The next section examines how Catholics handled challenges to religious freedom that they faced in the British colonies of North America.
Our Catholic Roots 1492—1865
II. American Catholics Struggle for Religious Freedom: 1763-1791
Foreword
Though the Spanish and the French failed to gain a real foothold in North America, the English, with their thirteen tiny colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, succeeded. For better or for worse, this would affect completely the future of Catholics in the United States.For the most part, English people in the colonies, like the English at home in England, had a deep-seated hatred for the Catholics in their midst. Furthermore, as the colonists moved more and more toward independence, they tended to reject all things English or European—they began to think as Americans. As a result, they suspected Catholics as "foreigners," as subjects of a European ruler, the pope. So Catholics—or "papists" as they were called—had to keep a low profile in the colonies.
They had to prove their American patriotism over and over throughout the struggle for freedom. They had to wrestle with their own Catholic understanding of church authority and order, as they viewed their Protestant neighborsı democratic self-governing religious congregations.
Freedom to practice their religion came for Catholics with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But the principle of separation of Church and State came too, and this would cause difficulty for Catholics down to the present day.
In these early days, no Catholic—priest, religious, or lay person—could foresee the growth in numbers, and in acceptance, that lay ahead for this tiny handful of seeds.
4. Seeds of the Church in America
The year 1763 brought two severe defeats for Catholics living in New France. First, the English, strongly anti-Catholic, achieved total victory in the French and Indian War. Second, the French Jesuits were disbanded and sent home. The English won ownership of the whole of New France, but they did not get around to organizing its government for many years. In the meantime, civil chaos reigned and Catholics feared the future oppression they knew would come.
Charles Carroll
(1737-1832)
Grandson of the Charles Carroll who emigrated from land to Maryland in the 1600s, Charles Carroll became the most prominent Catholic of his time. His father was Charles Carroll of Annapolis, a wealthy plantation owner. Young Charles went to school in Europe with his cousin John, who would later become the first Bishop in the United States. Charles served his state and country well: he was a member of the Second Continental Congress, and signed the Declaration of Independence; and he served in the Maryland Assembly and in the U.S. Senate for many years. Charles Carroll died in 1832, the last surviving signer of the Declaration.
Catholic Awakening
For English settlers in the thirteen coastal colonies, the removal of the French "papists" from their "back door" in 1763 softened only slightly the prejudices they held against their own tiny Catholic population. Discrimination, intolerance, and oppression by the Protestant majority continued in all the English colonies except Pennsylvania. Religious conflict, however, was not the only trouble. The attention of the London government, now freed from the distractions of a long war, focused upon two plans of action:1. England wanted the colonists to obey English trade laws;
2. England wanted the colonists to pay a "fair share" of what it cost the British army and navy to defend them.
The colonists, of course, objected strenuously; they had grown accustomed to doing as they pleased and being protected at no cost to themselves. The conflict deepened into the Stamp Act crisis, and then the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Americans divided into two camps: those who accepted English rulings, and those who fought against English rulings. The few Catholics among the colonists were mostly poor, and were, in any case, disqualified by their religion from voting or holding public office. Therefore, though they tended as a group to side with the revolutionaries, Catholics remained silent and took no part in the public debate. It was Charles Carroll who broke that Catholic silence in 1773.
Carroll had been infuriated by the attempt of Daniel Dulaney, a fellow Marylander, to defend in the press the unjust and arbitrary actions by Maryland's royal governor. Carroll responded with a series of letters published in the "Maryland Gazette" under the pen name of First Citizen.
Carroll's action was unheard of. An American Catholic, even if he were the richest man in the colonies, would never seek public notice. When Dulaney found himself losing this public debate, he abandoned the original issues. He began to attack Carroll on his religion, threatening him with stiffer enforcement of the anti-Catholic laws. But Carroll refused to back down, sensing that at last the climate might be beginning to change. He declared his religious views to be a private matter, and not any part of the political issues at hand. No one rose to challenge him. From then until his retirement in the next century, Carroll was a major figure in Maryland and national politics.
The evolution toward equality had only begun, however. Certain events were to reveal the extent of anti-Catholic bigotry that still remained. After stalling for a decade, the English Parliament adopted the Quebec Act in 1774. This legislation was intended to bring some order to Canada and the rest of what had been New France. By passing the Quebec Act, the English were also trying to cement the loyalties of French settlers to the new English regime. They achieved their aims brilliantly by several strategies:
1. they granted full religious freedom to French Catholics;
2. they promised to pay the costs of supporting Catholic churches;
3. they exempted Catholics from the Oath of Supremacy.
Predictably, the reaction of the already suspicious thirteen coastal colonies was nothing less than hysterical. Preachers of all Protestant sects used their pulpits to denounce the establishment of "popery" so close at hand. In a formal petition to King George III, the Continental Congress expressed its utter terror. The Congress feared that despite two centuries of disinterest in colonization, French Catholics would now come to America in hordes, becoming:
...fit instruments in the hands of power, to reduce the ancient free Protestant Colonies to the same state of slavery with themselves. This was evidently the object of the Act:—And in this view, being extremely dangerous to our liberty and quiet, we cannot forbear complaining of it, as hostile to British America...Nor can we suppress our astonishment that a British Parliament should ever consent to establish in that country a religion that has deluged your island in blood, and dispersed impiety, bigotry, persecution, murder and rebellion through every part of the world.
