86. Liberalism and Catholic Minorities;   87. North American National Crisis   ; 88. Latin American Independence   

86. LIBERALISM AND CATHOLIC MINORITIES

Retrospect. The Netherlands, comprising modern Belgium and Holland, had remained formally a part of the Holy Roman Empire until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Since 1465, however, the various feudal states had been united under the Burgundian dynasty into a confederation with a common parliament. The Habsburgs succeeded to the Burgundian possessions in 1477, and the Netherlands were the birthplace of Emperor Charles V. Then they passed to his son, King Philip II of Spain, against whom the Dutch revolted in 1581. This resulted in a division of the Netherlands into predominantly Calvinist Holland, an independent aristocratic republic, and largely Catholic Belgium, a dependency of Spain until 1713, and of Austria to 1795. During the Revolution, both lands came under French domination from 1795 to 1814, and Catholics had shared in the persecution of the Jacobins and the limited blessings of the Napoleonic Concordat—against the latter a schism broke out which endured until 1957: the “Stevenists.”

Reorganization. The Congress of Vienna, in the hope of forming a strong bulwark against renewed French aggression, had united Belgium with Holland in the kingdom of the Netherlands under the Protestant house of Orange which had hitherto enjoyed almost an hereditary presidency in Holland. This disregard of three centuries of hostility created resentment among the three million Belgian Catholics. To make matters worse, King William I (1815-40) was a religious bigot and a reactionary autocrat. He conceded a constitution, to be sure, but retained all real power. This constitution gerrymandered parliamentary representation in favor of the Dutch and ignored Belgian political traditions. It disestablished the Catholic Church in Belgium and annulled clerical privileges. Though equal protection was promised to all religions, King William appointed Dutch officials who consistently violated Belgian Catholic customs. Despite its rejection by Belgian “notables” and a “doctrinal decision” of the Catholic hierarchy that an oath of allegiance to it was illicit, the constitution was put in force during 1815 by royal fiat. Belgian resentment now united on one ground or another, Catholics, Liberals, patriots.

Allegiance controversy. The king promptly nominated Bishop De Mean of Liége, the only dissenter to the “doctrinal decision,” to be archbishop of Malines. Pope Pius VII refused to confirm this appointment until the nominee should make a declaration that he took the oath of allegiance only insofar as it did not contradict Catholic doctrine, and ^{[p. 564]} in particular should interpret the constitutional “protection” of all religions as merely civil. The king replied in 1816 by declaring the Organic Articles in force, and indicted the Catholic leader, Bishop De Broglie of Ghent, for communication with the Holy See and promulgation of papal documents without the governmental placet and exequatur. During 1817 the Court of Assizes sentenced Bishop De Broglie to exile, but the pope and the cathedral chapter resisted the king’s efforts to install a successor. When De Broglie died in Paris in 1821, the king terminated this controversy by conceding that the oath of allegiance entailed assent to the merely political provisions of the royal constitution.

Education dispute. The king, however, sought to dominate education. The constitution had placed colleges under secular administration, and now a series of decrees (1821-25) subjected other schools to state control. In 1825 the king established the Philosophical College at Louvain and decreed that all seminarians must spend two years in attendance prior to their theological training. This measure evoked a protest even from the conciliatory Archbishop De Mean. The Belgian deputies in parliament voiced the popular indignation by remonstrances, and finally backed these up by a refusal to vote taxes. This opposition became so menacing that during 1827-28 King William negotiated a concordat with the Holy See which proposed to introduce the Napoleonic system of episcopal nominations and rescinded the decree regarding the Philosophical College. Calvinist opposition, however, induced the king to delay the actual suppression of the institution until 1830. Then the concession came too late to placate the Belgians, for Catholics and Liberals had formed a “Patriotic Union” against the common enemy. This Union rapidly gained strength and seized the example of the French July Revolution (1830) to issue a declaration of independence. Fighting began in September when Prince Frederick occupied Brussels. But the Belgians, supported by Louis Philippe and Palmerston, soon drove the Dutch from Belgium, and in 1832 the Great Powers recognized Belgian independence, although William did not acknowledge the accomplished fact until 1839.

(2) THE BELGIAN MONARCHY (1830-70)

Catholic-Liberal coalition (1830-46). The patriotic union elected the Protestant Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to preside over a constitutional monarchy. A bicameral parliament was set up, chosen by the restricted suffrage so dear to bourgeois Liberals. Virtual separation of Church and state was decreed. While the government renounced appointments to ecclesiastical offices, it granted financial subsidies for maintenance of cult, exempted the clergy from military service, and guaranteed Catholic supervision of their schools and cemeteries. The ^{[p. 565]} Catholic University of Louvain dates from 1835. Common fear of Holland and general satisfaction with the secular government preserved a truce between Catholics and Liberals during the early years of independence. Disputes about education were generally settled by compromise. Thus when in 1842 a law made Catholic religious instruction obligatory in the state schools, dissenters were conceded the right to erect their own private schools.

