This week looks at the evolution of the concept of religious liberty in the United States and its effect on the Catholic population.

Our Catholic Roots 1492—1865

6. The Constitution and Religious Liberty
As Father John Carroll struggled to organize and strengthen the Catholic church in the new United States, he was hindered again and again by the limited powers given him by Rome. But he was not alone in his frustration.

In those first years after the American revolution, the new federal government was experiencing the same problem: organization. Under the Articles of Confederation, the states severely restricted the powers of the national government. As a result, it could barely function. More and more people came to recognize this problem, however. They slowly buried the fears of strong central government that had been inspired by years of oppression by England. A new constitution, the result of many compromises, emerged from the constitutional convention that met in Philadelphia through the hot summer of 1787.

Jonathan Edwards, pictured above, was a famous New England clergyman of the established Protestant Church.

Religious Freedom
The Articles of Confederation had remained silent on the question of religion. But Article 6 of the new Constitution took a first step in addressing the relationship between church and state. It stated, . . . No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. That is, no one could ever again be disqualified from holding national public office because of membership (or non-membership) in a church.

This provision did not, however, abolish the religious qualifications for state and local offices. And it failed to deal with a host of other church-state issues as well. The fact was that most Americans were still prejudiced against Catholics, Jews, Moslems, and non-believers. They simply could not imagine allowing the election of non-Protestants to local public office. Insistence on the discussion of these questions at the convention, however, would have aborted the new Constitution before it was born.

 

As the price of gaining southern support for the Constitution, the moral issue of slavery was sidestepped at the convention. Slavery was allowed to continue, but there was a constitutional provision that no new slaves could be imported after 1808. On the one hand, this simply delayed the eventual day of reckoning on this important issue. On the other hand, the nation might never have got it new constitution without the compromise.

 

Furthermore, it had become obvious to most American leaders that the country had become religiously diverse. No one religious group dominated all the others. It was very unlikely that any single religious group would ever gain sufficient strength to impose its beliefs on the whole country. So, just as on the sensitive issue of slavery, caution on the issue of religion was judged to be the wiser course. All thirty-five delegates from the twelve states in attendance signed the Constitution on September 17, 1787. Among them were two prominent Catholics, Thomas FitzSimons of Pennsylvania and Daniel Carroll of Maryland.

The new Constitution did not automatically become law when adopted by the convention at Philadelphia. It required ratification (formal acceptance) by at least nine of the thirteen states before going into effect. That means that the voters of nine states had to agree to the terms of the new Constitution. So the debate over the Constitution's merits, faults, and risks began in the fall of 1787. It continued in some states for the better part of a year. Both Carroll and FitzSimons were strong supporters of ratification in their own states.

By the summer of 1788, eleven states had ratified the Constitution. National elections were called, and the first president, George Washington, was elected. He was inaugurated in the nation's capital, New York City, on April 30, 1789. Two states, Rhode Island and North Carolina, had refused to ratify the Constitution at all, while six more had ratified it on the condition that some additions be made as soon as possible.

The reluctance of the voters in these states came from fears that the new Constitution did not guarantee sufficient protection for some of the most basic rights for which the revolution had been fought. Therefore, one of the most important tasks awaiting the new Congress was the amendment of the Constitution to provide the desired guarantees.

 

The Bill of Rights
About a month after the opening of the first session of Congress, James Madison proposed a series of constitutional amendments which addressed a wide range of human rights. Ten of these proposed amendments survived the three months of debate by Congress. They were sent to the states for ratification as the "Bill of Rights." With the assurances of the Bill of Rights in hand, North Carolina and Rhode Island were ready at last to join the Union. They ratified the amended Constitution, and the other states followed suit. The Bill of Rights became the law of the land on December 15, 1791.

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights addressed the question of religious freedom directly:

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Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. ______________________________________

The First Amendment's "no establishment" clause is very clear. It requires the federal government to observe a careful neutrality toward all churches, and to avoid any show of favoritism toward any individual church, or system of belief or non-belief. Religion, as such, is to be kept free from all governmental aid or promotion.

The First Amendment's "free exercise" clause prohibits the federal government from interfering with individuals' or groups' rights to practice publicly the religion of their choice, or to practice no religion at all. Among the activities thus protected are preaching, teaching, gathering for public worship, printing religious publications, and others. The only limits on these rights arise from the government's right to maintain civil order and peace.

