America Vol 19
his boyhood days he had ever striven. In the
pg 593
Nov 29, 1911 on giving the Cardinal's hat to
John Cardinal Farley, said:
"The enthusiasm with which the news of
your elevation to the Sacred College was
received, the demonstrations which were
made for you by all classes of citizens, the
acclamations, accompanied with blessings,
wishes and affectionate greetings on your
departure from New York and Boston, and
finally your triumph ant voyage across the
ocean protected by the Papal flag, afford me
not only hope, but certainty that the Lord
on your return will multiply the fruits of
your Apostolate, and that over the
hospitable land which receives all peoples
of the world, and with well-ordered
liberty provides for the universal well-
being, the Lord will reign and His glory
will shine therein."
the text goes on...."The priestly heart of John
Farley could not but be responsive to the
unsolicited manifestations of joy of his own
flock and of those outside the fold over the
great honor conferred upon him when he
was appointed to the College of Cardinals.
But his soul was above any thought of
worldly honor or prestige which such a
position might give. A supreme honor had
been conferred upon him; that would only
enlarge his influence and opportunities and
add a brighter flame to his pastoral zeal.
Like Pius X, he had but one hope, that on
the return to the land so beautifully
described by the Holy Father as the land of a
generous hospitality, the land of well
ordered liberty, he might more fully, more
chivalrously, even than before, were that
possible, carry out the ideals for which from
lives of those men who work especially for
God, here is a wonderful unity. That unity
we find in the life of John Cardinal Farley. It
was not without a special meaning that the
Papal flag floated at the masthead of the ship
that bore him across the seas to receive from
the hands of Pius X the insignia of his
office."
Americanism and the Collapse of the
Church in the United States (continued)
Dr. John C. Rao
Just as positive and negative influences may
be indicated in the growth of the
Americanist attitude, a two-fold set of
factors is responsible for the evolution of the
opposing position. Hostility to Americanism
was certainly due to fears of its effects upon
the corpus of Catholic teachings and the
practices of the faithful. It was also the
product of a certain jealousy of the
successes of the Americanist leaders in
mainstream society in this country.
Moreover, German ethnic pride and sense of
cultural superiority may also have played
their role irrespective of the substantive
issues involved.
The Americanists were probably right in
insisting upon the need for wholehearted
Catholic involvement in American society.
Catholicism does, after all, have a vision of
full participation in all forms of community
life. It is not healthy for Catholics to retreat
from this vision. When they do so retreat,
they have a tendency to create substitute
communities that temporarily protect them
from the reality around them but which
cannot shut it out permanently. They
become sectarian in their behavior,
sometimes even psychologically ill, like so
many Protestant cultists. When this retreat
takes place within an already Protestant
environment, such as that of the United
States, the potential for madness is
incalculable. The existence of a non-
Catholic society is always a tragedy, and one
which mutilates many of the best efforts to
deal with it. It is conceivable that a complete
victory of the anti-Americanists could have
entailed the development of a true ghetto
mentality with unpredictable heterodox side
effects. It is also conceivable that it might
have left the Church in the United States as
a set of colonial churches dependent upon
foreign governments and traditions, thus
arousing quite rational nativist fears.
Nevertheless, the enthusiasm and the type of
arguments with which the Americanists
promoted the difficult enterprise of making
contact with American society indicate their
unsuitability for the task. It seems to be
fairly clear that a desire to “fit in” to
American life caused them to be very blithe
about the dangers of “slippage” from the
Faith; that the Americanists themselves, in
displaying their “patriotism”, began to
espouse the “religion” of the United States;
and that, finally, adoption of this false
patriotic religion began to make them bend
Catholicism to the demands of the drab,
Pluralist culture around them. In other
words, they were conquered by
Americanism and became spokesmen for
their conqueror.
IV. The Opposing Camps
Americanist spokesmen encouraged any
number of sensitive contacts with non-
Catholics that radically increased the chance
of a break with the Church. They rejected
demands for foreign language parishes for
immigrants and an ethnic sharing of
bishoprics, regardless of the fact that a
sudden immersion in Anglo-Saxon culture
might mean a drowning in Protestantism as
well. Some urged newly-arrived Catholics to
abandon the city centers for a countryside
where anti-Romanism reigned supreme.
Major Americanist figures seem to have
been embarrassed at the idea of a separate
Catholic school system, preferring state
education supplemented by religious
instruction. What of the prolonged exposure
of school children to teachers trained in
hostility to Catholicism? They saw the
problem as being an exaggerated one.
While nervous of Catholic lower education,
they dreamed of a national Catholic
university, the present Catholic University
of America, which became a reality during
the 1880’s and 1890’s. This was envisioned
by them as a tool for breaking out of the
ghetto, as an instrument for encouraging
educated Catholic contribution to American
civilization in a spirit of friendship. But
what of the national culture’s penchant for
unanimity and the probability that
“friendship” would transform the Catholic
intelligentsia into yet another group of
mindless adulators of the Pluralist party
line? And were there no dangers to the
Americanist call for Catholic and non-
Catholic cooperation in labor unions? Could
workers’ interests be so clinically separated
from their personal beliefs that a man’s
atheism, Protestantism, or Catholicism did
not shade them in any significant fashion?
Americanists, as already noted, were largely
motivated to urge these contacts because of
their “patriotism” and because they believed
that they were a practical necessity. They
were enthusiastic, both in public and in
private, in their gratitude towards the United
States for what they felt that the Catholic
peoples had gained here. They tried to
demonstrate to Catholics the practical use
that they could make out of American
separation of Church and State. They sought
to convince other Americans that full
Catholic participation in national life would
strengthen this country still further. Once the
United States entered the race for colonies,
many Americanists became fervent
Imperialists. The Spanish-American War
was crucial to them, both as a means of
displaying their patriotism as well as for the
chance it gave to underline the value of the
Catholic contribution to the common cause.
Alas! Americanists, like other Americans,
were seduced into confusing true patriotism
with devotion to the religion of atomism,
democracy and Pluralism. They were led
from the practical acceptance and use of the
unique American experience into its
glorification as a superior good in and of
itself. This adoption of the secular religion
described in the previous section can be seen
in endless statements and symbolic actions
during the lat twenty years of the nineteenth
century. It is best summarized in a
biography of Fr. Isaac Hecker (1819-1888),
founder of the Paulists, which will be
discussed in further detail below.
Several examples will suffice to illustrate
my point. Because they had begun to
become atomists in the Puritan sense,
Americanists were often not alarmed at the
prospect of enticing Catholic immigrants
away from the cities. They saw America as a
place wherein individuals no longer needed
the superficial aids of past Catholic
communities. Older Catholic cultures were
“weak”, and, hence, understandably more
dependent upon authority, spiritual directors,
miracles and other religious manifestations
to keep up their spirit. They were “passive”
in character. No wonder that they
appreciated “passive” virtues, like
obedience, and developed so many religious
orders maintained by life-long vows and
disciplinary methods.
Now, however, America had created the
potential for developing strong individuals
who could be “active” instead of “passive”,
who were “doers” instead of obedient
servants. The Holy Spirit poured Himself
out directly to self-reliant American
individuals in a way that He did not wish to
do with passive Europeans. Hence, they
could dispense with certain of the
authoritative, visible aids that other Catholic
peoples required. As one American
archbishop said at Lourdes, there were no
appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary in
the United States because Americans did not
need them. Individual Catholic Americans
could survive more fruitfully than those
wrapped up in the community-rich,
medieval European setting. Unfortunately,
he did not understand that they would be
living off of the diminishing capital of the
past as they stripped themselves of all
reference to it.