, local banks having refused them, black professionals and businessmen built homes in the Grandview Avenue-Kessler Boulevard area, housing financed by a Louisville, Kentucky insurance company. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, intended to strengthen the 1964 act on equal accommodation, did not persuade the Criterion that a new day in racial relations had come; it passed only because Martin Luther King, Jr. had just been assassinated. Even then, the vote to get the bill out of committee was a narrow nine to six and the house vote to take the bill up was only 229 to 195. The Criterion saw it as but a token gesture toward open housing for minorities: many blacks didnt have the money to move outside the ghettoes and many states would doubtless flout the new law. Moreover, a loophole provided that if the owners sold the property they did not have to sell to blacks.84 Over time, court decisions and greater acceptance of black neighbors in some areas led blacks out of the center city. In 1960 only one of ten blacks lived outside Center Township; by 1990 more than half did so.85 Since the change was largely due to white flight to the surrounding suburbs, not that much had changed. To approach anything resembling equity meant that employment opportunities for blacks had to improve. In May and June 1951, the graduation season, the IC&R called attention to Cathedral High School honors graduate, Donald J. Ferguson, a black student. Decrying the inability of blacks to get jobs commensurate with their education, it urged Catholics employers to adopt fair employment practices. 86 When state Republicans held their traditional Lincoln Day celebrations in 1953, the paper suggested that the best way to honor Lincoln would be to imitate those states that established their own Fair Employment Practices Commissions.87 Four years after the Montgomery bus boycott and two years after the first civil rights law since Reconstruction, the IC&R, looking to its own bailiwick, canvassed the job opportunities and coverage of the black community provided by the local newspapers. The Indianapolis Times said it gave good coverage to Negroes in sports and believed its coverage was adequate. True, it had no black reporters, but that was because no qualified black had ever applied. According to the editor of The 84 Criterion, 19 April 1968, 1. Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, 138. 86 IC&R, 25 May; 9 June 1951, 4. 87 IC&R, 13 Feb 1953, 4. 85 17 Indianapolis News, Eugene Pulliam, Jr. (son of the publisher), the paper did employ an able black reporter and he thought the papers coverage adequate. As for its sister publication, The Indianapolis Star, editor Robert Early, a brother of a priest of the archdiocese, was adamant that printing news of Negro events would worsen race relations, not improve them. A black reporter wouldnt be accepted in Indianapolis, said Early, few blacks had the ability, and too few read the Star. Racial acceptance was a generation away. (The Star hired its first black reporter some five years later, the time of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.) The IC&Rs reply, Negro Acceptance, argued that there were a thousand Negro families in the city whose standards equal those of the best whites, and called on the local newspapers to educate their white readers.88 The exchange led Fr. Bernard Strange, an interracial pioneer and pastor for twenty-four years at St. Rita, a black parish, to wonder, Are Catholics ready to stand up and be counted on the Race question? For his part, the priest was tired of doing it by himself.89 Reflecting Boslers own fatigue at promoting racial equality, his bitter May 1962 editorial offered a real commencement speech to the black graduates of the citys Catholic high schools: Congratulations, he told them, many who despise you did not achieve as much. Unfortunately, the jobs awaiting you . . . will [be] in driving a truck, behind a broom or wheelbarrow while [your fellow white graduates] go to banks, insurance companies, department stores. Catholic employers did not differ in this. Perhaps your children will do better. Personal culture is no passport to the suburbs; for you theyre out of bounds. More than likely you will no longer be part of your white friends social orbit. Go forth now, dear graduates, to a world which is waiting for you. Nay, not just waiting--but lying in ambush for you. Your education is not over. The hardest lessons are still to come.90 Later that decade Bosler was active in Project Equalityan amalgam of 25 religious bodies operating together as the Indiana Interreligious Commission on Human Equality (IICHE)--to push equal job opportunity statewide. Working to get businesses to join, it published a list of firms pledged to support the effort. Lafayettes Catholic bishop, Raymond Gallagher, headed the board.91 In 1970 the American bishops created the Campaign for Human Development (CHD), a program to encourage self-help and initiatives by the poor who devised and ran the programs themselves. From the start, the CHD was criticized from the Catholic right for funding organizations that had programs supporting abortion and birth control, which was true; before Roe v. Wade, the bishops found this acceptable in that no CHD money went directly to fund either practice.92 Bosler regarded the CHD the Churchs most important anti-poverty 88 89 IC&R, 24 July 1959, 1, 4. IC&R 24 July 1959, 4. 90 Criterion, 24 May 1962, 4. Criterion, 12 September 1969, 4; 21 December 1969, 1, 9; New Wine, 56, 58, 59. 92 Criterion, 17, 24 November 1972, 4. 91 18 effort and as a way to develop greater sensitivity among Catholics to poverty while helping the poor achieve self-help.93 *** The issue that aroused the greatest passion in the Bosler years was Communism. In view of its condemnations of socialism and communism over the past century, the Catholic Church was well defended from its legions of critics on that score. Its attacks on Reds had long placed it in the vanguard of the anticommunist movement.94 Having never embraced Americas Russian ally in World War II, enmity to godless communism was almost part of the priests and nuns job description. In the 1940s and 1950s, Catholic parochial school students prayed for the conversion of Russia while their parents in the Holy Name and Rosary societies were admonished to oppose Reds wherever found. In 1947, two months before Winston S. Churchill announced the beginning of the Cold War in his Iron Curtain speech at Fulton, Missouri, the supreme knight of the Knights of Columbus, in a widely publicized address, called on the government to confront the Soviets. John E. Swift asserted: All the world knows that Godless Russia has torn the Atlantic Charter to tatters and enslaved millions of our fellow Catholics all the way from Finland and Poland to Catholic Austria and Czechoslovakia and almost to the gates of Rome. By one shameless appeasement after another we have failed to uphold our American ideals. . . . Has not the time arrived for some group or some leader to arise in forums of the world and in challenging tones cry out to Russiathus far thou shalt go, and no farther. 95 An American archbishops policy of refusing absolution to Communists96 made news in 1948, and the next year Pius XII decreed that Catholics cannot belong to the Communist Party or publish, read, or disseminate texts in support of Communist doctrine. Those who do cannot receive sacraments and those who defend, profess, or spread communism, are excommunicated.97 By then the two leading American Catholic churchmen, Fulton Sheen and Francis Cardinal Spellman, were busy denying any possibility of peaceful co-existence with Soviet Russia. Thus the Cold War--the ideological, military, and economic struggle for mastery between the Soviet Union, its satellites, and like-minded regimes on one side and the United States and its allies on the other, made its appearance almost before the guns had cooled. The years between Hiroshima and Nagasaki, August 1945, and June 1950 when the Korean War 93 Criterion 16 November 1973, 1, 4. Richard Gid Powers, Not Without Honor: The History of American Anticommunism (New York: Free Press, 1995), 51, cited in Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass., 2008), 167. 95 Kauffman, Faith and Fraternity, 359, 360. 96 IC&R, 5 March 1948, 10. 97 IC&R, 22 July 1949, 4. 94 19 erupted, saw the lines between the two camps harden abroad, while at home the question of the size of the domestic communist threat roiled and divided Americans. Among the exacerbating factors were the failure to achieve agreement on atomic weapons (1946); the Truman Doctrine and aid to Greece and Turkey (1947); the loss of China to Communism and Russias successful test of its own atomic bomb (1949), and the finding that Alger Hiss, formerly of the State Department, was a communist agent and guilty of perjury (1950). Catholicisms influence in Western and Eastern Europe, South East Asia and South America--all areas of contention with radical movements during the Cold War, made it an attractive resource to the U.S. government, not least to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). So valuable was the Church that the agency willingly violated separation of church and state and ignored its own charters prohibition against operating domestically. (The CIA was also enmeshed in the labor movement and college student organizations, and utilized journalists, intellectuals, writers, filmmakers, and artists at home and abroad.) Of particular interest to the CIA were Dr. Tom Dooley, a Catholic physician active among the peasantry in Vietnam and viewed by some as a lay saint, and Irish-born Fr. Patrick J. Peyton, C.S.C., founder of the Family Rosary Crusade. The CIAs interest in Fr. Peyton stemmed from his wildly popular open-air crusades in Latin America. To the CIA, arousing the intense piety of working class Catholics might prove effective as a prophylactic against the contagion of communism in that part of the world.98 As intent as it was to arouse fear, in the 1950s anti-communism also had its unintended comical side: There was a campaign to pull Robin Hood from public school libraries on the ground that it implied that the rich were undeserving; the Cincinnati Reds, baseballs oldest professional team, felt the need to change its name for a time to Redlegs, Red Sox already being taken by Boston; in Washington, D.C. a license to sell second-hand furniture was denied a man who had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights in an inquiry into communism. Communists could not draw unemployment benefits in Ohio; Pennsylvania barred them from state aid; Nebraska school districts inspected texts for foreign ideas and had its children spend hours each week singing patriotic airs. Reds were ordered to leave Birmingham, Alabama (punishment for failure to do so unspecified), and it was a crime in Jacksonville, Florida, to communicate with current or former communists. To seek to overthrow the Tennessees government was a capital offense. At Madison, Wisconsin (locale of the flagship state university and the Wisconsin Idea of using the universitys scholars to produce progressive legislation), of 112 citizens asked to sign a petition containing nothing but quotations from the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, 111 refused.99 98 Wilford, Mighty Wurlitzer, 168. Haynes Johnson, The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism (Harcourt Brace, Inc.: New York, 2005), 169, 170. 99 20 The American people swam in a sea of anti-communism and Indiana was as susceptible to the mania as any other state: professional wrestling, with a sure grasp of the commercial value of patriotic posturing, required its grapplers to sign loyalty oaths (also common for city employees). An Indianapolis priest remembers being encouraged by parishioners to attend a gathering at a private residence to hear a speaker from the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade explain the nature of the communist threat. One of the things the man said was that Beetle Bailey in the comics was part of the communist plot designed to make us scorn our military. The priest remembered thinking, This is insanity, this is Loonytoons.100 Loony or not, a number of readers of the IC&R similarly discerned that the cartoon it carried, All Angels Parish, a gentle spoof of priests, nuns, and laity was subversive: one reader had always thought the cartoon to be communist inspired . . . .101 Indicative of the citys thinking in the 1950s and 1960s was the pride the leadership of the Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) took in the systems national reputation for its commitment to free enterprise, having received the lions-share of awards from the right-wing Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation. In its virulent anti-communism and praise of consumerism and the good life, IPS took the business corporation as its model. To those who disapproved of the emphasis on materialism, the superintendent responded with the non- sequitur that most of the staff were practicing Christians who led their students in morning prayers and Bible readings.102 One of the leading anti-communist entrepreneurs of those days, Dr. Benjamin Fred Schwarz, an Australian, founded the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade in 1953. Two years later Schwarz left his medical practice in Sidney to come to the U.S. In 1963, the IPS superintendent and his top aides sponsored Schwarzs appearance--a four-day anti-communism school at the Indiana War Memorial.103 When Bosler sent an editorial from Rome scorning Schwartz as a four flusher as welcome as ringworm, the crusader, feeling ill-used, sued the Criterion for $510,000. Informed of the suit by the archdiocesan lawyer, Archbishop Schulte was unmoved: If Mr. Schwarz can find that kind of Criterion assets, we will be happy to divide them with him. Evidently, he needs some publicity.104 In late 1953 a group of liberal Indianapolis residents were moved to found a branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. Reflective of the states anti-communist hysteria, the Indiana War 100 Peter Doherty, interview, 28 April 2005; It was probably Dr. Benjamin Schwartz or possibly a John Bircher. For Schwartz see below. 101 IC&R, 22 February 1952, 4. 102 Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, Education article, 83. 103 Becker, Indianapolis Church Federation, 76. 104 Criterion, 25 October 1963, 4. Chancellery files, letter from Cornelius B. Sweeney to John OConnor, archdiocesan lawyer, 15 October 1964. The editorial was judged not libelous in Hancock Circuit Court, 21 October 1966. On 19 January 1967, when Schwarz failed to file a new complaint within 90 days, the decision stood. Criterion, 27 January 1967, 1. 21 Memorial Board, acting on the American Legions claim that the ACLU was a communist front, refused to rent the War Memorial Auditorium for the meeting, as did the Indianapolis-Marion County Central Library, the Claypool Hotel, and the YMCA. The Knights of Columbus offered space, but then withdrew the offer as too controversial. Fr. Victor Goossens, pastor of St. Marys Church downtown, offered its parish auditorium: As Fr. Goossens stated on Edward R. Murrows televised program, See It Now, I had no reason to believe them unfit or unworthy . . . Theres something much more basic involved here than the idea of a meeting place.105 In 1957 the War Memorial Commission again refused the ICLU use of the public facility for a lecture by the respected Methodist bishop of the city, justifying their refusal on information from the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that the organization was a defender of communists. To permit it would desecrate this sacred soil.106 (In defending the First Amendment, the ACLU defends all sorts of unpopular people). The Criterion, called the Legions action un-American, stating it would want the ACLU around to defend the Church were anti-Catholicism to enjoy a revival.107 Boslers own critique of communism, judged insufficiently rabid, accounted for many of the newspapers detractors. As a liberal priest out of sympathy with knee-jerk anti-communism probably made the most difficulties for him. He would never qualify as a fellow traveler (whatever his critics might say). Anyway, his was not the only editorial hand, with the result that on the communist issue the newspaper was more nuanced editorially than most of the press.108 In 1948 an editorial took a hard line against Henry A. Wallaces run for president on the Progressive ticket, a danger sufficiently serious to overcome any niceties about keeping the Church out of politics. Surely, the writer argued, no Catholic who read the popes warning to the Italian people in their election that year about the need to vote for candidates who recognize the laws of God and the rights of the Church would support Wallace. Being in the hands of the Communists, either a deluded captive of the Reds [or] a dishonest stooge, a vote for Wallace was a vote for Joe Stalin.109 A serio-comic editorial, most likely Fr. Courtneys, employed an argument between a zealous young priest (zyp) and a wise old pastor (wop) to make its anti-communist point: Learning 105 Star, 7 October 1999, A2; Criterion, 20 November 1953, 4; 5 July 1957, 4. The Indianapolis episode almost made the cut for the 2006 Oscar nominated movie about Murrow, Good Night and Good Luck. Criterion, 25 May 1962; 15 June 1962, 4. 106 Commonweal, 6 December 1957, 248. 107 Criterion, 25 May 1962, 4; 15 June 1962, 4. The War Memorial ban of the ICLU held for twenty Indiana Supreme Court overturned it, 5 to 0, in October 1973. 108 Since editorials were not signed until 1971, it is not possible to attribute particular editorials to their authors. Besides Fr. Courtney, some of the others were Fr. James Doherty, Fr. Bernard Head, Michael Bowles, John Acklemire and his wife, B.H. Acklemire. Paul Fox interview. 109 IC&R, 13 August 1948, 4. The language smacks too much of the Catholic ghetto and is too harshly personal in tone to be Boslers; its likely to be Courtneys. The editorial of 27 May 1949 cited below, does sound like Bosler. Again, one cant be certain. years until the 22 that Danny Hoolihan was going to speak to the Holy Name Society about communism, the zyp decried Hoolihans credentials: What does he know about communism? Well, answered the wop, hes got ten kids and hes against it. Thats good enough.110 In the atmosphere of fear that prevailed in the 1950s and later, a good many Catholics were of the opinion of the wise old priest. More Boslers style was the 1949 editorial, Not So Bad. Yes, there might be 70,000 Reds in America, but there were more than 2,000 Catholic high schools, more than 100,000 Catholic educators, and 400,000 Catholic college graduates: Rather than fear-monger, We prefer to be optimistic.111 A 1952 editorial (Tired of Hearing About The Red Menace? So Are We) sensibly argued that Americans were the least likely to be attracted to communism and that Europeans were dealing with the communist issue without witch-hunting and frightening the populace half out of [its] wits.112 The editorial inspired lengthy letters, nearly all hostile, for more than a month. The charge that the newspaper was soft on communism, even pro-communist, were frequent and perennial: An anonymous letter to Archbishop Schulte blamed Bosler for fomenting anti-hysteria hysteria and suggested he be investigated for income tax evasion and sent back to Ukraine. Bosler responded that his remarks were intended to bolster, not weaken our countrys defense against the evil. The problem was how to fight communism while not curtailing liberty.113 Nevertheless, a good many readers persuaded themselves that the paper was socialistic.114 Truly Disappointed believed that many articles in the IC&R had a communist slant and suggested that some leftist had infiltrated the paper: So go through your staff with a fine tooth comb--before it is too late.115 When the paper attacked the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act as monstrous for its discrimination against southern and eastern Europeans and contrary to social justice, it stirred a reader to bracket the editor with the Daily Worker, the Communist party, the National Lawyers Guild, Americans for Democratic Action, and every Red, Pink, and Punk in the country.116 It was left to a Catholic, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R. Wisc.), to lead the way in stoking the fear that communists honeycombed the leading institutions of the republic. The pall cast over America by this second Red Scare (the first followed World War I), was considerable. McCarthy, like Richard Nixon and John Kennedywas an ex-serviceman who entered Congress in 1946; He attracted national attention for 110 IC&R, 9 June 1950, 4. Almost certainly authored by Fr. Paul Courtney, a man well known as a wit; Bosler would not cavalierly denigrate knowledge in that way and was not only not Irish, as Courtney was, but found Irishness tiresome. 111 IC&R, Not So Bad, 27 May 1949, 4. 112 IC&R, 27 May 1949, 4. 113 IC&R, 21 November 1952, 4. 114 IC&R, 29 August 1952, 4. 115 IC&R, November 1952 1952; See also Criterion, 18 May 1962, 4. 116 IC&R, 16 January 1953, 4; 6 June 1952, 4; 20 June 1952, 4; 30 January 1953, 4. Bosler would no doubt admit sharing the views of the liberal cold warriors of the ADA. 23 the first time with a Lincoln Day speech in February 1950 at Wheeling, West Virginia, charging that communists had found a home in the State Department. The first mention of the junior senator from Wisconsin in the Indiana Catholic and Record was to publicize an upcoming McCarthy speech, What Congress Is Up Against, at the 13th Annual Indianapolis Catholic Forum, held at the Indiana War Memorial, October 1947.117 McCarthys appeal to conservative Catholics was that he burnished the Churchs anti-Communist reputation and simultaneously skewered the WASP establishment for its putative softness on communism; at the same time, for non-Catholics, McCarthy personified their distrust of the Churchs power.118 He also divided Catholics: Cardinals Francis McIntyre of Los Angeles and New Yorks Francis Spellman, the Catholic War Veterans, the Knights of Columbus, The Brooklyn Tablet, and the city of Boston were dedicated McCarthyites, while Chicagos Bishop Bernard Sheil, the city of Chicago, and liberal Catholics were hostile. Sheils public opposition to McCarthy dated to his 1946 Wisconsin senate race, having been brought in to speak against McCarthy by the state Democratic Party.) Catholicisms intramural divide could be explosive: Attending a convention of North American College alumni in Cleveland, Bosler got into a violent argument with his table companions, all of whom were ardent, even rabid, supporters of McCarthy. The heated confrontation, combined with rushing to catch a plane caused Bosler to faint at the airport and he had to be hospitalized; in his memoir, he facetiously blamed McCarthy for his ensuing heart problems.119 The strongest predictor of attitudes regarding the Wisconsin senator was party preference. And while there were more Catholic Democrats than Republican ones, pro-McCarthy Catholics outpaced the antis by about ten percent.120 Bosler protested that the constant accusations of communism and socialism against government leaders by McCarthy, Indiana Senator William Jenner, and others distorted recent history. Lamenting that Some Catholic Readers Live in a Nightmare World, in 1951 the IC&R pointed to real policy successes, such as, Marshall Plan, 1947, responsible for the economic recovery of Western Europe; the defense of Greece and Turkey, 1947, the Berlin Airlift, 1949, and the defense of South Korea against invasion from the North, 1950, all of them helpful actions. Yet a large part of the press remained hysterical and as a consequence Americans are bewildered and in danger of losing confidence in their form of government.121 The bishops themselves, moved by the billingsgate of McCarthy and others on the right, issued a pastoral in November 1951 (Gods Law: The Measure of 117 IC&R, 17 October 1947, 1. Fuchs, JFK, 127. 119 New Wine, 59, 60. 120 Crosby, God, Country, Flag, 230-245; On the other hand, Morris, American Catholics, 243, rightly regards that ten percent edge for McCarthy among Catholics as making a big difference politically. 121 IC&R, 13 June 1951, 4. 118 24 Mans Conduct). Without naming names, it lectured politicians to be bound by justice and charity: Dishonesty, slander, detraction, and defamation of character are as truly transgressions of Gods commandments when resorted to by men in political life as they are for all other men.122 Believing that few Catholic editors had the courage to denounce the senator, the IC&R would do so in hard-hitting anti-McCarthy articles and editorials. It gave extensive coverage to a speech at Notre Dame University, May 1953, by George F. Kennan, former ambassador to the USSR and author of Americas Cold War containment policy. Like the bishops, Kennan named no one, but his rebuke of most of what passed for anti-communism as a sort of semi-religious cult, blind, intolerant, anti-intellectual, vulgar, left no doubt of who and what was meant. Such people distort and exaggerate. They sow timidity where there should be boldness; fear where there should be serenity; suspicion where there should be confidence and generosity. Bosler thought the speech masterly.123 A fortnight later the IC&R expressly denied that being a good Marine, a practicing Catholic, and loyalty to country made McCarthy a great American or a great Catholic, as some Catholic clergy would have it. Nor was it just to label McCarthys critics fellow travelers and communists.124 In March 1954, while announcing his refusal to deal any further with the McCarthy issue, Bosler asserted that while both the senator and Catholicism were antiCommunist, they were not the same.125 Quoting Thucydides remarks on the evil effects of the Peloponnesian War, Bosler drew the contrast: The customary meaning of words was arbitrarily distorted to cover the conduct of those who employed them. Reckless irresponsibility was treated as courageous loyalty, cautious reserve as cowardice masked under a high-sounding name, restraint as a cloak for poor-spiritedness . . . . A frenzied fanaticism was the popular idea of conduct . . . . Violence of feeling was a warrant of honesty, depreciation of violence a signal of suspicion.126 122 Bishops Pastorals, Vol. II, 1941-1961, 143; see also Donald Crosby, God, Church, and Flag: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and the Catholic Church (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), and Mark S. Massa, Catholics and American Culture (New York, 1999), chapter 3. IC&R, 22 May 1953, 1, 3, 4; William Pfaff, Wise Men Against the Grain, New York Review of Books, 9 June 2011, 59-61. 124 IC&R,5 June 1953, 4. 125 IC&R, 12 March 1954, 4. 126 IC&R, 9 April 1954, 4. 123 25 Soon after, in a dispute originating over the senators attempt to gain preferential treatment for the close friend of his chief of staff, McCarthy recklessly took on the U.S. Army. Charge and counter-charge flew at the televised Army-McCarthy hearings (22 April to 17 June 1954). Just prior to the hearings Bosler ran a lengthy article by the senators nemesis, Bishop Bernard J. Sheil. Although professing to speak as a private citizen, Sheil noted that the Church did take stands on lies, calumny, the absence of charity and calculated deceit, and that thanks to Joseph McCarthy (a pitifully ineffective anti-communist), We have been victims . . . of a kind of shell game.127 The article produced two highly critical letters: Your modified version of the communist party line, in running the bishops nauseating rehash was a new low. Stung by the animosity shown, Bosler announced that no more letters on the McCarthy controversy would be published.128 Even the Senates censure of McCarthy, 67 to 12, December 1954, did not appear in its pages. McCarthy would be mentioned in the IC&R only twice more; in 1956 bracketed with Elvis Presley as comparable screwballs that the press should ignore,129 and at his death in 1957: Embracing the maxim nihil nisi bonum de mortuis (of the dead, speak only good), the IC&R allowed that perhaps Joe McCarthy was the man of the hour with his vigorous exposure of the dangers of communist subversion. But Catholics value means as well as ends.130 Many Catholics, like William F. Buckley, thought otherwise, as did the 39 priests and 14 monsignors drawn to McCarthys funeral at St. Mathews Cathedral in Washington, D.C., Archbishop Patrick A. OBoyle presiding.131 Boslers criticism of the John Birch Society (JBS), the ultra-right, anti-communist organization made him more enemies. Founded in Indianapolis in 1958, he objected to its extreme anti-Communism, holding it responsible for some of the most vicious anti-Catholic literature distributed in the Middle West during the 1960 election. It was contrary to Catholic social teaching and subversive to American civil liberties.132 Yet Catholics joined in large numbers; according to the society, forty percent of its members were Catholic. While the Criterion doubted that, a 1965 Indianapolis dinner honoring its founder, Robert Welch, drew 1,300 persons at fifty dollars a plate, tangible evidence of its popularity.133 And there were plenty of others among Criterion readers, in whose eyes the editor was ignorant, commie-sympathizing, un-Catholic and subversive. A Clarksville reader complained of the Criterions prejudicial diatribe smearing the society and questioned whether it was a Christian paper or a propagandizing publication for the radical-left Liberals.134 Such hostility hurt, especially when denunciations that the Criterion was Sheil Scores Anti-Commie Methods, IC&R, 16 April 1954, 1, 2, 3. IC&R, 30 April 1954, 4. 129 IC&R, 30 November 1956, 4. 130 IC&R, 10 May 1957, 4. 131 Johnson, Age of Anxiety, 454. 127 128 132 Criterion, 7, 14, 21 April 1961. Criterion, 3 December 1965, 4. 134 Criterion, 14, 21 April 1961, for pro and con letters; 8 January 1965, 4; Clarksville letter, 2 September 1966, 4. Criterion, 1, 8, 15 December 1961. 133 26 un-Catholic and subversive found their way in letters to Rome.135 To protect its flank from the right, in December 1961, the Criterion brought in a conservative columnist, Fr. John Doran. In the series of Dorans articles on the Birchers in 1965, even Doran, who found nothing objectionable in much of the societys manifesto, saw it as too dismissive of government, intolerant of divergent views, and its founder, Robert Welch, an authoritarian. In Dorans judgment, the Catholic conservative would not find answers in the Birch Society.136 The political and economic benefits of anti-Communism, inside government and out, were so robust that it seemed impervious to real world Russian setbacks. But Khrushchevs secret speech in 1955 to the 20th Party Congress denouncing Stalin and Stalinism proved deeply injurious to the Communist Party in the United States (CPUSA), as did the Soviets crushing of the Hungarian revolution the next year. By December 1956, the partys numbers had collapsed from its postwar high of 80,000 to 5,000. Of the latter, about 1,500 were FBI informants, leading J. Edgar Hoover to contemplate controlling the party by having its FBI agents and informants support one or another faction at the CPUSAs February 1957 convention. By the 1960s FBI informant-members dues supplied a hefty part of American Communist Party budget and membership.137 Yet in important ways the moribund nature of the American Communists didnt matter. Like the living dead, the anti-communist mania proved impossible to kill: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, well aware of the real weakness of Americas communists, did not disclose the facts. The bigger the menace could be made to seem, the bigger the manpower, budget, and influence of the FBI. Thus, the Bureau refused to supply Attorney-General Robert Kennedy with a white paper on the Communists Party network for fear it would compromise informants.138 The public, left in the dark, was persuaded by the memory of the Hiss case, atomic spies, Castros Cuba ninety miles from our shores, and the Missile Crisis, October 1962, that the domestic danger to the nation remained clear and present. If he failed to give conservatives satisfaction on McCarthy and the Birchers, on Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution the IC&R proved more prescient than the coverage of either the New York Times or the bishops Catholic News Service (CNS). The support of Castros movement by the Times correspondent in Cuba, Herbert Mathews, became notorious. As for the CNS, throughout 1959 CNS articles carried in the IC&R denied that Castro was a communist, even painting him as inspired by the social encyclicals. While the IC&R could not find support, in any papal pronouncement, for the new 135 Criterion, 15 October 1965, 1, 9. Criterion, 1, 8, 15 December 1961. 137 Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (New York, 1988), 211, 563, 564, 567, citing FBI files and Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (Free Press), 1987. 138 Branch, Parting the Waters, 678. 136 27 regimes drumhead trials and bulldozer burials of ones enemies,139 Bosler held his editorial guns until the situation became clearer. In January 1960 the Catholic News Service correspondent had to admit that Castros Extreme leftists to the forefront and reformers and middle class Cubans were frustrated and fearful.140 In its first editorial on Castro, May 1960, the IC&R could see clearly that there is a Communist element in the regime and by August portrayed Castro as having betrayed the revolution.141 In September an editorial admitted that the U.S. was reaping the harvest of its past support of dictators, such as Cubas Batista and Trujillo of Santo Domingo, nevertheless, Cubas open and defiant subjection of their policy and economics to the Communist bloc had caused justifiable fear and anger in the U.S. The regimes audacious lies including wild talk of assassination plots hatched by the U.S. government were worse than even the confiscation of property.142 Soon the paper headlined a campaign of persecution against the Church,143 with Catholics bear[ing] the brunt of Castros reprisals. Following the fiasco of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, at least one Cuban bishop, a hundred priests, and tens of thousands of Cubans were imprisoned. And there was fear that Castro might establish a schismatic church.144 Then there was South East Asia: Nothing did more to divide the nation than the Vietnam War. A French colony from the mid-1800s, Catholic missionaries followed the Tricolour to establish the Churchs stake in the country. That, combined with anti-Communism and the Cold War, put Vietnam high on the list of the Catholic Churchs concerns. In 1954, during the throes of the decisive French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, the IC&R ran a series of articles from Saigon by an American priest lamenting the communist victory. Influential Catholic congressmen promoted the nomination of the Ngo Dien Diem for president of South Vietnam (a Catholic mandarin with a brother an archbishop). Despite the strong Catholic stake, Bosler, cringing at press references to Diems Roman Catholic government, took on the unpopular role of opposing U.S. involvement. In 1963, still two years before the American anti-war movement began to stir, the paper asserted that Diem was not our man and reminded readers to Remember when Franco could do no wrong? The Criterion did carry pro-Diem articles by the National Catholic Welfare Conferences correspondent in South Vietnam, Fr. Patrick OConnor, an American priest and Columbian missionaryjournalist. OConnor stuck with Diem to the end, writing just days before Diem and his brother were 139 IC&R, 16 January 1959; 14 August 1959, 12. Indiana Catholic, 8 January 1960, 3. Note that for a brief period the paper went back to the original title of 1910. 141 Indiana Catholic, 27 May 1960, 4; 26 August 1960, 7. 142 Indiana Catholic, 2 September 1960, 4. Of course, there were assassination plots, some eight in all, during both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. It would take the Vietnam War to persuade journalists and the man in the street that the United States of America was capable of premeditated immoral acts of great evil. 143 Criterion, 14 October 1960, 1. 144 Criterion, 28 April 1961, 1; Criterion, 26 May 1961, 1. 140 28 murdered, 2 November 1963 (by coup plotters encouraged by the Kennedy Administration, that his Buddhist opponents were selling the U.S. a bill of goods. 145 Kennedys death followed twenty days later. The Criterions disenchantment with the war was rapid: By the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the Criterion designated Vietnam a mess and wanted no wider war.146 By November the war had become ugly,147 and in the spring and summer of 1965, it was obvious that power alone, in the form of bombs and guns, is unlikely to solve the Vietnamese riddle for either side. The war, growing more critical by the hour, was moving toward total U.S. entanglement on the Asian land mass. What then? Armageddon? The Criterion wanted the United Nations to get involved.148 More and more a show of American muscularity, the war was becoming the sort of thing that will make ours the most hated nation on earth.149 In September 1965, judging the escalation in American forces over the last seven months a failure, the Criterion urged the U.S. to submit to a UN ceasefire, otherwise the war could go on for years.150 Bosler found solace in Pope Paul VIs address at the United Nations, October 1965 (no more war, never again war) with its stress on international themes--support for the UN itself and its subsidiary organizations UNICEF and UNESCO, both bete noires of the Birchers. Yet the editor wasnt impervious and attacks could hurt: With some emotion, Bosler revealed that several persons in the city had reported to Rome that the Criterion is un-Catholic and subversive . . . . The popes words at the UN gave Bosler cover against his critics and he expressed his gratitude.151 At Christmas the Criterion again appealed for a ceasefire.152 In 1966 the anti-war movement was in full cry and the Criterion filled with editorials on the war. Senate hearings in January proved that opposition to the war was not a matter of beatniks, left-wing radicals, or right-wing war hawks. What was needed was a real debate.153 Denying that the 1954 Geneva Conference committed the U.S. to South Vietnam, the newspaper denominated South Vietnams government a bloody, corrupt little dictatorship.154 When readers answered with foul-spoken letters and telephone calls accusing [the Criterion] of being pro-Communist or worse, or of somehow undermining Criterion, 9 August 1963, 4, 12. OConnor also covered Korea in the 1950s. Diem was murdered 2 November 1963; President Kennedy was assassinated 22 November. 145 146 Criterion,14 August 1964, 4. 147 6 November 1964, 4. 30 April 1965, 4. 149 9 July 1965, 4. 150 10 September 1965, 4. 148 151 Criterion, 15 October 1965, 1, 4. 152 24 December 1965, 1. 25 February 1966, 4. 154 4 March, 4; 18 March 1966, 1. For two letters critical of the March 18 editorial, see 1 April 1966, 4. 153 29 Americas brave sons on the field of combat,155 Bosler was not deterred: Vietnam was a poor boys war and the draft a mess, with draftees and deaths disproportionately young black men.156 More than three years before the revelation of the massacre of more than 400 old men, women, and children at a place called My Lai, the Criterion drew attention to the innocents . . . being killed by Americans . . . some . . . intentionally. How can we justify fire bombing of entire villages, poisoning of [the] rice crop and killing of innocent women and children?157 Condemning the wars escalation, the paper beseeched Congress to recapture the war power.158 When the Johnson White House announced a Christmas truce, the Criterion wanted the bombing stopped permanently.159 In March 1967 a 600-word An Open Letter on Vietnam to the Catholic Clergy and Laity of the United States drew numerous signatures, including that of the auxiliary bishop of Minneapolis-St. Paul and nine Catholic college presidents, among them Msgr. Francis J. Reine of Indianapolis Marian College.160 The Criterion drew the line against draft card burning, but was highly critical of the American Legions July Back the Boys in Vietnam parade held in the city, not least because of the presence of the John Birch Society. Its editorial against the parade produced many letters, mostly critical, including two from pastors of the archdiocese.161 But that summer, support for the war continued to erode with 24 percent of Catholics opposed (versus 16.5 percent of Protestant America).162 In the fall four bishops called for immediate negotiations and an end to bombing,163 an action that may have inspired the letter signed by twenty-nine professors and seminarians of St. Meinrad Seminary in support of draft resisters, a bombing halt, and immediate withdrawal from Vietnam. Illustrative of the division among Catholics, within a week eight other St. Meinrad professors and 78 students demurred, on the ground that it was not clear that the war was morally unjust.164 The Criterion had no doubts, likening the need to speak out to the failure of good Germans to do so under the Nazis,165 a harsh, even cruel comparison, given the areas heavily German population. 155 15 April 1966, 4. 156 Criterion, 27 May 1966, 4. Blacks,10.8% of the male population, age 20 -24, were 14.8% of military in Vietnam. 157 1 July 1966, 4. Four letters attacked the editorial, 29 July 1966,4. 22 July 1966, 4. 159 9 December 1966, 4. 160 Star, 19 March 1967, si, 23. It was to appear as an ad in eight Catholic publications. 161 14 July 1967, 3; 21 July 1967, 4. 162 Dolan, American Catholic Experience, 426. 163 Criterion, 1 September 1967, 4. 158 164 Criterion 20, 27 October 1967, 5. A number of St. Meinrad alumni also weighed in against the critics of the war, 3 November 1967, 5. 165 Criterion, 27 October 1967, 4. 30 The Criterions opposition to the war drove some readers mad: One, unhappy with Your Commie-loving editorials, returned her copy, suggesting that it be sent to Moscow: They will love it and also get a big laugh out of your stupidity. May God have mercy on your soul.166 A Greenwood resident also wanted her subscription cancelled because of the editors ultra-liberal attitude and who likewise truly feel sorry for your soul.167 A Cathedral high school graduate, sick and tired of your socialistic, liberal garbage for having editorially supported: guaranteed incomes, a public Mass for a conscientious objector, nuns marching with dirty hoodlums and arsonists and Viet Cong flag wavers, . . . sexually frustrated [Dutch priests], but dont think we are all that dumb.168 More tempered were the letters of E. J. Dowd of Indianapolis who lamented that the paper was never factual and appealed only to emotion--in short, was demagogic, irrational, intemperate. Nonetheless, confessing his own need for year-round Lenten penance, Mr. Dowd enclosed a check for his subscription.169 When the communist Tet offensive, February 1968, led the commanding U.S. general to appeal for over 200,000 troops to add to the 510,000 already in Vietnam, the Criterion declared the request an admission of defeat and denominated the Vietnam War the dirtiest, most evil war the United States ever blundered into.170 Today Vietnam is a shambles . . . . Millions of refugees roam the land, stunned, hungry, maimed and diseased. Citing a Gallup poll in which 49 percent said that intervention was a mistake (even Fulton J. Sheen had come to support a pull out), the Criterion supported holding a few strategic centers--an enclave strategy.171 Having concluded that the war was unjust and morally indefensible, the paper saw virtue in selective conscientious objection, a theme of many editorials in 1968 and 1969, even to the point of the archdiocese providing counseling for young men on how to avoid the draft.172 By 1969 a majority of Catholics supported de-Americanizing the war and a ceasefire. A year later a clear plurality objected to the invasion of Cambodia, a desperate gamble in the eyes of the Criterion.173 Although Pope Paul VI frequently condemned the Vietnam War, the American bishops were notably reticent. As late as 1966 they were of the mind that it was reasonable to argue that [the American] presence in Vietnam is justified. By their November 1968 meeting the bishops raised questions regarding the just war proviso of proportionality (the waste of resources), welcomed the bombing halt, but still 166 Criterion, 17 November 1967, 5. Criterion, 28 May 1969, 5, 7. 168 Criterion, 30 October 1970, 4. (The Dutch clergy supported making celibacy optional.) 169 Criterion, 4 April 1969, 5. 170 Criterion,16 February 1968, 4. The Criterion carried many articles on dissenters to the war, e.g., 8 167 March 1968, 1,2. 171 Criterion, The nobler course, 15 March 1968, 4. 172 Criterion, 10 May1968, 4; 15 October 1969, 1; 7 November 1969, 4. 173 Criterion, 8 May 1970, 4. 31 offered no definitive judgment; two years later they remained as divided on the war as the public.174 Finally, in 1971, they conceded that whatever the good aimed at for Vietnam was now outweighed by the destruction of human life and of moral values which [the war] inflicts. A speedy ending of this war is a moral imperative of the highest priority.175 Tardy they may have been, but it was the first time the hierarchy had ever dissented from a major American military effort. Even so, they did not question the righteousness of the causeanti-communism--only that the war was a losing proposition.176 Despite an 8 to 1 Supreme Court ruling against selective conscientious objection, March 1971, the U.S. Catholic Conference (USCC) came out in its favor, and in October called for amnesty for draft resisters as well.177 When a conscientious objector of the archdiocese was convicted of violating the selective service act, fourteen priests publicly praised him for his witness.178 By 1971 four of five Catholics nationally--and the Criterion (Bring the boys home--now!), wanted all American troops withdrawn.179 Bosler drew comfort from the shift in opinion. He had lost friends for his stand, especially in the earlier Kennedy-Johnson years of the war. He drew comfort in the belief that the newspapers opposition was never political or ideological, but based on the moral and social grounds enunciated by two popes and the American bishops.180 In a real break with American Catholicisms patriotic tradition, the Criterion began to question the practice of supplying chaplains to the military.181 Fighting Americas wars had been the practical riposte to the canard that Catholics were compromised by an allegiance to a foreign pope. Now there were more Catholic conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War than any other single denomination.182 By 1972 even B.H. Ackelmire, the relatively conservative editorial voice of the Criterion wanted the troops out--at long last common sense and compassion have persuaded us that we must get out of Vietnam. And when President Gerald Ford blamed Congress for South Vietnams final collapse, in April 1975, the Criterion charged him with unmitigated hypocrisy.183 The Vietnam War ravaged American self-esteem. As for its many supposed lessons, one has proved durable: for the first time, many Americans came to the 174 175 Bishops Pastoral Letters, vol. III, 229. Bishops Pastoral Letters, vol. III, 176 Brynes, Bishops and American Politics, 95, 96. 177 The consciences of those who follow the just war tradition should be respected. Criterion, 19 March 1971, 4; Bishops Pastoral Letters, vol. III, 283-286. 178 Criterion, 30 April 1971, 4. 179 Criterion, 30 April 1971, 4; Byrnes, Bishops and American Politics, 104. Criterion, 12 February 1971, 4. 181 Criterion, 14 May 1971, 4. 182 Gallup and Castelli, 76-90. 183 Telling it straight, Criterion, 4 April 1975, 4. 180 32 conclusion that the United States was capable of doing real evil in the world, not through error, misjudgment, or bad luck, but intentionally.184 This was new and its importance cannot be over emphasized: The morality of Americas conduct henceforth would become a perennial consideration in judging every American political and military intervention in world affairs. *** Until recently, Vietnam was Americas longest war; an even longer conflict is the struggle over womens rights. In the fifteen years under the priest board, 1932-1947, the archdiocesan paper held fast to the most retrograde tenets of patriarchy. Even under Boslers thirty years as editor, from time to time the paper exhibited the taint of male chauvinism: A 1956 a column by a monsignor, Is Woman Mans Equal? was a classic: Striking most of the notes in the second sex songbook, A man, he explained, detests an independent woman; wishing to command, he needs to have her dependent on him. A woman, the priest was sure, likes to feel that she has a master. Of course, men, lacking the subtlety and cunning of the female, are by indirection guided by the woman to get her master to do what she wants. In the final analysis, One must complete the other.185 Less than two years on, perhaps reflecting the contemporary influence of anthropologist Ashley Montagues critique of Momism--the dominance of women in American families, the IC&R praised a priests novena sermon critical of Dad for letting Mom take over the family. Seconding the message, an editorial pleaded Let the fathers come out of retirement, reassert their authority and reassume their child-training responsibilities.186 It is unlikely that Bosler wrote that editorial or shared such views, for he seems to have stood out in his sympathy and respect for womens abilities. That he differed from the general run may have been due to family circumstances: His father was a successful dentist and something of a free thinker, but his homemaker-mother suffered mental problems, problems manifested in harshness toward the four girls, particularly the eldest daughter, Helen; the three boys, especially Raymond, the eldest, seemed to have escaped the mothers sternness. Despite the employment of a cook and a housekeeper, raising seven children caused or exacerbated the mothers difficulties. Privately institutionalized in 1935 (three years before her sons ordination), later a resident in the state mental hospital, for the last eight or nine years of her life (she died age 90 in 1966) were spent in a Catholic nursing home. To attribute Ray Boslers pastoral sympathy to women in difficulties to the hard life inflicted on his sister Helen--and the suffering of his mother as well--does not seem too far a reach. One may conjecture that Boslers sensitivity when 184 Which is what I used to tell my American history students. IC&R, 9 November 1956, 5. 186 IC&R, 18 July 1958, 4. This is another case of an editorial that does not read like Boslernot even the 1950s Bosler. 185 33 treating reproductive issues in editorials and his syndicated Question Box column was owed to family experience.187 Whatever the source, Bosler had advanced views on the position of women in society and in the Church. In 1976, retiring as editor, but still conducting the Question Box, readers of the archdiocesan newspaper discovered that a Pontifical Biblical Commission by a vote of 12 to 5, contradicting bishops, theologians, and hallowed tradition, found nothing in scripture to bar women priests.188 A first year college student wrote that she wanted to be ordained. What should she study? Bosler was not optimistic, but thought that in thirty years or so--by the time the young woman was 50--he suspected that women would be ordained.189 He agreed with another reader that men and women certainly differed, which was precisely, he observed, why women ought to be ordained. Anxious to share his opinion, Bosler recruited a number of arguments in favor of women priests, among them that, like most people, his earliest religious education had come from women. Mentioning Christs use of domestic examples to illustrate his teachings (yeast, sweeping the floor, etc.), he called attention to the women doctors of the Church--which gave the lie to womens supposedly low intellectual endowment. Citing St. Paul (neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female), nothing in scripture prevented their ordination. He was so convinced that women should and would be ordained that in future Catholics would view the ban on women priests as slavery came to be regarded: How could Catholics ever have held such a view?190 But St. Paul could take away as well as give: his dictum that women should be silent in church was one hurdle to womens ordination.191 Tongue in cheek, a woman wrote of an organization she and other homemakers had founded: The Interdependent Gals Rejecting Evil Scholastic Sophistry (TIGRESS). Its three founding families (wives, husbands, and children over twelve), pledged that until women can be priests to give no money or support to the Church. The children will go to public schools and the families had revised their wills. Bosler replied that he knew enough about bishops and had read enough about popes to know they would not be intimidated by such an organization. His advice to women was to work from the grassroots--become lectors, Eucharistic ministers, parish council members, and 187 New Wine, 1, 2. The commission hedged by voting unanimously that women were not excluded from ordination by scripture alone, that is, there could be other grounds. Criterion, 18 June 1976, 1. 189 17 September 1976, 5. 188 190 Criterion, 5 November 1976, 5. Bosler thought so much of this response he included it in his 1992 memoir, New Wine, 96. 191 Second Corinthians, 14: 34, 35. Many scripture scholars regard these sentiments as not authentic St. Paul, having been added later. 34 clamor for a diocesan pastoral council.192 As he interpreted scripture the day would come for God does not treat the inspired writers as puppets, but allows them to be true authors, who reflect the limited knowledge and ignorance of their times.193 Thus St. Paul, while a giant of the Church, could not speak for all times in all matters. To a reader disgusted with the wedding rite telling wives to be submissive and subject to husbands as to the Lord, Bosler, noting that different readings were now available, cited the more palatable ones. The scriptures simply incorporated the secular household codes of responsibility contemporary to that time and customs and attitudes had changed.194 In the Churchs defense, he would point out that reputable historians credit the Church with raising the position of women and noted, too, that nuns already ran important institutions. His reward were the women who congratulated him for his support; wrote one Take good care of yourself, Monsignor. With all the gynophobic Latin members of the hierarchy, we need you.195 192 What To Ask About Marriage, 119, 120. What To Ask About Marriage, 117. 194 Genesis 2:15-24; Romans 8:31-39; I John 4: 7-13, What To Ask About Marriage, 106, 107. 195 What To Ask About Marriage, 114. 193 35  ...