Catholic Participation
Only five days after this petition to the king, Congress took quite a different tone in addressing a letter to the people of Quebec. They wrote to attract them to their revolutionary cause:We are all too well acquainted with the liberality of sentiment distinguishing your nation, to imagine, that difference of religion will prejudice you against a hearty amity with us. You know that the transcendent nature of freedom elevates those who unite in her cause above all such low-minded infirmities.
The people of Quebec were not deceived by this thin coating of courtesy, and they promptly rejected the Continental Congress's invitation. Nevertheless, two years later, Congress addressed the people of Quebec once again. This time a distinguished delegation was sent to Canada. It was made up of Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and two Catholics: Charles Carroll, and his cousin Father John Carroll. They were sent to Canada in the hope of gaining French-Canadian support for the revolutionary cause.
Father Carroll was extremely unsure about his part in this mission. He felt it was not appropriate for a priest to participate in a strictly political activity such as this. He also doubted that longstanding antagonisms could be so quickly dissolved. Carroll was correct; the mission was a total failure.
The practice of burning the Pope in effigy was the highpoint of the annual celebration of Guy Fawkes Day. In 1605,a small band of Catholic terrorists planned to blow up the English parliament and king by exploding vast quantities of gunpowder hidden in a cellar beneath the House of Lords. The plot was discovered in a search of the cellars just hours before the king and parliament were to meet, and the conspirators headed by Guy Fawkes were captured and put to death. In the picture on the right, Guy Fawkes, kneeling, is being interrogated by King James I and his council. The English government always falsely charged Jesuits with conspiracy in the "Gunpowder Plot" to them look bad in the eyes of the Protestant public.
As the American Revolution began in earnest, both prudence and the temper of the times were moving American Protestants toward more enlightened attitudes and practices in religious matters. Congress desperately wanted and needed an alliance with France. Prudence and politics dictated that Catholicism, the religion of France, would have to be treated with greater respect. George Washington himself issued orders to his troops that "the childish custom" of burning the pope in effigy on Guy Fawkes Day would have to stop. He candidly explained to his soldiers that they could not expect French help if they insulted the French religion.
The hoped-for alliance with the French did in fact come about in 1778. As French troops began to arrive in the colonies, many Americans came into contact with "papists" and their "Jesuitical priests" for the first time. The experience was an eye-opener for many Protestants, revealing neither devils nor angels. Catholics, they found out, were simply Christian people whose religious beliefs and practices were somewhat the same, and somewhat different, from their own.
Beginnings of Religious Freedom
Relaxing religious intolerance was smart politics. In addition, the temper of the times and the very nature of the contest with Britain tended to make religious intolerance appear wrong. How could Americans discriminate against other Americans for their religious beliefs, and still assert in the Declaration of Independence that every human being has a natural right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? Americans in increasing numbers were coming to recognize that they could not.As the colonies drafted their new state constitutions, some of them inserted statements guaranteeing religious freedom. Virginia, urged on by Thomas Jefferson, led the way in 1776 with a bill of rights that included religious freedom. Pennsylvania followed suit before the end of the year, declaring:
... that all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences and understanding; and that no man ought or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any place of worship, or maintain any ministry, contrary to, or against his own free will and consent; nor can any man, who acknowledges the being of a God, be justly deprived or abridged of any civil rights as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiments or peculiar mode of religious worship; and that no authority can or ought to be vested in, or assumed by any power whatever, that shall in any case interfere with, or in any manner control, the right of conscience in the free exercise of religious worship.
Maryland adopted a similar declaration only a few weeks later, and by the end of the war every one of the new states had granted some kind of toleration to Catholics. In some cases, however, it was only a half-hearted gesture.
In New York, the new state constitution attacked Catholics' spiritual relationship to the pope by requiring that persons who wished to become citizens must renounce all allegiance to any foreign ruler "in all matters, ecclesiastical as well as civil." Massachusetts, still a stronghold of Puritanism, allowed for religious toleration but continued for many decades to support the established Protestant church with public funds. The Articles of Confederation by which the states bound themselves together in 1781 ignored the subject entirely, except for committing the states to assist each other in case of an external attack "on account of religion."
Though by no means ideal, the condition of American Catholics had improved greatly by the time the revolution ended with the Peace of Paris in 1783. Catholics' actions had given them a right to expect this change.
As Father Carroll noted later, Catholics' blood had flowed as freely (in proportion to their numbers) to cement the fabric of independence, as that of any of their fellow citizens. They concurred with perhaps greater unanimity that any other body of men in recommending and promoting that government from whose influence America anticipates all the blessings of justice, peace, plenty, good order, and civil religious liberty.
As a whole, Protestant Americans did not like Catholics. They did not grant Catholics religious equality everywhere. But they did at last come to tolerate them.
Terms
bigotry: the state of being intolerant toward anotherıs belief, church, or opinion.
inalienable: incapable of being surrendered or transferred
prudence: the ability to take care of oneself by good judgment
Questions for Reflection
What effect did the English victory in the French and Indian War have upon the Catholics of New France?
What effects did the presence of friendly French troops have on Protestant Americans during the Revolution?
What might this suggest to you about the nature of prejudice? What is the difference between religious toleration and full religious freedom?
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