American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present [1 ed.] 0268006393, 9780268006396

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THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC EXPERIENCE

DOLAN

A History from Colonial Times to the Present JAY P. DOLAN

“The “The American American Catholic Catholic Experience Experience is is aa model model of of cogency, cogency, its its every every seam seam fastened fastened by by rivets rivets of of documentation. documentation. In In itit we we see see ourselves ourselves more more clearly. clearly. This This is is what what we we ask ask from from history, history, and and here here obtain.” obtain.” —The —The Recorder Recorder “This “This book book .. .. .. will will quickly quickly capture capture your your attention, attention, and and engage engage your your mind, mind, and and make make you you think think what what itit meant—and meant—and means—to means—to be be ‘a ‘a Catholic Catholic in in America.’ America.’ This This book book cannot cannot be be ‘recommended.’ ‘recommended.’ It It must must be be labeled labeled ‘essential.’” ‘essential.’” —Spirituality —Spirituality Today Today JAY JAY P. P. DOLAN DOLAN is is professor professor emeritus emeritus of of history history at at the the University University of of Notre Notre Dame, Dame, where where he he founded founded the the Cushwa Cushwa Center Center for for the the Study Study of of American American Catholicism Catholicism in in 1975 1975 and and was was the the director director of of the the Center Center until until 1993. 1993. He He is is the the author author of, of, among among other other books, books, In In Search Search of of American American Catholicism Catholicism (2002) (2002) and and The The Immigrant Immigrant Church: Church: New New York’s York’s Irish Irish and and German German Catholics, Catholics, 1815–1865 1815–1865 (Notre (Notre Dame Dame Press, Press, 1983). 1983). University University of of Notre Notre Dame Dame Press Press Notre Notre Dame, Dame, Indiana Indiana 46556 46556 undpress.nd.edu undpress.nd.edu Cover Cover design design by by Jennifer Jennifer Bernal Bernal

THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC EXPERIENCE

“In “In this this work, work, Dolan Dolan is is concerned concerned less less with with traditional traditional institutional institutional history—orders, history—orders, bishops, bishops, churches—than churches—than with with aa broader broader social social history history of of the the Catholic Catholic experience experience itself. itself. At At the the same same time, time, he he does does not not ignore ignore structures structures and and institutions, institutions, but but seeks seeks to to place place them them within within the the context context of of Catholic Catholic life. life. Dolan’s Dolan’s style style is is provocative provocative and and allows allows him him to to hold hold the the reader’s reader’s interest interest while while providing providing endless endless material. material. This This is is aa helpful helpful volume, volume, which which serves serves as as an an excellent excellent introduction introduction to to Catholic Catholic experiexperience ence in in America.” America.” —Review —Review and and Expositor Expositor

A History from Colonial Times to the Present

“For “For anyone anyone interested interested in in American American Catholic Catholic history, history, Dolan’s Dolan’s book book is is pivotal. pivotal. The The solid solid research research and and extensive extensive citations citations make make itit aa valuable valuable teaching teaching tool, tool, while while its its solid solid writing writing makes makes the the ideas ideas easily easily accessible.” accessible.” —St. —St. Anthony Anthony Messenger Messenger

the

AMERICAN CATHOLIC EXPERIENCE A History from Colonial Times to the Present

JAY P.DOLAN

The American Catholic Experience

The American Catholic Experience A History from Colonial Times to the Present

JAY P. DOLAN

UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS NOTRE DAME

Dolan ACE 2015 pg iv_Layout 1 1/5/15 1:45 PM Page 1

Copyright © 1992 by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Reprinted in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2015

This ebook has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this book do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dolan, Jay P., 1936– The American Catholic experience : a history from colonial times to the present / Jay P. Dolan. p. cm. Originally published: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1985, Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 13: 978-0-268-00639-6 ISBN 10: 0-268-00639-3 1. Catholic Church—United States—History. 2. United States— Church history. I. Title. BX1406.2.D637 1992 282'.73—dc20 92–50409 CIP

∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper.

FOR PATRICK AND MARK

Contents

PREFACE

9

THE COLONIAL PERIOD, 1500-1780 I Conquest and Conversion in the New World The Spanish and French Indian missions in North America

15

43 II Catholicism and Native American Cultures What happened when Catholics came into contact with the world of the Indians III Catholics in the English Colonies What it meant to be Catholic in colonial Maryland

69

A REPUBLICAN INTERLUDE, 1780-1820 IV A New Beginning The attempt to form an American version of Roman Catholicism

101

THE IMMIGRANT CHURCH, 1820-1920 127 V Immigrant Catholics: A Social Profile The ten major Catholic immigrant groups and their patterns of settlement, work, and economic mobility VI The Parish and the People The organization of the local church and the struggle for control

