John Locke on Tolerating "Papists"

From the Smithsonian Magazine website:

Every so often an unknown letter or document signed by Locke is found, but identifying a substantive work is extremely rare. The manuscript also reveals something new about Locke. “Locke is supposed to have never tolerated Catholics,” Walmsley tells Alison Flood at The Guardian. “All his published work suggested that he would never even consider this as a possibility. This manuscript shows him taking an initial position that’s startling for him and for thinkers of his time—next to no one suggested this at this point. It shows him to be much more tolerant in certain respects than was ever previously supposed.”

This work was written before “A Letter Concerning Toleration,” one of the essays that led Thomas Jefferson to advocate for the separation of church and state in the U.S. Constitution. Many of the ideas found in the letter are proposed in the newly discovered manuscript. “This manuscript is the origin and catalyst for momentous and foundational ideas of western liberal democracy – which did include Catholics,” Walmsley argues.

Political scientist Cole Simmons says that the manuscript, which is in the form of two lists, shows Locke brainstorming. “Everyone kind of has down that Locke doesn’t and isn’t willing to tolerate Catholics, so the surprising thing is that he entertained tolerating Catholics for some time,” Simmons explains in the press release. “But the reasons for tolerating and not tolerating are very Lockean, in either respect: When he gives reasons for tolerating Catholics, all of the reasons are to the prince’s interest—basically, if [toleration] can benefit the Commonwealth or the prince, you should tolerate Catholics. And the second list is ‘if not tolerating Catholics will benefit the prince or the Commonwealth, you shouldn’t tolerate Catholics.’”

Here is an image of the document from St. John's College. Here is a link to an article about the document in The Historical Journal published by Cambridge University Press. National Review provides more context in calling for a revival in "Lockean Liberalism".

Some materials to read and ponder. 

Why Was England So Slow to Embrace Religious Toleration?

When Hilaire Belloc described the goals of Cardinal Richelieu to make his king and his nation strong, secure, and united, he cited Richelieu's view that a country could be divided in religion and still maintain unity. Both Catholics and Protestants in France could be loyal subjects and participate in the governance and the community of the kingdom. Richelieu wanted to reduce the power of some Huguenot leaders, because his young king--remember that Henry IV was assassinated while Louis XIII was a child--was in danger of a permanent loss of power:

He had noticed how during his own youth the great nobles and especially the great Protestant nobles were black- mailing and weakening the Crown, after the assassination of Henry IV. The worst culprit was old Sully, who went off with enormous loot as the fruit of threats to aid civil war against the Queen Regent. The King, the heir of Henry IV, was only a boy, under the title of Louis XIII; until he should be of age his mother, Marie de Medici, a violent but unpractical woman, was left in control. The result was that the rich could do pretty well what they liked. The Protestant nobles and the large Protestant middle class of the towns took full advantage of this position. It will be remembered that Henry IV, by the Edict of Nantes, had allowed them to hold a number of strong walled cities and to govern them as a sort of State within the State, and had also permitted them to call national assemblies of their faction, which were a perpetual menace to the central power of the King. Richelieu saw that the first thing to be done if the Crown was to be saved, its power increased and thereby the whole nation consolidated, was to take away these dangerous special favours, and treat the Huguenots like everybody else. He was determined when he came to power that there should no longer be a realm within the realm, and a rival power strong enough to threaten the monarchy. 

But by so much as he was determined upon this was he also determined upon the fullest toleration for Calvinism. Richelieu was the first of that long line of public men from his day to ours to treat religious difference as a private matter, and to believe that one can have a united country without unity of religion. James I of England, as we have seen, had some such idea at the back of his head; but he never really put it into practice, for the hatred and fear of the Catholic Church of the great land-owners his subjects, whose fortunes had come from the loot of the Church, was too strong for him. And what is more, the great landowners proved in the long run too strong for the English Crown, and destroyed it, substituting their own two assemblies, the House of Commons and the House of Lords, known as "Parliament," for the old popular kingship of England. Richelieu saw the menace, though it had not fully developed in his own time, and he was determined that France should follow the opposite course. It is therefore due to him not only that France became politically united as a strong monarchy, but also that the peasantry won the long battle with the noble classes and became the main owners of the soil of France; whereas in England the noble classes, that is the squires, ate up the peasantry and became the main owners of the soil themselves.

Even after he had destroyed the Huguenot power center and completed the siege of La Rochelle, for example, Richelieu maintained the Edict of Nantes:

All the more was Calvinism tolerated as a religion. In that very lifetime which saw priests butchered in England after the cruel fashion for which the Puritans were openly responsible during their period of power, Calvinism in Catholic France was perfectly free. It had no martyrs and suffered no persecution. 

And Huguenots could be doctors, lawyers, own property, travel freely, visit Paris, etc--while Catholics in England had many restrictions against them and had to pay crippling fines.

Of course, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, but nevertheless, the French monarchy had adopted religious tolerance as an acceptable administrative policy within his kingdom and both Catholics and Protestants were trusted--as much as a monarch ever trusts his subjects' loyalty--to be loyal subjects. But in England at the same time, Catholics were not trusted as loyal subjects because of their faith. The English monarchy presumed that any Catholic, unless he denied his religious allegiance to the Pope (abjured his faith and was no longer a Catholic) was a traitor or an imminently potential traitor, plotting or liable to plotting against the king.

Why did France progress for a generation at least into a more modern, tolerant view of religion in their country than England did?

