This section covers how the Catholic Church in the new nation slowly began to organize and take root.

Our Catholic Roots 1492—1865

Organizing the Infant Church
In ten short years, and after 150 years of oppression, American Catholics had suddenly won religious toleration. But full religious freedom and equality for Catholics, as well as for Jews and other religious minorities, would come much more slowly in the future. Now, at least, they had some rights and could begin to organize their church in normal ways without fear of civil penalties.

Steps Toward Leadership
Church officials in Rome knew very little about the new United States, except that its few Catholics were mostly poor and completely without organization. To Rome, it seemed clear that the new country was a missionary area to which the usual missionary rules should be applied.

As a first step, the pope would appoint a bishop as vicar apostolic of the whole country. This vicar apostolic would report to the office in Rome called the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. This office was responsible for mission lands. Eventually, the area would become a diocese with a bishop of its own.

Before taking these routine actions, however, Rome needed more information. Church officials believed that nothing remained of the fragile American church after the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773. In their planning, then, the Roman officials did not even attempt to consult any priests or laypersons in America. Instead, the pope's nuncio Archbishop Daria Pamfili, sought the advice of a non-Catholic, old Benjamin Franklin. He was representing the United States at the Paris peace negotiations.

 

The drawing on the right shows Benjamin Franklin and others working on the Paris peace negotiations.

Franklin saw no difficulty with the appointment of a vicar apostolic, but thought it wise to ask Congress for an official opinion. Their reply was a model of neutrality. Congress declared that the appointment, "being purely spiritual," was outside their jurisdiction. Congress, they said, have no authority to permit or refuse it, these powers being reserved to the several states individually.

France was the Catholic nation with the closest ties to the United States. Therefore, Franklin and Pamfili agreed that the pope's nuncio to France, namely Archbishop Pamfili himself, would be the logical person to be the vicar apostolic to the church in the United States.

Meanwhile, events in America were following another course. Twenty-four Jesuit priests had been serving Catholics in the English colonies at the time of the Jesuit suppression in 1773. Left to carry on as best they could without external support or replacements, the ex-Jesuits were an aging and demoralized remnant by 1783. One of them was Father John Carroll. Though he had no more official status than any other ex-Jesuit, Father Carroll had the intelligence and self-confidence of a born leader. He saw the urgent need for some organization, and so he proposed a plan:

. . . to perpetuate a succession of laborers in this vineyard, to preserve their morals, to prevent idleness, and to secure an equitable and frugal administration of temporals.

He persuaded the clergy to meet in November, 1783, at Whitemarsh, an old Maryland farm owned by the priests. There they prepared a constitution uniting the priests into an organization they called the Select Body of the Clergy. This organization would manage the church's property, evaluate the credentials of newly arrived priests wanting to work in America, and generally try to maintain order in the absence of any guidance from Rome.

The Select Body of Clergy was certainly an improvement over chaos. But it was not a final solution, and the clergy recognized this. So they also petitioned Rome for permission to elect one of their own members to be the superior for the American missions—but not a bishop. They were concerned that if Rome appointed a bishop, it would be resented by non-Catholics as interference in American affairs by a foreign power. Still only barely tolerated in some states, Catholics had good reason to be very sensitive to the possible reactions of the Protestant majority.

When the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith in Rome received the reports and petitions from the American priests, its head, Cardinal Antonelli, had a much clearer understanding of American conditions. He began to move quickly. Within months he appointed Carroll as superior of the missions in the United States. Carroll was assured by Antonelli that your appointment will please and gratify many citizens of the republic, particularly Mr. Franklin.

Rumors of this action reached America faster than the official letter from Antonelli. So when the Select Body of Clergy held their annual meeting at Whitemarsh in October, 1784, they immediately expressed their satisfaction at the appointment. Then they warned Rome that should a bishop be sent later, they would withhold all financial support from the extensive clergy estates that had belonged to the Jesuits. These aging American ex-Jesuits had not forgotten that the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith had played a major role in the suppression of the Jesuits. They were not about to trust the Congregation or its European appointees.