... Putting Gender on the Agenda: A Feminist Approach to Study Abroad Dr. Mary Ellen Lennon, Dr. Holly Gastineau-Grimes, Marian University Feminism & Pedagogy Feminism: encompasses ideas about the importance of women and womens experiences, histories of social movements seeking gender equality, a philosophy of humanism that works as a lens for understanding the entire human condition (not just that of women), and a critical analytical method that interrogates the relationships among gender, sex/uality, race, class, the environment, and power, often using misogyny as an organizing principle to explain inequalities and injustices in these realm Crabtree, Sapp, and Licona, 2009, pg. 1 Pedagogy Focus on curriculum, instruction, and evaluation Feminist Pedagogy & Study Abroad Approach that strives to not to tacitly accept or reproduce an oppressively gendered, classed, racialized, and androcentric social order Crabtree, Sapp, and Licona, 2009, pg. 1 One womans experience does not help us construct a template for understanding the world - Steans, 1998, pgs. 23-27 Feminist pedagogy not yet embraced in study abroad programs: International travel can and should challenge students to see and understand themselves as the other Feminist Study Abroad Emphasizes the value of relationships and care in order to understand society and moral choices (Carol Gillgan) Partners The premise stems from a feminist perspective Our Project Relationship & Research Focused: 1) Intimate research discussions with educators, legislators, university professors, nongovernmental organizations, women survivors of domestic violence and lawyers in BRAZIL; and 2) Continued conversations - friendships and research partnerships forged Global Learning Association of American Colleges and Universities Critical Analysis of and an engagement with complex, interdependent global systems.. Students Should: 1. Become Informed, open-minded, and responsible attentive to diversity 2. Seek to understand how their actions affect the local and global 3. Address the worlds most pressing and enduring issues collaboratively Our ProposalWomens Rights and Womens Empowerment in the Western Hemisphere Partners of America, 1964 Dr. Ana Paula Motta Costa People to People Kennedy Alliance for Legislative Fellows in the Western Hemisphere Skype: we want to study the lives of women Indianapolis Chapter High School Youth Ambassadors / US Department of StateFunded Exchange Program Her work: focuses on child labor in Brazil, and its implications especially on girls/young women Rights and Womens Empowerment in the Western Hemisphere Spring Workshops International Travel to Porto Alegre, Brazil Summer Writing Rounds The Feminist Archive Spring Workshops January International Legal Framework and the United Nations February: All Things Brazil March: Independent Research April: Cultural Preparation Dilma Rousseff I speak to you with a feminine voice. Its the voice of democracy, of equality. We face an economic crisis that, if it is not contained, can transform into a grave political and social rupture, an unprecedented rupture with the potential to provoke serious imbalances between people and nations. Either we get together, all of us, and defeat this crisis, or we all will be defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton Womens Rights are Human Rights. What we are learning around the world is that if women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish Gender Development Index Brazil United States Life Expectancy Life Expectancy Women: 81.4 Men: 76.7 Women: 78.3 Men: 70.7 Years in School Years in School Women: 15.7 Men: 13 Women: 15.6 Men: 14.8 Income Women: $43,054 Men: $63,158 Income Women: $11,393 Men: $19,084 Intersectionality and Substantive Equality The concept of the simultaneity of oppression is still the crux of a Black feminist understanding of political reality and, I believe, one of the most significant ideological contributions of Black feminist thought. Black feminist and scholar Barbara Smith, 1983 Gender inequality, Racial inequality and Poverty are too often conceptualized as separate problems! Formal equality the rules, criteria, process, etc. do not explicitly discriminate Substantive equality the effect of the rules, criteria, process, etc. is nondiscriminatory International Travel DAY 1 - GRAMADO DAY 2 PORTO ALEGRE  Half Day Public School Programs Expectations of girls in the classroom and gender expectations of dating heightened Solutions community enrichment centers DAY 3 ESCOLA ESTADUAL CONEGA JOSE LEAO HARTMANN & GALERA CURTICAO  Galera Curticao Project h Participating schools have students in the eighth grade select a gender-based problem to tackle Over the course of the first semester students learn about the issue, get comfortable talking about the problem, and develop a community awareness initiative such as a music video or film  Growing Up Right Project crafted legislation to link the completion of secondary education for students to paid work/internships with the Tobacco Syndicate Boys and girls expected by parents to quit school and work on the family farm Classes emphasize sustainable rural administration DAY 4 SANTA CRUZ  City Council shared similar stories that women work against in the United States - The women emphasized that they were in the midst of securing equal rights for women, shifting gendered perceptions of women, and addressing domestic violence University legal clinic provides help to transgender individuals with legally changing names DAY 5 CITY COUNCIL & UNIVERSITY DAY  Started in the early 1990s to provide legal training for women to become paralegals Includes a workshop series on seeing the value of themselves, followed by discussions on the meaning of gender and feminism, and then a series of sessions on rights relating to abortion, sexual orientation and gay marriage, sexual rights, especially of black women, racism, and violence, especially police violence DAY 6 THEMIS & UNIRITTER Courts striving to shift cultural perception of masculinity and love Men arrested on domestic violence charges required to take part in reconciliation & healing workshops DAY 7 DOMESTIC VIOLENCE & THE COURTS The value of a global conversation.and the Feminist Archive Obrigada!  ...

... Msgr Raymond T. Bosler at the Second Vatican Council, 1962-1965, and After Have no fear; once the talk ceases and the bishops depart, we will change everything back to the way it was. Cardinal Paolo Marella, to a reporter at the end of the second session. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have to change often. John Henry Cardinal Newman. William Doherty 2017. All rights reserved. 1 On 28 October 1958, Angelo Guiseppe Roncalli became Pope John XXIII. At age 76, his reign was expected to be short, his role a mere placeholder. Three months later, trembling a little with emotion but with a humble resolution of purpose, he shocked many and surprised everyone when he announced his intention to hold an ecumenical council. Asked what he had in mind, Pope John used the term aggiornamento, literally, to make things ready for today, its needs, the times. Going to a window he opened it wide saying he expected the council to let some fresh air into the Church.1 He was himself a fresh breeze: He ended the practice of Vatican officials kneeling in his presence, held the first papal press conference, the first pope since 1870 to travel outside Rome, the first to make pastoral visits hospitals, orphanages, prisons. Driven around Rome he would stop the car to greet people. As an auger of the future, passing Romes Great Synagogue one day, he blessed the people coming out; after a moment of bewilderment, they crowded around applauding enthusiastically. The rabbi, an eyewitness, called Johns action the first real gesture of reconciliation.2 Earlier, a sign of the difference his papacy would make, at his first Good Friday service as pope he dropped the prayers for the perfidious Jews, substituting Let us pray also for the Jews to whom God first spoke.3 John would be ecumenical: he met with the Archbishop of Canterbury, December 1960, six months later he received the Anglican personal representative to the Vatican and invited non-Catholics as council observers. In naming the first cardinals from Japan, Africa, and Mexico, John XXIII foreshadowed the councils intention to decentralize and deItalianize the Church. To prepare for the council, in June 1959, letters to over 2,800 ecclesiastics and heads of institutions around the world stated that the pope wanted to know the opinions, suggestions, and wishes of their excellences.4 They were to offer their ideas with complete freedom and honesty, about issues the council should deal with. The 2,100 responses filled twelve large volumes, more than 5,000 pages.5 Overall, the suggestions were quite conservative and a poor guide to what would happen at the council, being mostly condemnations of modern evils, such as Communism, and to reassert tradition and doctrine, especially relating to the Virgin Mary. The more liberal asked for a greater role for the laity and use of the vernacular in the liturgies. The gathering process ended in early June 1960 with the Central Theological Commission setting up ten sub-commissions, each headed by the prefect of the corresponding congregation of the Roman Curia; these would produce the initial drafts for the councils consideration. The pope had admonished its members to work together with brotherly concord, moderation in proposals, dignity of 1 2 Thomas Cahill, Pope John XXIII (Doubleday: New York, 2002), 175. Michael A. Hayes, From Nostra Aetate to We remember, 426. 3 Cahill, John XXIII, 175. 4 Italy was first in number of bishops with 367; United States, 216; Brazil, 167; India, 80. 5 John W. OMalley, What Happened at Vatican II (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2008), 19. 2 discussion and wisdom of deliberation, using a pastoral approach rather than condemnations.6 Meeting behind closed doors, the hundred or so high ecclesiastics collating the responses divulged little information and LOsservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, gave the impression that all was sweetness and light. In fact, the meetings proved highly contentious as the minority of liberals disputed with the conservatives over collegiality, liturgical reform, and the desirability of yet another condemnation of Communism. This absence of brotherly concord made the preparatory commission a dress rehearsal for the real thing.7 In the nearly three years between the announcement of the council and its opening, 11 October 1962, the Vaticans heavily Italian bureaucracy made its fierce opposition to a council manifest, and Pope John resented it. Having told the gathered of his hope that that the council would help the Church to face the future without fear, Gaudet Mater Ecclesia (Mother Church rejoices), he then voiced his displeasure with the Curia for having had to listen to persons, who, though burning with zeal, lack discretion or measure, and see nothing but prevarication and ruin having learned nothing from history, . . . [W]e must disagree with these prophets of gloom who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world was at hand. Producing his own guidelines for the council, Pope John said the councils purpose was not to discuss one or another fundamental doctrines--for this a Council was not necessary, but to study and expound doctrine through the methods and through the literary forms of modern thought. The substance of the ancient doctrine of the deposit of faith is one thing, and the way in which it is presented is another. As to errors, they always abound, but nowadays, rather than condemnations, the Church prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than severity. That being so, she desires to show herself to be the loving mother of all, benign, patient, full of mercy and goodness toward the brethren who are separated from her. Far from condemning the contemporary world, the pope held out the prospect that Divine Providence is leading us to a new order of human relations, which, through mens efforts, unknowingly, are directed toward fulfilling Gods inscrutable designs; and everything, even human differences, leads to the greater good of the Church. 8 Implicitly, Pope John turned away from triumphalism, from condemning the world, from punishments, and not least, punctured the notion that high church officials were not as other men, unreal, incorporate spirits free from ordinary human failings. Pope John, nobodys fool, his address was pastoral, open to change, ecumenical and modern, as the American Bishop Robert Tracy later wrote, it was the first glimmer that the bishops had not been called to Rome simply to exhibit our solidarity with the approved authors and with the Holy See.9 Msgr. Ray T. Bosler, at one with Pope Johns hopes for the council, identified the foot draggers for his readers as men who see in the secularization of society a corruption of what was once a glorious Christian civilization and Communism as secularisms logical evil expression. It followed that clergy and laity, for their own 6 Criterion, 19 Oct 1962. Criterion, 19 Oct 1962. 8 R.T.B., Criterion, 19 October 1962, 4; Walter M. Abbott, gen. ed., Documents of Vatican II (Herder and Herder: New York, 1966), 712. 9 Robert E. Tracy, An American Bishop at the Vatican Council, (McGraw-Hill: New York, 1966), 34. 7 3 protection, should have as little to do with secular society as possible and the ideal to be striven for once again is the restoration of the medieval union of Church and State. Fearful of efforts to express the beliefs of the Church in modern language more intelligible to men of today, they would have the council repeat the dogmas of faith in their ancient language.10 They wanted a doctrinal council drawn from the teachings from Leo XIII to Pius XII. Suspicious of scripture scholars, they defended papal power and saw themselves as defenders of orthodoxy. 11 It would not be an exaggeration to say that the 1910 anti-modernist oath, still in effect, remained a fair description of their views: Required of all clergy upon taking minor orders, as well as office holders, and professors at the beginning of each academic year, the oath emphasized the fixity of doctrine transmitted to us in the same sense and meaning from the Apostles, the absolute and immutable truth first preached by the Apostles. One swore submission and adherence wholeheartedly to the condemnations and all the prescriptions contained in Pius Xs encyclicals Pascendi and Lamentabili, especially those which bear on the history of Dogma.12 At first, things looked promising for the standpatters: The councils general secretary was a curial cardinal as were the presidents of the ten preparatory commissions (except the Commission on the Apostolate on the Laity which, being new, lacked its own curial congregation), and many of the commissions secretaries were curial theologians. As the preparations for the council was the bureaucrats business, curial conservatives and their allies were wildly over-represented on the various commissions. These were the people whose experts would write the initial schemata. And by excluding some of the most outstanding theologiansJohn Courtney Murray and John L. McKenzie of the United States, Karl and Hugo Rahner from Bavaria, from France Henri de Lubac, Jean Danielou, Yves Congar, and Marie-Domonique de Chenu, recent biblical scholarship was marginalized. Besides producing the first drafts, the conservatives wrote the procedural rules and set the daily rota of speeches in the aula. They controlled the Vatican weekly, LOsservatore Romano, and by barring the press from the debates in St. Peters, leaving reporters dependent on unhelpful summaries, they expected to manage the news. Under the circumstances, they were confident they would succeed in crafting a short, harmless council. It could never be said of the conservatives that they didnt understand the stakes: Having failed to prevent the council, they worked to render it innocuous. Fearful of losing curial clout to conciliarisma bishops parliament enacting changes affecting the papacy and particularly themselvesthe Curia--they put every obstacle in the way of renewal. While a minority in the council of only about ten to fifteen percent (about 200 to 300 in all), the Curia and its intransigent allies (largely Italians, Spaniards, and Poles), used the time to ensure as little as possible would 10 11 12 Criterion, 19 October 1962, 4. OMalley, Vatican II, 111-113. Peter Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII: Shepherd of the Modern World (Doubleday & Company: Garden City, New York), 66, 67. 4 changeideally, nothing. They wanted a short council on the lines of the First Vatican Council, one that simply reiterated accepted doctrine and papal pronouncements from Leo XIII to Pius XII. They didnt play fair: they stalled-for instance, the theological commission, which claimed the right to vet all schema drafts, met only once a week rather than every day. When the tide turned against them, they used intimidation, leveled charges of heresy, and clung to absolutes and scholasticism. They fell to mistranslating documents, even to changing the words themselves. If critics found such tactics unworthy, their justification was this accursed council is ruining the church.13 For them, the Pope, the Curia, and the Roman bishops were the Church. After more than two years to prepare, only seven of some seventy schemas were ready for the first session, and of these only the liturgy schema proved worthwhile; the rest simply repeated the old theology manuals. There was neither freedom of conscience for the laity nor development of doctrine. The progressive bishops also discovered that the Roman Curia has often kept them separated from the Roman Pontiff. Many regarded its maneuvers and violations of the rules as a tactic of deception.14 Resentment at the conservatives hard ball habits became a running sore during the council, alienating many, including the editor of the Criterion.15 From the preparatory commission in 1960 the conservative defenders of the status quo, out of exaggerated confidence, relied on the Curias four centuries of dominance, its superior access to influential circles, its plentiful financial resources. Alarmed at the first sessions results, however, for the second session they hired staff, bought a printing press, and organized as the Coetus Internationalis Patrum (Union of International Fathers). Yet fatal to its cause, compromise was not a CIP option, nor consensus a goal: It was anti-collegial, suspicious of episcopal conferences (they take away papal power and were themselves a threat), with the result that it was isolated. Unable to reach and organize potential allies in significant numbers, its meetings gathered few participants. 16 What effectiveness the CIP would have was not in mustering the support of like-minded bishops, but in pressuring Paul VI to qualify council decisions. On his own, a pope can insist that a council discuss an issue or not discuss it--as Paul VI did with birth control and priestly celibacy; he can veto an approved schema or have its drafting committee amend it-as he did with collegiality; he can draft his own statement on matters with which he disagrees--as he did in referring to the Virgin Mary in terms the progressives had kept out.17 If the conservatives were too few and overconfident, the progressives brought real strengths which they only gradually realized they had. More wedded to collegiality, they proved more flexible, more successful at compromise and consensus. Having judged the first prepared schemas inadequate, recall that the French, German, Dutch, and Belgians circulated their own drafts before the council ever convened. Some council arrangements unintentionally Tracy, An American Bishop at the Vatican Council, 32, 33, 153. Citing Yves Congers journal, they found justification in their belief that this accursed council is ruining the church. OMalley, What Happened at Vatican II, 114. 14 Fr. Robert J. Nogosek, C.S.C., America, (October 1, 2012); Criterion, 14 December 1962, 4. 15 Boslers self-published memoir, New Wine, 74, 79. 16 Melissa J. Wilde, Vatican II: A Sociological Analysis of Religious Change (Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey), 70. 17 Wilde, Vatican II and Religious Change, f.n. 16, 144. 13 5 favored collegiality, such as seating the bishops in the aula by seniority rather than region, produced more wideranging cultural exchanges, as did the coffee bars--Bar Jonah and Bar Mitzvahthe sites for what George Weigel called the crucial secondary Council of informal conversation and personal encounter . . . . 18 The germ of what would become a collegial juggernaut was the agreement a few weeks into the first session of two Latin Americans and a few French bishops to meet regularly to inform and help each other.19 From this small beginning, midway through the first session a formal organization emerged. Meeting weekly at the Domus Mariae, a hotel a 35-minute walk from St. Peters, it was a participatory democracy with, in time, the ability to reach some 1,900 council bishops through its 22 core individuals representing the various national episcopal and regional conferences. Ideas were debated and compromise the order of the day. Once consensus was achieved, the Domus Mariae, speaking in the name of 127 conferences from the five continents, could rapidly communicate its decisions. In addition, reformminded bishops, as Archbishop Schulte put it at the first session, went off to school again at evening presentations by theologians organized by Domus Mariae.20 American Bishop Earnest Primeau, one of the 22 rapporteurs--testified to the DMs effects. As the liaison to the American bishops National Catholic Welfare Conference, Primeau met weekly with the other core members, corresponded with other bishops, attended meetings where the final details of schemas were agreed upon, and kept DM members abreast of developments. The DM widened my horizons, made me more appreciative of the ideas and problems of others, more sensitive to their needs, spiritual and material. . . . Before collegiality [was] formally approved at the council, I had already profoundly experienced it.21 *** The council years proved to be the most thrilling of Boslers life, intellectually stimulating as nothing before or since.22 Looking back to his ordination in 1938, he described that newly minted priest as an ultra-conservative, Biblical fundamentalist given to the old heartless rationalistic theology of the scholastics, one who idolized the pope. That cleric was a casualty, in part, of his doctoral research in the documents of the First Vatican Council: Discovering the bickering among the bishops and the way Pius IX rammed papal infallibility through convinced him of the need to reduce papal power through episcopal collegiality. Made a peritus (expert) within a week of his arrival in Rome by the efforts of a friend, Bishop Primeau, Bosler was one of 22 Americans among the first 244 periti named by the pope.23 As a peritus he had a ringside seat in the aula whenever he wanted it. 18 First Things, 67 (November 1996), 54-56. Wilde, Vatican II and Religious Change, 7, 63, 64. 20 Criterion, 16 November 1962, 4; Wilde, Vatican II, 41. 19 21 Wilde, Vatican II and Religious Change 68. Criterion, Only in America, 24 May 1963, 4; New Wine, 66. St. Louis Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter asked him to serve as his theologian, but Schulte, hearing of it, told Bosler that he would accompany him. 22 23 6 Charged with answering John XXIIIs call for suggestions for the councils work by Archbishop Paul C. Schulte, Bosler and canonist Msgr. Charles Koster had two years to think about the council. (Bosler viewed their effort as too safe, but one who reviewed it in the 1990s told him that the Indianapolis effort was among the best. Rome received some 3,000 such submissions.24 Boslers first dispatch from the council showed him to be desirous of change and anxious to open windows: he wanted a horizontal, democratic church rather than a vertical, hierarchical one; opposed to clericalism and appreciative of the laitys gifts, he wanted their competence in practical affairs put at the service of the Church; he was for individual conscience over universally applicable rules, the spirit over the letter, and an openness to change which required that doctrine develop. Specifically, there was the American schema on religious liberty, ecumenism, and the Churchs relation to the modern world. Embarrassed by the Churchs history of anti-Semitism and its history of condemnation and censorship, above all he wanted Church renewal, and for that to happen the power of the Curia had to be broken in favor of the bishops. Collegialitythe worlds bishops working closely with the pope in governing the Church--was the great issue, the most crucial, the most important thing the council has to do. It will be a failure if it does not accomplish it. 25 For example, much of liturgical reform, being focused on a devolution of power to the bishops and away from Rome, won Boslers praise for increasing a bishops discretion in running his diocese. Such decentralization was a close relative of collegiality. By 1962 Bosler had had fifteen years as editor of the archdiocesan newspaper and it was through his journalist spectacles that he viewed its doings, albeit a priest with a heavy stake in its outcome. Recall that his condition for taking the job was Schultes promise of independence. Many American bishops, to say nothing of the Romans, believed that to apply ordinary political categories to this most solemn of religious gatherings was impious and they resented the press for revealing the existence of council factions. Bosler disagreed: The council was a parliament--with over 2,000 participants, a very large one. Bishops are human; those who think alike naturally form groups to promote their agenda. They are jealous of their own opinions, are stubborn, petty, domineering, as well as generous, magnanimous and open to conviction and compromise. Hence, reporters were justified in finding at Vatican II a like dynamic at work. But under the rules secular journalists were banned from St. Peters, leaving them dependent on council press office handouts which tilted toward the conservative. For example, a press release on the 24 New Wine, 66. 25 Criterion, 5 October 1962, 4; 12 October, 4, 9; 19 October, 4, 9. Of some thirty-five council dispatches, collegiality was his chief concern, with fourteen columns, wholly or in part, devoted to it, followed by religious liberty with ten, the laity, nine, and a declaration on the Jews, five. Even when not the main subject of a column, its impact on collegiality might be Boslers major interest: 7 use of the vernacular in liturgy listed four reasons against and only one in favor, exactly the reverse of the views expressed in the aula. For the real news of the council, Bosler much preferred the secular press over the Catholic religious press. At the first session, hampered by the Anglo-Saxon bishops and theologians who keep secrets, if labeled as such, our Catholic News Service in Rome sends little more than the councils official communiques, and never any idea of whats behind the discussions . . . . Being short-changed on council coverage, while the Romans were quite willing to talk, though not for attribution, Bosler instructed the Criterion staff to rely less on the U.S. bishops news service and more on the Religious News Service, which was not church-owned and served a wide spectrum of religious and secular publications.26 Fortunately, the enterprising American secular press was filled with good information. His own weekly dispatches, editors comments from Rome, benefited from daily discussions with confreres and knowledgeable friends in both camps, including some in the Curia. His lengthy reports might run to 3,000 words. Besides his first-hand observations and sources across the ideological spectrum, Bosler read the French and Italian newspapers and other publications where the real news of the council could be found.27 Unfortunately, the councils participantsthe bishops, the periti--were sworn to Secreto!, not to reveal anything that is said or done in the aula and the commission meetings. The picture of the Church the Curia worked to portray was one of unity and unchanging doctrine. In the manner of authoritarians everywhere, any hint of disagreement had to be kept hidden, lest scandal be given. Airing differences is unedifying and confuses the faithful. The experts came in for special attention: They were restricted to answering questions the bishops asked; outside the commissions, they were not to promote their opinions in interviews, criticize the council to the press, or disclose inside information of council doings. Naturally, the periti felt insulted. Almost from the start, that horse was out of the barn. There was no real way to keep secrets among the more than two thousand bishops and hundreds of others--theologians, guest observers, staff, and others with inside knowledge. That, and the heated nature of the disputes, rendered secrecy hopeless. Then, too, non-Roman bishops and theologians came to see the press as an ally in Church renewal: Francis X. Murphy, C.SS.R., a teacher of moral theology at the Redemptorist Academy in Rome during the councils preparations, was busy compiling notes about the intrigues and secretive manipulations by a number of prominent prelates. The New Yorker magazine began publishing his Letter from Vatican City in time for the councils opening.28 The articles created a firestorm of controversy. Under advice, Murphy used a pseudonym, (his middle name and mothers maiden name). When asked 26 Criterion, 30 November 1962, 4, 12. The two principal national and international news sources were received as packets daily at the Criterion; the Catholic News Service (CNS) from the NCWC in Washington, D.C. and the Religious News Service (RNS) from New York City. The latter was not church-owned and served a wide spectrum of religious and secular publications. The lengthy articles on the council sessions by the Benedictine, Placid Jordan, a Swiss-American representing the RNS, appeared weekly in the Criterion. 27 Criterion, 30 November 1962, 4, 12. Francis X. Murphy, Out of the Catacombs, America (September 11, 1999), 15-17. The articles were later gathered in four volumes. Vatican Council II (Farrar & Giroux, 1968). 28 8 if he was Xavier Rynne, using casuistry, hed reply I am Francis Murphy. But as a well-known journalist whod published in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and in magazines, his identity became an open secret: During the third session the Criterion published his photograph on page one with the caption, identified in some circles as the mysterious Rynne . . . .29 Ironically, through the efforts of a fellow Redemptorist, the bishop of Monterey-Fresno, and a close friend of Cardinal Amleto Cicognani, the Vatican Secretary of State, Murphy was made a peritus. In another secrecy breach the French-Canadian superior-general of the Holy Cross fathers gave his peritus, Fr. Robert J. Nogosek, C.S.C., all the documents as they were discussed and revised.30 All in all, Bosler thought the press did a creditable job. Outside observers were impressed with the freedom of debate and by how much the bishops differ, exactly what bothered the conservatives and many another bishop. 31 By the second session useful summaries of what was said in the aula were provided, for example, the American bishops published a Council Daybook, and held regular press conferences. The combination of immense world-wide interest and innumerable secular press outlets led Bosler to say there are no secrets.32 While this was an exaggeration, what the effort to maintain secrecy revealed was the chasm between the curial mentality and the dayto-day realities of modern journalism. Back in Indianapolis the Criterion carried extensive coverage of the councilthe background, analysis, and lengthy excerpts of documents as they became available. It was not uncommon for the paper to run two, three, four council articles on page one, with four or five more on the inside on as many aspects and from as many points of view. The reporters and regular columnists ran the gamut from conservative to moderate to liberal, clerical and lay among them weekly columnists Fr. John Doran, Placid Jordan, O.S.B, and layman Gary MacEoin; frequent contributing clerics were Andrew Greeley, George Higgins, Fulton Sheen, Gustave Weigel, S.J.; and laymen, such as John Cogley and Michael Novak. An attentive reader of the Criterion was well-informed on the doings in Rome. *** During council sessions Schulte and Bosler stayed at the Istituto San Tommaso di Villanova, a comfortable pension on the Via Romania run by French Augustinian nuns. The Villanova became notable, even notorious, as a gathering center for progressives seeking real change in the Church; the Americans called it the rebels roost. At the fourth session Bosler wrote that to live at the Villanova was itself an education and quite possibly the best means of knowing from day to day what goes on . . . in St. Peters or behind the scenes.33 Part of the reason was the variety of 29 30 Criterion, 23 October 1964, 1. America, (October 1, 2012). 31 Criterion, 16 November 1962, 4. 32 Criterion, 27 September 1963, 1, 9. Criterion, 1 October 1965, 1. 33 9 minds and experience present: Some two-dozen bishops were usually in residence, along with a slightly smaller number of periti. For example, at the third session eleven U.S. bishops, ten Italians, four French, an Australian, and some Eastern European bishops lived there. Of the Americans, New Hampshire Bishop Earnest Primeau, thanks to his many years in Rome, was particularly influential. He knew the curial movers and shakers and became one himself, as a member of the councils preparatory committee, 1960-1962. Of greater importance was Primeaus membership on Cardinal Beas Secretariat for Christian Unity (SCU) (which dealt with ecumenism, the declaration on the Jews, and religious liberty), and as the U.S. bishops representative--one of its 22 core members--of the international committee, the Domus Mariae. The DM was the progressives umbrella organization which acted as a clearing house for over a hundred national episcopal conferences. Of the fifteen or so periti at the Villanova during the third session were nine Americans, three French, and one each English, Belgian, and Swiss. Besides Primeau (who had offered to take Bosler as his peritus before Schulte decided to do so), was the American labor priest and regular Criterion columnist, George Higgins, head of the American episcopal conferences social action department, who served on the joint commission responsible what became The Church in the Modern World; Canadian theologian and sociologist, Gregory Baum; and the well-known enfant terrible, Hans Kung; Bosler rated Msgr. William Onclin very highly--a Louvain University professor (fine canonist, good theologian, excellent Latinist) and, as the principal drafter of the Pastoral Office of Bishops, more than anyone responsible for the new synod of bishops. From the second session on, John Courtney Murray, S.J. was in residence.34 Heretofore forbidden to write or lecture on religious freedom and separation of church and state, his area of expert knowledge, he was made a peritus and a member of the SCU. During sessions Murray lectured bishops national conferences, circulated briefs and memoranda, and led the drafting of what became the Declaration on Religious Liberty (Dignitatis Humanae). Visitors to the Villanova who became notable or notorious included Malachi Martin (Cardinal Beas peritus), Xavier Rynne, and Msgr. Paul C. Marcinkus, later involved in the 1980s Banco Ambrosiano scandal. Even the founder of Opus Dei, Jose Maria Escriva, dropped in one evening.35 Wrote John Cogley in Commonweal, To be anything in Rome is to be at the Villanova.36 Conversation, in English, continued at noon after dinner in the common room (dubbed the Truth Room), where residents meet for preprandial refreshments and arguments each noon and evening with as many as twenty participants--bishops and periti, battle it out on equal terms.37 Many of the bishops went to bed early, leaving the floor to the periti who often talked until after midnight. Kung remembered The atmosphere [as] always lively and 34 Brought to the council as a peritus by Cardinal Spellman. Fr. Andrew Greeleys autobiography, Confessions of a Parish Priest, (1987), 236, 239. 36 Criterion, 1 October 1965, 1, 9. New Wine, 77, 78. 37 Criterion, 29 October 1965, 1, 9. 35 10 friendly, uncomplicated in a way which is unusual among German professors.38 In Rome during the third session doing research for his Ph.D dissertation, Fr. Charles Frazee of Marian College, Indianapolis, found the talk delightful. Forty years on he recalled, The real drama came from the discussion on how to get around the Curia men who were bent on keeping the church in their mold, a topic driven by the theologians from France, Germany, and Belgium. Strategies to push the progressive agenda were planned . . . (Murray, who had the room next door, asked Frazee to translate the Latin first draft of the religious freedom document for the English-speaking bishops.)39 The Americans provided the amenities: five or six morning Roman newspapers, an ice machine from home, and the liquor.40 Daily interaction over months among the resident moderates and progressives produced a Villanova effect. The experts listened and learned from each other and minds were changed: Birth control, at first no part of the councils agenda nor the American bishops, but the Europeans were thinking about it and it was much discussed in informal conversations at St. Peters and at the pension on the Via Romania. Chicago Msgr. John Egan remembered a discussion in 1964 in the Villanova common room that changed his whole attitude on the issue. Present were theologians Murray, Baum, Charles Davis and, Egan thought, Bernard Cooke. All four, he recalled forty years later, agreed that a married couple for good reason could licitly use contraception. Conscience was determinative. Egan was persuaded by the quality of the theologians involved; That solved it for me. I had at least a strong probable opinion.41 *** On the councils first working day, 12 October, the Curias gambit was to require each bishop to select sixteen members for each of the ten commissions--160 in all, aided by a list of those who had served on the preparatory commissions and had written the schema drafts.42 Of course the average bishop could know little, if anything, about the vast majority listed. While he could consult a booklet listing all the 2,500 council bishops, absent the possibility of consulting with others this meant little. While the American bishops were still getting their bearings, 38 Kung, My Struggle for Freedom (2003), 403, 404. In 1960 his The Council, Reform, and Reunion appeared. Translated into eight languages, it was the most important pre-council publication. Kung mentions Schulte in his Memoirs. [[check this]] OMalley, What Happened at Vatican II, 35. 39 Fr. Charles Frazee email to author, 15 August 2005. French because a modern document required a modern language and it is the language of diplomacy. 40 Criterion, 1 October 1965, 1. A Chicago monsignor had the job of supplying the refreshments. 41 Leslie W. Tentler, Catholics and Contraception: An American History (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, New York, 2004) 248. 42 Italy ended up with the most commission members, 51 (32 by appointment), the U.S. with 21 was second (only three were appointed). France had 20, Spain, 18, Germany 12, Canada 11. Criterion, 2 November 1962, 1, 9. Presiding over the Theological Commission was Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, who held that it had the right of veto over everyone else because the congregation to which it corresponded, the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Office, its formal title, was the most powerful. 11 the Germans, French, Belgians, and the Dutch, unhappy with the schemas produced, refused to accept the ballot as it stood. A French cardinal moved and a German seconded a motion to delay the vote so that the fathers could meet as national conferences to propose additional nominees. In the straw vote that followed, some 1,700 progressive votes overwhelmed the opposition by more than three to one. In the end, sixty-four new names won election, a sign that the bishops were determined to run their own business. Put another way, 65 percent of the Curia and 40 percent of the Preparatory Commissions list were Italian; after the vote on the new slate only 17.6 percent of the commission members were Italian.43 Bosler drew the lesson that the Curia was not the only group ready to promote its own plan and ideas and that the council would not rubber-stamp the conservative agenda.44 Still, many members of the Curia and its allies were also elected, making up about half of the 160.45 The Central Preparatory Committee had identified an untidy list of some seventy different subjects for council consideration, but only seven schemata were ready for the first session (revelation, deposit of faith, moral order, the family, social communication, church unity, and the liturgy). Of those, only Sacrasanctum Concilium, the schema on liturgical reform was of any substance, and the only commission not dominated by the curialists. The drafters intention was to execute changes making the mass more modern and participatory by eliminating the requirement that it be said in Latin. The opponents of change, fearing that diversity of prayer would lead to diversity of belief, argued that the Latin liturgy was sanctioned by the usage of centuries. The progressives, thinking pastorally, believed it important that the laity understand what is said. As Bosler saw it, the larger issue was one side wants everything regulated by the Holy See to preserve unity, the other wants more authority held by the bishops through their episcopal conferences. The question is, will there be more independence for the bishops and decentralization of the Church. Its the big issue, a discussion that will dominate the council.46 Struck by the world-wide nature and variety of the Church on display at the councils ceremonial opening, Bosler concluded that the Churchs insistence on Latin was a barrier to ecumenism for the separated brethren. The real pressure for using the vernacular came from the missionary territories: The Africans were adamant in wanting their own liturgies in their own languages, as were the bishops of Asia and India who pleaded for relief from the burdens of a Latin mentality and language for one that our people can understand and pronounce. A Japanese bishop, noting that his people couldnt pronounce the Our Father in Latin, let alone understand it, hoped and prayed 43 Religious News Service, October 31, 1962, cited in Arthur Gilbert, The Vatican Council and the Jews (World Publishing Company: Cleveland, 1968), 73. 44 Criterion, 26 October, 4; OMalley, Vatican II, 97. 45 Melissa J. Wilde, Vatican II and Religious Change, 146, f.n. 28. 46 Criterion, 9 November 1962, 4. Bosler was right, collegiality proved to be central. 12 the council recognized this.47 It did: By a vote of 2,162 in favor to 46 against, the national bishops conferences were authorized, on a trial basis, to make use of the vernacular to better adapt to the culture and conditions in their own nations or territories. While not yet formally adopted, parts of the liturgy schema were put immediately into practice, indicating that windows would be opened.48 The progressives were divided, some doubtful that anything would change, some expecting great things.49 The American bishops, with few exceptions, at first showed little interest or understanding of the issues. Many sat in their hotels during the first session, complaining of the waste of time and left Rome almost as uninformed as they were upon arrival. [T]he Holy Spirit came and parted at the Council and some of these people never even dreamed He had been there. An American bishop observed that the Germans and French came with briefcases full of plans and prepared statements, while all we brought with us was our return tickets.50 The Americans were so quiet the first two sessions that some called them the Church of Silence.51 Like his colleagues, Archbishop Schulte expected little of importance from the council. True, it might be necessary to clarify the application of age old principles to changing problems. And it could not be denied that there had been tremendous changes in the world since the First Vatican Council, 1870, so that while the immutable truths and laws of God are inviolable, the scope of things that may come under the scrutiny . . . is otherwise almost limitless. But he saw no arguments regarding truth that needed to be settled by this Council as the Church had infallibly settled [them] in the Councils of the past. 52 By the eve of the 1963 session, however, Schulte admitted to an awareness of the tremendous field for change and advancement that lay before us. What he had seen and heard last autumn led him to believe this Council will not only be different, but in many ways greater than any of its twenty ecumenical predecessors.53 At the councils end, Schulte will declare Vatican II in many respects the greatest Council in the history of the Church.54 The day of the liturgy vote Cardinal Ottavianis Theological Commission produced De Fontibus Revelationes (on the sources of revelation), which emphasized both tradition and scripture as sources, with the magisterium as the final authority (Pope and Curia), and the inspiration of the authors as from God. It condemned any questioning of 47 Criterion, 16 November 1962, 4. Criterion, 2 November 1962, 1, 9. 49 Editor comments from Rome, Criterion, 19 October 1962, 4. 48 50 51 Criterion, 26 October 1962, 1. Xavier Rynne [Fr. Francis X. Murphy], Vatican II (Straus and Giroux: New York,1968), Vol. II, 106. 52 Schulte letter, 22 February 1962. Indianapolis Catholic Archives. 53 Schulte letter, 23 September 1963, Indianapolis Catholic Archives. St. Louis archbishop, Joseph E. Ritter, Schultes predecessor, was probably the most frequent intervener among the Americans. Schulte never spoke and does not appear in the index of Msgr. Vincent A Yzermans, American Participation in the Second Vatican Council (Sheed and Ward: New York, 1967), nor in Xavier Rynnes four volume work, Vatican Council II, 1968. 54 Schulte papers, Indianapolis Archdiocesan Archives, Box 31, 8 December 1965. Schulte was assiduous in attending council sessions and the American bishops meetings, but like fully half of the American bishops, never spoke in the aula, nor drew attention to himself in any other way. 13 the historical accuracy of the scripture accounts, asserted that the Old Testament found completion in the New, and ruled out a sympathetic hearing from either Protestants or Jews. In presenting it, Ottaviani said that since the pope had already approved the text, the bishops should agree to it. This was not well-received: eight cardinals, among them former Indianapolis Archbishop Joseph E. Ritter of St. Louis, immediately asked that it be rejected. Prepared without any participation by progressives, stuffed with condemnations, it was neither pastoral nor in the spirit of aggiornamento. The ensuing fight was the first battle in an extended war involving the Holy Office, the Sacred Congregation of Studies and Seminaries, and Lateran University on one side, versus the Pontifical Biblical Institute and the Germans, French, Belgians, and Dutch on the other.55 The latter favored ecumenism with Protestantism, deemphasizing the role of tradition, and opening the way for Biblical archeology and other sciences. It was at base a question of authoritywho would rule, the commissions dominated by the Curia or the overwhelming progressive majority of the council? Bosler expected progressive theologians would subject the schema to a severe artillery shelling.56 Bosler identified the heart of the progressives disagreement with the proffered text as the contradiction between the councils purpose of bringing-up-to-date and the retrograde schema. The conservatives saw no problem with it, being just what we studied in our seminary dogma books. Exactly so. The progressive majority blamed the Doctrinal Commission for presenting revelation in the language style, and thought of the remote past, for being negative, for denouncing error instead of presenting truth in attractive form, for failing to take account of important advances in theology and Scriptural interpretation since the last Vatican Council. Above all for lacking an ecumenical tone and for ignoring entirely the desires and feelings of the Protestants and Orthodox. 57 In light of such a catalog, after five days of debate the councils general secretary, Cardinal Pericle Felici, tried to save the schema by holding a vote on should the discussion be interrupted? There was confusion over the balloting in that placet (it pleases) was a vote against the schema and non placit a vote to continue its consideration. (Bosler, already suspicious of the Romans, believed the confusion intentional and that at least half of the votes to continue discussion were really for rejection.) The vote to reject was a healthy 1,368 to 822, but 105 short of the two-thirds needed to do so. Sending it back to the theological commission would solve nothing. In the councils second great turning point (rejecting the initial ballot for commission members being the first), Pope John withdrew the schema and called for a new commission co-chaired by cardinals Alfredo Ottaviani and Augustin Bea. Composed equally of members of the Doctrinal Commission and Beas Secretariat for Christian Unity (the group As an example of the mindset of the conservatives, Bosler cited the congregations issuance, May 1963, of a decree forbidding Catholic colleges and universities from granting honorary degrees without Romes approval [St Louis University had recently given one to Hans Kung]. Then, as the second session opened, Romes chancery office banned three authorsthe writings of the deceased Teilhard de Chardin, Xavier Rynne, Letter from Rome, in the New Yorker magazine, and journalist Robert Kaiser, for Pope, Council, and World. Criterion, 11 October 1963, 4, 9. 55 56 Criterion, 30 November 1962, 4, 12. 57 Criterion, 7 December 1962, 4. 14 charged with communicating with Protestant observers at the council), it was to re-study the matter and avoid condemnations.58 The rejection of the revelation schema established the councils power to reject others, a necessity if the documents were to represent the thinking of the majority. The victory produced a collective effervescence among the progressives, a sense of community. Heartened, they realized they werent alone.59 Bosler heralded 21 November 1962 an historic day in the annals of the Church--the day Pope John intervened to help the progressive forces break a stranglehold applied by a small bloc of reactionaries.60 What became of the revelation schema is quickly told: Renamed Dei Verbum, it was ready for the 1963 session but not presented. Voted on in 1964, more revisions were made and many amendments (modi) proposed. But Dei Verbum is largely absent from Boslers dispatches from Rome, except for a brief mention of a rumor as the council wound down that those still trying to curb the Scripture scholars may get some changes in the text repudiating what modern scholars say about the relation of Scripture and Tradition. Blood pressures rise; bull sessions get noisier.61 Last minute corrections were made, some at the popes request. In the end, the final text received near unanimous approval. With the Constitution on the Church, Dei Verbum, though short, is often judged the most fundamental documents of Vatican II. It is said to be less philosophical, more biblical and historical, with more stress on modern methods of interpreting scriptures; on balance, it was a victory for the progressives. 