158

8

CONTENTS

VII The Neighborhood and Its Gods The relationship between neighborhood, parish, and religion

195

VIII The Catholic Ethos 221 The four marks of devotional Catholicism: authority, sin, ritual, and the miraculous IX Handing on the Faith The educative role of family, church, school, and the press

241

Schools 262 The emergence of the parochial school along with the high school and the college X

294 XI Religion and Society Conflict among immigrant groups and the debate over the role of the church in the modem world XII Toward a Social Gospel The Catholic response to the Industrial Age

321

THE END OF AN ERA, 1920---60 349 XIII Changes in Church and Nation The organization of the institutional church, the persistence of immigrant Catholicism, and the challenges presented by Black and Mexican newcomers 384 XIV Religion, Education, and Reform The golden age of devotional Catholicism, the expansion of the educational network, and the move toward social reform THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION, 1960-84

xv A New Catholicism Bringing the church up to date, and the effects of this change

421

NOTES

455

INDEX

493

Preface

EVERY GENERATION OF HISTORIANS seeks to rediscover the past in a new and enlightening manner. The present generation is no exception. During the past twenty years, historians have reclaimed the history of the family, women, and blacks; in the 1980s they are asking new questions of labor, politics, and economics. Inspiring much of this work is a desire to write a new social history of the United States, a history that goes beyond politicians and power brokers and urges a broader historical vision of American society and its people. Such impulses have also influenced the writing of religious history, most especially European religious history. As regards the history of Roman Catholicism, another major influence is at work, namely a new understanding of the church. This new understanding of the church, proclaimed at the Second Vatican Council, incorporates the peo­ ple-lay men and women-into the definition of the church. To outsiders, such a development may seem quite harmless. But for Roman Catholics the effects have been profound. By proclaiming the church to be first and fore­ most the people of God, the Second Vatican Council sought to revise the more traditional view of the church as a hierarchical institution in which the Pope and his clergy reigned like monarchs. Such a revision stood Roman Catholic theology on its head, and the full implications of this theological development remain to be seen. As Pope John XXIII said more than twenty years ago, a new day is dawning for Roman Catholicism. Today it is still early morning. One obvious effect of this change is the desire to write a new history of Roman Catholicism. The spirit of Vatican II and the new vision it inspired

10

PREFACE

has had a profound effect on the study of the Bible, theology, ethics, and church law. Less publicized but no less real is its effect on the study of history. A new understanding of the church demands a new history of Ro­ man Catholicism. Reinforcing this development is the current emphasis on the need for a more social history of the past. These two developments, one within the historical academy and the other within Roman Catholicism, have shaped my thinking about the past and persuaded me to write a social history of the American Catholic people from colonial times to the present. Having said this, it is necessary to explain what I mean. By social history I mean the history of a society that focuses on the ordi­ nary people and their culture; some historians have labeled this "history from the bottom up" or "people's history." Attempting to write a social history that spans more than three hundred years presents problems, a principal one being that for some eras of history the necessary research and sources are not yet available. Thus, some sections of this book follow the traditional narrative style of history; other chapters concern themselves with intellectual history or institutional history. Obviously, bishops are part of the history and so are priests and other church personnel. But my main concern in this book was to focus, as much as it was possible, on the people and not just the prelates, on the experience of religion and not just the development of the institution. I wanted to look at the American Catholic experience from a new angle, from the bottom up if you wish, and write what I believe is a new history of Roman Catholicism in the United States. In writing this history I have sought to ask new questions of the past and to focus on themes often neglected in American Catholic history. In the colonial period a major issue was what happened when two cultures of religion, Ro­ man Catholicism and native American religions, came into contact with one another. An important question in the English Catholic colonial experience was how these people kept their religion alive in a frontier society in which priests and churches were scarce and Protestants were so numerous. The era of the immigrant church marked a new beginning for Catholicism in the United States. The major questions that concerned me in this period were the social context in which Catholics lived, an economic and social profile of the community, how the people organized their churches, and what leadership roles they assumed in the local church. The focal point in much of this section was the parish community. Another major theme was the nature of religion in the immigrant community. How did Catholics pray, and how did this shape their values? Education and schooling, cultural and theological conflict, and social reform in the immigrant era are other issues examined. These themes continued to dominate the twentieth century as the immigrant church moved into its golden era. Reform movements in the 1940s and 1950s and the increased activity of the laity were other major themes examined. The