Liberal regime (1847-55) . But masonic propaganda had been urging the Liberals to sponsor a program of secular education. In 1846 the Liberal Party Congress renounced the coalition and named their own candidates on a vague platform of “religious and political reform.” The Catholics were negligent in forming their own organization so that the Liberals won a majority in the 1847 elections and installed their own ministry. Charles Rogier, leader of the Moderate Liberal majority, became premier (1847-53), though Walther Frère-Orban headed a Radical anti-Catholic minority. The Moderate Liberals professed to be merely neutral, but consistently worked for complete secularization. In 1849 charitable institutions were subjected to state control, and in 1850 a bill proposed secularization of schools. But in the Convention of Antwerp (1850) the Catholic hierarchy secured amendments permitting religious instruction belonging to the religion of the majority of the pupils, according to books approved by the hierarchy. Safeguards were also appended to prevent antireligious propaganda in other courses. This compromise brought temporary peace.

Clerical reaction (1855-57) . The Catholic or Clerical Party won the 1854 elections on their budget program and Pierre Decker became premier from 1855 to 1857. In the latter year he proposed amendments to the Charitable Institutions Act of 1849 in the direction of subsidies to Catholic religious orders. Decker was an inept politician, and the Liberals defeated him with the slogan that he proposed endowing convents. Riots, probably engineered, forced Decker’s resignation.

Liberal return (1857-70) . Charles Rogier and the Liberals returned to office which they held until 1870. Although still stopping short of radical measures, they continued secularization. More charitable institutes were secularized in 1859; in 1862 they repealed the guarantee of religious control of cemeteries, and scholarships for Catholic education were confiscated in 1864. The Protestant King Leopold I (1831-65) was now succeeded by his Catholic son, Leopold II (1865-1909) . Though not a stalwart Catholic, he urged moderation upon the Liberal ministers. When these, nevertheless, imposed military service on seminarians and novices, the Catholics were aroused. In 1870 they won the elections and themselves took over the ministry. They were yet to learn that Catholic vitality would provoke more radical opposition. ^{[p. 566]}

 (3) THE DUTCH MONARCHY (1830-70)

Calvinist domination (1830-48). In Holland the Catholics were only about a third of the population, but were more alert and energetic than the Belgian majority. William I had granted religious toleration in the 1815 constitution, but he remained bitterly hostile to Catholicity. He surrounded himself with Calvinist bigots whose only regret was that the prerevolutionary Calvinist Establishment had not been fully restored. The Concordat of 1827-28 applied to Holland as well, but Calvinist opposition delayed its operation.

Catholic-Liberal coalition (1848--57). Hence, the Catholics allied themselves with the Liberals who were opposed to the regime on political grounds. Accession of the religiously indifferent William II (1840-49) paved the way for concessions. The revolutionary fever of 1848 induced the monarch to grant a new constitution, wherein the placet was abandoned and Catholics granted freedom of association and legal property rights. Pope Pius IX took this occasion to restore the Catholic hierarchy. In the brief Ex Qua Die, March, 1853, he created the archbishopric of Utrecht with four suffragan sees. Jan Zwijser became the first metropolitan (1853-68). The Calvinists at once stirred up a furore similar to that in England during 1850. Vast blanket petitions made the government hesitate, but it was at length placated by the papal concession that the bishops would be permitted to take an oath of civil allegiance to the new King William III (1849-90) . A law authorizing governmental supervision of religious societies was passed, but this probable face-saving measure was eventually relaxed. Catholics and Liberals continued their fruitful political alliance against the die-hard Calvinist Conservatives.

Catholic-Conservative coalition (1857-70). During 1857, however, the Dutch Liberals reverted to the universal type by proposing a neutral school system. This led to a dramatic realignment of political parties. The orthodox Calvinists were equally opposed to secularist education, and some of their anti-Catholic bigotry had by now evaporated. Hence, a Liberal-sponsored law of 1857 which imposed strictly nonreligious primary schools induced the Calvinists to make common cause with the Catholics in opposition. Together they organized their own private school systems and also co-operated in using their influence in the appointment of public school teachers favorable to their interests wherever local autonomy permitted. During 1868 the Catholic hierarchy forbade the faithful to send their children to neutral schools wherever a Catholic school was available. Yet the Liberals persisted in their secularizing designs, and the suppression of diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1870 may be taken to mark the opening of a more vigorous attack. ^{[p. 567]}

B. Switzerland

(1) THE REVIVED CONFEDERATION (1815-48)

Retrospect. The Zwinglian War had resulted in division of Switzerland into Catholic and Calvinist cantons. Since there was no central government, these retired communities went their separate and comparatively peaceful ways until the French Revolution. In 1798, however, Switzerland was organized into the French-dominated “Helvetic Republic” with a constitution patterned on the French. This opened questions of Centralism versus Localism, and of Secularism against Catholicity. During 1803 Napoleon Bonaparte conceded more local autonomy, but at the price of drafting Swiss soldiers into his continental armies. After Bonaparte’s downfall, Switzerland reverted to cantonal separatism.