Belloc would say it was because the land-owning nobility and upper class  in England, exemplified by the Cecils (father and son), would not permit the monarch to adopt even so much toleration as to allow Catholics to attend the Mass freely. James I promised a measure of toleration to Catholics at Court when he wanted to marry his son Charles to Catholic princesses of Spain and France, but the promises were never completely kept. He still enforced his Oath of Allegiance, had the recusancy fines levied, and restricted Catholics from taking full part in English society.

I'd suggest that the English monarchy was stuck on the issue of the papacy and never could separate the religious and regal aspects of the papal office at the time. The pope was a monarch as well as the Vicar of Christ. James I could not accept Catholic loyalty to the pope and even would have limited the spiritual authority of the papacy if Catholics had accepted the Oath of Allegiance. English leadership could not imagine a nation in which subjects or citizens would not be Protestant. What a lack of progress, a complete denial of the Whig view of British history--and they wouldn't catch up until 1829!

Blogging about Blogging: The Quebec Act @ NCReg

So this is a meta blog post, posting about another blog post at the National Catholic Register: a follow-up with background to explain why Fanny Allen's mother and stepfather were so worried about her going to Catholic Canada:

This fear of Catholics and of Canadian Catholics in particular had deep colonial roots in the French and Indian War (part of the Seven Years’ War fought between France and England in several colonial territories) and the 1774 Quebec Act. Great Britain, with help from their British colonists in North America, won the war in 1763 and had obtained the French territory of Quebec in Canada. The colonists were pleased with the defeat of Catholic France.

Eleven years later, Parliament passed the Quebec Act, integrating the former French colony into British Canada. American colonists were not pleased with many of the decisions reached by Parliament. Although the issue of religious liberty among Protestants was tremendously important in the revolutionary period, as Thomas S. Kidd recounts in God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (Basic Books, 2012), American Protestants did not think that Catholics should be free to practice their faith.

The Quebec Act allowed Catholics in Canada, unlike Catholics in England or other British colonies, not only to practice their faith freely, but to serve in government offices without taking an oath that denied their faith. Catholics in England, Scotland and Ireland could not serve in political office because they would have had to deny the Real Presence in the Eucharist (which the government called Transubstantiation), the invocation of saints, and the authority of the pope. Catholics in Canada could simply swear loyalty to King George III.

In the background for all the British American colonists, even those in Pennsylvania, like Benjamin Franklin (picture in the fur hat that he procured in Canada and that became such a fashion statement in Paris), the specter of James II--and the more remote horrors of the Gunpowder Plot, the Spanish Armada and even the fires of Smithfield--dominated their view of Catholics and the Papacy. Franklin, with his career in Pennsylvania, should have known a little about William Penn's support of James II's efforts to bring religious toleration to England. His speaking and campaigning for the Act of Toleration got Penn in trouble: he was imprisoned and accused of being a Papist!

Book Review: "Papist Devils"

As mankind become more liberal they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protection of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of justice and liberality. And I presume that your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution, and the establishment of their government; or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Roman Catholic faith is professed.

--George Washington to prominent Catholics who congratulated him

on his election as the first President of the United States, March 15, 1790

Robert Emmett Curran may cover some of the same ground at Papist Patriots in his telling of the history of Catholics in Maryland, but by examining the Catholic populations of the British West Indies and other colonies like New York and Pennsylvania he broadens the range of this study:

This is a brief [320 pages] highly readable history of the Catholic experience in British America, which shaped the development of the colonies and the nascent republic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Historian Robert Emmett Curran begins his account with the English reformation, which helps us to understand the Catholic exodus from England, Ireland, and Scotland that took place over the nearly two centuries that constitute the colonial period. The deeply rooted English understanding of Catholics as enemies of the political and religious values at the heart of British tradition, ironically acted as a catalyst for the emergence of a Catholic republican movement that was a critical factor in the decision of a strong majority of American Catholics in 1775 to support the cause for independence.

Papist Devils utilizes archival material, newspapers, and other contemporary records in addition to a broad array of general histories, monographs, and dissertations dealing with the British Atlantic world.The unprecedentedly broad scope of this study, which encompasses not only the thirteen colonies that took up arms against Britain in 1775, but also those in the maritime provinces of Canada as well as the ones in the West Indies, constitutes a unique coverage of the British Catholic colonial experience, as does the extension of the colonial period through the American Revolution, which was its logical dénouement.

He clearly demonstrates the long reach of the English Reformation and its penal laws against Catholics, Catholic priests, and the Catholic Mass. There was a constant tension between Catholics and Anglicans and other Protestants even in those colonies founded expressly to allow religious liberty, Maryland and New York. I think we forget what "York" represents in that name: James, the Duke of York, Charles II's Catholic convert brother and heir. The long recusant period had inspired a longing for religious freedom in Catholics and a continued suspicion and hatred of Catholics in Anglicans and Protestant dissenters from the Church of England. Catholics in British America inherited the legacy of English fear of them as disloyal, dangerous, and conspiratorial--and as enemies of freedom! Hatred and fear lead to paranoia and bigotry of course, and the Catholics of Maryland and New York soon found themselves disenfranchised and penalized for their faith.

When the British Parliament recognized the freedom of Catholics in French Canada to practice their faith (the Quebec Act), British Americans regarded this as an act of tyranny. But it was through French Canada that British Americans began to change their minds a little about Catholics--because they needed Catholics to reach out to Quebec to join the revolution. Benjamin Franklin, enlightened Catholic hater though he was, found out by going to Quebec with Charles Carroll of Carrolton and his cousin Father John Carroll that Catholics are human beings. Franklin was touched by John Carroll's concern for him when he fell ill. Although the mission failed, George Washington had forbidden the celebration of Pope Day (Guy Fawkes Day) on the 5th of November, pointing out that it made little sense to attack the spiritual leader of possible French Catholic allies. The support of French and Polish Catholic military leaders extended the ban on burning the Pope in effigy.