PREFACE

11

book concludes with a study of the new Catholicism that has emerged in the past quarter century. This book is but the first step in the writing of a new social and religious history of American Catholicism. I hope others will take up where I have left off and explore more deeply the vast richness of the American Catholic expe­ rience. By doing so they will further enrich a history that deserves to be known in all its fullness. In writing this book I have acquired many debts, and it is a pleasure to acknowledge them publicly at last. The American Council of Learned Societ­ ies provided a fellowship in 1 978 that enabled me to begin this project. The University of Notre Dame generously supported my work by allowing me to take some time off from teaching so that I could devote full time to research and writing. The Notre Dame community has also provided an atmosphere and environment of support that have sustained me in my work over the years, and for this I am very grateful. I am also grateful for the support of many individuals. Martin E. Marty was the first to urge me to pursue the subject, and I am glad he did. Other colleagues, too many to mention, also encouraged me along the way and thus motivated me to complete the task. Daniel McLellan, O.F.M., Steven M. Avella, and James Grummer, S.J., provided valuable research assistance while they were graduate students at Notre Dame. Another student, Jeffrey M. Burns, was especially helpful and did the bulk of the work in the "Parish History Study," cited in the book. Rod Ganey provided us with the necessary sophistication in computer programming to make such a study worthwhile. Henry Warner Bowden, Thomas E. Blantz, C.S.C., Jon Butler, Philip Gleason, David C. Leege, Thomas F. O'Meara, Louis Putz, C.S.C., and Thomas Spalding, C.F.X., read one or more chapters of the manuscript and offered valuable advice. I am especially indebted to James P. Shenton and Joseph M. White, who carefully read all the chapters on the immigrant church. My wife, Pat, was forced to read the entire book and did so cheer­ fully. Historian that she is, she provided keen insights along the way. She also put up with me throughout the entire project, and for that she deserves a medal. Joseph M. Lauck and the Inter-Library Loan staff of the University of Notre Dame Library were most helpful. Delores Dant Fain, secretary of the Charles and Margaret Hall Cushwa Center for the Study of American Ca­ tholicism, did a heroic job in typing the manuscript, and her patience and understanding are sincerely appreciated. I have dedicated this book to my two sons, who more than once asked me if the book was done yet. When they are old enough to read it, I hope they will be pleased with the result. JAY

P.

DOLAN

December 1984

The Colonial Period,

1500-1780

I Conquest and Conversion in the New World THE SPANISH MISSIONS ON A FRIDAY MORNING, the twelfth of October, 1492, Christopher Colum­ bus set foot on a small coral island in the Bahamas. A dream had finally come true. The Italian visionary and explorer had established contact with a new and different world. The Admiral of the Ocean Sea had met the people of America. It was a momentous day in the history of the human race, and Columbus later clothed his discovery with profound religious significance: . . . these great and marvelous results are not to be attributed to any merit of mine, but to the Holy Christian faith, and to the piety and religion of our Sover­ eigns; for that which the unaided intellect of man could not encompass, the spirit of God has granted to human exertions, for God is wont to hear the prayers of His servants who love his precepts even to the performance of apparent impossibilities. Therefore let the King and Queen, our princes and their most happy kingdoms, and all the other provinces of Christendom, render thanks to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who has granted us so great a victory and such prosperity. Let proces­ sions be made, and sacred feasts be held, and the temples be adorned with festive boughs--let Christ rejoice on earth, as he rejoices in heaven in the prospect of the salvation of the souls of so many nations hitherto lost. 1

The "door of the Western sea" was opened at last. Columbus knew that Spain would prosper because of his discovery, and prosper she did when silver and gold from the New World began to pour into the coffers of Spain. But Columbus believed that he was more than a servant of the Crown; he was an instrument of God: a man, he said, "animated by a heavenly fire," whose