62 Although the first session produced only the insertion of St. Josephs name in the Canon, a brief preface, and a first chapter of the liturgy schema, Bosler judged the sessions results far from meager. Liturgical reform not only opened a path toward a wider use of the vernacular, but invited the worlds bishops power to experiment. It was a step toward the decentralization of the Church, signifying the bishops new awareness of themselves as the successors to the Apostolic College and their right to rule and govern the Church together with the Pope as the Apostles did with Peter. Just being together in Rome with fellow bishops from every nation and race, praying together, working together, chatting together in the coffee bars, . . . has given the bishops a new insight into their office and function within the Church. They are conscious now of their membership in the College of Bishops that is the successor to the Apostolic College. The bishops went back to school, tutored by theologians in conferences on the issues. All in all, wrote Bosler, a revolution was set in motion at the first session and neither the bishops nor the Church would ever be the same again. That the council was a hit with world opinionProtestants, the Orthodox, even the communists gave it a good press, was a bonus.63 *** 58 Criterion, 30 November 1962, 1, 12; 7 December 1962, 4. Wilde, Vatican II and Religious Change, 22-24. 60 Criterion, 7 December 1962, 4. 61 Criterion, 8 October 1965, 1, 9. 62 Abbott, Vatican II Documents, 107. 63 Criterion, 14 December 1962, 4; Hebblethwaite, Pope John XXIII, 314. 59 15 With Pope Johns death four months before the second session the question of questions became What would happen to the council? Did Montini share Roncallis vision? Bosler had used the two days before the session to canvass his Roman friends on the issue that concerned him most: Would the Curia continue to dominate the bishops as the popes right arm or will the bishops in union with the pope direct the Curia? The pope as monarchical ruler or as chief bishop of the college of bishops?64 He discovered that for some weeks the reformers wondered if Paul VI would prove a Hamlet, indecisive, agonizing over decisions (as many would later conclude). 65 Bosler was also troubled by the strange and devious moves by curial conservatives which have alarmed many council fathers. It was an open secret that the Curia used delay in the first session in the hope that nothing would be ready for a vote. The same tactics were being used by the theological commission with the schema on the Church. Even more sensational and harmful was the decree of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities forbidding the granting of honorary degrees without Romes consent (St Louis University had given one in May to Hans Kung). Then, as the session began, at the instigation of the Holy Office, Romes chancery office directed Catholic booksellers not to display Xavier Rynnes articles in the New Yorker magazine, works by New York Times reporter, Robert Kaiser, nor the writings of the deceased Teilhard de Chardin. In partial amends, Paul VI appointed Cardinal Bea to the Holy Office to balance Ottaviani. For Bosler all this was further proof that Bishops role in the Church seen great issue of 2d council session. Put another way a week later, Reformation of the curia is the most crucial issue facing the council.66 Paul VIs opening address brought Bosler some comfort. While emphasizing his position as Peters successor, the pope seemed to allay any doubts about being a reformer: On a central question, does doctrine develop, he said the Church is ever susceptible of new and deeper investigation. Man advances from empirical observation to scientific truth . . . . It is thus that thought evolves. Even more to Boslers liking, the pope called on the council to work toward defining the nature of the Church and to look for a more effective and responsible collaboration between bishops and the papacy. On renewal and restoring the unity of Christendom, the pope humbly begged Gods forgiveness and asked pardon of the separated brethren for any contribution the Church may have contributed to the division. Let the world know that despite the evils of the day the Church looks at the world with profound understanding, with sincere admiration and with the genuine intention not of conquering it but of serving it; not of despising it but of appreciating it; not of condemning it but of strengthening and saving it. 67 64 Criterion, 4 October 1963, 4. Criterion, 4 October, 1963, 4. Years later Paul VI sympathetic biographer found Montini had a reputation for inconstancy. Never wanting to be pope, feeling his inadequacy, he saw the purpose of his pontificate was to show by his suffering that it is the Lord who guides and saves the Church. **Peter Hebblethwaite, Pope Paul VI: The First Modern Pope (Paulist Press: Mahwah, New Jersey, 1993), 328, 329. 65 66 Criterion, 4 October 1963, 4; 11 October 1963, 4. 67 Criterion, 4 October 1963, 1, 9. 16 Seizing on the popes words, Bosler exulted, There can be no doubters now. Pauls magnificent speech had opened the windows even wider than John left them. On the great issue, the pope wants the council to reform the Curia so it will be clear that the bishops together with the Pope govern the church. Paul does not consider the papacy something apart from, nor above; he is within the college of bishops of which he is the chief. What the pope wants is a mechanism for a more effective and responsible collaboration with our beloved and venerable brothers in the episcopate. Hed exhorted the Curia to cooperate with the council fathers, and while the Curia itself would formulate and promulgate its own reform, he made it clear that reforms were needed. The session is off to an exciting start.68 The progressives wanted to restore what they believed was the collegial practice of the early Church in which Peter sought his fellow bishops advice. Peter was himself a bishop and there was abundant proof in the Scriptures that the early Church was founded upon the Apostles, with Peter as their head. Peter with, not apart from the Apostles. The large majority of the council want to regain for themselves many of the powers . . . that a local bishop or a group of bishops of the same nation . . . can best decide how to use. History, having shown that ecumenical councils did indeed decide things, so might this one, the twenty-first in the series. Conservatives saw this as close to heresy and a plot to weaken the papacy; for them, Peter alone is the rock, the founder, the pope a monarch from whom all authority in the Church descends and itself as his right arm. Therefore, bishops stood to the supreme pontiff as parish priests to bishops, having no authority beyond their diocese, just as a pastors was limited to his parish. Accordingly, even an ecumenical council decides nothing except what is submitted to it by the pope, nor did its decisions have value unless sanctioned by him.69 For Bosler, the real question was not Was the Church founded on both, but How do bishops share in the popes authority? The great accomplishment of the first session was to waken the worlds bishops to their true role in the Church. Now he looked to the development of an effective mechanism for the bishops to cooperate with the Pope in ruling the universal Church, ideally, a bishops commission to periodically advise the pope and help in directing the Curia. Bosler pointed out that Paul VI, in his opening address, expressed a desire for a more effective and responsible collaboration with the bishops. This is the most important thing the Church has to do. {The council] will be a failure if it doesnt accomplish it.70 The first great clash between the two sides occurred in mid-October at the second session, when the moderators chairing the session were forced to cancel a straw vote on what would later emerge as the Dogmatic Constitution on the ChurchLumen Gentium. This first draft from the theological commission came right out of the 68 69 70 Criterion, 4 October 1963, 1, 9; 11 October 1963, 4. Criterion, 11 October 1963, 4, 9. Criterion, 18 October 1963, 4, 9. 17 manuals written between the two World Wars with their emphasis on hierarchy, juridicism, and papal supremacy. The reformers saw the chapter on the hierarchy as out of keeping with the warm, pastoral tone of the rest of the text. In reflecting centuries of anti-Protestant polemic, it was the last thing the progressive majority wanted. There were rumors of conspiracies against the councils freedom and growing resentment of the Curia as the chief suspect.71 To break the log jam, a besieged Paul VI established an ad hoc committee which decided to let the council vote by secret ballot on five questions: Should the schema assert that episcopal consecration is the supreme grade of the sacrament of Orders; every consecrated bishop is in communion with other bishops and the pope is a member of body of bishops; the College of Bishops in its evangelizing, sanctifying, and governing task is successor to the original College of the Apostles and, always in communion with the pope, enjoys full and supreme power over the universal church; the power of the College of Bishops, united with the pope, belongs to it by divine ordination, not through papal delegation; finally, is it opportune to reinstate the permanent diaconate as a grade of sacred ministry, according to the needs in different parts of the church? Each query was affirmed by over 2,100 votes with the negatives from first to the fifth question ranging from a low of 34 to 525.72 This unexpected landslide was met by an explosion of applause in the aula. Seen as the third turning point of the council, it revealed the numerical dominance of the reformers. The theological commission was instructed to prepare a new schema reflecting the bishops wishes. For Bosler, 30 October 1963 was the day Pope Pauls council really began.73 At stake was the centuries-long process of centralizing power in Rome. Bosler traced the roots of curial power to the Council of Trents reaction to the Protestant Reformation. Beginning as an essential bureaucracy to centralize and establish standards, erect seminaries, and carry the Church through the crisis of the rise of nationalism, the Enlightenment, and the democratic revolutions, it led to the bishops habit of looking to the Vatican bureaucracy for permission to act. Eventually, the episcopate appeared as mere deputies of the Pope in charge of a small part of the Church called a diocese. The First Vatican Council defined papal infallibility, but cut short by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War it failed to take up the question of the bishops authority. In Boslers telling, this brought new problems: ecumenically, the present arrangement was too monolithic for Protestants and an obstacle to reestablishing unity with the Eastern Orthodox whose bishops had greater status than in the West. If the Church is not a monarchy, but a college or body in which the bishops with and under the Pope have authority over the whole Church, then this must be brought out clearly. The progressives applied pressure and had prevailed. The suddenness with which their views became the councils majority, Bosler took as a sign of the working of the Holy 71 Criterion, 25 October 1963, 4. 72 OMalley, What Happened at Vatican II, 184. 73 Criterion, 8 November, 1963, 4. 18 Spirit. As the successors of the Apostles, the Senate would stand above the Curia. Collegiality, he was sure, will show it is possible to have unity under one central authority without uniformity. 74 Yet he had to admit that Curia members remained in the controlling positions of authority on the commissions. The opposition argued that the five votes were merely advisory suggestions and not binding. Cardinals Ottaviani and Browne, president and vice-president of the theological commission, respectively, convinced that the majority were in theological error, made it clear they would not abide by the vote on the five propositions. Their position was strengthened when the majority showed uncertainty on how collegiality was to be exercised. And when the progressives appealed to the pope for his views on how the bishops might cooperate with him, they were surprised when Pope Paul turned them down.75 There were other obstacles: One that Bosler headlined a month into the second session was that Lack of organization is crippling the American bishops at council. As representatives of the greatest world power the American failure to lead was especially galling, given that the Churchs influence in the United States was substantial. The difference was that in the aula the national churches of Europe, South America, and the mission territories spoke with one voice, while the U.S. bishops speak as individuals and never as a group.76 Their organization, the National Catholic Welfare Conference, never had real authority over individual bishops; it couldnt bind them and lacked real representation at the Roman Curia. Perhaps the greatest obstacle was the conviction of many U.S. bishops that forming a political bloc in anything so sacred as an ecumenical council was somehow impious and unseemly. [A cynic might object that for a bishop to be scandalized by the notion that politics is at work at a religious conclave shows a striking lack of selfknowledge, given that a bishops career commonly depended on the assiduity with which he played ecclesial politics.] Bosler felt that the Americans--mostly canon lawyers used to taking directives from the Curia, pastoral in approach, too few of them theologians--were simply unprepared to lead.77 In an article in the Criterion, the then liberal Michael Novak attributed the American bishops docility to the Curia to their naivet as to how the world really works. Novak dubbed it Angelism, the belief that noble or religious deeds are done in a non-human fashion, not through men as they are--temperamental, with their own habits of thought, preferences, prejudices, and the rest. Believing politics a dirty business and the council Gods business, they expect the Holy Spirit to produce results. In reality, if men leave 74 Criterion, 15 November 1963, 1. 75 Bosler signed editorial. Criterion, 6 December 1963, 4. 76 Criterion, 1 November 1963, 4. 77 Criterion, 25 October 1963, 4. 19 something undone, it usually stays undone; anyone who knows Rome knows that the Church is not run by angels.78 A week later Bosler reported that the U.S. bishops were finally working together: On successive days in late October three spoke in the name of all their American colleagues: Baltimores Sheehan, of the need for a strong statement on religious freedom; New Hampshires Primeau, for the council to heed the wishes of the laity for a greater role in the Church; and Louisianas Tracy, for a proclamation on equal rights for men of all races.79 In another boost to progressives morale, at the late October memorial Mass for John XXIII, Cardinal Suenens, in eloquent French, sought to revive the spirit of aggiornamento: Quoting Pope Johns admonition, We have no reason to be afraid; fear comes only from lack of faith, his eulogy received great applause, proving to Bosler that the council is still inspired by the spirit of good Pope John.80 The second session half gone, Bosler, thinking the council was in grave crisis. Beyond the a morass of long-winded oratory, there were conflicts over Communismcontinued Church enmity or more openness? The theological commission has absolutely done nothing, and the schemas do not represent the thinking of the progressive majority. The strategy of the Holy Office, which dominates the commissions, seems to be to delay and leave everything as it was before.81 The accumulated tensions exploded in a public donnybrook between cardinals Joseph Frings of Cologne and Alfredo Ottaviani of the Holy Office. The question was whether the powers exercised by the Curia should be returned to bishops of dioceses. According to the Criterions account, in a speech written in part by Joseph Ratzinger (at the time, a council progressive), Frings wanted bishops to function as bishops, not holding a curial office as some sort of honor, but put to work; he even held that many curial jobs could be done by laymen. And he attacked the Holy Offices schema on the bishops for its centralizing, anti-collegial tendency and vigorously objected to curial procedures that denied due process as out of harmony with modern times, a source of harm to the faithful, and of scandal to non-Catholics. No Roman congregation should have the authority the Curia claimed to accuse, judge, and condemn a person who has no opportunity to defend himself. In defiance of council rules, his remarks were met with great applause in the aula.82 An angry Ottaviani denied that anyone was condemned without thorough investigation by competent consulters and experienced specialists or without the approval of the pope. As the pontiff was the prefect of the Holy Office, such criticisms were an attack on the Holy Father himself! Since bishops were the sheep along with everyone 78 Criterion, 8 November 1963, 2. Criterion, 1 November 1963, 4. 80 Criterion, 8 November 1963, 4. 81 Criterion, 1 November 1963, 4. 79 82 Criterion, 15 November 1963, 1; Floyd Anderson, ed., Council Daybook, Vatican II, session 2 (National Catholic Welfare Conference: Washington, D.C.), 1965, 247-249, a highly informative source on the council. 20 else, collegiality treaded on the popes power as shepherd. Cardinal Ritter, chiming in on Frings side, attacked the Curia as having no autonomous existence and called for the restoration of bishops powers, which are basically of divine origin.83 Affronted, Ottaviani chastised the moderators for exceeding their authority and affirmed the competence of his commission to deal with collegiality as it wished. Angered in turn by Ottavianis public scolding of the moderators, many bishops petitioned the pope to dismiss him. The dispute had the virtue of clarifying the main issue: should top down, centralization, hierarchical governance--business more or less as usualcontinue or should there be change toward a horizontal model of broad consultation, shared responsibility, and democracy?84 As ever, the ultimate council question for Bosler was, do the bishops or the curia have precedence?85 The key to collegiality lay in Paul VIs hands. Hundreds of bishops petitioned him asking what sort of senate or college he wanted, but for weeks nothing happened; rumor had it that he had capitulated to the small minority of immobilares--the curial cardinals and the Italian and Spanish bishops. Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, breaking with his American colleagues, told the pope that the council was moving too fast, leaving the laity confused and authority endangered. In the end, under tremendous pressure to close windows in favor of re-emphasizing tradition, Paul VI said it was not the time for change. Instead, he memorialized Trents 400th anniversary and, by visiting St. John Lateran (the popes church as bishop of Rome), emphasized his role as Peters successor at the cost of ecumenism. With the pope now grown close to the conservative minority, little wonder that Bosler confessed that conversation among progressives at the end of the day had become wakes where the council is buried. Its hard to decide just where the council is going.86 Boslers verdict on the session came a week later: All the hopes raised by Pope Pauls opening address have been shattered. Although the theological doctrines of the Church have the possibility of magnificent development, the effort to develop the doctrine of the episcopate, its function and its relationship with Peter never went anywhere. Why didnt the pope act on his expressed desire for a more effective and responsible collaboration with our beloved and venerable brothers in the episcopate? Bosler offered two possibilities: the conservative minority sowed doubts in the popes mind regarding the orthodoxy of collegiality (and religious liberty), and that a progressive victory would encourage Italys political left and weaken the Christian Democratic Party, Italys bulwark against Communism.87 Having fallen under conservative influence, at the last minute before the vote on ecumenism Paul VI ordered a series of changes: one was offensive to Protestants who were said not to find God in the scriptures but only seek him there; postponement of a vote on religious freedom led over a thousand bishops to protest; and, contrary to the bishops explicit will, the pope promulgated the title Mother of the Church to Mary. 83 Criterion, 15 November 1963, 1. OMalley, What Happened at Vatican II, 193; National Catholic Reporter, 50th Anniversary Issue, 11 October 2012, OMalley, Collegiality becomes a lightning rod, 8. 85 Criterion, 15 November 1963, 4. 86 Criterion, 29 November 1963, 4, 9. 87 Criterion, 6 December 1963, 4. 84 21 Still, Bosler insisted, the council was not a failure. If it never reconvened the bishops had been enriched by a new awareness of their role. They had taken the measure of their colleagues and of the Curia and Protestants and other observers could attest that there is freedom of speech and diversity of opinion within the Roman Catholic Church. [The Curia would likely equate the first with indocility and the second as indifferentism and heresy.] Above all, by voting overwhelmingly for liturgical reform, 2,178 to 19, on 22 November (the day of President John F. Kennedys assassination), Bosler believed the process of decentralizing the Church had begun. The bishops national conferences would decide on how much vernacular to allow and what adaptions for national and local customs permitted. Perhaps that was all that was needed for decentralization.88 In the run up to the third session Boslers morale had fallen so low that he dreaded leaving his parish to return to Rome with its interminable speechmaking, formal receptions, and theological bull sessions. On reading the newly prepared schemas, however, he found them pastoral--nothing like the pompous and sometimes scolding tones of previous drafts, and his spirits revived. Other signs were good: Paul VI again stated that the role of the bishops must be clarified (that the Holy Father was scheduled to concelebrate Mass was another step in partnering bishops with the pope); and as Cardinal Leo Suenens had asked, the pope announced that women would join the council, at least for some deliberations, another step, however small, in recognition of the other half of humankind. Foreseeing substantial action and the possibility that the session might be the last, Bosler became eager to return.89 In opening the session, however, Paul VI did not use the term collegiality, though it was thought that he favored it. Even less promising was on the eve of the third session twenty-five cardinals (sixteen from the Curia), warned the pope of the dangers of collegiality and of his need to oppose it, pressure the pope did not find agreeable. Religious liberty faced repeated condemnation for separating church and state, although the bishops behind the Iron Curtain favored it as protection against their communist regimes. More controversial still was non-Christian religions, at this point exclusively focused on the Jews. On revelation the sticking point was: are there truths required for salvation not in scripture, but found in tradition? As for the legitimacy of the historical-critical approach to Bible texts, it would be sent back for revision. Added to these, contrary to the announcement that strict secrecy had been dispensed with, Cardinal Felici began the session lecturing the bishops like a short-tempered school master talking to errant boys. He drew attention to norms handed down previously forbidding periti to criticize the council, or organize currents of opinion or ideas, or hold interviews, or defend their personal ideas about the council. Periti who ignored the rules were threatened with dismissal.90 Cardinal Cicognani of the theological commission seconded Felici 88 Criterion, 6 December 1963, 4. 89 Criterion, 18 September 1964, 1. 90 Criterion, 25 September 1964, 4. 22 with a letter telling the periti to be quiet and reminding the bishops that they, too, were bound to secrecy. Documents were not to be publicly circulated nor the laity to know what was said in the council hall. In the same vein, the Congregation of Seminarians and Universities issued instructions that periti were not to be invited to speak to seminarians and forbade the latter from attending expert lectures off campus. Bosler thought this strange since it was the experts who wrote the bishops speeches and the schema redrafts.91 Most revealing of the attitude of the conservatives came on the tenth day of the third session, when, in a papal audience, the question was raised, When should the council end? A member of the councils board of presidents and determined opponent of collegiality answered, Se possibili subitoif possible, immediately.92 Bosler still found reasons for hope on collegiality: In voting on chapter three on the bishops in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), the council overwhelmingly proclaimed their conviction (only 328 non placets of 2,200 cast), that they share in the supreme authority of the Pope. Bosler highlighted the schemas declaration that episcopal consecration is a fullness of the Sacrament of Holy Orders by which Christ makes a man a successor to the Apostles, conferring the ability to sanctify, teach, and rule the Church as a member of the college of bishops, together with the Pope and under him governing the universal Church. Episcopal powers come directly from Christ through the Sacrament, not by papal delegation; thus, bishops are not merely a sort of district manager assigned to represent the Pope in a given territory. As Peter and the Apostles formed a college, their successors are united in the same way. Still, as head of the college, the Pope determines for the good of the universal Church the use of episcopal power, when, where, how much.93 Despite that bottom line assertion of papal dominance, to Bosler at least it seems certain that the way was open to reform the organization of the Church and that Paul VI was determined to do so by setting up a bishops senate representing the worlds bishops. Elected by their national conferences, senators would come to Rome periodically to advise the pope and with him, perhaps, form the legislative body of the Church. Placed under the senate, the curia would administer the senates laws and directives. Letting his mind run free, Bosler entertained rumors that the senate might elect the pope, thus eliminating the College of Cardinals! With the cardinals gone, the office of patriarch might be revived in the Latin Church, the title bestowed on the elected presidents of the national conferences. This would be more representative and would put an end the Italian domination of the papacy. He likened it to encouraging frequent communion sixty years beforeas a restoration . . . of a truth obscured because other truths had become overstressed. As for the Curia members, they were understandably disturbed by collegiality and the changes it would bring; they have vested interests and believe it may be heretical. Trained in the juridicism of Canon Law, they ask how can there be two supreme powers in the Church. How can you have a king with supreme power if the power is shared? For Bosler the answer suggested itself: the pope isnt an absolute 91 Criterion, 25 September 1964, 4. 92 Guiseppe Siri, council board of presidents and member of the conservative bishops lobby, Coetus Internationalis Patrum. 93 Criterion, Why collegiality vote . . . historic, 2 October 1964, 1, 9. 23 monarch. Well never understand [what the Church is] by comparing it with [the] power of a king in a monarchy or the power of representatives in a democracy. The Church is a mysterious union fashioned after the Holy Trinity. 94 On 4 November, amid the council debates on collegiality versus papal power, Paul VI chose a general audience to emphasize his authority as visible head of the Church. He reminded everyone that there exists in the Church a supreme power which is a personal prerogative, having authority over the whole community gathered in the name of Christ, a power that is not left to the optional election of the faithful . . . and which does not derive from the Church, but from Christ and God. Namely, the pope.95 That messagethe pope was still in chargewas driven home by the adoption of an amended chapter III of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium. The problem was conservative fears that the use of the words college of bishops opened the door to conciliarism, a five centuries old idea that councils were superior to the pope. As Bosler explained, the conservatives, understanding that collegiality would change the whole governing structure of the Church, moved to ensure that that would not happen. Their strategy has been to bog down the theological commission under hundreds of requests for textual revisions (modi), which the commissions must accept, reject, or present to the council for a vote. Critical of the extreme conservatives for opposing everything that smacks of what they call the new theology, they say The world is the enemy; it must be denounced and the faithful warned against it.96 On 16 November, 322 bishops voted against collegiality, and nearly 50 amendments proposed. The next day, at Paul VI insistence, a nota praevia explicativa (preliminary explanatory note) was added to the chapter reaffirming papal primacy; bishops could only act with the assent of the pope, who can always exercise his power at will . . . . while bishops only act as a college from time to time and only with the consent of its head. Reassured, the oppositions non placets fell to 46, and on the final vote to only five. The central point of the schema adopted five days later was that while the bishops constitute a college in the same sense as the original apostles, together with the pope and never without the pope, the episcopal order is the subject of supreme and full power over the universal Church, a power exercised only with the consent of the Roman Pontiff. As Vicar of Christ, the pope has full, supreme, and universal power over the Church. And he can always exercise this power freely.97 The last weeks of the third session were harried and eventful. Final approval of the schema on the collegial nature of the hierarchy was obtained as well as one on relations between Catholics and non-Catholics and with Eastern Rite Orthodox Christians. The council voted in principle that the Jews were not all guilty of deicide, but Pope Paul refused to promulgate it.98 The pope also postponed a vote on religious freedom (leading over a thousand council bishops to protest). 94 Criterion, 2 October 1964, 1, 9. Criterion, 13 November 1964, 7. 96 Criterion, 23 October 1964, 1, 7. 97 Abbott, Documents of Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, ch. III, 43. 98 Criterion, 27 November1964, 12. 95 24 Paul VI refrained from discussing any issue before the fourth session except to state that he would soon establish an episcopal synod. He was careful to say that the papacy needed the Curia, a body to which we owe so much gratitude for its effective help.99 On the sessions second day, by moti propria (on his own initiative), the pope issued Apostolos Solicitado, creating a council of bishops drawn from all over the world, with a majority of its members elected by their national conferences. It was not what the council majority wanted--a senate or group of bishops, meeting periodically with the pope to help him direct the Church, and presumably give direction to the Curia. The pope had ceded nothing, yet Bosler pronounced Apostolos Solicitado a major reform, the most significant and historic action of the council. It has accomplished what even the most optimistic felt would not take place until sometime in the future.100 His enthusiasm is hard to explain. The proposed synod was not a continuing group nor was a moti propria the stuff of collegiality. There were no guarantees, no telling how far-reaching [or limited] the synods would be. But Bosler saw its saving grace as a council in miniature, giving the worlds bishops a continuing voice in Church governance. It made frequent, streamlined councils possible, replacing the unwieldy 2,000 plus gatherings of Vatican II. The synods would strengthen the national episcopal conferences and lead to new ones where they did not exist, marking another step in ecclesial decentralization by introducing a form of representative government into Church governance. The pope could choose up to fifteen percent of the synod, among them perhaps special experts-non-bishopseven laymen and women. As no nation could have more than four synod members, Italian representation would be reduced, a real benefit in Boslers eyes. Thanks to Apostolas Solicitado, no matter what else happens, the council must be considered a success. The bishops synod, a capstone of Vatican II, changed the atmosphere of a gloomy group of bishops and heads of religious orders.101 He was ignoring the documents plain language: Synods were directly and immediately subject to Our power, able to make decisions only when such power is conferred upon it by the Roman Pontiff to whom belongs the power to ratify the decisions of the Synod. Among the fifteen percent of the synod body the pope chose would be ex officio curial cardinals in charge of the congregations. Even calling it a synod suggested impermanence as it was neither a continuing body nor a senate of advisors counseling the pope and overseeing the Curia. The pope calls it, defines the agenda, appoints the leader (or presides himself), and confirms those elected. Synods have no power to make decisions, only to inform and advise. Without the pope, the bishops cannot act. 102 So it proved under Paul VI and John Paul II, whose synods were far more akin to a cap gun than a capstone. Hans Kung called them a collegial fig-leaf for naked papal absolutism. They were often an 99 Criterion, 17 September 1965, 1, 9. 100 Criterion, 24 September 1965, 1. 9. 101 Criterion, 24 September 1965, 1, 9. Criterion 24 September 1965, 12. 102 25 embarrassment, with bishops quoting the pope to himself to prove their loyalty to the Vatican.103 The first three synods--1967, 1969, 1971--issued their own reports and published them, but the 1974 report (evangelization) and subsequent reports were submitted to the pope who decided what to reveal. The process was stage managed by the curial cardinals and the bishops told what topics to avoid, removing from their agenda . . . . the very things their participants wanted to discusscontraception, women priests, married priests, improved dialogue, lay participation.104 At the 1980 Synod on the Family the selected lay invitees praised natural family planning; this, at a time when lay Catholics had long since embraced birth control. When San Francisco Archbishop John R. Quinn spoke frankly on the matter, he was slapped down, and denied the red hat traditionally due the archbishop of San Francisco. Pope Francis has called for an openness previously unknown. For his first synod, Marriage and the Family, in 2014, he decried the idea that the cardinals might hesitate to say something that he might not agree with: This is not good. This is not synodolaty, because it is necessary to say all that, in the Lord, one feels the need to say, . . . without polite deference or hesitation. And to listen with humility and welcome with an open heart, what your brothers say.105 Taken at his word, participants reported that his two synods on the family were both contentious and enlightening. In another break with the past, the final reports of both were written by the bishops themselves. Pope Francis drew on them in his own lengthy exhortation on family life, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), April 2016. There the pope wrote that countries and regions can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs. Equally important, Francis resurrected the decentralized collegiality of the national bishops conferences pursued by the progressives at the Second Vatican Council. In the words of one analyst, the pope effectively devolved power. The marriage annulment process was streamlined, and in places where it was acceptable, priests could use the internal forumthe good conscience solution--for the divorced and remarried. Sounding like Pope John, Pope Francis said what is wanted is a church that greets families with empathy and comfort rather than with unbending rules and rigid codes of conduct.106 Problems remain: At the October 2015 synod on the family, when a lay auditor raised the issue of Humanae Vitae she was ignored. In his address at its conclusion, the pope was clear that the Church is a Church of the poor in spirit and sinners seeking forgiveness, not simply of the righteous and the holy. . . . True defenders of doctrine are not those who uphold its letter, but its spirit. Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., believes that to reform the synod the laity ought to be included, but which ones? And since most bishops are pastoral and ill-equipped theologically, the biggest need is 104 Wills, Why I Am a Catholic, 242. Wills, Why I Am a Catholic, 242; Richard R. Gaillardetz, An Unfinished Council: Vatican II and the Renewal of Catholicism (Liturgical Press: Collegeville, Minnesota, 124, 125. 105 106 New York Times, 9 April 2016, A1, 8. 26 to invite the theologians to the party, as happened at Vatican II. Reese believes that the membership also needs to be changed by eliminating curial officials and forming committeesall things Bosler would have supported.107 Bosler would also approve of Pope Francis, who, having noted the tense relations of bishops conferences with the Congregation for Divine Worship on translations of text, issued Magnum Principium which shifted the balance toward the bishops. Effective 1 October 2017, the Vatican will no longer review the translations, but recognize them, leaving the bishops not only to prepare them, but to approve them. This was to recognize the great principle of Vatican II, that the liturgy should be understand by the people at prayer, . . . 108 It was Francis entry into the liturgical wars, his response to both John Paul IIs and Benedicts reform of the reform on the subject. His efforts have met opposition from the same quarter that was active at the Second Vatican Council. *** Any ecumenical religious council taking stock of the world situation after the two great warssome long neglected, some novel--would have to give due consideration to the laity. Two weeks before the council opened Eucharist Magazine, with the cooperation of twenty U.S. Catholic weekly newspapers (the Criterion was one), published a survey, The Laity Reveal Their Hopes. More than 2,000 laywomen and laymen responded to a 24 item questionnaire: Ninety-one percent thought the need for change in the Church was either very urgent (47 percent) or moderately urgent (44 percent). Asked to list three things most in need of reform in life and practice, the liturgy (in English, greater participation), holiness (desire for a deeper spiritual life), trust in the laitys talents (consult, share in administration) came one, two, three, followed by better sermons, less authoritarian clergy, more friendly relations with other religions, and birth control. The laity wanted arbitrary barriers to the reunion of neighboring Christians removed and greater stress put on the Bible (88 percent). There was a great need for raising some married men to the diaconate, modernizing religious garb, and relaxing celibacy for Christian minister-converts. Most didnt wanted any new dogmas, a bare majority wanted the Church to clarify its stand on nuclear warfare. Although women were 54 percent of the respondents, the questionnaire constantly used laymen, a dismissive practice still taken for granted.109 Bosler had long wanted to see more responsibility ceded to the laity. He was a founding member of the Indianapolis chapter of the Catholic Interracial Council, 1953, a lay-run organization integrated racially and by gender. Before the council opened, in January 1962 he spoke on The Challenge to the Apostolic Layman, on NBC radios 107 Thomas Reese, National Catholic Reporter, November 20--December 5, 2015, 20, 21; Gary Wills, The future of the Church with Pope Francis, Why I am a Catholic, 232, 233.??** 108 Criterion, 13 September 2107, 1. 109 Criterion, 28 September 1962, 2. 27 The Catholic Hour. It attracted so much national attention that it was rebroadcast. The challenge, he argued, was how to make Church relevant. The great obstacle to democratizing the Church was that it carried the imprint of past agesthe Roman Empire, feudalism, monarchy--so that the modern democratic form of government and living has failed to make an impression on it. He saw no reason why the Church cannot take to itself modern democracy just as it took to previous regimes. There are ways to grant representation to the people who, thanks to modern education, are prepared for more responsibility. Government cannot be organized from the top down, but must spring from the grass roots. . . . Therefor, proper representation of the layman must also exist in the diocese and in the parish. Its time for democracy in the Church. No group is better fitted to do this than the U.S. bishops. 110 When the bishops severely criticized what was proffered on the lay apostolate at the third session as too clerical, Bosler took as evidence that the bishops had come a long way. Fortunately, an alternative existed in the lay sections in the schema that became the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium: it emphasized the laity as equal members of the Church assigned by the Lord himself by baptism and confirmation to share in the Churchs salvific mission . . . . No longer is the Church presented as a juridical institution in which pope, bishop, priest, and religious carry on the mission of Christ with an assist or two from the laity, but first of all as the People of God, in each member of whom the Holy Spirit dwells. It is precisely because the laity are in the world, they can reach others in a way clergy and religious cannot. Whatever skill, competence and eminence laymen enjoy in their field, they are entitled, and have the duty, to offer their opinions concerning the welfare of the Church. Let the pastors listen to them in temporal matters.111 If they meet resistance, let the faithful take matters into their own hands according to the dictates of their own conscience aided by all the human sciences. As for pressing problems--birth control, ethics, just war theory in a nuclear age, poverty amidst plenty--the dynamic between clerical and lay had to be turned topsy-turvy: It is the laitys solutions that will be studied by the theologians and, in due course, submitted to the magisterium. Lumen Gentium, he thought, will inspire new texts: We can expect great changes in the life of the Church.112 A week later Bosler found the same emphasis on the potential for lay leadership in Schema 13, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes; the schema that will arouse the interest of the world. . . . Here the council at last speaks to men about that which most interests thempoverty, marriage, nuclear warfare. Naturally, there was strong opposition from the same extreme conservatives who have opposed everything inspired by what they call the new theology. Where the progressives saw the need for the Church to dialogue with 110 Criterion, 25 October 1963, 4. 111 Criterion, Dramatic lay role seen in aftermath of the council, 16 October 1964, 1, 9. 112 Criterion, 16 0ctober 1964, 1, 9. 28 the world or suffer irrelevance, the opposition sees the world as the enemy which must be denounced and the faithful warned against that godless movement [Communism] that destroyed Christendom and the Churchs dominance of society. As in Lumen Gentium, Schema 13 admits that the Church doesnt have all the answers, nor should the faithful think their pastors are either competent or called to give them answers to even the serious questions and tell them what has to be done here and now. When complicated and novel questions arise which do not lend themselves to ready answers, let the faithful take matters into their own hands according to the dictates of their own conscience, guided by Christian prudence and all the human sciences bearing on the problem.113 As a practical matter, democracy in the Church would be served through diocesan pastoral councils of clergy, religious, and laymen. Presided over by the bishop, the councils would investigate and study pastoral problems and act on what is discovered, thus extending and broadening collegiality to all the faithful. It recommends that the Curia confer and seek advice from qualified laymen, outstanding for their virtue, knowledge, and experience, before making decisions so that they, too, will have an appropriate share in Church affairs. 114 That laymen could discover truths that the Church doesnt know the Ruffinis of the council found absurd. Bosler saw their mistake as forgetting that the Church isnt just the pope and the hierarchy, but that the Holy Spirit resides in the layman as well. He lives in the world while the hierarchy, Bosler implied, did not. Eventually, it is the layman who will provide solutions, and these will be studied by the theologians and submitted to the magisterium the teaching Church. As one bishop put it, far from having to wait to be told whats what, in secular life it is the layman as doctor, mayor, police who has authority over the bishops. In other words, there is no reason for a Christian civilization to be ecclesiastical, much less clerical. To paraphrase Bosler, the Europe that was once Christendom was created by the Church, but that world is gone. The Church needs to find out what she must be in the civilizations already formed apart from her. That was what the council is attempting to do in Schema 13. To be relevant the Church must recognize the values in the various civilizations that exist. She must show an interest in the sufferings of the world, humbly offering her services and her knowledge of man derived from revelation. 115 In the three-week debate over The Church in the Modern World that ensued, the progressives fired a heavy barrage against the Church for its faults and failures. The bishop of Metz blamed it for not understanding that over the last four centuries the world had become global not sectional, universal not western, dynamic not traditional, historical not cyclical. The world had progressed without the Church. When one of the four council moderators said, The Church must break her ties with past cultures in order to be open to all contemporary cultures and humbly 113 Criterion, 23 October 1964, 7. 114 Decree on the Bishops Pastoral Office in the Church, Christus Dominus. 115 Criterion, 30 October 1964, 1, 9. 29 admit its faults, Bosler intoned: This is a most significant observation. Another bishop, holder of a doctorate in nuclear physics, criticized the Church for speaking an archaic language unsuited to modern science. What the Church understood about matter, cause, substance, finality, lifeare now so modified by science that the Church is not in real conversation with the modern world. Having moved on from Aristotle and Aquinas, philosophers and scientists call for the freedom and autonomy of scientific investigation and especially freedom in education. Another blamed the Churchs history of abuse of authority for its having missed the signs of the timeswhich Bosler identified for Criterion readers as the Enlightenment, the democratic revolutions, modern scienceand its misuse of authority in opposing new developments with old-fashioned rationalistic ways. The council fathers were saying in public what younger scholars and theologians were saying timidly and usually privately. Now the windows of the Church have been opened, as Pope John requested.116 Bosler was elated by the bishops candor for having favorably impressed the councils guest-observers. *** Sibling to Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes in its embrace of modernity is Dignitatis Humanae, the Declaration on Religious Freedom. Known as the American schema, thanks to its major mover, John Courtney Murray, S.J., and its greatest supporters, the U.S. bishops, its impact would be felt in ecumenism, human rights, foreign policy, and international affairs. In its respect for, and acceptance of, the legitimacy of other religious traditions, it broke with the ignoble tradition of the thesis. Religious liberty as a question erupted in Europe in the early sixteenth century with the fragmentation of Christianity and the appearance of modern nationalism. A partial modus vivendi came with the Treaty of Augsburg, 1555, via the formula cuius region, eius religio (whose kingdom, his the religion), that is, the religion of the ruler determines the religion of the realm. Other sects, at best, might enjoy toleration, but not privilege. Pius IXs Syllabus of Errors, 1864, explicitly condemned the proposition that Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall believe true.117 In the United States, from its first Catholic bishop, John Carroll, 1789, to the Americanist bishops of the late 19th and early 20th century, the Church lauded the Constitutions no establishment clause and the principle of separation of church and state. Pope Leo XIII, in Loginqua Oceani, 1895, reproved them for such neutrality as being very erroneous to draw the conclusion that in America is to be sought the type of the most desirable status of the Church, or that it would be universally lawful or expedient for State and Church to be, as in America, dissevered and divorced. A decade before the council, however, the American Jesuit John Courtney Murray argued otherwise, which led to a theological dispute over religious liberty between Murray and his detractors. The Holy Office took note and Criterion, 13 November 1964, 1, 9. Schema 13 has opened windows of the Church. Dom Alberic Stacpole, O.S.B., ed., Vatican II Revisited, by those who were there (Winston Press: Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1986), 291, 292. 