 

Problems for the Young Church
The official letter of appointment from Cardinal Antonelli finally reached Carroll in late November 1784. It included a request for a detailed report on the condition of the American church. So one of Carroll's first tasks as superior was to persuade each of the twenty-four priests in his jurisdiction to supply him with the facts on their missions. Then, to see for himself, he set out from Maryland and traveled as far north as New York, visiting all the Catholic communities along the way. He did not bother going farther North into the New England states because everyone knew that few Catholics had ever ventured there.

Upon returning home, Carroll mailed a report to Cardinal Antonelli on March 1, 1785. Its contents revealed some harsh realities. Out of a total American population of 2.5 million people, Catholics constituted only one percent, or 25,000 people. Of these, a very few were wealthy Maryland planters, and 3,000 were their Black slaves. Most of the rest were either modest farmers or indentured servants. Except for those living in large towns, few Catholics had the opportunity to celebrate Mass or receive the sacraments. The few American priests were too old or sick to travel. As for the territories west of the Alleghenies, the situation was even worse. Only the old Catholic city of New Orleans remained as a Catholic center.

A consequence of this lack of priests, and of the generally hostile Protestant atmosphere, was that many Catholics were falling away from their faith. This bleak picture, as well as the earlier threats of the local priests to withhold support, caused Cardinal Antonelli to stall for five years his plan of naming a bishop as vicar apostolic of the United States. Meanwhile, Father Carroll was faced with some very difficult challenges, without much real authority with which to address them.

The Catholic Church in the United States had only recently gained a limited degree of freedom and respectability. Therefore, Carroll was anxious to avoid anything which might cause it to look bad or even to attract too much public attention. His concern was that the public's new commitment to religious toleration was not yet very strong and might falter under pressure. At this point, a very capable Maryland ex-Jesuit, Father Charles Wharton, left the Catholic priesthood, became an Anglican priest, and wrote a book attacking the Catholic church.

Carroll was terribly distressed. He recognized that his Protestant fellow-citizens might believe the false accusations if they were left unanswered. At the same time, he also realized that a vigorous rebuttal might draw other Protestants into an increasingly nasty fight. His solution was to reply with a very calm, well reasoned, and carefully written book, An Address to the Roman Catholics of the United States of America, By a Catholic Clergyman. His cautious response to Wharton's attack on the church worked, and the controversy died quietly.

American Catholics did not have a well-defined church organization—there was no bishop, there were no established parishes, and no stable resident pastors. As a result, American Catholics were inclined to imitate their Protestant neighbors and take church business into their own hands. This was made easier by the fact that church property, except for the old Jesuit estates, was usually held by a lay board of trustees. However, these boards of trustees were locally elected or appointed. They could, and occasionally did, choose to ignore the directions of church authorities. The first major conflict with trustees occurred shortly after Carroll's appointment as superior.

 

 

St. Peter's Church in New York City is the oldest Catholic parish in New York. Today, office workers from the financial center are among the people who worship there.

The Church in New York
The two hundred Catholics of New York City had never had more than the occasional services of a visiting priest. So they were very pleased in 1785 when Carroll assigned a newly arrived Irish Franciscan, Father Charles Whelan, to serve the community on a permanent basis. A group of Catholics became the "Trustees of the Roman Catholic Church in the City of New York." They purchased land for St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street.

Before long, trouble developed between the priest and his congregation. They thought him a poor preacher, and he found them spiritually lazy and exceptionally sinful. Neither side attempted to conceal its feelings. In desperation, Father Whelan called for the help of an Irish friend, Father Andrew Nugent, who was noted as an eloquent preacher. But the remedy turned out to be worse than the original problem. The trustees soon came to prefer Nugent, so they ousted Whelan and demanded that Carroll appoint Nugent in his place. Carroll's options were limited. He could either give in to the rebellious trustees' demands, or he could leave all the Catholics of New York City without any priest at all. Carroll gave in.