Conservatism (1815-32). The constitution of 1815 was in accord with the reactionary ideas of the Congress of Vienna. Certain changes, however, had to be conceded. In the old Confederation, there had been thirteen cantons, together with subject districts. The new Confederation was composed of twenty-two equal cantons. This modification destroyed the ancient balance between Catholic and Protestant cantons, and accordingly in the Diet a compromise was secured by granting nine and one-half votes each to the Catholic and Calvinist cantons. The remaining three votes were exercised by the mixed cantons of St. Gall, Aargau, and Glarus. Catholic monasteries were everywhere safeguarded. But this conservative arrangement was increasingly challenged by Liberals, including many political refugees from other lands.

Liberal challenge (1832-41) . In March, 1832, representatives from
seven liberalized cantons agitated for a closer federal union and a secularized constitution. They were supported by the insubordinate priest, Fuchs, who in January, 1834, proposed restraint of the Catholic Church by means of the exequatur and placet, secular supervision of seminaries, clerical appointments, matrimonial courts, and exaction of an oath of allegiance from the clergy. These “Articles” were condemned by Pope Gregory XVI, May 17, 1835. Since 1832 the Catholics had formed the League of Samen to resist constitutional change, and cantonal contests centered largely on the control of education. Despite temporary Liberal victories in several cantons, by 1841 the Catholics had regained their ground and had brought in the Jesuits to supervise Catholic religious instruction. Gregory XVI took this occasion (1841) to reorganize the Swiss dioceses, but the fact that Ticino remained subject to an Italian bishop proved a target for Liberals.

Civil conflict (1841-48) . A decisive act proved to be the suppression of the Aargau monasteries (1841) in violation of the constitutional ^{[p. 568]} guarantee. The Diet, after protesting ineffectually, acquiesced. Thereupon Catholic representatives concluded a defensive league upon which the Liberals—playing up the “Jesuit menace”—made an unsuccessful armed attack during December, 1844. The Catholic cantons strengthened their Sonderbund into a military alliance during 1845. This amounted to secession from the Swiss Confederation, and the Liberals called upon the Diet to suppress the Sonderbund. Two years of armed truce passed until the Radicals overcame Conservative opposition in the Diet. After the Radicals had secured control, in July, 1847, the Diet decreed dissolution of the Sonderbund, revision of the constitution, and expulsion of the Jesuits. General Guillaume Dufour, a former Bonapartist officer, was named commander-in-chief of the Liberal forces, and by December, 1847, he had conquered the Sonderbund with a minimum of bloodshed. Any interference from Metternich, who protested in January, 1848, was nullified by the Liberal revolutions of the next few months throughout the European Continent.

(2) SWISS FEDERATION (1848-70)

The Federal Constitution of September, 1848, was devised by the Radicals under the lead of Jonas Furrer, first president of Switzerland and leading statesman for a generation. The executive was committed to a seven-man council. The American system of representation was followed in a bicameral legislature, responsible both to the cantons and the people. Religious liberty was guaranteed throughout the Federation, thereby abrogating cantonal exclusiveness. In virtue of so-called supervisory rights, the Jesuits were expelled and monasteries suppressed. Political success eventually attended the constitution, but religious peace was long in coming.

Religious strife was almost continuous. The Catholic champion, Bishop MMlarilley of Lausanne, was exiled. Catholics, worsted in war, turned to political action in which they sometimes received support of conservative Protestants against Liberalism. Many Catholics moved to former Protestant cantons where they took advantage of federal toleration to erect churches, form organizations, and edit newspapers. This provoked reprisals, and Catholic institutions and property were targets for cantonal attacks.

C. Scandinavia

(1) DENMARK

Retrospect. The Catholic Church in Denmark had been completely crushed by the Protestant Revolt of the sixteenth century, and severe laws were directed against any possible missionary efforts of the Counter Revolution. Until 1849 the French embassy in Copenhagen possessed ^{[p. 569]} the only legal Catholic chapel in Denmark, and the vast majority of the Danes had been lost to the ancient Faith.

Liberal concessions. In Scandinavia, Liberalism worked in favor of Catholics inasmuch as the Liberals clamored as usual for religious liberty against an established Lutheran religion. Warned by the revolutions of 1848, King Frederick VII conceded a Liberal constitution in 1849. This allowed dissenters, including Catholics, freedom of cult and freed them from payment of tithes to the Established Church. At the same time all citizens were guaranteed their civil rights. In 1852, moreover, the Lutheran Establishment was replaced by the privileged and subsidized status of a majority religion, for Danish Protestantism was honeycombed with indifferentism to an unusual degree.

Catholic progress followed the arrival of missionary priests and nuns, at first chiefly from Germany. They discovered that a few native Danish families had preserved the Faith during penal days. The Catholics began the Church of St. Ansgar in Copenhagen, and here in 1853 was preached the first public Catholic sermon in Danish since the Revolt. Catholics founded their own schools, hospitals, and orphanages, and these institutions, served by devoted religious, acquired a high reputation among non-Catholics. Protestants made use of their services and in this way converts were made with surprising rapidity in proportion to the Catholic numbers. In 1869 Hermann Grader was named prefect apostolic, and in 1892 the prefecture was raised to an episcopal vicariate. By the end of the century there were some forty priests and nine thousand Catholics in Denmark. Iceland, still a Danish dependency, received its first two resident priests in 1896.