116 117 30 successfully pressured Murrays Jesuit superiors to silence him. In March 1953, Cardinal Ottaviani, prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Evangelization, without mentioning Murray, thought it necessary to restate the tradition: Since only the Catholic Church has the truth, only she has a right to religious freedom. Where Catholics are the majority, the state is obliged to acknowledge God in Catholic worship. When a minority, Catholics have a right to religious freedom through natural law. On the assumption that other faiths are held sincerely, they have a right to tolerance and understanding. Then, in 1960, Pope John XXIII called for an ecumenical council and John F. Kennedy asserted his freedom from episcopal domination in his campaign for the American presidency. It meant that religious freedom, at the least, would have to be considered at the council. Naturally, the conservatives joined Ottaviani in insisting on the thesis, fearful that were tolerance to go too far it would lead to religious indifferentism, state neutrality, or even antagonism to religion. A year or two later an official at the Holy Office reiterated Ottavianis 1953 statement that if the Catholic faith became the majority in the United States, the Church would work for union of church and state--just what American Protestants had always feared.118 As with bishops sharing power with the pope, new discoveries on revelation, unleashing the laity, a declaration on the Jews--religious liberty as an individuals right would be a tough sell. Those favoring it would have to bring out of hiding those occasions when the Church supported something like it for non-Catholics. At the second session, in an article carried in the Criterion, Cardinal Joseph E. Ritter made a beginning: He recalled that Pope Innocent XI (1676-1689), beatified in 1956, openly opposed Louis XIV for forcing the Protestant Huguenots to convert. Told that 400,000 had done so, the pope replied that converts were not made by armed Apostles nor had Christ used such methods, and he honored those French bishops who had protested such brutal suppression. Pius XII had distanced the Church from extreme claims of religious dominance in Mystici Corpus, 1943, making the same point as Innocent XI: although man may be compelled in religion, compulsion does not make true Christians . . . for faith must be an entirely free [act] of the intellect and will. Consequently, religious error must be tolerated and theologians must take into consideration what is good in the religious beliefs of other communities, their worship and observance. In 1953, the year of Ottavianis restatement, Pius XII told a national assembly of Italian jurists that while toleration of error and sin is immoral, God has not given to human authority absolute and universal command in matters of faith and morality. Thus the Church is led to tolerance out of regard for those in good conscience [who] are of a different opinion. And less than two months before his death, Pope John XXIII declared in Pacem in Terris that Every human being has the right to honor God according to the dictates of an upright conscience and therefore the right to worship God privately and publicly. Ritter did not scant the difficulties: He found no easily cited principle of religious freedom extant, rather certain unresolved dialectical tensions between human free will and Divine predestination, between freedom of conscience and the individuals obligation to assent to revealed truth, between societys duty to safeguard individual rights and its obligation to honor God according to revealed truths.119 118 119 Stacpole, Vatican II Revisited, 246-286, 293. Criterion 25 October1963, 2. 31 But if we move from Europe to America, beginning with Bishop John Carroll, from the 1790s through the 1960s we find the American hierarchy comfortable with the U.S. Constitutions religious neutrality. At the council itself, the 200 plus U.S. bishops united in support of religious liberty as on no other issue.120 Still, many progressive bishops had a hard time embracing the notion that the signs of the times required jettisoning the dictum that error has no rights. Besides being long-held tradition, on a practical level the Church in Latin America suffered from the keen competition of evangelical Protestants. With such behavior how ecumenism, let alone religious freedom? And so, as with other preparatory drafts, the one on church-state relations, De Ecclesia, argued that the state is obligated to support the Catholic Church and prohibit all others. Insofar as it mentioned religious freedom, it was to condemn the views of the progressive theologians of the day. As the second session opened Bosler despaired of religious libertys prospects. Even getting a hearing proved difficult: It was not on the council agenda until it appeared under the auspices of Cardinal Beas new Secretariat for Christian Unity as Chapter V of the ecumenism schema, which itself arrived in the hall with less two weeks left in the session. Submitted to the Theological Commission for doctrinal vetting, religious liberty somehow-Boslers word, got lost. The curial members of the commission were said to be against any consideration of religious liberty. But the American bishops, determined and unanimous for a strong statement, petitioned the pope, the secretary of state, and the president of the Theological Commission; They applied pressure everywhere. And they prevailed when Paul VI forced the commission to vote on whether to print and present the statement to the council; it passed 18 to 5, and religious liberty made it to the councils agenda.121 By the session was running out of time, and there were reasons to hesitate: some felt chapters IV (on the Jews) and V didnt fit with ecumenism. There were fears that religious liberty would promote indifferentism and it clearly meant development of doctrine. Some thought Ottaviani, Siri, Ruffini, and Company persuaded the pope that neither religious liberty nor collegiality were orthodox. Others worried that a progressive victory on those issues would throw Italy politically to the left, hurting the Vaticans political ally, the Christian Democrats. Some attributed to the pope the feeling that the councils 2,000 plus membership was too unwieldy to produce practical results and would fall prey to mob psychology. Bosler was bothered by a hastily arranged program honoring the 400th anniversary of the Council of Trent, seeing it as a kind of unwanted symbolic return to the sixteenth century. In the end, the pope allowed only three chapters of the declaration on ecumenism to be voted on, denied a vote on the declaration on the Jews, and delayed a vote on religious freedom until it was too late for discussion. Progressives had to be contented with Cardinal Beas promise that religious liberty would be discussed at the third session.122 As the text underwent a remarkable improvement during the 1964 session, Bosler would come to see the delay as a blessing.123 120 Stacpole, Vatican II Revisited, 294. 121 Criterion, 29 November 1963, 4, 9; 6 December 1963, 4. Criterion, 6 December 1963, 4. 123 Wilde, Vatican II and Religious Change, 94, 95, f.n., 97; Criterion, 29 November 1963, 4, 9. 122 32 Bosler had noticed that between council sessions--when the commissions presided over the work of the sub commissions and called the tune on redrafts--the opponents of renewal seem to be at least half the council. But once the bishops returned to Rome the progressives numbers manifest themselves and the spirit of Pope John grips them and they speak out for stronger statements, and before you know it, the opposition has all but disappeared. 124 This held true for religious freedom. Now detached from the ecumenism schema, in the debate On Religious Liberty, 23-28 September 1964, the Americans marshalled their largest number of speakers in favor. Though the pros and cons were equal, Bosler judged the speeches in support much the stronger, for while those opposed spoke in their own capacity, those in favor were given in the name of large groupsBostons Cushing for almost all U.S. bishops; Englands Heenan for most of the British Commonwealth, as well as Scotland, France, Belgium, and most of Ireland; Africa for many Africans, and so on. Although the Spaniards and the Italians were divided, he thought most of the rest of the world would be favorable. It gave Bosler confidence that a strong religious liberty statement would be adopted. Crucial support came from Auxiliary Bishop Carlo Columbo of Milan (the popes personal theologian). Colombo founded religious liberty on: mans natural right to search for truth, especially in religion, which required freedom to search and to express ones thoughts by dialogue and exchange of ideas with his fellow man; on the obligation to follow ones conscience; and on faith which requires that one freely believe. The greater the freedom the more genuine the faith. Since truth cannot be communicated with political force, public authority must allow the greatest possible liberty in religious matters not in conflict with the natural law. It helped that Columbos closeness to Paul VI was taken as a signal that the pope generally approved.125 Ten days after the great debate, however, the opposition struck in the person of council secretary Pericle Felici. Anxious to derail it and the declaration on the Jews and non-Christian religions, in separate letters to Bea, Felici stated that both documents were to be removed from the exclusive control of Beas Secretariat (SCU). The pope wanted religious liberty given to a new, weighted joint commission made up of three members chosen by the theological commission, three from the SCU, and four others named by Felici. Bosler was disturbed on a number of grounds: It was contrary to settled practice by which redrafts were left with the commission that presented it; it was done without consulting or informing the council moderators; and with three of Felicis nominees (the exception was Colombo) known for their intransigent opposition to religious liberty, it would give the joint commission a readymade conservative majority of six to four. Seen as an arbitrary action limiting the freedom of the council, it caused an uproar. The progressive majority felt insulted. And they acted.126 124 125 Criterion, 9 October 1964, 1, 9. Criterion, 9 October 1964, 1, 9. 126 Criterion, 23 October 1964, 1, 7; John W. OMalley, What Happened at Vatican II (Harvard University Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 2008), 224. 33 In Boslers telling, the French and Americans at the Villanova received word of Felicis designs on a Friday evening and immediately organized resistance. Progressive bishops, periti, and a group of cardinals led by the German Frings and the Americans Meyer and Ritter, moved to thwart the scheme. By Sunday, an angry Bea had rallied sixteen fellow cardinals to sign an appeal to the pope to safeguard the rights of the council and prevent interference liable to stall its progress. Were the public to learn of it, they warned, world opinion would not be kind to the Church. Specifically, the statement on the Jews should not be reduced and religious liberty should be left in the hands of those who understand what religious liberty means. Paul VIs answer was to order Cicognani to suggest to Bea that the mixed commission be limited to advisory opinions, not to reformulaterewrite--the religious liberty schema and to assure the protesting bishops that the statement on the Jews would remain intact. Within days Felici backed down: religious liberty would stay with the SCU and, while the declaration on the Jews would reflect the strong statement of 1963, it might be moved to the Church schema. (If so, Bosler thought, that would turn it into a theological matter which might help with the Arabs). The council had survived a crisis.127 Having been approved by all thirty of the bishops of the Secretariat on Christian Unity, a religious liberty text was ready for a vote by the theological commission, the normal procedure to test for orthodoxy; the vote was 12 placet, 6 non placet, 9 juxta modum (yes with reservations), and one abstention. Since the modi presented only minor problems of wording, the SCU handled them and the text given to the printers the next day.128 Matters seemed well in hand when, on Monday of the sessions last week, Paul VI roused liberal anger by intervening on three schemas and issuing a proclamation: He insisted on nineteen changes to Unitatis Redintegratio, the ecumenical decree already approved by the council--for example, Protestants dont find God in the Scriptures, but only seek Him; issued an explanatory note providing his own interpretation of collegiality in Lumen Gentium (undermining the councils interpretation already voted on); postponed the vote to accept the religious liberty text as the base text; and proclaimed Mary Mother of the Church, an echo of Vatican I that went against the councils will and seen as another blow to collegiality--even the conservatives were opposed to this as not tradition. Two days before the sessions end, in response to petitions from some 200 prelates who argued that the many amendments to the religious liberty schema made it a new document requiring more time for study, Cardinal Tisserant, speaking for the Council of Presidents, canceled the vote. Within hours more than a thousand bishops urged the pope to intervene. When Bishop de Smedt went ahead and read the religious liberty schema in the aula, he met constant interruptions of applause and received an unprecedented thunderous ovation at the end. Unmoved, Pope Paul refused to intervene in the councils procedures, but did promise that religious liberty would be the first item at the next, last session.129 Black Week left a bad taste and the pope under suspicion. Carried out on the papal 127 Criterion, 23 October 1964, 1, 7. Criterion, 20 November 1964, 1,9; Gilbert, Vatican II and the Jews, 159, 160, 161. 129 Criterion, 23 October 1964, 1, 7; John Connally, From Enemy to Brother: The Revolution in Catholic Teaching on the Jews, 1933-1965 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2012), 258. 128 34 throne at the sessions end, the pope received only perfunctory applause; Once again, however, as with other council controversies, the delay over Dignatatis Humanae turned out to be providential. What the pope would do at the final session about religious liberty would be crucial. A possible harbinger came at a weekly audience, June 1965, when Paul VI emphasized that Christs words, Come to me all, was an invitation, not a command or threat, for it is man who must decide for himself. The pope summarized this paramount doctrine regarding faith as let no one be hindered, let no one be forced.130 True to the his promise, on the sessions first business day the bishops turned to Dignitatis Humanae. Among those in support over the three days were Spellman: very pleasing, timely, outstanding based on the dignity of the human person; Urbani of Venice, speaking for 32 Italian bishops, found the schema substantially satisfactory, opportune, and true. It will promote peace and concord; and Bostons Cushing, who emphasized freedom of religion from all coercion. Ruffini held to error has no rights and in criticizing the notion that the state is exempted from any religious duty, averred It is still obligated to worship God and to protect and aid religion. In light of the 1929 concordat with Italy by which Catholicism is the state religion and the only one, Ruffini was dismayed that the declaration will mean the complete separation of church and state. Spains Cardinal Arriba affirmed that only the Catholic Church has the right to preach the Gospel, and therefore wanted no declaration on religious liberty. The next day, Ritter said the schema left nothing to be desired except a prompt approbation and promulgation. Charity, justice and fidelity forbid our delay.131 On important, contentious issues, Boslers practice was to provide lengthy explanations of the issues involved; for Dignitatis Humanae he told his readers that John Courtney Murray, S.J., its lead author, had worked for years to convince conservatives that religious freedom and the separation of the Church from the power of the State is a boon to religion, as the Americanists had held, not a hindrance. Bosler deemed Europes experience with religious freedom unfortunate in being introduced by the free-thinkers and agnostics of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution which followed. Under such auspices people thought it meant freedom from organized religion, from religious influence in education, from civil life, and from superstition and pie in the sky. It was freedom to think whatever one pleased. Similarly, justifying such freedom can be one religion is as good or as worthless as another, or no one can claim to know the truth about anything, or faith must be free from all coercion, or the dignity of man demands it. And would not declaring the state has no competency in religious matters end the financial support the Church and its clergy receives under its concordats with Italy, Spain, and Columbia? And if such liberty is based on the dignity of man will not both people and clergy argue for more freedom in the Church? In light of such 130 Criterion, 2 July 1965, 1. Floyd Anderson, ed., Vatican II Council Digest, 1965 (National Catholic Welfare Conference: Washington, D. C.), 9-11. 131 35 complications, there is strong opposition from a powerful minority at the council fearful of embracing what the Church had so roundly condemned in the last century.132 He worried, rightly, that Dignitatis Humanae will be changed so much that the Spaniards will demand it be discussed anew, leaving no time to vote on it.133 Another danger was that the conservatives kept frightening the pope with the prospect of a thousand votes against it, embarrassing him just before his speech to the United Nations. They succeeded in persuading the majority of the councils governing officials to postpone a preliminary vote, but at the last moment, the pope, importuned by Bea, insisted that the vote be held. (Absent a vote, the declaration could have been taken from Murray and De Smedt and radically rewritten by a conservative group where it would die.) Bosler was overjoyed: It marked the first time that Paul VI has stood firm against the the powerful leaders of the Curia. On the question of accepting the schema as the basis for a final version to be voted on later, the council voted 1,997 placets to 224 non placets, a great first week progressive victory. As one of a handful of issues discussed incessantly at dinner and into the late hours in the Villanova common room, when it passed champagne flowed at the Villanova. The residents, including the ten resident Italian bishops who voted placet that day, celebrated with so much joy.134 The final vote, 7 December, was an even more robust 2,308 to 70. Dignitatis Humanae meant discarding the old thesis/hypothesis according to the formula intolerance whenever possible, tolerance whenever necessary. Instead, the council declared that religious liberty requires that if special civil recognition is given to one religious community, . . . the right of all citizens to religious freedom must be recognized and respected as well. All men, being endowed with with reason and free will, are obligated to seek the truth, especially religious truth. To do that, in religious matters every form of coercion by men should be excluded. A person must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Religious freedom is to be protected and furthered by society, state, and church. Worth noting is that Fr. Murray saw Dignitatis Humanaes development of doctrine and its wider application as its real significance, not religious freedom in itself.135 *** Vatican II opened only two decades after the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust began. Now, more than a halfcentury later people might assume that the councils effort to dispense with the long-held teaching of Jewish deicide was due to a widespread, slow-building, fifteen-year moral recoil and the guilt that Christians carried for having done so little to stand against it. At the end of World War II, however, such remorse described only a tiny minority in the West. Instead, the Europeans persuaded themselves that they, too, were victims. Under Nazi domination, they could have done little to help the Jews and therefore deserved little blame. Quite the contrary, rather than contrition, as late 132 Criterion, 1 October 1965, 1, 9. Criterion, 8 October 1965, 1, 9. 134 Criterion, 1 October 1965, 1, 9. 133 135 Stacpole, Vatican II Revisited, 292. 36 as 1959, in one two-month period more than 2,000 anti-Semitic outragesdefacements of synagogues, cemeteries, and sundry attacks against Jews--erupted in nearly forty countries, some 800 in West Germany and almost 700 in the United States. As for Jewish material loss--houses, art works, bank accounts, professions, businesses--there was little sympathy for any sort of restitution, even less for punishing those chiefly responsible. And after all, just because the Jews were targeted by the Nazis didnt mean that you could suddenly rewrite the Bible to supplant a teaching going back to the second century that Jews must suffer until they turned to Christ.136 For this to change, centuriesold Christian theological anti-Semitism would have to undergo an exegetical revolution, but how? The way forward was to return to the sources (nouvelle theologie, ressourcement), using the past as a lens to understand the present. It meant a reformulation of new teachings on texts written just after Christs death, without which the Church would have no language to talk about the Jews in the aftermath of Auschwitz.137 The answer was found mainly in St. Pauls Epistle to the Romans, chapters 9 to 11. Paul begins by declaring that his love for his Jewish kinsmen is so great that he is willing, for their sake, to suffer anathema. God, not being tied to any nation by birth or merit, but find[ing] all involved in sin, by his free grace could raise up children of faith to Abraham and Israel from among the Gentiles, and prefer them before the carnal Jews. Having mercy on whom he will, he delivers some, but his justice not others. Paul wills that the Jews be saved, but not knowing the justice of God and seeking to establish their own, [they] have not submitted themselves, in word and heart to Gods justice. Only believe in Christ and in his resurrection and thou shall be saved. As a Jew and a Christian, Paul was proof that God has not cast off his people. Then and now, there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace. Israel is not cast off forever without remedy, but only in part. But by [Israels] offense salvation is come to the Gentiles. God does not repent of his gifts and his calling, for the promises of God are unchangeable. Those who abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in . . . . And so all Israel should be saved, as it is written: There shall come out of Sion, he that shall deliver and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. And this to them my covenant; when I shall take away their sins. As concerning the gospel, indeed, the Israelites are enemies for the Gentiles sake: but as touching the election, they are most dear for the sake of the fathers. This new way of looking at the scriptures was key, but more was needed--proponents who had emerged from the catastrophe of World War II with their reputations intact. These would be the small number of European religious activists with solid anti-Nazi credentials who appeared in the 1930s--Protestants, Jews, and Catholic converts, most of the latter from Judaism, some from Protestantism. Not a few became priests: Without converts to Catholicism, the Catholic Church would never have thought its way out of the challenges of racist anti-Judaism. It was this legacy of the small groups of Catholic rescuers that supplied whatever fragment of credibility that Christianity retained, . . .138 Clergy or lay, men and women, they evaded the Nazis, resisted, and hid Jews. After the 136 Gilbert, Vatican II and Jews, 34, 35. John Connally, From Enemy to Brother, 242. 138 Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965 (Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 2000), 225. 137 37 war they published newspapers and journals refuting Christian anti-Semitism and met in seminars, workshops, and at international conferences with the goal of transforming Christian understanding of the role of the Jewish people as described in the scriptures.139 Once Christians began talking to Jews about theology, the hateful quality of the traditional teaching against Judaism first became an embarrassment, then a cause for shame.140 The first major international conference on the religious response to anti-Semitism took place at Seelisberg, Switzerland, August 1947. Attracting some sixty-seven attendees, nine of them Catholic, it was notable for its pioneering ten point theses: the same God speaks to all in both the Old and New testaments; Jesus was born of a Jewish virgin and His love embraces his own people and all the world; the disciples and all the first Christians and martyrs were Jews; the injunction to love our neighbor is found in both testaments and obliges Christians and Jews in all their human dealings; avoid debasing Biblical or post-Biblical Judaism in order to elevate Christianity; avoid equating Jew as enemies of Jesus; avoid presenting the Passion so that the odium of the condemnation of Jesus falls only on the Jews; Jesus Father forgive them for they do not know what they do prevails over the crowds shout in the temple courtyard to accept the responsibility for the crucifixion; withhold credence to the opinion that the Jewish people are reprobate, cursed, or destined to suffer; avoid speaking of the Jews as if they were not the first Christians.141 Karl Thieme and Gertrud Luckner, founders of the Freiburger Rundbrief, in 1948, were another pair of philoSemites aiming to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and awaken in ourselves our duties and responsibilities toward our Jewish brothers.142 The Rundbriefs anti-Nazi reputation attracted Jewish readers living in Germany willing to dialogue in its pages--Martin Buber was one. The resulting Freiburg Circle had regular contact with Augustin Bea, Yves Congar, Jacques Maritain, Jean Danielou, and other council notables, and helped shape the views of the young German bishops appointed after Pius XIIs death. Other journals devoted to Catholicisms relations with Judaism were Paul DeManns Cahiers Sioniens, 1947, a converted Hungarian Jew and a Father of the Order of Sion; Fr. John M. Osterreicher, a convert from Judaism who published The Bridge in the United States; and Jacques Maritain, a convert from Protestantism, published Sens, the Paris-based study group of Jews and Christians, LAmitie Judeo-Chretienne de France, 1948. Debates aired in the Rundbrief sparked the formation of the Apeldoorn group, the Freiburg Circle in all but name. An international group of priests and laymenDutch, German, Frenchit met annually in the 1950s at the Utrecht diocesen seminary to urge changes in teaching and catechesis regarding 139 140 Connally, Enemy to Brother, 287. Connally, Enemy to Brother, Chapter 6, Conversion in the Shadow of Auschwitz. 141 Phayer, Catholic Church and Holocaust, 206; Connally, Enemy to Brother, 177, 178. 142 Phayer, Catholic Church and Holocaust, 186; Connally, Enemy to Brother, Ch. 8, Second Vatican Council. 38 Judaism. In sum, Judaism was an old but still living tradition upon which Christians depend for core beliefs, not least, love your neighbor. These ideas began to penetrate the theology taught in the seminaries. And yet, as far as preparation for the Second Vatican Council was concerned, Seelisberg, Freiberg, and Apeldoorn resonated but faintly. Hardly any of the bishops and theologians canvassed for topics during the councils preparatory period listed the Churchs relations with the Jews. Even Pope John, who as papal nuncio in Turkey provided many thousands of Jews with identity papers, money, and clothes to escape the Holocaust, hadnt thought to put the Jews on the agenda. Enter Jules Isaac, a survivor who had lost wife, daughter, and son-in-law at Auschwitz. A moving force behind Seelisberg and the principal founder of Amitie Judeo-Chretienne,143 he was a French-Jewish scholar of education known for his work on the history of anti-Semitism and for his book, Jesus et Israel, published in 1959. In that work he addressed the question Why was it possible in Christian Europe for such inhumanity toward Jews to be tolerated? His answer: Anti-Semitism had been engrafted on a stock of contempt for the Jews preserved by centuries of Christian teaching.144 Sufficiently well-known to be granted a private audience with Pius XII in 1949, Isaac spoke of ways to to uproot anti-Semitism and what he saw as the myths bedeviling Jewish-Christian relations. Pius received Isaac cordially but, worried that changing the teaching to support Israel and fight anti-Semitism would encourage religious indifferentism, in October 1950, he issued a monitum, a warning, against such work. Ironically, he appointed Bea and two others to investigate the people behind the Freiburger Rundbrief. John XXIII was different: As the apostolic delegate to Turkey during World War II, he had saved thousands of Jews by issuing them Baptismal papers. Besides dropping perfidious Jews from the Good Friday rite, he rid the liturgy of negative Jewish references--their veiled hearts, their blindness, etc., substituting The people to whom God first spoke. Meeting American Jews come to thank him at the Vatican for his efforts during the war to rescue Jews, John greeted them with I am Joseph, your brother.145 In June 1960 Isaac met with Pope John to reprise the issues hed raised with Pius: rectification of the Churchs teaching on the Jews, an account of the theological myths (dispersion of the Jews, the Jews as cursed, etc.), and evidence from the Council of Trent demonstrating that the charge that Jews are deicidists was contrary to Church tradition.146 He asked if something might be done about the Christian teaching of contempt for Jews and Judaism, suggesting that a council subcommittee be formed to study such teaching. Pope John replied You have right to more than hope, but that study is required. Having just created Thomas Stransky, The Genesis of Nostrae Aetate, America, (October 24, 2005), 8-12. Gilbert, Vatican Council and the Jews, 27. Isaacs examination of textbooks for anti-Semitism stimulated efforts by other interested parties. 145 Phayer, Catholic Church and Holocaust, 204-209. 146 Rene Laurentin and Joseph Nuener, S.J., commentary, The Declaration on the the Relation of the Church to NonChristian Religions (Paulist Press: Glen Rock, New Jersey, 1966), 19. 143 144 39 the Secretariat for Christian Unity (SCU) to help other Christians follow the work of the council, the pope sent him to Cardinal Bea, its head, with the message to include the Jews in the councils work.147 Three months after meeting with Isaac, John met with Bea to outline the basic approach for a declaration on the Jews. Bea began by appointing like-minded individuals from Freiburg, Paris, Apeldoorn, and elsewhere, among them three refugee-converts from Judaism, Fr. John Osterreicher, the leading American expert on Christian-Jewish relations, Fr. Bruno Hussar of the Order of Sion, and Fr. Gregory Baum. Baum was tasked with producing a survey focusing on the close connection of the Church with Old Israel. Pope John, told just before the council opened that he had a fatal disease, made it clear to Bea that he supported him on the Jews and to proceed. Thus was set in motion the shortest, most divisive, and one of the most important documents of the Second Vatican Council. As a leading historian of the council has put it, No schema roused greater anxiety in the pope, the Secretariat of State, and the Secretariat for Christian Unity than the statement on the Jews.148 Given the mandate, the SCUs two full-time staffers, fifteen bishops, and twenty expert consulters (periti), expected to work with the theological commission. They produced a set of papers in August 1961, but Ottaviani refused to accept them on the grounds that the SCU was merely a pastoral commission, not a theological one. Notwithstanding the setback, Beas secretariat went ahead and produced De Judaeis (On the Jews), in 1962 in time for the second session. The warmest of what would become four versions and the final text, it reflected Seelisberg and Apeldoorn in its condemnation of calling the Jews a deicidal people. Ray Bosler viewed the anti-Semitism found in the United States as mostly a cultural or sociological problem rather than religious or political one. While many Americans, not knowing any better, embrace the stereotype of Jews as loud-mouthed, money-mad pushers responsible for all the worlds problems, even so, they dont think of the Jews as cursed by God for the crime of God-killing deicide. Nor was it an issue in Asia and Africa, but in Europe, the Middle East, and especially among the Eastern Orthodox, it was. He traced Jewish-Christian animosity to the fourth century, noting that in 1095, Pope Urban IIs crusaders in the Holy Land turned on the Jews first, rather than the Muslims.149 His own philo-Semitism was never in question. In a reminiscence of his seminary days, he recalled bicycling along the Rhine into Holland with three other seminarians, in 1937. It was a foundational experience: Available everywhere they went were two long-forgotten, anti-Jewish tracts by Martin Luther and the Protocols of the [Elders of] Zion (the forgery that purported to be a Jewish plot to take over the world), as well as finding Der Sturmer, the Phayer, Catholic Church and Holocaust, 208; Thomas Stransky, The Origins . . . of Nostra Aetate, (America, October 24, 2005). 147 148 149 OMalley, What Happened at Vatican II, 250. Criterion, 22 October 1965, 1, 9. 40 infamous Nazi newspaper, displayed in glass cases at bus and tram stops. In Frankfort they asked a man to point out the House of the Rothschild; he gave them a surprised look, grunted Juden, and spat on the sidewalk. Others when asked stared at us as if we were out of our minds. He remembered vividly his shock at the open anti-Jewish prejudice of the pious Catholics of Oberamergau and by what ardent Nazis they were, the result of centuries of passion plays portraying the Jews as God-killers. At the council itself, anti-Semitism intruded from the start: Bosler might well have experienced dj vu in recalling that the day after bishops arrived for the opening session they all received a large, expensive book, The Plot against the Church, in Italian, containing the Protocols of Zion with an introduction tying it all to Communism. Some thought Arab money behind it.150 As noted above, the statement on the Jews (ch. IV, Catholic attitude toward non-Christian religions, especially the Jews) arrived late in the 1963 session. The debate over absolving the Jews of what happened in Christs Passion would become fixated on the deicide charge, namely, to condemn its application to Jews then and now, or only some then, and whether to use the word itself. It would be put in, dropped, and reinstated, before being suppressed for good in the final text. But when it was reinstated at the third session and its use against the Jews in the past and in the present explicitly condemned, this went too far for those bishops who remained under the old assumptions. Beyond the doctrinal change it would require, there was the immediate opposition from the Eastern Orthodox, among whom anti-Semitism was, as Bosler put it, an intellectual and theological conviction.151 Outside the council, but a great concern within, was that Christians living under Islamic governments, especially in Arab lands, had reason to worry about retaliation; such threats were already being made. The Arabs regarded any overture to Jews as political, pro-Israel, and not to be borne. More important than any of these was the New Testaments condemnation of the Jews for refusing to recognize Christ as the Messiah: Johns Gospel, which depicts Jews throughout as enemies of Jesus, and Matthew (27:25), who recounts their acceptance of responsibility for the crucifixion--His blood be upon us and upon our children. That Jews bore the essential blame for Christs suffering and death was unquestioned Christian tradition dating from the late first century. A new factor was Rolf Hochhuths play, The Deputy. First performed in West Berlin, February 1963, it depicted an uncaring Pius XII as doing less than nothing to help the Jews during the Shoahthe catastrophe. An immediate success de scandal, before the year was out it opened in Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, France, and England. A September London production sparked enormous discussion and press controversy. In February 1964 a condensed version opened in New York City to riot and picketing sparked by what the Criterion called American Nazi punks defending Pius XII! In a remarkably balanced article, the Criterion observed that while Pius XII bore a lonely burden of delicate decisions, unique beyond the comprehensions of most of us, many Catholics were disturbed by the popes failure to speak more plainly. Calling the play confused and confusing and a slander, yet it found elements in the play deserving a hearing. Catholics did share responsibility for Hitler and his vassal, Mussolini. In their hundreds of thousands many saw no contradiction between Being good Catholics 150 When I was a young seminarian, Notre Dame University Archives. 151 Criterion, 22 October 1965, 1, 9. 41 and also enthusiastic, bloodthirsty Nazis and Fascists. The editorial concluded, If Hochhuths blighted play wins converts to peace, the whole will have been worth while.152 As a measure of the plays impact, at the council Bishop Josef Stangl, Wurzberg, Germany, was led to demand Nostra Aetates (In Our Day) immediate promulgation: Can we really justify Pius XII?, he asked: Has not the Church been walking the way of the children of this world, who calculate and follow earthly considerations? If we speak in the name of God, in the name of Jesus Christ, as his representatives, our speech must be [a clear] Yes [or] No, that is, truth not tactics, for anything more than this comes from evil. (Mathew 5:37).153 Stangls outburst had an electric effect on progressives, by this time the overwhelming council majority. They wanted a strong statement and an end to the deicide charge. Thanks to Hochhuth, many council fathers could have no illusions regarding the response of world opinion if the Council was silent on the Jews. 154 When it appeared at the 1964 session as On the Jews and Non-Christians, Bosler told readers that the Secretariat for Christian Unitys (SCU) proposed text had been watered down. It was rumored that powerful forces in Rome were determined to render the Jewish statement innocuous or even eliminate it. 155 The culprit this time was Cardinal Amleto Cicognani, secretary of state and head of the coordinating commission. Without Beas knowledge, the text had been shortened and a sweeping condemnation of applying both deicide and accursed to the Jews dropped. In their place was everyone should take care not to impute to the Jews of today that which was perpetrated in the Passion of Christ. The revised version included that part in Romans which foresees the day when the Jews would give up their religion to join with Christians to form one perfect Church.156 In effect, Judaism was to disappear. A distinguished rabbi, Abraham Joshua Heschel (with whom Bea frequently consulted), protested that faced with conversion or death hed choose Auschwitz. Bosler agreed that The Jews are rightly incensed by the revised schema for its failure to absolve them of the crime of deicide, the accusation used by Christians to justify gross injustices against them. If not changed it could make the council look ridiculous. No such claim of conversion is asked of the Orthodox, Protestants, or any other non-Christian. Heartened by the speeches, Bosler was confident that the declaration will be improved and greatly strengthened. And for that, the Jews could thank the U.S. bishops. Theirs was the leadership and theirs the strongest speeches.157 The upshot was that at the 1964 session the declaration was amended according to points raised in the debate. Deicide was put back (The Jewish people never should be represented as rejected or accursed, or guilty of 152 153 Criterion, 6 March 1964, 4. As per policy, the editorial was unsigned. Connally, Enemy to Brother, 212. 154 Connally, Enemy to Brother: 263, 264, 270. 155 Criterion, 9 October 1964, 1, 9. 156 Stransky, Genesis of Nostra Aetate. 157 Criterion, 9 October 1964, 1, 9. 42 deicide) and the positive values of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam amplified. It avoided seeming to favor Israel by making overtures to both Moslems and Jews. Crucially, it held that censure of the Jews was not biblically founded, instructed the faithful to avoid anything that might engender hatred and contempt for Jews, and explicitly mentioned anti-Semitism.158 As a nod to the conservatives, the part played by the Jewish leaders in Christs death was added, no mention of the Jewish people or community was made (thus obscuring the denial of collective responsibility), and it was made clear that the Catholic Church was the new people of God. Although The Jews were now absent from the title, A Declaration on non-Christian Religions, on balance the text was strengthened in accord with the wishes of the progressive majority.159 Deicide was dropped and Christian preachers and teachers told never to speak of the Jews as cursed or those of today blamed for the crucifixion 2,000 years ago. The vast majority of the council demanded the rejection of the accusation of deicide be put back, which was done. However, no longer was it called an injustice to speak of deicide; it simply forbade speaking of it. On 20 November 1964, the vote stood 1,651 yes (95 percent of the council), 242 placets with reservations, and 99 non placets. Citing a Bologna newspaper as his source, Bosler reported that council seems to have passed through a crisis. Whether the Jewish statement was moved to the Church schema or not, it will reflect the strong statement of last year.160 Progress was made, but the opposition was resourceful and a declaration on the Jews remained far from home. The same day the Criterion carried Boslers expression of confidence regarding the Jewish statement, Felici launched his double-barreled attack on religious liberty and the Jewish declaration. As weve seen, a bakers dozen of the bishops, among them the Americans Ritter and Meyer protested to Paul VI that the statement on the Jews not be reduced to something meaningless, and they called on him to intervene. Bea received the popes assurance that the declaration would not be amputated nor diminished, but would become the heart of separate declaration on nonChristian religions.161 On the last working day of the third session a much revised draft, On the Jews and NonChristians, passed with a large majority, but with 242 reservations. These would have to be taken into account for the final version. For the 1965 session Beas secretariat readied a new draft of five short chaptersan introduction, favorable remarks on Hinduism and Buddhism (about three lines each), other religions (six lines), looked with esteem on Islam (about nine lines), on Judaism (thirty lines), ending with a rejection, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men based on their race, color, condition in life, or religion. Bosler assured readers that the new version on the Jews is a good one, whatever the press says. Though deicide no longer appears, the text is stronger than before for it now says that from Scripture it is impossible to show that Jews are reprobated by God for the death of Christ. This cuts out the roots of Christian anti-Semitism and the accusation of Stransky, Genius of Nostra Aetate, 39-42. Criterion, 23 October 1964, 1, 7. 160 Criterion, 23 October 1964, 1, 7. 161 Laurentin and Neuner, Declaration on the Church to Non-Christian Religions (Glen Rock, New Jersey; Vatican II Documents, Paulist Press, 1966), 32. 158 159 43 deicide. All the councils progressive leaders and the American bishops who fought hard for a good statement deploring anti-Semitism are completely satisfied with the present text. 162 Two weeks later Bosler conceded that Nostra Aetate was less warm and friendly on the Jews than the November 1964 text. Weakened in parts, with the condemnation of deicide dropped and deplored substituted-because to condemn was to admit that former popes were guilty of error. Also missing was an acknowledgement of the Churchs Jewish roots. Beas secretariat had had to consider the 242 suggested changes to the previous text. These came not just from conservatives, but progressives, too, even some who worked for amity with the Jews, yet believed the deicide charge is tradition and theologically correct. Consequently, the Secretariat on Christian Unity did change the tone somewhat, did weaken it, did drop the word deicide for which it had previously fought so strenuously. Simply put, a good many council fathers hesitated over making such a huge change in Church teaching. What held back drawing closer to the Jews, Bosler explained, was the spirit of ecumenism--the movement for Church unity with both the Orthodox and Protestants. It was an open secret that the pope wanted deicide dropped, perhaps to placate the Arabs, but principally to appease the Orthodox. To the early Church fathers, such as John Chrysostom, the curse of Jewish deicide was embedded in Orthodox liturgy, especially its Holy Week rites. The Eastern patriarchs made it plain that if the council rejected the deicide accusation, all possibility of unity talks would be off indefinitely. Despite overwhelming support at the council for a stronger statement, these factors could not be overcome.163 As a doctor of sacred theology, S.T.D., in his last column on the subject Bosler took a turn at bat himself. Yes, the Scriptures record that the Jews religious leaders condemned Christ and prevailed upon the Romans to put Him to death. The crucifixion was an act of deicide or God-killing. It wont do to deny this on the grounds that you cant kill God, for God cant die and therefore that it was not Christ as God, but Christ as man who died. It is the Christian belief that God became man so that he could die for us in an extreme act of love. It is the person who experiences the separation of body and soul that is death, and in Christ there is only the one person, the divine. . . . [To] condemn the use of deicide is to deny divinity and unity of Christ. Considering the act itself, however, apart from the intentions of those who participated, one could call the crucifixion a crime of deicide and apply it to the Romans as well. But considering intentions, had they known who Christ was the Jews would not have condemned Him nor the Romans executed Him. As Augustine wrote: They had crucified Him without understanding, but later they believed and that great offense has been forgiven them. The blood they spilled through folly they have drunk by grace. Ignorant at first as whom Christ was, their crime was homicide not deicide. How did the SCU remain faithful to Augustines teaching, the 1964 text, and the appeasement of the Orthodox? As Scripture testifies, 162 163 Criterion, 8 October 1965, 1, 9. Criterion, 22 October 1965, 1, 9. 44 Jerusalem did not recognize the time of its visitation, nor did the Jews, for the most part, accept the Gospel; indeed, many opposed its spreading. . . . Although the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ, nevertheless, what happened to Christ in His passion cannot be attributed to all Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor to the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected by God or accursed, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures, (1 Cor 2:8); Christs words, father forgive them for they do not know what they do, (Lk 23:34); and Peters sermon, It is through ignorance that you have acted, and your chiefs as well, (Acts (3:2, 17). This strikes at the root of theological anti-Semitism. As to the act itself apart from the intention of those who committed it, we could call the crucifixion a crime of deicide applicable to both the Jews and the Romans. But considering their intentions, we deny it was deicide for had they known who Christ was the Jews would not have condemned Him nor the Romans executed Him.164 There was no open debate before the final session vote on Nostra Aetate (In Our Time), only Beas presentation and voting on specific questions. It was adopted, 2,221 for to 88 against, the largest number of nonplacets for any of the sixteen council document, but one.165 On 28 October, five weeks before the end of the council, the pope promulgated it. The shortest of the sixteen documents produced by Vatican II, besides being the most controversial, it was also noteworthy for the discussions and new thinking it provoked in other schemas as it was shifted from ecumenism, to shared billing with religious freedom, to the Church schema, before finally resting in nonChristian religions.166 Bea hailed the expansion of the declaration to include other non-Christian religions as providential, the first time in history that the Church proposed brotherly dialogue with non-Christian religions. The cardinal was sure that Pope John rejoiced at the declarations passage, fittingly, on the seventh anniversary of John XXIIIs election as pope. An important improvement over previous drafts, in the final version there was to be no discrimination or harassment of men because of race, color, condition of life, or religion. That was why Nostra Aetate, after rejecting nothing which is true and holy in Hinduism and Buddhism, included an overture to Muslims.167 Why not? Muslims are monotheists, revere Jesus as a prophet, honor Mary, and await Judgment Day. This was in accord with Beas 164 Criterion, 22 October 1965, 1, 9. Inter Mirifica, an inconsequential statement on the press which had 164 votes against. The Church in the Modern World garnered 75 final votes against, religious liberty, 70. The non placets of other documents were typically in the single digits. 165 166 Laurentin and Neuner, Declaration on the Church to Non-Christian Religions, 35. 167 Criterion, 22 October 1965, 9. 45 basic principles announced in April 1962 by which in the councils quest for unity with the separated brethren included mutual respect and esteem.168 Now extended beyond Protestants, it was witness to the sensibility that led to the more than two dozen centers devoted to Catholic-Jewish understanding at American Catholic universities, such as Seton Hall Universitys Institute of Judeo-Christian Studies, established in 1953 by the Jewish convert and SCU member, Fr. John Osterreicher. Such centers publish documents promoting understanding and respect between Christians and Jews and the participation of rabbis in priest formation in Catholic seminaries. Naturally, the Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox branches of Judaism differed in their reception of Nostra Aetate, with the Reform being the most positive and the Orthodox critical of the whole enterprise. A good many Jews were genuinely pleased: One rabbi called it a Magna Carta for breaking new ground; to another it was a Copernican revolution.169 The chairman of the Indianapolis chapter of the American Jewish Committee applauded its rejection of Jewish collective guilt for the Crucifixion and its repudiation of anti-Semitism; it constituted a turning point in 1,900 years of Jewish-Christian history. Praising the efforts of Cardinal Bea and the American bishops to secure the declaration, it won for them the friendship and confidence of all men of good will and an honored place in the history of Jewish-Catholic relations.170 The Jews Bosler talked to complained, but admitted that had they not had the 1964 text they would be satisfied with this final text. Overall, Bosler thought it was a good compromise for the substance of the 1964 text was preserved. What the Arabs would make of it he didnt know. The Orthodox and our own Eastern Rite bishops seemed to be satisfied, but it is the maximum they could admit in favor of the Jews.171 Actually, in addressing his flock, Patriarch Maximos IV took a very jaundiced view: In his eyes, in recognizing that the Catholic Church is the People of God it followed that the Jews, in claiming part of the Holy Land, are usurpers. While it declares them innocent of the blood of Christ, the Jewish authorities and those gathered instigated the death of Christ. And even though deicide was dropped, The Jews will continue to be marked by their crime. 