It almost seems miraculous that Catholics were finally allowed to participate in the founding of the United States of America, based on the history of anti-Catholic prejudice in the British American colonies. In the West Indies, that fear and hatred was focused on the Irish indentured servants, temporary slaves of the sugar plantations, and those Irish who had been sent into true slavery during the English Civil War and Cromwell's campaigns in Ireland. Their land had been confiscated, their families divided, and they were branded, sometimes literally, as felons and slaves. With the African slaves brought to the West Indies, they sometimes resisted the cruelty of the great planters and then were ruthlessly put down and punished.

On the Continent, the Seven Years War/French and Indian War inspired more anti-Catholic fervor with the French as enemies, and the horrible dispersal of the French Catholic Acadians of Nova Scotia was hailed as a great British accomplishment! Fear of Catholic conspiracies against the British Empire in time of war was exacerbated by evangelical ministers like the cross-eyed George Whitfield, friend of Charles and John Wesley, during the first Great Awakening. He saw the Seven Years War as a vast Catholic wing conspiracy against Protestantism (Arminian or not). Wherever Catholics congregated in significant numbers they were suspected of some conspiracy against British forces in the field of battle, and Catholics were harassed, attacked, and taxed at a higher rate.

The irony is that because the Pope did not take sides in the American Revolution, Catholics were free to choose which side to support--some were Loyalists, fighting for King George--but Commodore John Barry exemplifies the contribution Catholics made to the war. While British Americans had regarded the Catholic Church as the source and summit of tyranny in the world, Catholics supported them in their efforts to throw off tyranny! Pardon the anachronism, but it must have blown their minds!

Curran narrates this story and its surprising conclusion vividly and clearly, describing conflicts, personalities, and events throughout British American history. The bibliography is excellent and the book is well illustrated. Highly recommended.

Speaking of Coincidences! Two Champions of Religious Toleration Born

Two allies in the effort to bring religious toleration and freedom of conscience to England were born on the same date, in 1633 and 1644, respectively: James, the Duke of York (later James II) and William Penn, the Quaker founder of Pennsylvania.

On October 14, 1633, King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria welcomed the birth of their second son and third child, further securing the succession. James was titled the Duke of York. During the English Civil War he was captured by Fairfax but escaped to Holland.

He served in the armies of France and of Spain while on the Continent after the fall of the monarchy and the execution of his father. He secretly married Anne Hyde, the daughter of Lord Clarendon in 1660, but continued his womanizing ways. Anne bore him two daughters, Mary and Anne. When Charles II returned to England and the throne, James became the Lord High Admiral and declared himself a Catholic in 1672.

Anne Hyde, the Duchess of York had also become a Catholic and died in 1671--James then married Mary Beatrice of Modena, a Catholic Italian princess.

 

Of course, the crucial event of his life--at least as it influenced his reign--was the birth of his only son, James Francis Edward on June 10, 1688. In combination with his efforts to make religious toleration and freedom of conscience the law the in England, this birth of a Catholic prince led to the Glorious Revolution, as his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange deposed him in 1688.

His reputation for courage in battle suffered after the invasion of William of Orange. He panicked and fled for France. Before the Battle of the Boyne he suffered nose bleeds and did not execute a successful battle plan. The Encyclopedia Britannica in 1910 offered this harsh assessment:

"The political ineptitude of James is clear; he often showed firmness when conciliation was needful, and weakness when resolution alone could have saved the day. Moreover, though he mismanaged almost every political problem with which he personally dealt, he was singularly tactless and impatient of advice. But in general political morality he was not below his age, and in his advocacy of toleration decidedly above it. He was more honest and sincere than Charles II, more genuinely patriotic in his foreign policy, and more consistent in his religious attitude. That his brother retained the throne while James lost it is an ironical demonstration that a more pitiless fate awaits the ruler whose faults are of the intellect, than one whose faults are of the heart."

The line, "But in general political morality he was not below his age, and in his advocacy of toleration decidedly above it" does give James the credit he deserves although it does not go far enough. James did not just advocate toleration or tolerance; his Declaration of Indulgence addresses freedom of conscience for his subjects.

Also, as I have alluded to Edward Corps' The Court in Exile before, he seems to have repented both for the moral harm he did in being unfaithful to both his wives and for the political errors he made in ruling while he lived in France at St. Germain-en-Laye. James became prayerful and devout, and more sincerely lived up to his religious beliefs.

 

James II's ally in the campaign for religious liberty and freedom of conscience was William Penn, born on November 14 in 1644. He was an early Quaker leader, the founder of Pennsylvania, and, in a way, the founder of Philadelphia, according to this wikipedia article. On October 21, 1692William and Mary removed him from the governorship of Pennsylvania, accusing him of being a Papist--all because he had worked with James II on religious freedom in England.

Making Toleration and "The Glorious Revolution"

From Harvard University Press. Definitely a new view of James II and his efforts to promote the Declaration of Indulgence for religious toleration:

In the reign of James II, minority groups from across the religious spectrum, led by the Quaker William Penn, rallied together under the Catholic King James in an effort to bring religious toleration to England. Known as repealers, these reformers aimed to convince Parliament to repeal laws that penalized worshippers who failed to conform to the doctrines of the Church of England. Although the movement was destroyed by the Glorious Revolution, it profoundly influenced the post-revolutionary settlement, helping to develop the ideals of tolerance that would define the European Enlightenment.

