Constitution Day and the Two Catholic Signers of the Constitution

Today is Constitution Day in the U.S.A., a day we unfortunately do not celebrate with fireworks and bands as we do our Independence Day. While it is true that Independence Day is well worth celebrating because it signifies our nation's founding as an independent country, Constitution Day is even more worthy of celebration because it demonstrates what we did when establishing our nation, limiting the power of government and protecting the rights of individuals. Of course, our country had to develop the definition of who had those rights as citizens, but the Constitution is a magnificent document of rights and restraints.

Here is a link to the official website for Constitution Day, which includes profiles of Daniel Carroll and Thomas Fitzsimmons, the two Catholic signers of the Constitution. Carroll was the cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrolltown and brother of John Carroll, Jesuit priest (until the Society of Jesus was suppressed by the pope) and first Catholic bishop in the U.S.A.

Daniel Carroll (July 22, 1730 – July 5, 1796) was a politician and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a prominent member of one of America's great colonial families that included his cousin Charles Carroll of Carrollton who signed the Declaration of Independence, and his brother John Carroll who was the first Catholic bishop in the United States. He was one of only five men to sign both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States.

Carroll was a patrician planter who fused family honor with the cause of American independence, willingly risking his social and economic position in the community for the Patriot cause. Later, as a friend and staunch ally of George Washington, he worked for a strong central government which could secure the achievements and fulfill the hopes of the Revolution. Ironically, for one whose name was synonymous with the colonial aristocracy, Carroll fought in the Convention for a government responsible directly to the people of the country. . . .

He wanted governmental power vested in the people, and he joined James Wilson in campaigning for popular sovereignty. When it was suggested that the President should be elected by the Congress, it was Carroll, seconded by James Wilson, who moved that the words "by the legislature" be replaced with "by the people". His signature on the Constitution made him one of two Roman Catholics to sign the document, a further symbol of the advance of religious freedom in America during the Revolutionary period.

Carroll did not arrive at the Constitutional Convention until July 9, but thereafter he attended quite regularly. He spoke about 20 times during the debates and served on the Committee on Postponed Matters. Returning to Maryland after the convention, he campaigned for ratification of the Constitution but was not a delegate to the state convention.

Thomas Fitzsimmons was also born in Ireland:

Thomas Fitzsimons (1741–1811) was an American merchant and statesman of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He represented Pennsylvania in the Continental Congress, the Constitutional Convention, and the U.S. Congress. Fitzsimons was born in Ireland around 1741. By 1760 he had immigrated to Philadelphia, and began work as a clerk in a mercantile house. He married Catherine Meade on November 23, 1761 and formed a business partnership with her brother George. Their firm specialized in the West Indies trade, and would operate successfully for over 41 years.

As the Revolution neared, he supported the Whig position. Early in the Revolutionary War he served as captain of a company of home guards, but the only report of their actions was to support the regular troops for the Battle of Trenton in 1776. Later in the war he provided supplies, ships, and money in support of Pennsylvania’s forces.

Fitzsimons entered active politics as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1782 and 1783. He was a member of Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives in 1786 and 1787. He was also a delegate to the U.S. Constitutional Convention in 1787. Although not a leading member of that convention, he did support a strong national government, opposed slavery, and favored giving the Congress powers to tax import and exports, as well as granting the house and the senate equal power in making treaties. He was one of only two Catholic signers of the United States Constitution.

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.

American English Catholics of the Revolutionary Era

Based on the Introduction, available in this Google book preview, Papist Patriots: The Making of an American Catholic Identity by Maura Jane Farrelly from Oxford University Press looks like a fascinating study (I've ordered my copy, you can be sure):