172 What the four-year struggle over a Jewish declaration revealed to Bosler was the frightening amount of Christian anti-Semitism. Here is proof enough for the need for a Declaration on the Jews. 173 Over the life of the council anonymous anti-Semitic publications, thought to have originated from Arab sources, were mailed to all the council fathers from time to time.174 Even at the the last session three such brochures circulated, one which warned that One should not label as anti-Semitic the just measures for legitimate defense of the Church and so many peoples . . . against the conspiracies, aggressions and other crimes committed by the Jews, causing the greatest 168 Criterion, 20 April 1962, 2. Connally, Enemy to Brother, 267, 268. 170 Criterion, 5 November 1965, 9. 169 171 Criterion, 22 October 1965, 9. 172 Laurentin and Neuner, Vatican II, 100, 101. 173 In his The Vatican Council and the Jews, 1968, Rabbi Arthur Gilbert praised Bosler for having sounded a keynote to the importance of the declaration and the need for further work. 174 Criterion, 22 October 1965, 9. 46 injury to the Church and so many people.175 Anti-Semitism remained rife among Catholic churchmen, including, Bosler counted, several persons high up in the Curia who subscribed to the collective guilt of the Jews. Bishop Luigi Carli, Segni, Italy, was one: In a respected clerical journal, February 1964, like Maximos IV, Carli held that though only the Sandhedrin and a small group of Jews materially committed the crime of deicide, the Jewish people even today stood guilty of it.176 Many Catholics, even progressives, harbored anti-Judaic feelings. That Cardinal Bea himself hesitated over Nostra Aetate, showed that fewer minds were changed than we think, just as the election and reelection of Barack Obama was supposedly proof of a post racial America. If Bea and others didnt seem to grasp the fullness of what was requiredgiving up deicide and its curse, Paul VI was another. In a shocking 1965 Lenten sermon, the pope, refusing to make distinctions, bluntly stated that the Jews did not recognize [Christ], but fought him, slandered him, and injured him, and in the end they killed him.177 In 2008 Benedict XVI reopened the issue of proselytism in amending the Good Friday prayer to read, Let us pray for the Jews, that God our Lord should illuminate their hearts, so that they will recognize Jesus Christ, the savior of men. Two years earlier, in a lecture before a German university audience, Benedict, far from showing Islam respect and esteem, quoted a late 14th century Byzantine emperor: Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached. In his last dispatch from Rome Bosler credited whatever success the council had to the public criticism from the bishops, the desire of the liturgists for the vernacular, and especially the secular press for its criticism of the council itself. These saved the council from being an ineffectual exercise and for bringing on the changes in practices and attitudes we now experience in the Church. He put his hopes for the future in the magnificent passages in the Constitution on the Church to produce what Christian authority ought to be and for the seriousness with which the laity should be treated. Citing Chapter IV of the Constitution on the Church, the laity have the right of making known to the sacred pastors their needs and desires with the confident liberty which suits them as children of God. What qualifies them to do so is their knowledge, competence, [and their] position in the world which gives them the means, or rather, the duty at times of making known their opinions on matters which envisage the good of the Church. In modern democratic nations, public criticism is seen as desirable and does not undermine authority, as it does in say, feudal Spain. Efforts to repress criticism in the Church will only increase it and turn it into something evil by driving out the best educated of her members. As yet, the Church isnt a place where one can be free to express himself, where he can be himself, but one day it may be.178 175 Laurentin and Neuner, Declaration on Non-Christian Religions, 56. 176 Criterion, 22 October 1965, 9. 177 Connally, Enemy to Brother, 269. 178 How to tell the bishops from the periti, Criterion, 29 October 1965, 9. 47 To illustrate the contention between freedom of expression and its suppression at the last session, Bosler used two council newcomers--Pedro Arrupe, recently named Father-General of the Jesuits, and Turins Archbishopelect, Michele Pellegrino. Having spent the previous three years in Japan, Arrupe stood for the old way, warning of a new godless society holding almost complete sway in international organizations, finance, and in mass communications.179 A few weeks later Arrupe proclaimed his strict opposition to any criticism of the Church. It was intolerable that any defect of the Church, however real, should be broached publicly by individuals or groups, regardless of the good will [such critics] might have, Intelligent critics will see that the best solution will be either to keep silent and wait . . . or meekly bring the defects to the knowledge of the proper authority. He was sure no changes in the Church would take place, but if so, any reforms will be done by the duly constituted hierarchy. Otherwise confusion results and the work of the Church on behalf of all obstructed.180 Besides having some fun at the expense of his liberal Jesuit friends, Bosler charged Arrupe with subscribing to a conspiracy view of history, one that smacked of the thought patterns of the sixteenth century.181 The Jesuits insistence that reform was a monopoly of the hierarchy failed the Villanovas truth room test; there the near-unanimous view was that without criticism there is no change. True, there is a spirit of criticism within the Church today, but attempts to suppress it will change it into something evil and will drive from the Church the best educated of her members. 182 Contrary to Arrupes worries of secular conspiracies, Pellegrino surprised the council with a ringing . . . defense of freedom of research and scholarship not only for laymen but for priests. Deploring the repression of the modernists at the turn of the century, the Turin archbishop asserted that such censorship was still going on: Even in theology many things must be subjected to revision with the progress of research and the sphere of things open to various opinions is much broader than non-scholars may think. If scholars know they are permitted to express opinions with wholesome freedom, [they] will act with [the] straightforwardness and sincerity that should shine in the Church; otherwise the abominable plague of dishonesty and hypocrisy can hardly be avoided. Beyond his call for scholarly independence, Pellegrinos statement was a resounding affirmation that doctrine developed. Bosler: Would that there were more American bishops speaking out in this fashion.183 Criterion, 8 October, 1965, 1, 9, a none too subtle reference to international Jewrys conspiracy. Criterion, 29 October 1965, 1, 9. 181 Criterion, 8 October 1965, 1, 9. 182 Criterion, 29 October 1965, 9. Under the influence of Jesuits such as Rahner, Bea, and Murray, Arrupe soon became a progressive, earning stiff rebukes from Paul VI for permitting undue experimentation and loose discipline, and from John Paul II, for the Orders secularizing tendencies and for causing confusion among the laity. When Arrupe died, instead of the Jesuits choosing his successor, the custom since the orders founding 141 years before, John Paul II put his own man in. 179 180 183 Criterion, 8 October 1965, 1, 9. 48 The Second Vatican Council closed on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. The day before, the Declaration on Religious Liberty and the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Today were adopted. Bosler was certain that the windows Pope John had opened would remain open. (Note that John is back opening windows, not Paul.) The old Church no longer considers herself a besieged fortress, but the home of all mankind. Added proof was the replacement of the Holy Office with the new Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: In Pope Paul VIs words, while the CDF will still correct errors and gently recall those in error to moral excellence, new emphasis is to be given to preaching the gospel and promoting doctrine. To Bosler, ever open to optimism, it meant that the Holy Office, the old bastion of feudalism given to the ferreting out of heretics, would be replaced by a new institution that refuses secrecy and respects the principle of the right of appeal and of judicial representation for all those whose teaching or writing may be questioned.184 A discordant note and a cautionary one for the future, however, was the accompanying announcement of a jubilee decree giving confessors power to absolve those who committed heresy, or read forbidden books, or joined the Masons or like organizations, all matters out of keeping with the councils spirit of Pope John. Disappointed with its pre-conciliar language and attitude, Bosler suggested that the decree was a consolation gift to the old guard in the Roman Curia. It ran against the grain of the vast majority of bishops [who] wanted censures and ecclesiastical penalties eliminated as ineffective and meaningless in todays world. 185 In this curial reform, as with the failure of the bishops synods to develop into genuine collegiality with the pope, Bosler would be grievously disappointed. A fortnight later the secretary for the new Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith provided another example of outmoded language and attitude: in an Interview by the Madrid Catholic daily, Ya, Cardinal Ottaviani sounded like Arrupe in expressing his unhappiness with priests and laymen who were embarked on a dismal mission of criticism of the Church, indeed, an anti-Christian one. They sow confusion and prevent the word of God from being spread. He was sure the hierarchy could be relied on to provide remedies with meekness, goodness, effectiveness and a spirit of truth. Ottaviani, whose motto was Semper Idem, always the same, praised the Spanish Church and Opus Dei for carrying out a great necessary work. He was sure that while the Index of Forbidden Books would be reformed, it will never disappear. This was the Ottaviani who prayed to God that I can die before the end of the Councilin that way at least I can die a Catholic.186 Clearly, clericalism wasnt dead. Recall that a good many council fathers resisted the notion that an ecumenical council would or should exhibit the motivations and behaviors common to secular parliaments; a Catholic religious congress must prove edifying in process and product. But from the start Bosler complained of the conservatives strange and devious moves and general foot-dragging. Felici, Ottaviani, and others used their positions to thwart renewal, and before second session adjourned, the new pope had moved into their camp. Only at the 1965 session did Bosler find that the fathers were satisfied that the commissions are representing fairly the different points in proper proportions, and 184 Criterion, 10 December 1965, 4. Unsigned editorial, but almost certainly Boslers. 185 Criterion, Vatican II, 10 December 1965, 4. Criterion, 24 December 1965, 2. 186 49 are quite willing to accept whatever changes are proposed. So theres no suspense, no back-stage maneuverings.187 Previously, conservative machinations made a bad impression on those council participants disposed to be critical of clericalism and immune to Romanita. Among these, the aura of the Churchs sanctity suffered a wound. And when both clergy and laity divided among themselves and each other over the merits of the Second Vatican Council, unity became another casualty. An important part of the motivation for renewal was the embarrassment of the progressiveseven shameat the Churchs triumphalism. The stand-patters held to the belief that adherence to the Catholic Church was the one sure way to paradise, certain that as deicidists the Jews had permanently condemned themselves, and unembarrassed by the heads I win, tails you lose formula of the thesis on church and state. To understand how the progressives got so much of what they wanted, more needs to be said: In defending the status quo the conservatives initially relied on the Curias four centuries of dominance, its superior access to influential circles, and its plentiful financial resources. That confidence was shaken at the first session by the support for the liturgy schema and the dismissal of the schema on revelation. Alarmed at the progressives influence, early in the second session they hired staff, bought a printing press, and organized as the Coetus Internationalis Patrum (Union of International Fathers). Fatal to its cause, however, the CIP was anti-collegial, suspicious of episcopal conferences (they take away papal power and were a threat to the Curia), and isolated.188 Unable to reach and organize potential allies in significant number, its meetings gathered few participants. As progressive influence waxed, the conservatives reasserted hierarchy, papal primacy, and insisted that votes were not binding. Since the pope had approved the initial schemas, they argued that changes would undermine papal authority. For conservatives, compromise was not an option, nor consensus a goal. What effectiveness the CIP had was not in mustering the support of like-minded bishops, but in pressuring Paul VI to qualify council decisions. On his own, a pope can insist that a council discuss an issue or not, as he did with birth control and priestly celibacy. He can veto an approved schema or have its drafting committee amend it, as he did with collegiality. He can draft his own statement on matters he disagrees with, as he did in referring to the Virgin Mary in terms the progressives had kept out.189 By the end of second session the CIP had hints of an organized opposition; by the end of the third session it was convinced that a progressive conspiracy subversive of doctrine existed.190 If the conservatives were too few and too late to be effective, the progressives were many and early. Having judged the initial schemas inadequate, the French, German, Dutch, and Belgians circulated their own drafts before 187 Criterion, 22 October 1965, 1, 9. 188 Melissa J. Wilde, Vatican II: A Sociological Analysis of Religious Change (Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey, 2007), 70. 189 Wilde, Vatican II and Religious Change, f.n. 16, 144. 190 Wilde, Vatican II and Religious Change, 69. [see Rynne, vat c II, 407.] 50 the council even opened. A few weeks into the first session two Latin Americans and a few French bishops agreed to meet regularly to inform and help each other.191 From this small beginning, midway through the first session a collegial organization officially formed, a participatory democracy with the ability to reach some 1,900 council bishops through its 22 core individuals representing the various national episcopal conferences. Bishop Ernest Primeau, one of the 22, was the liaison to the American bishops National Catholic Welfare Conference. Meeting weekly at the Domus Mariae, a hotel a 35-minute walk from St. Peters, ideas were debated and compromise reached. Once consensus was achieved by the 22, decisions could be rapidly communicated by the Domus Mariae, the twenty-two secretaries speaking in the name of 127 episcopal conferences from the five continents.192 Other council practices also favored collegiality, even the seating of the bishops in the aula by seniority, not region, produced more wide-ranging cultural exchanges. As did the coffee bars--Bar Jonah and Bar Mitzvahthe sites of what George Weigel called the crucial secondary Council of informal conversation and personal encounter . . . .193 In addition, reform-minded bishops attended evening presentations by theologians organized by Domus Mariae. As Primeau testified, meeting weekly with the other 21 core members, corresponding with other bishops, attending meetings where the final details of schemas were agreed upon, keeping DM members abreast of developments widened my horizons, made me more appreciative of the ideas and problems of others, more sensitive to their needs, spiritual and material. . . . Before collegiality [was] formally approved at the council, I had already profoundly experienced it.194 191 Wilde Vatican II [and] Religious Change, 64. At the 1964 session Bosler referred to the recommendation of the international committeethe Domus Mariae-that schema 13 be accepted as the basis for the councils discussion. Criterion, 6 November 1964, 1, 9. 193 First Things, 67 (November 1996), 54-56. 192 194 Wilde Vatican II [and] Religious Change, 68. Her study is based on transcripts of interviews with more than eighty of the most important council bishops and theologians, conducted by Rocco Caporale, a doctoral student, primary documents, archives, and computer analysis of the voting via an electronic data base. The council bishops divided into four geographical groups based on whether Catholicism of a nation or area was high or low in stability and in diversity. For example, in Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Ireland (20 percent of the council), the Church enjoyed a religious monopoly. Being high in stability and low in religious diversity, they opposed collegiality, ecumenism, and renewal. The non-monopolistic, but stable and religiously diverse Northern Europeans and North Americans (25 percent), prioritized ecumenism and renewal. Latin America (22 percent), rating low in stability and diversity, faced a rising tide of Protestant evangelicals and Marxist inroads into their laity. Suspicious at first of ecumenism, the Episcopal Conference of Latin America, CELAM, emphasized economic justice, the poor, and the unchurched. The bishops of the low stability, highly diverse, emerging missionary fields of Africa (FACE) and Asia supported ecumenism and social justice and were oriented toward growing the Church in their areas. In the end, superior organization and collegiality was the glue unifying all three progressive areas. 51 *** Boslers chief worry after the council was how to get the folks back home to understand the documents. For that to happen, they must reach the pulpit, schools, and the press. New catechisms, religious textbooks, and theological manuals must be written reflecting the spirit of the council. While the documents were not revolutionary and do not reflect the desires of the large progressive majority, they do contain the germs for a future development that could be magnificent. His hope was that the council is only the beginning of a reform within the Church that will go on for years.195 His contribution to such development were years spent giving talks on the councils accomplishments and meaning, reprising what hed experienced. One talk was at a suburban Cincinnati parish, probably in late summer, 1968, a time when priests and nuns were leaving in numbers and of widespread dissent by the laity, many clergy--even bishops--over Paul VIs birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae. Focusing on three council documents--the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes), the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation (Dei Verbum), and the Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae). His theme, three years after the council, was not Church reform that will go on for years, but the profound, drastic, revolutionary change the Church was going through.196 The old Catholic Church, the one before the council, had provided a security blanket, our bulwark of defense against modernity. Now, after the council, respected theologians and even some bishops were questioning traditional doctrine . . . . Citing Gaudium et Spes, the cause was science--the dramatic breakthroughs of knowledge which required a more critical ability to distinguish religion from a magical view of the world and from the superstitions which still circulate . . . . Vatican II alone did not cause the present ferment, but rather the human intellect . . . broadening its dominion over time. Thus, the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a more evolutionary one, a sentence Bosler repeated for emphasis. Similarly, the Declaration on Religious Freedom spoke of the growing demand that men should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of responsible freedom, not driven by coercion, but motivated by a sense of duty. This, the council declared, is greatly in accord with truth and justice.197 What it came down to was that during the council our Church suddenly grew up. Until then modernity had developed apart from the Church, often in opposition to, or in revolt against the Church, and the Church reacted by denying that anything good came from the world, only evil. Sadly, listed among the evils were some very wonderful things--democracy, religious liberty, freedom of the press and of assembly. John XXIII broke with this habit of 195 Criterion, 22 October 1965, 1, 9. 196 Lecture on Vatican II at suburban Catholic parish in Cincinnati, 1968? Raymond T. Bosler Papers (BOS), CBOS 2/01, University of Notre Dame Archives (UNDA), Notre Dame, IN 46556. The talk, double-spaced, is 23 pages long; the Q and A that followed runs to 20 more. Fr. George Higgins, the labor priest, partnered with Bosler at the two-day program. 197 Cincinnati talk, Bosler Papers, next five paragraphs. 52 condemnation, as did Paul VI, who, in opening the second sessionhis first--said: Let the world know this, the Church looks at the world with profound understanding, with sincere admiration and with a sincere intention not of conquering it, but of serving it. In effect, by embracing certain Enlightenment Era valuesreason, science, toleration, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, the Second Vatican Council had worked a mighty reversal. Bosler would remind his audiences that the bishops went to school to the theologians, historians, and other scholars, who themselves had gone back to the sources and practices of the early Church. Scriptural interpretation underwent fundamental change. One of the real great things the council did in the Constitution on Revelation was to point out that all of us, all the faithful, not just the pope and the bishops and the theologians, but all the faithful, contribute to a better understanding of the revelation that God has given us. God taught so that the people of any time and place, whatever their limitations, could understand. Now we know so much more; why limit ourselves to the understanding of the people at the time of the councils of Nicea (4th century) or Trent (16th century). The child or childlike adult is satisfied with the precise formulas from the catechism, while the mature adult finds these pat formulas and the certitude they afford almost empty. The great real change brought by the council came when the bishops began to be dissatisfied with the old formulas and began to ask questions, then man really arrived at his adulthood in the Roman Catholic Church and our church suddenly grew up. Unfortunately, not everything had changed: The Church of the 1960s still bore the marks of the pastof ancient Rome, of feudalism, of absolute monarchy. Thanks to the council, we can experiment with democratic forms that afford more freedom, . . . more expression of the maturity and dignity of the individual by granting more responsibility to the laity in the parish, the diocese, and the worldwide Church. The Church in the Modern World says the laity should not imagine that their pastors have the answer to every question, but that they themselves through the helps of the truths of faith, their own practical knowledge, and everyday living understanding may come. In line with the best practices of science, the Church must shift from a mentality of certainty to a mentality satisfied with scientific probability. It must more often admit we dont know. For the first time in years, and years, and years, there is the sense of freedom, with scholars, theologians, and lay people telling the bishops and the pope their ideas. True, the laitys assertiveness had so alarmed the bishops that they are less courageous than they were at the council--not as progressive, holding back. But this, too, is a good thing: It was the absence, the lack of tension before Vatican II which was really an evil thing. It is also true that while much can be learned from the world, there is much to be feared from too much adulation of modern culture and knowledge. Paraphrasing Chesterton, Bosler said there is still the need for the democracy of the tombstones--the contributions to knowledge of the great men of the past. Theirs is a voice that will help us make our decisions today. Striking an ecumenical note, before the council the Church, certain that it had all the answers, failed to see the value in the Protestant elementthe importance of the individual. Protestantism suffered its own loss in breaking away from that other part of the Church which stands for authority . . . . Both must exist for creative tension. Conservatives and progressives alike forget that the Church is a very human institution, and therefore itself a great test of faith. Citing Pope Pius XII that many members of the Church suffered from spiritual infirmity is no reason for us to lessen our love for the Church, rather it is an occasion for us to feel deeper sympathy with its members. 53 But the Church seemed to be foundering. There is a new spirit of criticism in the Church that frightens some and helps others to find all sorts of things wrong . . . . More and more people are aware that the papacy has been both a rock and a scandal; that the bishops, let alone the priests and laity, divide over the birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae; that conservatives and progressives want too much and so there is the sense that the Church is doing too much or not enough. The problem was the need to do much more: What is the Church and what are we going to do about racism, the global have-nots, about tawdry middle class materialism? What is needed is a real love for the Church in all its imperfections, and real faith. Only when one recognizes how weak and human and full of fault the Church is can one really make a true act of faith. We need to be adults. If the Church was perfect, what need of faith?198 Talking to a gathering of nuns, Bosler sounded like an agent provocateur: The Church was going through a painful, dramatic change, and the nuns were the vanguard for renewal. Invited by the Church to lead, they were empowered to change and experiment on your own without seeking authorization from the local bishop or the authorities in Rome for the steps you take. No one else in the Church has the same opportunitiesnot even the bishops! Theres a new attitude to the world; the Church is no longer the fortress, the bulwark against evil. Gaudium et Spes "took a new look at the world and found much good there, among them the rights and dignity of man, of conscience, and the need to understand the world. Accepted values are called into question, . . . especially by the young. The institutions, laws, and modes of thinking and feeling as handed down are not always well adapted to contemporary life. The old juridical Church no longer fits needs. The religious nuns have been asked to lead the way. They alone have the opportunity. As the Church still bears the marks of the Roman Empire, feudalism, absolute monarchy, [and in pen in the typescript] outmoded attitudes toward women], it was time to experiment in democratic forms that afford more freedom, responsibility, and the dignity of the individual. 199 Within a few years of the councils close Bosler concluded that its promise was going unrealized. The council had called for internationalism, collegiality, and decentralization of power in the Church. Although many American council fathers and others had been willing to listen to the theologians, and while the documents held the promise of a dynamic future, as soon as the bishops got home they became polarized. Less than four years after the council he told the local Serra Club that the councils documents now appear to be ancient history. 200 Although the Church had promised renewal, ten years after the council it takes two steps backward for each one forward.201 In 1992, two years before his death, he mused that Rome and many of the worlds bishops had been frightened by the aftermath of the council. As he had said at that suburban Cincinnati parish, perhaps things had needed to be slowed down; still, the old status quo could not stand and the councils orderly study of theological and Biblical sources and [its] systematic reappraisal of the Churchs needs and opportunities were all to the good. All in all, Vatican II had served as a providential safety valve that made it possible, . . . to forestall a disastrous explosion in 198 Cincinnati Talk, Bosler Papers. 199 Indianapolis Catholic Archdiocesan Archives, Bosler Box. Typescript: Talk to nuns on their opportunity to reform. Lacks date, place, or religious order[s] addressed, but shortly after the council. 200 Biskup papers, Indianapolis Archdiocesan Archives, Serra Club notes file, 1969. 201 Criterion 19 January 1975, 5. 54 the life of the Church.202 Certainly Pope Paul VI had been frightened by the progressives efforts to bring change. Bosler wasnt frightened, he was liberated, as his post-Vatican II editorials and Question Box answers would show. *** For an editor of an archdiocesan newspaper like Bosler, it was more true than ever that post Vatican II there was no place for the old-fashioned comfortable Church papers. The Catholic press must reflect the restlessness, the frustrations, the bad news as it is, to fulfil its inescapable obligation to be a disturbing element in the life of the Church.203 The Question Box would be his vehicle. The Box first appeared in the archdiocesan newspaper without a byline until March 1951, when it was assigned to Fr. James D. Moriarity of Our Lady of Fatima parish.204 Later conducted by Msgr. John Conway, it appeared under Boslers byline from January 1967.205 That year two University of Notre Dame graduates asked to include the Question Box as part of a newspaper syndicate they were putting together, and by 1973 it ran in 29 newspapers.206 Seeing his role as sparking discussion between bishops and laity,207 as a doctor of sacred theology Boslers strength was the sophistication with which he discussed doctrinal issues. Neither mincing difficulties nor talking down, bringing theology, philosophy, and history to bear, he was confident that the laity was capable of understanding abstruse topics.208 The renowned Biblical scholar, Fr. Raymond Brown, S.J., well aware of the brickbats thrown Boslers way, praised the quality of his answers on difficult theological 202 New Wine, 109, 110. 203 Criterion, 7 February 1969, 4. 204 Indiana Catholic Record, March 1951, 4. 205 Msgr. Conway died in March 1967. [See if his mea culpa column can be found.] Bosler would write the column until June 1984. Note, the Criterions review of its history, 8 October 2010, 9, has Bosler conducting the column for only ten years, from 1974 to 1984. 206 Criterion, 13 April 1973, 7. Two collections of Boslers Question Box columns were published: What a Modern Catholic Believes About Moral Problems (Thomas More Press: Chicago, 1971) and What a Modern Catholic Believes About Marriage Ava Maria Press; Notre Dame, Indiana, 1975). Each collects about five years of columns. They were part of a four book series written by eminent thinkers and scholars, Fr. Andrew Greeley, What a Modern Catholic Believes About God, Fr. Eugene Kennedy, About Sex; and John Shea, About Sin. 207 208 New Wine, 95. Criterion, 26 May 1972, 7. 55 subjects and the courtesy and respect he showed readers.209 The new learning was hard and the resistance comparably intransigent. The central issue was the nature of authority in the Church.210 Had Bosler made bishop (a goal he evinced no interest in reaching), his episcopal motto might well have been The days of the Catholic Answer Man are gone forever--the title of his first Question Box column. Citing Gaudium et Spes, the laity was not [to] imagine that his pastors are always such experts that to every problem which arises, however complicated, they can readily give him a concrete solution, or even that such is their mission. In other words, avoid laying down the law, modesty is the needed virtue. The spy novelist known as John le Carre put it this way: Moral clarity is diminished by increased understanding. The harder you look for absolutes the less likely you were to find them. Bosler: We Catholics no longer imagine revelation to be a collection of precisely formulated truths handed down to be memorized by generation after generation. Rather, it is a living, on going experience of God. As such, each generation had something to say about it and its relationship to its time. Even more, faith is not just accepting as true what the Church teaches through its pastors, but the loving submission and listening to the living God personally revealing himself to the individual through these teachings. Submission must include a response, a striving to understand and to carry out in life what is heard. It is this response of all believers which increases and advances the Churchs knowledge of revelation and how it applies to right living. 211 Theologians strengthen the authority of pope and bishops when they bring biblical, historical and scientific knowledge the popes and bishops need to clarify and develop their teaching. With the laity unaware of this before the council, some found it shocking, others thrilling, to discover that the Church was not a monolith: Instead, there is Augustines pilgrim church, one that struggles to discover its way through trial and error, one that the Holy Spirit inspires the laity with gifts as well as the hierarchy, with a need for dialogue within and without the Church and for knowledge of science and modern philosophy to understand the world. It would not be easy, but Bosler expressed confidence in its possibility.212 While the laity might be the best educated in history, judging by their questions many readers were confused by Vatican II and mystified with his answers: One often raise[d] her eyebrows at his responses; they seem so often at variance with the teachings of the Church.213 She wasnt alone. Question: What was serious sin? Answer: The gravity of a sin is measured by the extent of the disorder and aversion to God caused by the sinful act and its 209 Criterion, 23 June 1972, 7. Bosler revealed Browns name in his memoir. 210 Criterion, 6 June 1969, 5. 211 Moral Problems (1967-1971), 5, 6. 212 Moral Problems (1967-1971), 8. 213 Criterion, 17 September 1976, 5. 56 consequences and also by the disposition of the sinner.214 In short, it depends. What about missing Mass? Bosler let the laity in on the secret that Roman laws are written overly strict on the assumption that dispensations from them will be granted and individuals may readily find excuses for judging they do not apply in given circumstances. The Romans (the Italians, clergy and lay), dont regard missing Mass a serious sin.215 The implicit message, Grow up. Having moved out of the Catholic ghetto, himself, he enjoined readers to do likewise. To one who thought teaching non-Catholic theology courses at a Catholic university a bad idea, he drew attention to the councils document on ecumenism and noted that Catholics had learned a great deal from Protestant and Jewish scripture scholars and theologians.216 To another retailing the old canard that Luther was merely a sex-obsessed, disobedient, self-aggrandizing monk, Bosler set the record straight, giving the details of Luthers life and marriage. 217 Typical of his common sense was his answer to the query: We are Catholic and are invited to a Protestant wedding. Is it wrong to go? They are the best of friends and neighbors. A: They wont be, if you dont act like a friend and neighbor. Go to the Wedding.218 A mother wrote that her daughter is marrying in their Catholic Church a very nice Jewish boy she met in college, but the father threatens to disown her. Her husband was a good Catholic and read the Question Box every week. Maybe you can enlighten him. Bosler: You flatter your husband . . . . if his opposition . . . springs from prejudice against the Jews. Perhaps the man didnt know that Jews are noted for stable marriages and strong family ties and that Catholic-Jewish marriages can be most successful. I dont know what to say to your husband other than to remind him that he will be facing another Jew on judgment day.219 He could be funny: A husband wrote that his wife wanted to know when a widow remarries who is the man she spends eternity with? Bosler recalled that the Sadducees had posed a variant of the question to Jesus: If a woman married seven brothers over her life, at the resurrection (in which the Sadducees disbelieved) to whom would she be wife in heaven? Jesus answered, the resurrected do not marry (Lk 20:27-37). So keep your chin up, wrote Bosler, You and any possible successor are not apt to be rivals in heaven. But just what is on your wifes mind? 220 A reader wondered, What happened to the changeless church? Bosler agreed that until recently the understanding had been that the Church was the one stable, almost perfect thing that bolstered our lives. The Church was always right and had all the answers. But in light of Vatican II this is mere triumphalism. With man 214 Moral Problems, 11, 12. Moral Problems, 18. 216 Criterion, 22 March 1974, 7. 215 217 New Wine, 98. 218 About Marriage, 40. 219 About Marriage, 65. About Marriage, 257, 258. 220 57 walking on the Moon and the knowledge that there are billions of stars, the old formulas--the primitive explanations in the Bible, are no longer adequate. We must attempt to understand all this in the light of the knowledge that overwhelms us today.221 The progressives--Bosler was one, are excited that the Church has awakened from a long sleep and is now aware of the modern world. There is a new spirit of freedom, a new theology, and more change to come in the Churchs structure.222 Much of the anxiety over change and the divisiveness it produced he attributed to ignorance of history. He pointed to the Churchs continuous, age-old conflicts between conservative and progressive camps in the Church. The Acts of the Apostles was filled with the disagreements among Jews, Greeks, moderates, and liberals; Church history was replete with unsavory battles between Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans (after his death even Aquinas was condemned by the University of Paris). Multiple councils--not least Trent and both Vatican I and II--saw deep divisions among the participants. As for change, as recently as 1900 Communion was to be taken but once a year, the pope had no time for Catholics outside Italy, and it was the exception, not the rule, that bishops were nominated from Rome.223 Prior to [Vatican II] the Church was looked upon as a bulwark protecting the faithful from the dangers of modern thought and the evils of secular society. Citing Galileo a d Darwin, the Church esteems men of science224 and has nothing to fear from modern science and knowledge, but much to learn that will help her understand what God has revealed in His Word. This was the important truth of Vatican II. 225 What of the Churchs authority? While still intact, it was somewhat wobbly because those who exercise it and those who obey it have not yet learned how to make the change from a highly regulated, closed society of uneducated peasants or immigrants to an open, democratic society of self-reliant, educated citizens brought up to make decisions for themselves.226 (Here Bosler was as much expressing a wish as stating a fact.) New knowledge, new understandings, meant that Church doctrine develops. As for nulla salus extra ecclesiano salvation outside the Catholic Church, he quoted a 1952 commentary on Canon Law on the question of saying Mass for a non-Catholic that held that while many Protestants merely followed the religion of their parents and not from any spirit of opposition to the Catholic Church, still the fact remains that theyre in the enemy camp just like aliens during a war. The Catholic Church cannot recognize them as members of the saved without sacrifice of principle. Boslers response, Isnt that unbelievable?227 Yes, the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church, where Gods plan is best embodied, but other churches and religions--even non-Christian ones, share in this. Thus, many elements of 221 Criterion, 12 December 1969, 5. 222 New Wine, 97, 98. 223 Criterion, 5 April 1974, 7. Criterion, 1 July 1977, 5. 224 225 Criterion, 22 July 1977, 6. 226 Criterion, 4 April 1972, 7. 227 Moral Problems, 83-86. The commentary was Woyywood/Smith, A Practical Commentary on the Code of Canon Law. 58 sanctification and truth are found outside the Catholic Church.228 The early church fathers had thought that they were the center of the world; then came the discovery of the New World. Reading scripture in that light, God wants all to be saved.229 Those who do not know Christ or his Church yet sincerely seek God and by grace strive to do His will through the dictates of conscience, can be saved, even atheists.230 Papal infallibility? To believe the pope incapable of error when he makes a formal, public statement on faith or morals is false. Rather, infallibility is the Holy Spirits gift to the Church when all Catholics are in agreement. That occurs when the pope alone or with his bishops needs to clarify or define an issue and makes it clear that pope and bishops are doing it for the whole Church. Noting that Vatican II reversed papal teaching on freedom of religion, of speech, and of assembly,231 the Pope is infallible, free from error, we Catholics believe, when as head of the universal Church he formally declares that a certain belief is generally held to be true by the universal church and, therefore, must be accepted as true by all Christians. If no consensus exists, he cannot declare infallibly--not on revelation from God or of his own knowledge.232 Challenged on this, he noted that in practice the pope consulted with bishops. Validity of infallibility of his ultimate decision does not depend upon ratification by the [bishops] but by the special guidance of the Holy Spirit. Boslers real feelings on infallibility came out when he was asked why the clergy were not more social justice conscious: The leaders of the Church are human beings, victims--like everyone else--of the prejudices, the false ideas accepted as truth and the ignorance inherited from those who taught them. After all, St. Paul did not denounce slavery and Christ suffered betrayal by the Apostles.233 His impatience with letters asking about matters he thought trivial was palpable: A query about the proper disposal of religious articlesrosaries, scapulars--he dismissed as illustrative of the faulty and useless religious education of the previous twenty and thirty years. This hasty and harsh answer, he confessed, brought more complaints than he had about everything else I have written put together in his twenty-five years at the paper.234 When he wrote that the recitation of the rosary was declining he got more brickbats; one wrote, Ive got news for you brother. The rosary will be around for a long time after third rate hack priests like you are dead and buried. To this prediction, Bosler replied that facts were facts--the practice had declined.235 To a devout conservative who couldnt accept the changes in the Church, he had to acknowledge his own inability to understand the extreme conservative mind.236 Bosler disparaged Fatima as merely private revelations in no way the standard of what one must believe Criterion,12 August 1977, 6. Bosler pointed to the councils Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World: Those who do not know Christ or his church, but who strive to lead a good life, are saved thanks to Christs grace. 24 March 1972, 7. 229 Criterion, 28 January 1977, 6. 230 Criterion, 20 May 1977, 5. 228 231 Criterion, 2 June 1978, 4. Criterion, 25 August 1978, 4 233 Criterion, 30 Sept 1977, 6. 232 234 Criterion, 5 May 1972, 7; 26 May 1972, 3. 235 Criterion, 12 May 1972, 7. 236 Criterion, 22 March 1974, 7. 59 and he confessed doubt that many souls were in hell--such matters must be judged by scripture and tradition.237 Sometimes his good nature failed: A woman complained of her retired husband and she wanted to retire, too--from cleaning, cooking, ironing, etc.--he replied that she should be glad to have a husband. This prompted another to write that some lucky woman doesnt know how really lucky she is that you entered the priesthood and didnt propose marriage to her. Hurt, Bosler answered Thanks. I must be slipping. Once I used to get compliments from women for defending the rights of women in the Church.238 He was never sure that marrying outside the Church or even apostasy was a sin. Circumstances changed cases and the person may never have been suitably instructed in the faith.239 A son having married a Methodist, shouldnt his mother see to it that her sons home has holy water, the needed articles for the last rites, and his wife told about Lenten observances? Answer, most emphatically not. You can best contribute to the couples harmony by keeping mum on religion. Give witness to your religion by the loving generosity and kindness you show to your daughter-in-law.240 A teenager refuses to go to Mass? Besides prayer, the parents must examine their conscience. Were they excessively critical of the clergy? or the opposite, an obsequious infantile attitude towards them? The bottom line was that parents must respect the right of their children to make their own religious commitment and not nag them about going to church.241 A daughter joined the Methodist Church of her husband. Is her soul lost? Bosler: Im sure Heaven has a large Methodist population, including, perhaps, some former Catholics. If she acted in good conscience she could well be doing the will of God for her. Challenged to justify that answer, he replied that some children simply decide that Catholicism is not for them. And if they honestly do what they think they have to do, then they do well and they would sin by going against their conscience. It can happen. 242 Divorce means automatic excommunication, right? No: The Church had no such general law. The third council of Baltimore imposed such a law, but its all but forgotten, primarily, . . . because it has no real meaning today. In any case, excommunication does not cut off one from associating with Catholics or the Mass or parish activities. Excommunicates cannot receive the sacraments, but neither can anyone in a state of serious sin. Good pastors recognize the difficulty of the divorced and remarried who, it may be, are raising the children in the Church. Bosler knew of a number of children from broken families who entered religious life, and knew of none of the divorced faithful who did not receive the sacraments before death.243 For Bosler what it came down to was that textbook morality was sometimes inadequate for judging the unique experiences of real, live human beings. Admitting that 237 238 Criterion, 18 October 1974, 5. Criterion, 24 March 1978, 12. 239 About Marriage, 73, 74. About Marriage, 74. 241 About Marriage, 77, 78. 240 242 About Marriage, (Ave Maria Press: Notre Dame, Indiana, 1975). 243 About Marriage, 50, 51. 60 no one can know how God judges people, he was sure that God is more merciful than moral theologians.244 Another divorced woman in a second marriage who attends Mass wanted to know was she living in sin? According to Church law, yes, but really, since she hadnt turned away from God, which is what sin is, how was she so sinful as to require condemnation? In true Roman fashion, Bosler wrote that there is the ideal and there is reality; he advised her, Dont be afraid.245 On priestly celibacy Bosler hewed close to tradition, at least early on, but of course said little in print. As celibacy became widely debated, he continued to find value in priests freely giving up the right to marry. In 1978, when a woman confessed to being in love with a priest, he predicted that optional celibacy wouldnt come in her lifetime, and advised her to fish in other waters.246 In his memoir, New Wine, he was more forthcoming: Celibacy had been a real struggle and at times wished he had a wife and children. Still affected by bouncing breasts, he wondered, Would he do it again, become a priest? He didnt know, but his friendship with Protestant clergymen showed it was possible to be fulfilled by combining marriage with ministry. And times had changed: While the priesthood before World War II was a way for a working class boy to get an education and achieve high status, there were other ways to do that now. The Vatican Council had also improved Catholic understanding of marriage, shifting its meaning from a license to have intercourse for procreation and to allay lust, to a community of life expressed best through the marital act. Marriage was not a contract, but a covenant--a promise--a mutual giving and not, as heretofore, a second best. Vatican II had called for all to achieve perfection. It was this seeking for priestly perfection that was the principal reason for celibacy.247 The topic of sex was more fraught than either papal infallibility, the theological status of Limbo, the rosary, or Lourdes and Fatima. Bordering as it does on the prurient, the subject long remained too delicate for secular family newspapers, let alone a diocesan paper of decades ago. After all, the American bishops never publicly evinced doubt on sexual matters: premarital sex?contrary to Christian doctrine; homosexuality?--intrinsically disordered and can in no case be approved of; masturbation?--an intrinsically and seriously disordered act. It was the habit of the hierarchy to insist that objective standards existed and they trumped motives or intentions. Minimizing what is grave sin is rejected. A person sins . . . mortally not only when his action comes from direct contempt for love of God and neighbor, but also when he consciously and freely, for whatever reason, chooses something which is seriously disordered.248 244 About Marriage, 53. 245 Criterion, 25 May 1973, 7. In another divorce case Bosler discussed at length the matter of external and internal forum, WMCB, 54-58. See below. 246 Criterion, 30 June 1978, 4. 247 New Wine, 14-16. 