Based on a rich array of newly discovered archival sources, Scott Sowerby’s groundbreaking history rescues the repealers from undeserved obscurity, telling the forgotten story of men and women who stood up for their beliefs at a formative moment in British history. By restoring the repealer movement to its rightful prominence, Making Toleration also overturns traditional interpretations of King James II’s reign and the origins of the Glorious Revolution. Though often depicted as a despot who sought to impose his own Catholic faith on a Protestant people, James is revealed as a man ahead of his time, a king who pressed for religious toleration at the expense of his throne. The Glorious Revolution, Sowerby finds, was not primarily a crisis provoked by political repression. It was, in fact, a conservative counter-revolution against the movement for enlightened reform that James himself encouraged and sustained.

Table of Contents

Note to Readers
Introduction

1. Forming a Movement: James and the Repealers
2. Writing a New Magna Carta: The Ideology of Repeal
3. Fearing the Unknown: Anti-Popery and Its Limits
4. Taking Sides: The Three Questions Survey
5. Seizing Control: The Repealers in the Towns
6. Countering a Movement: The Seven Bishops Trial
7. Dividing a Nation: The Geography of Repeal
8. Dancing in a Ditch: Anti-Popery and the Revolution
9. Enacting Toleration: The Repealers and the Enlightenment

Appendix: A List of Repealer Publications
Abbreviations
Notes
Manuscripts Consulted
Acknowledgments
Index

This book, which I have ordered, should be an excellent rebuttal to works like Michael Barone's tedious and tendentious Our First Revolution, which somehow ignores the anti-Catholic legislation of the Glorious Revolution and the overturning of religious tolerance in Colonial Maryland while claiming that "the Revolutionary settlement was also a step forward for religious liberty". (Barone does add the caveat that the step forward did not include Catholics or Quakers, so it was a tiny step.) You might remember that I've mentioned William Penn's support of James II's toleration before and commented on the limited tolerance granted by the Glorious Revolution's Act of Toleration here.

Pilgrims and Park Rangers; Burning Books and Remembering

Image Catholic Books sent me a copy of The Right to be Wrong: Ending the Culture War over Religion in America by Kevin Seamus Hasson, the founder and chairman of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, in connection to a book giveaway, and for my opinion of the book.

I found it to be fascinating read because 1) it made connections for me with my study of the English Reformation and its aftermath, including the affects of religious matters in England on colonial New England, and 2) I was reading--I think for the first time ever!--Fahreinheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, and again, the conflict that Hasson frames by using the Pilgrims on one side and the Park Rangers on the other side of the religious culture war in 21st century America resonated for me. It seemed to me that whoever was in charge of things in Bradbury's dystopia, they were both Pilgrims and Park Rangers, using entertainment and distraction to control people--with a message of nothingness and a public square empty of thought and freedom.

I liked Hasson's use of history to present his argument, at first focused on the Pilgrims, the Puritan and Pilgrim English emigrants who left their homeland to found colonies where THEY could practice their religion freely--but no one else could practice any different faith. Then he introduces the Park Rangers, mostly by citing different court cases, who don't want ANYONE to practice ANY faith in the public square. Along the way, Hasson identifies another crucial difference: between government toleration of different religion(s) and government recognition and protection of the human right to religious freedom. He even cites what I have regarded as the Calvert's Maryland colonial experiment in religious freedom and recognition of religious plurality as a case of toleration, because it was not grounded in the Lords Baltimore recognizing the basic human freedom of conscience and religious practice, but in their more limited view that their governance could arrange this toleration and plurality--so much so, that as I noted from Papist Patriots, they limited free speech, with a list of names the colonists could not call each other. Hasson continues this discussion of tolerance vs. freedom's rights through the history of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and the application of those rights in the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.

On my Radio Maria US radio show on October 13, I discussed this difference between tolerance and freedom of religion in the context of the Emancipation of English Catholics in 1829, which was not a recognition of human freedom but a legal removal of penal and recusant burdens. The proof of that--which I understood more fully after reading Hasson's book--is the restrictions on Jesuit and other orders Parliament included in the Act. The government gave freedom with one hand and took it away with the other!

From the Becket Fund website:

Becket Fund founder Seamus Hasson’s definitive book on religious liberty is now available for purchase in paperback.

Heralded by many as “the best discussion of religious liberty” available, “The Right to Be Wrong” offers an invaluable–and easy to read–examination of the fundamental right of all people to maintain the right to be wrong.

After 20 years of defending the free expression of nearly every religious tradition imaginable: Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs, Native Americans and even Zoroastrians, Hasson dissects stories from both his career at the Becket Fund and American history that illustrate the trenches of the religious liberty culture war.

In one corner are the “Pilgrims,” referencing the early Americans of Plymouth Colony who “thought only the truth was permissible in public” and so restricted the rights of those who disagreed with their definition of truth. In the other corner are “Park Rangers,” a nick-name (with a hilarious back-story) for bureacrats and organizations who think freedom means erasing beliefs from the public square, no matter how harmless.

Pilgrims and Park Rangers, in one form or another, have fought over the place of faith in society since the founding of our country. To end this culture war we must, as Hasson thoroughly points out, defend the free expression of all faiths, even if we disagree with them. “On any given day, I think most of my clients are wrong,” he says in the book’s introduction. “But I firmly believe that, in an important sense, they have the right to be wrong.”

This is the bedrock principle of the Becket Fund, and precisely the reason why we have become the premiere religious liberty law firm for defending the free expression of all, regardless of faith or conviction. To us, there is no better way than this.