"The persons in America who were the most opposed to Great Britain had also, in general, distinguished themselves by being particularly hostile to Catholics." So wrote the minister, teacher, and sometime-historian Jonathan Boucher from his home in Surrey, England, in 1797. He blamed "old prejudices against papists" for the Revolution's popularity - especially in Maryland, where most of the non-Canadian Catholics in British North America lived.
Many historians since Boucher have noted the role that anti-Catholicism played in stirring up animosity against the king and Parliament. Yet, in spite of the rhetoric, Maryland's Catholics supported the independence movement more enthusiastically than their Protestant neighbors. Not only did Maryland's Catholics embrace the idea of independence, they also embraced the individualistic, rights-oriented ideology that defined the Revolution, even though theirs was a communally oriented denomination that stressed the importance of hierarchy, order, and obligation. Catholic leaders in Europe made it clear that the war was a "sedition" worthy of damnation, even as they acknowledged that England had been no friend to the Catholic Church. So why, then, did "papists" become "patriots?"
Maura Jane Farrelly finds that the answer has a long history, one that begins in England in the early seventeenth century and gains momentum during the nine decades preceding the American Revolution, when Maryland's Catholics lost a religious toleration that had been uniquely theirs in the English-speaking world and were forced to maintain their faith in an environment that was legally hostile and clerically poor. This experience made Maryland's Catholics the colonists who were most prepared in 1776 to accept the cultural, ideological, and psychological implications of a break from England.

In the Introduction, Farrelly begins a re-examination of John Courtney Murray's analysis of how Catholics could fit into the pluralistic society of the modern United States; from reading it on-line it seemed to me that she was questioning the historical facts on which he based his confident trust in the moral and social structures of U.S. culture and government supporting Catholic morality based upon natural law and revelation. Farrelly seems prepped for deeper investigation into the experience not only of English Catholic colonists in Maryland, but of English Catholics in their homeland during the Stuart and Hanoverian dynasties. My copy should arrive tomorrow and I look forward to diving into it soon. When I come up for air I'll write a review.

Archbishop Chaput's "Render Unto Caesar"

I belong to a reading group that meets weekly, reading the chosen book aloud and discussing it as we go. We just finished Archbishop Charles J. Chaput's book Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs In Political Life which he wrote while serving the Denver Archdiocese. The book has nothing to do with the topic at hand--but, I found it interesting how Archbishop Chaput referred to historical figures I mention often on this blog, and highlighted in my own book, Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation.

Any book about Church and State will feature Thomas More, and Chaput features Thomas More extensively. He also highlights Bishop John Fisher.

Any book about the rights of religion in the USA will mention Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and Chaput features that great founder also.

Tolkien is the interesting figure and how Chaput works him in is a discussion of how Tolkien's mother Mabel became a Catholic and the very adverse reaction of her family: withdrawing material assistance and love. The Archbishop used her story to depict the cost of following Jesus Christ: "We can't follow Jesus Christ without sharing in his cross."

Reading a book aloud a paragraph (or so) at a time, even with different voices, highlights the rhythm of sentence structure, phraseology, and word choice in an author's prose. I read Supremacy and Survival aloud as I wrote it to hear what I was "saying" and how I was "saying" it. It's a big leap back to ancient times when all reading was aloud--remember how St. Augustine was amazed when St. Ambrose read silently? What reading groups do you belong to, readers, and have you ever participated in a read aloud group?

Perfect Timing: Charles Carroll and the Maryland Bishops

Charles Carroll of Carrollton, last surviving signer of the Declaration of the Independence, died on November 14, 1832. Just in time for the anniversary of his death, the Catholic bishops of Maryland issued a statement on protecting religious liberty. EWTN's National Catholic Register provides some context:

BALTIMORE (CNA)—Religious freedom is fundamental to a free society, but some political and cultural trends are threatening that freedom, the Catholic bishops of Maryland said in a new statement.

“Efforts to restrict the rights of individuals and institutions because of their religious or moral beliefs are on the rise here in Maryland and around the nation,” the bishops wrote.

“Religious liberty — a right rooted in our human dignity and protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — is being silently and subtly eroded.”

The 12-page document, titled “The Most Sacred of All Property: Religious Freedom and the People of Maryland,” was signed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington; Archbishop Edwin O’Brien, the apostolic administrator of Baltimore; and Bishop W. Francis Malooly of Wilmington, Del.

The document took its title from American Founding Father James Madison, who called conscience “the most sacred of all property” and its exercise “a natural and unalienable right.”