16

THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC EXPERIENCE

mission was not only to find a passage to the Indies, but also to inaugurate the last great crusade so that the biblical prophecy of preaching the gospel to all peoples and all races could be fulfilled and the holy city of Jerusalem deliv­ ered from the unbeliever. This visionary side of Columbus, inspired by the book of The Apocalypse and the gospel mandate to "go out all over the world and preach the gospel to all creation," was not unique. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth cen­ turies, a similar sense of mission animated other New World explorers, En­ glish as well as Spanish, Portuguese as well as French. John W inthrop, the founding father of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, had such a vision when he spoke to his fellow Englishmen about being a chosen people whose task it was to build a Christian society in the New World, where, according to Goc!'s will, "we shall be as a city on a hill." W inthrop was not a Columbus, but he was a Puritan, and his vision of the holy commonwealth was as much reli­ gious as it was political. The link between Columbus and W inthrop illustrates an important point. Catholics and Protestants were not terribly different in their motivation to explore and conquer the New World. To acquire wealth was an obvious prior­ ity, but to establish a New Israel and extend the boundaries of the kingdom of God on earth was also a major impulse that propelled both the Spanish conquistador and the English Pilgrim across the ocean to America. Seen in this manner, the Spanish conquest of the sixteenth century, which inaugu­ rates the history of Catholicism in the United States, evidences a striking resemblance to the Puritan colonization of the seventeenth century and the beginnings of American Protestantism. American Catholicism, like American Protestantism, was inaugurated with a millennial enthusiasm. It first surfaced on an island in the Bahamas, appropriately renamed San Salvador, and spread across Central and South America, eventually reaching Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. There is no denying that the Spanish were greedy; that they robbed, pil­ laged, and eventually annihilated millions of Indians in South and North America. They were conquistadors, crusaders armed with Toledo steel and mounted on Spanish horses. Theirs was a crusade, made all the more just, precisely because it was conducted on behalf of the Church. Indeed, the Spanish conquest was the last great crusade to abolish "paganism" and estab­ lish a city of God in the Promised Land, where the Christianity of the Old World could reach its perfection. Such holy wars are the worst possible kind. But it was the sixteenth century, and conquest and conversion in the name of God and king was the way the Spanish set out to "Christianize and civilize" the people of the New World. The marriage between conquest and conversion was not unusual in Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Most people were still viewing life through a medieval prism, possessing a worldview that knew no separa-

CONQUEST AND CONVERSION

17

tion between religion and society, church and world. The two realms were interwoven in such a way that it was unthinkable to distinguish the sacred from the secular, to separate religion from the activities of daily life. From birth to death and at every stage in between, the church intervened with ritual and prayer; in the city and the rural countryside, the sacred deeply penetrated the minds of men and women and was never far removed from the surface of human consciousness. Columbus is a good example of this mentality. "His thoughts, deeds, and aspirations were permeated with religious faith," wrote his biographer Samuel Eliot Morison. "He was more particular than many clergymen in saying daily the Divine Office of the Church . . . and seldom missed an opportunity to hear Mass. "2 On his voyage of discovery, Columbus prayed daily and sang the Salve Regina, "which all seamen are accustomed to say and sing in their own fashion. " 3 He believed he was an instrument of God, whose providence and power had safely brought him to America. Even though Columbus was a sailor, not a saint, religion was the indispensable compass of his life. Heman Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, was a more extreme example of the union between the sacred and the secular in Catholic Spain. The con­ queror of Mexico "was greedy, debauched, a politician without scruples, but he had his quixotic moments, for, despite his weaknesses, of which he later humbly repented, he had deep Christian convictions. He always carried on his person an image of the Virgin Mary, to whom he was strongly devoted; he prayed and heard Mass daily; and his standard bore these words: 'Comrades, with true faith follow the sign of the Holy Cross and through it we shall conquer.' "• Cortes relentlessly pursued the political and military conquest of Mexico, but he was equally zealous in pursuing a religious crusade as well. All along his journey of conquest to the capital of the Aztec empire he stopped to erect the cross of Christianity and build altars for Mass; at the same time, he pillaged Indian temples, smashed their religious symbols, and killed anyone who tried to stop his march. His was a ruthless faith, which sought to bring a new culture to an old civilization. An essential ingredient of this transfer was religion, and the mission of Cortes would not be complete until he could make the Aztecs Spanish Catholics. Nothing less would satisfy this medieval Catholic who carried a holy card in his pocket and a saber at his side. It was a thin line that separated Christianity and magic in the sixteenth century. The picture of the Virgin in Cortes's pocket could easily be taken for a good-luck charm as well as a sign of orthodox piety. In the case of Cortes it is hard to say which prevailed; more than likely it was a mixture of both superstition and orthodoxy. Either way, religion was an integral part of Cortes's world; so, too, of that of the common folk. Average Westerners in the sixteenth century were more than likely superficial Christians, possessed of a mentality that knew no sharp distinction between matter and spirit, religion

18

THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC EXPERIENCE

and life. For them, as for Columbus and Cortes, the world was permeated with religion, be it magical. Christian, or a blending of both. But the point is clear. In the sixteenth century and well into the seventeenth, there was no separation between religion and life. Such a mentality helps to explain the crusade launched by Columbus in the name of God and the sovereign. To civilize necessarily meant to Christianize in sixteenth-century Spain. Another aspect of Spanish culture that shaped the conquest of America was the type of Catholicism prevalent during the sixteenth century. A millen­ nial interpretation of the New World and the intimate bond between religion and life were not uniquely Spanish. They were common to the Western world and explained the founding of Boston as well as the conquest of Mexico. But, for the Spanish, there was a third element at work, a complex of forces which, taken together, made up a special brand of Catholicism that only Spain pos­ sessed in the sixteenth century. A major feature of Spanish Catholicism was the close union between the church and the Crown. Nothing symbolized this better than the real p