(2) SWEDEN

Retrospect. Sweden’s monarchs had dallied with the notion of reunion with the Holy See until 1599 when Protestantism was definitively established. Severe penal legislation had imposed exile on all missionaries and converts to Catholicity, and had deprived Catholics of all religious and civic rights. Queen Christina’s conversion during the seventeenth century had not affected the status of her Catholic subjects, for she had been forced to abdicate.

Toleration was granted in 1780 to “Christians of other faiths” who might wish to emigrate to Sweden for the sake of promoting the country’s economic development. In 1783 Pope Pius VI named Father Oster prefect apostolic, but he and his immediate successors could make little progress among native Swedes, because the penalty of exile for converts to Catholicity remained. As late as 1858 five converts were exiled and their goods confiscated. The intervention of Princess Josephine (1807-70), Catholic daughter of Eugene de Beauharnais and wife of ^{[p. 570]} the well-disposed King Oscar I (1844-59), considerably changed the position of Catholics. The prudent vicar-apostolic, Monsignor Studach (1833-73), could erect Ste. Eugenie’s Church in 1837, and other Catholic edifices followed. In 1860 the penalty for adult conversions was removed. Dissenters were allowed private exercise of their religion, but public preaching and proselytizing remained under ban. Dissenters were also made eligible for most civil offices in 1870. During 1872-73 remaining restrictions were removed with these exceptions: minors under eighteen might not leave the Established Church; royal permission was required to hold property and organize parishes; all religious except the Sisters of Charity were excluded from Sweden. Catholics remained few in number, probably no more than one or two thousand.

(3) NORWAY

Toleration. Norway was subject to the Swedish crown from 1814 to 1905, but Norwegians were more progressive and cosmopolitan and dissent from the Lutheran Establishment became common. When the dissenters in 1839 forced the king to grant them freedom of religious assembly, and in 1845 the right to have public churches, Catholics shared in these gains. A church was erected in Oslo in 1872 and Catholic growth was so rapid that a prefecture was established in 1887 and raised to a vicariate in 1892. During 1891 dissenters were granted full religious liberty, subject to a few restrictions, and in 1894 civil rights were conceded as well. Distinguished converts were made, including Dr. Tonning, a Lutheran minister, and the novelist, Sigrid Undset (1882-1949). By 1900, the Catholic population was estimated at two thousand.

87. NORTH AMERICAN NATIONAL CRISIS

Issues. The slavery dispute, far from having been settled by the Compromise of 1850, soon became acute. The ostensible issue remained economic: the firm conviction of the South that slaves were essential to her prosperity, so that no fancied moral question dare be raised. It is true that some Northern abolitionists were more solicitous for Negro slaves that they did not own, than about fair wages for their own factory workers. Yet even Southerners like Lee—who freed his slaves—agreed that slavery, if seldom deliberately cruel in practice, was far from compatible with human dignity and American democratic theory. A social issue was also involved, for if one may be permitted sweeping generalizations, the South was aristocratic, the North bourgeois, and the West democratic in collective outlook. Yet in the end, it was the national issue that proved basic. Southerners, as a defensive minority, insisted on “state sovereignty,” a decentralized, sectionalist view of government. ^{[p. 571]}

But the North and West regarded a strong federal government as most in accord with their industrial and financial concerns that knew no state lines, or most likely to finance expansion to the Pacific. As Lincoln put it in 1860: “Physically we cannot separate.” This view was sentimentally confirmed by numerous immigrants who gravitated toward the North and were more familiar with Old World centralization. Ultimately, the North and West had a majority of about twenty-one million against the South’s nine million including three million slaves. Railroads were rapidly linking their lands and their horizons extended to the Atlantic and Pacific coasts; indeed, Yankee clippers were seeking Japan and the Indies.

Political parties, despite efforts to compromise, were at last obliged to lean toward one view or the other. Democrats, while retaining a minority of Conservative and pacifist adherents in the North, had become largely identified with Southern statesmanship by the 1850’s. The Whigs, who tried to evade taking sides, were rejected by both sections, and groups like the Know-Nothings who proposed new issues did not endure. A new party, the Republican, was born in 1854 and quickly captured favor in the North by its firm opposition to slavery extension. The fugitive slave clause of the 1850 Compromise proved a continual goad to Northerners who abetted the “underground railroad,” and not even its approbation by Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott Case (1857) could make them accept it. Stephen A. Douglas essayed a new compromise with his doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” but it became “squatter rule” in practice, and a bloody practice at that. Douglas might defeat the shrewd and moderate Lincoln in debate (1858), but he could not control Southern “fire-eaters”: those who demanded a repeal of the ban on slavetrading. Defeated by John Quincy Adams in their effort to impose a “gag-rule” on Congress during the 1840’s, these myopic defenders of sectional interest demanded in the 1850’s that free speech cease on slavery, even in the North. An older school of statesmen like Webster and Clay had soothed these courtly egotists, but now blunter men like Senator Seward of New York declared that “there was a higher law than the Constitution” on the slavery question, and that between free and slave societies there existed “an irrepressible conflict.” Lincoln, indeed, hoped to avoid armed strife if possible, but even he warned that the “Union . . . will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other.” Four years of bitter war decided that America would be all free.