I appreciated Hasson's argument and am still thinking about his final discussion of how we can have "a right to be wrong", which he also expresses in the context of The Becket Fund's efforts: “On any given day, I think most of my clients are wrong.  But I firmly believe that, in an important sense, they have the right to be wrong.” This is a provocative statement and Hasson avers that he can believe it without adopting what Blessed John Henry Newman would call the "anti-dogmatic principle of liberalism in religion" aka relativism:

Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with any recognition of any religion, as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, for all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a taste; not an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy. Devotion is not necessarily founded on faith. Men may go to Protestant Churches and to Catholic, may get good from both and belong to neither. They may fraternise together in spiritual thoughts and feelings, without having any views at all of doctrine in common, or seeing the need of them. Since, then, religion is so personal a peculiarity and so private a possession, we must of necessity ignore it in the intercourse of man with man. If a man puts on a new religion every morning, what is that to you? It is as impertinent to think about a man’s religion as about his sources of income or his management of his family. Religion is in no sense the bond of society.

I think what Newman describes as liberalism in religion ends up in the toleration of religion that Hasson identifies as an ineffective response to religious plurality. Hasson develops an argument that religion is "[a] bond of society" because human beings by nature are religious (for example, when we celebrate something--say Christmas--we want to celebrate publicly, not in hiding as though Puritan soldiers were searching for violations of Parliament's law against Christmas). Hasson argues that we cannot ignore religion "in the intercourse of man with man" and he certainly wants us and urges us to get beyond government merely tolerating different religious practice--it's a fascinating dilemma.

More on Fahrenheit 451 tomorrow.

"The English Reformation Today" Podcasts

After the live Saturday broadcast of "The English Reformation Today", Radio Maria US repeats the show on Wednesday morning, and then the most recent podcast is uploaded to this page on their website.

Saturday, September 8's episode was the first part of a two part discussion of the reign of Elizabeth I and what it meant for Catholics in the 16th century:

Describe the legislation that established the Church of England as a via media compromise between Calvinism and Catholicism (The Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles). Catholic Reaction: The Northern Rebellion.The controversial excommunication of Elizabeth I by Pope St. Pius V--casting suspicion on all Catholics in England and leading to recusancy and martyrdom. Stories of early martyrs like St. Edmund Campion and St. Margaret Clitherow.

The most relevant issue today of the episode is the issue of divided loyalty and obedience to authority. To whom did English Catholics owe their homage? Their queen or the pope? For some reason--and this would be an interesting research project--the sixteenth century political order could not apply Jesus's Gospel admonition to render unto Caesar what was Caesar's and to God what is God's to the vision of a united polity. In the sixteenth century there was little or no notion of diversity or certainly plurality. Throughout Europe the motto cuius regno, eius religio (the religion of the ruler was the religion of the ruled) prevailed. The pope's position as a temporal ruler of the Papal States also confused the issue: were Catholics being loyal to their own nation or to a foreign power? The English government was convinced that Catholics could not be loyal to England even temporally if they were loyal to Rome even spiritually.

Now, our situation in the United States has parallels but some important distinctions too: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been pointing out since January this year, through the Fortnight for Freedom and even into the current political season, that religous liberty has been endangered by the U. S. Government through the HHS Contraceptive, Abortafacient, and Sterilization Mandate--especially because of the limited definition of a religious organization AND the lack of an opt-out conscience clause. Like the English Catholics of the sixteenth century, Catholic business owners, for example, have to choose between two loyalties, between their Church doctrine and the US Government law--if they wish to be faithful to God and His Church's teachings, they cannot comply with the state's new demands for loyalty. They will not suffer blood martyrdom, but they will be fined; they can fight the law in the Courts, but their risk is great. The most important distinction is that Catholics in the U.S.A. as citizens have opportunities/rights to campaign for change through legislation, the justice system, and the electoral system: Elizabeth I's Catholic subjects did not have these opportunities.

English Catholics pressed for a view that they were temporally loyal to Elizabeth I but spiritually loyal to Pope Pius V, and their respective successors. Elizabeth I, because of her instability on the throne, could not accept that view, although it was expressed by many of the Catholic martyrs even as they faced death--they could accept her as monarch but not as governor of the church in England. And then there came the "bloody question": when it came to armed conflict or invasion, with whom would they side, England or attacking Catholic power. That's the crucial question coming up in the next episode when we look at the Spanish Armada or the plots against Elizabeth I to replace her on the throne with Mary, the former Queen of Scots.

This Saturday, Sepember 15's episode will conclude the discussion of Elizabeth and introduce the new dynasty, the Stuarts of Scotland. By focusing on the two dangers to Elizabeth's throne, we'll also see the result of this divided loyality--even when Catholics DID support their country when facing invasion, they were punished by the state and when Catholics despaired of receiving any tolerance for their Faith in their own country, they turned to desparate measures, hoping for a change in leadership as the only means of relief:

Explain the two great dangers to Elizabeth and how they affected Catholics: her rivalry with Mary, Queen of Scots and the Spanish Armada (plots led by Catholics to depose Elizabeth and replace her with Mary on England's throne and the Catholic position on the Spanish Armada). Describe the wave of martyrdoms of Catholic priests and laity after the Armada: why are they martyrs?  Describe the end of the Tudor dynasty and the transition to the Stuart dynasty--the status of Catholics in 1603.

Once the Elizabethan government designated all Catholic priests as traitors and most Catholic laymen as potential traitors, a long-lived anti-Catholicism developed in England: a prejudice that certainly emigrated from England to New England in the 17th century.

St. Thomas More's Importance Today

"Blessed Thomas More is important today, but he is not as important now as he will be in one hundred years from today", G.K. Chesterton said in 1929.

