For U.S. President's Day: Review Essay in the NCRegister

While the President's Day Sales are still being advertised, please allow me to announce my review essay of two books in the current issue of the National Catholic Register! After I'd submitted my copy, the editor asked me to add some words about "Prelates and Presidents", and they ended up at the top of the feature (and supplied the title for the article!):

Just in time for Presidents’ Day, take time to learn about how presidents interacted with Catholics.

Father Charles Connor, a theologian and historian who was ordained in the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and is a popular EWTN host, focuses much of his narrative in Toil and Transcendence: Catholicism in 20th-Century America on the relationships between U.S. presidents, from Grover Cleveland to Ronald Reagan, and leading members of the hierarchy, from Baltimore Cardinal James Gibbons to Cardinals Joseph Bernardin of Chicago and John O’Connor of New York. Thus, major events like World Wars I and II, the Great Depression, The New Deal, the Cold War and others are seen mostly at the highest levels of decision-making and reaction.

Some of Cardinal Gibbons’ contacts with U.S. presidents were better than others: Theodore Roosevelt (“T.R.”) was always ready to defend Catholics’ religious rights from the time he was the police commissioner in New York City to his presidency. Relations with President Woodrow Wilson were considerably cooler: “Chilly Wilson” had “anti-Catholic views” (p. 107) and rejected Pope Benedict XV’s peace plans in 1919 at the end of World War I. When Cardinal Gibbons died in 1921, President Warren Harding sent a letter of condolence and praise, commending him as a fine citizen and Churchman (p. 133).

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s four presidential victories, his efforts to aid recovery from the Great Depression, and his role as commander-in-chief during World War II provoked various Catholic responses. The radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, who promoted anti-communist and anti-Semitic views, first supported then protested against Roosevelt’s New Deal and other policies. The archbishop of New York, Cardinal Francis Spellman, remonstrated against Allied bombing of Vatican City in 1943 and 1944, especially since the Holy See was considered neutral.

Both Roosevelt and his successor, President Harry Truman, tried to establish diplomatic relations with the Holy See, but anti-Catholicism at the time meant, as Father Connor relates, that it would take 30 more years for it to happen.

The relationship between President Reagan and Pope St. John Paul II receives due coverage (pp. 344-358). Father Connor also describes the negotiations between Cardinal Bernardin and the Reagan administration regarding the U.S. bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter “The Challenge of Peace” (pp. 358-360), concluding his survey of contacts between prelates and presidents with the appointment of William Wilson as the first U.S. ambassador to the Holy See in 1984. . . .

I also reviewed American Pilgrimage: A Historical Journey through Catholic Life in a New World by Christopher Shannon from Augustine Institute/Ignatius Press. As the publishers' blurb states:

Histories of the Catholic Church in the United States abound. Most suffer from an excess of either scholarly detachment or popular triumphalism. American Pilgrimage seeks instead to draw on the best of current scholarship to tell the story of the Church as it understands itself: the Body of Christ, divinely ordained yet marred by sin, charged with the mission of spreading the Gospel and building up the community of the faithful.

In scope, American Pilgrimage narrates the story of the Church from the dramatic efforts at evangelization in the colonial period, to the Catholic urban villages of the immigrant Church, to the struggles to reimagine tradition in the late-20th century. In shape, it follows this story through the Augustinian contours of the ongoing struggle between the City of God and the City of Man—a struggle that takes place between the Church and the world, within the Church itself, and within the soul of every Christian.

I recommend both books (and the other books in Father Connor's trilogy) to anyone who loves to read Church History and well-written, well-researched studies of Catholicism in the United States from the Colonial era to the 20th Century.

I'm eager to see this in print!

Catholicism in the Thirteen Colonies

EWTN, the late Mother Angelica's Catholic media empire, has now conquered book publishing--along with social media outreach, a tremendous website, a cable television station in the US and around the world, broadcast radio, and newspaper publishing--and in this case, EWTN has published a book by one of the priests who has presented many programs on EWTN on Church History. I presume this book could be adapted for a series of programs for EWTN television. Father Charles Connor celebrated his silver jubilee of ordination in the Diocese of Scranton in 2015.

Sophia Institute Press publishes and distributes the book, which I purchased at Eighth Day Books here in Wichita, Kansas. The publisher's book description:

In this comprehensive history, Fr. Charles Connor details the life of Catholics in the American Colonies. It’s a tale that begins with the flight of English Catholics to religious freedom in Maryland in 1634, and continues through the post-Revolutionary period, by which time the constitutions of all but four of the first 13 states contained harsh anti-Catholic provisions.

Catholic readers will be proud to learn from that despite almost two centuries of ever-more-intense religious persecutions and even harsher legal prohibitions, American Catholics in the colonies simply refused to abandon the Catholic Faith.

This is an indispensable reading for souls interested in the deep roots of Catholicism in America, and in the holy courage of scores of Catholics who kept remorseless forces from driving Catholicism out of America. Among other things, you’ll learn:

• The tale of The Ark and The Dove that carried the first settlers to Maryland
• The surprisingly harsh anti-Catholic sentiments of most of the Founding Fathers
• The Quaker/Catholic alliance that promoted both religions
• The role of persecuted Catholics in the Revolutionary War
• Why, in that War, many Catholics favored the anti-Catholic British
• The French Jesuits who evangelized New York and its frontier areas, and the saints who were martyred there
• The years in which, throughout the colonies, Catholics became an endangered species

Father Connor's survey emphasizes Maryland. After three chapters offering background on the Protestant Reformation on the Continent of Europe, the Tudor Reformation in England, and the status of Catholics in England during Elizabeth's I reign and the Stuart Dynasty, four chapters of six dedicated to Catholics in the colonial era are devoted to describing Lord Baltimore's colonial enterprise, his vision for it, his sons' implementation of that vision, and its vicissitudes. His narrative style is smooth and detailed, using substantial quotations from other secondary sources. 

