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SALVE MATER - - - - - = 1920 (Third Impression) Crown 8vo. Anglican Books PRINCIPLES OF ANGLICANISM 1910 Crown 8vo. CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT 1913 Crown 8vo. LONGMANS, GREEN & Co. OUTLINES OF THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH - - - - - 1915 MoREHOUSE PUBLISHING Co. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM BY FREDERICK JOSEPH KINSMAN | LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 55 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E. C. 4 TORONTO, BOMBAY, CALCUTTA AND MADRAS 1924. Copyright, 1924 By LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. Made iu the United States TO THE REVERED MEMORY OF JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS Digitized by the Internet Archive In 2022 with funding from | Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/americanismcathoOOkins PREFACE Tuts book is the amplification of lectures de- livered in Portland, New York, Cleveland and Chicago, and has been written in the hope that it may aid in fostering that mutual appreciation which ought to exist between all Americans and Catholics. If Americans are ever hostile to re- ligion in general, or to the Catholic Church in par- ticular, they are poor specimens of what America stands for. If Catholics living in this country are ever apathetic, or even secretly hostile, to Ameri- can ideals, they are poor specimens of Catholicism. The clashes between non-representative cliques such as these ought never to be confused with the normal relations existing between the Catholic Church and the American Republic. The Ameri- can national genius has much in common with the Catholic religious spirit, which, in its turn, is uniquely useful in supporting certain American’ ideals. These things will be apparent to the thoughtful and fair-minded who are at pains to discover the relevant facts. In a study of Americanism and Catholicism, it might seem normal to reverse the order here fol- lowed, to consider the universal religion first, and then proceed to the particular nation. Abstractly, Vii Vili PREFACE and in many concrete instances, that would be plainly right. ‘The present writer, however, was an American fifty years before he became a Cath- olic, and has written along lines of his own ex- perience, having chiefly in mind as possible readers those whose point of view and natural mode of approach would be similar to his own. He has also wished to interpret the typical American tem- per to those who have had scant opportunities to experience its fairness and kindliness. The book has been written under handicaps of a hermit, dependent for many things in the outer world on the assistance of friends. Special thanks are due to the Reverend Joseph Bruneau, 5.S., S.T.D., of St. Mary’s Seminary, Baltimore, to the Reverend William Temple, D.D., of Wilmington, Delaware, and to the Reverend J. Anthony Win- nen of Portland, for criticisms of the concluding chapters; to Dom Henry Leonard Sargent, O.S.B., of the Priory, Portsmouth, Rhode Island, to the Reverend Joseph V. Tracy, D.D., of Brighton, Massachusetts, to the Reverend Edwin A. Dugan of Albany, and to the Librarian of Bowdoin College, for assistance with books not to be found in the Maine woods; and to the writer’s mother and sister for assistance in preparing manuscript and proofs for the publishers. re pi Birchmere, Bryant Pond, Maine, September 27, 1924. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGB ENCE ODUCTION SM Wuiicva tua ana tn e Pian I [. AMERICANISM einai 4. Sie TES aU a CR TOR Re US NUTONE EE DA LINTON a NN eG) ue lies Mer CoP a AG A DVO ELIGIOUSY LOLERATION 010 econ au Nee. V. AmeErRICAN SusPICION OF CATHOLICS II0 Miss ATHOLICISMN yt wur ee oe, See, ioe KOMANISM S| 42S Gt ae, Mm Mane LOS VIII. AmericANIsM AND CATHOLICISM . 224 UNDE ns it rch in cath gc Thats Seen 2 ean wee nD } RA ee Me , ia AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM INTRODUCTION AMERICANISM is the patriotism of the people of the United States; their self-conscious nation- ality and self-confident management of their own affairs; their belief that their national institutions are the best possible for the welfare of central North America. Catholicism is historic Christianity; the exten- sion of the work of Jesus Christ through the in- strumentality of the sacramental society dating from Pentecost; the Church, intended for all nations but identified with none, universal in scope, eternal in duration, preserved in unity through allegiance to her visible head whose seat of gov- ernment is in Rome. These two things, the genius and government of a particular nation and the organized universal- ity of a world-religion, are sometimes regarded as antipathetic or even as mutually exclusive. The nationality is suspected of narrowing the religion by trying to cramp the universal into grooves of a local mould; of mutilating faith and worship by 2 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM an eclectic use of what is of universal obligation. The religion is suspected of undermining the nationality by fostering a servility contrary to the spirit of freedom; by acting as stalking-horse for foreign influences; and especially by demanding an ecclesiastical allegiance inconsistent with pa- triotism. There are many non-Catholic Americans, well- disposed to all religion and wishing to be fair- minded, who distrust Catholicism as an alienizing influence. They have had little or no opportunity to learn exactly what Catholic teaching and prac- tices are, and have taken up with current prej- udices. Such people may find it useful to have brought together those points of Catholic teach- ing which bear on civil allegiance; and this book has been written mainly with them in mind. By way of citing Catholic authority for statements made, much use has been made of the Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII. These bear directly on the special points to be considered and are easily accessible to all who wish fuller informa- tion. The teaching of the Church does not vary; but Pope Leo has been the great exponent in re- cent times of Catholic doctrine in its bearings on duties to the State. : Moreover, if there be Americans who do not understand Catholicism, there are also Catholics who do not understand America. Many, even AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM — 3 after residence in this country when, possibly, they were only in contact with semi-alien groups, try to interpret America in terms of Europe, and to deal with Americans as if they were Europeans with a difference. It is true that Americans are descended from European races: but passage from the Eastern Hemisphere to the Western involves ‘a sea-change,” and Americans are not to be con- fused with any of the older nations. Catholic Doctrine and the Monroe Doctrine are in differ- ent categories; but with certain matters both are concerned, and it is important to understand their mutual relations. All friends of America must clearly apprehend the American presuppositions, illustrated in this book by quotation of great national leaders, recognized by all as accredited spokesmen for the national mind and conscience. There is no antagonism between the law and spirit of the nation and the law and spirit of the Church. The laws are independent and the spirits are akin. The American Nation and the Unt- versal Church are not only legal friends, but also natural and effective allies. Attempts to set them in opposition will be easily thwarted by the co- operation of American fair-play and Catholic charity. I AMERICANISM AMERICANISM, the abstraction of a nationality, is less a body of opinions and habits, than a spirit and a temper. It is, first, the intense devotion of the people of the United States to their own country and institutions; and, second, the tone and temper which the country and institutions create. Americans may not be, strictly speaking, a race, being compounded of many races: but they are a nation with an intense consciousness of nationality: and even if nationality be not the same as race, for many it takes the place of it. America has been in the making for three hundred years, be- ing the product of the lives and aspirations of men from many lands. If the descendants of ten gen- erations living on American soil are not, for all practical purposes, Americans by race, for them no such thing exists. Americans of several gen- erations, of the newer no less than of the older colonial stocks, have become wholly identified with the land of their adoption, feel themselves American, call themselves American, and repudi- ate all foreign labels. The great majority of 4 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 5 people in the United States regard themselves as American and nothing else, and are quite right in doing so. What gives them distinctiveness is the acceptance of certain ideals, political and ethical, and the admiration of certain traits of character regarded as representative of the nation at its best. And, in fact, the conduct of the nation has, in its broad outlines, exhibited the characteristics which go to make up the national ideal. What these characteristics are may be seen in “Uncle Sam.” The figure of Nast’s cartoons rep- resents a reality, a combination of personal quali- ties, commonly possessed and admired by Ameri- cans, which, when seen in leaders, give them their largest measures of influence. Of all the out- standing figures in American history, the one whose appeal seems most to grow with time is Lin- coln. Lincoln was Uncle Sam in actual life, the man of the cartoons in Illinois and the White House. He exhibited traits which all Americans would like to possess; and the honor paid his memory represents not so much appreciation of his public services as affection for his embodiment of national ideals. And, if American feeling be analyzed, it will probably appear that what makes Lincoln, the man, loveable, as well as Lincoln, the President, admirable, and Uncle Sam an object of affection and respect, even when we laugh at him, is the combination of three things: Common Sense, 6 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Good Nature, and Reverence. To claim this is to justify a comment made by Mrs. Trollope: * “In acuteness, cautiousness, industry, and _persever- ance, the Yankee resembles the Scotch; in habits of frugal neatness he resembles the Dutch; in love of lucre he doth greatly resemble the sons of Abra- ham: but in frank admission and superlative ad- miration of his own peculiarities, he is like nothing on earth but himself.” The American is like nothing on earth but himself: and he must plead guilty to self-appreciation! Uncle Sam is a shrewd old gentleman, not to be tricked in a horse-trade or Ford-trade; quite as able as Mr. F’s Aunt to “hate a fool’’; clear- sighted, able to size up both men and situations with which he has to deal; knowing a man when he sees him, expecting to behave like one himself, to stand on his own legs, carry his own burdens, and find others equally self-reliant. If people owe him money, he expects them to pay, less because he cares for the money than because he will not be imposed upon by those willing to be carried. He has a clear perception of his own rights and inter- ests, and a firm determination that they shall be respected; hates a fight, but, if forced, can put up a good one; sees no impropriety in looking out for Number 1, is not easily used as cat’s-paw, and seeks no instruction in the management of his own * Domestic Manners of Americans, AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 7 affairs. He is keen, even close, in making a bar- gain, and does not take it amiss if others are equally alert in looking out for themselves. Busi- ness with him is a specialty, a habit, and an ideal: he has only contempt for the unbusiness-like and shiftless. ‘“‘Strictly business” and ‘‘No nonsense’”’ are his mottos. He subordinates most things in life to business and lays himself liable to the charge of being a materialist. “Though he owns books and wishes his children to know something of good literature, he is no great reader, though liking a good news- paper which is fair in its judgments of political leaders, gives the latest quotations from the mar- kets and has snappy reports of base-ball. He has a great respect for the natural sciences, for polit- ical economy, and for modern history, knows his own history fairly well and has a fiery contempt for those who would take liberties with it. In- tellectually profound he is not; but he is quick to assimilate knowledge for practical purposes, and has a gift of penetration to the heart of practical issues. He is, therefore, one who gets on well in this world and ascribes his material success, not to self- reliance or determination, though he has plenty of both, but to common sense. He regards inability to make one’s way in the world as lack of ordi- nary wit, assuming that there is something radically 8 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM wrong with obvious failures. His hard-headed determination to make his way might easily make him hard-hearted, since forcible qualities are often cultivated at the expense of finer. If he had nothing except this, he might easily become a de- testable brute; and those of his sons and daughters who represent only this side of him, can be, and often are, both brutal and detestable. Worldly common sense, however, is not the whole of Uncle Sam’s character. His eyes may be keenly shrewd; bat they have a kindly twinkle. The old gentleman greatly en- joys a joke, even at his own expense: and no one with a sense of humor can be wholly bad, for genuine laughter only goes with a clear conscience. Uncle Sam’s common sense is no more marked than his great good nature. This is something more than an amiability signifying the absence of fighting qualities. It is a genuine kindliness, dis- playing sympathetic intuition in judging others and their difficulties, and indicating a sincere desire to be helpful. ‘With malice toward none and charity for all” goes farther to explain his dis- position than his business ability and skill at poker. His sense of his own rights leads him to recognize those of others: and he has both a marked sense of justice and an equally marked sense of gen- erosity. No one is more ready to assist a fallen comrade. Although ever ready to fill his pockets, AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 9 he is also ready to empty them at the call of dis- tress. Close-fisted to business rivals, he is open- handed to all who deserve his aid. Though he scrutinizes applicants, he does not stint his bounty, when he feels that he can indulge his genuine pleasure in playing Santa Claus. With generosity in conduct goes generosity in thought. He prefers to think well of people, dis- likes feuds, and has little patience with exhibition of them by his peaceful fireside. He takes satis- faction in displays of magnanimity, likes to see political rivals on terms of personal cordiality, in his halls of fame places Lincoln side by side with Lee, and considers nothing in his history more moving than the reconciliation of the Blue and the Gray. As a man of good will, he wishes to see peace and good will among men, and is never more happy than when his spirit of fairness and kindliness is reflected in those about him. What he is in his office or his store must be related to what he is in his home. Uncle Sam is devoted to his home, for, though lacking in style it abounds in comfort, and, though simple in its surroundings, is notable for hospitality. He likes to carve his Thanksgiving turkey, the biggest and juiciest pro- curable, and to see about him a crowd of happy faces. His doors are open to all who wish to join his family circle, though he is too canny to admit disturbers or let the designing impose on his good 10 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM nature. ‘There is a great deal of human na- ture in all of us’: and Uncle Sam has his full share. There is another quality that goes even deeper. The old gentleman has a very simple reverence. This is the last quality for which he often gets credit. He is no respecter of persons and habitu- ally disregards the conventions which hedge the importance of dignitaries. “Hello, Ted,” is his way of addressing an esteemed chief-executive. In fact, the more he thinks of people, the less re- spectful his manner. ‘The leaders he likes best are those whose Christian names he feels at lib- erty to abbreviate. The explanation probably is that he feels they can dispense with ceremony be- cause supremely able to take care of themselves as men among men. ‘The greater the man, the more he stands out in his simple humanity. Hence, Uncle Sam’s familiarities are well understood to be marks of respect and affection. He will, too, address a perfect stranger on any topic whatso- ever without formal introduction. Why not? Both are bipeds under a common sky. He has a scornful impatience of the flummeries of etiquette whereby self-important people would disguise per- sonal smallness, and little use for those who shrink from jostlings in the crowd. His free-and-easy, rough-and-ready ways seem to mark him out as conspicuously lacking in any form of veneration. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM | 11 Yet this is far from the truth. He can be very _ well-behaved when he chooses, has the sense to see that good manners are useful manners: and, if he dispenses with the artificial defences of for- mality, it is because he gives people credit for being big enough not to need them. Far from lacking veneration, he has a good deal of it. With all his levelling processes, and his shrewdness in not rating men above their worth, he likes to recog- nize a true leader and gives his heroes an un- grudging admiration. He has a genuine rever- ence for proved ability and proved goodness, though on his guard not to be taken in by shams. Moreover, his capacity for reverence goes beyond this. He is alive and alert in this world, but has also a sense of something beyond. Uncle Sam is very reticent about all that con- cerns religion, and averse to making religious pro- fessions: but he has a religion, a very simple one, a belief in God and a deep-grounded sense of duty. He insists on having his coins marked, “In God we trust,’ and is ever ready to doff his colossal stove-pipe in acts of worship and in the presence of death. He is something of an agnostic, fights shy of positive afirmations concerning the unseen world: but he has a great respect for religion when he believes it to be sincere. If he hates a fool, he trebly hates a hypocrite. He is not much given to ceremonial, but has sense enough to see 12 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM that religious ceremonies have meaning, and is always respectful to sincerity, whether he under- stands its manifestations or not. No one wholly understands the old gentleman, who does not de- tect, behind his silence and shy reserve, a deep well of reverence, indicating a simple and sturdy belief in God, and a simple wish and sturdy in- tention to serve Him. “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness for the right as God gives us to see right.’’ There was much of this in Lincoln, so that one of his suc- cessors in office * could say of him: “In wisdom great, but in humility greater; in justice strong, but in compassion stronger; he became a leader of men by being a follower of the truth.” There is a depth in the ideal which many Amer- icans fail to realize: yet the ideal forms part of the national heritage. Character is to be judged by aspiration as well as by accomplishment: and those who would deal effectively with Americans must be at pains to apprehend the bases of the national character and temper. Uncle Sam must be seriously dealt with. Americans recognize his truly representative personality. Though of many antecedents, representing various lines of descent, he has ceased to be conscious of his ingredients, and is only interested in being very much himself. As Lincoln put it in talking with an Englishman, * President Coolidge. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM — 13 ‘The difference between you and me is that you are a descendant, and I am an ancestor.” But was he an ancestor? Will the Americans of the future really be the progeny of the Amer- icans of the age of Lincoln? Plainly Lincoln and Uncle Sam were products of the America made by immigrants of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of the special conditions and experiences which brought the Republic to birth in the eighteenth. But the nineteenth and twentieth have seen the incorporation by America of great bodies of new citizens, most of them not akin to the primitive stocks, whose descendants are likely to predominate in the population. Is it not possible that the national institutions and character will be altered, that the typical American of the future will not be Uncle Sam but Barnum’s What-is-it ? Facts seem to indicate that Lincoln was right. It is true, that Americans of the older stocks are becoming comparatively less numerous and in- fluential; that every year some lines of colonial descent become extinct. It is wholly probable that the descendants of later emigrations will even- tually count for more in the country than those of the earlier; that there will be great changes in the proportions of the mixed ingredients of American blood. Yet the Americanism established by men of the earlier periods survives and is likely to survive. It is a thing not of blood so much as of 14. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM spirit; and the spirit lives where the blood fails. The newer citizens are no less American than the older. They did not originate the distinctive char- acter of the country: but they adopt and perpetu- ate it. American ideals win on their own ground for what they are in themselves. It is needless to estimate whether they are better or worse than those of other nations. They are accepted as best for people here. What immigrants find is more powerful here than anything different they bring with them: and, sooner or later, they, or at least their children, acquire the American stamp. The national character has persisted thus far: and there is no reason to think it will be radically altered in future. Our fathers in the common- wealth had no monopoly of wisdom and virtue: but the event has shown that in doing their best for themselves they did well also for us. Their sons by blood we may not all be: their spiritual and political sons we show ourselves by perpetuat- ing their institutions and appropriating their spirit and character. Were the posterity of the con- temporaries of Washington and Lincoln wholly to die out, what they stood for would survive through the gradual formation of the American character in the later additions to Uncle Sam’s ever-increasing family. This formation is going on all the time. It is less rapid in cities with their disproportionate share of the raw materials out AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 15 of which citizens are made, and with their ab- normal contrasts between wealth and poverty, be- tween pleasure-madness and misery, than in small communities and rural districts where the more fluid populations permit freest movement of masses and classes. In these may be observed the steady approximation to the national type, the sturdy, homely, kindly character which Americans would like to think they possess. Mr. William S. Rossiter, a recognized author- ity on statistics of population, wrote an interesting article for the Atlantic Monthly of August, 1920, entitled What are Americans? The gist of his contentions are given in the following paragraphs: “The total population in 1920 will be found to approxi- mate 105,000,000, of which the whites number about 94,000,000. . . . The distinctly native and allied elements would in 1920 amount to about 54,800,000. ... “What are Americans? Primarily they are a mighty company of nearly 55,000,000 of men, women and chil- dren of British ancestry, including the descendants in the second and later generations of Irish, German, and other immigrants who came to America sixty years ago or earlier, and including also later Anglo-Saxon arrivals and their children, welded into one vast and_ surprisingly homogeneous element. ‘This element is the pillar that supports the Republic. It is the element which manages and controls the United States. Even in places where it is in a minority, it generally leads. ‘The activities of 16 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM the nation, infinite in variety and extent, both intellectual and material, are principally in the hands of persons of the native and allied stocks. . “If, to bewildered observers, whether at home or in distant Europe, America seems inconsistent and uncertain: if there appear vagaries on the part of government and public: if echoes of the shouts of agitators who claim to voice American opinions resound through the land and across the waters, remember the unruffled fifty-five mil- lions. Assuredly they are the placid deeps of the nation, which lie far beneath the roaring surface waves. If foreign complications were actually threatened by the lati- tude allowed to public expression, swift and overwhelm- ing would be their condemnation.” This signifies that the body of our people con- stitute as distinct and coherent a nation, or even race, as most peoples of the globe. Their char- acteristics are plainly recognizable. They may represent an amalgam; but the compound is solid and indestructible. Americans proper of the pres- ent generation are the fifty-five millions, constitut- ing the majority of the ninety-five million whites. The other forty millions comprise various groups: a small proportion of foreigners, sojourners in the United States for a time or even for life: several classes of nominal Americans who are so entirely the product of foreign antecedents as to be incap- able of assimilating American ideas; and, last, various classes, constituting by far the greater part AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM = 17 of the forty millions, of new citizens not yet wholly identified with the land and people of their adoption, but rapidly becoming so. The first two of these groups are in the country, but not of it; those of the third are in it and of it as well, since their children, if not themselves, will soon be merged in the great body of the all-Americans. Every year a greater proportion of the people is drawn into this great body. It is the exception when grandchildren of immigrants fail to identify themselves wholly with the country and its citizen- ship. They know and value the antecedents of their fathers; but the fact of practical importance is their own Americanism. ‘Their ancestors were English, German, Irish, Italian, or all combined; they themselves are Americans and nothing else. A very simple test is afforded by the unwillingness of the genuine American to accept a foreign label, or even tolerate the conveniently descriptive hyphen. The difficulties of too rapid acceptance and dangers of non-absorption have necessitated restriction of immigration: but the wisdom that comes by experience may lessen the difficulties and dangers even for the immediate future. It is a century only since the flood of immigration set in, and only sixty years since it began to run high. Every year solves problems for those already in the land, and ought to increase the efficiency of methods for providing for those still to come. 18 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM The American people, representing so many racial and national stocks, is still in the making: but certain traits have become fixed. The great body exhibits a national distinctiveness, and domi- nates not only by present numerical superiority, but also because the newer citizens become Amer- ican by moral and political preference. The national character, like the national government, was the product of colonial needs and conditions. In the course of time, it has had to provide for new needs and to adapt itself to changed condi- tions: but it has won its way by efficiency. There has been a unity of experience between the suc- cessive generations who have lived in the New World. The later Americans entered a com- munity which neither they nor their ancestors had formed: but they made it their own for themselves and for their descendants, and proved their right to do so by loyal support of it. If possession is nine points of law, appropriation is ten. The work of Americanization goes on apace; and the segregated groups grow less in influence as well as in comparative numbers. The American character is closely connected with a group of political ideals to which it stands in relation of both cause and effect. These are summed up in what is commonly called democracy, the idea that government must serve the interests of all the people, a great brotherhood in which all AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 19 shares and stakes are alike. “America is another name for opportunity.” ‘The prizes of life are open to all and are frequently won by those who enter the race most heavily handicapped. In spite of fluctuations in.averages, American development as a whole has shown that, in all that pertains to material welfare, equality of opportunity has brought a generality of gains. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. .In spite of the limitations of a new country, nine hun- dred and ninety-nine immigrants out of a thousand stay in their new homes by preference. If they have been homesick for the Old World, a single visit after some years in the New, convinces them that they are better off where they are. ‘The old village is very picturesque, and [| always miss it: but, when I went back, I found I could not get on without my new range and the bath-tub. Then, they can never rise in the world over there, while here one has a chance to get on a bit.”’ Material comforts are not the chief thing in life. Democratic institutions aim at giving what is more important still, increase in intelligence and character through share in the work of self-govern- ment. America aims at training citizens by giving them experience, extending the franchise in the hope that responsibility will evoke capability. Premature and too rapid extension has sometimes defeated this aim: but the errors have been those 20 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM of generosity, and second thoughts as to the wis- dom of details have never suggested abandonment of the ideal. The country has suffered from in- discriminate admission of immigrants and indis- criminate giving of the rights of citizenship, mis- takes of application, not of principle: yet the recognition of duties of discrimination has not altered the national disposition to give every man a chance to get on and to share in the best. There has been impractical idealism, scant recognition that equality of opportunity does not involve equality in use, frequent blindness to moral values and to failures in detail: but levelling processes have justified themselves by a general levelling up rather than down; and, on the whole, it has been plain that America has opened wide the gates for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What- ever the failures in detail, Americans are con- vinced that, on the whole, their experiments have been successful. Democracy compels processes of intermingling, efforts on the part of each to play his part as man among men; not only encouraging freest inter- course between men of one stamp, the operator with his fellows, the farmer with his help, the ex- perts of one profession with those of another, and, that most perfect of all freedoms and equali- ties, the give-and-take among gentlemen, but also aiming at the removal of all barriers which lessen AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 21 the sense of universal brotherhood. It is gratified when children of all classes meet in the common ~ schools, when political life dynamites social strata, when in training-camps the sons of millionaires and coal-heavers bunk together. It dislikes cliques and classes, does not wish citizens to live in water- tight compartments, and objects to exclusive coal- heavers quite as much as to exclusive millionaires. One citizenship makes one society. Those who have had experience of democratic intermingling most value it: the only ones suspicious are those who hold aloof. What is called democracy, in unifying the nation, merely emphasizes the great truth of brotherhood in the human race. With all recognition of differences in ability, achievement, and responsibility, all men as men are equal: and experience proves that those are most men who mingle most freely with their fellows. “The great principle of Americanism is that merit makes the man. It discards all distinctions which are purely accidental, and recognizes only such as are per- sonal. It places every man on his own two feet, and says to him, “Be a man, and you shall be esteemed according to your worth as a man; you shall be commended only for your personal merits; you shall be made to suffer only for your personal demerits. To each one according to his capacity, to each capacity according to its works.’ This is Americanism.” * * Brownson’s Essays, New York, 1880; p. 422. 22 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM American patriotism comprises three convic- tions: that American institutions are good in them- selves; that they are the best and only possible institutions for the people of the United States; and that they contribute to the welfare of the world at large. This is not to assume that they are models for universal imitation. They are the outgrowth of long experience in self-government, and not adapted to peoples who lack this. Yet Americans know that for themselves their institu- tions are best and are convinced that they will en- dure. Their fathers laid foundations well; by building on these they are convinced that they do well for posterity. This conviction is more than in- tellectual appraisal; it is a sentiment of fiery devo- tion. The older and newer Americans alike respond to Webster’s appeal, ““Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country.” The older may have deeper devotion to the soil, that passion of men in many ancient lands, for the rocks, rills, woods and hills, “‘templed” or not: but for the newer as well, America is home, and there is no place like it. This patriotism may at times be ill-judged, extravagant, even ludicrous in some of its manifestations: but at bottom it represents the American at his best and can never be taken lightly. The American cult, devotion to the people, the land, the Commonwealth, is all symbolized by the AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM = 23 sentiment for the Flag. Other peoples have dif- ferent symbols, a sovereign, a patron saint, a shrine, a festal celebration. National conscious- ness expresses itself in many ways. But for Americans the unique symbol of the nation is the star-spangled banner and depths of emotion are stirred by the mere sight of a bit of bunting. De- votion to this is a symbol of loyalty. ‘‘We have no room in this country,” said Roosevelt, ‘‘for but one flag, the Stars and Stripes, and we should tol- erate no allegiance to any other flag, whether a foreign flag, or the red flag, or the black flag. We have no room but for one loyalty, loyalty to the United States.” * Love of country lies deep in the American soul and can tolerate no rival. There are different loyalties, religious, ecclesias- tical, ethical, intellectual, filial, personal, not in conflict with the national: but in its own sphere the patriotic loyalty is supreme. ‘To the American America stands first: no man to whom it does not stand first can claim to be a genuine American. To aliens as aliens the American is friendly; to aliens masquerading as Americans he metes out a stern contempt. ‘“‘We can have no fifty-fifty al- legiance in this country. Either a man is an Amer- ican and nothing else, or he is not an American at all. We are akin by blood to most of the nations of Europe: but we are separate from all of them; * The Great Adventure, N. Y., 1918; p. 39. 24 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM we are a distinct nation, and we are bound always to give our whole-hearted and undivided loyalty to our flag, and in an international crisis to treat each and every foreign nation purely according to its conduct in that crisis.’ * ‘“The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with a man who loves other women as much as his own wife. One is as worthless a creature as the other.” + The American expects all his fellow-citizens to share the feeling expressed by a German-American in Wisconsin: { “After pass- ing through the crucible of naturalization, we are no longer Germans; we are Americans. Our at- tachment to America cannot be measured by the length of our residence here. We are Americans from the moment we touch the American shore until we are laid in American graves.’’ And he expects all other peoples to recognize that his love of country is fundamental. None can deal effect- ively with him who fails to take account of this invariable and ineradicable characteristic. * Roosevelt: Foes of Our Own Household, N. Y., 1917; p. 62f. t Roosevelt: Great Adventure, p. 193. ¢ Richard Guenther. II LIBERTY TuE United States celebrates its birthday on the Fourth of July, thus dating its existence from the Declaration of Independence. This gives the key-note to the national history. Starting with the conviction that the American commonwealths ‘are, and of right ought to be, free and independ- ent states,’ with the first duty that of securing independence of Great Britain, the nation went its ways as “land of the free,” determined “from every mountain-side (to) let freedom ring,’’ con- scious of a destiny to exhibit ‘Liberty enlighten- ing the world.” Independence, Freedom, Liberty —all rather vaguely used—stand for the first of American ideals. From the beginnings of national existence, there was consciousness that this ideal stood for two things; national independence of foreign rule, and individual independence of servitude in any form. The first was secured by the War of the Revolu- tion, the second extended by the outcome of the Civil War. The abolition of slavery was seen to 25 26 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM be involved in the principles of the Declaration. Although Jefferson in drafting this, conscious of the existence of slaves in Virginia, had described men as “equal” rather than as “free and equal” (as asserted by Locke whose political philosophy he had adopted); yet he was one of those who saw clearly, both that the abolition of slavery was desirable, and that it was inevitable on American principles. Professed apostles of freedom could not long perpetuate the slave-trade. The first of national ideals could not be nullified or neutralized by pigments in the skin. Emancipation of the negro was an ultimate necessity. Americans have no monopoly of an ideal common to all mankind; but, in view of their special professions, they must be judged by their solid contributions to human freedom. And this, to be understood rightly, must be studied in its widest context, related to the nature and whole history of man, and even- tually to the law of God, ‘Whose service is per- fect freedom.” The history of freedom in America can never lose sight of the fact that, in its beginnings, it signified freedom from foreign rule. The United States begins with independence of Great Britain. Understanding of America and Americans re- quires clear perception of the underlying principle. The Fourth of July does more than recall an occurrence of the year 1776. It serves to remind AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 27 Americans of one of their deepest convictions, of facts which have determined important points in their policies, and of unchanging conditions which account for America’s being a nation. We are Americans not so much by nature as by position, less by historical accident than by geographical necessity. One of the most obvious of globe-facts is that North America can not be controlled by corners of Europe. Mutual independence is a necessity to which attention was first strikingly called when the central North Americans declared and won their independence of British rule. The War of the Revolution secured for the United States what later the Constitution of the Dominion secured in effect for Canada. Alexander Hamil- ton, as a boy of seventeen, clearly stated the American issue: ‘They endeavour to persuade us that our contest with Britain is founded entirely on the petty duty of threepence per pound on East India tea; whereas, the whole world knows, it 1s built upon this interesting question, whether the inhabitants of Great Britain have a right to dis- pose of the lives and properties of the inhabitants of America, or not.” * More was involved than the relation of one set of colonies to England. Independence for the United States implied that the Western Hemisphere can not be managed by the Eastern, and the interests of its continental * Full Vindication of Measures of Congress. 28 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM tracts subordinated to those of distant islands and peninsulas. Geography, in the long run, deter- mines history. American independence meant primarily recognition of the Atlantic Ocean. ‘Europe and America are two systems, universes, creations, standing apart.’’ * The United States evolved from a group of colonies settled chiefly by Englishmen; and their entire history has been conditioned by certain facts due to English origins. Yet the foreign origins must always be related to the native environment. American institutions can not be accurately under- stood unless it be recognized, both that early America was English, and that from the very beginning it was English with a difference. Trans- plantation involved transformation. On a foun- dation of English materials was erected a super- structure distinctively American. Although the life of white men in the New World was a con- tinuation of their life in the Old, there were limi- tations and expansions. The culture of an ancient civilization could not be transported entire to the wilderness; nor could men with a hemisphere to exploit confine themselves to insular grooves. The first possessions of the colonists were imported: but old materials had to be used in new ways, and there were new materials for use in old ways. English life was not so much adopted as adapted * Belloc. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 29 in the English colonies. ‘An English colony of the seventeenth century was not, like a Greek colony, a ready-made commonwealth with its so- cial and political institutions moulded for it before it sailed from its native shore. The American colonies were at the outset small communities of Englishmen practically free to shape their own in- stitutions and mode of life within certain wide and elastic limits. The colonies did, indeed, one and all, form for themselves institutions closely re- sembling those of the mother-country; but these institutions were developed, not transplanted or servilely copied.” * American political institutions are largely a perpetuation, under modified forms, of English, since the first political life of Americans was that of English colonists. Virginians and New Eng- landers alike imported their civil polity from the mother-country, perpetuating the institutions of local government more obviously than those of national administration, as was natural, both be- cause the average Englishman had something to do with local, but little with national, affairs, and be- cause the problems of new settlements had chiefly to be solved by local management. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that colonial life was simply a small copy of the English social life of * Doyle: English Colonies in America, London, 1888; Vol. I, pp. rf. 30 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM the time. It not only smacked of the backwoods rather than of the town, but also of the continent as distinct from the island. There were big no- tions amid petty experiences. America was ‘Europe frontiered”; and independence was illus- trated in its beginnings, In the matter of general government, Amer- icans emphasized everything in English precedent which favored self-government, and eventually, on English principles, declared their independence al- together. In the town-meeting of Virginia and New England alike was the assumption made, to use Connecticut language of 1638, that “‘the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free assent of the people.” Democratic government was a practical necessity in the New World. Dur- ing the contests between King and Parliament, Americans accepted almost invariably the parlia- mentary point of view, responding to vague ap- peals to “the ancient rights and liberties of sub- jects” and “the rights of the nation.” They accepted the current English political philosophy, making use of Hobbes and Locke and after 1765 of Blackstone. “No taxation without representa- tion’”’ was an old principle, supposed to be derived from Magna Charta. The first Continental Con- gress expressed a common view when it asserted that “the foundations of English liberty, and of all free government, is a right of the people to AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 31 participate in their legislative council.”’ Jefferson simply expressed an accepted principle in forcible language, when he wrote, ‘Governments are in- stituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed’’—the last phrase being one of Defoe’s. English principles were used, but only so far as was consistent with American freedom in action. There is an apt illustration of the attitude of American colonials toward England in a saying of John Adams concerning the authority of English law.* ‘How, then, do we New England men derive our laws? I say, not from Parliament, not from common law, but from the law of nature, and the compact made with the King in our char- ters. Our ancestors were entitled to the Common Law of England when they emigrated, that is, to just so much of it as they pleased to adopt, and no more. They were not bound or obliged to sub- mit to it, unless they chose it.’”” Attorney General West expressed the same opinion in 1720: “Let an Englishman go where he will, he carries as much of the law and liberty with him as the nature of things will bear.’ + So also the Continental Congress defined in its Declaration of Rights: ‘That the respective colonies are entitled to the Common Law of England, and more especially to * Works, Vol. IV, p. 122. {Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Boston, 1907; Vol. I, p. 418. 32 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of law. That they are entitled to the bene- fit of such of the English statutes as existed at the time of their colonization; and which they have, by experience, respectively found to be applicable to their several local and other circumstances.” * From the beginning they were eclectic in their use of what came from the mother-country; as time went on more and more independent in their eclec- ticism; and finally they elected independence alto- gether. Hence Madison’s question:t ‘Is it not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for cus- tom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation and the lessons of their own experience ?”’ In the adoption of the Constitution, the Con- gress of 1787 applied certain English principles to colonial and revolutionary experience. ‘The Constitution is simply an application of the ex- perience of Americans to the work of government. . . . For its warp is the experience of the colonies and the later states: and its woof is the experience of the Continental Congress and the Confedera- * Quoted in Pounds: Common Law, p. 265. + Federalist, No. XIV. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM = 33 tion. With the exception of the method of elect- ing the President, there is not a clause of the Con- stitution which can not be traced back to the English statutes of liberty, colonial charters, state- constitutions, the Articles of Confederation, votes of Congress, or the unwritten practice of some of these forms of government.” * The Constitu- tional Convention was less creative than adaptive, epoch-making, not as innovating but as inaugurat- ing important and successful applications of old principles. In all this it was simply following precedents set during the whole of the colonial period. However, when all emphasis has been laid on the English antecedents of American institutions, the main fact is that they represent repudiation of English rule. As summing up colonial experience, they represent not fifteen, but one hundred and fifty years of struggle for independence, the real- ization of actual necessity, leading to the assertion of theoretical right and the securing of general recognition. What was declared to be right in 1776 was assured in 1787. The Declaration was mere assertion, an aspiration for liberty; the Con- stitution represents its establishment and is the Great Charter of American Freedom. It implies that liberty is only guaranteed by law; that true *Hart: National Ideals Historically Traced, N. Y., 1907; pp. 138f. 34. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM freedom only comes by obedience; that individual freedom is protected by the state. It does not go beyond this in its philosophy, but demands of all citizens obedience to its principles, regarded as embodiment of the wisdom of the fathers, and as best means of securing freedom for all men in the western world. It can only be understood as a study in government by recognition as a basic prin- ciple of the necessity of American independence of Europe. The Americans who fashioned it were, with few exceptions, men whose knowledge and experience were primarily those of English sub- jects, who, in the crisis they had to meet, never ceased to use their inherited equipment. They had _imported their politics as well as their tempera- ment and physique: but they had become wholly identified with their own country and used all they had to build up a new and independent state. “It was above all America, the American land, which made the Americans; the soil and the spirit of that long-awaiting empty world stamped their own.” * 1776 merely brought to a head what had been going on since 1607. Throughout the colonial period there was con- flict between colonies and mother-country in what related to economic development. Eventually England’s commercial policy forced the issue of independence. The colonial policies of all Euro- * Belloc: The Contrast, p. 43. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 35 pean states were selfish and short-sighted. It was the accepted principle that colonies should be ex- ploited for the benefit of the mother-country. Any study of colonial charters will show this. The Charter of the Virginia Company, granted by King James I in 1609, was intended to secure a commercial monopoly for some seven hundred in- dividuals and organizations in England. ‘The Charter of the Dutch West India Company tn 1621, and that of the Company of New France in 1628, though showing more consideration for colonists, equally exhibit primary concern for the protection of home interests. ‘These charters are typical.* Colonies were forced to look sharply after their own interests, to develop their own policies, in two senses, to mind their own business. Gains were only won in defiance of their respec- tive mother-countries, with whom alone they were allowed to have direct dealings. The American colonies were always struggling against commer- cial restraints imposed by the British government and seeking to avoid the full effects of the various Acts of Trade. Their finances were only thriving as they could keep them under their own control; and their economics were of necessity of home growth.t England dealt with Ireland and Scot- oa ARG European Background of American History, Chap. + Clark: History of Manufactures in the United States, pp. 9-12. 36 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM land in ways similar to those of dealing with her American colonies; and her system of dealing with dependencies differed in detail only, not principle, from those of other countries. What happened to the American colonies of England happened also to the various colonies of Spain, Portugal, ‘France and Holland. The chief contribution made by all these European powers to colonial economics was the forcing of conflicts which re- sulted in independence. The wise and just gov- ernment of overseas dominions is of compara- tively recent discovery. Colonial experience fostered the sense of inde- pendence as fact and necessity and a distrust of European methods and of the European point of view in regard to American affairs. It was not merely that men of the New World had to look out for themselves in their dealings with men of the Old, but that they felt that there were many things about America and the world at large which Europeans did not understand as well as themselves. Europe thinks of the world in terms of herself, ‘home’ and ‘‘overseas dominions,’’ “the Fatherland” and the ‘‘colonies,’’ ego and non- ego. Americans are more apt to think of Europe in terms of the world, as seat of the world’s high- est culture, ever to be revered and in many ways imitated, but, after all, only the least of the world’s grand divisions, the most confused and AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM = 37 divided, whose tangled fringes at the west take themselves with tragic seriousness. Right or wrong, wise or otherwise, the great new states in both Americas presume to regard Europe as a little old grandmother who cannot be expected to keep grown-up sons tied to her apronstrings. They all have a fixed determination to keep them- selves free from European control. This is the meaning of Washington’s advice in his Farewell Address: ‘Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the baneful foes of republican government.”’ He made the point of self-determination for large continents! The declaration of independence of England was, in effect, a declaration of independence of Europe; and the Revolutionary War was the first stage in a struggle of many phases, whereby for all countries of both North and South America independence was realized. In the United States, the second stage came in the development of a foreign policy. The Monroe Doctrine is a second Declaration of Independence. The country’s in- ternational relations and attitude can not be under- stood except by recognition that American diplo- macy of the present day is concerned with main- tenance of the same principle for which Americans fought on the battle-fields of the Revolution. 38 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM This was not at once apparent. Many who saw the necessity of freedom from England did not see equal necessity for freedom from every other form of European domination. As colonies, the American states had followed England in world- affairs; as independent, many sought to make them follow France. Washington was the first to state the policy that, in foreign affairs, America must follow her own line. He wished ‘“‘to establish a national character of our own, independent, as far as obligations and justice would permit, of every nation of the earth, and, by steering a steady course to preserve this country from desolating war.’ Hamilton supported him, holding that “foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic,” and that, in financial matters, “it is for the United States to consider by what means they can render themselves least dependent on the com- binations, right or wrong, of foreign policy.” In the eleventh paper of The Federalist, Hamilton stated the whole point of view involved in the Monroe Doctrine. “T shall briefly observe, that our situation invites, and our interests prompt us, to aim at an ascendant in Amer- ican affairs. The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests. Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has, in different degrees, extended her dominion AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 39 over them all. Africa, Asia, and America, have succes- sively felt her domination. The superiority she has long maintained, has tempted her to plume herself as the mis- tress of the world, and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit. Men admired as profound philosophers, have in direct terms, attributed to the in- habitants a physical superiority; and have gravely asserted, that all animals and with them the human species, de- generate in America; that even dogs cease to bark, after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere. Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Euro- pean; it belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race; and to teach that assuming brother moderation. Union will enable us to do it. Disunion will add another victim to his triumphs. Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the Thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world.” Jefferson, head of the French party, secretly opposed Washington, favoring an alliance with France that would have been distinctly entangling. Later on, however, as President, he adopted com- pletely the Washington-Hamilton doctrine and policy. Immediately after his inauguration he wrote: “It ought to be the very first object of our pursuits to have nothing to do with European in- terests and politics. To take part in these con- 40 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM flicts would be to divert our energies from crea- tion to destruction.” Still later as ex-President, he wrote a letter to President Monroe, the sub- stance of which, amplified by John Quincy Adams, Monroe embodied in a message to Congress, giv- ing formal statement to what is known in history as the ‘‘Monroe Doctrine.” ‘This simply restated the initial convictions of Americans in 1776, for- tified by fifty years of further experience. And during the century since the “Doctrine” has been steadily maintained. ‘Our country has one cardi- nal principle to maintain in its foreign policy. It is an American principle. It must be an American policy. We attend to our own affairs, conserve our own strength, and protect the interests of our own citizens. Yet we recognize thoroughly our obligation to help others, reserving, however, to our own judgment the time, the place, and the methodia Americans feel, not only that, in the nature of things, the Western Hemisphere cannot be man- aged from the Eastern, but also that their prob- lems and point of view so differ from those of Europe in many ways, that they must be dealt with separately. With all recognition of the com- mon interests of all nations in what concerns the human race, that there can be no such thing as * President Coolidge’s Message to Congress, December 8, 1923. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 41 absolute independence, it is still true that the polit- ical problems of Europe and America differ in so many ways that there must be, for the sake of both, a relative independence. The American con- viction, which determines policies, has been re- cently expressed by Secretary Hughes. “The reason that the main problems of Europe can not be solved, save as Europe helps herself, lies in the fact that each major difficulty centres in the self-determined action of independent states, and is beyond external con- trol.” “For us, international co-operation does not mean that we should embroil ourselves in controversies not involving our own interests, but growing out of the age-long rivalries and conflicting interests of European powers, having policies which we do not assume to criticise, but in which we have no share.” “There is no reason why we should fritter away our helpful influence by becoming a partisan of either party to such controversies, much less make the fatal.mistake of attempting to assume the role of dictator.” * American objections to the League of Nations reduce themselves to misgivings as to its being, in effect, merely a European, rather than a World League. Similarly, objections made to President Wilson’s ‘fourteen points,” most of which Amer- icans regarded as good, were due to fears that it * Speech delivered in New Haven in 1923. 42 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM represented “the fatal mistake of attempting to assume the role of dictator.’ The Western Hemisphere must attend to its own affairs, but must not meddle with the tangles of Europe. This is ingrained in the national mind as the result of experience. It is needless to point in how many ways the whole history of the United States has been re- garded, by those who have made it, as a progress- ive application of the principles of freedom. The history of the Constitution and of American law affords continual instances of the claim that these stand for the principles of freedom, and ensure their practical application. The same is true of all insistence on the idea of democracy, the su- premacy of the people as a whole, as distinct from that of cliques and classes. It is assumed that democracy is another name for freedom, and that it signifies for Americans equal opportunity to de- velop self, secure a home, rear a family, with good chances for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Equal opportunity for all men has not always been given, and is not yet wholly assured. The unscrupulous have frequently taken its watch- words to delude their dupes. ‘Independence’ has often led to servitude, “‘freedom” to new forms of slavery, ‘‘democracy” to establishment of degrad- ing tyrannies. Our history is full of examples of the way in which ideals may be dragged in the AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 43 mire, and national aims defeated by those most trusted to protect them. We are here only con- cerned with the fact that freedom is the ideal; that the best Americans have striven for it; that the United States has actually given it in large degrees. At the national gateway stands the statue of Liberty enlightening the world. And one important point in the American con- ception is that liberty involves freedom from foreign domination. ‘The chief characteristics of nine tenths of our people are their intensely Amer- ican habits of thought, and their surly intolerance of anything like subservience to outside and for- eign influences.” * This goes far to explain vari- ous forms of typically American prejudice. * Roosevelt: American Ideals, p. 147. Hil UNION ONE of the most hackneyed quotations of Fourth of July orations is Webster’s appeal to “the sentiment dear to every true American heart, Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and in- separable.” [!f the first principle suggested to the founders of the American Republic by their ex- perience was independence, the principle of their relation to Europe, an external relation; the second, relating to themselves, a domestic, in- ternal relation, was Unity. The thirteen colonies which subsequently formed the United States were, prior to their in- dependence of Great Britain, independent of each other. The only political bond was common al- legiance to the British Crown. There was geographical contiguity, as now exists between Spain and Portugal, and a common allegiance as now between Canada and Australia: but each con- stituted a political entity and worked out local problems in self-contained isolation. Common in- terests in what concerned the relation to England 44 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 45 led to conferences between leaders: common oppo- sition to the policies of the British Parliament and King led to combination and coéperation. A Federation was formed for the prosecution of the War of Revolution. Yet thirteen independent colonies had entered the War; and thirteen inde- pendent States emerged from it. During the War there had been combined action, but not united action. There was no strong bond of sympathy between the inhabitants of the various sections. Differ- ences of antecedents and infrequency of inter- course kept them strangers; clashing of interests between near neighbors made them rivals. There was no strong intercolonial affection; on the con- trary, there was much suspicion and dislike of that bitter sort which springs up between near neigh- bors and relatives. New Yorkers and Connecticut Yankees were apparently natural born enemies; Virginians and Carolinians affected to regard each other with mutual disdain; the chief ambition of Delawareans was to get free from Pennsylvania. The suspicious neighbors were far from feeling like brothers. There was no such thing as all- American sentiment. Each colony had been strain- ing every effort to make the most of itself; each independent state was concerned to preserve it- self from encroachment by any of the others. The common cause against Great Britain had made 46 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM them comrades in arms: but not at once was it ap- parent that the thirteen units should be merged in a national unity. Various unities existed: but they were not at once felt, nor their significance recognized. It took almost a century of unex- pected discoveries and disappointments to exalt the sentiment for unity into a ruling passion. The Federation, formed for the prosecution of the War, sought to function through a Continental Congress, an assemblage of ambassadors from the States, ‘‘a debating-club dressed up in the lion’s skin of authority.” Congress could discuss measures, recommend action, and appeal to the patriotism of the people in their respective states: but they were not vested with authority to govern and could do no more than send their members home to use influence with the local legislatures. ‘The whole history of the Congress, during the War and the years immediately following peace, con- sisted of successive exhibitions of futility. Its action commanded little respect. “Folly, caprice, a want of foresight, comprehension, and dignity, comprise the general tenor of their action,’ was Hamilton’s description in 1780. Yet the colonies, in the existing circumstances, could have done nothing better than form the Federation; the Fed- eration could have done nothing better than to try to act through a Congress; and the Congress, lacking authority, could not have been expected to AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 47 do better than it did. Conditions made the ex- periment inevitable, and equally inevitable the ex- periment’s failure. Federation could not save the States; what they needed was Union. That was the net result of a series of disastrous experiments at government and management during the ten years subsequent to 1776. The union of the States into one Commonwealth with an efhcient central and national government was an obvious necessity. That is Federalism. As Washington stated the problem: ‘“The Con- federatio: appears to me to be little more than a shadow without substance, and Congress a nuga- tory body, their ordinances being little attended to. To me it is a solecism in politics: indeed, it is one of the extraordinary things in nature, that we should confederate as a nation, and yet be afraid to give the rulers of that nation . . . sufh- cient powers to order and direct the affairs of the same ... We are either a united people under one head and for federal purposes, or we are thirteen independent sovereignties, eternally coun- teracting each other.’ Or, as he later expressed it: Our object should be “‘to overlook all personal, local, and partial considerations; to contemplate the United States as one great whole.” Union was a novelty, and was opposed, quite naturally, by men of less vision and experience than Washington. They felt that prosperity 48 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM would be better assured by continuing the inde- pendence of the States. “The problem was simple. Which should be first, the States as they then were, or the Union, as was then proposed? The Con- stitutional Convention solved the question by adopting the principle of the supremacy of the Union. ‘This was done by the first words of the preamble to the Constitution, ‘We, the people of the United States.”” The whole people, as sovereign, adopted the form of government, not the accredited representatives of thirteen sovereign States. The Constitution adopted the principle and put it first. It was quite natural that it was only gradually put into effect. States’ Rights were long urged in contravention of it. Jefferson, not at first wholly in sympathy with the Federal principle, in 1798 drafted the “Kentucky Resolutions,” later quoted in the South as classic justification of seces- sion. Yet Jefferson, as President, acted on Fed- eral principles and did much to establish them. No President has ever taken action more clearly implying the supremacy of the Union over the States (and, incidentally, the necessity of “loose construction” of the Constitution) than Jefferson did in the Louisiana Purchase, the great glory of his administration. It was during his administra- tion also that the Federal principle was practically applied, and its implications made clear, by the AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 49 classic decisions of Chief Justice John Marshall. Somewhat later, Andrew Jackson, once prominent among anti-Federalists, gave the principle of Union one of its strongest affirmations in his Nullification Proclamation. Union urged as an ideal, was seen to be a practical necessity, was achieved by many struggles, and finally became an American commonplace. By the middle of the nineteenth century, States’ Rights seemed to have become a moribund issue, and there would have been general acquiescence in the sentiments of Webster: “I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation of our federal union. It is to that Union that we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happi- ness.”’ The principle was assailed in a new way in the agitation of the slavery question. States’ Rights in the earlier form seemed dead, but revived in the form of “‘Sectionalism.’’ A single State might not defy, and break from, the Union; but might not a group of States do so? The first suggestion of sectional secession was made in New England: the only actual secession was that of the South. 50 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM The Civil War was fought primarily, not for the abolition of slavery, which was a secondary aim and an incidental consequence, but for the preser- vation of the Union. The great leader under whom the Unity of the States was saved from dis- ruption, who was also the great prophet of Amer- ican Unity during the Civil War, was Abraham Lincoln. “Physically speaking,” he declared in his First Inaugural, “we cannnot separate. We cannot re- move our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassible wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the pres- ence and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this. . . . We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. . . . The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when touched again, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.’ Or, on another occasion: ‘That portion of the earth’s surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States is well adapted to be the home of one national family; and it is not well adapted for two or more. Its vast extent, and its variety of climate and productions, are of ad- vantage in this age for one people, whatever they AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 51 may have been in other ages. Steam, telegraph, and intelligence have brought them to be an ad- vantageous combination for one united people. There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary, on which to divide.”’ So the Civil War was fought to preserve ter- ritorial unity as basis for national unity of the in- habitants of central North America. General Garfield gave a true interpretation of the events of 1861 to 1865. ‘There is nothing more national in this Republic than the spirit that saved the Union. The soldiers fought for the whole Union; and the spirit that animated us was the spirit of nationality against the spirit of sectional- ism: and, in defending the truths for which we fought, we were national to the core and sectional in nothing. It is the spirit of sectionalism against which we fought, and the spirit of broad, united nationality which we defended and will defend while we live.” During the half century that has elapsed since the Civil War, there has been a deepening of the national sense. State boundary lines and sectional groupings have geographical and political con- venience: but, as separating brothers from national unity, they have been obliterated. No one now thinks, as it was once natural for Jefferson and Lee to think, ‘Virginia is my country.’ No one is now conscious of being a New Englander or a 52 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Southerner more than of being an American. We have learned the meaning of one of Washington’s parting injunctions: “The name American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must al- ways exalt the just pride of patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discrimina- tions.’ Most of us could say quite as truly as Roosevelt, “I have not a sectional bone in my whole body.” “Lord of the universe! Shield us and guide us, ‘Trusting Thee always through shadow and sun! ‘Thou hast united us, who will divide us? Keep us, O keep us, the Many in One.” * During the past fifty years, the national unity has been threatened in a new way, and the old problems of its preservation presented in new forms. Sectionalism has been succeeded by racial- ism, local division by tribal. America has obliter- ated her own boundary-lines only to find herself overlaid by the boundary-lines of Europe. The nation is now threatened not by sectional, but by racial, disunity. It has been inevitable that the difhculty should arise. America has welcomed many peoples who could not be expected, all at once, to understand the American idea of a national unity, like Jaques’ melancholy, “composed * Holmes. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM = 53 of many simples.” Europe divides a few races into many nationalities, and aims at keeping them separate by balances of power. America has taken in many races and welded them into one national- ity by infusion of one spirit. The work is far from completed, but has passed beyond the experimen- tal stage. ‘The aim is, in Lincoln’s words, that we form “one national family,” into which any- one may be adopted and given full privileges, so long as he identifies himself with the family life. But we are having to deal with many who have accepted the adoption and privileges without the responsibilities, with the secret, or even openly avowed, intention of living as members of another household. A German-American declared in Mil- waukee in 1915: “We are all German brothers together, no matter in what country we live.” He would not say that now. It must be recognized as natural that peoples devoted to their ancestral homes and cultures should go to another country with the feeling that, no matter what legal for- malities were involved, they were forming colonies for their native lands. In the United States, how- ever, they have to learn that they cannot do this; that their aim clashes with a firmly cherished American ideal; that persistence in it is regarded as a species of treason. It does not alter the case that they think of transforming this country into a copy of the one they have left, conquest rather 54 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM than colonization! The United States requires that all aliens admitted to citizenship shall con- form to the country’s distinctive conditions and accept its ideals; that all imported traits shall be pooled in the common stock of the one composite people. American nationality, comprising so many elements, is larger and richer than any of its com- ponent parts. ‘he assumption that any one part is greater than the whole is poor mathematics and poorer political speculation! ‘Thus far there has been progressive realization of American unity; and there is no reason for thinking that past and present are not prophetic of the future. Yet dis- unity along racial lines in some degree exists and creates a danger which the country must meet. It is not that one stock is pitted against another in a many-cornered fight, but that the great body of united Americans is confronted with a number of alien or semi-alien groups. Uncle Sam has to deal with some of his neighbors’ dull, if not bad, boys. He has tried to adopt them and give them a home; and they have proved troublesome; if not a danger, at least a nuisance. Any country has a perfect right to impose what conditions it pleases on those who seek its citizen- ship. The United States, in doing this, offers something better than what it supersedes. At any rate, the alien seeking admission must think so; otherwise he would make no change. America AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM | 55 wishes immigrants to keep all they have in the way of inherited equipment, but not to refuse what by addition they can gain, to be all that they are, and willing to be more too. It is not required that racial traits shall be destroyed, merely that they be adapted to others. Mr. Lloyd George, in a Canadian speech emphasizing the advantages of British citizenship, compared the union of peoples in the United Kingdom to a building composed of various marbles, the distinctness of which was pre- served by appropriate uses for the strength and beauty of the one structure. He contrasts this with a process of stone-crushing whereby the same materials should have lost beauty and identity by being used for building in the form of concrete. He seemed to have an oblique glance at the Amer- ican system. If so, he was wrong. ‘There has been no ‘‘stone-crushing”’ in the use of human ma- terials in America’s making. ‘The whole history shows how one set of settlers after another has been able to amplify an old inheritance in a new environment, and enrich it by appropriation of what had been made part of American life through contributions from other sources, ‘making out of divers race stocks a new nation, and treating all citizens of that nation in such fashion as to pre- serve them equality of opportunity in industrial, civil, and political life.” ‘We wish to make of the many peoples of this country a united nation, 56 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM one in speech and feeling, and all, as far as pos- sible, sharers in the best that each has brought to our shores.’ * ‘No matter from what Old World country they themselves or their forefathers may have come, the great thing is to remember that we are all Americans. Let us keep our pride in the stocks from which we have sprung, but let us show that pride, not by holding aloof from one another, least of all by preserving the Old World jealousies and bitternesses, but by joining in a spirit of generous rivalry to see which can do most for our great common country.” T The American ideal is of “one national family”; and the national experience has been that of a great family life. Racialism is condemned as family disloyalty. Naturalization does no vio- lence to nature; but adoption into the family does involve acceptance of new obligations along with the new name, and limitations such as those in- volved in marriage. Two things are required of new citizens, renunciation of foreign allegiance, and declaration of allegiance to the United States. No one is forced to come here or prevented from succumbing to “temptations that belong to other nations’; but, if a man has withstood all these and come to us, we demand that he shall be one of us; that the land of his adoption shall super- * Roosevelt: Fear God, pp. 358, 372. ? ¥ Roosevelt: Address to the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, March 17, 1905. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 57 sede that of his origin. If anything involves choice between the two, America must stand first. As President Coolidge expressed it in his first message to Congress: * ‘American institutions rest solely on good citizenship. They were created by a people who had a background of self-government. New arrivals should be restricted to our capacity to absorb them into the ranks of good citizenship. America must be kept American. Those who-do not want to be partakers of the American spirit should not settle in America.” Most who choose to live in America become genuine Americans, if not in the first, at least in the second and third generations. Where there is the will, there is no difficulty; nor do Americans lack sense and patience in dealing with recent ar- rivals. Nevertheless, they do not fail to char- acterize deliberate cult of foreign conditions as disloyalty and ingratitude. Vermont is not an out- post of French-Canadian Quebec; New England is not an extension of Old England or of Old Ire- land; the Middle West not a province of Mittel- Europa. America has no intention of becoming a congeries of foreign colonies. Something like colonies are a temporary necessity: Ellis Island affects no magical transformations. Yet all group- ings of nationals should be so directed as to further Americanization. ‘This is mere common * December 8, 1923. 58 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM sense. The country is not “a bit of crazy-patch- work,” “a collection of warring groups,” ‘“‘a poly- glot conglomerate of unfused nationalities,” or ‘‘a menagerie where the animals have to be kept in separate cages.’ “‘We must resolutely refuse to permit our great nation, our great America, to be split into a series of little replicas of Euro- pean nationalities, and to become a Balkan penin- sula on a larger scale. We are a nation, and not a hodge-podge of foreign nationalities. We are a people, and not a polyglot boardinghouse.” * The chief spokesman for his countrymen against the dangers of disunity through racialism has been Theodore Roosevelt. He has said nothing which all who know conditions and have the welfare of the country at heart, do not feel: but he has given a growing conviction its most forcible ex- pression. No one who cares to understand Amer- ican sentiment of the present time can ignore the importance of what is the burden of Roosevelt’s preaching throughout his career, and is equally to be found in the teaching of all the country’s chief leaders. “Once it was true that this country could not endure half free and half slave. To-day it is true that it can- not endure half American and half foreign. The hyphen is incompatible with patriotism.” ft * Roosevelt: The Great Adventure, N. Y., 19183 p. 52. 1 Fear God, p. 19. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 59 “The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its con- tinuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English- Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans, or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nation- ality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with the Europeans of that nationality than with the other citizens of the American Republic. ‘The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen, and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily a citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good Amer- ican. ‘There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. ‘The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.” “For an American citizen to vote as a German- American, an Irish-American, or an English-American, is to be a traitor to American institutions and _ those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threats of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.” “Tf as a nation we are split into warring camps, if we teach our citizens not to look upon one another as brothers but as enemies divided by the hatred of creed for creed, or of those of one race against those of another race, surely 60 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent will go down in crushing overthrow.” * “We welcome the German or the Irishman who be- comes an American. We have no use for the German or the Irishman who remains such. We do not wish German-Americans and Irish-Americans who figure as such in our social and political life; we want only Amer- icans, and, provided they are such, we do not care whether they are of native, or of Irish, or of German ancestry. We freely extend the hand of welcome and good fellow- ship to every man, no matter what his creed or birthplace, who comes here honestly intent on becoming a good United States citizen like the rest of us; but we have a right, and it is our duty, to demand that he shall indeed become so, and shall not confuse the issues with which we are struggling by introducing among us Old World quarrels and prejudices. ... Our political and social questions must be settled on their own merits, and not complicated by quarrels between England and Ireland, or France and Germany, with which we have nothing to do: it is an outrage to fight an American political cam- paign with reference to questions of European politics. ... “Americanism is a question of spirit, conviction, and purpose, not of creed or birthplace. . . . A Scandinavian, a German, or an Irishman who has really become an American, has the right to stand on exactly the same foot- ing as the native-born citizen of the land, and is just as much entitled to the friendship and support, social and political, of his neighbors. . . . We must stand shoulder to shoulder, not asking as to the ancestry or creed of our comrades, but only truth demanding that they be in very * Address to the Knights of Columbus on “Americanism.” AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 61 truth Americans, and that we all work together, heart, hand, and head, for the honor and greatness of our com- mon country.” * There is much repetition in all this, simple ring- ing of changes on one thought: but it represents the mind and will of the American people, and is to be taken as integral and essential to the Amer- ican consciousness. The ideal of a united people, exhibiting many types but constituting one family, did not come into existence as the figment of theorists. It merely represents hope and determination that the future shall resemble the past. The Republic from the beginning represented the corporate life of a com- posite people, various races welded into one, re- taining the variety of their respective character- istics, though they had surrendered an isolated in- dependence. ‘The distinctive traces of separate origin were subordinated to the common destiny. Colonial experience proved that the ideal was practicable. The population of the thirteen colonies was composed of English, Scotch, Welsh, Irish, Dutch, French, Germans, and Swedes. All these combined to form a political and social en- tity. Their common life in the Western Hemis- phere differentiated them from their respective kindreds in the Eastern; and at the end of the colonial period their imported differences counted * American Ideals, pp. 62-74 passim. 62 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM for less than their acquired resemblances. ‘The different brands of colonials were more like each other than they were like their respective forbears. Before it existed as theory or policy, American- ization was a fact. John Jay, commenting on this, wrote: ‘‘Provi- dence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people; a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same lan- guage, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established their general liberty and independence. This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties. Similar sentiments have hitherto prevailed among all orders and denomina- tions of men among us. To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people; each _ indi- vidual citizen everywhere enjoying the same na- tional rights, privileges, and protection.” * Madi- son expressed the same thought: “The kindred * Federalist, No. II. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 63 blood which flows in the veins of American citi- zens, the mingled blood which they have shed in the defence of sacred rights, consecrate their union and excite horror at the idea of their be- coming aliens, rivals, enemies.” There was much rose-color in this view of things, considering the conditions of 1787: but, though it tinged, it did not distort the fact. Americans were not born united; but they achieved union; and they not un- reasonably thrust it upon all newcomers. Eighteenth century America exhibited a race of Americans formed during the preceding century and a half. These inaugurated the Republic, and assumed that the nation could expand and develop along the lines of its beginnings. It has opened wide its doors, extended a welcome to men of all lands, wishing to incorporate them with all reason- able speed as all alike American. In colonial times there had been a blending of at least eight north-European stocks. It was assumed that, by similar processes, there might be blending of stocks more numerous and more widely different. Experience has not falsified, though it has modified the assumption. In the first place, what was possible for various tribes of white men, was not possible for men of different colors. Red men, black men, and yellow men cannot combine with whites, as white men can with each other. The Americans, as originally 64 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM formed, were a white race. Indians beside them, and negroes among them, could not blend in the American amalgam as could Scotch, Germans and Swedes. Eventually these were included in the nation, having place and part in the national life, and full enjoyment of the rights guaranteed by the government. Yet, however widely and fairly ex- tended the privileges of political equality, the color lines of creation could not be ignored in mat- ters of social fusion. The American family idea had to be modified. Black Americans and red Americans must have full consideration and pro- tection; but the white Americans can not abrogate their responsibilities for leadership. Whether it be put in words or not, it must be a recognized principle that the national welfare depends on the domination of whites in America. In the nation are the great race of Americans proper and cer- tain lesser races. Modifications of the national theory have been forced along other lines than those of fast colors. Among white peoples are differences which affect the ease, if not possibility, of combination. North Europeans, thrown together in close contact, get on fairly well: south Europeans do the same. They do not, however, get on so well with each other. Barriers of temperament count for more than barriers of tongue. These may be sur- mounted, and have been in America: but processes AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 65, of uniting south-Europeans and north-Europeans are complex, affording difficult, though not in- soluble, problems. The first Americans repre- sented the more adventurous from sturdy stocks, with ambition and capacity for self-government, and ability to adapt themselves to novel conditions. Among later comers have been many whose ca- pacity for self-government and whose adaptibility were undeveloped or negligible. Here again; the theory has not broken down or been abandoned: but it has had to be applied with a difference. The New World’s healthy digestion easily disposed of the simpler foods of early days: but highly-spiced éntrees in later life have caused attacks of acute dyspepsia. Dyspepsia is not fatal, but calls for regulation of diet. Hence restrictions on immi- gration. Some newcomers we can assimilate readily; some not so easily; some, perhaps, not at all. There must be due time-allowances, sensible recognition of differences, but no failure to face facts and to adapt policies and methods to reali- ties. Slowness in coalescence with the currents of national life involves a handicap for those who ex- hibit it, for its duration a species of inferiority. Non-coalescence incurs a permanent disability. If there be any races or classes of people coming to our shores who can never lose their foreign identity, from the nature of the case they keep 66 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM themselves subordinate. The formation of our society is like the final judgment, the finding of levels by law of spiritual gravitation. Each is judged by being allowed to have his own way, by being left on the plane he has chosen for himself. ‘This is judgment, that men loved darkness rather than light.” ‘‘He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; he that is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.”’ So in America. To him that hath will for citizenship shall more capacity and enjoyment be given: but he that is alien, let him be alien still. Americans must do the best they can with all within their borders: but only to those who are Americans through and through can be entrusted the management of the Republic. Are there any white races which cannot be fully adopted into the national family? The most ob- vious case to examine would be that of the Jews. Americans have been forced to admit that they, no less than their transatlantic neighbors, have a “Jewish problem.” They are hopeful that it may be solved to the satisfaction of all concerned. The history of four thousand years shows that Jews have lived in all countries without belonging to any of them, for half of the time being a race without a country. Always and everywhere they have been Jews and Jews only, the type persistent and the peculiarities indestructible.’ They have AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 67 never lost racial identity; and an apparently im- mutable alienism has made them in all lands a “oroblem.” If the alienism be an innate necessity, the Jew can not be blamed for it any more than the negro for his black skin; but the fact remains and must be reckoned with. It may be unreason- able to expect in the United States what has never happened anywhere else. Yet, if the Jews must be dealt with as a people apart, innocent heirs of ancestral conditions though they be, they must ac- cept a position of difference which means one of subordination. National problems cannot rank with national assets. “Tt is a social truth,” writes Hilaire Belloc of a situation in Europe,* “that there is a Jewish nation, alien to us and therefore irritant. [tis a moral truth that expulsion and worse are remedies to be avoided. It is an historical truth that those solutions have always ultimately failed. The recognition of these three truths alone will set us right.” Hence, he urges as solution, ‘‘segregation which may take an amicable form and may be a mutual arrangement: a recognition with mutual advantage of a reality which is unavoidable... If we recognize the Jewish people freely and with- out fear as a separate body; if upon both sides the realities of the situation be admitted, with conse- quent and necessary definitions which those reali- * The Jews, Boston, 1922; pp. 13, 108. 68 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM ties imply, we shall have peace.” Mr. Chesterton says the same things somewhat differently. ‘“‘It is the essential fact of the whole business, that the Jews do not become national merely by becoming a political part of any nation. . . . The point is that we should know where we are; and he should _ know where he is, which is in a foreign land.” * Jews in America have become more self-asser- tive and aggressive during the past twenty years. They have made themselves felt, especially in New York with its one-third Jewish population, in finance, in the press, in politics, in the universities; at times in attempts to influence the national poll- cies of education, and especially in attacks on the assumption that the United States is in any sense specifically Christian. “The Jewish problem in our midst arouses vehement feeling and discussion, and can no longer be ignored. ‘To some it appears that all Jews are hopelessly alien, that none of them will ever make good Americans. Of many this is certainly true. At a meeting of Jewish societies in Chicago,t the most applauded senti- ment was: ‘We don’t want to be less Jewish in this country; we want to be more Jewish.” There seems to be no potential Americanism in that. If so, let him that is Jewish, be Jewish still; but let him take the consequences. Let the Jew have his * The New Jerusalem, New York, 1921; p. 283. f American Union of Hebrew Congregations, April, 1924. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 69 bond, but no more, the pound of flesh, but no jot of blood. If he cannot attain the Presidency or other high office, it will not be because he is a Jew, but because he has not become American. It is not that Judaism excludes, but that only American- ism qualifies. That is sheer common sense. The country’s opportunities are offered to all, and have been accepted and used by all sorts of people will- ing to comply with the reasonable conditions. Those who can not, or will not, identify themselves with the nation, must miss the chief prizes; but they have no cause to complain. Their exclusion is self-exclusion. Others have not shut them out: they themselves have refused to come in. Uncle Sam gives a fair and square deal; but he requires that we observe the rules of the game. We must, however, always be on guard against sweeping generalizations. Acquaintance with American Jews will show that many, possibly most, of them are not genuinely American. Per- haps they can never be made so. But it will also show that there are many who are. Israel Zang- will once said to President Roosevelt,* ‘The Jew- ish problem breaks to pieces as soon as it comes to the United States; the Jews cease to be Jews as they are Jews in Germany, Russia, and France, and become simply citizens of the United States.” * Conversation reported by Major Archibald Butt in letter of October 2, 1908. 70 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM That was too sweeping. Nevertheless, there are many who would understand the testimony given Roosevelt by a Catholic chaplain in the Great War:* “You may be interested to know that many of our best officers and men are Jews. Among them I have the staunchest friends. As a Catholic priest, I take off my hat to the Jew for heroism on the field of battle and loyalty at home.” We must discriminate sharply between two classes in our ‘‘separate peoples’: those who can and will identify themselves with the American spirit and aims, and those who can or will not. ‘The former belong to us wholly, and must share wholly in what we are and what we have: the latter must observe the limits we have to set them. Belloc thinks that the United States may find a solution for the Jewish problem, ft but only by “recognition of a separate community resident amongst its hosts upon clearly defined terms.” If that is the best we can do, we must make the most of it: but it means modification of the national ideal. Uncle Sam wishes members of the family, not guests: he is a good provider as head of the house, but dislikes the duties of ‘fashionable host” and of probation-officer. The Jewish problem is but the most obvious of a series of difficulties of similar character with * Father Vincent J. Toole, in a letter to Roosevelt, July 18, 1918, on the death of his son. + The Contrast, Boston, 1924; p. 179. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 71 which Americans of the present generation have to cope. They press upon us from all sides and affect every phase of national work and develop- ment. ‘Chey involve a danger, to which our whole history has made us specially sensitive, that of im- pairing the national unity. It is not strange, there- fore, that our judgments of many persons and things are affected by their supposed bearings on this phase of our nationalism. Our unity is the very foundation of all other national blessings. IV RELIGIOUS TOLERATION In declaring the principle of religious freedom, the American Convention of 1787 did not follow a precedent, but established one. For the first thousand years of the Christian era there had been but one religion for the great body of Christians. In the eleventh century came the Great Schism between East and West. From the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries there had been one religion ior all western Christians. Then occurred three revolts which separated most of the countries of northern Europe from the unity of the Catholic Church. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it had been the aim of European states to impose religious uniformity within their borders, partly from desire to protect what was believed to be truth, more from desire to secure civil tranquillity. It was generally accepted that there should be but one religion in one state. Rival parties tried to establish their respective systems in power, and when in power, each in turn suppressed and persecuted opponents. There had 72 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 73 been hints of toleration as a principle during the Middle Ages, as by Marsiglio of Padua in 1327 and by Gerson at the Council of Constance: but it was generally accepted that those in power were bound to impose their own conceptions of truth. The Reformation caused no immediate change. Lutherans, Calvinists and Anglicans forced accept- ance of their respective systems as rigorously as Catholics. The majority imposed their will; small minorities were ruthlessly suppressed; large minorities were grudgingly granted such liberty as they could extort and maintain. Strong rulers en- forced their wills without regard to the wishes of subjects. ‘‘No religious body of any antiquity which obtained possession of power, can plead that it did not wish to use it for its own support.” * Yet the indirect influence of sixteenth century struggles was in the interests of toleration. What was not done from principle was done from polit- ical necessity. More minorities and larger minori- ties called for consideration; and struggles for independence as a right suggested equal rights for others. Sects as well as political parties fought to the death for religious liberty for the sake of having their own way. Ass class interests during the Middle Ages had been true pioneers of polit- ical liberty, so during the Reformation religious liberty was won by the struggles of sectarians. ‘““To * Creighton: Persecution and Tolerance, pp. 41ff. 74. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM transfer the allegiance of the human spirit from clerical to civil authority was, roughly speaking, the effect of the movement of the sixteenth cen- tury alike in Catholic and Protestant countries. It was less successful in those lands and cities where Calvinism, manipulated by a highly trained ministry, obtained predominant or exclusive con- trol. The result was achieved partly by the sacri- fice of earlier and larger aims, partly by their realization.” * The seventeenth century saw re- ligion imposed in the several European states by their respective rulers, though in all appeared opposition to the religions imposed, and some- times to the assumption by rulers of right to im- pose religion at all. The eighteenth century saw marked increase in the tendency to deny the right of civil authority to dictate in matters of religion. In England, Cath- olic and Protestant dissenters made common cause again the oppressions of the State Church. They sought restoration of civil rights withheld on re- ligious grounds; they denied the right of the State to control conscience. Independency vaguely urged a principle of toleration; and Cromwell tolerated various sects of Protestants, though not Anglicans or Catholics. The Toleration Act of 1688 granted new priviliges to dissenters, though far from ac- cording full freedom. At the accession of George * Figgis: Cambridge Modern History, Wars of Religion. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 75 II, Protestant dissenters were admitted to office and laws against Catholics were softened. Under George III, regulations were further relaxed, re- lief being granted in 1786 to Catholics as well as Protestants. ‘Chere were some bold declarations of principle, as by Lord Mansfield in the House of Lords: ‘There is nothing certainly more un- reasonable, more inconsistent with the rights of human nature, more contrary to the spirit and precepts of the Christian religion, more iniquitous and unjust, more impolitic, than persecution. It is against natural religion, revealed religion, and sound policy.”” Yet the removal of all civil dis- abilities from dissenters was not accomplished un- til 1832; and an Established Church is still main- tained. ‘“The daughter-land was before the mother-country in establishing religious liberty.” In the American colonies of England there were important grants of toleration. It is often claimed that the Pilgrim Fathers were “apostles of re- ligious liberty”: but the claim can not well be sub- stantiated. The Pilgrims, and later the Puritans, sought liberty in America, made distinctions be- tween civil and ecclesiastical authority, and were emphatic in asserting their own rights: but they did not grant rights to others, as Quakers, Bap- tists, Episcopalians and Catholics learned to their sorrow. The Plymouth colony excluded Quakers in 1658, and in 1671 required that all freemen 76 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM must be “orthodox in the fundamentals of re- ligion,” thus acting on a principle against which, when directed against themselves, they had strongly protested in England. The Puritans were notoriously bitter against all who differed from them in religion, and added a new chapter to the history of religious persecution. The New Englanders were but children of their times: the pioneers of toleration appeared elsewhere. Maryland has the honor of having been the first colony in America to grant toleration in re- ligion, which she did in 1649. The authority which granted this was Catholic. Lord Balti- more’s action may have been “evidently dictated by worldly prudence, rather than prompted by advanced charity”: * but, if so, his worldly pru- dence was entitled to honorable distinction for the time in which he lived. Bancroft’s comments do not exaggerate the significance of the Maryland precedent. “The foundation of Maryland was peacefully and hap- pily laid; and in six months it advanced more than Vir- ginia had done in as many years. The proprietary continued with great liberality to provide everything needed for its comfort and protection. ... Far more memorable was the character of its institutions. One of the largest wigwams was consecrated for religious service by the Jesuits, who could say therefore that the first chapel * Crane and Moses: Politics, p. 119. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 77 in Maryland was built by the red men. Of the Dis- senters, though they seem as yet to have been without a minister, the rights were not abridged. This enjoyment of liberty of conscience did not spring from any act of colonial legislation, nor from any formal and general edict of the governor, nor from any oath as yet imposed by instructions of the proprietary. English statutes were not held to bind the colonies, unless they especially named them: the clause which, in the charter for Virginia, ex- cluded from that colony ‘all persons suspected to affect the superstitions of the church of Rome,’ found no place in the charter of Maryland: and, while allegiance was held to be due, there was no requirement of the oath of supremacy. ‘Toleration grew up in the province silently, as a custom of the land. Through the benignity of the administration, no person professing to believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ was permitted to be molested on account of religion. Roman Catholics, who were op- pressed by the laws of England, were sure to find an asylum on the north bank of the Potomac; and there, too, Dissenters were sheltered against Protestant intolerance. From the first, men of foreign birth enjoyed equal ad- vantages with those of the English and Irish nations.” * Rhode Island followed the example of Mary- land in 1663. Roger Williams, driven from Massachusetts in 1636, had spoken for toleration and in his new settlement of Providence had in- corporated a “'town-fellowship only in civil things.” * Bancroft: History of the United States (Author’s last re- vision), Vol. I, p. r6rf. 78 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Three other settlements of refugees near by, in- cluding the antinomians at Portsmouth, had imi- tated this: but it was not until the four settlements were recognized as the colony of Rhode Island that formal action placed the new colony in the cate- gory with Maryland. In 1664, the proprietaries of New Jersey granted wide toleration. In 166s, the Charter of Liberties granted New York by a board of which the Catholic Duke of York was head, contained the provision: ‘‘No person pro- fessing belief in Christianity shall be molested for his judgment in matters of religion.” In 1667, Charles II authorized the proprietaries of Caro- lina, where the State Church was to be established, to accord liberty to all nonconformists who did not disturb the civil authorities. In 1691, Massa- chusetts passed an act benefiting all except Catho- lics. In 1701, Pennsylvania received from William Penn a charter in which was guaranteed full freedom of conscience. In 1732, Georgia re- ceived from George II a charter in which liberty was granted to all except Catholics. In 1776, Virginia issued a Declaration of Rights in which the principle of religious liberty was affirmed; but corresponding action was deferred for ten years. In 1777, New York enacted a statute that “the free toleration of religious profession and worship, without diminution or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed within the State to all man- AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 79 kind,” provided “that liberty of conscience hereby granted shall not be construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness or justify practices inconsistent with fresatery or thesotate. 2) There was much, therefore, in colonial prece- dent to pave the way for the action of the Con- stitutional Convention of 1787. ‘Toleration in America where there were many sects, seemed a social and political necessity. ‘“‘In such a chaos of creeds religious persecution became impossible.” There was, however, discussion of toleration as right in principle as well as expedient in policy. Two men were chiefly responsible for the forma- tion of opinion on the subject, the English philos- opher, John Locke, and Thomas Jefferson. The influence of Locke was important. As a Protestant Dissenter, he was led to think much of the rights of men like himself during the reign of Sharles oil. As:ifriend ,and~ adviser of; Lord Ashley, one of the proprietors of Carolina, he had sought to prevent the establishing there of the Church of England, and proposed that it should be recognized that seven persons might form an independent church on professing belief in God and in the duty of public worship. He had thoughts of visiting America and was shareholder in the Bahama Company. His writings contain * Stevens: Sources of the Constitution of the United States, N. Y., 1894; pp. 214-218. 80 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM frequent allusions to the New World. He cites the “Americans,” i.e. Indians, as examples of what is to be found in the “State of Nature!” Under James II he left England for Holland where he became known to William and Mary. He returned to England in Queen Mary’s train in 1689, was influential with men of prominence in the new reign, and provided the Whigs with their political philosophy for a century to come. One of his best known writings was 4 Letter con- cerning Toleration, written in 1667, revised in 1685, and first published in Latin in Holland in 1689. His thesis was later elaborated in three other Letters. Francis Bacon in his essay on Unity in Religion had laid down similar principles, as had various other writers in England, Hales of Eton, Chillingworth, and Jeremy Taylor in his Liberty of Prophesying. But Locke’s treatise came to be regarded as classic on the subject and had more influence than anything else in forming sentiment in England. The original Letter was published in America, three editions having ap- peared in Boston by 1743. The acceptance of Locke’s main contentions is apparent in most eighteenth century Americans whose opinions have been preserved. No consideration of religious liberty during this period is complete without a careful study of Locke. The practical problem with which he was trying to deal was the relation AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 81 of Protestant Dissenters to the established Church of England: he is opposing Anglican Bishops and the Crown. But he is led on to statement of prin- ciples going beyond his special problem. His main contentions are indicated by the fol- lowing extracts from the First Letter: “Absolute liberty, just and true liberty, equal and im- partial liberty, is the thing that we stand in need of. Now, though this has indeed been much talked of, I doubt it has been much understood. I am sure, not at all prac- tised, either by our governors towards the people, in gen- eral, or by any differing parties of the people towards one another.” , “T esteem the mutual toleration of Christians in their different professions of religion to be the chief character- istical mark of the true Church. For whatsoever some people boast of the antiquity of places and names, or of the pomp of outward worship: others of the reformation of their discipline; all of the orthodoxy of their faith (for everyone is orthodox to himself): these things, and all others of this nature, are much rather marks of men striving for power and empire over one another, than of the Church of Christ. Let anyone have never so true a claim to all these things, yet, if he be destitute of charity, meekness, and good will in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians, he is certainly short of being a true Christian himself. . . . No man can be called a Christian without charity, and without that faith which works, not by force, but by love.’ “The toleration of those that differ from others in mat- 82 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM ters of religion is so agreeable to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to the genuine reason of mankind, that it seems monstrous for men to be so blind, as not to per- ceive the necessity and advantage of it, in so clear a light.” The civil magistracy “neither can, nor ought in any manner, to be extended to the salvation of souls,” because (1) the care of souls is not committed to civil authority; (2) civil power consists only in outward force; and (3) law and penalties do not help in the salvation of souls. “All the life and power of true religion consists in the inward and full persuasion of the mind; and faith is not faith without believing. ... True and saving religion consists in the inward persuasion of the mind; without which nothing can be acceptable to God. And such is the nature of the understanding that it cannot be com- pelled to the belief of anything by outward force.” ‘““The magistrate’s power extends not to the establish- ment of articles of faith, or forms of worship, by the force of his laws. For laws are of no force at all with- out penalties, and penalties in this case are absolutely im- pertinent, because they are not proper to convince the mind. . . . It is only light and evidence that can work a change in men’s opinions.” “All the power of civil government relates only to men’s civil interests; is confined to the care of things of this world; and hath nothing to do with the world to come.” “Let us now consider what a church is. A church I take to be a voluntary society of men, joining themselves together of their own accord, in order to the public worship of God, in such a manner as they judge acceptable AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM — 83 to Him, and effectual for the salvation of their souls. . . . No man by nature is bound, not of any particular church or sect, but everyone joins himself voluntarily to that society in which he believes he has found that profession and worship which is truly acceptable to God. The hope of salvation, as it was the only cause of his entrance into that communion, so it can be the only reason for his stay there. For if afterwards he discovers anything either erroneous in the doctrine or incongruous in the worship of that society to which he has joined himself: why should it not be as free for him to go out as it was to enter? No member of a religious society can be tied with any other bond but what proceeds from the certain expectation of eternal life. A church, then, is a society of members voluntarily uniting to this end.” “No church or company can in the least consist and hold together . . . unless it be regulated by some laws, and the members all consent to observe some order; .. . (yet) the right of making its laws can belong to none but the society itself; or at least (which is the same thing) to those whom the society by common consent has author- ized thereunto.” Episcopacy and Presbyterianism are rejected as without warrant, yet they are conceded to those who wish them, “provided I may have liberty at the same time to join my- self to that society, in which I am persuaded those things are to be found which are necessary to the salvation of my soul. In this manner, ecclesiastical liberty will be preserved on all sides, and no man will have a legislation imposed on him, but what he himself has chosen.” “The church itself is a thing absolutely separate and distinct from the commonwealth. The boundaries on 84 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM both sides are fixed and irremovable. He jumbles heaven and earth together, the things most remote and opposite, who mixes the societies, which in their original, end, and business, and in everything, are perfectly distinct, and infinitely different from each other.” “All men know and acknowledge that God ought to be publicly worshipped. . . . Men therefore are to enter into some religious society. . . . These religious societies I call churches; and these, I say, the magistrate ought to tolerate. . . . There is no difference between the national church and other separated congregations.” “Liberty of conscience is every man’s natural right.” “Neither pagan, nor Mahumetan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth be- cause of his religion.” “Not even Americans, subjected unto a Christian prince, are to be punished in body or goods for not embracing our faith and worship. If they are persuaded that they please God in observing the rites of their own country, and that they will obtain happiness by that means, they are to be left unto God and themselves. . . . The reason of the thing is equal both in America and Europe. Neither pagans there, nor dissenting Christians here, can with any right be deprived of their worldly goods by the predomi- nating faction of a court-church; nor are any civil rights to be either changed or violated on account of religion in one place more than another.” “If a Roman Catholic believe that to be really the Body of Christ, which another man calls bread, he does no injury thereby to his neighbor. If a Jew do not be- lieve the New Testament to be the word of God, he does not thereby alter anything in men’s civil rights. If a AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 85 heathen doubt of both Testaments, he is not therefore to be punished as a pernicious citizen. The power of the magistrate, and the estate of the people, may be equally secure whether any man believe these things or no. I readily grant that these opinions are false and absurd. But the business of the laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the safety and security of the commonwealth, and of every particular man’s goods and person. And so it ought to be. For truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself.” “Liberty remains to men in reference to their eternal salvation: and that is, that everyone shall do what in his conscience he is persuaded to be acceptable to the Al- mighty, on whose good pleasure and acceptance depends his eternal happiness. . . . For obedience is due in the first place to God, and afterwards to the laws.” Nevertheless, there are three classes to whom the magis- trate cannot grant toleration. (1) Those holding “opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral tules which are necessary for the preservation of civil society’; (2) those whose church “is constituted on such a bottom, that all those who enter into it, do thereby, ipso facto deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince; for by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country, and suffer his own people to be lifted, as it were, for soldiers against his own government”; (3) “lastly, those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.” 86 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Locke, therefore, declares for the liberty of all who believed in God, unless something in their beliefs was opposed to morality or order in the State. Of those, besides atheists, to whom he would deny toleration he mentions no names: but his descriptions leave no doubt as to whom his ex- ceptions apply.. As examples of opinions “‘con- trary to human society,” he cites three: ‘‘Faith is not to be kept with heretics’; ‘“‘Kings excom- municated forfeit their crowns and kingdoms”; and ‘Dominion is founded in grace.” ‘The first two were commonly ascribed to Catholics; the last was the Wyclifite doctrine still held by some suc- cessors of the Lollards. Catholics were not to be excluded for “matters of mere religion,” such as Transubstantiation, in saying which Locke con- tradicts the English law of his time. ‘They were, however, to be banned for such teachings as those cited, endangering “the preservation of civil so- ciety,” and also on the ground of ‘delivering themselves up to the protection and service of an- other prince.’ Locke uses but one illustration of this, the point of which is obvious. “Tt is ridiculous for any one to profess himself to be a Mahumetan only in his religion, but in everything else a faithful subject to a Christian magistrate, whilst at the same time he acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the Mufti of Constantinople; who himself is AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 87 entirely obedient to the Ottoman Emperor, and frames feigned oracles of that religion according to his pleasure.” Locke’s contemporaries quite understood that the “‘Mahumetan” he had in mind was a Catholic; the “Christian magistrate,’ Charles II; the “Mufti of Constantinople,’ the Pope of Rome; and the “Ottoman Emperor,” Louis XIV. Cath- olics were, therefore, to be excluded from tolera- tion not for theological beliefs, but as being bad or impossible subjects. Locke was the first to make this distinction clearly. He lays down em- phatically that the seeking of eternal happiness for man’s immortal soul “‘is the highest obligation that lies on mankind,” and that, so long as “‘he doth not violate the right of another, . . . each man’s salvation belongs only to himself.” But he held that others’ rights were violated by anything like ‘“‘Mahumetan” deference to “the Mufti of Con- stantinople.” No one else who asserted principles of toleration so emphatically had gained a hearing in England; and, as has been already noted, his teaching was very influential in America. It was formative of opinion during the eighteenth cen- tury, and is representative of much opinion prev- alent in the present day. Jefferson owed much to Locke, as appears in his use of Locke’s political philosophy in the Declaration of Independence. In his room in 88 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Philadelphia he had pictures of Bacon, Newton and Locke, “my trinity of the three greatest men the world has ever produced.” * He plainly was influenced by the Letter concerning Toleration; but he went further than its author. He would have excluded no one, not even atheists. He was accused of being an atheist himself, not justly, as he seems plainly to have believed in God and im- mortality, and is best described as a Deist. But he had abandoned definite Christianity. Although setting high value on much of the teaching of Jesus (regarded as a man “great natural endow- ments” and “correct and innocent life,” although ‘his reason had not yet attained the maximum of its energy”), Jefferson believed that such frag- ments of his teaching as have come to us were “mutilated, misstated, and often unintelligible, . . . disfigured by the conceptions of schismatiz- ing followers, . . . frittered into subtleties, and obscured with jargon.” + He made a cento of what he regarded as the authentic portions of the Gospels, omitting all that was miraculous or mys- tical, the Virgin Birth, Resurrection, and dis- courses in St. John, as ‘‘amphiboligisms,” the bits of genuine tradition being “‘as easily distinguished as diamonds in a dung-hill.” { His opinions were only expressed to a few intimates; but his free- * Works: Letter of January 16, 18112. { Works: Letter of April 21, 1807. £ Introduction to Morals of Jesus. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 89 thinking marked him out from his neighbors in Virginia; and, had the law of the Established Church been enforced, he would not have been eligible for office. As he pointed out, the statute De haeretico comburendo was in theory part of the common law of Virginia. Jefferson was de- termined that the Episcopal Church in Virginia should be disestablished, and that there must be a principle of toleration which would remove dis- abilities from those who had ceased to hold Biblical Christianity. His plea for abolition of religious tests and for wide toleration was made in 1781 in his Notes on Virginia.* “The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. ... But our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights, only as we have submitted to them. The rights of con- science we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for these to our God. ‘The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. If neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice can not be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately * Query XVII, “Religion.” 90 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM in his errors, but will never cure them. Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error. Give a loose rein to them, they will support true religion, by bringing every false one to their tribunal, to the test of their investigation. ‘They are the natural enemies of error and of error only. . . . Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself... . “Is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face, or of stature. Introduce a bed of Procustes, then, and as there is danger that large men will beat small, make us all of a size, by lopping the former and stretching the latter. Difference of opinion is advantageous to religion. ‘The several sects perform the office of censor morum over each other. . . . What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools, and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error over the earth, 2) vie “Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York have long subsisted without any establishment at all. The ex- periment was new and doubtful when they made it. It has answered beyond conception. They flourish indefi- nitely. Religion is well supported, of various kinds, in- deed, but all good enough; all sufficient to preserve peace and order: or, if a sect arises whose tenets would sub- vert morals, good sense has fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors, without suffering the state to be troubled with it. They do not hang more malefactors than we do. They are not more disturbed with religious dissensions than we are. On the contrary their harmony is unparalleled and can be ascribed to nothing but their AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 91 unbounded tolerance, because there is no other circum- stance in which they differ from every other nation on earth. “They have made the happy discovery that the way to silence religious disputes is to take no notice of them. Let us, too, give this experiment fair play, and get rid, while we may, of these tyrannical laws. It is true, we are yet secured against these by the spirit of the times. I doubt whether the people of this country would suffer an execution for heresy, or a three years imprisonment, for not comprehending the mysteries of the Trinity. But is the spirit of the people an infallible, a permanent re- liance? . . . It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united.” Jefferson had in 1779 drawn up a bill for separating Church and State in Virginia and for granting full liberty for religious opinions. It was finally passed in 1786: and he so highly valued the usefulness of his service in this that he men- tioned it in his epitaph as one of three things for which he wished to be remembered.* The Virginia statute declared: “All men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.” The statute was to prove a benefit to Virginia and a precedent for the whole country. * “Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declara- tion of Independence, the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.” 92 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM The preamble, however, goes out of its way to rule out all authority in religious matters, not only of the Church, but even of revelation. In its dog- matism it is characteristically Jeffersonian. ‘‘Al- mighty God hath created the mind free, and mani- fested his supreme will that free it shall remain, by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint. . . . [he impious presumption of legislature and ruler, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others... hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time. . . . Our civil rights have no depend- ence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.” The policy of the statute, without the dogmas of the preamble, was later incorporated in the Constitution of the United States, largely through the instrumentality of Madison. When the Constitution was formulated, the principle of religious freedom had been for some time gathering strength. Partly from this cause, and probably yet more from the fact that no one Christian body was in sufficient numerical pre- dominance to make ecclesiastical establishment of it for the nation a political possibility, it was en- acted: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 93 free exercise thereof.’ This was contained in the First Amendment, and, though specifically relat- ing to prohibited legislation, is to be construed in the light of its clearly implied principles, freedom for religion and protection in that freedom. This is the guarantee of the American Constitution. In Article VI it was laid down: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any ofice or public trust under the United States.” This is to be interpreted by contrast with the English Test Act of 1673, which had been opera- tive in some of the colonies and established a precedent which the American legislators would have considered. They did not copy or modify existing tests; they abolished all tests. The prin- ciple implied is the entire independence of Church and State, which also underlay the prohibition of a religious establishment. In two senses this feature of the Constitution was a declaration of independence. It was an emancipation proclamation, in that it did away with restrictions that had fettered various classes in the past, and in that it proclaimed liberty of conscience, raising a new standard which has had far-reaching consequences in the New World. It also represented, on the part of the State, refusal to shoulder a burden that had weighed heavily on the governments of Europe. The state dis- claimed all responsibility for determining the re- 94 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM ligion of the people, or for acting as agent for ecclesiastical authorities, thereby ridding itself of such problems as had beset the government of England ever since there had been a State-Church ‘by law established,” and of such duties as befell the governments in Catholic countries, when called upon to act as “‘secular arm of the Church.” By granting individual freedom to the people and avoiding difficulties in administration for the gov- ernment, it gave the guarantee of independence alike to State and Church. For both it safe- guarded inalienable rights and did away with oc- casions of annoyance. It was the only possible policy in America in the eighteenth century: it seemed also to represent the only right principle. The experience of a century and a half has deep- ened conviction in America that it represents some- thing stable and stabilizing in American life. Each citizen is free to follow his own religious convic- tions. The State neither dictates nor interferes, and is pledged to protect the freedom. This represents not an ideal, but the only practicable policy. The new State, having declared itself not re- sponsible for religion, might easily have adopted an attitude which was non-religious, or even ir- religious. There were some who would have felt this to be consistent. Jefferson, in drafting the Declaration of Independence, omitted any refer- AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 95 ences to God: Congress put them in. The Con- stitution adopted the principle of toleration with the broad scope of Jefferson’s recommendations: the government which put the Constitution into effect, marked itself as religious, or even as defi- nitely Christian. ‘The men responsible for the beginnings of the Republic were Christian and as- sumed that their State was Christian as well. They put something of their own spirit into constitu- tional history which was not represented by the bare letter of the law. Freedom for religion meant to them that they might keep themselves religious and give a religious character to the State. The classic illustration of this aspect of early American history is the First Inaugural Address of Washington. It rested with him to sound a key-note; and he chose to make the new Republic begin its course in the spirit of prayer. The chief topic of his address at the inauguration, not merely of an administration of four years, but of the Re- public, was “The Necessity of Dependence on God.” “It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my present supplication to the Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United 96 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM States a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument em- ployed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this hom- age to the great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your (Congress’) senti- ments no less than my own, nor those of my fellow- citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which con- ducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency: and in the important revolution just accomplished, in the sys- tem of their united government, the tranquil deliberation and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established, without some return of pious gratitude, along with humble anticipation of the future blessings which the past presage. ‘These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there can be none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence. “The great constitutional charter... pledges... that the foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality. There exists in the economy and course of nature an in- dissoluble union between virtue and happiness; between duty and advantage; between the genuine maxims of an AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 97 honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity. The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained: and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered, perhaps, as deeply, as finally, staked in the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. “I take my leave, but not without resorting once more to the Benign Parent of the human race in humble sup- plication that, since He has been pleased to favor the American people with opportunities of deliberating in perfect tranquillity, and dispositions for deciding with un- paralleled unanimity on a form of government for the security of their union and the advance of their happi- ness, so His divine blessing may be equally conspicuous in the enlarged views, the temperate consultations, and the wise measures, on which the success of the govern- ment must depend.” Both Houses of Congress responded sympa- thetically to the address, joining with the Presi- dent in making the inauguration represent a solemn dedication of the country and government to the service of God. ‘That His benediction may consecrate” was the significant phrase of the Inaugural, in which also Washington assumed that the American Republic is based on recognition of “the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself hath ordained.” This acknowledgment of 98 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM the supremacy of the Divine Law stands alone in early American state-papers, and is important both as precedent and as interpretation. It was recog- nition of this as an established American principle which led President Coolidge to say recently: ‘We believe in the brotherhood of man, because we believe in the Fatherhood of God. This is our justification for freedom and equality.” Washington also affords an excellent example of practical magnanimity. The people of the country were now in theory tolerant of all re- ligions, committed to the policy of a fair field for all and special favors for none. Would the theory be put into practice? Or would the toleration in language and law mask old suspicions revealing themselves in political and social proscription? It was not to be expected that mixed societies could at once adjust themselves to novelties in govern- mental principles. Much depended on the ex- ample set by leading men. Among these it is pos- sible to distinguish three types. Jefferson represents toleration in its broadest Scope, an attitude of impartiality based on indiffer- ence and skepticism. “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Legs and pockets being safe, he could re- gard with equanimity not only the many forms of Christianity, but polytheism and atheism as well. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 99 Charles James Fox once said: ‘The only founda- tion for toleration is a degree of skepticism, and without it there can be none. For, if a man be- lieves in the saving of souls, he must soon think about the means; and, if by cutting off one gen- eration, he can save many future ones from hell- fire, it is his duty to do it.’ Jefferson showed something of this skeptical tolerance. He viewed theological disputes with an amused impatience, ignored differences in opinion, usually concealed his own thoughts on religious subjects, and wished others to imitate his reticence. In his University of Virginia, there was to be no teaching of re- ligion, although he suggested that there might be theological schools of the various sects in the neighborhood. “By bringing the sects together and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality.” Ethics without dogma was the ideal: and all dog- matic systems could be treated alike as equally obsolescent. There were few of this type in Jef- ferson’s day; but there have been many since. John Jay represented the type of Locke. His statute of religious liberty for New York repro- duced Locke’s programme: separation of Church and State, and entire freedom for religious opinion with the three exceptions of atheists, antinomians, 100 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM and those whose tenets seemed dangerous to the state. He wished to grant freedom, but felt the need of cautious limitation: and the class whom he distrusted as dangerous citizens were Catholics. He had no fears of the revival of Smithfield burn- ings, Spanish Armadas, or Massacres of St. Bartholomew; but he doubted the whole-hearted loyalty to America of those who owned a foreign ecclesiastical allegiance. There were many like him among his contemporaries, and there are many now. Washington represented more religion than Jefferson, more optimism that Jay. He was great- hearted rather than great-minded, wished to think well of all men, could think well of most, and was most loth to harbor suspicions of any man’s re- ligious sincerity. He was sincere and judged others by himself. His tolerance was the expres- sion of sympathy and generosity. On one occa- sion during the War he wished to receive com- munion in a Presbyterian Church in Morristown and was delighted to learn that he might do so. As he explained to the clergyman, ‘Though a member of the Church of England, I have no ex- clusive partialities.’ He had grown up amid re- ligious divisions and assumed that they were in- evitable. He was a conscientious member of his own church and wished well to all others. His at- titude and temper were typical of the majority of AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 101 his contemporaries and is probably typical of the majority of non-Catholic Americans to-day. In extending the limits of toleration, the chief practical question related to Catholics. They were the only class who had been under special suspi- cion. They had been distrusted in most of the colonies, expressly excluded from Massachusetts and Georgia, and recently much discussed in New York. Many suspected danger lurking in their foreign allegiance: but Washington was not one of these. His kindly disposition prompted him to think well of everyone: and he judged Catholicism by the Catholics whom he knew, the Carrolls in Maryland, Thomas Fitzsimmons of Philadelphia, Thomas Sim Lee, and the many Catholic soldiers in his armies. On his election to the Presidency, he received an address from Catholics to which he made a sympathetic reply. His concluding words were: “I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations in examples of liberty and justice. And I presume your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their revolution and the estab- lishment of their government, or the important assistance which they received from a nation in which the Catholic faith is professed.” Washing- ton was far from understanding or accepting the Catholic faith: but he knew from experience that Catholics were as good citizens as others; and he 102 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM had no reserves in granting them full considera- tion and recognition. John Carroll, first Archbishop of Baltimore, set the pace and standard for Catholic citizens in the United States. He was closely associated with many leading men in Maryland and Pennsylvania, was wholly in sympathy with the new Republic, and took occasion to manifest his own and his people’s loyalty to the Constitution. “Bishop Carroll did not wish to see the Church vegetate as a delicate exotic plant.. He wished it to become a sturdy tree, deep-rooted in the soil, to grow with the growth and bloom with the development of the country, inured to its climate, braving its storms, invigorated by them, and yielding abun- dantly the fruits of sanctification. His aim was that the clergy and people should be thoroughly identi- fied with the land in which their lot is cast: that they should study its laws and political constitu- tion, and be in harmony with its spirit. From this mutual accord of Church and State there could but follow beneficent effects for both.” * ‘There is no finer aspiration for the country’s welfare, quite in line with Washington’s Inaugural, than Archbishop Carroll’s Prayer for Church and State: . . . ‘We commend likewise to Thy unbounded mercy * Cardinal Gibbons: “Church’s Work for the Republic,” in A Retrospect of Fifty Years, Vol. I, p. 248. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 103 all our brethren and fellow-citizens, throughout the United States, that they may be blessed in the knowledge, and sanctified in the observance, of Thy most holy law; that they may be preserved in union, and in that peace which the world cannot give: and, after enjoying the blessings of this life, be admitted to those which are eternal.” This may be taken to express an ideal of the State as well as of the Church. The founders of the Republic made it abundantly clear that re- ligious liberty was intended to allow choice be- tween religions, not neglect of religion altogether. The officials of the government exercised their freedom by choosing to give the Republic a re- ligious beginning. Moreover, there was special regard for the Christian religion. The language of the Constitution is perfectly general. Under it Jew and Buddhist may claim liberty as well as another. Yet the fathers of the commonwealth, being themselves Christians, seem to have had little thought of religious problems more compli- cated than those of dealing with competing forms of Christianity. America was to try the expert- ment of keeping governmental hands off while men individually worked out their own salvation. It was, however, the conventional thing to think and speak of the United States as a Christian country. Alexander Hamilton fell in with popular feeling in wishing for a “Christian Constitutional Society,”’ 104 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM which should defend together the Christian re- ligion and the Constitution of the United States. That America recognizes a duty toward God is not merely the commonplace sentiment of church-teachers: it is also the definition of the highest judicial authority. In 1891, the Supreme Court of the United States gave decision in a case where immigration officials had tried to exclude a clergyman, called from a foreign country to an American parish, on the ground that his admis- sion would be an infringement of an Alien Labor Law.* The decision, handed down by Justice Brewer, held that the law in question had no ref- erence to clergymen, and went further to afirm the principle that there could be no law imposing restrictions on churches in their proper work, since freedom in the pursuit of religion was guaranteed by the Constitution, and the Americans were a re ligious people. “No purpose of action against religion can be imputed to any legislature, state or national, be- cause this is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present time there is a single voice making this affirmation.” In proof is cited the Christian lan- guage of the commission given Columbus by Ferdinand and Isabella, the colonial grant to * Reports of the Supreme Court of the United States, Vol. 143, PP. 457-472. Church of the Holy Trinity vs. the United States. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 105 Raleigh in 1584, the charters granted to Virginia in 1606, 1609 and 1611, and the charters of other colonies. ‘In language more or less emphatic is the establishment of the Christian religion de- clared to be one of the purposes of the grant.” Then follow citations from the Mayflower Cov- enant, from the Fundamental Orders of Con- necticut in 1638 and 1639, and from the Charter of Privilege granted in 1701 by William Penn. There had been no religious revolution in 1776. ‘The Declaration of Independence recognizes the presence of the Divine in human affairs. . . . The constitutions of the various states contain a con- stant recognition of religious obligation. Every constitution of the forty-four states (1891) con- tains language which, either directly or by clear implication, recognizes a profound reverence for religion and an assumption that its influence in all human affairs is essential to the well-being of the community. . . . Even the Constitution of the United States, which is supposed to have little touch upon the private life of the individual, con- tains in the First Amendment a declaration com- mon to the constitutions of all the states, as fol- lows: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’’”’ Reference is made also to the use in Art. I, Sec. 7, of the Constitution of the ex- pression ‘‘Sundays excepted.” ‘There is no dis- 106 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM sonance in all these declarations. ‘There is a uni- versal language pervading them all, having one meaning; they afirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation. ‘These are not individual say- ings; they are organic utterances; they speak the voice of the entire people.” The decision then quotes certain state-decisions, among them one given by an Attorney General of Pennsylvania: ‘Christianity, general Christianity, is and always has been part of the common law of Pennsylvania; not Christianity with an established Church and tithes, and spiritual courts, but Christianity with liberty of conscience for all men.” And another, given by Chancellor Kent of New York: ‘The people of this State, in common with the people of this country, profess the general doctrines of Christianity.” An explicit declaration required of officials in Delaware in 1776 was mentioned, and a number of common customs. ‘“These and many other matters which might be noticed add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances, that this is a Christian nation.” Though it may be disputable whether “re- ligious” should be construed as ‘“‘Christian” in some of the documents quoted, it is not open to dispute that ‘‘religious’ was intended to mean “Christian” particularly. The American Consti- tution like Constantine’s Edict of Milan proclaims universal toleration with special reference to Chris- AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 107 tians. On American principles, Christianity is a most favored religion and always to be main- tained. The assumptions made concerning ‘‘the gentral doctrines of Christianity,’’ not defined, are individualistic, that they ‘‘touch only the private life of the individual’: those concerning Church are congregational. ‘There is no conception of One Church, Divinely established, to be “the ex- tension of the Incarnation.” ‘These assumptions, common among most Americans, are contrary to what Catholics believe Christianity to be: but law- documents are not intended to teach theology. They express the practical intentions of the law- giver, in this case, that all religions in the United States are to have a fair field and no favor; and that all concerned must concede to others the free- dom they enjoy themselves. All forms of Chris- tianity are given opportunity to urge their respect- ive claims to conformity with the intentions of Christ. The State makes no assumption as to which may be right, expresses no opinions and accords no special recognitions. It affords pro- tection and is entitled to respect and gratitude from all who accept its guardianship. There is a special ethics of toleration which ought to be considered apart from all questions of legality, closely connected with two consequences of toleration in a mixed society, one of which is unfortunate, the other good. The first confuses 108 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM the standards of practical politics with those of absolute truth, fostering an indifference to truth and a habit of peace at any price of principle. It is prone to assume, that every thought concerning the unseen world represents futile speculation; that one man’s guess is as good, bad, or indifferent as another’s; that modern thought is fast making away with ancient faith. Religions which are equal in the eyes of the law are assumed to be equal in the eyes of God. Conviction of one’s legal right to serve God in one’s own way may blind one to the moral duty to serve God in God’s way. Because all religions are on a par legally, it does not follow that they are all equally true and equally good. The governmental policy does not set up a criterion of truth. The tolerances of law and of courtesy must not be allowed to obscure considerations paramount to both. This possibility is unavoidable in the conditions of mod- ern life and needs to be guarded against. The other, wholly good, is the encouragement of justice and sympathy, of judicial broadmindedness as contrasted with petty partisanship, considera- tion for the rights of others, fruitful in all “things lovely and of good report.” There is much to encourage that combination of gentleness and penetration which made St. Francis de Sales “the gentleman saint,” courtesy raised to the highest degree, and, as consecrated to the service of God, AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM. 109 one of the fairest flowers of faith. The ethical side of toleration, which is quite as much matter of moral amenities as of legal rights, consists of fairness and good manners. These must prevail in every respectable society and well-ordered com- monwealth, much more in every reputable religion. The influence of rival religions is largely deter- mined by their respective displays of equity and charity. The religion which fails to show these is thereby condemned. ‘“‘Envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness,’ though masquerading as zeal, will make no headway with men of good will. Religion apparently responsible for these things is discredited: if zealots be responsible, they will have to answer not only for their personal guilt, but also for betrayal of a cause. ‘“‘By their fruits ye shall know them.” In the sphere of toleration, the special fruits by which religions and religion- ists are known and tested are those fruits of the Spirit which center about charity. This standard is Christian: it is also American. Uncle Sam is drawn toward those who can show “‘malice toward none, and charity for all.”” His righteous anger is kindled towards bigots of every stripe, no mat- ter how boldly they may label their viciousness and vulgarity as zeal for country or for faith. In his lighter moments, he waives them away as “pesky varmints”; in his sterner, he denounces them as foes of God. V AMERICAN SUSPICION OF CATHOLICS AMERICA is committed to a policy of religious toleration, boasts of it, countenances many forms of religion and irreligion, viewing them and her own attitude with apparent complacency. She en- tertained a Congress of Religions at one of her World’s Fairs, was gratified at the number and variety of the exhibits, and would willingly have seen them all domiciled within her borders, The people generally adopt the tolerant temper of the government, approving and trusting all—except, in many instances, Catholics. It is a common thing, in comments on the bearings of religion on politics, to lay emphasis on “irrespective of creed” —except for Catholics. There are reserves when they are considered. They alone of nominally Christian bodies are objects of frequent suspicion or even marked hostility, and at times of spas- modic persecution. Not that Americans generally are malevolent or prone to distrust. On the con- trary, the average American is disposed to think well of everybody, despises bigotry and the per- 110 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 111 secuting spirit, and would rather think well of Catholics than not. But he is honestly convinced that there is something unsatisfactory about their system, and that he must be a bit cautious in his dealings with them. The New York statute grant- ing “free toleration of religious profession and worship” stipulated “that liberty of conscience shall not be construed to justify practices incon- sistent with the safety of the State’: and -the danger dreaded was from “Rome.” This proviso is to be associated with the Quebec Act of a few years earlier, hostile to the Catholic Church, and supposed by some to have prevented Canada from joining the Union to the south. There was in the eighteenth century, and is still in many minds, a lurking suspicion that Catholics can not make wholly good citizens. This suspicion is due to no imported feud. The religious quarrels of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, although responsible for divisions in America, are not now directly responsible for the existing distrust. “[ransmarine rivals may occa- sionally indulge in America in a fresh round of an imported fight: but these things are not responsible for any American sentiment except a passing im- patience. ‘“‘A plague on both your houses!’ Nor is the distrust a mere survival of the anti-Catholic notions of colonial times. It is neither imported nor inherited, but indigenous and easily accounted 112 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM for in the present. Americans who distrust Cath- olics do so for reasons of their own, most of them unwillingly. The reasons are easy to discover and can always be reduced to an assumption of incom- patibility between Catholicism and good citizen- ship. The religion seems to be a menace to Amer- ican independence and to American unity. Anti-Catholic prejudice in the United States is to be connected with three things; dread of foreign domination, dread of tendencies to disunion, and dread of a possible rival to patriotism. It is be- lieved that the Church endangers independence by recognition of a European Pope, freedom by blind submission to ecclesiastical tyranny, and unity by the encouragement of racial divisions. The prejudice rarely has anything to do with strictly religious considerations. Nine times out of ten it is to be connected with patriotic jealousy for the national ideals. The chief things noted to justify the prejudice or opposition are: Catholic allegiance to the Roman Pontiff, the grouping of Catholics along lines of foreign nationality, Catholic avoid- ance of the public schools, and the association of Catholics with political corruption. There seems in all this to be an alien menace. ‘Freak religions” are not mistrusted, if home-grown, nor eastern cults with insignificant followings: but over twenty millions of Catholics are formidable. Many would agree with the judgment of a national AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM. 113 leader: “The Catholic Church is in no way suited to this country, and can never have any great permanent growth except through immigration, for its thought is Latin and entirely at variance with the dominant thought of our country and its institutions.” There are two considerations which go far to meet the objections most commonly made. First, if Catholics in America prove poor citizens, it is some cause other than their religion that makes them so. For, second, Catholicism, rightly inter- preted, is one of the strongest bulwarks of good citizenship everywhere, and has special points of sympathy with the ideals of this country. Cath- olics who, deliberately or even inadvertently, op- pose the national ideals and policies, or fail to take their full share in the national life, are guilty of a double disloyalty to their Church; first, of mis- representing her spirit, and, second, of playing directly into the hands of her enemies. Most of the relevant facts may be seen by con- sideration of Catholic Schools, Catholic Segrega- tion, and the Catholic Allegiance. Catholic Schools. Training in the Faith is a fixed principle of Catholicism. Every Catholic is bound to secure for himself and his dependents the best possible Catholic education. When the American Constitution guarantees to all citizens free exercise of their religion, this means for 114 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Catholics, among other things, opportunity for the religious education of their children. Religious education is the business of the Church, and can only be provided by those whom the Church trains and appoints for the purpose. he Church herself must determine the substance and method of teaching without any sort of dictation or in- terference. That Catholic children be taught their faith is not an open question, either for Catholics who would fulfil their obligations, or for Amer- icans who would uphold their Constitution. The children are to be taught: the only question is how it can best be done. For both Catholics and Amer- icans this is a matter of principle, for the former of conscience, for the latter of loyalty to their national institutions. If the Catholic Faith could be taught in the public schools, there would be no reason, on prin- ciple, why Catholic children should not be sent to them; if it could be as well taught there as else- where, great reason, in expediency, why they should. As matter of fact, the Faith can not be well taught in the public schools, or taught there at all. Under existing circumstances, parochial schools are a necessity. If the Faith is to be taught, there must be Church schools and colleges. Some oppose these because they dislike the Faith: but in most instances criticism of them, or opposi- tion to them, is not on religious grounds at all. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM. 115 There is another very important side to the school question. The schools of the country must teach something beside religion; and the primary purpose of the public schools is to teach other things. It is irrelevant here to discuss the relation of re- ligion to education as a whole, or to appraise the values of different kinds of knowledge. The only thing to note is the relation between Catholic de- votion to education in the Faith and American de- votion to education in general. It is important for Catholics to make it quite clear that, if they avoid the public schools, it is not from any indifference to the things for which the public schools stand. One marked feature of American development has been the spread of education. From colonial times, especially in the northern states, effort has been made to provide a good common schooling; and from such educational privileges as the State provides none are to be excluded. Education for all is one of the foundations of democracy. A persistent national aspiration has found expression in the public schools. Hence American devotion to them. ' There are two chief reasons for this. In the first place, the public schools are nurseries of the democratic spirit. Children of all sorts and con- ditions, of all racial antecedents representing parents of all professions and trades, meet on the same plane and intermingle. This of itself gives 116 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM a good training to the youthful citizens of a re- public where equality of rights, privileges, and opportunities, is always sought. The public schools are the training-camps of citizenship. ‘Private’ schools of any sort, if they seem to rest on class-distinctions, prevent that rubbing of shoulders in a crowd which is regarded as desir- able ina democracy. The public schools, intended for all, are regarded as good enough for anybody; and there seems to be an arrogant, undemocratic assumption in refusal to attend them. In the second place, they are the national in- stitution for teaching the meaning of American- ism, the duties of citizenship, and the spirit of patriotism. Common thought of them concerns itself less with education in general than with pa- triotic education in particular. “They are emphat- ically American: there seems to be something un- American in fighting shy of them. It is a fixed point in American policy, a matter of national principle and conscience, that children be educated and educated in the American spirit. This is not open to discussion. The work is to be done, to be done in the best possible way, for purposes and by methods of which Americans themselves are sole judges, without any sort of outside dictation or interference. The American attitude toward education in nationalism corresponds exactly to the Catholic attitude toward education in the AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 117 Faith. None can censure it, least of all Catholics, who are taught the duty of upholding the civil authority. Catholics put themselves in the wrong, as matter of principle as well as of policy, by de- nunciations of the public schools, which seem to show indifference to the patriotic aims of the national system of education. There are various classes of schools other than the public schools in all parts of the country. All of them make special pleas in justification of their Separate existence. If these are to be accepted by the American public, the special schools must prove themselves the equals of the public schools in all that pertains to the interpretation of the national history, institutions, and spirit. Amer- icans gauge the usefulness of education by the standard of nationalism, the only one possible; and all schools seeking their approval must measure up to this. Schools other than the public schools must prove that they can teach what the public schools teach, and teach it as well, no mat- ter what they may teach besides. The public are shrewd judges of their efficiency. Their judg- ments are as prompt and instinctive as those of Catholics in matters of faith. Pleas for uniform education of all children in the country are con- cerned with the uniform teaching of patriotism and citizenship. If this be assured, there is no wish to interefere with what is taught in addition. 118 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Objecting to Church schools is due to fear that they draw class lines, and that the Church, being “culturally alien,’ can not inculcate the national feelings and aspirations. Once it is made clear that the Church schools do this as well as others, objection dies. The following extract from a recent periodical is a good example of common criticism directed against influences and institutions which are as- sumed to be indifferent or hostile to the spirit of the country. The chief thing to notice is its pa- triotic aim, with which every good American must be in sympathy. With details of the criticism im- plied many could not agree; but the main points are admirable. “These two things, at the very least, we should have unyieldingly to stand for, and, if necessary, to fight for: a common language, and a universal American public school for our children which should be ‘a national in- stitution and under some form of national authority.’ ” “The underlying and uncompromising aim and pur- pose of all reconstruction work should be conformity to the American spirit, to American life and history, to American ideals and aspirations. In this great labor the young men of our new-stock citizens, particularly those who have had special advantages of birth and education, must face their high duty. Without their honest, earnest, and whole-hearted help, the problem of slowly converting the mass-alienage into a real element of the Union will AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 119 prove well-nigh unsolvable. Theirs is a great power; theirs will have to be also a high courage. They will have to fight, undismayed, against a mass of racial and cultural prejudices and preferences, entrenched in high and low places, in politics, in culturally alien churches, Protestant no less than Catholic and Jewish, and even in some of our educational and publishing institutions. But in their fight they will have the backing of the growing legions, not only of Americans of the old stock, but also of thousands and thousands of those Americans of the new stock, ‘Latins’ no less than ‘Nordics,’ Catholics no less than Jews, wishing to be, and meaning to be, in every possible way American—wholly American; men of alien stocks who do not want a foreign-language press; who do not desire any language or culture other than that of democracy; who do not want separate schools and separate societies and organizations; who want their clergymen and their priests and their rabbis to be likewise American, wholly engaged with the great problems and hopes of America and of humanity, not with the national- istic questions and aspirations of Ireland or Palestine, or of Poland or Russia. “Tf these thousands of new-stock citizens can be made to forsake that false racial leadership which, for honest or oblique ends, has utilized and exploited the natural tendency of racial groups to cohere, if they can be made to realize that ‘the America that was’-—the America of their school histories—is actually threatened, they will unhesitatingly and whole-heartedly come to the rescue. And they will do so as soon as they are made to vision clearly that the danger is not from the possibility of any racial conspiracy or ‘Popish plot’ or ‘British propaganda,” 120 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM or other more or less fanciful vagaries, but by the sheer force of mass, by the almost uncontrollable and often un- conscious operation of the forces of heredity and of his- toric antecedents, of racial psychology and traditional out- look upon life.” * What is demanded here is ‘‘conformity to the American spirit,” to be taught in “a universal American public school.’? When parochial schools inculcate conformity to the American spirit, they are as much American public schools as any others. Church schools must in every way equal the State schools, proving their efficiency by meeting national requirements for national ends, showing sympathy with national ideals, improving on State methods if they can. They may well feel con- fident that they teach citizenship and patriotism in the best possible way by relating them to the laws of God, giving them a sacramental character. There is no conflict between Catholic determina- tion to teach religion and American determination to teach citizenship. The two things are on dif- ferent planes. The State demands all that is meant by allegiance to the Flag: the Church stands for allegiance to the Cross. The Flag belongs in the church, the Cross in the school: and it is de- votion to the Cross that nerves men best to live, fight, and die for the Flag. A practical commen- * World’s Work for May, 1924, pp. 66f. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM. 121 tary on the patriotism taught in parochial schools is to be found in the high percentage of Catholic soldiers in the American armies during the Great War. The percentage was kept high by prompt- ness in voluntary enlistments and by a standard of purity which enabled young Catholics to pass the physical tests. If schools are to be tested in pa- triotism by practical products, let the parochial schools be judged by the Catholic American soldiers. Four things are requisite for right adjustment of the relations between the State and Church schools: recognition of the Church’s right to de- termine all things concerning the teaching of her faith; recognition of the State’s right to determine all things concerning the teaching of citizenship; cordial codperation by the Church with the State’s patriotic aims; and protection by the State of all the Church’s constitutional rights. An example of the reasonable temper and jus- tice in viewing all aspects of the problem, which must prevail when solutions are found, was given by Cardinal Gibbons. “State supervision of schools commended itself to his judgment, if it was properly applied. His idea of a public school for Catholic children was one under the supervision of a local examiner, no matter what his religious faith, subject to regulations in the use of text-books the same as other schools, in discipline, class-work, sanitary regu- 122 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM lations and all other points, conforming to the standard set by the public authorities; the teachers to be appointed on certificate, subject to tests provided for instruction in the public schools. But, apart from all this, he desired that the teachers of Catholic children should be Catholics, and that for a portion of the day, perhaps before and after regular school_hours, they should instruct the pupils in the principles and practices of religion. In his view it was desirable that the State should contribute to the sup- port of Catholic schools only in the proportion to which the parents of the children in those schools were citizens. “He could see nothing un-American in this. A school of the kind he favored was as much a public school, in his view, as any other. He felt that this name should not be pre-empted for any particular type of school, par- ticularly one in which religious teaching was either non- existent or so scanty as to be negligible. Holding these views unshakenly, he was nevertheless not disposed to press the question of a general change in the existing sys- tem of public schools in advance of popular sentiment.” * Church and State are independent in America: and the State cannot teach religion. It does not follow that faith and education must be kept apart, or that the Church can not aid in teaching citizenship. Catholics insist on having their own schools and must take the consequences. They can claim no State aid for teaching religion: the national funds are not intended for ecclesiastical * Will: Life of Cardinal Gibbons, Chap. XVIII, “The School Question.” AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM. 123 purposes. That follows from the nature of our institutions. Yet the parochial schools can, and do, train millions of young citizens. If they do this well, it is perfectly fair that the State by grants should recognize their usefulness. They have as much right as others to accept the State’s pay for doing the State’s work. Anything they might receive would represent but a small part of what they save the taxpayers by relieving them-of responsibility for educating millions of children. They pay taxes like all others, but, by not using the State schools, get less in return. This dis- ability they voluntarily assume. It would be just, however, for them, or for any other non-State schools, to receive State aid, not for teaching re- ligion, but for giving civic education. There would be nothing “sectarian” in this. But, in view of the fact that any claim for State aid in religious institutions is apt to be viewed as in- sidious propaganda, and especially in the case of Catholics to prove that the Pope is polluting our politics, it is probably better to let the money- question rest. If grants are made where deserved, they may be accepted as justly due; if withheld, or unthought of, let the Church good-humoredly go her way. The Faith must be taught and is worth more than all it costs. Catholic schools train Catholics: American schools train Amer- icans. Catholic schools in America train both. 124 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM When it is known that they do this, opposition ought to die. Let those who doubt they do, visit some of them! Catholic Segregation. The objection to Cath- olic schools, as to the life of Catholics generally, often takes the form that their segregation fos- ters the spirit of disunity. The nation, it is urged, by a long struggle established the federal prin- ciple, protected it at the expense of a bloody war against sectionalism: now it is threatened by racial- ism, and the arrangements of the Catholic Church promote this. There can be no objection to segregation for purposes of worship, as the Amer- ican State has abrogated all responsibility for securing uniformity in religion. It has set out to be one nation with many faiths, in sharp contrast with the Catholic Church which has but one faith for all nations. Its toleration must embrace stiff- ness as well as flabbiness, the Catholic Church as well as all others. Religious separations may be deplorable: but the State’s attitude is that of Gallio. National unity with, and in spite of, re- ligious diversity has been the American necessity. The Catholic aim to keep the faith of Catholics intact is no more exclusive than that of any others who take their beliefs seriously, or, for that mat- ter, of many who take their beliefs lightly. The religious divisions exist; their existence is recog- nized, if not tacitly encouraged, by the American AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 125 State. Catholics have caused no fresh divisions. In fact, their contribution to comparative stability is greater than that of others, since they hold to- gether half the Christian world against tendencies in the other half to resolve itself into small and smaller fractions. On American principles there can be no objection to merely religious segrega- tion. The point usually stressed is that Catholic segregation encourages racialism. “I have in my diocese,’ said a Bishop: ‘Germans, Irish, French, Poles, Lithuanians, Czecho - Slovaks, Italians and Ruthenians.” “But what about Americans?” ‘Most of them are Americans: and we are helping the rest to become so.” That is as it should be; but many would notice the Bishop’s first remark and not his second. The majority of American Catholics represent immi- grants during the past hundred years. Quite naturally Catholic parishes in the first instance seem like foreign chaplaincies, and