A Catholic chaplain, an airborne officer, celebrates Mass with his fellow troopers in Vietnam. The work of chaplains is one example of the "free exercise" clause in the First Amendment.

Separation of Church and State
Some Americans, especially in recent years, have argued that the First Amendment requires an "absolute wall of separation" between church and state. These people have sometimes spoken as if those words —"wall of separation"— were in the Constitution itself. This is simply not the case. The First Amendment requires neutrality toward religion, not the hostility that absolute separation would involve. The separation required by the Constitution is not absolute, but allows for cooperation between church and state, provided that this cooperation is for secular, and not religious, purposes. This kind of separation promotes religious liberty, rather than shrinking it.

From the very beginning, the United States government recognized that if it was to be truly neutral, not hostile, toward religion, it could not absolutely avoid all contact with religion. For example, when it called citizens from their homes to serve in the armed forces, the government understood that it had the duty to make provision for their voluntary access to religious worship and provide chaplains. To fail to do so would have be a violation of the "free exercise" clause of the First Amendment.

In New England, where the Congregational Church was established in every state but Rhode Island, the decisions in favor of religious liberty came only very slowly. Connecticut was typical of the region. The Connecticut Toleration Act of 1784 removed many legal disabilities, and excused dissenters (non-Congregationalists) from supporting the Congregational Church. But it still required them to attend and support some church. Only after a long and bitter struggle was disestablishment fully achieved in 1818.

A proposal to disestablish the Congregational Church in Massachusetts failed in 1820 by a vote of nearly two to one, and did not finally pass until 1833. In New Hampshire, until 1877, only Protestants could be public officials or school teachers.

The Middle Atlantic states had no established churches, so their progress toward full religious liberty was more rapid. New York and Delaware had no religious test for office, and Pennsylvania required only a belief in God after 1790. New Jersey was the sole holdout, waiting until 1844 to allow a non-Protestant to hold public office.

Before the revolution, the Church of England had been established in all the Southern states. Three weeks before the Declaration of Independence, Virginia, under Thomas Jefferson's leadership, had shown the way for the whole nation. It had disestablished the Church of England and granted full religious freedom and civil liberties to members of all faiths. North Carolina swiftly followed Virginia's lead, but restricted office-holding to Protestants until 1835. Maryland, with its large Catholic minority, gave all Christians access to public office in 1776, and finally extended the privilege to Jews in 1826. Atheists remained ineligible to hold public office until 1961. Georgia and South Carolina extended full political rights and religious freedom to all Christians in 1789 and 1790 respectively.

The guarantee of full religious liberty for the citizens of all states was long in coming. Its many opponents acted from many motives: simple prejudice, the fear of loss of power, or even the profound dread that the separation of church from state could mean the death of both. But throughout the decades of debate, the American Catholic bishops, beginning with John Carroll, affirmed the principle of religious liberty with reservation. They did so, of course, partly because they represented a historically oppressed minority. More than that, however, Catholics and their leaders in the United States strongly supported religious liberty as a matter of conscience.

Differences with Rome
As their history unfolded, experience would continue to confirm for American Catholics that a separation of church and state, and full religious liberty for all citizens, were the best of all possible arrangements in a pluralistic society made up of many different nationalities and religions.

But the experience of American Catholics was very different from that of the church in Europe. There, in countries that were traditionally Catholic, the call for religious liberty and for church-state separation was quite different. It usually came from those who hated the church, and wanted, at the very least, to exclude it from any influence in public life. Moreover, in such an atmosphere as Europe's, support for religious freedom could easily be interpreted as religious indifference, an attitude which looks upon all religions as equally useful or equally useless.

Rome, so much a cultural part of western Europe, could not understand the American experience. Thus, it responded to the European needs it did understand. Repeated condemnations of religious freedom and church-state separation were issued by Rome well into the 1900s. This misunderstanding of American circumstances was long a source of tension and frustration in the relationships between Rome and the American bishops. However, it was at last resolved at Vatican Council II. Through the Council, the whole church committed itself to the principle of freedom of religion.

 

A planning group of bishops, in Rome during Vatican Council 11, meets under the guidance of Pope John XXIII. Freedom of religion became a Church-wide principle after the Council.

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