President Pierce (1853-57), a pliant Northern Democrat, tried to abide by the Compromise of 1850, but Stowe’s influential if not entirely accurate Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) aroused high feelings. Senator ^{[p. 572]} Douglas and War Secretary Jefferson Davis then proposed to repeal the Missouri Compromise by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854), but feuding pro- and anti-slavery settlers in what became known as “bleeding Kansas” took the issue out of these politicians’ hands. Senator Sumner’s intemperate denunciation of the “Crime against Kansas” got him a caning on the floor of the Senate, while the new Republican Party’s flaunting of the issue of “bleeding Kansas” frightened enough conservatives to prefer the Democratic candidate in 1856: Buchanan was another Northerner willing to appease the South.

Chief Justice Taney (1857) stole the inaugural headlines, March 6, 1857, by his decision that not merely did the free soil of Illinois fail to free the Missouri slave Dred Scott, but that the Missouri Compromise had been unconstitutional: slavery might not be outlawed from any territory. It seems that this upright Catholic judge allowed himself to be swayed by his Southern prejudices. Wrongly, but understandably, Northerners branded the court’s decision a conspiracy with the new administration and invoked a “higher law than the Constitution.”

President Buchanan (1857-61) proved almost a caretaker administrator, and in his last months was but a grieving bystander. John Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry (1859) in a desperate attempt to free slaves got him a hanging, but “John Brown’s Body” soon became an abolitionist war cry. The South lost its best chance to continue compromise by walking out on the conciliatory Democratic nominee, Stephen A. Douglas, and nominating Vice-President Breckinridge who, unlike Douglas, had endorsed a congressional slave code for the territories. When Southerners asserted that they would not accept the Republican candidate Lincoln even if elected, conservatives put up yet a fourth nominee, Senator Bell. On electoral votes the choice was never in doubt: Lincoln won by 180. An analysis of the popular vote shows forty per cent for Lincoln, forty-two per cent for Douglas and Bell, and eighteen per cent for Breckinridge. Though the upholders of the Union thus constituted a clear majority, South Carolina seceded in December, 1860, and by February, 1861, six other states had joined her in forming the “Confederate States of America.”

President Lincoln (1861-65) at his inaugural addressed the South: “In your hands and not in mine is the momentous issue of the civil war. The government will not assail you . . . but no state on its own mere action can lawfully get out of the Union. . . . I shall take care ... that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.” When Lincoln undertook to relieve Fort Sumter in Southern territory, Confederate President Jefferson Davis permitted and General Beau-regard precipitated war by firing upon the Federal position, April 12, 1861. Secession would, then, mean war. The conflict was prolonged by ^{[p. 573]} the fact that the South had a larger proportion of experienced officers and that her soldiers fought on their own territory with the advantage of interior lines of communication. Convinced that “cotton was king,” Southern planters hoped to do business as usual with Europe, but despite a general European disposition to favor the South, an efficient Northern blockade presently stifled Southern economy. The North had the greater population, area, resources, and industrial technique, and must, if it persevered, inevitably outlast the South. If the Confederate States had an experienced and intelligent leader in Jefferson Davis, he lacked the unusual common sense and loftiness of character that made Lincoln pursue victory with patient tenacity against most discouraging setbacks. Lincoln lived to witness Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, April 9, 1865, though his assassination five days later was the crowning tragedy of a “Tragic Era.” His Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, however, was legalized by the Thirteenth Amendment, December 18, 1865. Slavery was done and the Union was one.

B. Catholic Ordeal (1852-66)

Echoes of 1848. The European Revolutions of 1848 that overthrew the Metternich System were followed by an authoritarian reaction that sent revolutionaries to refuge in the United States. Louis Kossuth, president of the brief Hungarian Republic, was received here as a “symbol of Protestantism as well as liberty,” for the Metternich Old Order was supposedly Catholic and Kossuth’s masonic connections had excited no enthusiasm for his revolt in American Catholic circles. Kossuth’s tour (1851-52) was at first triumphal, and he responded by a strongly anti-Catholic speech. Later, however, when he asked for funds and American intervention, his popularity waned. But he had served to revive nativist bigotry. When during 1852 Pope Pius IX donated a marble block to the Washington Monument under construction, the nativist press reached a frenzy of alarm at the “schemes of that designing, crafty, subtle, far-seeing, and far-reaching power.” Bigots did not rest content until 1854 when a mob broke into the storage shed and cast the papal block into the Potomac.

A papal nuncio, Archbishop Bedini, could not have arrived at a less propitious time when during 1853 he called on President Pierce en route to his Brazilian post. Unfortunately he had been papal representative at Bologna while Austria was assisting the Vatican in suppressing the Young Italian Revolution. This gave an apostate Italian priest, Gavazzi, an opportunity to denounce him as the “Bloody Butcher of Bologna,” typical agent of the Vatican Inquisition. Audiences were regaled with pictures of the Inquisition buildings at Rome in which, supposedly, rich ^{[p. 574]} apartments for the inquisitors contrasted with the dungeons and torture chambers of the victims. It is little wonder that mass demonstrations were provoked: at Baltimore Bedini was fired upon and burned in effigy; at Pittsburgh he was pushed about by rowdies who broke through a Gaelic bodyguard; Cincinnati Germans prepared to lynch him, and one man was killed and sixteen wounded in clashes with the police. Despite Bedini’s courageous attitude, it was deemed expedient to smuggle him out of New York in a tug, for a mob had congregated at the dock. The Bedini tour stirred up emotions and the years that followed were too often marred by violence. The Federal Government, however, was not responsible. Its envoy, Lewis Cass, presented apologies to Cardinal Antonelli during 1853, and during the perils of the papal temporal government the pope was offered American naval vessels as means of escape to a haven in the United States. It is not difficult to understand why Pius IX preferred to remain in Rome.

