It’s an apt juxtaposition of events: American Catholic bishops discussing a potential document on the Eucharist, including a section on “eucharistic coherence” and Juneteenth, long celebrated, but just-this-minute-declared federal holiday commemorating African-American emancipation.
The vote to write a document and then talk about it was more decisive than expected, although a core of senior prelates remained opposed. Keven Tierney writes about that and what it might mean here.
Hardly any of us, no matter how many solid individual bishops we know of, have much faith in the American bishops as a group. I’m just here to point out that this is nothing new. And the emancipation of enslaved peoples is a good way to understand that.
Just pick up any objective (aka, non-triumphalist) history of the Church in the United States and you will read that the leadership of the American Church (along with most Catholics south and north) stood in opposition to abolition of slavery and anything but gradual – very gradual – emancipation. I’m not going to rehash all that history here. It’s easily available. Last month, I highlighted this good, brief article in The Catholic Thing on the subject.
Although Pope Gregory XVI’s In Supremo denounced the slave trade in 1839, the apostolic letter did not criticize the institution itself. Some historians have argued that the Pope’s death in 1846 and the election of Pius IX ended any form of a Vatican led anti-slavery initiative. Overall, Gregory XVI and his successor Pius IX made no attempt to intervene on the American slavery issue, even though some sources have suggested that Gregory XVI held anti-slavery sentiments.
Although the Gregory’s In Supremo provided Catholic abolitionists with a source to dispute the institution, it accounted for a rather powerless voice, because only a few American Catholics emerged as abolitionists during the pre-war period. The majority of Catholics actually favored slavery as a means of protecting the economic status of Irish and other European Catholic immigrants in the United States. In addition, numerous Northern abolitionists also held strong anti-Catholic sentiments. Republicans and freesoilers often “viewed slavery and Catholicism alike as regressive institutions.” A common chant of the movement included “down with slavery and popery!!” As a result, a strong political alliance formed between the Catholics and the pro-slavery Democratic Party. According to historian Mischa Honeck, even Catholics in Northern cities, such as Cincinnati, “principally voted for the socially conservative Democrats, not because they regarded chattel slavery as a positive good, but because they had come to identify opposition to it with the extreme Protestantism of the evangelical abolitionists.”
Other sources of Catholic tolerance toward slavery developed from the church’s conservative heritage.” According to historian John T. McGreevy, the Catholic position toward slavery “rested upon the pervasive fear of liberal individualism and social disorder that so shaped Catholic thought during the nineteenth century.” Most Catholics viewed abolition as a “misguided radicalism” that threatened the stability of the nation’s social order by potentially inciting racial conflict between African Americans and whites.
(That article is on JSTOR, which requires an account to view, but JSTOR is still giving access to 100 articles a month for simply registering, at no cost. If you’re interested, it’s a cinch to register and read it.)
And so most of the American bishops followed suit…staying as far away from politics as they could.
An exception was Archbishop John Purcell of Cincinnati, who evolved to become a vocal opponent of slavery and proponent of abolition and emancipation. This article – which is not on JSTOR and requires no registration – lays out his journey, and the reactions to him.
Archbishop John Baptist Purcell of Cincinnati was one of these minority voices, the first American Catholic bishop to offer public support for immediate emancipation of slaves. Through his teaching and the influence of his diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Telegraph, Purcell attempted to convince his readers of the inconsistency of slavery’s existence in a free nation while striking at the racial, religious, and political discord that shaped the loyalties of Catholics in antebellum America. Historians have largely ignored Purcell’s contribution to the intellectual and moral conversation of the period, mentioning him only in passing as an example of a divergent opinion. Yet his presence in Cincinnati was critical in shaping the ideological climate of the Ohio Valley during the Civil War era….
…..Early in his episcopacy, Purcell pronounced his own moral distaste for slavery yet seemed unwilling to assert these views to the Catholics of America or to become associated with the abolitionist movement. At a speech given in 1838 in his hometown of Mallow, County Cork, Ireland, Purcell spoke of the inconsistency between the Declaration of Independence and the existence of slavery. He later termed this inconsistency “the fatal contrast,” acknowledging his belief that America could not tolerate the institution of slavery if it were to be faithful to its ideals. At the time of his 1838 speech, however, Purcell blamed the “virus” of slavery less on the Americans as much as the English, who had established it during the colonial period. Clearly, Purcell found it safer to be anti-English than to level charges against his fellow countrymen….
But over time, Purcell changed his view. National unity and avoidance of violence remained a priority, but as Purcell saw the southern states’ intransigence, he came to embrace the view that if states were willing to secede and go to war over slavery – there was no reason not to abolish slavery, and in short order.
…Upon returning from a second trip to Europe on September 1, 1862, three weeks before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, Purcell delivered one of his most important speeches of the war. Reiterating the content of his 1838 speech delivered in Ireland, Purcell said that he believed “a people could not long survive the fatal contrast between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, the one asserting that all men are born free, sovereign and independent, that the other millions may be slaves.” Purcell further proclaimed that war could have been avoided if only the South had compromised, abolishing slavery “after a given period, say fifty, seventy, or a hundred years . . . and in the meantime, as the Northern States had done, fit her slaves, by education, to be men.”
Since compromise was then out of the question, Purcell went so far as to advocate emancipation of the slaves as a means of ending the war within three months’ time. While not demanding immediate emancipation, Purcell’s address stood in stark contrast to the beliefs and actions of his fellow Irish Catholics, some of whom had participated in racial rioting just months earlier.
This and subsequent statements were not well received by his fellow bishops:
In a pastoral letter written to the people of his diocese on January 27, 1864, Purcell stated his position in the clearest of terms: “We go with our whole heart and soul for the maintenance of the Union and the abolition of slavery — against neither of which does the Supreme Pontiff of Christendom utter a single word.” Bishop Spalding of Louisville, in particular, condemned the letter, saying that if Purcell could not produce a non-partisan pastoral letter, it would be best not to issue one. In fact, the opposition to Purcell was so great that the bishops of the surrounding dioceses refused to attend the Provincial Council that Purcell had planned to take place in Cincinnati the fourth Sunday after Easter, 1864.
The issues during those decades leading up to the Civil War were different than the issues related to “eucharistic coherence” and Catholic politicians. Bishops were struggling to maintain unity in a time when the nation was, indeed, splitting apart and war threatened.
But I think it is still worth bouncing the present day off of this particular corner of the past, don’t you?
When does the expressed concern to not engage in politics or seem too political become, indeed, a political act?
What is “unity?” What comprises it, what is its center? What is real and false unity?
Can we look at this objectively and admit how selective we can be with our calls to religious leadership to be counter-cultural, prophetic, and speak truth to secular power, yes?
And what about that sensus fidelium, or as it tends to work itself out these days, doctrine-by-polling. “Most American Catholics support…..” Well. In the mid-19th century, most American Catholics seem to have supported slavery and opposed abolition and emancipation. So?
Let’s see. Ambiguous papal statements that could be used to support the status quo of an immoral and unjust system. And were by American Catholic leadership. An American Catholic populace that also supported that injustice, or, at the very least, opposed and feared change.
So what’s changed?
Anything?
….
Charlotte was Both 