248 Criterion, 16 January 1976, 1. 61 But times were changing: In 1947, the year Bosler became editor, Sigma Delta Chi, Indianas newspaper honorary society, bestowed a medal on Professor Alfred Kinsey for his book, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, as the faculty member who did the most to bring distinction to Indiana University. The Indiana Catholic and Record condemned the choice, commenting that it should give Catholic parents pause as to the suitability of the university for their childrens education.249 A year later, the IC&R took great exception to one of Kinseys lectures, finding it deplorable, a bald-face attack [on] morality. To equate sexual morality with custom, associate with prostitutes, provide contraceptive information, discuss the laws relating to bastardy and bigamyall charges it laid at Kinseys door--such ideas cannot exist without malice. Professor Kinsey, it complained, was at war with the family, morality, and purity.250 When Sexual Behavior of the Human Female appeared, in 1953, Archbishop Paul C. Schulte charged the sexologist with having degraded science by not circulating his findings among reputable scientists, rather than publishing them for all and sundry to read.251 The IC&R wanted to know Whats Going On Down There in Bloomington, Dr. Wells? Chancellor Herman B. Wells took the time to reply that the university was firmly in support of Kinseys research. In February 1954, during the Army-McCarthy Hearings on communists in the military, while admitting that neither Kinsey nor Wells was a Communist, the IC&R bracketed Kinseys views with those of Communists in that both saw man as merely an animal. In supporting the professor, the chancellor aided and abetted naturalism and materialism.252 Given its hostility to his work, the IC&Rs irenic tone on the occasion of Kinseys death, in 1956, was unexpected. It praised Kinseys unrelenting efforts, his patient, endless search, his disregard for criticism and ridicule, and his disinterest in financial gain, he was a truly dedicated scholar. The IC&R would welcome scholars like Kinsey on its side. The editorials generosity moved Chancellor Wells to sincere appreciation. Wells admitted to frequent disagreements with Kinsey, but always believed in his sincerity; his dedication to scholarship was complete. Your editorial . . . makes a real contribution to a better understanding of the importance of . . . the work of the scholar.253 The work of Kinsey and his associates opened a space for adult discussion of human sexuality and was soon reflected in letters to the Question Box. The letters could be quite frank and Bosler, sometimes reluctantly, responded in kind. He was always pastoral and over time nearly fearless. But the editor of the late 1940s was not the editor of the 1960s (although the later man could be seen in the earlier one): For instance, a front-page editorial of IC&R, 14 May 1948, 4. The IC&R also condemned Ross Lockridge for his obscene novel, Raintree County. In the early days of Boslers editorship, the paper used a conservative priest from Illinois for its editorials and until the early 1970s editorials were unsigned. Until he resigned from the paper in 1966, conservative editorials were likely Fr. Paul Courtneys. 250 IC&R, 13 May 1949, 4. 251 IC&R, 21 August 1953, 1. There were reasons to critique Kinseys data. See footnote 108. 252 IC&R, 12 March 1954, 4. Again the editorial was more likely Courtneys than Boslers. 253 IC&R, 31 August 1956, 4. In 1958 the Kinsey Institute admitted to the IC&R that Catholic women refused to be interviewed and therefore were under represented in the sample--ten percent rather than twenty percent of the population. IC&R, 14 March 1958, 5. 249 62 1948 was headlined forthrightly, In Defense of Sex. This, Bosler granted, was a Shocking sort of title for a Catholic publication. The 3,000-word effort was prompted by an article in Cosmopolitan magazine on the need for parents to stop shirking their duty to inform their children about sex. The title might be shocking, but the IC&Rs treatment of the subject was quite traditional, even Victorian: Mere knowledge of the facts of life was not enough; it was necessary to put women on a pedestal and hold family life sacred, for chastity was the virtue that preserved civilization. 254 Twenty-five years later, women were off the pedestal and treated by Bosler with realism and sympathy. Beyond the Kinsey effect, what had changed was Vatican II, especially its raising of the unitive purpose of conjugal love to the level of the procreative. To get down to cases: What about impure thoughts? A mother, 53, with five children confessed to being troubled by them. Bosler ascribed her difficulty to faulty teaching. Sexual thoughts were not impure nor sexual acts immodest unless misdirected. Sex, erroneously, had been seen as dangerous, nasty, impure, that somehow became all right once a marriage ceremony was gone through. There had been no preparation of the young to enjoy and appreciate sex in marriage. A mother of five without sexual thoughts would be a being from outer space. Bosler told her to Ignore the thoughts that bothered her.255 Legions of readers wanted to know if masturbation is a serious sin. Bosler didnt think so. What of voluntary ejaculation for the purpose of artificial insemination? Citing Fr. Bernard Harings Medical Ethics, he answered that despite the American bishops guide to Catholic hospitals against it, enough theologians disagreed so that one may use it to achieve a pregnancy not possible or likely any other way. 256 Among adolescents the practice was the rule, not the exception, and there was lots of temptation. [Here Bosler relied on the traditional get out of jail card, pointing out that not every such act is a mortal sin, many theologians finding freedom of the will due to sleepiness, tension, etc., much reduced the evil and the blame.] Perhaps it was merely a bad habit. The real question is: Is your life selfish?257 A married woman had problems reaching climax in intercourse; might she masturbate to achieve it? This was a delicate question, but since the secular press deals with such matters so would he: Moral theologians have long taught that it is not sinful for a woman to help herself to a climax after intercourse.258 This was news to many, clergy and laity alike. Some years later, a woman complained that her husband reached climax before she did, and she had to masturbate, as she put it, completing the marital act. Her husband regarded her action as a mortal sin and wont speak to her afterwards. Bosler: If there is anyone sinful, it is your husband for ignoring your needs. All the old Catholic moral theology books accepted that the woman had a right to complete satisfaction in the marriage 254 255 IC&R, 13 February 1948, 1,4. What a Modern Catholic Believes, 29, 30. 256 Criterion, 28 September 1973, 7. 257 Criterion, 29 October 1971, 7. 258 Criterion, 24 May 1974, 7. 63 act and permitted masturbation. Bosler recommended The Freedom of Sexual Love as a book useful to others who have asked questions too delicate to answer in this column.259 Artificial birth control? A mother of three married five and a half years uses the pill because abstinence and rhythm didnt work. She doesnt feel she is doing wrong, but rather for her childrens sake, my own sanity and congeniality with my husband what we have decided together is for the best. For the first time the family was above water economically, and family unity has vastly improved because Im physically and emotionally up to snuff. She wanted desperately to receive communion, yet two priests had refused her absolution. In conscience she could not agree with the pope. Bosler advised her to read the whole of Humanae Vitae, and the American, Canadian, and French bishops statements concerning the encyclical. If you are convinced you are right you have no sin to confess.260 A couple reached climax without the marital act--had they sinned? Bosler said it was up to them to decide.261 While the Church still teaches that it is an evil, theologians and national conferences of bishops have recognized that there are occasions and circumstances where couples may in good conscience decide that to avert the destruction of the marriage or harm to the children already born they may use artificial birth control. 262 As for abortion, after 22 January 1973 it became the issue of issues. Eleven months later, Bosler sat down with the chancery staff to discuss medical ethics. He told them if they hadnt read Fr. Bernard Harings Medical Ethics, 1972, to do so, and proceeded to deliver a wide-ranging summary of the book: Sterilization should be allowed, semen gotten in usual way for fertility tests, and many other matters now forbidden allowed. A German doctor came to Haring with a case of a pregnant mother with unstoppable bleeding: The doctor would have to abort the fetus or decide the uterus was diseased and take it out, leaving no chance of a child in future if he did. He aborted. To Haring, for the Church to condemn the doctors choice was ridiculous. Bosler was able to cite a halfdozen moral theologians who agreed with Haring, making it a good probable opinion. The problem was that the theologians who drew up the hospital code for the U.S. bishops were of the old school that physical evil was objectively moral evil. The crux is the intent and the two goods involved. Remember, weve always said one could steal to keep your family from starving. If you disagree, you still have to let others use it. You have the obligation to tell doctors that it is all right. And if you cant do it in a Catholic hospital you have an obligation to say go to a non- 259 Criterion, 9 May 1980, 6. Joseph W. and Lois F. Bird, (Doubleday Image Books), 1970), a mature, comprehensive treatment of married sex. In 1960, Polish Bishop Karl Wojtyla published Love and Responsibility, containing accurate information about female orgasm and how it may be achieved . . . . Like Bosler, the future pope supported the equality of the spouses in marriage and the mans responsibility to satisfy the woman. Thomas Cahill, Pope John XXIII (Penguin Books: New York, 2002), 228. 260 About Marriage, 41-45. About Marriage, 45, 46. 262 Criterion, 22 October 1976, 5. 261 64 Catholic hospital. The old way was to identify a physical evil as an objectively immoral act. No longer. Were not giving up our principlesor direct and indirect means [principle of the double effect], but we want it properly understood. Killing is a physical evil but it is not necessarily an objectively evil moral act every time we do it. . . . W e have misunderstood the interpretation of these principles. Bosler blamed the Churchs failure to panic as freedom and liberalism were emphasized in the larger world; Pius IXs condemnations of modern political ideaspress, assembly, democracywas one result. Theological research was clamped down, and after about 1850 our theology got frozen, stultified. At Vatican II cardinals stood and declared that under Pius X we had a reign of terror in the Church. We began to be afraid of St. Thomas, we became afraid of everything. We could only quote the [theologians] who were the authorities and taught us in school. This was the situation between 1850 to 1950. In his own case, he remembered doing graduate work in 1945 to 1947 at the Angelicum, there was a reign of terror then. We have to take into account the magisterium which has guidelines, but as the moral theologian Richard McCormick states, the magisterium has to be careful in giving moral directives. It shouldnt do as Casti Conubii did in declaring artificial birth control a mortal sin. It has no real authority to do this. The magisterium is there to help when you have extremes. In a hospital setting, You have to act and you have to act right now and theologians say you can follow a good probable opinion. If 50 percent of moral theologians concur, you have more than a probable opinion. This whole problem shouldnt be devastating to our faith. The hospitals ethics board should make the decision. Since the great freeze . . . . the faith has been presented as something that is absolutely certain and we all have to be in agreement. That was a fiction that was kept up. That fiction was destroyed by Vatican I in 1870 but people didnt realize it. My great enlightenment came when I was doing my thesis and I had to read all of the documents of Vatican I and there I realized that important cardinals and bishops were getting up and violently disagreeing with one another. 263 What he told the chancery staff, Bosler told his readers: Three years after Roe v. Wade, a woman of 45, a convert with ten children, wrote that she had aborted a pregnancy at eight weeks upon advice from more than one doctor. She had been near death at her last delivery. What did he think? Bosler thought that the physicians pressure lessened her culpability. She had made a decision, a choice, and in his judgment she did not seriously sin, if you sinned at all.i Later he discussed abortion in the context of the principle of the double-effect. Using casuistry, he began by noting that an act can be good, bad, or neutral; for example, the quality of walking depends on whether one is visiting the sick, on the way to robbing a bank, or just moving from one place to another. There are times when good and bad are bound together. In such a case an agent knows that an evil will follow, thus intending the bad effect, but if a better way could be found she would use it. The good effect of the act flows as immediately as the bad effect, so that the good is produced by the good effect and not by the bad effect. Finally, the good effect is so important that it justifies allowing the bad effect, as in the case of a pregnant woman whose cancerous uterus is removed even though it means aborting the fetus. The good effect and the bad effect are simultaneous. As for the 263 Bosler chancery staff notes, November 1973. 65 tension between theologians and the hierarchy regarding medical and family problems, in Boslers mind, the hierarchy, by stressing objective evil too much, scanted the intention of the actor and circumstances. 264 A Catholic husband was troubled by his non-Catholic wifes unwillingness to accept the Churchs position on the pill, sterilization, and abortion in the face of physically and emotionally starved children, a burden on the overpopulated world. Bosler began by stating that the Catholic Church is in no position to force its own members, much less non-Catholics, to do something they think is morally wrong. It has long been the [Churchs] traditional teaching . . . that individuals must follow the decision they make for themselves with a properly informed conscience. Normally, this means seeking advice in difficult situations and the obligation to consider seriously Church teachings on the matter. The church proclaims principles of morality and declares certain actions morally evil, but does not make applications to individual acts. Problems of morality arise for individuals when they are faced with a conflict of obligations or must choose between the lesser of two evils. At such times the individual must make a decision for himself or herself and follow that decision even though in reality it be wrong. Though Catholics oppose the evil of abortion as a threat to respect for life and the dignity of man, they nevertheless hold that those who believe that in certain circumstances an abortion is something that must be done, or that sterilization is an obligation, must follow their own consciences. Those opposed to abortion must do everything short of physical force to end the practice, but they may not force others to agree with them . . . for that is to destroy the very dignity of man which they strive to protect. So, in your case, you may not force your Catholic conscience on your wife, and for the sake of preserving your marriage you may have to permit her to do things which she thinks are right and you think are wrong. 265 A reader took exception, arguing that not conscience but the Churchs magisterium is the final arbiter. Bosler reiterated that the magisterium cannot decide the morality of individual acts, for this is determined by changing circumstances, the moral development and psychological conditions of the one who performs the act, and at times by a conflict of good things to be done or evils avoided, in which an individual must choose what seems the lesser of two evils. It is the individual who must decide what is the right thing to do. Quoting Vatican IIs Declaration on Religious Liberty: It is through his conscience that man sees and recognizes the demands of the divine law. He is bound to follow this conscience faithfully in all his activity so that he may come to God, who is his last end. Therefore, he must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters. And again, in the Constitution on the Church in the World: Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God.266 Homosexuality emerged in the 1960s as part of the larger debate over sexual expression. Until then there had been little questioning of the consensus that the behavior was an evil practice of a small minority, sinful and repugnant. Early on, Boslers position was indistinguishable from Church tradition. In 1967 he advised one writer to 264 Criterion, 21 October 1977, 6. In 2010 the Phoenix, Arizona bishop held that a nun had excommunicated herself by permitting an abortion of the sort outlined above. If you aborted, the mother would live; if not, both would die. As Bosler anticipated, many theologians and Canonists vigorously criticized the bishops decision. 265 Criterion, 12 January 1979, 5. 266 Criterion, 11 May 1979, 8. 66 the Question Box to avoid others like himself if they were occasions of sin and to seek the society of normal people. Same sex preference was an unfortunate tendency, an illness, yet God tempts no one beyond ones strength. Fortunately, today theologians are aware that grace will not cure all physical defects, that homosexuality is primarily a problem for the psychiatrist whose help must be enlisted so that grace can be built upon nature. 267 None of this would have been of much help. Later that year a Criterion editorial showed little development: While remarking that homosexuals, for the first time, were getting a modicum of compassion from the churches--a radical departure from traditional religious attitudes. Still, the willingness of some Episcopalian clergy to place homosexual partnering on the same level with heterosexual ones was unacceptable. Such a view is no service to the homosexual or to the emotional disorder with which he must live.268 Compassion, yes, but not acceptance; pity the sinner, hate the sin. Five years on, while aware of the trend toward greater tolerance, Bosler continued to defend the Churchs opposition to homosexuality: To a 17-year-old, practicing Catholic, he offered that the Church was trying to protect the likes of you from a life of frustration and unhappiness. Suggesting that the writer might be merely a late starter, Bosler was sure that gays were few, inevitably unhappy, and doomed to live a restricted, abnormal life. Q: What do you tell a 20-year-old who is an active homosexual who does not feel he is doing wrong? A: Urge him to see a psychiatrist. 269 One who did consult a psychiatrist thanked him for the understanding he had shown to homosexuals like himself, but confessed he had despaired of living a productive life: his fear of being found out, of being an outcast, never to have a family, children, the failure of psychiatry to change him, his discovery that the neurosis was so deeply rooted there was no possibility of cure. Fortunately, an understanding priest saved him from suicide by convincing him that he could be productive. It was time that the Church evaluated people for what they are as persons rather than some reviled category; perhaps time for men, homosexual or not, to cease the self-loathing, the self-destroying sense of guilt, the self-pity, and to begin to live productive lives for the betterment of themselves, their society and the Kingdom of God. Bosler responded: Need anything more be said?270 Bosler continued to oscillate between extending sympathy to gays and an inability to accept the practice. Asked in 1974 if it was possible for a homosexual to become a saint, he answered that with Gods grace, it was: A true, inborn homosexual could do so by directing his sexual energy to charity for others and following Church law by being celibate. Whether one could become a heterosexual, Bosler confessed, was beyond his competence; some psychiatrists believe that homosexuality is sometimes a phase, yet true, inborn homosexuals are rarely helped. 271 Two years later, so that normal people can appreciate the misery that a homosexual must live through, he published a letter from one who clearly regarded his orientation as a curse. In an attempt to provide solace, Bosler offered that 267 Criterion, 12 May 1967, 4. Criterion, 15 December 1967, 4. 269 Criterion, 25 February 1972, 7. Published in What to Ask About Marriage, 280-282. What do you tell a 20year-old who is an active homosexual who does not feel he is doing wrong? Answer: Urge him to see a psychiatrist. 270 What a Modern Catholic Believes, 33-35. 271 Criterion, 12 April 1974, 7. 268 67 Jesus was not ashamed of the writer: his affliction was an opportunity because, not being bound by family, he could serve others. As in the case of dwarfs and crippled persons [!], homosexuals are usually endowed with exceptional talents. He suggested that the writer sublimate his sexual energy by establishing a homosexuals anonymous in his city.272 Such advice was well-intended, but would come to be seen as farcical. Later that year the American bishops issued To Live in Christ Jesus. While acknowledging that homosexuality was not chosen (a real advance), it remained intrinsically disordered and required celibacy.273 Although the bishops pastoral was praised by the Vatican as providential and timely, Criterion readers learned that 65 of the 227 U.S. bishops wanted a more pastoral approach and had opposed its issuance.274 Another sure sign that the ground was shifting in the mid-1970s was the formation of a Dignity USA chapter with the permission of the pastor, at St. Thomas Aquinas parish.275 In 1977 the Catholic Theological Society replied to To live in Christ Jesus with Human Sexuality: New Directions in American Catholic Thought. In the pages devoted to homosexuality the authors agreed that homosexual sex can be moral, as did the majority of its members. Question Box readers wanted to know what Msgr. Bosler thought. Still professing reluctance to discuss it, he noted that gays write to say he is ignorant and doesnt understand, while others charge him with destroying morality and committing heresy. He remained essentially conservative on homosexuality, but pastoral not condemnatory: Convinced that God doesnt punish menmen do, he thought it possible that homosexuals had something wrong in their genes or more likely than not, . . . an overprotective father or mother. But as Christ had associated with publicans and sinners--outcasts--today Jesus would associate with homosexuals. The problem was that homosexuals didnt want sympathy they wanted their rights. But this threatened Church teachings and even national security (seen as a crime and an abomination, gays were viewed as blackmail targets). Those who came out of the closet lost their rights and their livelihoods. He thought gays ought to be quiet, but admitted they had the right to organize for protection. Can they change? Sometimes, he thought, maybe, but little had been done to help them do so. In the end, he confessed he didnt know what the answer is.276 In November 1978 Criterion readers found more sophisticated answers in a new advice column by the Kennys, a Catholic husband and wife team from Rensselaer, Indiana. Jim, a psychologist and wife Mary, responding to a parent whose son was gay, explained that it is an inborn tendency and no reason to think that homosexuals were pederasts. It may be partly instinctive and is not a matter of choice. What is needed is tolerance. Allowing that It may be immoral, but certainly homosexual tendencies are not. They are there. They are given, and they are hard 272 Criterion, 13 February 1976, 5. Bosler observed that marriage was barred to homosexuals as was the priesthood and noted the terrible temptation that homosexuals posed in religious orders. For a man of his experience, he would have been well aware of homosexuals in the priesthood and in monasteries and convents. 273 Gillis, Roman Catholic, 177.???: 274 Criterion, 3 December 1976, 4; 17 December 1976, 1. 275 It meets there to this day. 276 Criterion, 29 July 1977, 5. 68 enough to deal with as it is.277 In time, Bosler caught up with the Kennys: In 1982, asked by a husband and wife what they had done wrong to have a lesbian daughter, he answered Nothing! Why there were homosexuals was a disputed question, but they seem to be born not made. It used to be hidden, but now gays wanted to be accepted and were surprised at their number. True, the Church holds that objectively . . . full [homosexual] pleasure would be sinful . . . as for any single person. But If the relationships are sexual, God alone will decide whether or how much they are sinful. Since the parents described their daughter as very charitable, Bosler admonished that she be accepted for what she is--a good, generous, talented human being. In this way, his views on homosexuality moved in parallel with the publics, but more quickly.278 Some bishops marched with Boslers own evolution: In 1983 Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen welcomed the lay Catholic homosexual organization, Dignity, Inc., to his Washington State archdiocese; for doing so, and for his opposition to Washington States heavy dependence on defense contracts, the liberal Hunthausen was forced to accept the ignominy of a supervisory bishop and stripped of most of his authority. Some bishops didnt evolve: New York Archbishop Terence Cardinal Cooke defended the teaching that genital sexual expression for gays could not be licit. To provide a spiritual support system for Catholic celibate homosexuals, in September 1980, Cooke founded Courage. His successor, John Cardinal OConnor, strongly backed the organization and Pope John Paul II praised its work. In 1994, however, at Courages sixth annual conference, its priest-leader lamented that some clergy and even bishops in their hearts supported Dignity, Inc. He reported that the prevalent view among priests was that Courage was reactionary. . . . Such priests counsel that homosexuals do not have to follow church teaching. 279 By the mid-1980s the AIDS epidemic (Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome) was well under way. Prominent fundamentalist Protestant ministers remained homophobic, seeing AIDS as Gods judgment on sinful man. In May 1986 Cardinal John Krol of Philadelphia called the disease an act of vengeance [presumably Gods] against the sin of homosexuality.280 That October, Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), issued Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexuals. Insisting that departure from or silence about the teaching was unacceptable, priests must distance themselves from the prohomosexual movement and its deceitful propaganda. It demanded that homosexuals who denied Church teaching be denied the use of Church property and all support withdrawn. Bishops were instructed to oppose gay rights legislation, and while violent malice in speech or action against gays was to be deplored, it was understandable 277 Criterion, 17 November 1978, 16. 278 Criterion, 24 September 1982, 10. It would take thirty more years for Pope Francis, in July 2013, to famously withhold judgment of homosexualsWho am I to judge? 279 280 Criterion, 26 August 1994, 23. Fox, Sex and Catholicism, 150, 151,158. 69 why some people were aroused against them for their carelessness of the lives of others. Same sex orientation while not a sin, was an objective disorder, a more or less strong tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil . . . . 281 As a result of such hostility, many gay Catholics went on sabbatical or left the Church for good; Dignity Inc.s membership dropped from 5,000 to 3,000. In November 1986, local Indianapolis clergy, nuns, and lay Catholics sponsored a seminar by the Catholic Coalition for Gay Civil Rights at which Fr. Robert Nugent, a Salvatorian, and Sr. Jean Grammick, a School Sister of Notre Dame, leaders of the homosexual apostolate in the American Church, criticized the Vatican document.282 In May 1987 the archbishop of Washington, D.C., banned Dignitys weekly Sunday Mass at Georgetown University, which had been held in the chapel for eleven years.283 All but a handful of dioceses fell into line, expelling the group from meeting at its parishes. Some progress appeared: In September 1997, the American bishops issued Always Our Children, a pastoral addressed to the parents of homosexuals; its message was that although the practice continued condemnable, since the orientation was not experienced as chosen, the children were to be loved.284 *** When Archbishop Schultes retired in 1970, the Criterion, in thanksgiving, remembered his consistent support. Bosler observed that the newspaper has its share of critics, some of whom, from time to time, have sought to curtail its freedom, but [Schulte] would have none of it.285 Archbishop George J. Biskup would be different: he had had three years as coadjutor (July 1967 to January 1970) to conclude that the Criterion aroused unwonted disunity in the archdiocese. Boslers preference for the views of some theologians over those of bishops and popes mightily displeased Biskup, who believed he confused and rattled the laity. Unwilling to give the editor the independence Schulte had, he communicated this early on in an eight-page Overview critique. His main concern was that people felt little connection to the paper: Editorial policies in particular have alienated many of the more conservative readers. As a result the paper has a liberal image that automatically estranges a certain segment of the readership . . . . The image is self- 281 Criterion, 7 November 1986, 1; Hastings, Vatican Council II and After, 278; Fox, Sex and Catholicism, 136, 137. A week later a mother wrote of her gratitude at Ratzingers stand. Her son was trying to get rid of his homosexual feelings (feelings he says that came so naturally to him). She hoped that through effort he will be able to have a normal relationship with a woman. Her son was sensitive and I think he has always felt he didnt measure up to what a man should be. 282 283 284 285 Criterion, 21 November 1986, 3. Criterion, 19 June 1987, 26. Fox, Sex and Catholicism, 140-144. Criterion, 23 January 1970, 4. 70 defeating insofar as it curbs communication with and from all the people. A greater diversity of views is needed. We intend to seek it out.286 As he had at times in the past, Bosler made an effort to placate his critics: In January 1970, the month Biskup became archbishop, in addition to the weekly columns by experts in theology, scripture, and Vatican II, the paper began a two-page Know Your Faith feature.287 In March 1971, a new weekly column, For Catholics Only, ran on page one. Designed to reconcile Catholics with opposing viewpoints, it was an assignment, as an editorial noted, that might prove impossible.288 To give voice to traditionalists and progressives, the Criterion sometimes matched adversaries to debate an issue--Belief and Unbelief, Priesthood of the Future, and the like,289 though why Bosler would think that running conflicting views about such matters would allay Biskups concerns is a mystery. By June 1971, responding to continued pressure from the archbishop, he promised a New look-new outlook: he admitted that for years the paper had taken liberal, unpopular positions, disenfranchising those who did not agree with its editorials; readers became disinterested, at best, in the publications welfare as conservatives and traditionalists became estranged from the voice of the archdiocese to the poverty of both readers and the newspaper. Since Catholics were so polarized, the paper would open its editorial pages to a greater variety of conviction and sentiment. Editorials would be signed and reflect only the views of the writer. Opposing views would be solicited though, in fairness, anonymous letters would not be published. A new board of advisors would assume overall editorial direction and judgment.290 Although he continued to conduct the Question Box, from 1971 to the day he resigned as editor five years later, Bosler never contributed a signed editorial.291 Also missing was the statement that the paper expressed a Catholic viewpoint, not THE Catholic viewpoint. For Biskup, the only view admissible in 286 John Fink box, Promotion file. Produced during Biskups tenure, carrying neither date nor author, the changes coincided with his becoming archbishop. 287 That it was ready as the change in archbishops took place indicates that Bosler was well aware that Biskup, in regard to the paper, was not Schulte. 288 Criterion, 26 March 1971, 1. 289 Criterion, 16 April 1971, 5; 28 May 1971, 5. Such point/counter point had appeared before (e.g., on the candidacies of Nixon and Kennedy), and would continue through the 1970s. The same thinking had been at work in 1967 when the weekly columns of the liberal columnist John Cogley was added to balance the conservative Fr. John Doran. The column by Dale Francis, editor-publisher of the conservative National Catholic Register, appeared after May 1974. 290 Criterion, 4 June 1971, 4. Whats striking is how closely Boslers mea culpa paralleled Biskups Overview critique. 291 The more conservative voice of B.H. Acklemire appeared and for a time it became the practice to run a single editorial--Mrs. Acklemires. She stayed from 1969 to November 1975. 71 the paper was The Catholic viewpoint. Readers noted the changes, with liberals predictably morose and conservatives happy. As the Criterions continued to display the real divisions in the Church, keeping it open to a greater variety of conviction and sentiment was not what the archbishop had had in mind. In fall 1971, with Bosler away covering the Bishops Synod in Rome, Biskup called a series of meetings around the archdiocese inviting priests and lay leaders to look at new editorial policies and ways to improve the newspaper.292 The meetings produced a board of lay and clerical advisors to help the editors make the publication more representative of the archdiocese. While retaining his belief in the value of a Catholic paper, for Biskup, if it was to instruct the people it must enter every home: For that to be possible the paper must be acceptable to our people.293 Five months later, the archbishop found a Criterion more aware of its obligation to present information in such a manner that the confusions of the past will not be created by them [sic.]. But the praise was faint: While the paper was an important source of knowledge and much in it regarding faith was valid, [m]uch of the confusion which disturbs its readers was caused by the presentation of so much varied thinking about any Catholic subject. Knowledgeable Catholics must distinguish between truth and the search for truth. It happens all too often, that writers in their search for truth tend to sound dogmatic in their presentation.294 The differences between Bosler and Biskup were unbridgeable. Circulation was another issue; the archbishop wanted the paper to start standing financially on its own. Instead, declines in circulation from 1972 to 1975 led to cost cutting with deep reductions in staff and the number of pages (the 1970s were not prosperous years).295 Moreover, as a full-time pastor at St. Thomas Aquinas after 1963, then at Little Flower, Bosler took his parish duties seriously, leaving fewer hours for supervising the paper. Grown weary of the disputes with the archbishop, he spent less and less time at the Criterion office until by 1975 he was seldom there, instead writing at home and handling situations by phone. Fr. Thomas Widner, named associate editor in 1975, mistakenly thought Bosler was on sabbatical.296 While even a long time staffer like Paul Fox could be totally unaware of friction between editor and publisher, which was not dwelled upon or even mentioned, 297 friction there was. Biskup finally told Bosler straight out that he did not want him to engage in controversy at the Criterion. Bosler resigned, 30 September 1976,298 ostensibly for health reasons. At the boards request, he remained for a time 292 293 Future of paper to be discussed, Criterion, 10 September 1971, 1. Biskup binders, 1970-1972, letter to priests, 2 September 1971. 294 Biskup binder, 1970-1972, letter of 15 February 1972; Criterion, 25 February 1972, 1. 295 Criterion, 11 February 1972, 4; 10 January 1975, 4. Widner interview, xxx. Criterion, 11 February 1972, 4;10 January 1975, 4. 296 297 Paul Fox interview, June 2009. Bosler left Little Flower parish after eleven years the following July 1977, and was granted early retirement for reasons of health. Criterion, 1 July 1977, 4. He gave up the Question Box, June 1984, about the time John Fink replaced Fr. Tom Widner as editor. Was Bosler pushed or was it a good time to go? 298 72 as editorial consultant and continued the Question Box to June 1984, by then, syndicated to more than thirty diocesan papers.299 *** The young priest who had been uneasy entering the offices of the Church Federation of Greater Indianapolis (CFGI) became the ecumenists ecumenist. For thirty-two years Ray Bosler was the archdioceses unofficial representative to the group, even serving a stint as its director. In 1960, he was one of only five Roman Catholic priest-experts with Vatican authorization to dialogue with Lutherans; five years later, in recognition of his fifteen years spent promoting interfaith dialogue, especially with Jews, he was named by the U.S. bishops one of ten to serve on a new sub-commission of its ecumenical affairs committee to establish formal relations with Jews.300 Named monsignor, in 1966, domestic prelate, 1967, and a papal chamberlain, Bosler was one of six Catholic theologians who met annually as a team with the Disciples of Christ (1966-1972). His service to the archdiocese included six years as notary, secretary, and judge of the Archdiocesan Matrimonial Tribunal. As St. Thomas Aquinas pastor he established one of the first Catholic parish councils in the country. After 1980 he was liaison to the Churchs charismatic renewal movement, archdiocesan director of ecumenism, and member of the ecumenical affairs department of the Indiana Council of Churches. Besides talks on television and radio, for over twenty-five years he was a frequent panelist on local televisions Focus on Faith, and for many years chaplain of the archdiocesan Council of Catholic Men (NCCM). An active member of the Indianapolis Literary Club (1957-1994) and the Indiana Press Club, Boslers civic work included membership on the Indiana Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the Indianapolis Health and Welfare Council, founding member of the citys Catholic Interracial Council, the Mayors Human Rights Commission, a director of the Community Service Council, the Marion County Health and Welfare Council, and director of the Indianapolis Council on World Affairs. In a long life few people are ever completely constant, all of a piece: After 1980, Bosler, the man of science and rationality, the enemy of magical thinking, became the archdiocesan liaison to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement. At one of its meetings he was slain in the spiritan event when the Holy Spirit, through the 299 New Wine, 94Criterion, 8 October 1976, 1, 7. Bosler lived another ten years in productive ministry as an active lecturer, speaking primarily on Vatican II and St. Paul. Paul Fox interview, June 2009. Archbishop Biskup was ill his last years and the archdiocese was run by the vicar-general, Msgr. Francis Touhy. 300 Criterion, 8 October 1965, 1, 9. 73 agency of a minister or priest, moves upon a person with such power that the person collapses to the ground, incapacitated. Catholic parishes who practice it hold prayer meetings outside Mass featuring prophecy, faith healing, and speaking in tongues. Since the mid-1960s, supported by Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI, the movement has spread globally. A second surprise is that the Bosler who had worried at the council that the importance of the Blessed Virgin was being exaggerated, even to his being disturbed . . . that [so many of] the great cathedrals of France were dedicated to Mary, in a homily the year before he died he agreed with St. Bonaventure that as the Sun excels and makes glorious the planets, so Mary excels and makes glorious the members of the whole church. 301 Bosler was showered with honors: a partial list includes the Rabbi Stephen Wise Award, 1953, (given by the Indianapolis chapter of the American Jewish Congress for service in promoting human rights); City of Hope Good Citizenship Award for leadership in interfaith relations, 1960; Citizen of the Year from the Indianapolis chapter of Omega Psi Phi (national Negro fraternity) for outstanding efforts to promote interracial justice, 1963; Man of the Year of the Bnai Brith Lodge of Indianapolis, 1966 (the Woman of the Year was the president of Planned Parenthood!);302 and honorary doctorates from Marian College (he served many years as a trustee) and Christian Theological Seminary. In 1985 he was elected to the Indiana Academy, a society limited to 100 members for their contributions to cultural, scientific, literary, civic, religious and educational developments within the State.303 Editorship of the archdiocesan newspaper led to service as director and treasurer of the National Catholic Press Association. In 1951, after only four years as editor, the newspaper began winning prizes: Catholic Press Association gold medal for editorial excellence over every Catholic newspaper in the country and placed second in the religious teachings and exhortation division. He was happiest over the latter award and mordantly humorous about the editorial prize (Look What You Folks Have Been Swatting Flies With). He attributed the gold medal to the morose conviction that since no one read the paper, it left us free to say what we pleased. 304 The next year the IC&R again won the gold medal for best editorials over the more than 260 Catholic papers, and was judged fifth of twelve finalists as most distinguished for overall excellence. A third prize for best editorials followed in 1957, and in 1959 it won gold for typography and layout, its fourth first place CPA medal.305 Called the Criterion after October 1960, the paper continued to win CPA awards for excellence; in 1961 it received an award from the Journalism Department at 301 Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, Notre Dame Archives, Bosler papers. 302 New Wine, 105; Criterion, 22 November 1963, 12. Criterion, 21 June 1985, 2; Archdiocesan Archives, Bosler Box, program of Indiana Academy, 11 June 1985. 304 In August 1952, the IC&R columnist, Elyse (Elsie) Mahern won one of the 100 Christopher Essay prizes. IC&R, 27 June 1952, 1;15 August 1952, 1. Paul Fox, 1959-1974 staff member, observed that the vast majority of readers did not read the editorials or letters, and few of the columnists, except when name-dropping and local situations. Paul Fox memo note to author, June 2009. 305 IC&R, 15 may 1953, 1; IC&R, 24 May 1957; 22 May 1959, 10. Under Fr. Thomas Widner the paper would continue to win CPA awards. 303 74 Missouris Lincoln University (traditionally an African-American school), for pioneering racial justice (the other award that year went to The Saturday Review). He had trouble meeting deadlines and often had to fly out of his house at 10:30 at night to get copy into the weeks edition.306 He signed the paychecks and, acutely aware of the papers financial limitations, frequently apologized to the small staff for the lack of periodic raises; by way of a bonus, checks for $30 or so were given to all employees at the Christmas pitch-in, to which former staffers were invited.307 Necessarily, the staff had to wear many hats:308 On Wednesday, 8 October 1958, Pius XII died at the Vatican at 9:52 p.m., Indianapolis time. Having but one day to prepare, print, and mail the edition, the Indiana Catholic and Record was delivered as usual throughout the archdiocese on Friday, carrying a full page and a half summary of the popes life, a half-page of photographs, and reaction statements from the archbishop, the governor, the mayor, and representatives of the Church Federation of Greater Indianapolis, the Methodist Church, and Beth el Zedick synagogue. He had his detractors: Nationally, conservative bishops, pastors, and laity pressured their diocesan papers to drop his Question Box column. This was especially true of my opinions on moral issues and mortal sins.309 Within the Indianapolis archdiocese, animosity tended to increase with distance from the more liberal city. Many rural and small town pastors hated the newspapers drain on parish funds. Priests who differed ideologically and theologically resented his use of the editorial megaphone. Being human, some were jealous. Of course, he had his loyal followers, among them the many subscribers from outside the archdiocese. In the 1950s he gained a sort of fame when his picture appeared in Time magazine for taking a Spanish cardinal to task for that nations continuing discrimination against its Protestants.310 As a pastor he was well received at St. Thomas Aquinas in 1963; the relatively liberal intellectual climate that obtained there--Butler University was nearby, the Butler-Tarkington neighborhood counted many in the professions, and the interracial nature of the parishsome twenty percent African-American--seemed tailor-made for him. He was at St. Thomas just long enough to begin raising funds for a new church designed, in its three-quarter round amphitheater, a large red, empty cross, and few kneelers to reflect the councils influence. At St. Therese of the Infant Jesus (Little Flower), (1966-1977) things were otherwise: There he followed a popular pastor who built the mammoth church to his own specifications, oblivious to the liturgical changes of Vatican II. According to one Authors interview of Fr. Thomas Murphy, 6 March 2006. Long-time staffer, Paul Fox memo, June 2009. 308 Paul Fox, hired full-time after graduation from Marian College, in 1959, worked on copy editing, reporting, wrote features and columns, photography, proofread and assisted in layout. Each week the office received copies of some 50 diocesan papers and selected a few for the editorial eyes; picked up the mailbag daily from the post office and sorted the mail. Made the rounds of the diocesan office for news the Chancery, CYO, social services, schools, missions, etc. 309 Bosler, New Wine, 99. 306 307 310 Bosler, New Wine, 59. 75 observer, Little Flower was a large Irish parish and Bosler was not Irish; there were no blacks, school problems were worrisome, his sermons were thought too cerebral, and his leadership was challenged.311 What was worse, as one parishioner recalled more than forty years later, Bosler got rid of Bingo, injuring the income of those who ran the game and the fun of its multitudinous devotees. Parish critics took to parading around the rectory in protest. His years at Little Flower saw controversies over civil rights and racial desegregation, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal. Bosler later told a close friend that it was his most difficult time as a priest.312 Late in life, Bosler convicted himself of a tendency to think he knew it all--his over-willingness to give advice, exasperation with incompetence, and a tendency toward hypercriticism. In 1972, he underwent open-heart surgery when that procedure was still something of a novelty. The six weeks leading to the operation concentrated his mind and he prayed for those he might have failed or harmed in his thirty-three years as a priest. Spiritually renewed more than physically rehabilitated, he said it was the best retreat he had ever made. 313 He retired at 65 in 1979, but into the late 1980s, residing at St. Joan of Arc, he remained active, gave homilies, and until 1992 ministered in rural parishes of Decatur County where he alternated with his friend and classmate, Msgr. Joseph D. Brokhage, who shared his views on the Church. On 29 June 1984, after eighteen years, he stopped writing the Question Box column--about the time Fr. Thomas Widner, his successor as editor, left the paper (though Bosler continued on the Criterion board to 1987). In that last column, asked if the spirit of Vatican II was dead, he reflected that the conservatives at the council were needed to uphold the Churchs heritagethe importance of doctrine, respect for tradition, religious discipline, the majesty of the Mass. In 1990 he reverted to his Vatican Council days, telling the Serra Club that if one believed in ecumenism the structure of the papacy had to change. In early Christianity the people chose the bishops (later emperors and kings did), but it was only in the 1917 Canon Law did it become official policy that the pope did so. For Christian unity to become a reality, the papacy itself must be reformed. The problem was the conflict between the institutionalist-hierarchical model versus the people of God--a communion.314 In 1990, Bosler joined 4,500 Catholics who signed an ad in the New York Times calling for womens ordination, married priests, local church autonomy--all to make the Church less authoritarian and hypocritical. More work on the theology of sexuality was needed and the bishops were called on to consult with the laity.315 Sixty-seven Indianans signed the broadside, among them, Sr. Carmel McEnroy, a theologian at St. Meinrad whose signature cost her her job,316 and Sr. Joann Hunt, O.S.B., St. Christopher Parish, Speedway. Msgr. Ray Bosler died 27 April 1994, age 79. He left a sizeable bequest to enable needy students to attend one of the eight Indianapolis inner city parochial schools, among them St. Joan of Arc, his alma mater.317 A liberal journalist, public intellectual, church reformer, civic activist, ecumenist, moralist, philo-Semite, agitator for social Paul Fox recollections; Fox worked at the newspaper 15 years during Boslers editorship. Authors interview, Fr. Thomas Murphy, 6 March 2006. 313 Criterion, 27 Oct 1972, 2. 311 312 314 Criterion, 30 October 1987, 9. 315 Criterion, 9 March 1990, 24. The ad, A Call for Reform in the Catholic Church, was authored by Chicagos Call to Action. 316 317 Criterion, 29 April 1994, 2. Criterion, 8 March 1996, 10. 76 justice, especially for blacks, a scold--he had lived usefully. In weighing his contribution as a newspaperman, Fr. Widner wrote that Bosler not only had provided news of the archdiocese, but also polemical discussions concerning the national and international Church, making the Criterion one of the most important Catholic periodicals in the country.318 Widners successor, John Fink, wrote that Bosler became well known nationally for his Catholic opinion, which didnt always agree with that of many other Catholics, and that he was noted for speaking his mind well before he got old. Msgr. Bosler cannot be replaced.319 318 319 Criterion, 8 February 1980, 4. Criterion, 29 April 1994, 2. 77 78  ...