Local origins. Nativist fears were capitalized upon by a new political party. In 1849 Charles Allen founded the Order of the Star Spangled Banner at New York. Reorganized as the Order of United Americans by James Barker in 1852, its members observed a masonic secrecy which they guarded with such fidelity as to be nicknamed “Know-Nothings.” [The Native American Party, renamed the American Party in 1855 and commonly known as the Know Nothing movement,] During 1852 the movement began to attain phenomenal success in local politics. It elected municipal officials and prepared to capture state governments. The party was pledged “to resist the insidious policy of the Church of Rome and all other foreign influence against our republican institutions in all lawful ways; to place in all offices of trust, honor or profit in the gift of the people or by appointment, none but native American Protestant citizens.” Members were obliged to swear that they would never vote for a Catholic or a foreign-born citizen. Despite their profession of being law-abiding, Know-Nothing officials often condoned mob activity, and “plug-uglies,” armed with awls, threatened to harm voters who refused to give the Know-Nothing password on the way to the polls. Catholics were kept from voting by violence, as on ‘Bloody Monday,” August 5, 1855, at Louisville, Kentucky. By fair means or foul, the Know-Nothings carried nine states between 1854 and 1856, and held the balance of power in others. They elected governors in New York, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. During 1855 the first steps were taken in New York State toward confiscation of church property, while anti-Catholic legislation was passed or attempted in Michigan and elsewhere. Once again Bishop Hughes proved a shrewd and belligerent opponent who marshaled Catholic legal and political defenses. Churches elsewhere ^{[p. 575]} were burned or looted, and convent inspection regulations occasioned good nuns trouble and insults.

National failure. By 1855 the Know-Nothings claimed seventy-five members of Congress and were confidently eying the 1856 presidential elections. They nominated ex-President Fillmore and Jackson’s nephew, Andrew Donelson. But Fillmore repudiated most of the anti-Catholic program. The party did receive eight hundred thousand votes but many of these were those of Fillmore’s former Whig partisans. The most respected political leaders, Douglas and Lincoln, repudiated KnowNothingism. The latter [, Lincoln,] remarked:

“I am not a Know-Nothing; that is certain. . . . Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We are now practically reading it: ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read: ‘all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty—to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.” But defeat in the national election and an attempt to ignore the burning North-South conflict, diverted American attention from the Know-Nothings. With the coming of the Civil War, the whole nativist movement paled into temporary oblivion.

Clerical attitudes. In the South, the Catholic hierarchy was in a difficult position. Pope Gregory XVI’s pronouncement in 1839 condemning the slave trade provoked adverse comment among slaveholders, and Secretary of State John Forsyth of the Van Buren administration had tried to identify the Catholic position with Northern abolitionism.

In a series of open letters in his journal, the Catholic Miscellany, Bishop England of Charleston, whose private letters reveal him personally opposed to slavery, undertook to explain the papal document:

“Slavery, then, Sir, is regarded by that Church of which the pope is the presiding officer, not to be incompatible with the natural law; . . . but not so the ‘slave trade,’ or the reducing into slavery of the African or the Indian.”

Archbishop Kenrick in his widely used Theologia Moralis (I, v, 38) , while deploring the institution of slavery, urged obedience to the laws lest the lot of the Negro be made worse. His pastoral instruction of May, 1858, was in keeping with such norms:

But the archbishop’s passive policy was no more successful in allaying feeling in regard to slavery than it had been in appeasing nativism at Philadelphia. When secession took place, Confederate sympathizers among the Maryland [Catholic] clergy refused to read Bishop Carroll’s “Prayer for Civil Authorities,” and when the archbishop himself read it, some of the laity walked out.

But even in the North, Archbishop Hughes of New York branded abolitionism as incitement to robbery, and he even disapproved of the Emancipation Proclamation as an invasion of property rights. Some of the clergy were less conservative: at New Orleans, Father Napoleon Perché so attacked Yankee occupation as to be put under house arrest, while Father Edward Purcell of Cincinnati branded all opposed to emancipation as “jailors of their fellowmen.”

Lay opinion. The leading Catholic lay publicist, Orestes Brownson, changed from toleration of slavery to abolitionism during the prewar excitement, but he also indicted the evils of wage-slavery in Northern factories. Patrick Donohue of the Boston Pilot and most Northern Catholic newspapermen were staunchly Federalist, but Courtney Jenkins of the Catholic Mirror of Baltimore remained a Southern sympathizer, with the disapproval but toleration of Archbishop Kenrick.