The Acton Institute reminds us of all that Charles Carroll risked and all he hoped to gain when he signed the Declaration of Independence:

When the signatories of the Declaration of Independence pledged their “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor,” few men had more to lose than Charles Carroll of Carrollton. A wealthy landowner, businessman, and member of a prominent Maryland family, Carroll risked the confiscation of his estate and the loss of his life if the British had prevailed. Yet when asked if he would sign or not, he replied, “Most willingly,“ and ratified what he called ”this record of glory.” Reflecting on that act fifty years later, Carroll–by then the last surviving signer–concluded that the civil and religious liberties secured by the Declaration and enjoyed by that present generation were “the best earthly inheritance their ancestors could bequeath to them.”

As a Roman Catholic–the only one to sign the Declaration–Carroll also had much to gain. Though many American colonists harbored intense suspicion toward Catholics (it was widely believed that Catholic doctrine was incompatible with republicanism), Carroll and his contemporary co-religionists presciently perceived that the American understanding of liberty entailed not only political and economic freedom but religious freedom as well.

It's too bad the writers of the Maryland bishops' statement did not reference Charles Carroll and the Carroll Family in the document!

John Carroll and the Carroll Family

Hearing Kevin Schmiesing on the Son Rise Morning Show Monday morning, I was reminded that John Carroll, former Jesuit, became the first Catholic bishop in the United States of America on November 6, 1789. His older brother Daniel was one of only two Catholics to sign the Constitution and one of only five men who signed both the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. His cousin Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the only Catholic who signed the Declaration of Independence and also served as the first Senator from Maryland.

I've mentioned the Carroll family before on this blog and I include Maryland, the Calverts (Lords Baltimore), and the attempt to establish a colony in the New World where the colonists could be loyal both to their sovereign and their Church in several chapters of Supremacy and Survival: How Catholics Endured the English Reformation. The link between the Carrolls and the English Reformation begins with the Jesuit College of St. Omer in what is now France, but was then the Spanish Netherlands (roughly today's Belgium). Robert Parsons/Persons, SJ founded the College for the education of England Catholic boys who could not otherwise receive a Catholic education. Charles, Daniel and John all attended the College at St. Omers, which subsequently moved to Bruges, Liege and finally to Stonyhurst in England (!) because of unrest in those continental areas.

John Carroll continued his education in the Jesuit seminary and was ordained in 1769 and finally returned to Maryland as a missionary priest in 1773, after Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Society of Jesus. With his cousin Charles, he accompanied Samuel Chase and Benjamin Franklin to Quebec on the Continental Congress's attempt to gain French (Catholic) Canadian support for the Revolution in 1776. Once colonial independence had been won from Great Britain and eventually religious freedom assured by the Constitution, Catholics had greater freedom in the new United States of America. Archbishop Charles Chaput describes the reasons for Charles Carroll's support of the Revolution and the Constitution in his book, Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life, (Chapter Five. The American Experiment)--I'm attending a book group at Eighth Day Books reading and discussing this book weekly.

Carroll was elected the first Catholic bishop on November 6, 1789 by the clergy (24 out of 26 voted for him) and his selection was approved by Pope Pius VI. The next year Carroll was ordained in England and then took up his see in Baltimore, Maryland. Among his accomplishments were the founding of Georgetown University, holding the first diocesan synod in 1791, and building the first Catholic cathedral in the United States, now the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He laid the cornerstone but did not live to see it completed. Pope Pius VII raised Baltimore to the Archdiocesan level, and Carroll as its first Archbishop, overseeing bishops in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Bardstown, Kentucky. Archbishop John Carroll died on December 3, 1815 and he is buried in the cathedral he founded--more detail on his life here at its official website. You might note the location of his ordination as bishop--England. The Catholic Church in the colonies had been under the leadership of the ordinaries of England, specifically the Vicars Apostolic. It was Bishop Richard Challoner who wrote to Carroll in 1773 about the suppression of the Jesuits, and Benjamin Franklin even opined that the Catholics of the new USA should rather be led by French bishops.

This connection between the Carrolls and the struggles of Catholics in England to secure freedom of worship and religious conscience after the English Reformation fascinates me, especially as I see -- per Archbishop Chaput's book cited above -- that this is really an ongoing struggle for balance and justice between Church and State in every nation and society. John Carroll and the Carrollton family made great contributes to that balance and justice and I think it's good to remember the election of the first Catholic bishop in the United States of America (even though it's a little late!)