He was only 17 years off. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has chosen St. Thomas More as a Patron of Religious Freedom and used his visage on a holy card with a prayer for religious freedom. There might be some historical difficulty there, however, since Thomas More, as Chancellor of England enforced the heresy laws as Henry VIII intended. England had heresy laws on the books from the Lollard era (first passed as law in 1401 during the reign of Henry VI); More, like most of his contemporaries, had no idea of religious plurality or of absolute religious freedom. Like Henry VIII, More believed that the State had a role in defending religious truth and thus, in his brief tenure as Chancellor, he enforced the heresy laws.
Blessed John Paul II might have thought Chesterton was about 29 years off, because he proclaimed St. Thomas More the Patron Saint of Statesmen and Politicians in the year 2000:

There are many reasons for proclaiming Thomas More Patron of statesmen and people in public life. Among these is the need felt by the world of politics and public administration for credible role models able to indicate the path of truth at a time in history when difficult challenges and crucial responsibilities are increasing. Today in fact strongly innovative economic forces are reshaping social structures; on the other hand, scientific achievements in the area of biotechnology underline the need to defend human life at all its different stages, while the promises of a new society — successfully presented to a bewildered public opinion — urgently demand clear political decisions in favour of the family, young people, the elderly and the marginalized.

In this context, it is helpful to turn to the example of Saint Thomas More, who distinguished himself by his constant fidelity to legitimate authority and institutions precisely in his intention to serve not power but the supreme ideal of justice. His life teaches us that government is above all an exercise of virtue. Unwavering in this rigorous moral stance, this English statesman placed his own public activity at the service of the person, especially if that person was weak or poor; he dealt with social controversies with a superb sense of fairness; he was vigorously committed to favouring and defending the family; he supported the all-round education of the young. His profound detachment from honours and wealth, his serene and joyful humility, his balanced knowledge of human nature and of the vanity of success, his certainty of judgement rooted in faith: these all gave him that confident inner strength that sustained him in adversity and in the face of death. His sanctity shone forth in his martyrdom, but it had been prepared by an entire life of work devoted to God and neighbour.

Referring to similar examples of perfect harmony between faith and action, in my Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici I wrote: "The unity of life of the lay faithful is of the greatest importance: indeed they must be sanctified in everyday professional and social life. Therefore, to respond to their vocation, the lay faithful must see their daily activities as an occasion to join themselves to God, fulfil his will, serve other people and lead them to communion with God in Christ" (No. 17).

This harmony between the natural and the supernatural is perhaps the element which more than any other defines the personality of this great English statesman: he lived his intense public life with a simple humility marked by good humour, even at the moment of his execution.

This was the height to which he was led by his passion for the truth. What enlightened his conscience was the sense that man cannot be sundered from God, nor politics from morality. As I have already had occasion to say, "man is created by God, and therefore human rights have their origin in God, are based upon the design of creation and form part of the plan of redemption. One might even dare to say that the rights of man are also the rights of God" (Speech, 7 April 1998).

And it was precisely in defence of the rights of conscience that the example of Thomas More shone brightly. It can be said that he demonstrated in a singular way the value of a moral conscience which is "the witness of God himself, whose voice and judgment penetrate the depths of man’s soul" (Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, 58), even if, in his actions against heretics, he reflected the limits of the culture of his time.

In the Constitution Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council notes how in the world today there is "a growing awareness of the matchless dignity of the human person, who is superior to all else and whose rights and duties are universal and inviolable" (No. 26). The life of Saint Thomas More clearly illustrates a fundamental truth of political ethics. The defence of the Church’s freedom from unwarranted interference by the State is at the same time a defence, in the name of the primacy of conscience, of the individual’s freedom vis-à-vis political power. Here we find the basic principle of every civil order consonant with human nature.

5. I am confident therefore that the proclamation of the outstanding figure of Saint Thomas More as Patron of Statesmen and Politicians will redound to the good of society. It is likewise a gesture fully in keeping with the spirit of the Great Jubilee which carries us into the Third Christian Millennium.

Therefore, after due consideration and willingly acceding to the petitions addressed to me, I establish and declare Saint Thomas More the heavenly Patron of Statesmen and Politicians, and I decree that he be ascribed all the liturgical honours and privileges which, according to law, belong to the Patrons of categories of people.

Blessed and glorified be Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of man, yesterday, today and for ever.

Given at Saint Peter’s, on the thirty-first day of October in the year 2000, the twenty-third of my Pontificate.

Remember that Margaret Giggs Clement, one of St. Thomas More's wards, died 35 years after his execution in Mechelen, now Belgium, where the More family had gone in exile during the reign of Elizabeth I.

Book Review: Papist Patriots, Part Two

To conclude my long review and analysis of Maura Jane Farrelly's Papist Patriots, I pick up at the middle of the book, with the fourth chapter:

Chapter 4, “Catholic Commitment in an Inhospitable Climate” is crucial for Farrelly’s second argument or purpose in this book, to demonstrate that Catholic laity developed a cisalpine attitude toward the Catholic Church hierarchy. She introduces that term in the Introduction, noting that Catholics in England, in attempting to prove their trustworthiness and loyalty to their nation and their king, sometimes expressed limitations on the temporal authority of the pope. In Chapter 1 she also addresses the divisions between Catholics, particularly between the Jesuits and the seminary clergy, about whether one could swear James I’s Oath of Allegiance. As the Society of Jesus was founded with obedience to the pope as a central purpose, they said Catholics couldn’t. Others, called the Appellants, even at the end of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, tried to argue that they could be loyal to both the Queen and the Pope, appealing to divisions between spiritual and temporal authority. What Farrelly tries to do in this chapter is extend that cisalpine spirit to issues of doctrine, devotion, and discipline, creating a conflict between the laity and the (mostly) Jesuit clergy in Maryland in the eighteenth century.