THE judicial verdict on slavery was handed down by a Catholic, Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case. Holding to a strict construction of constitutional opinion, Taney held that Negroes “had for more than a century been regarded as beings of an inferior order.” Yet in his private capacity, Taney “did not believe in slavery and had not only manumitted those slaves whom he had inherited at the death of his father, but pensioned his freedmen.” ⁸ Personally humble, he used to take his turn after Negroes in the line of penitents before the confessional.

Yet he believed that he must uphold the law as Chief Justice until slavery had gradually been eliminated. But popular Northern opinion, with less prudence but more heart than Taney, bypassed such “law” for equity and insisted that the evil was intolerable. Certainly voluntary emancipation with some public compensation would have been the ideal solution, but since the Bourbons would not take that course, they reaped the “grapes of wrath” and the “terrible swift sword.”

s Theodore Maynard, Story of American Catholicism (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1942), p. 349.

The Confederacy provoked the fratricidal conflict by order of a Catholic, General Beauregard, who fired on Fort Sumter. Catholics were comparatively few in the South, yet most of the bishops, clergy, and faithful believed themselves justified in transferring their allegiance to ^{[p. 577]} the Confederate States. Bishop Lynch of Charleston accepted a diplomatic mission to Europe for Jefferson Davis, and regained his see only after a pardon from President Johnson. Bishop Elder of Natchez was expelled from his cathedral by General Brayman in 1864 for refusing to order prayers for President Lincoln; on the other hand, Bishop Whalan of Nashville so alienated his flock by fraternizing with Federal officers that he resigned in 1863. There were instances of occupation forces abusing their power to damage church property. In the critical border states of Kentucky and Missouri, test oaths were imposed on the clergy for performance of their functions. Such acts, such as the “Drake Constitution” of 1865, were later declared null by the Supreme Court. Father Francis Leray, later bishop of New Orleans, was one of some thirty Confederate priest chaplains. Abram Ryan, the poet priest, by his “Conquered Banner” and “Sword of Robert E. Lee,” put a romantic haze about the Southern cause, for which the Catholic leaders, General Beauregard and Longstreet, and Captain Raphael Semmes of the raider Alabama, served.

The Federal Union, not abolition of slavery, Archbishop Hughes told Secretary Cameron in 1861, was the object of Northern Catholics’ loyalty: “Catholics, so far as I know, whether of native or foreign birth, are willing to fight to the death for the support of the Constitution, the Government and the laws of the country.” The archbishop himself, a friend of President Lincoln, accepted a diplomatic mission to Ireland, France, and Italy in a successful effort to avert foreign recognition of the Confederacy. Bishop Domenech exercised like influence in Spain, and Bishop FitzPatrick of Boston in Belgium on behalf of the Union. When many Irish Catholics, too poor to buy exemption from military service at $300, participated in the 1863 draft riots, the dying Archbishop Hughes appeared in public to urge them to disperse; in this he was sustained by other members of the hierarchy. The Catholics, Sheridan and Rosecrans, were Federal generals. Regular chaplains were often assigned by regimental vote, which seldom favored a Catholic. Hence auxiliary nonmilitary chaplains took care of most Catholic needs, though there is record of about forty regular army priest chaplains. Notre Dame University sent seven chaplains, and their Father William Corby was the only Catholic chaplain at Gettysburg. The future bishops, James Gibbons, John Ireland, and Lawrence McMahon, served as chaplains. Mother Seton’s Sisters of Charity and nuns of other communities to the number of six hundred almost monopolized the nursing service and won universal acclaim from men of good will; a monument in Washington pays tribute to their work. “All these sisters must be remembered for their heroic service in the cause of charity. And they must be still more remembered on account of their service to a better understanding of the ^{[p. 578]} Church and all it stands for; no one who experienced their unselfish charity could long remain a bigot.” ⁹

Clerical education continued a pressing problem. St. Mary’s Seminary at Baltimore had ordained 52 priests by 1829, of whom 21 were natives. About 1840 there were eleven seminaries in the United States with 148 students. In 1857 an American house for clerical students was affiliated with Louvain University in Belgium, and the following year the American College at Rome was provided by Pope Pius IX, and promoted in this country by Archbishops Hughes of New York and Kenrick of St. Louis.

Religious communities coming to the United States from Europe also helped provide priests, brothers, and sisters for the American mission. Redemptorists came to Cincinnati during the early 1830’s, and toward the close of that decade Bishop Forbin-Janson’s Fathers of Mercy began to work in the South. Foreign sisterhoods arrived in increasing numbers: during 1833, Carmelites went to New Orleans, Sisters of St. Joseph to Carondolet, and the Dublin Sisters of Charity to Philadelphia. During the 1840’s Holy Cross Fathers, Brothers, and Sisters began to settle in Indiana, where Notre Dame University would germinate. During the same decade, Benedictine Monks came to the United States, and the Trappists returned, establishing themselves at Gethsemane, Kentucky. At the same time the Sacred Heart Brothers (1847), the Christian Brothers (1848), and the Marianist Brothers (1849) arrived. The Sisters of Providence, the Precious Blood Sisters, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, the Sisters of Mercy, and the Notre Dame Sisters all opened establishments. The Oblates came in 1851 and the Passionists in 1852. Finally the poor and sick drew the Brothers of Charity, the Alexian Brothers, and the Little Sisters of the Poor toward the close of the Civil War.