Peace was restored in New York for a while, but Nugent was busy building support for himself among the trustees. In October of 1787, Carroll found it necessary to go up to New York to resolve some conflicts that had broken out among various factions in the parish. For two Sundays in a row, violent demonstrations by Nugent's followers drove Carroll away from St. Peter's Church and forced him instead to celebrate Mass at the residence of the Spanish ambassador.

Since New York was the new nation's capital, and since these events were much discussed in public, Carroll was tremendously embarrassed both personally and on behalf of his church. At this point he also learned that Nugent had earlier forged his credentials and letters of recommendation to cover a very bad record of misbehavior in Ireland. In fact the Archbishop of Dublin had forbidden him to function as a priest.

Recognizing that the public scandal could not go on, Carroll ousted Nugent and appointed Father William O'Brien to take charge of St. Peter's. Weary of Nugent's outrageous conduct and the endless conflict it generated, the trustees complained for a time but eventually supported Carroll's new appointee. O'Brien served as pastor of St. Peter's from 1787 to 1808, bringing peace to the parish and opening the first free school in the state of New York. Meanwhile, the trustees took up a collection and bought Nugent a one-way ticket to Ireland.

The Pennsylvania log building, pictured on the right, is typical of the countryside churches in early nineteenth-century America.

The Church in Pennsylvania
Soon after restoring peace to the church in New York, Carroll had to face new challenges in Pennsylvania, which was second only to Maryland in numbers of Catholics. Pennsylvania included about 7,000 Catholics, many of them German people, both in the city of Philadelphia and in the farming communities farther west. The parishioners of St. Mary's in Philadelphia were mostly English-speaking. The church, however, had provided satisfactory service to the local German Catholics because the old pastor, Father Ferdinand Farmer, was German. Upon Farmer's death and replacement by a non-German in 1787, the German members of the parish became increasingly discontented. Tensions grew even worse as two newly-arrived German Franciscans, Fathers John and Peter Heilbron, began to compete with the local pastor, even though they had no official authorization from Carroll.

The Germans, who already had their own cemetery, now demanded a church of their own. Reluctantly, Carroll sought to restore peace by agreeing to the establishment of Holy Trinity Church, a separate "national" parish to serve the needs of Philadelphia's German Catholics. But he remained deeply concerned about the possible dangers of dividing groups of Catholics in a country which was welcoming immigrants from all over Europe.

The English-speaking trustees of St. Mary's Church sought and received formal incorporation in 1788. Several weeks later, the German trustees of Holy Trinity followed suit, dedicating their new church in 1789. Holy Trinity's trustees elected Father Peter Heilbron as pastor, and asked Carroll's approval of their choice. Once Heilbron had agreed to recognize Carroll's authority as his superior, his appointment was confirmed and peace reigned in Philadelphia's Catholic community, at least for a while.

However, the question of who held ultimate authority in the Catholic Church of the United States had not yet been resolved. In the face of free-wheeling immigrant clergy and lay boards of trustees who held ownership of almost all church property, Carroll's title of superior of the American mission carried little weight. He had the powers of suspension and excommunication, but he had little more than his strong determination and powers of persuasion at his disposal. Carroll's strength and goodness, and the decency and good will of the vast majority of American Catholics, achieved much in an infant church with such fragile organizational structures.

Terms

remnant: a small remaining part of a larger whole

credentials: testimony which gives a person authority, confidence, or credit.

nuncio: a papal official of the highest rank.

indentured servants: persons who bound themselves in a legal manner to work for another in return for

Questions for Reflection

What religious rights had American Catholics not yet won at the end of the revolution?

What signs of leadership did John Carroll demonstrate before his appointment as superior?

Father Carroll wrote An Address to the Roman Catholics of the United States of America. If you were to write a letter to the Roman Catholics of today, what challenges, issues, and concerns for the Church would you include?

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