I think this attempt fails, partially because, reading it as a Catholic, I immediately noticed that Farrelly does not use the correct Catholic vocabulary when discussing devotions and the Sacraments. She refers to limited access to the Sacrament of Confession, for instance, by saying that the laity could not regularly “give their Confession”—that’s not what Catholics do: we “confess our sins”. Farrelly states that “The Church told Catholics that the Eucharist was a Sacrament and as such, it must be venerated.” The correct term for Catholics’ response to the Eucharist, the Real Presence of Jesus, is worship and adoration, not veneration. Latria, worship and adoration, is offered only to God; dulia (or hyper-dulia for the Blessed Virgin Mary) is the veneration Catholics offer saints. Furthermore, Farrelly tries to develop a conflict between the Eucharistic devotion Catholics in Maryland practiced in sodalities and the veneration (sic)—worship of the Mass and reception of Holy Communion. That does not work, especially since by the eighteenth century, Eucharistic adoration outside of Mass was a regular part of devotions throughout Catholic Europe. She sets up a control issue between laity and clergy, stating that the clergy tried to control the laity by encouraging certain devotions. Nathan Mitchell’s The Mystery of the Rosary: Marian Devotion and the Re-invention of Catholicism argues the opposite—that the development of Marian devotions, for example, demonstrates that Early Modern Catholicism offered the laity a great variety of spiritualities and prayers.

Farrelly also undercuts her own argument by showing how flexible the Jesuits were in addressing practical issues among the laity in the inhospitable climate of eighteenth century Maryland—dispensing them from fasts during particularly hard winter Lents, allowing work on Sunday during harvest, and understanding certain family issues on Fridays (not forcing Protestant servants or family members to abstain from meat). She even notes that the Jesuits serving in England would not permit these kinds of variations from Catholic disciplines and teaching—and they were in the same dependent circumstances, supported by and living with Catholic nobility. Certainly Catholic priests could not dispense Catholics from their Sunday obligation in usual circumstances, because Sunday worship is an indispensable part of being Catholic. And certainly Farrelly notes that Catholics often demonstrated their devotion to their faith, even choosing distinctly Catholic names for their children.

In chapters 5 and 6, Farrelly is back on surer historical footing. She analyzes different aspects of Anti-Catholicism in Anglican Maryland, as issues of English identity and a kind of knee-jerk reaction to the idea of Catholicism that exempted individual Catholics from condemnation. The exile of Jacobite rebels from Scotland after the Pretenders’ attempts in 1715 and 1745 revived fears of Catholics plotting against king and country and increased the tensions between Anglicans and Catholics, but Chapter 5 lives up to its title, “The Inconsistency of Intolerance.”

In Chapter 6, “Papists Become Patriots,” Farrelly continues to investigate the Carroll family, focusing of course on Charles Carroll of Carrollton and his efforts, again, to prove to the other Founding Fathers that Catholics could be loyal and true allies in the cause of independence. She covers the anti-Catholic reaction to The Quebec Act, by which King George III and his government, recognizing that the vast majority of the inhabitants of Quebec were Catholic, allowed the free practice of Catholicism there. Farrelly notes that the American colonists’ reaction to the Quebec Act was “overwrought” because George III did not establish the Catholicism as the official Church of Quebec--the Church received no funding, for example. But officials did not have to deny Transubstantiation in their Oath and citizens did not pay taxes to support the Church of England’s presence in Quebec. To those who wanted independence, The Quebec Act was another argument against the tyranny of England.

When His Most Christian (Catholic) Majesty, the King of France, Louis XVI sent troops and money to the revolutionary army, American patriots had to think about this seeming contradiction—they associated Catholicism with tyranny and yet here were Catholics helping them fight against tyranny! George Washington forbade the burning of the Pope in effigy on the Fifth of November: things were changing. Although the mission failed, Charles Carroll of Carrollton and his cousin, Father John Carroll, SJ (the Society of Jesus had been suppressed by the Holy See) went on a diplomatic mission to Montreal with Benjamin Franklin. Catholics could be trusted, after all.

Farrelly ends her history with the 1776 Constitution of Maryland, to which Charles Carroll, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence contributed. It disestablished the Church of England in Maryland and established freedom of religion for Catholics, and others. She summarizes her work by hinting at the shifts in “American Catholic identity” that would come as Irish, Italian, and German Catholic immigrants changed the difference expressions of Catholicism in the coming centuries. On balance, this is an intelligent and well-narrated view of this crucial experiment in religious liberty and its effects on American independence, with one weak effort to bolster part of the author’s argument with a faux conflict between laity and clergy over Eucharistic adoration and Church discipline.

Book Review: Papist Patriots, Part One

Book Review: Papist Patriots: The Making of American Catholic Identity by Maura Jane Farrelly

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
A Note on Spelling and Dates
Introduction
1. The English Origins of American Catholicism
2. Prescience, Pluralism, and Profit
3. Inconsistencies and Consequences
4. Catholic Commitment in an Inhospitable Climate
5. The Inconsistency of Intolerance
6. Papists Become Patriots
Notes
Index

I've written a rather long review and analysis of this book, so I've divided it into two posts: Part One covers the Introduction and  first three chapters:

Maura Jane Farrelly sets out to explore the only Catholic colony authorized by the Stuart monarchs in New England, Maryland, and its history’s effect on Catholics in Revolutionary America. Part of her purpose is to examine the issues of religious freedom and tolerance in Maryland before and after the fall of the Catholic Lords Baltimore, the Calvert fathers and sons who served as governors before the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The other argument she wants to make is that Maryland Catholics developed an independence from both English government and Church hierarchy control that prepared them to support the independence movement, even though they were not particularly welcomed by other founding fathers.