Unfortunately, there's no index, which does reduce the usefulness of the book as a resource. From the table of contents in the book, you would not know that he covers Rhode Island, Connecticut, etc., however briefly, as is their due. To reach its potential as a historical resource, the book should also have a map and perhaps a few portraits. The bibliography is comprehensive and up-to-date. Good, solid and insightful historical writing. 

Deep in History: The Counter-Reformation in England

Interesting timing: The Coming Home Network has posted this video of Father Charles Connor speaking about "The English Counter-Reformation":

Many are familiar with the Catholic Counter-Reformation that took place on the European continent in response to Martin Luther and other reformers. Less well known is what the Counter-Reformation looked like in England as a response to the schism led by King Henry VIII. Fr. Charles Connor explores the relationship between Catholics and Anglicans in England in the decades following the split between the Church of England and the Church of Rome.

Since I'm reading Father Philip Hughes' great work on Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England, I watched/listened to the video the day it was released (I think I have an audio CD that I purchased several years ago). Of course, Father Connor can't go into the detail that Father Hughes can, but I think it is unfortunate that he concentrated only on the campaign against heresy during Mary I's reign, and skipped the constructive reform that Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, and his bishops led during Mary I's reign. 

Hughes provides the most unflinching interpretation of the international and papal politics, the personalities of major players and how their personalities influenced their efforts, and the status of belief in England that I have ever read. For example, he comments on how 20 years of the civil administration of religious policy in England had essentially freed the English from all thought of having canon law and the Catholic hierarchy in control again. Canon law and the ecclesiastical courts had previously ruled on many of the most essential events in the laity's life: marriage, family life, etc. The English people were not ready to place themselves under that authority again. Hughes also examines Reginald Pole's personality, his strengths and weaknesses, and how he was not able to face unpleasant realities and also too imperturbable--Pole was too willing to accept the role of martyrdom and incapable of the kind of righteous anger that drives us to effective action and real sacrifice.

I'm still reading Rome and the Counter-Reformation in England and will post a fuller review later. This book is the necessary supplement to Father Connor's brief presentation and also a more realistic (pessimistic?) view of the first Counter-Reformation efforts in England than Eamon Duffy's Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor. That's not really fair, to say that Hughes was a pessimist--after all, the Counter-Reformation in England did fail!

And, after I finish this book, I have another Counter-Reformation book in queue: John Hungerford Pollen's The Counter-Reformation in Scotland. Who knew that there was one? 

John Hungerford Pollen, SJ, was the son of John Hungerford Pollen, convert and associate of Blessed John Henry Newman. (He was the architect of the church Newman had built for the Catholic University of Ireland and a member of the faculty too.) His namesake son researched and published many books on the Catholic martyrs of England and Wales. This monograph is based upon a lecture, expanded for publication. More information on Father Pollen, here, from the Jesuits in Britain. He was vice-postulator for the cause of the martyrs of England and Wales from 1900 to 1923.

Catholic Maryland on EWTN

Today--and all week--on EWTN:

How did Catholicism come to the United States of America? EWTN sets out to answer this question in a new eight-part mini-series “Catholic Beginnings: Maryland” that begins at 6:30 p.m. ET, Sunday, July 3 and runs through Sunday, July 10. The series, hosted by Father Charles Connor of St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md., begins on St. Clements Island in Southern Maryland. Throughout the week, you will explore other famous Catholic sites such as the historic “Dove” ship, colonial St. Mary’s City and St. Inigoes, Maryland; Newtown Manor and St. Francis Xavier cemetery; St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius Churches; as well as the Carmel monastery at Port Tobacco.

As Fr. Connor notes, in this series, “we are not speaking of the Spanish settlement of Florida, which is earlier. We are not speaking of the French settlement of New England and Canada, which is earlier. We are speaking rather about the 13 colonies which became the nucleus of the United States of America.”

How many people who visit St. Clements Island today realize they are standing on the ground where the first Catholic Mass in what would become the United States was celebrated? How many realize that the first cross in what would be the U.S. was erected on this island by Jesuits, who were fleeing religious persecution in England? How many realize that the settlers, who were seeking religious freedom in the New World and granting it to others, would later be denied this freedom themselves?

If you want an overview of the history of Maryland's founding, you could read the article I wrote for OSV's The Catholic Answer Magazine a few years ago:

George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, the founder of the Maryland colony, had gone with the flow since his early adolescence: when he was 12 he was confirmed in the Church of England. Previously, his parents had been recusant Catholics in Yorkshire, refusing to abandon their faith. But local officials intervened and George’s Catholic education and reading ceased. After attending the University of Oxford, he rose steadily in government and supported King James I in his goal to see the Prince of Wales married to the Catholic Infanta of Spain. After the marriage negotiations failed and Calvert’s first wife died in childbirth, he announced his retirement and reversion to his childhood Catholic faith. 

Then Calvert set out to found a colony in the New World where Catholics could prove their loyalty to the monarch without renouncing their faith. Obtaining charters from James I and then his heir, Charles I, Calvert planned colonies at Avalon in Canada and then in Maryland — named for Charles’ Catholic queen, Henrietta Maria — bordering Virginia.

Although he died before the Maryland colony started, he left his son Cecilius Calvert a project for Catholics and Anglicans to live and work together in peace and prosperity. . . .