keep alive sen- timents of affection for the mother-countries of their parishioners. There is no reason why this should not be so. Uncle Sam does not demand that his new children forget their origin, any more than a wife, out of deference to her husband’s family, has to forget her father and mother. It is simply that Uncle Sam and the husband have acquired rights as heads of their respective 126 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM families. Non-Catholic Christians in America, when they first arrived, did precisely the same thing. Yet, in colonial days, there was nothing objectionable in the strong sentiment of Presby- terians for Scotland, of Lutherans for Germany and Sweden, or of Episcopalians for England, and their respective churches, nor in the strong senti- ment cherished by many of their descendants now. National groupings according to countries of origin are inevitable for all immigrants; and their churches correspond to these. The national groups, however, when they con- sist of American citizens or citizens in the making, should be wholly identified with the laws and ideals of the land. The Church has unique op- portunities for assisting the work of American- ization: and it is important that it be known that she makes good use of them. None familiar with the facts can overestimate the work of certain prelates and leaders especially interested in the Americanization of newly arrived Catholics. These men deserve the highest praise, both for their good work for the United States, and for providing in action the most effective apologetic for the Church in this country. Probably no set of men are more conversant with certain aspects of unity-problems, and more keen to reach solu- tions, than the Bishops of the Catholic Church. Many of them are eating their hearts out over AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 127 perplexities caused by ‘‘national parishes.” From the ecclesiastical standpoint closer unity among their people is the great need: hence, a special wish on their part to assist in widening and deep- ening the unity in citizenship. Practical difficul- ties, however, which none know better than they, forbid hasty action: premature and untimely at- tempts would create new difficulties and result in forfeiture of opportunity. They cannot do what they would at once: but they can be counted on to use all the influence they have in the interests of stable unity. There should be fuller recognition of the many ways in which Americanization of new citizens is encouraged by the influence of the Catholic hierarchy. An example of clear understanding and prudent dealing with existing conditions is given in The Homiletic and Pastoral Review for June, 1924, in an article by a foreign-born priest working in a ‘national parish.” * “The American determination towards a more thor- ough peaceful amalgamation of the various foreign groups that make up our nation is unmistakable, and it is an un- mixed blessing. It is altogether legitimate and cannot be opposed on any valid grounds. No one who grasps the limitations of human nature, will countenance noisy forcible methods that would involve an undue invasion of liberty and prove more harmful than beneficial. Yet *P, C, Romanus: “Future of our Immigrant Parishes,” 128 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM immigrants have come here of their own free will, to a country with established traditions. They have found here surcease from their sufferings; no social handicaps; a congenial environment that gave free scope to their natural endowments and abilities. They have been given political rights which they did not enjoy before. They have obtained immunity from petty persecutions. They have enjoyed an independence that they hankered after but knew only as an ideal in their dreams of better days. Catholics especially have found themselves freed from all harassing restrictions, from all disabilities, from all gov- ernmental interference, from Erastianism and Caesarism. Whatever vexations they have been subject to are in- significant when set over against the crimson pages that record their sufferings in other lands. They are mostly only such as are inseparable from necessarily imperfect human organizations, The rapid untrammeled expansion of the Church, the multiplicity and variety of her institu- tions of learning and charity, churches, schools, hospitals, asylums, is proof sufficient of the generous treatment ex- tended to her, and which is rooted deeply and permanently in our American Constitution. “It is the full realization of these benefits that makes us deeply anxious to minimize as far as possible the causes of misunderstanding that now and then obtrude them- selves. The Catholic body is sometimes looked upon as an alien element in the land. Catholics can not be, and never have been, otherwise than whole-heartedly loyal to America. Foreign Catholics are no exception to this rule. There is danger, however, that if the latter insist over- much on setting themselves aside in permanently isolated groups, they will contribute to intensify that feeling of AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 129 distrust. There can be no room in the American Re- public for colonies of European countries or any thing that even remotely amounts to that, such as language groups where a foreign spirit, foreign ideas and foreign customs are clung to tenaciously. ‘There is no need for casting any aspersion on their loyalty. However there is need for serious thought and reform when statistics show that one of our largest national groups—Catholic to the core—has a naturalization record of only 28%, where other national groups have a record of 60 to 72%.” ° The increase of “national parishes’ without special indult has been forbidden by the new Canon Law (Canon 216:4). The good work done in many of these by wise priests intent on assisting Americanization is illustrated by the ac- count given in the article from which the above ex- tract is taken. All honor to men like Father Romanus! It may occasionally appear, however, that some Catholics are indifferent to the national claim, and by their encouragement of foreign sen- timent and foreign ways, give plausibility to the charge that the Church is alien and alienating, that she not only does not promote, but actually re- tards, the work of Americanization. It is the un- wary Catholics of this sort who provoke the most violent opposition to the Church, and deepen the prejudice, even of serious and fair-minded people, who have scant opportunities of knowing the whole truth. The most definite and practical 130 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM thing that Catholics can do to set the Church right in the eyes of the American public is to make it clear that the Church does not encourage alien propaganda officially, and represses individuals who seek, in the guise of Catholics, to do so on their own responsibility. The alien charge must be met by removal of the alien taint. Granted that some Catholics exhibit an aloof- ness and foreign sympathies, which from the national standpoint are objectionable, it cannot be asserted too strongly that their Catholicism is not responsible for it. Whatever be the causes, they are not related to the Faith, the influence of which is in the other direction, but are to be sought in peculiarities of race or temperament. If Cath- olics be poor citizens, the reason may be racial or radical; but it is certainly not religious. Poor citizenship may be, and in most instances is, quite independent of race and religion. Yet these quite different and usually unrelated things are often confused both by those who make charges and those who are objects of them. ‘Those who cast blame are bound to scrutinize the causes, and not hold the Church responsible for results she is try- ing to prevent. Let the evils be tracked to their source, and all facts and conditions known: and it will appear that the Catholic Church is one of the most effective promoters of good American- ism. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM. 131 The Church’s attitude was shown clearly in the Cahensly controversy when it was necessary to deal with the language question. This is one on which Americans feel strongly. The language of the country is one bond of its unity; unwillingness to use it is a sign of doubtful loyalty. The litur- gical use of Latin and Greek is one thing, the de- fiant and unnecessary use of French or German as the vulgar tongue quite another. “We have no room,” wrote Roosevelt; “for but one language, the language of Washington and Lincoln, the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg speech, the English language. It would not be merely a misfortune, but a crime, to perpetuate differ- ences of language in this country, for it would mean failure on our part to become really a nation. Many of the newspapers published in foreign tongues are of high character and are doing capital work, by helping immi- grants who speak those tongues during the transition period before they become citizens. ‘These papers deserve hearty recognition for their work. But it is to be recog- nized as transition work, and therefore its usefulness must be recognized as conditioned upon its finally coming to anend. ‘This is as true of the use of a foreign language in schools and churches as in the newspapers.” * The Cahensly agitation sought to promote the use of the German language and encouragement * Roosevelt: Great Adventure, p. 39; Foes of our own House- hold, p. 74. 132 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM of Teutonic culture in the churches and schools of German-American Catholics. There are those who believe that back of this was the German propaganda which, prior to the Great War, sought to Teutonize portions of the United States. Few German-Americans understood this at the time; there are probably none who would defend it now. The agitation by Germans was assisted by French, Poles, and Italians, all of whom sought for similar use of their respective tongues; and coupled with this was a plan for the composition of the Catholic hierarchy, whereby its prelates should represent proportionately the chief Euro- pean nations from which the bulk of American Catholics were drawn. It thus brought the racial question before the Church, although probably few of those identified with it in this country understood all that was involved. At any rate, the Church was confronted with the same difh- culty which, on a larger scale, has for fifty years confronted the nation. Cahenslyism was strongly opposed, on the grounds, not only that it disrupted the Church, digging chasms under lines on a foreign map and introducing unnecessary rivalries, but also that it contravened the American spirit and would make trouble for the country. It threatened to encour- age unedifying politics for State and Church alike. Cardinal Gibbons especially was “determined that AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 133 the Church in this country should continue homogeneous like the nation. If the discord of rival nationalist aims were definitely introduced, .. . factions would entangle the Church in what- ever direction she might turn.’’ The opponents of the movement were numerous, among them prominent German-Americans whose objections were quite as much on national as on ecclesiastical grounds. Non-Catholics too saw the tendencies of the proposal and dreaded its indirect eftects. It was pointed to as proof of the way in which Roman Catholicism tended to divide its adherents along foreign racial lines and hinder their adap- tation to the land of their adoption. The per- sistent use of a foreign language was branded as a badge of disloyalty. The issue was usefully raised. The result of the controversy was to make clear to American Catholics what must be the determining policy and line of development, and to non-Catholics what the attitude and influence of the Church really are. After long discussion of all the principles involved, the question was settled by Leo XIII’s condemna- tion of the Cahensly proposals. Behind the con- sideration of the use of a particular language and of distribution of appointments in the American hierarchy, was the principle, determinative of poli- cies, of the Church’s attitude toward nations. In all of them she is responsive to the genius of the 134 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM people and the form of government. The Pope’s decision indicated no special indulgence for the United States and the English language, but merely carried out the Church’s policy of sup- porting the national spirit of every people. Amer- icanism for America was approved, as would have been Teutonism for Germany. ‘The gist of Rome’s message was, ‘‘When in America, do as Americans do.” After the papal decision, Presi- dent Benjamin Harrison took occasion to express his gratification, as the racial agitation threatened to disturb the country: ‘This is no longer a mis- sionary country like others which need mission- aries from abroad. It has an authorized hierarchy and well-established congregations. Of all men, the Bishops of the Church should be in full harmony with the political institutions and senti- ments of the country.” * The highest authority of the Church, therefore, condemned the tendency to racial divisions among Catholics, and favored keeping the Church in sympathy with the spirit of the American people. The papal decision meets the objection that the Church is alienizing by denial in action. It is necessary, however, that this principle of the Church be consistently applied. Language is not the sole test of loyalty. It takes more than English * Will: Life of Cardinal Gibbons, Chapter XXIX, “Struggle for Americanism,” AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 135 speech to make an American. Uncle Sam 1s a shrewd judge of his own Americanism and is not taken in by bogus brands. The chief reason for his attitude of watchful waiting toward Catholi- cism is its apparent identification in his country with ‘peoples apart” rather than with the main body of all-Americans. He will never be converted ex- cept by his own people who banish his uneasiness as to whether the Church is his friend. His mis- givings ought soon to be dispelled. Whole- hearted loyalty to the State is enjoined upon Cath- olics as a religious duty. “The Church has spoken clearly enough; and Catholic Americans are doubly bound to obey. Americans must show sense in making due al- lowances for the difficulties of recent immigrants. It is natural enough that there should be for a time groupings along racial lines, and no harm in it, if it be directed toward genuine Americanism. Americans have, however, a right to demand that this direction be assured, and to do their utmost to check any tendency toward disunity. Yet, when discussing the conduct of Catholics, they must dis- criminate between the Church herself and_ indi- vidual priests and laymen, remembering that, if any of these fail to show loyal allegiance to their country, they are defying their Church’s injunc- tions. They may be Catholics; but they are poor Catholics. 136 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM The Catholic Allegiance. The groupings of Catholics are regretted as tending to keep alive alien prejudices and antipathies; but the common objection to them lays stress on the “foreign Pope.” This is the trump-card of anti-Catholic propagandists, the occasion of chief difficulty for many well-disposed people who would like to re- gard the Catholic Church as favorably as they do other religious bodies. Many who admire the Church for obvious excellences apprehend danger in the Catholic obedience to the Bishop of Rome. Catholics recognize the Pope as Vicar of Christ, and final interpreter of His mind and will. Papal supremacy and papal infallibility are regarded as essential to the faith and have been given special prominence in recent times. In view of the fact that mediaeval Popes exercised feudal dominion over emperor and kings, it is suspected that, if given opportunity, they would control modern governments. Americans, with their determina- tion that the western hemisphere shall not be sub- ordinated to Europe, will not have their politics and policies managed or meddled with by Italian priests. [he “Monroe Doctrine” has its eye on certain aspects of Catholic doctrine! Reluctantly many of our people feel that papistry and patriot- ism are incompatible, that it would never do to have a Catholic, no matter how admirable in char-. acter, for President of the United States. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 137 This not uncommon impression is illustrated by a conversation reported to have taken place in the White House.* After a while the President and the Ambassador joined the ladies and in a few minutes Mr. Roosevelt called me to come in. “T only want you to hear what the wife of the Presi- dent and the wife of the world’s most distinguished diplo- mat are saying of your chief. “They dare to criticize my letter on religious tolerance.” ‘This letter, as you know, was published a few days ago and was intended to be very broadminded in its scope. Mrs. Bryce, who is much younger-looking than her husband and with a good deal of the British argumenta- tive side to her, I imagine, said: “Yes, sir, I dare to criticize your letter, and especially so as your wife agrees with me. I do not object to your advocacy of a Jew for President: but I most certainly do not want to see a Catholic ever President of this country or over an Anglo-Saxon people.” “A fine Christian spirit you ladies have—a Jew rather than a Catholic.” “Most assuredly,” said Mrs. Bryce: “for a Jew is loyal to whatever country he adopts, while a Catholic is loyal first to another power, and a temporal one at that.” “Do you really think,” asked the President seriously, “that Catholics would subordinate their own country to the interest of Rome?” “Not only to the interests of Rome, but to Catholic *From a letter by Major Archibald Butt. 138 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM countries as well. I have known it done in my own country, as Mr. Bryce would testify, if he dared.” The President rather avoids religious discussions save when he introduces them for some purpose, and he stopped the conversation with the remark, “Oh, you hidebound, aristocratic Episcopalians!” “But I am not one,” said Mrs. Bryce. “Just a plain Protestant like yourself.” ‘Then we can not differ,” said the President, reaching across and shaking her by the hand. While they stood thus, Mrs. Roosevelt held out her hand to me and said: “Then we will stand for the Established Church, Captain.” The Ambassador added, holding up his hands in bene- diction: “Bless this Protestant reunion. You look like Roundheads, all of you, taking the oath against Popery.” “Tf we have impressed the President with the fact that we do not approve of his sentiments, we will have accom- plished all we started out to do,” said Mrs. Roosevelt. “My mail is burdened each day now with similar pro- tests; but I hardly expected the revolution to enter my own household.” b] There is nothing new in this sort of charge. American Catholics are not the only ones called upon to defend papal supremacy as not antagon- istic to patriotism. Even in Catholic lands and Catholic times it has been impugned as inimical to civil authorities and national independence. Pope and patriotism have been presented as horns of a perennial dilemma. It is not hard to understand AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 139 how the difficulty occurs: it is hard, however, to understand how it persists with those who ought to know what the Church’s teaching about the Papacy is, and what the Popes actually do. Papal authority relates to faith and morals, to the intellectual and ethical content of the Christian revelation, not to directions concerning secular government. Many popes and priests have played political parts: so have Anglican bishops and Calvinist ministers. What has happened in Cath- olic Ireland, Spain, and France has happened also in Protestant England, Switzerland, and Scotland. Many priests and ministers have played politics in the past: some of them do so now. Yet the political activity formed no essential part of the work of their priesthood and ministry. Their official commissions charged them only with re- sponsibility for sacraments and preaching. Polit- ical influence might be an accident of position; it was in no way integral to the office. The Pope as Pope commands the allegiance of his subjects in faith and morals. He has no inherent right to direct their politics; if he did so, they would have a perfect right to oppose him. Church history abounds in instances of Catholic opposition to Popes on political grounds, even among those who most strongly upheld the Pope’s spiritual suprem- acy. The Pope is supreme in the government of the Church, final interpreter of the law of God. 140 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM He is not responsible for the government of states, representing the self-made laws of men. ‘The distinction between the civil and the ecclesiastical powers is very firmly established in Catholic teaching. ‘The Almighty,’ says Pope Leo XIII, ‘has appointed the charge of the human race between two powers, the ecclesiastical and the_civil; the one being set over divine, the other over human things. Each in its kind is supreme, each has fixed limits within which it is contained, limits which are defined by the nature and special object of the province of each.’ Pius IX approved a pastoral of the Swiss bishops which teaches the same doctrine, that civil magistrates are ‘invested in their own domain with a full sovereignty, and that to them ‘we owe obedience and respect in all things morally permitted and belonging to the domain of civil society.’ This is but common Cath- olic doctrine. “The Church, then, holds that the civil government has divine authority, just as has the ecclesiastical; that the limits of each are fixed by the nature of its purpose; that within these limits each power is supreme; conse- quently, that the Church cannot intermeddle in affairs purely civil, nor the State in affairs purely ecclesiastical ; and that members of the Church are bound to obey the State, within its own domain, in all things that do not contravene the moral law. . . “The political authority exercised by the mediaeval Popes presupposed a united Christendom, and was part of the universally recognized international law... . ‘The power was lost when the unity of Christendom, on the rise of the modern states, ceased to be a fundamental AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 141 principle of the law of nations; and when Germany, France, Russia, England and America shall be welded into a world-wide Christian confederation on the plan of the Holy Roman Empire, then and not before, need statesmen discuss the possibility of a revival of the mediaeval Papacy.... “But an objection is repeatedly cast up to Catholics which, repugnant though it is to my inmost feelings of loyalty and reverence towards the Holy Father, I must take into consideration; for, utterly absurd and imprac~ ticable as it is in our eyes, it seems to haunt the minds of many outside the Church. Suppose, it is said, the Pope were to issue commands in purely civil matters, should not Catholics be bound to yield him obedience? The Pope will take no such act, we know, even though it is part of the Catholic Faith that he is infallible in the exercise of his authority: but were he to do so, he would stand self-condemned, a transgressor of the law he him- self promulgates. He would be offending not only against civil society, but against God, and violating an authority as truly from God as his own. Any Catholic who clearly recognized this, would be bound not to obey the Pope; or rather his conscience would bind him absolutely to dis- obey, because with Catholics conscience is the supreme law which under no circumstances can we ever lawfully disobey. ... “American Catholics rejoice in our separation of Church and State; and I can conceive of no combination of circumstances likely to arise which should make a union desirable either for Church or State. We know the bless- ings of our present arrangement: it gives us liberty and 142 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM binds together priests and people in a union better than that of Church and State. Other countries, other man- ners; we do not believe our system adapted to all con- ditions; we leave it to Church and State in other lands to solve their problems for their own best interests. For ourselves, we thank God we live in ‘America, ‘in this happy country of ours,’ to quote Mr. Roosevelt, ‘where religion and liberty are natural allies,’ ” * This comment is the more valuable as coming from the one who for fifty years had a more in- timate knowledge than any other, of the special affairs and conditions in this country to which the principles he states would apply. Admitting the different spheres of Church and State, and that each is entitled to mind its own affairs within due limits, it is sometimes objected that Catholics regard the Church as more impor- tant that the State. They do. If they had to choose between the two, as did the martyrs in days of persecution, they would, if worth their salt, choose the Church every time. That would be simply to heed the apostolic injunction, ‘‘We must obey God rather than men.” They would never say, “My country, right or wrong,” if this meant, “‘We must obey men rather than God.” They put “America first’ among all the countries of the earth: but if the meaningless question be put, “Is America first, * Cardinal Gibbons: “The Church and the Republic,” in A Retrospect of Fifty Years, Vol. I, pp. 222, 227f, 234. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 143 or God?”’——the answer is obvious. God is above political geography as much as he is “above mathematics.” On every American principle, as well as on every religious principle, allegiance to God takes precedence of every other. There are certainly few who would not admit that the best sort of citizens are those who take their obliga- tions to God seriously. Religion as well as patri- otism must register one hundred per cent. Catho- lics look to the Pope for interpretation of the Divine will in matters of faith and morals, but not for guidance in things on other planes. Practical people are concerned less with theories than with facts. Popes in the feudal age claimed two swords and three crowns: would they not, if they could, in a democratic age, pull wires and hold balances of power as bosses of Catholic blocs? The question is hypothetical. A better one is, What have they actually done? Since the foundation of the American Republic, ten pontifts have occupied the See of Peter. Which of these ten has ever meddled in American affairs? Which of them in dealing with political affairs in Europe has ever done anything but defend the spiritual independence of Catholics? When the State has encroached on rights of the Church, the Church has defended herself. The political activities of the Popes have been invariably directed toward the protection of ecclesiastical liberty. ‘T'est-cases 144 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM would be found in France in the dealings of Pius VII with Napoleon and of Pius X with the Third Republic. Both these Popes did all in their power to prevent the passage of certain laws which threatened the withdrawal of religious freedom. Their action consisted of protesting, with all pa- tience and courtesy, against policies repressive, or even destructive, of Catholicism, and of sustaining Catholics in the discharge of the obligations of their faith. They stood boldly for the independ- ence of the Church against a persecuting State. What fair-minded American can condemn them? If it be true that they have ever meddled in the secular affairs of America or Great Britain, let those who know these things expose the chicanery. Let those whose ears have been ap- plied to keyholes on the back stairs tell unsuspect- ing Catholics what they have overheard. Cath- olics would be bound to welcome an exposure of an abuse calling for reform. The inherent recu- perative powers of the Church, which have dealt with abuses in the past, would be equal to dealing with this one. The Pope is a limited, constitu- tional monarch, none the less from exercising an authority of Divine institution. If Pius XI, or any of his recent predecessors, has transgressed the laws of the Church, it ought to be known, that the Popes may recollect to confine themselves to their proper faiths and moralities! As matter AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 145 of fact, Catholics may quite fearlessly afirm that there has been no improper interference with the affairs of America, England, or any other State. Yet, it may well be said that, as interpreters of faith and morals, the Popes must indirectly affect the political conduct of their subjects. Politics are affected by standards of ethics, works very much determined by faith. This is quite true. Catholic faith and Catholic morals do, and are intended to, have important bearings on Catholic citizenship. Catholicism ought to leave its impression on the political lives and activities of Catholics in all countries. The Popes have said repeatedly that religious principles must not be forgotten in social and political relations. Faith and morals are not to be sealed in conduct-tight compartments. More- over, Popes have given directions as to ways in which faith should affect citizenships, French, Italian, Irish, and American. The proofs of this are to be found in papal encyclicals and episcopal pastorals. But is this not to concede the whole point of the objection made against them? ‘The answer to the question lies in what it is that Cath- olics are bidden on their allegiance to do. The gist of ‘‘Rome’s” message to all countries, her explanation of how spiritual allegiance affects national allegiance, of how Catholicism affects citizenship, and Romanism politics, comes to two things and two only. 146 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM First. Be as good a citizen as you can of the State to which you belong. Second. Bring Christian principles to bear on the solution of social and political problems. The Pope says in effect to Americans, Be loyal Americans: and do your utmost to have the laws of your country- conform to those of Almighty God. Who can say that this is not, good advice; that it is not consistent with American ideals; and that it is not a factor in promoting national wel- fare and the world’s peace?, Who, with any Chris- tian or religious feeling, can fail to be thankful to have it so? It is only a legitimate interpreta- tion of the Christian principles, that “the powers that be are ordained of God,” and that Christians are “salt of the earth.” In view of what it prac- tically comes to, Americans are bound to be glad when Catholics take their religion seriously. Those who most criticize certain of them for failure in loyalty to the land of their adoption, should be the first to commend the Sovereign Pon- tiff for reminding his subjects of the duty of pa- triotism. Any fair examination of the pronounce- ments of the Apostolic See touching civil alle- giance will show: that they inculcate loyalty to the State; that they enjoin obedience to the highest standards of morality; and that, when they imply criticism, they are concerned solely for protection of spiritual rights. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 147 Catholics emphasize the spiritual nature of papal authority. Quite naturally opponents re- tort by reference to the papal exercise of temporal power. Temporal power is not integral to the Papacy; the Popes had none for eight centuries and have had none for the half-century just past: but it was an historical accident of the papacy for over a thousand years, and much is said about its possible restoration. Catholics are not bound to hold any particular opinions on this subject: but it is well to note the exact point at issue, when it is urged that the temporal power is desirable. If this be done, many non-Catholics, as well as all Catholics, may well be thankful that the Pope re- mains “prisoner in the Vatican.” One charge made against him is that he is “Italian.” His self- imprisonment is practical assertion that he is not. If he were an Italian subject, all non-Italians might view his political position with suspicion, as did all non-French during the papal exile in Avignon. The head of the Catholic Church, with spiritual subjects in all lands, is non-national or omninational, friendly to all nations, identified with none. A papal state would serve as buttress for the Pope’s spiritual independence by a guaran- tee of political independence. It would be a bit of internationalized territory, an ecclesiastical Dts- trict of Columbia. It is the practical way of meet- 148 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM ing the difficulty that the Papacy and Church must nowhere be “‘foreign.”’ “Bishops, etc., belong to particular nations; but the Papacy is not national. So it is natural that its freedom should be secured in a different way. . . . The temporal sovereignty is the only plan we can devise to secure lib- erty for the Pope, but it is a means subsidiary; in fact, it is a negative idea, the not being governed, not the right of governing, though governing is the only way to avoid being governed. It is stated as a basis, an acknowledg- ment of independence, not as a means of defence or a source of political power. The extent, therefore, is not essential. . . . The common faith of Catholics, that the Pope must be free by hook or crook, is obviously enough for us practically. . . . All liberty consists iz radice in the preservation of an inner sphere exempt from State power. That reverence for conscience is the germ of all civil freedom, and the way in which Christianity served it. That is, liberty has grown out of the distinction of Church and State.” * Those who object to the Pope’s being “Italian” should be the last to criticize him for refusing the status of an Italian subject: those who feel that Romanism neutralizes Catholicism, the local the universal, should pause to consider whether the Romanism be not the practical realization of Catholicism. ‘The Church is kept true to her uni- versal character by having a capital which belongs *Lord Acton, quoted in Gasquet: Lord Acton and his Circle, PP. 213, 215, 254. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 149 equally to all her parts. The objections against the Church’s being ‘“‘Roman’” or “Italian” are based on a right principle: but it ought to be seen that the Roman element in Catholicism is the very thing that does away with simply local and national limitations. Americans with their cult of common sense ought never to despise the common sense resulting from centuries of experience. If the temporal power of the Papacy were restored, there need be no revival of the old States of the Church, simply a guarantee for the freedom of a small ecclesiastical domain, in no way subject to secular authority. ‘The prisoner of the Vatican” is making a practical stand for keeping the Church out of secular politics, thus witnessing to the spiritual ideal. It has been suggested that, though the Pope ts safely shut up in the Vatican, there is danger from his bishops and priests who are at large. The ideal for prelates and priests is the same as for popes. Their power and sphere of influence are spiritual. They are bound to seek freedom for faith and worship, and bound to use their influence for recognition of Christian standards. So long as they do this, they can not be censured in America, where religious freedom is guaranteed, and where Christian leaders are expected to make a stand for their principles. Catholics should show the same interest in public questions as Presby- 150 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM terians, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Baptists, all of them notable for their public spirit. What is duty from a Catholic point of view is custom from an American point of view. Granting that Catholic principles are right, many would still claim that there are discrepancies in Catholic practice. One great handicap of the Church in the United States is the belief that, in some places, Catholic citizens are deeply impli- cated in political corruption, and that their priests are more or less mixed up with parties and rings. Americans detest this sort of thing in any ministers of religion, especially if there is complication with foreign issues. Yet they honor those who make a bold stand for Christian principles in the national life. Catholic prelates have unique opportunities to dispel prejudice by giving practical proofs of the Church’s influence in upholding municipal and national righteousness. The consistent Catholic attitude appears in such injunctions as these of Father Elliott, the Paulist. “Christ’s Vicar on earth, the Roman Pontiff, is at home in every nation and the truest friend of lawful authority, yet subject to none. With all this in view, we under- stand what our Lord means by ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ He would have us withhold our deeper loyalty, that concerning religion, from any secular power; but He would require us to pay to our nation a heart-felt AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 151 allegiance in all secular matters. And this is due by divine right, not only to our vast republic, but also to our state and city. The comfort of it is that, when we pay our debt to Caesar, we pay part of our debt to God. For God is back of every creditor whose debt is a just one. . . . Little do some of us realize that every Catholic who is a bad citizen is for that reason a bad Catholic. ... “Christ gives the state its truest lovers and its most valiant defenders. ‘Che more closely one is joined to our Lord, the more deeply does he love what is good in his nation, the more ardently does he strive to advance it, the more kindly a friend is he, the more independent a voter. This country’s government rests upon man’s capability for self-government, and that demands a citizenship clean of avarice and immune of cowardice—truthful, honest, generous, courageous, and just... . The Gospel does not supplant patriotism; nor Is it made little of by Christ’s Church. Every virtue of the citizen is intensified by true religion. His motives are elevated; his vision cleared; his purposes spiritualized. Render to your fellow-citizens the things that are theirs. That is surely a noble senti- ment. It is secondary only to ‘Render to God the things that are God’s’—secondary, not crowded out of existence. Citizenship is not belittled into so mean a place as to be shut off from the divine helps of religion.” * Sober-minded and fair-minded people can not imagine that loyalty to the Church is inconsistent with loyalty to the State. Catholics are bound to oppose anything contrary to the law of God: and * The Rev. Walter Elliott, C.S.P.: The Catholic as Citizen and Apostle, pp. 7ff. 152 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM were there anything of that sort in the American Constitution, they would oppose it. But there neither is, nor is likely to be. Discussion of the attitude of Catholics toward the Constitution 1s purely academic. They do not differ from any set of citizens who take their religious beliefs seri- ously. It is assumed that American institutions are in conformity with the law of God. People will differ in detail as to all that involves: but it is still to be assumed in America, that, God’s will being known, the country would not defy it. No one can be blamed for declaring the Divine law paramount or for taking all pains to learn what it is. There is no discrepancy between the American Constitution and the constitution of the Catholic Church. A loyal upholder of the one may be an equally loyal upholder of the other. There are, however, discrepancies between particular Amer- ican laws and the law of the Church, especially in regard to marriage and divorce. The State allows marriages which the Church forbids, and ignores a standard which the Church believes to be Divine. What about this? Catholics are bound to obey the Church’s laws, and may not avail themselves of the State’s permission to contract marriages after divorce. They are not on that account dis- | loyal citizens. There is nothing in their civil obligations to forbid acceptance of the stricter AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 153 standard. They would like to see the State law more in conformity with this: but no citizen 1s bound to think State laws perfect, or to refrain from efforts to improve them. Yet a Catholic judge or juryman, acting as citizen, would admin- ister the State law as it stands, no matter how un- willing, as Catholic, he might be to make any use of the State law’s permissions. Nor do Catholics judge by their own standards others who, in good faith, live up to standards that are different. Dis- crepancies between different codes of laws are common. Various societies impose on their mem- bers restrictions unknown to the laws of the State, and are guilty of no disobedience in so doing. What is notoriously conceded in the case of others can not be denied to Catholics. Those who doubt the patriotism of Catholics are bound to study with great care the Catholic teaching about duties of citizens, about marriage, and about the Catholic attitude toward non- Catholics in good faith. They are bound also to see clearly what has been the attitude of the hierarchy toward political problems especially that of the Popes, of Pius IX in Italy, of Leo XIII in Germany, of Pius X in France, and of Benedict XV in the World War. There is no antidote for suspicion like facts; and one line of justification for the Catholic Church is to be found in the exact truth about those of her leaders who have been 154 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM singled out for special attack. Those who fear the influence of “Rome”’ in the United States may discover that Rome is the friend of good Amer- icanism; that the non-national, international Pope and Curia exercise a helpful influence in abating animosities, and aiding in the solution of unity- problems of which America has more than her share. It was one of the deepest convictions of the founders of the American commonwealth that re- ligion is the basis of good citizenship, and espe- cially the Christian religion. As time goes on, it becomes more and more apparent to the most casual observer that, for teaching definite Chris- tianity, the function of the Catholic Church is unique. For this, America, by preference as well as by tolerance, is bound to afford free scope. The general influence of the Church in the Republic is best indicated by the injunctions of those in highest authority. If a wide induction were possible, it might be shown how consistent and unanimous are the declarations of the hierarchy in all parts of the world. It will suffice to quote Pope Leo XIII. “America seems destined for greater things: the Cath- olic Church should not only share in, but help bring about, this greatness. We deem it right and proper that she should, by availing herself of the opportunity daily presented to her, keep equal step with the Republic in the march of improvement, at the same time striving AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 155 to the utmost, by her virtue and her institutions, to aid the rapid growth of the States.” “In a free State, unless justice be generally cultivated, unless the people be repeatedly and diligently urged to observe the precepts and laws of the Gospel, liberty itself may be pernicious. Let those of the clergy, therefore, who are occupied in the instruction of the multitude, treat plainly of this topic of the duties of citizens, so that all may understand and feel the necessity, in political life, of conscientiousness, self-restraint, and integrity; for that cannot be lawful in public which is unlawful in private affairs.” “Without morality the State cannot endure—a truth which that illustrious citizen of yours (Washington), with a keenness of insight worthy of his genius and states- manship, perceived and proclaimed. But the best and strongest support of morality is religion. . . . Now what is the Church other than a legitimate society, founded by the will and ordinance of Jesus Christ, for the preserva- tion of morality and defence of religion?” “So far as the name Americanism designates ‘the char- acteristic qualities which reflect honor on the people of America, just as other nations have what is special to them; or implies the condition of your commonwealths, or the laws and customs which prevail in them, there is surely no reason why it should be discarded. But if... it raises the suspicion that there are some among you who conceive of and desire a church in America different from what it is in the rest of the world, it would be con- demned by the American bishops as unjust to them and to the entire nation as well.’ ” 156 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM “We highly esteem and love exceedingly the young and vigorous American nation, in which we plainly dis- cern latent forces for the advancement alike of civilization and Christianity.” * A striking example of loyalty to both Church and State has been given in our own day by Cardi- nal Mercier, a great Belgian because a consistent Catholic. His definitions of duty, tested in a fiery crisis, have been illustrated by his personal ex- ample. Thus he addressed his clergy in 1914: “Our country ... is an association of living souls, subject to a social organization to be defended and safe- guarded at all costs, even the cost of blood, under the leadership of those presiding over its fortunes. . . . Pa- triotism, an internal principle of order and of unity, an organic bond of the members of a nation, was placed by the finest thinkers of Greece and Rome at the head of the natural virtues. . . . And the religion of Christ makes of patriotism a positive law: there is no perfect Christian who is not also a perfect patriot.” + * Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII, pp. 329, 331, 322, 452, 320. The first three and last extracts are from Longinque Oceani (“Catholicity in the United States”), the fourth from Lestem benevolentiae (“Americanism”), t Cardinal Mercier, Kenedy, New York, 1917; p. 20. From Encyclical on “Patriotism and Endurance,” Christmas, 1914. VI CATHOLICISM CATHOLICISM is loyal to the fundamentals of Christianity intended to be foundations of the American State, and friendly to the ideal that Americans be allowed to work out their national salvation in their own way; yet it is directly op- posed to a religious trend which many would regard as typically American. ‘There are two as- sumptions commonly made which Catholicism does not share and seeks to dispel, namely, that religious certitude is impossible, and that one religion is as good as another. The prevalent temper and tendency is agnostic, and claims the right to dominate the age by calling itself mod- ernism. Catholicism is opposed to modernism in all its forms and aspects, proclaiming the authenticity and authority of a Divine revelation. Moreover, it proclaims one faith as absolutely true, against the common notion of many religions, all partially true and relatively useful. It postulates the exist- ence of positive truth and error in opposition to the 157 158 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM common conception of truth in fragments, and error as mere misnomer for partial apprehension. Analogous to its intellectual are its moral assump- tions; that there is a positive Divine law for man, that obedience to this is possible, and that dis- obedience is sin, entailing punishment. It thus contradicts the tendency to obliterate moral dis- tinctions, to regard “the ape- and tiger-promptings that civilized nations call sins” as natural virtues, and to deny hell. It is absolute in its claims, un- yielding toward rivals, wholly aloof from con- ceptions of relativity in religious truth and from easy-going indifference. Yet, though opposed to certain ideas very common in America, there is no opposition to Americanism. ‘The science of nationality in the United States does not conflict with the theory of Christianity as the one true and universal religion. The two things belong in dif- ferent categories, and, in so far as they affect each other, are mutually helpful. The national system affords the religion the protection of custom and law; the religion inculcates loyalty in citizens and aids in effecting national unity. Yet, in its own proper sphere, Catholicism disparages all systems other than its own. This fact can not be glozed over, much less suppressed. Most non-Catholics in America, with their dis- position to see good everywhere and to adopt con- ciliatory attitudes, can not sympathize with this. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 159 Some can. Sympathetic or not, however, all ought to have intelligence enough to understand the Catholic position and respect it. ‘Tolerance does not mean indifference to truth, but fairness in deal- ing with honest people. ‘The truest tolerance 1s shown by those with deepest convictions. Great minds and great souls show the most Justice and patience in dealing with minds and souls of others. Those who will carefully analyze the intolerance of genuine Catholicism will see that is merely con- viction of God’s authority and presence, jealousy for the Divine honor against human presumption, the quality which noble souls can admire as simple and unflinching loyalty. ‘“‘We must obey God, rather than men.” All who would wish to say that can respect Catholics for exalting their faith because they hold it to be Divine. Why begrudge them what is generally conceded to the Pilgrim Fathers? Americans, if they are truly thoughtful and tol- erant, ought to apprehend Catholicism and its spirit, even when far from accepting it in whole or even in part. They have often had no real opportunity to do so. The religion has not been fairly presented in its broad outlines and fun- damental principles, or exhibited clearly in its true spirit. It has been confused with local and racial accidents, none of which wholly represent, and some of which disguise it. Fairly presented, all 160 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Christians must admit agreement within limits; and most will discover that agreement extends further than at first they would have guessed. At any rate, none who have intelligence and fairness can fail to understand the necessity of submission to the Catholic claim for those who are convinced of its truth. Nor can they fail to value its in- fluence, both for its adherents and for the world at large. One differentiating characteristic of Catholicism is its definiteness. It opposes not only denials of specific Christian truths, but also the tacit tend- ency to disparage all religious truths whatever. It is definite and in earnest in the face of much that is indefinite and vague. Cardinal Mercier made pertinent comments in a letter to his clergy of January 18, 1924. “Religious authorities, all those, indeed, who follow the evolution of human thought and the trend of events, are frightened to see the dechristianization of the masses and the swiftness with which the failing of faith in the supernatural leads to the denial of all religion. ‘The phenomenon is quite general, but is more momentous, more noticeable, in Protestant countries than in Catholic. “In 1887, already, Newman wrote: ‘I have for fifty years thought that a time of widespread infidelity was coming and through all those years the waters have in fact been rising like a deluge. I look for the time, after my life, when only the tops of the mountains will be seen AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 1ol like islands in the waste of waters.’ ‘And,’ he adds, ‘I speak principally of the Protestant world.’ “Yes, ‘principally of the Protestant world,’ because there the doctrinal divergencies which separate the many confessions’ or ‘denominations’ deprive the religiously in- clined souls of the lightsome and comforting vision of unity in faith. ‘The splitting up of the Protestant com- munion leads to liberalism in religious matters, that is to say, to that vague kind of belief which holds that all religions stand for free opinions of equal value, because none can claim in its favor the proof of a positive and divine revelation; then indifference to matters religious inevitably leads to irreligion, to anti-religious sectarianism. “Clear-sighted Protestants saw Newman’s predictions come true. Those among them who still believe in the Divinity of Christ and of His Church, those who pray for themselves and for the souls entrusted to their keep- ing, see the danger, and know it is their duty to counter- act it; they also believe in the words of the Acts of the Apostles, ‘Neither is there salvation in any other.’” The last four hundred years have seen a steady drift away from what is definite in Christianity. The various bodies which broke from the Church in the sixteenth century inaugurated changes which marked not fixed degrees of departure from mediaeval Christianity, but a process of gradual abandonment. This has been steady and continu- ous, sometimes unconscious, sometimes concealed by pleas for reconstruction and reinterpretation, sometimes deliberate and devoid of every disguis- 162 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM ing pretence. ‘The test-case is that of belief in the Godhead of Christ. There have been all degrees of confusion, hesitation, and explicitness of denial, and always vehement defenders of the truth. Yet the drift away from belief in Jesus as God among all classes of non-Catholics has become more rapid and overpowering, too strong even for the strong- est swimmers caught in these side-currents. Aban- donment of old Christian beliefs and practices is held to be alone worthy of modern thought; and what started as “justification by faith” is ending as justification of little or no faith at all. As Mr. Chesterton notes: “The worst thing in seventeenth century aberration was not so much Puritanism as sectarianism. It searched for truth not by syn- thesis, but by subdivision. It not only broke re- ligion into small pieces; but it was bound to choose the smallest piece.” The plain facts can not be obscured by use of old names with new meanings. ‘The Church” once meant the visible society which keeps Chris- tians in visible unity: it is often now used for the invisible soul of disunity. ‘‘Christianity’” once meant recognition that Christ has first place among men, with right to all men’s allegiance, and always that He was believed in as incarnate God. It is now made to cover all phases of amiable inten- tion, being used as synonym for religion in general. Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics must not be men- AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 163 tioned, or even prayed for, in any invidious sense, although the names may be used to express neces- sary and honorable distinctions. Any one “liberal” enough to think all opinions equally good—or bad —is truly “catholic.” The tendency of “modern thought” is too often not to think, mot to keep abreast of the times, and to disguise shallowness and insincerity by appropriation of self-laudatory epithets. Catholicism, on the contrary, stands for the old meanings of the old names, and for the old names for the sake of the old things they sig- nify, challenging thought to profound experiments in the truth of its philosophy, and conscience to recognize the irresistible claim of its standard of morality. “Certain Germans of the last century remind me of Dickens as to religion. They saw ‘no divine part of Christianity,’ but divinified humanity, or humanized re- ligion, and taught that man was perfectible, but child- hood perfect. So they used to die full of benevolence and admiration of the sun and moon, and for their chil- dren and their dog, and for their home. ‘They hated in- tolerance, exclusiveness, positive religion, and with a com- prehensive charity embraced all mankind and condemned alike differences of faith and distinctions of rank as in- surrections against the broad common humanity. Their :eligion was a sort of natural religion adorned with poetry and enthusiasm—quite above Christianity. Herder was a man of this stamp. Surely Dickens is very like them. 164 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Nothing can be more indefinite than his religion, or more human. He loves his neighbor for his neighbor’s sake, and knows nothing of sin when it is not crime. Of course, this shuts out half of psychology from his sight and partly explains why he has so few characters and so many cari- catures.” * The prevalent tendency would reduce all things to lowest terms, explain things higher by things lower, man in terms of matter, God in terms of matter and man. Catholicism, on the contrary, exalts all things to their highest terms, explains lower things in terms of higher, man and the world in terms of God. The gorilla does not ex- plain man, nor protoplasm the gorilla: man helps to explain the gorilla and the primal cells, and God alone completely explains all three. Revelation. The chief difference between Cath- olics and other Christians is the degree of serious- ness with which they take certain things in regard to which all Christians theoretically agree. First of all, Divine revelation. Almost all who assume the Christian name profess belief in Divine revela- tion, yet many have lost real hold both of the idea and of the fact. To many the chief meaning at- tached to the term is individual intuition, human speculation rather than a Divine proclamation, subjective inferences rather than an objective ex- hibition of God in the Person of Jesus Christ. * Gasquet: Lord Acton and his Circle, p. 241. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 165 They have lost the Christian proportion of things. ‘God, who, at sundry times and in divers man- ners, spake in times past to the fathers by the prophets, last of all in these days hath spoken to us by his Son: whom he hath appointed heir of all things by whom also he made the world.” * God has revealed Himself at many times and in many ways to various of His servants: but these prophets of His have no revelation comparable to that made through His Son. ‘That and that alone is complete and final. The common con- ception of revelation is often that “God may in times past have spoken to the fathers by prophets and by Jesus called His son: but last of all in these days, at sundry times and in divers manners, He speaks to us, heirs of the ages on whom the ends of the world are come.” The sole important fact for each is his own notion of things. This is not possible for those who recognize unique authority in our Lord. Many who would not expressly deny the Di- vinity of Christ simply play with the word. They have tacitly, if not expressly, put aside the thought of the Word made flesh, of Jesus as “brightness of the Father’s glory, the figure of his substance, upholding all things by the word of his power, making purgation of sins, sitting on the right hand of the majesty on high, much better than the + Hebrews I: rf. 166 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM angels.’ * There is no hold on such thoughts as these. At best, if Jesus was God, it is assumed that He forbore to use His Divinity. More often, he is merely thought of as a good man, vaguely known, or even as the unknown subject of delud- ing myth. So must those think and speak, who, rejecting all miracle, are forced to excise from the Gospel its most characteristic features. Life may be transformed for those who believe in the miraculous Christ, ‘‘conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,” and “‘on the third day risen again from the dead’’; but there can be no similar experience for those who are sure of noth- ing except that He “was crucified under Pontius Pilate, died, and was buried.’ The Gospel of Pontius Pilate is no substitute for the Gospel of the Virgin Mary. There are many non-Catholics who do most sin- cerely believe in the Incarnation of the Son of God, who are firm on this basis of the ancient Christian and Catholic faith. Their assumption as to the authority of the Christian revelation, and their attitude towards all its rivals, is that of Catholics. They do not, however, represent the prevailing tendency of their environment. As individuals and in groups, they are heroically striving to stem the tide of unbelief. In this they align themselves with the Church in her solidity and might. For * Hebrews I: 3-5. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 167 it is the Catholic Church alone which is an im- movable bulwark of faith in one unique Divine revelation. Catholics believe that Jesus was actually God and are dominated by the tremendousness of the thought. For them, as for Christians of the first age, there is an overpowering sense of the com- pelling authority in the fact that the Son of Mary was none other than the Son of God. ‘How can we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” * The life of Jesus is the one great fact of history, the one sure clue to the mystery of existence. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life: none cometh unto the Father but by Him: He is the Door, all others but thieves and robbers. If this be true, it is the commonest of common sense to see its prime importance and to let it dominate life. It exhibits and embodies the authority and the love of God: and “we must obey God, rather than men.” If Jesus was actually God, He alone is Lord of Lufe: Those who do not believe this can not censure utter abandonment to His claim by those who do. They may criticize the belief, yet see that sur- render is the belief’s inevitable consequence. Moreover, they can not fail to see that Catholics hold to the Christ of tradition and are the true heirs of those who have upheld the authority of * Hebrews II: 3. 168 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM the Bible. They have not made a religion of “the Bible and the Bible only”: but they have always held that faith which, as evidence for the first Christians, the Bible attests. They still hold it without diminution or explaining away, sharing that faith and fear which ruled the founders of the American commonwealths. It is not for be- lief in revelation that any object to Catholics on supposedly American grounds: but, for any under- standing of them, this must be recognized as basis of their whole system. First things must be put first. Revelation is held not only as traditional and conventional, but as eminently reasonable. If the Maker of the world and of man has given His intelligent creatures some sure clue to the riddle of existence, life is explicable and tolerable. If not, we are “without God and without hope.” Man’s makeup postulates God, and his relation to God and God’s to him postulate revelation. “I am made up of an intensest life, Of a most clear idea of consciousness, Of self, distinct from all its qualities, From all affections, passions, feelings, powers; And thus far it exists, if tracked, in all: But linked, in me, to self-supremacy, Existing as a centre to all things, Most potent to create and rule and call Upon all things to minister to it: AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 169 And to a principle of restlessness Which would be all, have, see, know, taste, feel, Al This is myself; and I should thus have been Though gifted lower than the meanest soul. . . Where do they tend—these struggling aims? What would I have? What is this sleep which seems To bound all? Can there be a waking point Of crowning life? ... And what is that I hunger for but God? . I have always had a lode-star; now As I look back, I see that I have halted Or hastened, as I looked toward that star— A need, a trust, a yearning after God.” * Man, as he is constituted, craves God and craves love. No explanation of things is so con- gruous to the facts of self-conscious life as one which relates all things to love as life’s origin and goal. This is precisely what the Christian revela- tion does. Those who can not accept it must at least admit that it affords a plausible theory of life to those who do. One chief argument for it is its intrinsic reasonableness. Man, made for loving, finds it natural to conceive a Maker Who loves: and a Maker Who loves may be expected to reveal Himself. Man craves knowledge of his origin and of his destiny. Conscious that his present experience seems a tangle of unfinished beginnings, he feels that there can only be explana- *Browning: Pauline. 170 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM tion, completion, of himself in eternity. The Christian revelation corroborates his instinctive longings, affording objective proofs of his sub- jective assumptions. Our Lord brings life and immortality into the light. The Christian may go through life and death smiling, “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, who having joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God.” * Revelation, therefore, is held in itself to be reasonable, credible, even antecedently probable. It might be propounded as hypothesis. It is, how- ever, actually presented to us not as theory but as fact. Christ is not a postulate of thought, but a personage in history. ‘Those who believe in the possibility of revelation can not cavil at the super- natural, and those who accept Christ as God in- carnate are committed to belief in the miraculous in the beginning, middle, and end of their articles of faith, with all the difficulties involved in this for a certain class of minds. Yet they escape other difficulties into which those who deny or explain away the miraculous in our Lord’s life inevitably fall. A miraculous origin might seem to explain the actual consequences of Christianity: natural- istic explanations fail to do so. ‘This may be illus- trated by a single example. * Hebrews XII: 2. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 171 The Christian religion has changed the whole course of human history. True or false, it has been the greatest influence in the world for two thousand years. Quite correctly is this period of time called ‘‘the Christian era,” since the life of Jesus has actually been the central fact in human development. But the conception of His life which has focussed the lines of human evolution has been the supernatural religion of the Gospels, belief that the Son of Mary was none other than the Son of God appearing in human nature, Whose earthly life began by birth of a Virgin and ended by ascension into the skies after resurrection from death. There have always been those who wished, without repudiating Christianity alto- gether, to hold something less than this: but they represented a small minority. The body of Chris- tians as a whole, the Catholic Church throughout her history, and the great majority of non-Catholic Christians until very recent times, held to this faith of the Gospels, faith in the incarnation of the Son of God. The New Testament, evidence of the faith of Apostles and their immediate fol- lowers, represents the norm of Christian belief, expounded by the fathers, standardized in the creeds. This is the faith which has proven the great transforming fact for the human race. If it be not true, if the supernatural must be denied, if all the outstanding features of the Christian 172 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Gospel like the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection must be repudiated or twisted into contradictory meanings by “symbolical interpretation,” then it follows that Christianity is “the great delusion.” Consistent and candid skeptics so deseribe it. But this assumption gives rise to a series of special difficulties» It is not easy to conceive that the greatest influence in human history should have been due to delusion, that its admittedly beneficial consequences must be traced to a series of lies. The accumulation of original errors could not have been unconscious. If the thing be delusion, it must be traced to deliberate deception. ‘This is an unsatisfactory hypothesis in view of all the facts. It is those who deny, rather than those who affirm, the Christian explanation of the Christian facts, who are plunged into psychological riddles. The Apostles are more plausible as intelligent and honest men than as deceivers or dupes. The hypothesis that the primitive Christian faith was disguised and distorted at some period of its his- tory is being gradually abandoned. Keen students can see that the essentials of the faith have always been the same. If Christianity be wrong, it has always been wrong. The supernatural interpreta- tions of the life of Jesus must be ascribed to His first followers. The Apostles were no more naturalistic in their statements and explanations than the second-century bishops and fathers at AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 173 Nicaea. If the supernatural explanations be false now, they have always been false: “there never were any good old times.” If the Gospel narrative be myth, not history, then the dominating personality of all time, the unique master of men, is not Jesus, a man whose actual life has been misinterpreted, but the genius who first conceived the great misinterpretation. Who was he—the impetuous Peter, the neurotic Paul, or the visionary John? ‘They all taught the same thing. It is difficult to place the original responsibility—there are so many of them. The fourth Evangelist seems most explicit; but the es- sentials of his picture of the Word made flesh are to be found also in the others. Peter and Paul, quite independently, received and imparted the same impressions of Christ. The first disciples held the same beliefs as the Church of later days. There is no one genius who forcibly impressed his personality and imaginings on his fellows. If the conception of God become man be fiction, it must be traced to a whole school of historical novelists, and back of them to a large community possessed of the identical obsession to which they gave literary form. This is not plausible. It is easier to conceive of an historical Jesus as back- ground and cause of the one conception, than of coincidence of the one transcendent conception in so many and various and commonplace minds. 174 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Our Lord’s Personality is more explicable as fact than as fiction; and His influence more reason- ably ascribed to the intervention of God than to the invention of clever men. To even the simplest belief in God, as Power and possibly Goodness behind the world to account for it, a miraculous explanation of life is more reasonable than denials which leave life unex- plained. It is more credible too that the course of human history should have been determined by a supernatural revelation than by the tales of some speculative mystic. The novelist who could create the character of Jesus is a more troublesome miracle than God. Such novelists do not happen. God, after all, is a great comfort to the truly scientific intellect. History has coherence, if it may be traced to the Personality of Christ, but loses this, if it must be related to an inexplicable delusion. ‘Though reason and history are alike invoked for the overthrow or disparagement of revealed religion, both in fact support it. The dangers of a little learning come not from the learning, but from its littleness. The Catholic Church reasserts without change or compromise the traditional faith in Jesus as God, consubstantial with the Father. She claims to be champion not only of faith, but also of truth, exponent of science rightly so called. As defender of the ancient belief concerning Christ, she is en- AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 175 titled to respect even from those who least share her convictions: and in her defence of the Faith, her stores of philosophy and of historical and scientific learning must evoke admiration, even when they do not compel assent. First of all, then, the Catholic Church is to be judged by her unalter- - able assertion of the Christology of St. Peter. ‘Whom say ye that lam?” “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” The Church. Catholics maintain the doctrine of God as Christians held it from the beginning. There are many non-Catholics who are wholly at one with them in this. Only during the last two centuries have any large number of nominal Chris- tians modified or abandoned it. In the religious upheaval of the sixteenth century, denials of many points in the Church’s teaching did not extend to theology proper. Lutherans, Calvinists, and Anglicans accepted and asserted the doctrine of the Trinity quite as much as matter of course as the Council of Trent. Servetus fared before Calvin as he would have fared before the Spanish Inquisition. To-day, however, openly to deny Christ’s Divinity is common, to ignore its signifi- cance more common still. Nevertheless, believers and defenders are so numerous in many folds that Catholics can claim no monopoly of this form of Petrine loyalty. They rejoice that it is so. They differ, however, from many who would 176 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM agree with them about the Person and natures of Christ, in their hold of the traditional doctrine of the Church. The tendency of all forms of non- Catholic Christianity is to minimize this, of many to overthrow it altogether. Even those who ac- cept the principle, reject some of its corollaries and applications. Belief in the Church, however, is integral and essential to Catholicism. The actual result of our Lord’s life on earth was the Church. He left as His representative in the world, not a book, not a mere memory, not some vague notions scattered like Sybilline leaves, but a body of disciples. The New Testament shows how Christ, risen and ascended, was repre- sented by a society of believers, who were called Christians—and possibly also Catholics—first in Antioch. ‘The Catholic Church was the historic outcome of the life of Jesus, a spiritual family into which individuals were sacramentally born. To become a Christian one became a member of the Catholic Church. The principle implied is that, in redemption as in creation, society is prior to the individual; that life comes to each by process of generation in the race; that unity is the organic relation in a family, not mere contiguity of par- ticles in a dust-heap. Many accept the Church- principle who are not agreed as to what and where the Church is. In modern times, however, there has been wide- AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 177 spread loss of the whole Church idea. A common mode of thought is represented by some comments ef Woodrow Wilson: ‘The Church does not represent a structural part of humanity. It rep- resents the spiritual part which does not seek ex- pression in form of government or even in forms of society, but seeks expression in its search for God, in its search for the ultimate explanation of life, in its search for the ultimate fountains of the human spirit. The things that are outside of us and beyond our control and higher than we are, are the things by which we seek to measure our- selves: and every church is a sort of an attempt to discover a standard. .. . Our upward-pointing spires are like interrogation-points,” expressing man’s irrepressible queries concerning God and the world. This they are; but they are something more. They are also affirmative indices of the source of knowledge, and signs also of definite answers to the questioning instincts of men. The words quoted give telling expression to an indisputable fact, but are far from telling the whole truth about the Church of Christ. Man’s gropings after God are necessary, and in religious aspirations find natural expression. Churches do represent the normal “struggling aims” of humanity. But to state this alone and unguardedly is to ignore the fact that Christianity is a revelation; that it rep- 178 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM resents, first of all, not the upward struggles of men, but the downward reaching of God to assist men in their struggles. It is Protestant to think that “‘every church is a sort of an attempt to dis- cover a standard,” but Catholic to think of the Church established by God, “pillar and ground of the truth,” disclosing a standard. The New Tes- tament presentation of the Church emphasizes the very points the statement quoted seems to deny; namely, that the Church represents something normal and structural in humanity; that the laws of spiritual life are analogous to the laws of all life; and that spiritual truth and grace are gained through incorporation into spiritual society. The religious life is more than search; it is discovery. It is more than asking of questions; it is receiving of answers. Our Lord bids us “seek,” but promises that we “‘shall find,” that to our persistent knock- ing the doors of knowledge shall be opened. Moreover, what comes from Him is to be re- ceived as certain and final. Christianity is a search after God, as earnest a search as the world has ever seen; but, more than that, it is the manifesta- tion of God given in response to faith. It is an unsatisfactory statement of the substance of the Christian life to say of all Christians, ‘“They are looking for a foot-hold, for some firm ground of faith on which to walk.” This has been true of all of them: but fortunately it is also true that AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 179 many of them have found what they were looking for, and have come to share the confidence in the foundation of faith in Christ expressed by such discoverers of truth as St. Paul and St. John. Imperfect apprehension of the Church-principle is one of the chief limitations of Protestantism. In its extreme forms it wholly denies the principle, assuming the formation of the Church from be- low. ‘Those who have wished to start Chris- tianity afresh, whether expressly undertaking the task of invention, or claiming merely to have made rediscoveries, have been concerned not with per- petuation of a Church existent and of transcendent authority, but with the formation of new churches and with self-defermined plans of individual sal- vation, wholly independent of any church other than an aggregation for convenience of like- minded units. The negative tendency invariably halts short of the truth. Its opposition to au- thority, its restiveness at the mystical and super- natural, its content with the commonplace, are all signs of failure to rise to the level of highest at- tainment. The Church differs from human societies, de- pendent upon voluntary union of members, in origin, aim, and fundamental principles. It starts not with certain men, feeling certain needs, and consenting to act in common, but with the coming into the world of the Son of God. Men did not 180 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM attach themselves to each other: God attached them to Himself. The Church’s aim is not mere codperation of men for some common purpose, but the imparting to men of a Divine principle of life. It is not merely an organization, a human arrangement for convenience, but an organism, a creation of God as instrument and expression of life, analogous, as is suggested in Scripture, to the family and the vine. God created Adam and Eve with power to reproduce their kind. In Adam the race existed first: individual men only exist as the race and race-principle call them into being. Human nature has its source in the love of God and descends to its various sharers by a line of suc- cessive parents. So of the vine. Its character, life, is in its stock: this creates branches and leaves. In both human and vegetable organisms the source of life is from above, and the law of growth de- termined by a principle working within, undiscov- erable by natural science. So of the Church. She has her source in the love of God the Father, has for her head the second Adam, God the Son, and her life by the indwelling of God the Holy Ghost. In origin and law of life she is Divine. The Catholic Church, as distinct from indi- vidual, congregational, local, national, religious cults, and as transcending the noblest human efforts to realize universal brotherhood, is the mystical Body of Christ. Her whole life is sacra- AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 181 mental, her extension by the sprinkling of one baptism, inclusive of all who do not wilfully re- fuse the invitation of Divine love. ‘One touch of nature makes the whole world kin’’; and one touch of grace makes that whole kin one. The true character of membership in the Church is not real- ized without that sacramental conception which re- lates admission into the earthly fellowship to the writing of names in the Lamb’s Book of Life. * Those who think of the Church as prior to the individual Christian, of the dependence of the spiritual individual on the spiritual society, simply hold to the primitive conception. As ‘the Bible and the Bible only” used to be “the religion of Protestants,” so, in a sense, the Church and the Church only is the religion of Catholics. If one synonym must be used for the Christian religion, that synonym is, of course, Christ. He is the origin of the religion with the Church as actual consequence; the end of the religion with the Church as necessary means. Many non-Catholics would admit this: but, when all due recognition has been given to every acceptance of the Church- principle, it is still obviously true that Catholics * These last paragraphs, as well as several in the concluding chapter, are taken from a book of the present writer’s, Catholic and Protestant, written in 1912 or 1913 when the author was an Anglican. It contains various indications of how far he then was from understanding the Catholic point of view, and also illustrations of how one may stumble on true things without knowing clearly what he is talking about! 182 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM are its most conspicuous and consistent cham- pions. No one can declare it an exploded superstition. Those who would do so must face the fact that, in all attempts to explode it, the fuses have fizzled. Catholics represent one-half of the Christian world. Something like another quarter accept the Church-principle, although denying that the papacy is integral to it. The Catholic Church to-day is the most striking of all Christian phe- nomena, her strength being apparently due to her solidarity. When Christianity is recognized, due respect must be shown to the faith of half of the nominally Christian world, having a weight of precedent and efficiency which no friend or ob- server of Christianity can ignore. To exalt the Church is not only to be loyal to antiquity, but also to recognize the greatest religious fact in modern times. The distinctive feature of Catholic belief con- cerning the Church is that she is living. Catholics are less conscious of her past than of her present power. ‘This means consciousness of our Lord in the Church. ‘“The former treatise,” wrote St. Luke to Theophilus of his Gospel, “have I made of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach,” thereby implying that his second treatise, in which the words occur, was an account of what Jesus continued to do and to teach. Acts of Apostles AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 183 were instrumentally Acts of Christ. ‘‘Why look ye on us,” asked St. Peter of the Jews amazed at a miracle, ‘‘as if by our own strength or power we had made this man to walk? . . . In the faith of the name of Jesus, this man whom ye have seen and known, hath His name strengthened; and the faith which is by Him hath given him this perfect soundness in the sight of you alae e “They going forth preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word with sions following.” + That was the primitive con- ception; and that is the Catholic conception. Our Lord is still living and working: the Church is the sacrament of His activity. Many hold the Church-principle so vaguely as in effect to deny it. This may be seen in the sig- nificance of certain “‘appeals,” to Scripture, to antiquity, to the Fathers, to Seven Councils. These all seem to imply that the appellant recog- nizes no supreme authority in the present, and con- ceives of true Christianity as having existed only in the past. The Church is not living and func- tioning, but dead and buried. The tomb must be excavated and the mummy unwrapped. Eastern Orthodoxy makes this assumption no less than old-fashioned Protestantism. The appeal to “scholarship” treats Christianity as a department * Acts III: 12, 16. ~St. Mark XVI: 20. | 184 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM of archeology only to be dealt with by trained excavators. In certain ways, all these appeals are legitimate and necessary. Yet too often they imply abandonment of the Catholic consciousness of the Living Church of the Living Christ. ‘The appeal to history is heresy,’ when it is virtual denial of the continuity of the Church, and of the perpetuity of our Lord’s presence and of the Holy Spirit’s guidance. The Catholic conception brings the Gospel up to date, makes practical application of our Lord’s injunctions and promises, assumes the continuous activity of the Holy Ghost, being less concerned with theories about origins than with present experience of the supernatural. It is a consistent and logical development of New Testament principles and as such must be judged. Catholicism is the bulwark of definite Chris- tianity. An age which boasts its tolerance of all phantoms of belief and unbelief must tolerate also the most substantial version of the greatest of world-religions. The prevalent indefiniteness tends to agnosticism. It seems probable that Catholics and agnostics will divide the future. All between represent solutions of religious ideas in unstable equilibrium, gradually resolving into their elements and inevitably gravitating to one or the other of the two poles. There are some avowed apostles of undogmatism, wholly opposed to the super- natural, who frankly admit that they look on AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 185 Christianity as obsolete. ‘They are to be com- mended for the clearness with which they see what is involved in their premises. Others, less clear- sighted, hold to the use of Christian terminology, and claim merely to seek restatement and reinter- pretation; yet they have made the destructive as- sumptions, and in thought and culture are tem- peramentally skeptical. The revolts from the Church in the sixteenth century inaugurated a series of progressive abandonments, the goal of which is abandonment of all religion whatsoever. The agnosticism which blinks at the supernatural gravitates toward the atheism which sees in God the ultimate superstition. In defiance of this tend- ency, the Catholic half of Christendom abandoned nothing in the sixteenth century or at any later date, and is increasingly convinced of the common sense of its loyalty. It is significant that Catholics hold more clearly to the ideal of the Church as a spiritual society than the Eastern Orthodox, who are equally com- mitted to the principle. They realize the ideal in innumerable ways impossible for those whose churches are, in fact, but ecclesiastical national- isms. It is also significant that they hold to the Christian doctrine of God, to Revelation, the In- carnation, and the Atonement, as is no longer done by most descendants of the Evangelical Protes- tants, who blazoned these beliefs as excuses for 186 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM rebellion against the Church’s human errors. There are probably none of the Orthodox who would willingly relinquish or weaken the Church idea: there are certainly many Protestants who still hold firmly to the theology of the Bible: but conditions of their environment are proving too strong for them. The one sure protection for their cherished beliefs is the Catholic Church. Who still hold to the Church principles of the Fathers and Councils exalted by the Orthodox East? Not now the faithful in Russia and the Balkan States half so clearly as those in com- munion with Rome. Who still hold to the salient and most characteristic teachings of the Bible which Protestants once made their ‘religion only’? Only a comparatively small number of Protestants to-day, whereas they are still main- tained by that Church against which the first Protestants rebelled. The point of these com- ments is simply, that, in fundamentals of Chris- tian teaching concerning Christ and the Church, once held by the majority in non-Catholic com- munions, still officially professed by some of them, and certainly held by many individuals among them—the simplest things, now as always recog- nized as Christian essentials—it is Roman Cathol- icism alone which never wavers in its witness. It can, therefore, never be ignored by any who would uphold the Christian faith and name. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 187 It is not for their beliefs concerning Christ and His Church that Catholics are distrusted in ‘America: but in discussing them, first things must be put first, and second things second. Vil ROMANISM THERE are many who would assent to all, or most, of what has been said of Revelation and the Church, recognizing these as fundamental to Christianity, and saying that this is what they too mean by Catholicism. But they would go on to say, that, believing in Catholicism, they do not be- lieve in Romanism. ‘‘Catholics we are, or would be, but not Romanists. The universal and the local terms are mutually exclusive. An apostolic hierarchy we can accept, but not its feudalized apex, the papacy. We recognize this, indeed, as a long-standing phase of ecclesiastical develop- ment, temporarily useful; but we do not believe it to have been of Divine institution, and regard the claims made in behalf of it as the chief cause of divisions in Christendom. We quarrel less with the thing than with the reasons it gives for itself: in a de facto primacy we could acquiesce; in a de jure supremacy we do not believe.” Many would say something of this sort, regarding papal — claims as representing not a spiritual principle, but a secular ambition; not a logical application of the 188 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 189 Church’s unity, but the chief cause of schisms; not an important safeguard, but an imposition or even imposture. Without regarding the Pope as the Man of Sin, they are convinced that he is the Man of Delusion. Catholics they claim to be, yet are non-papal and anti-papal: Catholicism they re- gard as an unrealized ideal, Romanism as a heresy. ‘Their opposition is not mere perpetua- tion of historic‘feuds, but the assertion of personal convictions. They think papal theories destruc- tive of unity, failing to note that the only effective unity is bound up with the papal facts. It is unnecessary here to repeat the familiar arguments for the papacy drawn from our Lord’s special commissions and promises to St. Peter; from St. Peter’s part and place in the Apostolic Church; from the establishment and exercise of primacy and supremacy by a long line of Roman bishops; from the logical coherence of those con- ceptions of the Church which postulate her centre in the Apostolic See. There is nothing to add to the authoritative statements of these facts and arguments. They are well known to many who fail to feel their force. No arguments avail with those who are functionally, if not organically, non- receptive. No evidence whatever can establish an antecedently improbable fact. The blind can see nothing in clearest light; the deaf hear nothing of loudest sounds. Those who reject the super- 190 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM natural are moved by no arguments for revelation, mere individualists by no arguments for the Church. Similarly, many are color-blind to argu- ments for the papacy. They are prepossessed with the idea that the Church can recognize no visible head without implied disloyalty to our Lord; that St. Peter did net produce the Popes; that true Catholicism is the negation of Romanism; that whatever Petrine promises and papal perform- ances may mean, it is not what is summed up in the epithet “Rome.” They have fixed ideas as to St. Peter’s New Testament level, and as to the anti-papal witness of Church History. They have heard all the arguments for the papacy, from his- tory, from Scripture, from logic, and are unim- pressed. The point of these will never touch them until something acts as entering wedge. The wedge which has penetrated the shell of prejudice on many minds has been the spectacle of “Rome’s” efficiency. Many, once anti-papal, have found that history, and even spiritual ex- perience, suddenly became luminous when related to Petrine principles; that, by recognition of these, formless thoughts attached themselves to realities. The force of old and familiar arguments, long known but ignored, has been suddenly and pungently felt, the chief cause being that theories were not detached from experience. Many who were impervious to scholastic syllogisms, have AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 191 been sensitive to the logic of facts. “The evi- dence of everything begins in the present.” Theories are only of value to explain things which actually exist. Many a theory is saved through justification by facts, for, though “facts only” may be heretical pragmatism, there is a limited sphere within which this form of justification may be considered. There are certain outstanding results of Chris- tian history, parts of the world’s experience to-day, which challenge doubters to consider whether Roman theories of the Christian Church may not, after all, be true. Investigations are worth while, if the admitted strength of Roman Catholicism is intimately, and therefore perhaps essentially, connected with its having head and centre in the Apostolic See. What Rome claims is best judged by what Rome does, her faith by her works. If certain purposes of Christianity, indicated in the evangelical title-deeds, are attained under Roman auspices alone, or better under these than under others, this is a clarion challenge to practical minds to listen attentively to what Rome has to say for herself. The first Christians “‘were persevering in the Apostles’ doctrine, and in the communication of the breaking of bread.” * The doctrine centred about the proclamation that Jesus, risen from the * Acts II: 42. i922 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM dead, was Himself God. ‘‘God, raising up His Son, hath sent Him to bless you; that every one may convert himself from his wickedness.” * Later times were to think much of purity in the faith, loyalty to the faith, the heart of this being the Petrine conviction, ‘““Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” It is undisputed that Roman Catholics still believe in Jesus as Divine, Divine as the Father is Divine; that they still hold the Christian doctrine of God, eternally existing One in Trinity, and hold this to be fundamental to other beliefs. Again, the apostolic fellowship was an exhibi- tion of unity, realizing our Lord’s expressed in- tention for His disciples. ‘“The multitude of be- lievers had but one heart and soul.” t In later times, the first affirmation made about the Church, the mark to which creeds gave precedence, was that the Church is One. It is undisputed that Roman Catholics exhibit the only example on a world-wide scale of Christian unity in faith and cult. ‘This is obvious to the world at large and can not be overlooked by those who dispute the Roman teaching concerning the Church. Orthodoxy and Unity are two chief tests of apostolic Christianity, recognized essentials, of which heresy and schism are the denial and the destruction. Where have these, as matter of fact, * Acts III: 26. t Acts IV: 32. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 193 been maintained, or best maintained? Where do they most definitely now exist? ‘They exist among Roman Catholics: are they as satisfactory else- where? These are fair questions. ‘To answer them, it is necessary to scrutinize and weigh Roman Orthodoxy and Roman Unity, and to com- pare them with such counterparts as exist, for ex- ample, among Christians grouped under the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople, the successive gov- ernments in Russia, the Lutheran Confessions, or the churches in communion with the English Establishment. Are these as clearly identified with the Orthodoxy and Unity of the Christian past? Are they as definite and practically useful as those upheld by Rome? These too are fair questions. Orthodoxy. Rome has been historically the chief bulwark of primitive doctrine. ‘The unchang- ing faith of the millions in her communion has evidently been related to their ecclesiastical obedience. Explain it as we may, as the inter- action of tyranny and subservience, of intran- sigeance and imbecility, or of the fulfilment of the Divine purpose and promise, the fact remains. Roman Catholics are still “persevering in the Apostles’ doctrine.” Some will say they have added to it. We are now only concerned to note that they have not subtracted from it, nor evacu- ated its terminology of plain and primitive mean- ings. 194. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM The Christian East, ‘‘the Greek Church,” with especial emphasis asserts its orthodoxy, making this the unique Christian test. Still using the original Christian tongue, the language of the New Testament, of the first Liturgies, and of most of the earlier theologians, it recites the Symbol of Faith in the exact. terms given it by early Councils, regarding itself as special guardian of the truths whose watchwords are Homoousion and The- otokos. The Easterns, out of communion with Rome since the eleventh century, have never fal- tered in avowals of allegiance to the ancient and immutable faith. None have so_ strenuously afirmed devotion to the faith of the fathers. Immobility has been so exalted as an ideal, ancient thought so embalmed in ancient modes of expres- sion, that it has sometimes seemed as if the Creeds were enshrined in reliquaries with the bones of Diocletian martyrs. The ultimate limits of de- velopment are seen in St. John Damascene and the Seventh General Council. The important thing, however, is simply that the chief ideal of the Easterns is indicated by their chosen designa- tion, “Orthodox.” Yet, what are the facts? The East has been productive of heresies, which have been long-lived and have multiplied, all involving schisms. Heresy and schism are always mutually productive. More than this, those sections of Eastern Orth- AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 195 odoxy holding to the Seven Councils have been politically severed: and the dependence on civil authorities, Moslem as well as Christian, has made it dificult to hold peoples in the faith. There have been glorious martyrdoms, but also many apostasies. What is happening now in Russia ts typical of what has happened many times in the separated churches of the East. Russian Church history abounds in inspiring episodes. Russian de- votion to the faith was notable. Czars wished to be defenders of the faith, even after Peter the Great suppressed a patriarch to set up a colonel of dragoons as governor of the Church. ‘This functionary, working through the Most Holy Governing Synod, still upheld the ancient ideal, as did his successors such as the late Pro- curator Pobiednostzeff. But the support of the Church was secular, not spiritual authority: when the throne fell, the Church toppled, and threatened to drag down faith in her ruins. An ecclesiastical department of the State is not, strictly speaking, a Church; and the overthrow of the Czars has in- volved the disintegration of Orthodoxy. Russian allegiance to the Divine Lord, with special devo- tion to the great Mother of God, has been as marked as any in the world: but the Soviet regime threatens its destruction. At the present moment Russian Christianity totters on shifting sands. Similar things have happened in other countries 196 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM of the East. Political bases of ecclesiastical in- stitutions have never been secure. Greek Chris- tianity, victim of the fickleness and perversity of fortune, has been on the wane. Nor do the ex- ternal difficulties and disasters wholly explain this. There has been an inherent weakness, something centrifugal in polity which has resulted in inco- herence of doctrine. Otherwise, the past few years would have not witnessed the sight, theoret- ically the one most abhorrent to the Orthodox soul, of eastern prelates coquetting with western heresy, giving timid countenance to those who de- nied, or connived at denials of the ancient beliefs concerning God, the Church, and the Sacraments. Schism and politics make strange bedfellows. The disintegration of Greek Christianity has been the more apparent by comparison with the compact firmness of its Latin counterpart. In contrast to its kaleidoscopic transformations, due to political changes involving doctrinal as well as ecclesiastical upheavals, has been the stability, progressive development, and ever-widening in- fluence, of the Christian West, doctrinal as well as ecclesiastical permanence for all in communion with the Roman papacy. The one has been rent through subjection to secular authority, its “By- zantinism’’: the other has stood through the inde- pendence of its Papacy, its ““Romanism.’”’ One AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 197 aspect of this difference concerns Faith. Rome, that is the Papacy, is synonym for loyalty. Certain historical episodes are alleged in dis- proof of this: Liberius, Honorius, the case of Apiarius, the 28th Canon of Chalcedon. Rome may well rest her case on these and accept chal- lenges by urging full investigation of the supposedly weak points. Only let them be studied deeply: Liberius investigated with heed to the whole teach- ing of St. Athanasius and St. Ambrose; Honorius used as point of approach for study of the teach- ing functions of the Holy See; Apiarius and the Africans strictly cross-examined with special re- gard to the witness to papal authority in St. Augustine; Chalcedon and St. Leo scrutinized by way of thrashing out the difficulties in the rela- tions between the Papacy and General Councils and between faith and polity. Anti-papal critics have appealed to history; to history let them go. Only let them go all the way. In modern times, the chief disproofs of papal claims are seen by some in the “new dogmas.” Here again, let the case rest with the disputed points, with Pius IX in 1854 and 1870. Only let the investigation be thorough: and let the facts concerning the Pope’s communion be fairly compared with the corre- sponding facts in other portions of the Christian world. “Look on this picture, and look on that,” 198 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM and on both in the clear light of actual conditions and happenings. — It is unnecessary again to note the contrast be- tween the unchanged witness of Catholicism to New Testament doctrines and the drift away from them in the Protestant world. It need only here be noted that the effective point of the Church's sword of the Spirit is the teaching of its ultimate authority, the papal declarations. Once “orth- odoxy” in American Protestantism meant un- wavering faith in the Bible and the Bible’s teach- ing about Christ. It was sharply distinguished from indifference as well as from express denials. There are still many, in the name of inherited Protestant principles, to fight for these to the last ditch. Yet the “‘fundamentalists”’ are waging a losing campaign. They are able now sometimes to carry points by small majorities in their con- ventions: but it is evident, from the drift of things, that they will not be able to do so much longer. Modernism is having its day among them. ‘The old-fashioned beliefs in Bible teachings are tol- erated merely as useless survivals, as caudal vertebrae to modern thought, or possible seats of intellectual appendicitis. It is assumed that they must eventually go; and it is evident that from many old strongholds they are quickly going. Some still boldly assert the old truths; others quite as boldly deny them, and challenge interference AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM § 199 with their denials without the challenges being met. Heresy-trials are regarded as obsolete, because the truths on trial are regarded as obsolete. Evangelical truth is no longer safe in its former fortresses. Many are trying to stand for “funda- mentalism’’; but who beside the Roman hierarchy and notably Pope Pius X have done so effectively in western Christendom? The good Protestants who are battling for the fundamentals of Chris- tianity ought to see in the Pope and his Com- munion, not only their best friends and allies, but their true home. There was justice as well as cleverness in Cardi- nal Gibbons’ invocation of the ghosts of the Pil- grim Fathers to join in the celebration of the jubilee of Archbishop Williams in Boston. “If we consider the lives and works of some of the Puri- tan New Englanders, and compare their stern adherence to the sacred Scriptures, to the true Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ, to the saving power of His precious Blood, and then see into what religious aberrations their descendants have wandered, denying the Incarnation, the Atone- ment, and the inspiration of Holy Scripture, I think we should not be wrong in saying that, could the founders of New England have looked down over the ages, they would be glad to think that the lamp of Christianity was not to be put out; but that there should still be part of the population 200 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM who should revere the sacred and canonical Scrip- tures as the very Word of God, who should hope for salvation only through the merits and blood of our Redeemer, and would worship that Re- deemer as God over all blessed forever. If we think of the past of New England and of the present, we Catholics are far nearer in feeling to the founders of these commonwealths than many of their own descendants. ‘Therefore we know that nobody can contest our right here, and no- body who wishes for a Christian New England can be sorry for our success.” * The essence of Christian witness is its recog- nition of the Divine. Any broad view of Chris- tian history will show that the backbone of this witness has been always in Rome. Whether the point at issue was the Divinity of Christ, the Eucharistic Presence, the present operation of the Holy Ghost, or genuine Theism, it is from the Apostolic See that has ever come the firm and final testimony. Her faith has not failed; having been converted, she has strengthened the brethren; she has ever proclaimed Christ as Son of the Living God; and the gates of hell have never prevailed against her. She affords the one conspicuous ex- ample in all Christian history of truly Petrine principle and practice, the superstructure of her acts and achievements corresponding to the theory * Sermon at the Jubilee of Archbishop Williams. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 201 of her apostolic basis. From first to last, she stands like a great Rock, her shadow the one refuge in a weary land. There is no other place on earth where from the beginning the Faith has rested so firmly, where there has been such persist- ent proclamation of the heart of the Gospel mes- sage, as that See whose history begins with St. Peter and goes on with Pius XI. The Roman element in Christianity is somnie- thing human, not local, and exists in the line of pontiffs. The one unchanged institution during two thousand years has been the Catholic Church with a hierarchy subject to the Roman Papacy giv- ing her unity and coherence. Leaders, systems, dynasties, nations, have risen and fallen. The Church goes on, her present faith that of the first days. Heresies and schisms occur and recur; she remains the same. She is now calmly surviving Luther, Calvin, and Henry VIII as in ages past she survived Arius, Eutyches and Donatus. She always exhibits that response to the supernatural which represents the peculiar instinct of Catholi- cism, whether it be in her permanent and persistent witness to the stupendous and absolute claims of Revelation, to the central mystery of the Word made flesh, or to the Eucharistic Presence in the tabernacle as well as on the altar. Rome, Church of the Papacy, that line of leaders guided by the Holy Ghost, is the great Rock on which the 202 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Church stands firm, the great Fact corresponding to our Lord’s promises to St. Peter. If these be not related to the living voice of the Apostolic See, they have no practical significance. The obvious correspondence between our Lord’s predictions and the actual functions performed by Roman Christianity may well give pause to lovers of Gospel truth who unadvisedly and lightly reject the appeals of the Apostolic See to their allegiance. Unity. The unity of faith is but one aspect of that having ‘“‘but one heart and soul,” which is a destined mark of the Church. Everyone knows that the Church of Christ is ideally one; every- one knows of our Lord’s high-priestly prayer on the eve of His Passion; everyone knows that Christians ought to be united; and there is wide- spread aspiration for healing the divisions of Christendom. Various theories of unity have been pro- pounded as affording a basis for reunion, at least among fractions, of the nominally Christian world. Some seek an inner principle of coherence not destroyed by variety in outward manifestations, the uninjured soul of a dismembered body; others merely juggle with words to distract attention from the realities. “The only theory which is rep- resented by an actual unity on a world-wide scale, is the Catholic. Others may have a plausible sound; but they do not work. The Eastern AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 203 Orthodox regard themselves as alone constituting the Church, on the ground that they alone have not corrupted the faith, a theory more rigidly ex- clusive than the Catholic: but they are politically separated and have shown little capacity, with the exception of the Russians in some parts of Asia, for missionary activity. The nationalistic group- ings of ‘“‘Greeck”’ Christians are almost as depend- ent on the shiftings of secular power as the Eras- tian communions of the West. Cuius regio, etus religio, seems to lead to cuius religio, eis re- laxatio aut relictio. They seem to exhibit the Church as an archipelago. Of the theories of unity proposed as rivals to the Catholic theory among ourselves, three may be specially noted. The one most talked about is the “Branch Theory,’ which assumes that the basis of unity is a valid priesthood. Given the priest- hood, it is held that valid Sacraments unite in spite of schisms. Those who hold it assume that the Church is composed of Catholics, Eastern Ortho- dox, eastern heretics possessing undisputed Orders, and Old Catholics, Anglicans, Swedish Lutherans, Moravians, and any others who might be able to demonstrate that they had perpetuated a valid hierarchy. This is chiefly identified with High Church Anglicans and represents the survival of a seventeenth century contention against Puritans, that Anglicans were not to be classed with Con- 204 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM tinental Protestants. It is less urged than form- erly. It is seen to be unsatisfactory as theory and futile in fact. Branch is a relative term, implying trunk and roots: and a trunk is precisely the thing that some of the “branches” concerned are trying to get on without! Moreover, a heap of severed branches—dead in consequence—can not assemble themselves to make a tree. Then, too, when effort is made to apply it, there is the disconcerting fact that none of the bodies supposed to be affected by it, are in communion with any of the others; and only those whose orders are disputed accept it. At best, it has served to keep alive the sense of certain aspects and consequences of unity, though failing to discover the effective principle. Its futility is illustrated by an attempt to apply it in the East. Eastern Orthodox and Nestorian and Monophysite schismatics possess the same Orders, yet refuse to recognize each other on account of differences of faith. Possession of priesthood is in their eyes no bond of unity, so long as they are not one in faith. Should any of them ever come to terms with western Protestants, it would signify the abandonment of what has hitherto been their characteristic claim and boast. Various schismatics have valid Orders; but there is nothing in Christian history to justify the as- sumption that each individual bishop or priest is in such sense a nucleus of unity that he may in AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM = 205 fact be a nucleus of schism. If each bishop is at the base of a branch, his characteristic function is to keep contact with the rest of the tree, not to cut loose from it. The only approaches to unity effected on the Branch Theory have been those of a few extreme twigs. ‘‘Do you,” asked New- man, ‘‘call England and Prussia one visible body because both are monarchies, both have aristoc- racies, both have courts of justice, both have uni- versities, both have churches, and both profess the Protestant religion? . . . England and Prus- sia are both of them monarchies: are they there- fore one kingdom? England and the United States are from one stock; can they therefore be called one state? . . . It is as unmeaning to say that the Roman Communion and Anglican form that one Church as to say that England and the United States of America form one civil polity.” There is another theory, more comprehensive in its scope, which bases unity, not on episcopate or priesthood, but on Baptism. ‘This “Birth Theory,” recognizing that all validly baptized are members of the Catholic Church, assumes that all are therefore in unity; one Baptism, one Body. It would include in the Church, not only all those affected by the Branch Theory, but most Protes- tants as well, especially as stress is laid on baptism rather than on validity. The One Church, it holds, is made up of the aggregation of the baptized. It 206 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM is purely individualistic, assuming that likeness of atoms assures unity in the mass, and frankly abandons attempts to effect any union of prac- tical value. When it talks about “inner unity,” what it means is “hopeless diversity.” Yet it is important in its tendency to make those who hold it think more deeply of “‘the sacrament of initia- tion.’’ Attempts are made to simulate unity by use of the same words, even when avowedly used to express different, or even contradictory, mean- ings. ‘The word “baptism” effects no unity, if to one it signifies the Catholic Sacrament, to another, the denial of spiritual regeneration. Nor can unity be effected by having men called “bishops,” unless, apart from “‘local adaptations,” it be made quite clear whether they are of the Catholic, Anglican, Moravian, Methodist, or Mormon, varieties. Never was it more important to have distinctions between nominalism and_ realism clearly drawn. Both the theories mentioned often represent a tendency that goes even farther afield. There is something very amiable in the desire to stress the unity existing between all good men, a great truth which Catholics express when they speak of “the soul of the Church.’”’ But it does not help in any way to confuse soul and body. There are those who, in the all-embracing scope of their sympathy, would claim that all with good intentions make up the Church and are in reality AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 207 one; Christians, Jews, Moslems, all human beings to whom one can give benefit of doubt, ‘‘the in- visible Church” of the visibly disunited. This has been termed “Babble Theory.” It represents a kindly desire to see good everywhere, ‘“‘some soul of goodness in things evil’; but it comes simply to acquiescence in the indefinite divisions which it is supposed to abolish. The modern thought it is supposed to reflect is ‘‘mist on a windy day.” It says in effect: ‘We are one in doing and think- ing exactly as we please; and our acts and thoughts are of every contradictory sort. We agree to dis- agree, and combine to separate.’ The words are amiable, but they mean nothing. These theories are all of them attempts to imagine unity in anarchy: and they are all sharply contrasted with the Catholic unity which exists through obedience and through recognition of one source of jurisdic- tion. Over against a series of progressive disintegra- tions among Christians, the natural result of efforts to build on “‘the dust and powder of indi- vidualism,” stands the actual unity of half the Christian world. Inclusive of men of every nation, it is yet one in faith, in cult, in order, and in moral law. There is not uniformity in non-essential de- tails, not suppression of national or individual distinctiveness. There is notable freedom in the faith, though no freedom to confuse truth and 208 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM error. The unity is the more striking since the same things are done in manifold ways. In the one fold are men of all kinds and classes, no ex- clusion of sinners, and no dearth of saints. Lesser bodies exhibit lesser unities, unities of the like- minded of one or a few nations in various lands, or unities of cultin one section of the globe; but there is nothing comparable with this. ‘There is but one spectacle of something which seems to correspond to our Lord’s ideal for His Church, something that in fact suggests that ‘‘the Gospel of Christ is a substantive message from above, guarded and preserved in a visible polity.” * Here is something that can not unjustly be com- pared to the heavenly Jerusalem coming down from heaven, the Divine model from above, con- trasted with the earthly Babel that results from human experiments at building up from below. Here is something that really seems like—what it calls itself and is—the Catholic Church. Unity is a fact, based on some principle that works: and the fact recommends the theory. The theory is that our Lord, just as He pro- vided for a need of human nature in arranging an authoritative commission for His ministers, pro- vided also for a human need in appointing for this ministry a principle of coherence. ‘How can they preach, except they be sent?’ How can they be * Newman. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 209 sent except by a supreme and central authority? If the special commission to all the Apostles rep- resents something necessary for the episcopate, the governing college, of the Church; the special commission to St. Peter represents something necessary to give that college, and hence the whole body, its unity. “he primacy assured unity in the apostolate, the supremacy unity for the Church. The Church is kingdom, not oligarchy; and ‘the practical exhibition of this comes from there being a visible Vicar of the Invisible Head. Roman Catholicism displays unity; and its unity lies in its Romanism, its Papacy, unity’s keystone and foun- dation. Non-Catholicism offers nothing in any way parallel: and if the Romanism be the unity of Catholicism, it is well worth investigation. That there should be centralization in world-wide ad- ministration is simply the inspired common sense of ecclesiastical rule. The visible Church must have a head and centre of administration just as much as every other society of men. The unity of the American States, for example, is made effective by one chief executive acting from a Fed- eral District, as Washington put it, “‘one united people under one head.” If our Lord’s commis- sion to St. Peter meant something of this sort, it represented provision against the evils of dis- union which the world now deplores. If it did not 210 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM mean this, as the Church has immemorially held, it seems to have meant nothing at all. Roman Catholics have enjoyment of apostolic doctrine and fellowship such as existed in Jerusalem in the first days. As St. Peter stands forth as leader of the Church in the narrative of the early chapters of the Acts, so have the Popes stood in later his- tory, the preéminence of a visible and acknowl- edged head accounting for the unity and harmony of all members of the body. The nature of the causes is indicated by the consequences. So far is it from being true that Romanism is the nega- tion of Catholicism, a local element neutralizing the universality of the Church, that, in fact, the Romanism is Catholicism’s practical application. The ecclesiastical localism is the remedy for national localisms, inimical to one faith and one fold. E pluribus unum, one Church for and of all peoples, one through allegiance to the one See. “Centralization is the organization of unity”: Rome is the centre, the papal authority a diameter holding in a perfect circumference what would otherwise fly off as series of tangents. Unity is a condition, not a theory. Men who seek the condition may well accept the only theory that works. They incur dangers of criminal folly, if they drop substance to grasp at shadow. Sins of fastidiousness have been responsible for many AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 211 heresies and schisms, and are now partly re- sponsible for their perpetuation. Actual unity may appeal to Christian principles in its own justifica- tion: for disunity, on Christian principles, there is nothing whatever to be said. Many disbelieve in heresy and schism, because they do not believe there are such things as unity and truth. Others condone them as inevitable on the assumption that truth is obscured and unity shattered. The Church, however, discriminates between heresy and schism as accidents of environment, involun- tary situations, and heresy proper, that is, wilful defiance of revealed truth, and schism proper, that is, wilful breach of Christian unity. She pities the former as inherited misfortunes but condemns the latter as dehances of Christ. She believes that our Lord’s promise of the Holy Spirit’s guidance into all truth is being fulfilled; that His prayer that “‘they all may be one” is being answered; that the truth of His revelation is absolute and perma- nent; that unity is predestined and necessary. In saying this she simply repeats the teaching of Christ. The Church, if there be such a thing, 1s to be known by those marks which indicate her Faith and her Unity. If the papal communion exhibits these as no other communions do, they are her best credentials as in reality the Catholic Church, 212 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM the one Body of Christ, the one home of all who believe in Him as Source of one Faith for one Family. Charity. The Church is the home of charity, the most human of all societies, dealing with men, women, and children as they are, not as angels or devils, but as children of God often wayward, as affected by hopes and fears, by passions and de- pressions, by heroic struggles and ignominious failures. She knows all our moods and motives, regarding us with God’s eyes, non quales sumus sed quales futuri sumus. ‘The Church is the great clearing-house of all good works, a great school in philanthropy which has no greater expression in the world than in Catholic institutions. These excel, not only in sheer bulk of accomplishment, but also in the quality of social service which is based solely on love of God. Americans, always - quick to respond to philanthropic appeals, are at- tracted by the spirit of St. Francis and St. Vincent de Paul, and abandon their suspicions of religious orders when they know of what is actually done by the Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of Mercy, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. ‘The Church’s pre-eminence in the corporal works of mercy is conceded, Yet the absoluteness of her claims, and her in- flexible attitude in defence of them, give occasion for charges of hardness and intolerance. The AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 213 rigidity of Catholics is invidiously contrasted with the gracious suavity and conciliatory spirit so fre- quently shown in the non-Catholic world. The Church, it is objected, fails in the test of inner charity, instinctively recognized on all sides as the supreme test of religious sincerity. The highest credentials are those of character. None can claim to represent Christ who fail to show ‘‘the print of the nails’ and to reflect His understand- ing and compassion. Strength of logic is no sub- stitute for strength of love, nor length of statistics for extent of sympathies. Our Lord made abso- lute, uncompromising claims. “I am the Door of the sheep; all others, as many as have come, are thieves and robbers: and the sheep heard them not. I am the Door.” Yet He was more than unique mode of access to God. He was supreme example of sympathy and _ sacrifice, personal Saviour, revelation of Divine love. “I am come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. I am the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. I am the Good Shepherd: and | know Mine and Mine know Me.” * He demanded submission that He might give salvation; His claims were incidental to His love for souls. Yet the love necessitated severity and exaction of obedience. Let the uncompromising attitude of the Church *St. John X:10, 11, 14. 214 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM be compared with the American attitude toward immigrants. A sovereign body determines the conditions upon which applicants may be admitted to membership, has its own law, and will not countenance any who obtain admission under false pretences for the purpose of trying to set up some law of their own. Immigrant applicants for American citizenship with theories of government and political programmes are expected to throw them overboard in the outer harbor before they land. America has her own institutions and poli- cies which she will teach the new citizen. America will teach him, not he America. All that is re- quired of him is docile receptiveness. He will not have to discard any of his ancestral habits con- sistent with American ways; for many of them he will have fuller freedom than ever before. He does not have to change temperament or religion: but he is changing his nationality. Of his own choice, he is beginning life as a citizen over again; and he must exhibit that modesty becoming in the presence of a grandmother sucking eggs. So the Church deals with converts. Conver- sion means change, transformation, beginning the religious life as a child. To become a Catholic implies conviction that the Church is the one Body of Christ, toward which the only possible attitude is one of docile submission. Faith and morals are to be learned from the Church commissioned AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 215 to teach them. Anyone who enters the Church with the notion of continuing to follow his old standards of faith and morals has not been really converted. All that was good in them he will keep: but the anathemas of the Westminster Con- fession, the comprehensiveness of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the nebulous dogmas of Mrs. Eddy must be left on the other side of the Creed of Pius V. He is not changing temperament or nationality, but is changing his religion. Any con- vert who expected to continue in unconverted thoughts and ways would need some ecclesiastical Roosevelt to brandish the Big Stick! “The hyphen is incompatible with Catholicism. ‘The one absolutely certain way of bringing the Church to ruin and prevent all possibility of its continuing a Church at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squab- bling sectarianisms, an intricate knot of Dutch-Reformed- Catholics, Episcopalian-Catholics, Buddhist-Catholics and Christian-Science-Catholics, each preserving its separate denomination, each at heart feeling more sympathy with non-Catholics of that denomination than with other mem- bers of the Catholic Church. The men who do not be- come Catholics and nothing else are hyphenated Catholics ; and there ought to be no room for them in this Church. The man who calls himself a Catholic, and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily a member of some non-Catholic denomination, plays a thoroughly mis- chievous part; and the sooner he returns to that body to which he feels his heart-allegiance, the better it will be for 216 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM every good Catholic. We welcome the Dutch-Reformed or Episcopalian who becomes a Catholic. We have no use for the Dutch-Reformed or Episcopalian who remains such. We do not wish Dutch-Reformed-Catholics and Episcopalian-Catholics who figure as such in our spiritual and ecclesiastical life; we want only Catholics, and, pro- vided they are such, we do not care whether they are born-Catholics, or converts of Dutch-Reformed or Epis- copalian antecedents. We freely extend the hand of wel- come and good fellowship to every man, no matter what his creed or birthplace, who comes to us honestly intend- ing to become a good Catholic like the rest of us; but we have a right, and it is our duty, to demand that he shall indeed become so, and shall not confuse the issues with which we are struggling by introducing among us non- Catholic quarrels and prejudices. We must resolutely refuse to permit our great Church, the Catholic Church, to be split into a series of little replicas of the sects of Protestantism, and to become a Congress of Religions on a larger scale. We are a Church and not a hodge-podge of sects, the main exhibition under the big top, not a col- lection of freaks in a side-show.” So would Roosevelt have spoken, had he been a Catholic, showing his sound sense from the Catholic standpoint. Recognition of this ought to involve recognition of his equally sound sense in the things he actually said from an American standpoint, and vice versa.* * Cf) DD. 593) O06 —- ——— = ~ _ = wa 2 ilies Tel AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 217 The Church repeats our Lord’s claim as His representative on earth: she is bound also to imi- tate His spirit. Souls are won not by argument but by sacrifice. The Church can not relax Divine conditions, can not curry favor by compromise, can not imitate the unjust steward in conniving at par- tial payments of what is due Almighty God. She can not subtract from “‘all the counsel of God”; but she must ‘‘speak the truth in love.” In her official utterances she does so, though unfortu- nately some of her spokesmen fail at times to ex- press her true temper. Bishops and priests may have the mind without having the heart of Christ: if so, they have a severe account to render for the harm they do the Church’s cause. Yet their failure is not a failure of the Church. She does not sanction defects in justice and charity. Her attitude is represented by that of her pontifis. Take an example from Leo XIII. “Our thoughts turn to those who dissent from us in matters of Christian faith; and who will deny that, with not a few of them, dissent is a matter rather of inheritance than of will? Surely we ought not to desert them nor leave them to their own fancies; but with mildness and charity draw them to us, using every means of persuasion to induce them to examine closely every part of the Cath- olic doctrine, and to free themselves from preconceived notions. . . . Great is the force of example; particularly with those who are earnestly seeking the truth, and who, 218 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM from certain inborn dispositions, are striving to live an honorable and upright life, to which class very many of your fellow-citizens belong.” * “Suffer that we should invite you to the unity which has ever existed in the Catholic Church, and can never fail: suffer that we should lovingly hold out our hand to you. The Church as the common mother of all has long been calling you back to her; the Catholics of the world await you with brotherly love, that you may render holy worship to God together with us, united in perfect charity by the profession of one Gospel, one faith, and one hope.” + The temper of the Holy Father is imitated by the recognized leaders of the hierarchy. Cardi- nal Mercier urges his clergy to remember that many who love truth will find the Catholic Church their refuge and home, and that on Catholics of to-day lies an especial obligation for exhibitions of patience and charity. “Men are made to love one another; how often men who are strangers and who by separation may have felt at enmity, taste the delicate charm of finding out that their hearts are closer together than they knew. . . . No doubt the warming of hearts toward one another is not unity in faith, but it certainly prepares the way. . . . For the whole world, I would not that one of our severed * Longinque Oceani, “Address to Catholics in United States”; Great Encyclicals, p. 335. + Praeclara, “Reunion,” addressed primarily to Easterns; Great Encyclicals, p. 31x. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 219 brethren should have the right to say that he knocked trustfully at the door of a Roman Catholic bishop, and that this Roman Catholic bishop refused to open it... . When the saving of souls is at stake, the essential factor is neither human wisdom, nor tactical ability, but good Gospel simplicity, faith in Divine mercy, in the omnip- otence of faith, which will compensate for the short- comings of the means at our disposal. This burning faith is the beginning, middle, and end of apostolic work.” * When Catholics fail to exhibit this burning faith, they fail utterly to represent the Church. The Church lives by pulsations of the Sacred Heart. Her true spirit is that notably exhibited by St. Francis de Sales. ‘‘If the soul be a kingdom, of which the Holy Ghost is king, charity is the queen . 3 if the soul be a queen, spouse of the great King of heaven, then charity is her crown... ; and if the soul with the body be a little world, charity is the sun which beautifies all, heats all, and vivifies all.” + ‘Charity is the only bond be- tween Christians, the only virtue which unites us absolutely to God and our neighbor. In charity lies the end of every perfection, and the perfec- tion of every end.” ft “The gentleness of his disposition made Blessed Francis *Letter to clergy of Malines, January 18, 1924. + Treatise on the Love of God, Eng. Trans., p. 125. t Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, p. 50. 220 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM averse to disputing, either in private or public, in matters of religion. Rather, he loved to hold informal and kindly conferences with any who had wandered from the right way; and by this means he brought back countless souls into the Catholic Church. His usual method of proceed- ing was this. He first of all listened readily to all that his opponents had to.say about their religion, not showing any sign of weariness or contempt, however tired he might be of the subject. By this means he sought to incline them to give him in his turn some little attention. When, if only out of mere civility, he was given in his turn an opportunity of speaking, he did not lose a moment of the precious time, but at once took up the subject treated by the opponent, or perhaps another which he considered more useful, and deduced from it briefly, clearly, and very simply the truth of the Catholic belief, and this without any air of contending, without a word which breathed of controversy, but neither more nor less than as if deal- ing in a catechetical instruction with an Article of the Faith. If interrupted by outcries and contemptuous ex- pressions, he bore the annoyance with incredible patience, and, without showing himself disturbed in the least, con- tinued his discourse as soon as ever an opportunity was given to him. “You would never believe,’ he said, ‘how beautiful the truths of our holy Faith appear to those who consider them calmly. ... Faith is an infused, not a natural, knowledge; it is not a human science, but a divine light, by means of which we see things which, in the natural order, are invisible to us. ... All the external proofs which can be brought to bear upon opponents are weak, AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 221 unless the Holy Spirit is at work in their souls, teaching them to recognize the ways of God. All that has to be done is to propose to them simply the truths of our Faith. . . . We must beware of taking to ourselves any part of the glory which belongs to God alone.’”’ * There is special scope for Catholic generosity in the United States with people’s constant efforts to “get together.” Democracy encourages free intermingling, frank explanations, and fraternal friendliness. There is no reason here why Cath- olics should not abandon their aloofness and non- Catholics their prejudices. Non-agreements there may be; but there need not be misunderstandings. All have opportunities to know each other. If Catholics would understand their non-Catholic neighbors, let them take their full share in civic and social life: if non-Catholics would understand Catholics, let them go to Mass! There is no rea- son why they should not, and very good reason why they should. They can not fail to be im- pressed by the succession of crowds and by the obvious spirit of devotion and could find out at first hand what Catholics really are. Uncle Sam would not understand Mass. It would strike him as having a good deal of mum- mery and gibberish: but the old gentleman is no fool, is respectful to religion, sympathetic with *The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales, pp. 485f. 222 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM every effort to serve God, and not so dull as to miss altogether the sense of spiritual things. He is far from being a Catholic, but not unfriendly, and not out of sympathy or out of place at Mass. Americans who would “mock and fleer at our solemnities” are not of the best type. Americans have intelligence enough to appre- hend and respect the Catholic position: but what attracts them most strongly is the spirit of charity. When they feel that the Church is the Great Mother, with widest and deepest sympathies, aim- ing always at the reconciliation of estranged brethren, they are drawn to her. The most effect- ive champions of the Church’s cause are those who show themselves generous as well as just, as both lovers of truth and men of good will. One half of Christendom is compact, the other half divided and subdividing: the one on the rock, the other on sands. ‘The advantages are all with the Church. It is anomalous that these should ever be neutralized by defects in the temper of adyo- cates. For the Church is ever lifting all her chil- dren to higher planes by her vivid sense of the Communion of Saints. “The charity of the brotherhood”’ can not fail to abide with us, if we are mindful of our fellowship with ‘Jesus, the mediator of the new testament,” with “‘the spirits of just men made perfect,” with “the church of AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 223 the first-born,” “the company of many thousands of angels,” all together citizens and children of “the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the Living God.” * * Hebrews XII:22; XIII:1. Vill AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM AMERICANISM is a national spirit and temper, a patriotism, quite right in its proper place. It is, however, taken out of its place by any who would try to make of it a peculiar brand of Ca- tholicism, or use patriotism as a substance for re- ligion. Any who would foist it into the spiritual sphere go counter to the American principle of separation of Church and State, and are thus showing themselves poor Americans. Unwar- ranted intrusions of the national spirit into the ecclesiastical domain the Church repels: national spirit in its native element she blesses. ‘‘Americanism,” as ecclesiastical hyphenism, a local mutilation of the Catholic Faith, has been. officially condemned. Leo XIII declared that the name represents an error, if used to signify a policy, “that it would be opportune, in order to gain those who differ from us, to omit certain points of the Church’s teaching, which are of lesser importance; and so to tone down the mean- ing the Church has always attached to them” as to seem to imply that “the Church in America is to be different from what it is in the rest of the 224 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 225 world.” This form of error has frequently ap- peared, being due to a common tendency to cramp religion into racial grooves. St. Paul denounced it in his attacks on Judaizers. There have been attempts to Gallicize, Anglicize, Teutonize and Hibernize Catholicity, all disastrous; and to Americanize it would be equally bad. Fortu- nately Cardinal Gibbons was able to assure the Holy Father that ‘“‘the false conceptions of Amer- icanism emanating from Europe have no existence among: the prelates, priests and Catholic laity of our country.” What certain Catholic leaders had urged as important for America was approved by the Pope, when he declared: “The rule of life laid down for Catholics is not of such a nature that it can not accommodate itself to the exigencies of time and place,” pointing how in fact the Church had never neglected to adapt herself to the genius of nations. Of Americanism in its proper sense the Pope expressly approved: “If by this name are to be understood certain endow- ments of mind which belong to the American people, just as other characteristics belong to other nations; and, if moreover, by it is designated your political conditions and laws and customs by which you are governed, there is no reason to take ex- ception to the name.” * ‘Whatever tends to up- * Testem benevolentiae, “True and False Americanism”; Great Encyclical Leiters, p. 452. 226 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM hold the honor, manhood, and equal rights of in- dividual citizens—as the monuments of past ages bear witness—of these things the Catholic Church has always been the originator, the promoter, or the guardian. . . . She willingly and most gladly welcomes whatever improvements the age brings forth, if these really secure the prosperity of life here below, which is, as it were, a stage in the journey to the life that will know no ending.” * Americanism, as the peculiar brand of patriotism of the people of the United States, the Church approves, precisely as she approves every other brand, no more and no less. Patriotism as a gen- eral duty, rendering to Caesar the things of Caesar, she enjoins: the brands of it, the image and superscription on the coin, are not her concern. These are determined by nations for themselves. Yet the Church gives them a blessing as tending to promote the general welfare, as belonging in their place to the service of God. She bans the national stamp on religion itself, the symbol of Caesar where there should be only a symbol of God. Much more does she condemn any attempt to set up Caesar’s image in God’s House, to exalt nationalism into the place of re- ligion. This she denounces as an idolatry. She refrains indeed from meddling in purely secular *Immortale Dei, “Christian Constitution of States”; Great Encyclical Letters, p. 128. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 227 affairs: but she is bound also to repel secular en- croachments on her own territory. “It is the Church, and not the State, that is to be man’s guide to heaven. It is to the Church that God has conjoined the charge of seeing to, and legislating for, all that concerns religion, of teaching all nations, of spreading the Christian faith as widely as possible, in short, of administering freely and without hindrance, in accordance with her own judgment, all matters that fall within its com- petence. . . . Whatever in things human is of sacred character, whatever belongs, either of its own nature or by reason of the end to which it is referred, to the salvation of souls, or to the worship of God, is subject to the power and judg- ment of the Church. Whatever is to be ranged under the civil and political order is rightly sub- ject to the civil authority. Jesus Christ has Him- self given command that what is Caesar’s is to be rendered to Caesar, and that what belongs to God is to be rendered to God.” * A patriotism in its place ought to prevail: as an earthly intruder on heavenly ground, it 1S doomed to defeat. When the local attempts to rival the universal, it dashes itself against a stone wall. The attitude of the Church towards pre- sumptuous localisms, either secular or ecclesias- *Immortale Dei, “Christian Constitution of States,” 1885. Great Encyclical Letters, pp. 113, 115. 228 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM tical, is analogous to that of America toward fractional groups seeking to dominate her. ‘The problems of the two, in their different spheres, are similar, since both have to maintain a human brotherhood, deeper than any combination of geographical and political accidents. ‘Che tem- per of the “‘one united people,’ composed of many racial strains, is akin to that of the Church, em- bracing all nations in one fold. Both have to exercise patience and sympathy without stint: and both may be serenely certain of fulfilling destiny. Securus judicat orbis terrarum. The part can never supersede the whole. In the face of unruly children, a country like America may serenely pursue the course of daily duties, while the Church, the great Mother of the nations, is like no earthly state in her majestic calm. There is a special kinship between the Catholic genius of unifying mankind on the basis of spiritual fellowship and the American genius of unifying many kinds of men on the basis of common citizenship. ‘The Church by her general teaching is useful in aiding solution of national problems, to say nothing of her special influence with many whom the nation seeks to train. On the other hand, the genius of the nation is second to none in its broadening, in the civil sphere, of that sense of brotherhood which the Church seeks to raise to its highest terms. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 229 They have much in common in their aims along different lines of creating and promoting unity. They have also much in common in their re- gard for liberty. Here again, the nation gives special emphasis in the civil sphere to the concep- tion of the dignity of human nature which the Church seeks to express in highest terms. The American aim to secure “‘life, liberty, and the pur- suit of happiness,” is best achieved when related to our Lord’s promises: “I am come that they may have life, and have it more abundantly,” and, ‘If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.’ Human liberty is only assured, when it is made to rest on obedience to the Divine law. This is an American principle, as Washing- ton declared by referring to “those eternal laws of order and right which heaven itself hath ordained” as essential for “the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty.” What Washington vaguely apprehended and gropingly expressed was lucidly defined by Leo XIII. “The nature of human liberty, however it be considered, whether in individuals or in society, whether in those who command or those who obey, supposes the necessity of obedience to some supreme and eternal law, which is no other than the authority of God, commanding good and forbidding evil. And so far from this most just authority of God over men destroying, or even diminishing, their 230 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM liberty, it protects and perfects it, for the real perfection of all creatures is found in the prosecution and attainment of their respective ends: but the supreme end which human liberty must aspire to is God. . . . The impartiality of law and the true brotherhood of man was first asserted by Jesus Christ.” “Man, by a necessity of his nature, is wholly subject to the most faithful and ever-enduring power of God: as a consequence, any liberty except that which consists in submission to God and in subjection to His will, is un- intelligible. To deny the existence of this authority in God, or to refuse to submit to it, means to act, not as a free man, but as one who treasonably abuses his liberty; _. . for to reject the supreme authority of God, and to cast off all obedience to Him, is the greatest perversion of liberty.”* “When God, in His most wise providence, placed over human society both temporal and spiritual authority, He intended them to remain distinct indeed, but by no means disconnected and at war with each other. On the con- trary, both the will of God and the common weal of society imperatively require that the civil power should be in accord with the ecclesiastical in its rule and admin- istration. ‘The State has its own peculiar rights and duties, the Church likewise has hers; but it is necessary that each should be united with the other in bonds of concord.” + “Many are estranged from Jesus Christ rather through ignorance than through perversity; many study man and * Libertas praestantissimum, “Human Liberty,” 1888. Great Encyclical Letters, pp. 143, 159- + Praeclara, “Reunion,” 1894; Great Encyclical Letters, p. 313. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 231 the universe around him with all earnestness, but very few study about the Son of God. . . . About the ‘rights of man,’ as they are called, the multitude has heard enough: it is time they should hear of the rights of God.” * In all this there is agreement between Amer- ican and Christian principle: but many who would carefully discriminate between Christianity in gen- eral and Roman Catholicism would hold that in the latter are things which clash with the national assumptions. Admitting different spheres of Church and State, it would be maintained that there are ways in which the Church trenches on the rightful province of the State. It is needless to repeat what has been already said in detail of some aspects of the supposed conflict. In all probability, the difficulty would be assumed to lie in the relation of the national and the ecclesiastical allegiance, already discussed, and in the apparent antagonism between the Church’s claims and the national toleration of many religions, which must be further considered. The American State impartially views all forms of Christianity, and all religions: in the eyes of its law they are on perfect equality. The Cath- olic Church not only claims that Christianity is the one true religion, as many non-Catholics would * Tameisi, “Christ our Redeemer,” 1900; Great Encyclical Letters, p. 477- 232 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM admit, but also that Roman Catholicism is the one true version of Christianity, which all non-Cath- olics would deny. ‘Ihe American State gives equal countenance to all religions which will live in peace, share the national life, and share alike. Roman Catholicism, however, no matter how ready to share alike with the others, will never for a moment admit that she is alike. How can the State tolerate a disturbing intolerance? Does it not constitute a deliberate refusal, from the State point of view, to abide by the rules of the game? The important thing to see is that the Church is concerned with abstract truth, the State with something quite different. The Church denies, as contrary to truth and principle, that all religions are alike. ‘The State does not consider the truth or principle of the matter at all, but is concerned only with what pertains to civil tranquillity. It does not undertake to settle any questions as to number and comparative value of religions. The Church, on the other hand, does not undertake to legislate for the United States, and makes no de- mands concerning civic policies. In regard to this particular policy, however, she does expressly ad- mit that, under certain conditions, it may be neces- sary and prudent, acquiescing in American deci- sions concerning governmental policies, and thank- fully recognizing that she herself thrives under AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM § 233 them. She does not regard them as ideal, but as under existing circumstances the best possible and most practical. She accepts from the United States precisely what she accepted from the Emperor Constantine, namely, the benefits, along with other religions, of universal religious toleration. The Edict of Milan did not make Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire. The old paganism re- tained its official position, though other cults be- came legally permissible. Constantine personally favered the Christians; but not until a century after his time did Christianity become the official religion of the Empire. He gave freedom to the Church by the same policy which gives her free- dom in the United States. ‘‘We have long seen,”’ he declared in his edict, ‘‘that we have no busi- ness to refuse freedom of religion; and that to the judgment and desire of each individual man must be left the power of seeing to matters of belief, according to the man’s own free will. . . . Hence- forth the State rejects the function of prescribing in matters of faith: religion is inalienably a ques- tion for the individual. . . . In this view we have given orders, which are destined for Christians, too, that every man loyally observe his own persuasion and his own cult. . . . No man what- soever ought to be refused any facility for giving up his whole soul either to the observation of 234 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM Christianity or of any other religion, which he personally feels to be best adapted to his needs.” Such language might have emanated from the Con- stitutional Convention of 1787. Or here is an extract from a letter of Constantine’s which might be compared with some of the sentiments of Jefferson: “My own desire is for the common good of the world and the advantage of all man- kind; that the people should enjoy a life of peace and undisturbed concord. Let these, therefore, that still delight in error be made welcome to the same degree of tranquillity which they have. who believe. . . . Let them have, if they please, their temples of lies: we have the glorious edifice of trath..:* There could be no better statement of the Church’s principles which might seem to clash with American assumptions, and of the Church’s recognition of all that the American policy of tol- eration involves, than in the language of Leo XIII. His approval of America has been quoted. It is fair to quote also statements of his which might seem to conflict with American ideas. “To hold that there is no difference in matters of re- ligion between forms that are unlike each other, and even contrary to each other, most clearly leads in the end to the rejection of all religion in both theory and practice. And this is the same thing as atheism, however it may * Eusebius: Vita Constantini, I1: 56. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 235 differ from it in name. Men who really believe in the existence of God must, in order to be consistent with themselves and to avoid absurd conclusions, understand that differing modes of divine worship involving dis- similarity and conflict, even in the most important points, cannot all be equally probable, equally good, and equally acceptable to God. “So, too, the liberty of thinking and publishing whatso- ever each one likes, without any hindrances, is not in itself an advantage over which society can wisely rejoice. On the contrary, it is the fountain-head and origin of many evils. Liberty is a power perfecting man, and hence should have truth and goodness for its object. . . . What- ever is opposed to goodness and truth may not rightly be brought temptingly before the eyes of men, much less sanctioned by the favor and protection of the law. A well-spent life is the only passport to heaven, whither all are bound; and on this account the State is acting against the laws and dictates of nature whenever it permits the license of opinion and of action to lead minds away from truth, and souls away from the practice of virtue... . It is not lawful for the State, any more than for the individual, either to disregard all religious duties or to hold in equal favor all kinds of religion.” * Leo XIII here flatly contradicts such sentiments as Jefferson’s ‘‘Differences in opinion is advan- tageous to religion,” or as those commonly held in America concerning the freedom of thought and *Immortale Dei, “Christian Constitution of States”; Great Encyclical Letters, pp. 123. 236 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM of the press, without regard for Christian stand- ards of goodness and truth. There would seem to be explicit condemnation of the policy of the United States in the assertion, ‘It is not lawful for the State to hold in equal favor all kinds of religion.” At the same time, it must be noted that the Pope corroborates the assumptions of Washington and men of similar feeling in re- ligious matters: nor is there any real conflict with the American Constitution. This is made quite clear by other statements in this same letter, in which the Pope concedes all that, in the name of the State, any well-informed American would ever claim. He expresses the constant mind of the Church. Truth in the abstract can not be ignored by ecclesiastical authorities: but its claims lie out- side the purview of civil authorities in their modes of procedure for preserving peace. “No one of the several forms of government is in itself condemned, inasmuch as none of them contain anything contrary to Catholic doctrine, and all of them are capable, if wisely and justly managed, to ensure the welfare of the State. . . . The Church, indeed, deems it unlawful to place the various forms of divine worship on the same footing with the true religion, but does not, on that ac- count, condemn those rulers who, for the sake of securing some great good or of hindering some great evil, allow patiently custom and usage to be a kind of sanction to AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 237 each kind of religion having its place in the State.” (An exact description of the American policy.) ‘And, in fact, the Church is wont to take earnest heed that no one shall be forced to embrace the Catholic faith against his will, for, as St. Augustine wisely reminds us all, ‘Man cannot believe otherwise than of his own free will.’ (The sen- timent of Jefferson and Locke.) “In the same way, the Church cannot approve of that liberty which begets a con- tempt of the most sacred laws of God, and casts off the obedience due to lawful authority, for this is not liberty so much as license, and is most correctly styled by St. Augustine the ‘liberty of self-ruin,’ and by the apostle St. Peter ‘the cloak of malice.’ Indeed, since it is opposed to reason, it is a true slavery, for ‘whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin.’ ” * “The Church, guardian always of her own right and most observant of that of others, holds that it is not her province to decide what is the best among the divers forms of government and the civil institutions of Christian States; and amid the various kinds of State rule she does not disapprove of any, provided the respect due to religion and the observance of good morals be upheld. By such a standard of conduct should the thoughts and mode of acting of every Catholic be directed. There is no doubt but that in the sphere of politics ample matter may exist for legitimate difference of opinion, and that, the single reserve being made of the rights of justice and truth, all may strive to bring into actual working the ideas be- lieved likely to be more conducive to the general welfare. *Immortale Dei, Great Encyclical Letters, pp. 1266. 238 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM But to attempt to involve the Church in party strife, and seek to bring her support to bear against those who take Opposite views, is only worthy of partisans.” * Between Catholic principle and American policy there is no contrariety. Neither commits itself to the other: but there is no clash between their respective assumptions and actions in their differing spheres. Catholic Doctrine and the Monroe Doctrine affirm the dogmas of different sciences, the one of revealed religion, the other of the foreign policies of the United States. If there seem to be antagonism between the two, the solution of all difficulties may be found in the mak- ing of proper distinctions. Many practical duties consist in the making of due distinctions, and among them those which con- cern just estimates of the relations of Church and State, of constitutions and creeds. Most mis- understandings between Catholic and non-Catholic Americans vanish with knowledge of facts and judgment to see their bearings. ‘Your If is a great peacemaker.’ Americans must discriminate, between the essentials of Catholicism and its local accidents; between the faith itself and those who imperfectly represent, or even misrepresent, its spirit; between the teachings of those in authority and the disobedience of those who fail to heed * Sapientiae Christianae, “Chief Duties of Christians as Citizens,” 1890; Great Encyclical Letters, p. 196. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 239 them. Catholics must discriminate, between American principles and local misapplications; be- tween an ignorant bigotry masquerading as pa- triotism and the spirit of justice and generosity which created and have sustained American insti- tutions; between scrutiny of their citizenship and suspicion of their faith. When they are assailed as imperfect Americans, let them, if necessary, mend their citizenship, but not raise a howl that they are being discriminated against on account of racial origin or persecuted on account of their religion! If citizenship is defective, they are not only poor Americans, but poor Catholics as well. The genuine Americans, the great body, those who are loyal to the traditions of Washington and Lincoln, welcome everybody with no regard to antecedents and persecute no one. They detest bigots of every class and type; and the spirit of bigotry has never been long able to live among them. America has professed to give a fair deal to all who have come to her; and, on the whole, she has done so. Those who have come to her shores have stayed and prospered. ‘There is a peculiar ingratitude in any of them who abuse the freedom here given, to attack those from whom they have received it, and to undermine the in- stitutions by which they have been benefited. Nothing could be more alien to the spirit incul- cated by the Catholic Church. 240 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM In view of reserves towards Catholics on the part of many in the community, and the occasional revival of old prejudices which hinder the Church’s advance, special responsibilities rest on Catholic leaders in the United States. They are particu- larly bound to demonstrate, in action rather than words, that the Church exists for the salvation of souls, not for pursuit of racial ambitions; that her influence makes for civic betterment; that they themselves really understand the American people; that the Church in the United States, so far as she has national interests, is American and solely American. The type of leadership exists and has only to be perpetuated. Cardinal Gibbons’ last injunction to his colleagues in the hierarchy con- veys a message or reassurance to his countrymen at large: “We are bound in unity of faith and obedience to the Vicar of Christ; but our Church knows nothing of European politicians, and we must never allow them to lay hands on her fair structure.” With the Church’s spirit and attitude truly known, there will be no obstacles to her ad- vance, no withholding of respect for her dignity, in the American Republic. People are often misled by the sensational head- lines of newspapers into false estimates of the in- fluences predominant in the community. Noisy minorities attract undeserved attention. This is true when enemies of the Church who disgrace the AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM 241 country, and burdens to the country who discredit the Church, delude the unwary into thinking that they respectively represent the causes of patriotism and religion. The only possible use for these ex- tremists would be that of Kilkenny cats. For those who follow their lead, a wish of Lincoln’s (expressed in a different connection) would be applicable ‘‘to tell them good-humoredly that-they are very silly.’ Neither deceivers nor dupes rep- resent the great bodies of the people, “the placid deeps,” on the one hand, good Americans, fair- minded and friendly to all sincere religion, and, on the other, good Catholics, fair-minded and friendly to all patriotic traditions. Between these there should be full codperation. Henry Clay, in 1818, speaking as a non-Catholic, displayed the typical American attitude, when he said: “They worship the same God with us. Their prayers are offered up in their temples to the same Redeemer by whose intercessions we expect to be saved. Nor is there anything in the Catholic religion unfavor- able to freedom.” * With this may be compared as displaying the typical Catholic attitude, a pas- sage from the Pastoral Letter of the Council of Baltimore in 1884. ‘‘A Catholic finds himself at home in the United States, for the influence of the Church has been constantly exercised in behalf of individual rights and popular liberties. And the * Speech on South American Independence. 242 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM rightminded American nowhere finds himself more at home than in the Catholic Church, for nowhere else can he breathe more freely that atmosphere of Divine truth which alone can make him free.” ‘“‘And the City had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof. And the nations of them that are saved shall walk in the light of it; and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. And the gates shall not be shut at all by day; and there shall be no night there. And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it.” * All nations have made their special contribu- tions to the Catholic Church by peculiar sympathy with special aspects of the Church’s manifold faith and life. The nations have brought their glories into the Kingdom of God; and the Kingdom is richer for all of them. Americans like all the rest, following the example of the Magi at Bethlehem, offer to our Lord their treasures which are ac- cepted by Him, consecrated and given back, made effective for His special purposes. If Americans be true to their birthright, they may develop an assimilative, adaptive, sympathetic Christianity, firm but flexible for the tasks of the present day. The Church needs their special gifts: and they greatly need the Church. To the peoples of north- * Revelation XXI: 23-26. AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM § 243 ern Europe the Church was nurse in infancy, | teacher during adolescence, the chief influence in. developing national possibilities. In retrospect. may be seen how much each of them owed to the training thus received. In America also is there opportunity for similar benefits. Nowhere is there more obvious scope for the educative and regula- tive influence of the Church which belongs to- all the world to give sense of proportion and to sup- plement what is merely transient or local. America must make use of the faith and force of the Church, not only for the sake of doing justice to the part played in the national life by Catholic citizens, but also for the sake of counteracting tendencies which threaten her normal growth and influence. What the Church represents makes for the preservation of the Republic. American ideals are only guaranteed by the corporate sense which thinks of the nation as a whole, and rises from consciousness of the nation to consciousness of the brotherhood of all mankind: and this conception comes to us chiefly from the Church of Christ. The central thought of the Church’s faith is that of the presence and spiritual activity of our Lord, Who is, not mere figure dear but dim in ancient history, but the one great present Reality. Strong currents of thought and feeling in the mod- ern world are sweeping men away from Chris- tianity, from God and religion altogether. But 244 AMERICANISM AND CATHOLICISM there is a counter-current, now as always, increas- ing in strength, carrying men nearer to God, a tide in full flood of faith and charity. If we wish to be abreast of the times, we shall know of this as well as the other. Faith is quite as modern as skepticism, for though the forms of skepticism quickly become obsolete, there is one faith which is never out of fashion. One strong cry of the present hour, as of the ages, is for fuller realiza- tion of the Living Christ and fuller appropriation of life in the Living Church. This thought of life eternal, of present vigor and action, makes an especial appeal to the American zest for realizing present opportunities, bringing us close to the very heart of the Catholic Faith which combines perma- nent and variable, applying the oldest truth to the newest needs. The American Nation needs the Catholic Church as aid in harmonizing and correlating its varied elements. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, in another way, needs strong young nations like the American for effective application of her principles in the modern world. INDEX Acton, Lord, 148, 163, 164 Acts of Trade, 35 Adams, President John, 31 Adams, President John Quincy, 40 Alien Labor Law, 104 Ambrose, Saint, 197 Americanism, Chapter I, 1, 4, 21, 130, 146, 154, 224, 225 American Institutions, 214 Americanization, 18, 19, 57. Americans a Religious People, 104 American Spirit, 116 American Temper, 221 625° 926,°12'7, 135 Anglicans, 175, 203 Apiarius, 197 Apostolic See, 201, 202. Athanasius, Saint, 197, 212 Augustine, Saint, 197, 212 “Babble Theory” of Unity, 207 Baltimore, Council of, 241 Baltimore, Lord, 76 Bancroft, George, 76 Baptism, 206 Baptists, 75, 150 ; Belloc, Hilaire, 28, 34, 67, 70 Benedict XV, Pope, 153 Bible, Authority of, 168, 198 Bigotry, American Dislike of, 239 “Birth Theory” of Unity, 205, 206 Bishops, 206 Blackstone, Sir William, 30 “Branch Theory” of Unity, 203, 204 Brewer, Justice, 104 Browning, Robert, 169 Brownson, Orestes, 21 Bryce, Viscount James, 138, 139 Bryce, Mrs., 138, 139 Byzantinism, 196 Cahenslyism, 132, 133 Calvinists, 175 Canon Law, 129 Canterbury, Archbishop of, 21% Carolina, 77 246 Carroll, Archbishop John, 102, 103 Carrolls of Maryland, 1o1 Catholic Allegiance, 136 Catholic Citizenship, 145, 146 Catholicism, 1; Chapter VI; Chapter VIII Catholics, Suspicion of, Chap- ter V; 86, 100 Catholic Unity, 208-211 Chalcedon, Council of, 197 Charity, 109, 212-221 Charity, Sisters of, 212 Charles II, King, 77, 87 Chesterton, G. K., 68, 162 Church, The, 175-182, 222 Church and Citizenship, 145, 146, 149-152 Church and Politics, 150 Church and State, 140-142, 227, 237 Church of England, 74 Citizenship, Training in, 116 Civil War, American, 50, 51 Clay, Henry, 241 Colonial Charters, 35 Columbus, Christopher, 104 Common Sense, American, 7,8 Congress of Religions, 110 Connecticut, 30, 105 Constantine, Emperor, 106, 233, 234 Constitutional Convention of 1787, 32, 33, 48, 72, 79 113, INDEX Constitution of the United States, 33, 42; 48, 92, 93, 95, 103-106, 113, 152, 236 Constitutions, State, 105 Continental Congress, 30, 31, 46 Converts to Catholicism, 214 Coolidge, President Calvin, 12, 40, 57, 98 Council of Trent, 175 Council, Seventh General, 194 Councils, General, 197 Creighton, Bishop Mandell, 73 Cromwell, Oliver, 74 Declaration of Independence, 25, 26, 33, 87, 94, 105 Definiteness of Catholicism, 160, 184 Defoe, Daniel, 31 Delaware Declaration, 106 Democracy, 18, 20, 21, 42, IIS Dickens, Charles, 163 Discrimination, Duty of, 238 Divinity of Christ, 162, 165- 167, 170-175, 192, 201 Doyle, J. A., 28 Dutch West India Company, 35 Economics, American, 34 | Eddy, Mrs., 215 INDEX Edict of Milan, 106, 233 Education, American, 115 Education, Catholic, 114 Piliotthwia Gr Ov bee! Father Walter, 150, 151 Emancipation, 26 English Origins of United States, 28 English Test Act of 1673, 93 Episcopalians, 75, 89, 126, 150 Eucharistic Presence, 201 Europe, American View of, 36, 37 200, Federalism, 47 Federation, American, 45, 46 Ferdinand and Isabella, 104 Flag, American, 23, 120 Fox, Charles James, 99 Francis, Saint, 212 Francis de Sales, Saint, 108, 219-221 Freedom, American, Chapter II French Party, 38 Fundamentalism, 198, 199 Garfield, President James A., SI George II, King, 74, 78 George III, King, 75 Georgia, 78 Gerson, Chancellor, 73 247 Gibbons, Cardinal, 102, 122, 123, 133, 140-142, 199, 225, 240 Good Nature, American, 8, 9 Greek Christianity, 196, 203 Guenther, Richard, 24 Hamilton, Alexander, 27, 38, 39, 46, 103 Harrison, President Benja- min, 134. Hart, Professor A. B., 32, 33 Hobbes, Thomas, 30 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 52 Honorius, Pope, 197 Hughes, Charles E., 41 Hyphenated Americans, 509, 60 Hyphenated Catholics, 215 Immigration, 17, 20, 55, 6s, 214 Inaugural Address of Washington, 92-95, 103 Independence, § American, Chapter II Individualism, 207 Jackson, President Andrew, 49 James I, King, 35 Jay, John, 62, 99, 100 Jefferson, President Thomas, 26, 31, 39, 40, 48, 51, 79, 87, 88-92, 94, 98, 99, 234, 235 248 Jews, 66-69 John Damascene, Saint, 193 Judaizers, 225 Kent, Chancellor, 106 Kentucky Resolutions, 48 Language-question, 131 Leadership, Catholic, 240 League of Nations, 41 Lee, General Robert E., 9, 51 Leo I, Pope Saint, 197 Leo XIII, Pope, 2, 133, 134, 140, 153-156, 217, 218, 224-227, 229-231, 234,235, 237 Liberius, Pope, 197 Liberty, American, Chapter II, 229, 230 Lincoln, President Abraham, 5> 9, 12, 13, 14, 50, $3, 239 Living Church, 182-184 Lloyd—George, David, 55 Locke, John, 26, 30, 79-86, 87, 99 Lollards, 86 Louis XIV, King, 87 Louisiana Purchase, 48 Lutherans, 126, 175, 203 Madison, President James, ant ew ap ee) Mansfield, Lord, 75 Marriage and Divorce, 152, 153 INDEX Marshall, Chief Justice John, 49 Marsiglio of Padua, 73 Maryland, 76, 77 Massachusetts, 78 Mayflower Covenant, 105 Mercier, Cardinal, 156, 160, 161, 218, 219 Mercy, Sisters of, 212 Methodists, 150 Modernism, 157, 158, 198, 207 Monophysites, 204 Monroe, President James, 40 Monroe Doctrine, 37, 38, 40, 136, 238 Moravians, 203 Napoleon, Emperor, 144 Nation, American, 4, 16, 17, 18, 53, 54, OL, 242, 244 National Gifts, 242 National Parishes, 125, 127, 129 National Unity, 228 Nestorians, 204 New Englanders, 29, 200 New France, Company of, 35 New Jersey, 77 Newman, Cardinal, 160, 205 New York, 77, 78 New York Statute of Reli- gious Freedom, 99, III Nullification Proclamation, 49 INDEX Old Catholics, 203 Orthodox, Eastern, 185, 186, 194, 203, 204 Orthodoxy, 193-202 Papacy, 189, 201, 209, 210 Papal Supremacy, 140-144 Patriotism, American, 22-24 Paul, Saint, 225 Penn, William, 78, 105 Pennsylvania, 78, 90 Pennsylvania, Attorney- General of, 106 Persecution, Religious, 72, 73 Peter the Great, 195 Peter, Saint, 201, 209, 210 Philanthropy, 212 Pilgrim Fathers, 75, 159, 199 Pius V, Creed of, 215 Pius VII, Pope, 144 Pius IX, Pope, 153, 197 Pius X, Pope, 144, 153, 199 Pius XI, Pope, 144, 201 Plymouth Colony, 75 Pobiednostzeff, Procurator, 195 Poor, Little Sisters of, 212 Pope of Rome, 87, 136 Presbyterians, 126, 149 “Prisoner of the Vatican,” 148, 149 Protestantism, 161, 179, 185, 186, 198 Puritans, 75, 76 249 Quakers, 75 Quebec Act, I1I Race, American, 4, 13, 14, 15 Racialism, 52, 58-60, 124, 125 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 105 Reformation, The, 73 Revelation, 164-175 . Reverence, American, 10-12 Revolution, American, 27 Rhode Island, 77 Romanism, Chapter VII, 209, 210 Romanus, Father P. C., 127- 129 Roman Witness, 201 Roosevelt, President, Theo- dore, 23, 24, 43, 525 55, 56, 58-60, 69, 70, 113, 131, 19751142. 255,200 Roosevelt, Mrs., 137, 138 Rossiter, William S., 15, 16 Russian Church, 195, 203 Schools, Parochial, 113, 114, 120, 121-123 Schools, Private, 116, 117 Schools, Public, 114, 115, 118-120 Sectionalism, 49, 51 Segregation of Catholics, 124 Soldiers, Catholic, 101, 121 State and Church Schools, 121-123 250 States Rights, 48, 49 Supreme Court Decision, 104 Synod, Most Holy Govern- ing, 195 Temporal Power of Papacy, 147-149 Theism, 201 Tolerance, 159, 232, 235 Toleration Act of 1688, 74 Toleration, Letter on (Locke), 79-86 Toleration, Religious, Chap- ter IV, ror, 238 Toole, Father Vincent J., 70 Trollope, Mrs., 6 “Uncle Sam,” 5-12, 54, 69, 70, 109, 125, 135, 221 Union, American, Chapter III Unity of the Church, 202- 211 INDEX Vincent de Paul, Saint, 212 Virginia, Notes on (Jefferson) 89-92 Virginia Charters, 105 Virginia Company, 35 Virginia Declaration of Rights, 78 Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, 87, 91 Virginians, 29 Washington, President George, 14, 37, 38, 39 525 95-97> 98, IOI, 209, 229, 236, 239 Webster, Daniel, 22, 44, 475 49 West, Attorney General, 31 Westminster Confession, 215 Williams, Archbishop, 199 Williams, Roger, 77 Wilson, President Woodrow, 41, 177 Zangwill, Israel, 69 Theological Seminary Libraries Nine ; 012 01247 33 Ss $9 @ = @ f = ee eee ee