She succeeds completely with the first point, in my opinion. Tracing the legacy of English persecution of Catholics from the reign of Elizabeth I through to the strategies Catholic gentry and nobility developed to continue the practice of their faith, Farrelly aptly summarizes the history of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries in chapter 1, “The English Origins of American Catholicism”. She may be a little biased against the Jesuit mission in England, pointing out the limitations of its coverage throughout the country, and commenting on the relative ease of Jesuit priests living with noble Catholic families. I wonder about “relative ease” when the danger of discovery, arrest, imprisonment, and brutal execution was always present, since the priests’ very presence in England was considered not just illegal but treasonous. Father Robert Scully’s Into the Lion’s Den: The Jesuit Mission in Elizabethan England and Wales, 1580 to 1603 addresses this particular issue with more balanced and measured fairness. Nevertheless, the first chapter sets up the context of George Calvert’s life and career.

Chapters 2 and 3 recount the story of the Lords Baltimore and their efforts to found a colony in New England where Catholics would be free to practice their faith and priests would be able to serve them without fear of exile or death. George Calvert, the First Lord Baltimore (given that title by King James I) was a Catholic revert, having conformed to the established Church of England as a young lad of 12 when Yorkshire officials meddled in his education and his parents’ recusancy. John D. Krugler’s English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century is a great resource to these chapters, as Farrelly addresses the difficulties, successes and failures of religious toleration in Maryland, the second colony George Calvert managed to have approved before his death. (He first travelled to found Avalon in Canada, but found the climate and terrain inhospitable). She points out the dual purpose of the Maryland colony: making money and experimenting with religious liberty. Calvert’s heir, Cecil, or Cecilius as he became after his conversion to Catholicism, really managed—from a distance and with some trial and error—to find the balance his father had sought. Catholics were to be free to be in Maryland, but they were neither the majority nor the favored group in the colony. George Calvert had invited Jesuits priests to serve the Catholics and to be missionaries to the Native American Indians, but Cecilius Calvert had to work with the Jesuits to temper their enthusiasm for missionary efforts and make sure they were serving the Catholics. Catholics were to be free, but not to take such advantage of that freedom to oppress the Anglicans, who were the majority. Proselytizing was a delicate matter and although the Act of Toleration in Maryland codified religious liberty, it limited freedom of speech. Certain words were not to be spoken: the Calverts expected both tolerance and civility. Cecilius Calvert, the 2nd Lord Baltimore left the colony to his heir, Charles Calvert, who had been raised as a Catholic and was not as balanced and politique as his father.

But Farrelly also pays adequate attention to affairs in England, like the Civil War, the Interregnum, the Restoration of the Monarchy, and finally, the Glorious Revolution. The fortunes of the Calverts in Maryland—and of religious freedom—rose and fell with those events. The final fall came with the invasion of England by the Dutch, the deposition of the Catholic King James II, and the reign of William and Mary, the ultimate establishment of the Church of England in Maryland and the end of toleration for Catholics in their own colony.

Part Two tomorrow will cover the last three chapters of this interesting and important study of Maryland's contribution to religious liberty in the United States of America.

What are You Working on this Weekend?

I have two projects to work on this weekend, in addition to yard work, housework, shopping, and walking two demanding terriers! I'm working on a more expanded article on Blessed John Henry Newman and Conscience's rights and responsibilities, and an article to provide context for the two historical movies out now: one on the persecution of Catholics in 20th century Mexico and the other on the genocide of the Vendee during the French Revolution.

I'll let you know when they appear in print or on-line. Also, I hope you have a subscription to OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine, because I am going to have an article in the next issue (May/June) on the two types of saints in the Catholic Church--Martyrs and Confessors!

I am also thinking of joining this project in April, promoted by the Catholic Writers Guild, 30K for Christ, to write 30,000 words in April!

So what are you working on this weekend?

Charles Calvert, Third Baron Baltimore

Grandson of George Calvert, First Baron Baltimore and son of Cecilius Calvert, Second Lord Baltimore, Charles Calvert was born on August 27, 1637. He would succeed his father as Governor of Maryland in 1675, but he would lose the colony after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. His son, Benedict Leonard, Fourth Baron Baltimore, would become an Anglican to regain the family claim to Maryland but died only two months after Charles in 1715. Benedict's son Charles (the Fifth) received the governorship of the colony back from King George I. Unfortunately, Charles the Fifth's son Frederick would be the Sixth and last Baron Baltimore.

But back to today's birthday boy: Charles Calvert's mother was Anne Arundell, whose father was Thomas Arundell, the First Baron of Wardour, a Catholic nobleman who endured imprisonment and suspicion for his faith during Elizabeth I's reign. Charles' grandfather had reverted to the Catholicism of his youth when he resigned as King James I's Secretary of State in 1625 and then began the process of founding a colony on the North American continent that would allow religious freedom. His father Cecilius would implement that vision and Charles struggled to keep it alive.

John D. Krugler, writing about Charles Calvert's vissicitudes in Maryland in his book English and Catholic: The Lords Baltimore in the Seventeenth Century, notes that the Third Lord Baltimore was just not the diplomat and leader his father and grandfather had been. He may have been too complacent about the success of religious toleration and Catholicism in Maryland. What destroyed the great Maryland experiment in religious freedom was not Calvert's complacency, however, but England's anti-Catholicism. After the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the Anglicans in Maryland staged a coup, William and Mary took over the colony, and the Church of England became the official state church. Catholics were not permitted the freedom to worship and the usual round of penal laws imposed. Sad ending to a successful, though always delicate, effort to take the state out of the individual's choice of church and religion.