... The item referenced in this repository content can be found by following the link on the descriptive page.  ...

... AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES, 2016 VOL. 46, NO. 3, 320348 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02722011.2016.1214607 Constructing and Enforcing the Medicine Line: A Comparative Analysis of Indian Policy on the North American Frontier Pierre M. Atlas Department of Political Science, Marian University, Indianapolis, IN, USA ABSTRACT The national self-images of the United States and Canada have been shaped, in part, by their contrasting histories and mythologies of westward expansion and nation-building. Those narratives are most distinct with regard to government policies toward aboriginal peoples on either side of the 49th parallel, what Indians called the medicine line. The purpose of this article is two fold: (1) to specify and develop a three-part conceptual framework (consisting of the Turnerian discourse, the Lipset Thesis, and Borderlands Studies) for examining the history of the North American frontier and (2) utilizing a wide range of scholarly literature, to apply that framework in a comparative analysis of national policies toward Indians and First Nations in the postCivil War/ postConfederation period on the Great Plains and Prairies. Several explanatory factors for cross-national dierence will be identied and examined, including variance in geography and geology; demography, demographic trends, and political pressures in each country; the types of national political institutions and their impact on policymaking; and the types of forces deployed in the West (the Mounties and the US Army). KEYWORDS First nations; American Indians; frontier; Mounties; borderlands Introduction The national self-images of the United States and Canada, with their rival narratives, iconography, and conceptualizations of the proper relationship between government and society, have been shaped in part by their contrasting histories and mythologies of westward expansion and nation-building. Americans glory in tales of a Wild West lled with marauding Indians and gunghts, while Canadians proudly reply with their own narrative of a more civilized, Mild West, stressing Peace, Order, and Good Government on the prairies. The icon of the American West is the lone, armed cowboy (who, when romanticized as an outlaw, stands against government), while Canadas western (and national) icon is the red-coated Mountie, the physical embodiment of an honorable and powerful central government. The contrasting narratives of western expansion and nation-building, and their binary images of a Wild or Mild West, are perhaps most distinct when it comes to the two countries approaches to their CONTACT Pierre M. Atlas 2016 ACSUS patlas@marian.edu AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 321 aboriginal peoplesbeginning with the fact that there were no Indian wars in Canada. Indeed, Indians themselves called the 49th parallel the medicine line, in recognition of the contrasting realities created by government policies on either side of the international border.1 How can we explain the stark dierences in policy toward American Indians and Canadas First Nations?2 The purpose of this article is two fold: (1) to specify and develop a three-part conceptual framework (consisting of the Turnerian discourse, the Lipset Thesis, and Borderlands Studies) for studying the North American frontier that could be utilized in the elds of comparative politics, Canadian Studies or North American Studies and (2) utilizing a wide range of scholarly literature, to apply that framework in a comparative analysis of national policies toward indigenous people of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies (and in the AlbertaMontana borderlands in particular) in the postCivil War/postConfederation period. As will be seen, the three approaches are on occasion complementary and, together, can help provide a greater understanding of the topic at hand. This article is part of a larger research project that will examine the history, mythology, and political legacy of the North American frontier. Three conceptual approaches The Turnerian discourse Any discussion of the historiography of the American West must begin with Frederick Jackson Turners Frontier Thesis, rst articulated in his seminal 1893 essay, The Signicance of the Frontier in American History. Turners thesis framed Americas understanding of its past, and of the West in particular, for generations to comenot only for historians but also for popular culture and even American politics. In his introduction to Turners collected works, John Mack Faragher (1994, 1) oers a sweeping assessment of the scholars inuence: Turners essay is the single most inuential piece of writing in the history of American history. Turners thesis, beginning with The Signicance of the Frontier and not only bolstered but also modied by his later writings, has spurred over a century of historiographical discourse and criticism. Turner may have argued that the frontier ended in 1890, but his thesis continues to generate scholarship and debate well into the twenty-rst century. The historyand the uniquenessof the United States, Turner asserted, could best be understood (indeed, perhaps only be understood) through the lens of its westward expansion. Turner presents a compelling albeit mono-causal argument for American Exceptionalism: the very process of frontier expansion and the westward movement of civilization, he asserted, made the United Stateswith its republican and democratic values, its individualism, egalitarianism, and social mobilityempirically distinct from all its historical predecessors as well as its contemporaries. Up to our own day, began his famous 1893 essay, American history has been in large degree the history of the colonization of the Great West. The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain Americas development (Turner 1994a, 31; emphasis added). With this opening statement, Turner articulated key elements of his causal argument: the abundance of free land and the ever-expanding (and ultimately shrinking) frontier. These free lands, Turner wrote in a 322 P. M. ATLAS later essay, promoted individualism, economic equality, freedom to rise, democracy. In a word, then, free lands meant free opportunities. Their existence has dierentiated the American democracy from all others (1994b, 92). Signicantly, Turners project ignored Canada and any parallels between American and Canadian westward expansion, including the impact of an abundance of free land for settlers on the Canadian prairies. For Turner, the postCivil War trans-Mississippi West (the American geographic focus of this article) was not substantially dierent from earlier American frontiers. His frontier was not a single or specic geographic region of the countryfor the frontier line had moved ever westward from the time of the pilgrimsbut rather was a process of social, political, and economic development and transformation that created and dened the American character, the nation, and its history. In a key passage in his original essay, Turner (1994a) asserts that this frontier dynamic, beginning with the earliest days of Americas colonial settlement, was cyclical and rejuvenating. It produced a recurrence of the process of evolution in each western area reached in the process of expansion. Thus American development has exhibited not merely advance along a single line, but a return to primitive conditions on a continually advancing frontier line, and a new development for that area. American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this uidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character. (32) This transformative frontier process, argued Turner, created a new product that is American. Indeed, with the frontier, America became American. In his 1903 essay, Contributions of the West to American Democracy, Turner more specically suggested that the frontier process shaped Americas political development: the wind of democracy blew strongly from the West, inspiring the more established eastern states to liberalize their constitutions and enhance the egalitarian nature of democracy (1994b, 85).3 Americas frontier democracy, Turner asserted, was accompanied by a suspicion and even hostility toward government. The frontier is productive of individualism, he wrote in 1893, and this individualism was anti-social. It produces antipathy to control, and particularly to any direct control. The tax-gatherer is viewed as a representative of oppression (Turner 1994a, 53). He returned to this point in the 1903 essay: The Westerner defended himself and resented governmental restrictions (1994b, 86). The frontier also functioned as Americas social and political melting pot, assimilating all newcomers into an identiably American race of people. Furthermore, Turner argued in several essays, because the frontier oered an equality of opportunity not found in the eastern cities and provided the downtrodden with the ability to move ever westward geographically and upward socially, it served as a socioeconomic safety valve or a gate of escape, which in turn helped explain why socialism never really took hold in the United States. The danger for America lied in the fact that, according to the 1890 census, the frontier had closedand with it, Turner feared, the rejuvenating process that kept America young and exceptional.4 Turners thesis, including its pivotal concept of free land, ignored or marginalized Indians. Any cultural or legal claims that Americas indigenous populations may have had over the lands opened to white settlement are neither addressed nor are the histories of any specic tribes. In his seminal 1893 paper (presented to the American Historical AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 323 Association three years after the massacre at Wounded Knee, which signaled the climax of the Plains Indians Wars), Turner dened the frontier as the meeting point between savagery and civilization and observed that, The Indian was a common danger, demanding united action (1994a, 32, 41). Other than passages of this sort, Indians remain largely absent in Turners narrative and analysis of Americas westward expansion. Several aspects of Turners Frontier Thesis have been challenged by a body of scholarship collectively known as the New Western History, which rst emerged in the late 1980s with Patricia Nelson Limericks (1987) Legacy of Conquest. New Western historians reject Turners key assertion that the frontier ended in 1890, and instead view and study the Westor, the regions many westsas evolving to this day. The New Western History seeks to address the glaring absences in Turners historiographythe narratives and historical record of Indians and also nonwhite and non-male settlers, for exampleand points out that the creation and distribution of free land, so critical to Turners thesis, was actually made possible by governmental actions such as the 1862 Homestead Act and the provision of security by the military (Limerick 1987, 1992; Limerick, Milner and Rankin 1991; Malone 1991; Nugent 1991, 1994; Robbins 1991; White 1991; Cronon, Miles, and Gitlin 1992; Faragher 1992, 1993; and, 1994; Milner, Butler, and Lewis 1997; Hine and Faragher 2000, 2007; West 1991, 2012). Along with Limericks Legacy, Richard Whites (1991) masterful revision of traditional Western historiography, Its Your Misfortune and None of My Own, is an early seminal work in the New Western History, one that challenged Turner on several fronts: White details the long-standing and extensive role of the federal government in western development; the Wests economic dependence on investors from the East (and Europe) for capital; the role of large corporations (beginning with railroads and mining interests) in the consolidation of the West; and the cultural destruction wrought by US Indian policy. Whereas Turners formulation has long fed the western mythology of rugged individualism in a lawless (and government-less) Wild Westwhat Richard Slotkin (1998) calls The Myth of the FrontierWhite and other New Western historians debunk large chunks of that mythology. Despite the extensive and specic critiques, however, the New Western Historys wide-ranging body of mostly late-twentieth century scholarship follows the basic Turnerian narrative structure of a linear, developmental progression from East to West, and like Turner, the majority of these scholars focus exclusively on the history of the American West and have little or nothing to say about Canada (or any other country that experienced frontier development).5 Granted, many of its authors question Turners denition of the western frontier and view it as a diverse geographic, ecological, and cultural place rather than as a transformative process. Nevertheless, the New Western History engages Turner in a closed loop of critical discourse; much of its scholarly product is a direct and self-conscious response to Turner and, like Turner, presents a dichotomy of the American West and East. Thus, for the purposes of this comparative study, I include Turner and the New Western History in a common conceptual framework, what I call the Turnerian discourse. The Lipset thesis The American political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, in a body of work beginning in the 1960s and most fully articulated in his 1990 book, Continental Divide, posits that the 324 P. M. ATLAS dierences between the United States and Canada were forged at the two countries points of origin (Lipset 1968, 1990, 1991, 2000, 2001). Lipset articulates a historical and sociological process of loading the dice that temporally predates Turners thesis of frontier development. America, Lipset argues, was founded as a revolutionary society that stressed the values of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.6 Canada, on the other hand, was created as the counter-revolutionary society that, from its birth, enshrined the British-sourced values of Peace, Order, and Good Government.7 Lipset posits that values, culture, and political institutions shaped, and were shaped by, the two countries divergent developmental trajectories from the very outset.8 Lipset, echoing some of Turners imagery (but not his causal analysis), presents the United States as libertarian, individualistic, and deeply suspicious of government, while he argues that Canadian identity and political culture were infused, from its origins, by the Toryism of the American Loyalists who ed north during and after the Revolution.9 The Lipset Thesis rejects Turners fundamental assertion that the continual and cyclical process of moving westward into a frontier of free land is what made America unique, or that the wind of democracy blew from West to East. Instead, Americas classical liberal values and institutions dated to the founding of the republic, and they went west with the frontier. As for Canada, the legacy of its counter-revolutionary national origins continues to inuence the nations political culture: Canada remains more respectful of authority, more willing to use the state, and more supportive of a group basis of rights than its neighbor. The Revolution and the subsequent migration north by those opposed to the values it embedded loaded the dice toward more conservative postures in Canada than the United States (Lipset 1990, 3, 17).10 The cultural and structural distinctions that Lipset identies (even if he sometimes overstates or exaggerates them) have long been empirically veriable.11 The far more extensive role of the national government in the Canadian economy and societyfrom the moment of that nations founding as the Dominion of Canada in 1867has been largely accepted by the Canadian populace in the name of the best interests of society. Peace, Order, and Good Government is not just a slogan, but has been shorthand for a dierent orientation and worldview from its neighbor to the south for the past 150 years. As Gerald Friesen (2004) puts it, Even casual students of Canadian life are aware of the greater role of the state in the Canadian economy. Canada has been much aected in recent decades by European currents of state capitalism, trade unionism, and social democracy. Canadas partial rejection of the iron law of the marketplace contrasts with American practice and American ideology. In the generation after 1945, Canada articulated a distinctive North American version of the just society. (5859) I include within the Lipset Thesis scholarship that either directly supports Seymour Martin Lipsets core assertions or logically ts within a Lipsetian conceptual framework that stresses (1) fundamental cultural and structural dierences dating to the two countries points of origin, or (2) the continuity of eastern or national values and institutions as the country developed westward (rather than the West representing something entirely new and distinct from the East, as Turner argued). Thus, Canadian metropolitanism, developed by Harold Innis (beginning with his 1930 work, The Fur Trade in Canada) and rened by J.M.S. Careless could be included within this framework. AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 325 Rather than separating East from West, as does the Turnerian discourse, Innis and Careless argue that the federal government in Ottawa and the economic centers of Toronto and Montreal comprised the metropolitan core that nanced, facilitated, and directed westward development and expansion, with the West as the hinterland.12 Behind the rise of the frontier, hinterland or region in Canada wrote Careless, lay the power of the metropolis, which ultimately disposed of their resource harvest, strongly fostered their expansion, and widely controlled their very existence (Careless 1979, 99). This metropolitanhinterland relationship was symbiotic: the hinterland, with its temporary frontiers, provided staple goods and natural resources for the nation and its metropolitan center (including regional metropolises like Edmonton or Winnipeg), while demand in the core set prices and also supplied the necessary nished goods and technology to enable the hinterland/frontier to develop (Careless 1979). The metropolitan approach stands in glaring contrast to Turners Frontier Thesis, where the rejuvenating process of westering makes the East essentially obsolete. As Worster (2004, 27) puts it, the Canadians could nd none of Turners multiple new beginnings in the wilderness; instead, they saw development as a straight-forward march, controlled and directed by metropolitan forces far removed from the interior. Innis profoundly shaped Canadian historiography of the West in another manner as well, by recognizing the unique impact of Canadas multiethnic and linguistic origins (English, French, aboriginal, and mixed blood) on its later development (Kaye 2001; Francis 2006). This aspect of metropolitanism supports Canadas self-image as a multicultural mosaic of distinct groups and justies a group rights discourse that is largely absent in the more individualistic United States (with its own metaphor of the assimilationist melting pot). I also include within the Lipset Thesis the Canadian political theorist Gad Horowitz (1966), who noted the inuence of British Toryism (and socialism) on Canadian political culture: for Horowitz, British, and Anglo-Canadian values of community, social order, and governmental intervention in the economy for the common goodor Red Toryism are essential for understanding Canadas uniqueness. More recent scholarship has also noted the British inuence in the development of (English) Canadian society and culture, including in higher education.13 Gerard Boychuk (2008), in his comparative study of health care in the United States and Canada, suggests that from the time of their respective foundings, the United States has struggled with questions of race, while Canada was faced with the challenges of multicultural and linguistic division. He posits that the politics of race in the United States and the politics of territorial integration in Canada are the primary explanatory factors for USCanadian divergence in health-care policy. Dawson (1998), Johnson and Graybill (2010), Fanning (2012), Elofson (2015), and Jennings (2015) all note that the English (particularly, Ontario) Canadian elite went west along with the immigrants (and that the English elite also lled ranks of the Mounties and the large-scale cattle ranching enterprises in Southern Alberta), thus bringing their English Canadian values and rigid Victorian class structure with them to the frontier.14 All of these scholars t within the broad Lipsetian approach, in that they stress basic, even primordial cultural and structural dierences between the United States and Canada; these foundational distinctions, asserts the Lipset Thesis, traveled westward, shaping and constraining the policy options, and trajectories of the two nations development. 326 P. M. ATLAS Borderlands studies A third approach to examining North American frontier development and outcomes is Borderlands Studies. In contradistinction to the Lipset Thesis, this approach is about sameness, not dierence: it stresses similarity across the socially constructed boundaries that separate countries and the development of new and unique borderlands cultures that are distinguishable from the broader, national cultures. While the bulk of North American Borderlands scholarship focuses on the USMexican border, an increasing number of works examine the USCanadian borderlands and particularly the western region of the 49th parallel (Higham and Thacker 2004, 2006; McManus 2004, 2005; Evans 2006; Johnson and Graybill 2010).15 Turners Frontier Thesis is about process, and the New Western History is about place. These two approaches, from within the academic discipline of History, comprise what I call the Turnerian discourse. The Borderlands Studies approach is about both process (the intermingling and blurring of lines and people) and place (geographically and topographically specic borderland regions and border cultures of North America from Mexico to Canada). Borderlands Studies benets from and builds upon the advances of the New Western History, but unlike that earlier scholarship, it is explicitly comparative and multidisciplinary, incorporating the conceptual and methodological diversity of History, Political Science, Sociology, Geography, Cultural Studies, and other academic disciplines. Borderlands Studies are infused with postmodern assumptions about gender, class, ethnicity, and the social construction of identity. A key assertion of the Borderlands approach is captured in the title of a two-volume collection of comparative essays on the North American frontier edited by C.L. Higham and Robert Thacker (2004; 2006): One West, Two Myths. In many ways, Borderlands scholars assert, the American and Canadian Wests have more in common with each other than either has with the more eastern regions in their respective countries. This is in direct contrast to the Lipset Thesis, which asserts that fundamental national dierences moved westward or that Canadas metropolitan core directed and controlled the development of the hinterland. Rather than assuming fundamental dierences between countries, the Borderlands approach examines the interconnectedness and even interdependence of people. In her study of the nineteenth-century AlbertaMontana borderlands, for example, Sheila McManus (2005, xii) posits that this region was home to interconnected communities, economics, and ecologies that could not be divided simply by proclaiming that a linear boundary ran through them. The Indian borderlands culture of AlbertaMontana was shaped in large measure by the bison (whose great herds paid no mind to international boundary lines) as Indians on either side, such as the Blackfoot, followed the herds across the 49th parallel during hunting season; the extinction of the bison and diseases like smallpox and tuberculosis transcended the border and devastated numerous tribes, with long-lasting social, political, and economic ramications (Daschuk 2013; Dempsey 2015). There were white settler borderlands cultures as well, such as cattle ranching in Montana and Southern Alberta, and they regularly interacted with Indians on either side, sometimes in conict but often in economically interdependent collaboration (Elofson 2015; Jennings 2015). The articialness of the border was noted by Wallace Stegner AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 327 (2000) in Wolf Willow, his semiautobiographical work on growing up in the USCanadian borderlands in the early twentieth century: The 49th parallel ran directly through my childhood, dividing me in two. We could not be remarkably impressed with the physical dierences between Canada and the United States, for our lives slopped over the international boundary every summer day. We ignored the international boundary in ways and to degrees that would have been impossible if it had not been a line almost completely articial. (8183) In their critical review of Borderlands Studies, Hamalainen and Truett (2011, 349) suggest that borderlands scholars have turned American history into a Manichean interplay of states and borderlands. Borderlands history is everything that state-centered histories are not. Isern and Shepard (2006, xxxii), writing of the 49th parallel, seemingly conrm Hamalainen and Truetts observations when asserting that Borderlands Studies presupposes that the border has agency in history and that it forms border cultures and constitutes its own historical themes distinct from, and perhaps subversive of, national cultures. This is an important assertion, but it should not be overstated: for that border, what Indians recognized as the medicine line, did in fact separate two countries, two sets of laws, and two distinct qualities of life for indigenous peoples. When it comes to the western history (and mythology) of Canada and the United States, two great divides have cleaved the borderlands cultures of the 49th parallel. First, while the Law of the Gun was a much celebratedif exaggeratedcharacteristic of the American frontier, it was allowed no legitimate place on the Canadian Prairies under the domain of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP)16 (Elofson 2015; Jennings 2015; McClean 2015; Somerset 2015).17 Second, the postCivil War American Indian frontier was characterized in large measure by physical violence and warfare between whites and Indians, whereas Canadas counterpart was not. Yes, border cultures and localized social and economic interactions are powerful forces. But so are the institutions of the state. Borderlands Studies tend to privilege the former at the expense of the latter. A political science rejoinder from an earlier era (Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol 1985) may be appropriate here: perhaps it is time, once again, to bring the state back in. Carol Higham suggests that, The study of the West in Canada and the United States provides a unique laboratory for comparison and presents the perfect opportunity to test various theories of western development and nation-building (Higham 2004, xii, xiv). As with the parable of the blind men and the elephant, no single conceptual approach can explain everything. As will be seen, each of the three approaches identied here the Turnerian discourse, the Lipset Thesis, and Borderlands Studieswill have some utility for examining history as well as mythology across the 49th parallel. Indian policies on the North American frontier One of the most profound dierences between the United States and Canadas western histories concerns the policies toward their respective indigenous peoples. These divergent histories in turn helped fuel the frontier mythologies of Americas Wild West and, especially, Canadas Mild West. John Mack Faragher (1992, 103104) juxtaposes Americas frontier of exclusion with Canadas frontier of inclusion, and Elliott West 328 P. M. ATLAS (2004, 10) observes that Canada was friendlier and more sensitive than the United States when it came to the treatment of its aboriginal peoples. Although Canadas First Nations today enjoy constitutionally recognized group rights,18 it must be acknowledged that, when removed from a comparative context with the United States, Canadas history vis--vis its Plains Indians does not seem so sensitive or inclusive. McManus notes that the United States and Canada were both colonial nations with comparable cultural agendas and a shared belief in their right to displace the aboriginal peoples of the continent (2005, 181). Policies of neglect and the deliberate withholding of rations to the point of starvation; forced assimilation and other draconian aspects of Canadas Indian Act; and decades of abuse of First Nations children in residential schools (recently unearthed by Canadas Truth and Reconciliation Commission), all serve as a reminders that, even in Canada, indigenous populations have long been marginalized and mistreated by the government and civilians who enjoyed their trust and were ostensibly acting in their best interests (Daschuk 2013; Brock 2014; Curry and Galloway 2015; Dempsey 2015; King 2015). Nevertheless, any observer of North American history would notice signicant distinctions between American and Canadian treatment of aboriginal people on the western frontier, beginning with the fact that there were no Indian wars or massacres of Indians in Canada. In seeking to explain Canadas more tempered and less physically violent and destructive nineteenth-century Indian policies, a self-congratulatory national character argument will not suce. Indeed, as Jill St. Germain (2001, 43) notes, The Dominion government had no more regard for Indian culture, Indian government, or even Indian responsibility than its American counterpart. Although British and Canadian ocials did reject, from the outset, violent American-style military action as a policy option and some ocials (particularly Mounties) believed Indians should be treated fairly, there are important causal factors beyond the realm of Canadas moral or national character that help account for divergence in the two nations approaches to Indians in the post 1865/1867 Great Plains and Prairies. These factors, to be addressed in turn, include signicant variance in geography and geology; demography, demographic trends and political pressures in each country; the types of national political institutions (parliamentary versus presidential systems) and their impact on policymaking; and the types of forces deployed in the West (the Mounties versus the US Army). The Laurentian shield and the developmental time lag Unlike the United States, Canada did not experience a moving frontier from the time of its foundinga process that, in the United States, was accompanied by conictual and often violent interactions with aboriginal people. That Canadas westward development did not mimic Americas Turnerian trajectory was not a deliberate policy choice on Canadas part, however. Rather, Canadas settlement of newly acquired lands in the Northwest Territories was constrained by the geophysical obstacle of the Precambrian Laurentian Shield, also known as the Canadian Shield: a vast stretch of land encompassing more than half of Canadas territory and consisting of igneous rock and a very thin top soil. The area of the Shield was rich in natural minerals but made farming in the nineteenth-century prohibitive. As Paul Sharp (1955) explains, due to the natural impediment of the Shield, AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 329 the continuity of the frontier experience was broken, save in the fur trade. This shield comprised a barrier that forced westward-moving Canadian pioneers southward into the American states of the Old Northwest. When roads and railways nally pierced the Shield, the settlers of the Canadian plains came as easterners, innocent of the inuence of a continuous frontier environment. Thus they established institutions possessing a sophistication unfamiliar to plainsmen south of the boundary. (371; emphasis added) Put dierently, western Canadian development was more Lipsetian than Turnerian: British North American (and English Canadian) values, culture, and institutions were transplanted relatively intact to the West once the Shield was penetrated. Critical to any comparative study of North American nation-building is the sixteen-year gap between the acquisition of Ruperts Land (todays Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba)19 from Hudsons Bay Company in 1869 and the arrival of large numbers of white settlers in the Northwest Territories following the completion of the Canadian Pacic Railroad (CPR) in 1885. Fortuitously, the geophysical barrier and the logistical obstacles it created gave Ottawa much-needed time to address its Indian Question, put down two Riel rebellions, and develop its national policy for settling the Prairies (Bothwell 2006; McKenna 2006; Graybill 2007; Fanning 2012). The United States, on the other hand, did not have this luxury of space and time (McManus 2005, 61). Lipset identies several elements of the causal chain linking Canadas developmental time lag to its relatively more peaceful and orderly frontier reality: Law and order in the form of the centrally controlled North-West Mounted Police moved into the frontier before and along with the settlers. This contributed to the establishment of a much greater tradition of respect for the institutions of law and order on the Canadian frontier, as compared with the American, meant the absence of vigilante activity in Canada, and enabled Canada to avoid the Indian wars which were occurring south of the border, since the Canadian government kept its word to the Indians and the Mounties prevented renegade whites from upsetting the Indians. (Lipset 1968, 10) Demography, demographic pressures, and the Indian Question The two countries faced dierent demographic realities in the nineteenth century: Americas population was growing much faster than Canadas.20 On the American frontier, a seemingly endless stream of settlers, taking full advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 and driven by postCivil War socioeconomic pressures and dreams of a rejuvenating fresh start on the Plains, was lobbying Washington for more assistance and military protection from the Indians upon whose land they were often encroaching. They pressured the federal government to take harsh retaliatory action against Indian raids or the stealing of livestock, and to have treaties with Indians rejected and reservations reduced in size. In Canada on the other hand, prior to the completion of the CPR in 1885, there were relatively few newcomers in the Northwest Territories: cattle ranchers who, after 1881, were granted 100,000 acre leases by the federal government for a penny an acre (Glenbow Museum exhibit), and some hearty homesteaders acquiring land via the Dominion Lands Act of 1872, Canadas equivalent of the Homestead Act (McManus 2005, 39; Bothwell 2006, 232). Once the CPR was completed, spanning the Laurentian Shield and connecting Central Canada with British Columbia, Ottawa 330 P. M. ATLAS (and the CPR) had to actively seek out and incentivize immigrants to choose Canada over the United States; they oered free land and various subsidies in order to populate the vast and largely barren Northwest Territories (McManus 2004, 124125; Bothwell 2006, 231232). St. Germain (2001, 43) cites the absence of settler pressure in Canada as one explanatory factor for Canadas exclusive reliance on negotiated treaties to acquire Indian landsmaking American-style military campaigns unnecessary. Canadas Indian population was much smaller than that of the United States, the land area and physical distance between whites and Indians was much larger in Canada, and the major immigration waves did not hit the Canadian prairies until the early twentieth centurydecades after the First Nations had been subjugated on reserves by Ottawa. Thus, there was no violent, large-scale head-on collision between Canadian settlers and First Nations (such as the Cree or Blackfoot), as had occurred to the south with the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and others. In 1877, US Secretary of the Interior Carl Shurz, commenting on the lack of violence north of the border, noted, perhaps enviously, that the majority of Canadas Indian population in the West occupy an immense area almost untouched by settlements of whites. The line dividing the Indians and the whites can be easily controlled by a wellorganized body of police, who maintain peace and order (quoted in McManus 2005, 62). The Dominions more peaceful record of Indian relations, posits Utley, is explained less by enlightened Canadian policies than by the vastness of the land in relation to Indian and white population (2003, 260261). The two countries diered in how they conceived the Indian Question. In Canada, Indians and the reserve system came to be seen as an economic burden on Ottawa, while south of the border, US policymakers saw their Indians as a natural obstacle to frontier development that had to be overcome and subdued, akin to the Rocky Mountains (St. Germain 2001, 1011). The primary goal of Canadas seven Numbered Treaties (negotiated between 1871 and 1877) was to secure for the Dominion full title and claim to Indian land in the Northwest Territories, at the cheapest possible price (St. Germain 2001; Daschuk 2013; Dempsey 2015). Daschuk convincingly demonstrates that the stinginess of the Canadian Government, especially after the Conservatives return to power in 1878 under the leadership of John A. MacDonald, led to brazen (and demographically devastating) policies of reducing or withholding rations on the Cree and Blackfoot reserves during periods of famine following the disappearance of the bison. Dempsey (2015, 176) calls the government of this era unfeeling and budgetconscious. In sum, emigrants from Canadas eastern provinces and Europe, upon their orderly and government-directed arrival on the Prairies after 1885, encountered a largely pacied, dependent, and often demoralized Indian population living on (often far away) reserves, with law and order rmly in the hands of the NWMP. This was not the situation on the American frontier, where a more aggressive (and armed) individualism often forced the governments hand. In the United States, settlers did not wait for the government to clear title to the land. They just took it (St. Germain 2001, 7). Overcoming the tensions resulting from white settlers seizing lands that Washington had earlier promised to Indians via treaties often required the deployment of the US Army. AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 331 Institutional and cultural dierences When analyzing the policies that helped construct the medicine line, any comparison of the raucous, messy and often corrupt, patronage-driven American political system of the late-nineteenth century to its more staid, elitist and professional Anglo-Canadian counterpart will tend to support the Lipset Thesis. Samek notes that Canadians rmly believed in government from the top-down rather than from the grassroots. In the United States, Indian policy had to conform, in many ways, to the wishes of the electorate, especially the aggressive frontier population (Samek 1987, 31). All policing of Canadas Northwest Territoriesfor ranchers, settlers, and Indians alikewas carried out by the Mounted Police; they were the sole civilian legal (and military) authority on the Canadian Prairies. The American approach was more decentralized. There was no federal police force on the frontier; in Montana Territory as in other parts of the West, local judges and sheris were popularly elected (and often corrupt), and Montanans and their territorial legislature were not shy about resisting federal actions.21 Washington, for its part, was not interested in exerting control over all aspects of Indian policy: law enforcement and the meting out of justice on US Indian reservations was placed in the hands of tribal police and tribal courts (which had no parallel on the Canadian reserves, where the Mounties enforced law promulgated in Ottawa) (Samek 1987). Although there was a vibrant Blackfoot border culture and common language that transcended the arbitrarily drawn 49th parallel separating Montana and Alberta, when it came to both treaty-making and formal policies on American reservations and Canadian reserves, such cultures were cleaved in two by the rival sovereign governments.22 Indian policy in the United States was always heavily politicized, with ongoing and often debilitating power struggles in Washington between the legislative and executive branches and between the House and Senate (not possible in Canadas parliamentary system, where most First Nations policy was made by the prime minister and the cabinet). The pluralist American constitutional system with its separation of powers, checks and balances, federalism and nineteenth-century political patronage produced a patchwork of often incoherent and contradictory policies that were accompanied by corruption and incompetence (Samek 1987; White 1991; St. Germain 2001; Utley 2003). After Congress put an end to treaty-making in 1871, intense political conicts erupted between civilian agencies of the federal government aligned with church groups wanting to civilize and Christianize the Indians in what they called a Peace Policy, and the War Departmentsupported and encouraged by westerners who demanded aggressive, even violent actionwhich sought a military solution to the Indian Question.23 Utley notes with irony that, Virtually every major war of the two decades after Appomattox was fought to force Indians onto newly created reservations or to make them go back to reservations from which they had ed. Not surprisingly, warfare characterized the Peace Policy (2003, 161). The Lipset Thesis and its metropolitan corollary nd empirical support in the Canadian policy process. While American policymakers were continuously modifying and experimenting with Indian policy during the nineteenth century, sometimes to the point of creating chaos, Canadas Indian policies reected its more ecient parliamentary system that fused executive and legislative functions, and its more eective and comparatively less corrupt civil service. Canadas First Nations policy was shaped and 332 P. M. ATLAS directed from the political center (Ottawa), with the North-West Mounted Police [serving] as an instrument of metropolitan authority throughout the new domain (Careless 1979, 103). The all-encompassing and draconian Indian Act of 1876, which set Canadas First Nations policy for decades to come, was a shining example of what a well-oiled, majoritarian parliamentary system could accomplish, and represented a consolidation of laws that has no parallel in the United States (LaDow 2004, 73). Canadian ocials, operating in a British-inuenced culture where slow, evolutionary change was more likely to be lauded than condemned, were far more resistant to new ideas. Ottawas rejection of American-style tribal self-policing illustrated the Canadian fear of innovation and experimentation (Samek 1987, 165); the director of Canadas Indian Department proudly noted in 1913 that, The keynote of our policy is caution and prudence (quoted in Samek 1987, 23). As Lipset might have predicted, North American Indian policy developed along divergent trajectories in part not only due to structural and institutional dierences between presidential and parliamentary systems but also due to cultural dierences between a raucous, revolutionary, and a more conservative, counter-revolutionary society. Communal versus individual property Both countries national governments (and their often well-meaning reformers) sought to Christianize and civilize their respective aboriginal people and convert them into farmers on newly reserved tribal lands, but their approaches were noticeably dierent. Lending support to the Lipset Thesis, Canada in its Numbered Treaties stressed communal rights and the best interests of the group as a whole, while the US approach, consistent with a political culture that celebrated and even fetishized individualism and personal property, separated out and privileged individual Indians in the granting of rights and distribution of resources. Treaties designed in Washington DC, distributed land to individuals or small families in order to give Indians a stake in the family farm. Stipulations related to farming in the Numbered Treaties, on the other hand, were more likely to allocate resources to a number of families or to bands than to a single family and never to an individual. Unlike the United States, where the individual was the basis for goods allotted, the Canadian treaties stated that all implements and stock would be shared (St. Germain 2001, 113, 117). Canadian policy also stressed group rights and group identity by prohibiting the sale of even individually owned Indian land located on reserves without the consent of the tribe or band (Samek 1987, 178). An overarching goal of American reformers advocating the Peace Policy was to separate individual Indians from their tribal groups and loyaltiesto destroy existing Indian culture so that they could become civilized and assimilated into white society (White 1991, 113). As Richard Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Boarding School put it in 1892, it was necessary to kill the Indian in him in order to save the man (quoted in Wolfe 2006, 397); Wolfe (2006, 403) calls such policies of forced assimilation and the intentional destruction of indigenous identity structural genocide. A key American mechanism for separating Indians from their group identities and turning them into autonomous individuals was the 1887 Dawes Act. This federal legislation broke up communal property on Indian reservations into individual allotments that could be sold to outsiders by individual Indians; any parcels left over from the government-directed AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 333 allotment process would be put up for sale to whites, in time reducing the Indians overall landholdings more eectively than had the Indian Wars (Limerick 1987, 197; McManus 2005, 65; Wolfe 2006, 400; Brock 2014, 368). The legislations author, Senator Henry Dawes of Massachusetts, justied the policy in uniquely American, libertarian terms: Selshness is at the bottom of civilization. Till this people will consent to give up their lands, and divide them among their citizens so that each can own the land he cultivates, they will not make much more progress (quoted in Hine and Farragher 2000, 379). As Samek (1987, 27) puts it, in the United States, a society that worshiped private property and self-reliance, communally held reservations were seen as an anomaly. Communalism was thought to be the cause of the Indians distressing lack of interest in bettering themselves. On the frontier, American classical liberal ideology, with its emphasis on individualism, shaped even the most reform-minded policies. In Canada, a more communitarian political culture seemed to inuence the governments First Nations policy with regard to dening property rights. The militarization of US Indian policy Without doubt, the most signicant dierence between Canadian and American approaches to their aboriginal people was the latters embrace and even celebration of coercion, aggression, and physical violence against Indians (and also the deliberate destruction of the bison). State aggression and violence on the American Indian frontier did more than anything else to construct and enforce the medicine line separating the land ruled by the great father (the president of the United States) and the great mother (Queen Victoria). In Canadas original provinces, indigenous people were not forcibly removed and sent westward, as had been the case in the United States with the Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. From the earliest days of the republic through the late-nineteenth century, the policy accompanying Americas continuous and rapid westward expansion was to move (or remove) Indians from new lands coveted by whites, with most treaties (even if entered into in good faith) later to be violated by the US Government, often accompanied by state violence (Limerick 1987; White 1991; Hine and Faragher 2000, 2007; Wolfe 2006). Ironically, Indian removal policy, despite its horric human cost, proved to be but a temporary solution to demands for free land on the moving frontier: by the 1840s the majority of American aboriginal people lived in the trans-Mississippi West, where the rapidly expanding United States soon engulfed them (Samek 1987, 17). The Plains Indians Warswhich reached up to the Canadian border but did not cross it, and has no parallel in Canadian historycan be said to have begun in 1864 with the Sand Creek massacre and ended with the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. At Sand Creek, on November 29, 1864, 700 Colorado cavalrymen under orders to take no prisoners attacked an Arapaho and Cheyenne encampment (ostensibly at peace with the United States), killing nearly 200 Indianstwo-thirds of them women and children (White 1991, 96; Kelman 2013, 914). Utley (2003) vividly describes that day: Frantically the Cheyennes ed, seeking cover, as the cavalrymen cut them down. They had no chance to organize resistance, and for several hours after the opening charge the troopers ranged the village and surrounding country, honoring the colonels intent that 334 P. M. ATLAS no prisoners be taken. Men, women, children and even infants perished in the orgy of slaughter, their bodies then scalped and barbarously mutilated (92). A second, similar incident also captures the brutality of US Indian policy on the western frontier. The Washita River massacre occurred in November 1868, when, following Gen. Philip Sheridans written orders to destroy their villages and ponies; to kill or hang all warriors, and bring back all women and children (Powers 2010, 101), Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer led his 7th Cavalry in a raid on a Cheyenne village, killing more than 100 men, capturing more than fty women and children, burning down all the teepees and their contents, and killing almost 900 Cheyenne horses by cutting their throats to save ammunition (Powers 2010, 101; Utley and Washburn 2002, 223). Kelman (2013), referencing the nineteenth-century observer George Bent, identies several factors unique to American history, including racial concerns and the legacy of slavery, and the Civil War, which help explain the intense brutality of the Indian Wars: This aggression, [Bent] noted, was born in the hothouse of the Civil War, as white racial anxiety ran rampant at the time, fostering paranoia and misapprehensions about monolithic Indian identity. At the same time, the Civil War grew out of a longstanding ght between the North and the South for control of the West. The same struggle gave rise to the Indian Wars, which involved dierent parties vying for dominance in the same region. Regardless, the Plains Tribes had not formed an alliance until after Sand Creek, Bent said, when memories of the massacre had provided them with a rallying cry, a common cause around which they ultimately had united. (35) The two US Army generals in charge of crafting Americas postCivil War Indian policies, Philip Sheridan and William T. Sherman, believed in total war against the entire enemy population [the Plains Indians]war such as they themselves had visited on the South in 186465 (Utley and Washburn 2002, 210). The language and sentiment of what today could be called ethnic cleansing or even genocideincluding Sheridans alleged quip, the only good Indians I ever saw were deadwas on occasion operationalized into policy. In the 1860s and 1870s, notes Thomas Powers (2010, 259), the two generals had spoken often of exterminating the Indians if they did not submit, but the word was used casually, almost as a way of letting o steam. Following Custers defeat at the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876, however, there was a sharp new edge to their anger. In correspondence between the two generals on what should be done with the Sioux, Sherman told Sheridan, Better to remove all to a safe place and then reduce them to a helpless condition (Powers 2010, 259). Sherman biographer Michael Fellman describes the Indian policy of President Ulysses S. Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan thusly: These men applied their shared ruthlessness, born of their Civil War experiences, against a people all three despised. Shermans overall policy was never accommodation and compromise, but vigorous war against the Indians [whom he viewed as] a less-thanhuman and savage race (quoted in DiLorenzo 2010, 232). In Frederick Jackson Turners transformative frontier processwhich framed Americas western mythology for generations in popular culture, literature, art, and lmIndians are largely ignored, except when portrayed as savages standing in the way of progress. Yet, the actual history of the American frontier is in large measure the story of the deliberate decimation of indigenous populations across a vast geography, from the Mexican to Canadian borders. The postCivil War trans-Mississippi West, and AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 335 the Great Plains in particular, was forged by brutal acts of violence including large-scale military campaigns and localized massacres (committed by Indians as well as whites);24 by broken government promises, forced assimilation, the usurpation and division of tribal lands, and the repression, denigration, and abandonment of Indians on reservations. Historian and former US Interior Secretary Stuart Udall (1999) suggests that the mythological imagery of Americas Wild West gets it wrong, and that the real source of frontier violence was far less romantic than popular ction and movies would suggest: Thus, a startling incongruity of western history is that over the past century those who have reveled in glorifying western violence have concentrated on sideshows of gunplay and ignored the blood and gore on display in the big military tent. If body counts are the key measuring stick, the paramount story of violence in the West can be found not in overblown narratives about gunghters, outlaws, and vigilantes, but rather in annals relating to the massacres and wanton killings of Indians by units of the United States Army. (6869) The Riel rebellions: Canadas frontier anomalies The Canadian Government did not always fulll specic terms of the Numbered Treaties, delayed implementation of commitments, and viewed its Indians paternalistically at best. Daschuk (2013), in what is arguably the most critical recent work on the treatment of First Nations, chronicles a postConfederation record of incompetence, cynicism, and even deliberate cruelty by government ocials, arguing that Ottawa used food as a means to control the indigenous population. The strategy was cruel but eective (184). Nevertheless, Canada did not abrogate treaties and use force to retake territory once the land became more valuableas did the United States in 1874 with the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, after gold was discovered in the Black Hills and prospectors and settlers had ooded into lands promised to the Sioux. There were no Indian Wars in Canada and no massacres like Sand Creek, Washita River, or Wounded Knee.25 The only serious armed conicts in the Canadian West were the 18691870 and 1885 Louis Riel-led rebellions by the mixed-blood, French-speaking Metis (in which relatively small numbers of Indian sympathizers, mostly Cree, participated). The Metis, the descendants of French (as well as British and American) fur traders and their Indian mates, had become a distinct new aboriginal people who dierentiated themselves from both Indians and white settlers (Brown 2012, 294).26 Led by the ery and charismatic Louis Riel, they saw the sale of Ruperts Land and the incorporation of that vast territory into the new Dominion of Canada as a threat to their livelihood, culture, and perhaps very existence. The challenge posed by the 18691870 Red River Rebellion led by Riel, with his links to the anti-British, Irish Catholic radicals south of the 49th parallel known as Fenians, forcibly reminded Canadians of the vulnerability of their Northwest to the Americans (Morton 1998, 7) and was one factor in Ottawas decision to create the NWMP in 1873.27 Signicantly, the Red River Rebellion ended not in an American-style massacre but with a negotiated settlement: the Dominion created Manitoba as a new province and granted the Metis living there formal recognition as a distinct group.28 Riels larger, eight-week-long 1885 Northwest Rebellion in Saskatchewan was the only major war of the Canadian West (Utley 2003, 260). Suppressing it required the use of militia and volunteers in addition to Mounties, a force totaling 8,000 troops (LaDow 2004, 7779). It is important to note that the two Riel rebellions by the French-speaking Metis 336 P. M. ATLAS were not Indian uprisings, but were viewed at the time through the lens of ongoing political struggle between English and French Canadaeven though a few Cree had joined the 1885 eort because the government had reneged on its food security obligations in Treaty Six (LaDow 2004, 7778; Marquis 2005, 199; Daschuk 2013, 152155).29 Samek sums up Canadas Indian frontier thusly: If one ignores the two Riel rebellions which were comparatively tame aairsCanada, in comparison to the United States, has indeed enjoyed a largely nonviolent contact with her aboriginal peoples (1987, 4). Establishing peace, order, and good government on the prairies While the United States militarized its Indian policy following the Civil War (and in many ways, fought the Indians as it had fought the Confederacy), Canada approached its First Nations in the Northwest Territories with policemen instead of soldiers. And Indians took notice.30 From the moment the Mounties arrived in the Northwest Territories in 1874 and drove American whiskey traders from Fort Whoop-Up (modern-day Lethbridge, Alberta) and the other so-called whiskey forts, established law and order, and reached out to various Indian tribes, a relationship of mutual respect and trust was forged that continued even as the government in Ottawa implemented increasingly onerous policies (some of which the Mounties resisted enforcing). As NWMP Commissioner George French noted in the 1870s, Whenever a constable meets and Indian, he shakes hands and has a friendly talk, where the United States soldier regards an Indian with suspicion, and waves him o (quoted in Dempsey 2015, 95). Underscoring the overall success of MountieIndian relations is the fact that, in the 1870s and 1880s the NWMP never comprised more than about 300 constables in the entire Northwest Territories, whereas to the south, The Sherman-Sheridan strategy required heavy columns of cavalry and infantry trailing long supply trains in quest of an elusive quarry (Utley and Washburn 2002, 210). The Blackfoots trustful relationship with the Mounties was reected in an incident in July 1876 (a month prior to Treaty Six with the Cree and more than a year before the signing of the Blackfoot treaty, Treaty Seven). Following Custers defeat in Montana in June (but before Sitting Bull had sought sanctuary in the Northwest Territories), the Sioux sent an emissary to the Blackfoot on the Canadian side of the border, asking if the Blackfoot would be willing to cross over and join the Sioux in ghting the Crow and also the Americans. The Blackfoot rejected this proposal; Dempsey notes this briey in his study of the Blackfoot treaties (2015, 76). Not described by Dempsey, however, are some telling details surrounding the Blackfoots decision. According to the Sessional Papers of the NWMP for 1877 (Canada 1877, 2122),31 as relayed by Mounted Police subinspector Cecil Denny who had just visited a Blackfoot camp, a council of Blackfoot chiefs told Denny of the Sioux proposition for a joint campaign on the American side. But more signicantly, the Blackfoot informed Denny of an additional Sioux oer: to cross over into Canada and help the Blackfoot ght the Canadians once they had succeeded against the Americans. As related by Denny, the Sioux also told the Blackfeet [sic] that if they would come to help them against the Americans, that after they had killed all the Whites they would come over and join the Blackfeet to AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 337 exterminate all the Whites on this side. They [the Sioux] told them that the soldiers [e.g., the Mounties] on this side were weak, and that it would take them but a short time to take any forts that they had built here. (Canada 1877, 22) The Blackfoot informed Denny that they had rejected this second proposal as well. Then the Mountie relayed the following: his arrival at the Blackfoot camp came just after the Sioux messenger had returned, this time with a reply to the Blackfoots rejections. The Sioux now threatened to cross into Canada and ght both the whites and the Blackfoot. The Blackfoot leaders, according to Denny, were in a state of uncertainty, not knowing how to act. Their most respected chief, Crowfoot, turned to Denny and said We all see that the day is coming when the bualo will all be killed, and we shall have nothing more to live on, and then you will come into our camp and see the poor Blackfeet [sic] starving. I know, he said, that the heart of the [Canadian] White solider will be sorry for us, and they will tell the great mother who will not let her children starve. He said, We are getting shut in, the Crees are coming in to our country from the north, and the White men from the south and east, and they are all destroying our means of living; but still, although we plainly see these days coming, we will not join the Sioux against the Whites, but will depend upon you to help us. The Chief then told me that the Blackfeet had told him to tell me that as we [the Canadian government] were willing to help them, in the event of the Sioux attacking them, that they would, in case of being attacked, send two thousand warriors against the Sioux. (Canada 1877, 22) Denny thanked them for their oer, promised to relay the message to his superiors, and told Crowfoot that, as long as they were quiet and peaceable they would always nd us their friends and willing to do anything for their good. This episode, hidden in dusty archives, underscores the level of trust and respect that the Blackfoot had for the Mounties as warfare was occurring on the other side of the border. The Sioux, of course, did not wage war against the Blackfoot or whites in Canada, but instead, led by Sitting Bull, took refuge in Canada after Little Big Horn. Surrendering his tribe to six Mounties, he famously described Canada as the benevolent white mother, and the United States as the evil white father (LaDow 2004, 73). By the spring of 1877, between 6,000 and 8,000 Sioux were living as refugees north of the border; they were safe from the US Army, but they were placing a debilitating burden on Albertas ecosystem and its bison herds and causing tensions with the First Nations of the prairies, which the Mounties sought to calm (Dascuk 2013; Dempsey 2015). Even before the NWMP was formed in 1873, the intent of the national government was to take a decidedly dierent approach to frontier development and the Indian Question than the United States: it would produce and guarantee Peace, Order, and Good Government on the prairies, for Indians as well as whites. Canadas rst Prime Minister, Sr. John A. MacDonald, wanted to secure [the new territories] for development and white migration, but as peacefully and inexpensively as possible (Graybill 2007, 15). R.C. Macleod (2000) notes the signicance of Anglo-Canadian values and institutions (and Canadian miserliness) in shaping its Indian policy: It was clear to Prime Minister MacDonald that [westward expansion] would not be done in the American manner of letting government follow settlement. That process, observed by Canadians with critical attention, had produced a lengthy series of wars with native Plains Indians. MacDonald was acutely conscious that in 1869 alone these conicts cost the US government about $20 million, one million more than Canadas total budget for that year. 338 P. M. ATLAS Cold nancial calculations were powerfully reinforced by political values. Canadians believed fervently in their moral superiority to Americans. There would be no Wild West in Canada and the NWMP would be the principal instrument for preventing it. (39; emphasis added) In addition to facilitating and protecting white settlement, the NWMP provided Indians and their reserves with protection against attacks, squatting, and incursions by whiskey traders, settlers, and ranchers (Nettlebeck and Smandych 2010, 358; Fanning 2012, 517).32 To achieve the dual goal of protecting both settlers and Indians, the Mounties were armed with legal and police powers unique within Canada and unparalleled by any agency in the United States, civilian or military. Amanda Nettlebeck and Russell Smandych (2010), in their comparative study of mounted police in Australia and Canada, argue that the NWMPs sweeping magisterial powers facilitated nonviolent resolution of conicts including with Indians. This, they suggest, is an important factor in explaining why Canada had a far better record in its treatment of indigenous people than either the United States or Australia. Utley, the historian of the American military frontier, oers a similar assessment of the Mounties performance: the NWMP enjoyed an authority and prestige with the Indians based on justice and fairness. Unlike the US Army, it was a civil constabulary that could deal with individuals as well as tribes. It did not have to go to war with a whole people to enforce order (Utley 2003, 261). Harring (2005, 120) is not only more critical but also acknowledges the eectiveness of the Mounties: they served as police, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, imposing a form of Canadian law unrecognizable in Ontario or Quebec on the Indians and Metis of the Prairies. While many settlers in the Canadian West were arguably just as unsympathetic to Indians as were their counterparts south of the border, their hostility was generally not translated into violent action. Supporting the assertion of the Lipset Thesis that eastern, foundational national values moved west, Samek (1987, 33) notes that those settlers who arrived in the territories brought with them a tradition of respect for Queens law and a deference to authority, traits that many Americans are proud to note were absent from their frontier population. Jennings (1998) details the bigoted rhetoric aimed at Indians in the newspapers of the nineteenth-century Northwest Territories (what today could easily pass for hate speech) and credits the Mounties for keeping the most violence-prone Canadian settlers in check, in part by insulating them from Indians so that they never had to take the law into their own hands. In the view of some Alberta ranchers, however, the Mounties were more sympathetic to Indians than to whites: irate ranchers deeply resented the tolerant policy of the police toward cattle-stealing Indians (Sharp 1973, 373). A review of annual reports from the 1870s and 1880s listing cases tried before the NWMP magistrates indicate the evenhandedness of the Mounties: the majority of crimes brought to book were for the illegal possession or selling of whiskey by whites to Indians; both whites and Indians were brought to trial for horse theft, larceny, and other crimes, and in some instances, whites were arrested and tried for stealing horses from Indians (as well as vice versa).33 The Mounties, representing the Dominion government, were systematically protecting their First Nations from whites, something unparalleled on the postCivil War American frontier. AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 339 Conclusion Margaret Atwood once quipped that, Canada must be the only country in the world where a policeman is used as a national symbol (quoted in Lipset 1990, 90). Well into the twenty-rst century, the Mounties (particularly those of the nineteenth-century frontier) are still celebrated as a national icon of Peace, Order, and Good Government. Mountie mythology is enshrined in the narrative of Fort Whoop-Up and the Great March West of 18731874. A mock-up of the American whiskey traders infamous fort, sponsored by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, is a regular school eld trip site in modern-day Lethbridge, Alberta (but, ironically, not in the original forts actual location).34 Fort Whoop-Ups descriptive plaque memorializes the violence and lawlessness created by American intruders and the role of the Mounties in bringing order to the region: Fort Whoop-Up was the earliest and most notorious of the whiskey forts built by Americans on Canadian soil. During the years 186974 traders dealing in contraband liquor and rearms so demoralized the Indians that violence and disorder resulted. Lawless conditions here and in other areas hastened the formation of the North West Mounted Police in 1873 to ensure the maintenance of law and order in western Canada.35 In his chapter entitled, Law in a Red Coat, Wallace Stegner (2000, 100) describes the Mountie as the most tting symbol of what made the Canadian West a dierent West from the American. In the nineteenth century, the Mounties and the Canadian Government self-consciously and very eectively used Americas violent Indian policy on the other side of the medicine line as a way to convince First Nations that life on Canadas reserves, despite the hardships and loss of independence it would entail, would be a far better option. Canadians promoted their Indian policy as an intentionally benevolent onehumane, just and Christianby design. By implication, the American approach was none of those things (St. Germain 2001, xvii). Until very recently, Canadas treatment of its indigenous people was seen as honorable, especially when contrasted with its neighbor to the south. Canadas actual record, as noted, is more nuanced and awed; Daschuk (2013) and the recent ndings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission suggest that, in some ways, it was abysmal. Scholars have challenged or debunked other parts of the Canadian mythology, including just how peaceful were the Prairies or how ecient or eective were the Mounties in their law enforcement eorts (Dawson 1998; Harring 2005; McKenna 2006). Borderlands scholars, for their part, challenge or downplay the sharpness and the impact of the international boundary: for ordinary settlers, including white women in the nineteenthcentury AlbertaMontana borderlands, for example, the border existed only when it was crossed, and whatever national aspirations federal ocials had for the region were inconsequential compared to personal and local goals and developments (McManus 2005, 178). Yet, when it came to Indian policy, the contrast between Canada and the United States was starksometimes brutally stark. Soldiers in blue and Mounties in red (and the governments they represented) oered Indians a clear choice in quality of life, and perhaps in life itself. In her analysis of two centuries of US and Canadian Indian policy, Kathy Brock (2014, 369) concludes that there were signicant, qualitative dierences both in the way Indians were treated and in the two governments themselves, despite 340 P. M. ATLAS their common origins in British North America. For the indigenous populations of the North American West, the medicine line was a line of sovereignty that sharply divided the region. Through the process of nation-building, the state became the primary actor on the North American frontier; ultimately, state power trumped borderlands culture. The Lipset Thesiswith its focus on fundamental cultural and institutional dierences between the two countries that began at their points of origin and which shaped and constrained the trajectories of westward developmentgenerally oers greater utility for explaining these particular cross-national distinctions than does Borderlands Studies (even as the latter demonstrates that the reality on the Prairies was more nuanced and interconnected than the Lipsetian approach might suggest). Metropolitanism (which I include in the Lipset Thesis) can help account for the centralized control and direction of Canadas westward expansion and its more coherent Indian policy. South of the border, Turners steamroller of a continuously and rapidly expanding frontier, with settlers with insatiable appetites racing ahead of government (and demanding military action against Indians), also nds some substantiation, even though Turner himself ignored or dismissed the plight of the Indians. Yet clearly, Turners free land was not freeit was obtained at a very high price indeed. The New Western Historys contributions to the Turnerian discourse, particularly its multi-vocal narratives and acknowledgment of the federal governments critical role in conquering and building the West, often outweigh Turners own, more mythological analysis. Overall, the reality (and the perception) of American frontier lawlessness and genocidal Indian policies, of Americas Wild Westwhich was being constructed contemporaneously with dime novels and Wild West showsonly enhanced British North American skepticism of American liberalism, egalitarianism, and republicanism. The Mounties were created, in part, to ensure that Canadas western experience would be a far milder and orderly one. If the frontier was forging a new, rugged American character in the Turnerian sense, Canadians would have none of it. In Lipsetian terms, the westward development of Americas revolutionary society was conrming the meritand perhaps even the moral superiorityof the Canadian counterrevolutionary society. Notes 1. Northern Plains Indians, including Sioux, Cree, and the tribes of the Blackfoot nation (Blackfoot, Blood, North, and South Peigans), came to realize that American troops would not cross the international border in pursuit of Indians and that a means to escape physical violence on the American side was to cross into Canadian territory. It was as if this imaginary line on a map exerted magical powersor medicinethat prevented American soldiers from crossing. This phenomenon was recorded as early as 1870 when four years of sporadic conict between Indians and Montana ranchers, known as the Blackfoot War, culminated in the Baker Massacre. Following the killing of a Montana rancher, on January 25, 1870, a US Army expedition under the command of Col. Eugene Baker attacked a Blackfoot camp in Montana Territory killing 173 Indians, mostly women and children; it was the wrong camp, as it turned out. In the aftermath of this incident, some Blackfoot, seeking sanctuary, ed to the Canadian Northwest Territories and remained there (Dempsey 2015, 6566). The most famous crossing of the medicine line occurred in 1876, when Sitting Bull led his people to sanctuary in Canada following the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The medicine line AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 341 worked both ways: in 1885, some Metis and Cree Indians would cross into Montana to escape conict with the Mounties and Canadian militia during the Northwest Rebellion. Although todays preferred term for Canadas aboriginal people of the Prairies is First Nations, the term Indian was commonly used in the nineteenth century. In this article, I will use Indians and First Nations interchangeably when referring to Canadas indigenous tribes, and Indian when referring to tribes on the American side. Frontier democracy was notable for its greater gender equality compared with the more established East. Wyoming Territory was rst to give women the franchise, in 1869, and all western states had given women the right to vote in state elections prior to the ratication of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Turners obsession with the disappearance of the American frontier, a major component of his thesis, becomes incorporated into western mythology, nostalgia, and the narrative structure of dime novels, Wild West shows, western literature, and cinema (Bloodworth 1996). Wrobel (1993), in his historical survey of frontier anxiety, suggests that the fear of the disappearing frontier shaped American culture for generations, both before and after Turner. Whites (1991) 600-page new history of the American West does not even list Canada in its index. Three notable exceptions to this general statement about the New Western historians are John Mack Faragher, Walter Nugent, and Elliott West. This phrase is from the United States rst founding document, the Declaration of Independence of 1776. The phrase Peace, Order, and Good Government is from the Dominion of Canadas founding document, the British North America Act of 1867. Lipset credited Canadian historian Harold Innis for the term counter-revolutionary as way of describing Canada in relation to the United States (Lipset 2001, 99). I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for bringing this to my attention. Lipsets approach oers an entre for the study of political culture as well as the new institutionalism with its emphasis on path dependence (Powell and DiMaggio 1991; Peters 2011). Powell and DiMaggio (1991, 10) suggest that Institutional arrangements constrain individual behavior by rendering some choices nonviable, precluding particular courses of action, and restraining certain patterns of resource allocation. According to Horowitz (1966), it was subsequent British immigration, more than the early American loyalists as Lipset asserts, that made Canada more British, more Tory, and thus more Canadian. Horowitz notes the critical impact of successive, postAmerican Revolution waves of British immigration to Canadaalmost 1 million between 1815 and 1850 which soon engulfed the original American Loyalist fragment. Horowitz suggests that these immigrants (who, signicantly, chose to relocate to British North America rather than the United States) brought to it non-liberal ideas which entered into the political culture mix, and which perhaps even reinforced the non-liberal elements present in the original fragment (Horowitz 1966, 153). By conservative, Lipset means a Burkean organic conservatism that favored the judgment of elites over the popular masses and maintaining social order over individual liberty. It is a communitarian, statist conservatism, or Toryism that infused Canadian political culture at its birth. This is quite distinct from the way the term is used by American conservatives today (Lipset 1990, 35). Horowitz (1966) makes a similar point. Thomas and Biettes (2014) edited volume, Canada and the United States: Dierences that Count, now in its fourth edition, is one of the leading textbooks in North American Studies. Its various authors explore dierences in values and culture, political institutions and governmental regulations, and public and social policies. Elofsons (2015, 2) observation about scholarship on cattle ranching in Southern Alberta exemplies how metropolitanism ts within the Lipset Thesis, where foundational, eastern values, and structures shaped the West: Canadian ranching historians have tended to 342 P. M. ATLAS 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. employ a metropolitan analysis that stresses the predominance of eastern laws, legal agencies and culture. As Neil McLaughlin (2004) observes, English Canada (as opposed to Quebec) developed from loyalist communities who rejected the American Revolution, preferring ties to colonial Britain rather than joining the forces of mass democracy of the thirteen colonies to their south. As a consequence of this history, Anglo-Canadian universities have always had a British avor to them, something that can be seen in terms of faculty hiring, university governance, and culture as well as the intellectual orientation of Canadian institutions of higher education. The Mounties included few French Canadians in their ranks, most of the early settlers in the Northwest Territories (todays Saskatchewan and Alberta) were of Anglo-Canadian stock, and later emigrants were predominantly from Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe as well as Asia. As Thomas (1975, 74) observes, Most westerners rejected the idea that the bicultural pact upon which the nation was founded in 1867 extended to the west. With the notable exception of the semi-indigenous Metis, the Northwest Territoriesthe Canadian geographic focus of this articlewere settled and developed under the hegemony of English Canada. The classic USCanada Borderlands works are Paul Sharps 1955 Whoop-Up Country and Wallace Stegners 1962 Wolf Willow. For a critical review of the development of Borderlands scholarship, from Herbert Eugene Bolton in the 1920s to the twenty-rst century, see Hamalainen and Truett (2011). The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) became the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920 when the organization was transformed into a federal police force. The historic focus of this article predates this change. I address this subject in my article Of Lawless Frontiers and Peaceable Kingdoms: The Legacy of Myth, Government, and Guns in the North American West, presented at the Western Social Science Association conference, Reno, NV, April 1316, 2016. Canada formally recognizes and grants group rights and protections to several Aboriginal people in its Constitution of 1982: First Nations, Metis, and Inuit (Brock 2014, 366; Berdahl and Gibbins 2014, 47). There is no such parallel legal status for the more than 500 registered Indian tribes (or any other groups, for that matter) in the United States. Manitoba became a province in 1870. Alberta and Saskatchewan comprised the Northwest Territories until gaining separate provincial status in 1905. Pre-1905 Alberta and Saskatchewan constitute the primary (Canadian) geographical focus of this article. Between 1845 and 1850, the United States doubled in size with the acquisition of Mexican lands, the Texas republic, and the Oregon Territory. In 1870, the total population of Canada was 3.63 million, compared to the U.S. population that year of 38.56 million. By 1900, the Canadian population had increased to just 5.31 million, compared to the US population of 76.21 million (US Census Bureau and Statistics Canada data). Put dierently, in 1870, the US population was just over ten times that of Canadas, while by 1900 it had grown to more than fourteen times that of Canadas. More specically, between 1861 and 1880, more than 5 million immigrants came to the United Statesabout 4.3 million from Europe and 537,000 from Canada and Newfoundland (McManus 2004, 125). By comparison, the total immigration to Canada between 1867 and 1892 was about 1.5 million, although many of these were only passing through on their way to the United States (McManus 2004, 125). In 1868, Montanans rejectedand forced the abandonment ofa proposed federal treaty with the Blackfoot, and in 1874 they successfully lobbied Washington to reduce the size of the Blackfoot reservation, opening more land to white settlement (Dempsey 2015, 5052). American antipathy toward governmental control is a point stressed by both Turner and Lipset; where they dier is in the origins of that antipathy. Lipset argues that it dates back to the Revolution, while Turner sees it as resistance by rugged individuals on the frontier. They both may be correct. AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 343 22. Tribal nomenclature substantiates the distinctions constructed by the political division at the international border: today the term Blackfoot is used in Canada, while on the American side, these Indians are called (and call themselves) Blackfeet. 23. The Interior Department argued that the best approach to the Indians was to conquer with kindness. The War Department countered, saying the policy should be conquer, then kindness (St. Germain 2001, 20). 24. In just one region of Montana in the years after 1860, there were more than thirty massacres of whites committed by Indians (McKenna 2006, 95). 25. The battle (or massacre) at Wounded Knee, where the 7th Cavalry killed more than 200 Lakota Sioux men, women, and children, ended the controversial and subversive, millennialist movement among Plains Indians centered on the Ghost Dance. Daschuk notes that, despite attempts by American Indians to spread the movement to Canada, it did not take hold north of the border. Mounties disarmed all Indians coming over from Montana and the Ghost Dance was banned in the Northwest Territories. There were no uprisings on Canadian reserves [and] Canadian Indians never came close to acting out against the situation [of mass starvation and disease] in the same radical fashion as their American cousins in the 1890s (2013, 172). Interestingly, Daschuk does not ask (or answer) why this was the case. Despite the draconian aspects of Canadian policy that Daschuk enumerates, the First Nations of the prairies fully understood that the plight of Indians south of the medicine line was far worse, and they trusted and enjoyed good relations with the Mounties whom they believed would protect them. 26. The Blackfoot viewed the Metis as an enemy, and one of their primary demands in negotiating Treaty Seven in 1877 was that the Canadian Government force the Metis (as well as the Cree) o of Blackfoot land and hunting grounds; the government refused to do so (Dempsey 2015). 27. The rst Riel rebellion and other tensions with the Metis; Fenian agitation from the American side of the border; the illegal American forts established on the Canadian side to sell whiskey to First Nations and the subsequent murder of Canadian Assiniboine Indians by American whiskey traders in the Cypress Hills massacre; and an overarching concern for American expansionism were all factors in the decision to create the Mounties in 1873 and send them west on the Great March (Sharp 1973; Morton 1998; Macleod 2000; McKenna 2006; Daschuk 2013; Dempsey 2015). 28. The Manitoba Act of 1870 provided legal recognition to the Metis language (French), religion (Catholic), and rights (to use the land in keeping with their Aboriginal title) (LaDow 2004, 7475). Canadas political response to this rst Riel rebellion lends support to the Lipset Thesis: the Metis, referred to as half breeds in the Manitoba Act (Thomas 1975, 7779), were granted group rights, a concept largely alien in American political culture. While there were Metis on the Montana side of the border, the American government gave no recognition or rights to the Metis as a separate people (Ens 2006, 139). Canadas failure to live up to promises made to the Metis in the Manitoba Act was one catalyst for the 1885 Northwest Rebellion (Anastakis 2015, 4647). 29. Following the rebellion, Riel was hanged and appropriated as a martyr to the French Canadian cause by the Quebec press, which was highly critical of Ottawas heavyhandedness toward the French-speaking and Catholic Metis (Dawson 1998, 26). Although some Cree (and also some American Sioux living in Canada) participated in the 1885 Northwest Rebellion, the Blackfoot (who viewed the Cree and the Metis as their enemies) did not join, in part because the government supplied extra rations to placate them; Blackfoot chiefs even tried to prevent the rebellion (McManus 2005, 66, 81). As for the Cree themselves, Daschuk (2013, 152155) argues that they were not really joining a Metis rebellion, but rather took the opportunity to exact revenge on particular government ocials who had severely mistreated them or abused their women on the reserve; the Cree deliberately spared Mounties because the policemen had treated them humanely. Classifying the 1885 events as some sort of Indian uprising would be highly inaccurate. 30. The medicine line was also a color line. The Mounties scarlet coat, in contradistinction to US Army blue, was a deliberate choice, designed to remind the Indians of a British 344 P. M. ATLAS 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. tradition of law with which some of the older ones had already had experience (McKenna 2006, 91). Wallace Stegner puts the contrast marked by the 49th parallel most boldly in Wolf Willow: One of the most visible aspects of the international boundary was that it was a color line: blue below, red above, blue for treachery and un-kept promises, red for protection and the straight tongue (2000, 101). The tables were turned briey following the 1885 Northwest Rebellion, which only further reied the international boundary and its medicinal powers for aboriginal people: this time, hundreds of Metis and Canadian Indians ed south to escape persecution (Ens 2006, 151). The following passages are taken from the North-West Mounted Police Sessional Papers, 1877 (reviewed by the author in the Glenbow Museum archives, Calgary, AB, March 2016). When the Mounties rst arrived in the Northwest Territory, their primary law enforcement concerns were halting the illegal tracking of whiskey to Indians from south of the border and keeping the settlers in check; Indian crimes against settlers were quite rare (Sharp 1973; Marquis 2005). The record of Mountie success in protecting Indians and combatting the whiskey trade was extolled by Canadian negotiators in 1877 as a selling point to the Blackfoot for Treaty Seven; Blackfoot Chief Crowfoot, and Blood Chief Medicine Calf noted that the Mounties trustworthiness, and particularly Col. Macleods personal integrity, were key factors in their decision to support the treaty (St. Germain 2001, 66; Dempsey 2015, 99102). Medicine Calf told the Canadian negotiators: The Great Mother sent Stamixotokon (Col. McCleod) and the Police to put an end to the trac in re water. Before the arrival of the Police, when I laid my head down at night, every sound frightened me; my sleep was broken; now I can sleep sound and am not afraid (quoted in Dempsey 2015, 101). Authors review of Sessional Papers of the North-West Mounted Police, Glenbow Museum archives, Calgary, AB, March 2016. I would like to thank Sheila McManus of the University of Lethbridge for pointing this out (conversation, Lethbridge, AB, March 10, 2016). Narratives and material displays celebrating the Mounties provision of Peace, Order, and Good Government can be found in various exhibits at the historic Fort Macleod and Fort Calgary, and in Calgarys Glenbow Museum. For younger audiences, Mountie mythology is inculcated in a comic book for sale at Fort Calgarys gift shop: The March on Fort Whoop-Up: The Making of the Legendary Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Brouwer 2007). Cultural icons are often commercialized, and the Mountie is no exception. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has a store in a posh shopping district of Vancouver, where one can purchase the iconic tan Stetson campaign hat, books, apparel, home dcor, jewelry, and toys all with a Mountie motif. The Mountie Shop: The Ocial Retailer of the RCMP also sells Mountie paraphernalia to a global clientele on its website. As in the United States with everything cowboy and western, Canadas frontier mythology has been commodied and marketed. Acknowledgments I would like to express my appreciation to James T. McHugh and two independent peer reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions as I developed and revised this article. Disclosure statement No potential conict of interest was reported by the author. Notes on contributor Pierre M. Atlas is professor of Political Science and director of The Richard G. Lugar Franciscan Center for Global Studies at Marian University in Indianapolis. AMERICAN REVIEW OF CANADIAN STUDIES 345 References Anastakis, D. 2015. 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