° Theodore Roemer, Catholic Church in the United States (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1950), p. 254.

Missionary work continued, with Bishop Lamy of Santa Fe (1850-85) sketching an epic of zeal before “death came for the archbishop” in 1888. Other prelates were concerned about the Negroes. Bishop England had opened a school for free Negroes at Charleston in 1835, but was forced to abandon it in the face of antiabolitionist panic. In 1844 Bishop Peter Kenrick of St. Louis opened a school for both free and slave children, but it failed for much the same reason within two years. Bishop Elder of Natchez in 1858 deplored that though half of Mississippi’s six hundred thousand people were Negroes, he could not provide enough priests to visit and instruct the Catholic slaves. The American bishops of ^{[p. 579]} the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore (1866) after the Civil War declared that though they would have desired that “a more gradual system of emancipation could have been adopted,” they now urged on clergy and laity alike “charity and zeal” for the emancipated Negroes. Catholics ought “to extend to them that Christian education and moral restraint which they so much stand in need of.” If segregation was tolerated in secular contacts where expedient, it was not to be the rule in religion: Catholics were directed to admit Negroes to their existing churches without discrimination. Execution of these decrees was left to the bishops’ discretion, but “let the ordinaries see to it that this is done in such wise that later the Church will not be subject to complaint or pretext of complaint. . . . If through neglect this is not done, anyone who, unmindful of his duty, shall fail to provide the means of salvation to all seeking them, be they black or not, will merit the strongest condemnation.” The slavery issue was settled; the Negro problem remained.

Civil War relations. Pius IX personally approved of Archbishop Hughes’s mission on behalf of the Union, and though he also received Davis’s envoy, Bishop Lynch, it was only in his prelatial capacity. Officially the pope pleaded only for peace in public letters to Archbishops Hughes of New York and Odin of New Orleans. He never extended diplomatic recognition to the Confederacy, although his information was not always the most complete: he remarked to the British envoy: “I have written a letter to Mr. Davis, president of the South, and I have also written to the other Mister who is president of the North.” If the pope was cautious, Cardinal Antonelli was strongly pro-Union. And the American seminarian Robert Seton’s boycott of a papal reception for Maximilian of Mexico got him into no trouble with the Vatican, once he had explained that he had merely intended to express American disapproval of the Bonapartist puppet regime.

Lincoln’s assassination may have strained papal-American relations. The assassin Booth was not a Catholic, certain bigots’ suspicions that he was a Jesuit notwithstanding. But the conspirators met in the house of a Catholic, Mrs. Surratt. She was hanged during the vindictive aftermath, but doubt of the reliability of the circumstantial evidence has since been expressed. Her son John escaped to the Papal States where he enlisted in the Zouaves as “Watson.” When he was traced, Minister King asked extradition from Cardinal Antonelli. Though the secretary of state agreed to detain Surratt pending instructions from Washington, he was embarrassed by the escape of the elusive fugitive to Alexandria, Egypt. Recaptured and tried, Surratt had his case dismissed by reason of disagreement among the jury. ^{[p. 580]}

Close of the American Embassy came when Congress, dominated by a vindictive “Black Republican” oligarchy, discontinued appropriations for its support. The real cause seems to have been bigotry, though the pretext adduced in Congress was that American Protestants had been denied liberty of worship in Rome and ordered outside its walls. In reality, as Minister King reported, the Protestants held their services in the American legation building with the permission of the papal government, so that discontinuance of the legation would have precisely the effect alleged as cause for its suppression. The Holy See was never directly notified of the suppression, but diplomatic relations actually ceased in December, 1867.

88. LATIN AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

Clerical divisions. “Speaking generally and allowing for individual exceptions on both sides, the bishops opposed the movement for independence, while the lower clergy strongly favored them. A similar situation existed among the religious orders: the superiors were for Spain, the rank and file were largely, though not entirely, for separation. This is not difficult to understand. The bishops were nearly all Spaniards and all were appointees of the crown; the lower clergy were either creoles, persons of pure Spanish descent born in America—or mestizos—a mixture of Spanish blood with Indian or Negro or both. Hence there was much class and racial jealousy. Separation from Spain could mean to the bishops only difficulties for themselves or even possibly deprivation, while to the rest of the clergy it held out hope of advancement from which under the Spanish regime they were cut off. In addition, the mass of the priests considered the subjection of the Church to the civil power detrimental to spiritual interests—little better, in fact, than slavery. While they continued to advocate union of Church and state, they wished that union to safeguard the rights and the dignity of both parties, a condition which they felt was not realized under a system whereby the Church was practically a department of the civil government... . One can safely say that both among those who worked for separation and those who remained loyal to Spain, the majority were actuated also by motives conscientious and lofty. This needs to be insisted upon especially in regard to the former, who have been attacked unjustly.” ¹⁰

Edwin Ryan, The Church in the South American Republics (Westminster, Md.: The Newman Press, 1943), p. 43.

Clerical participation. The revolutionary movements against the Spanish crown, then, were not per se anticlerical. In fact, many clerics ^{[p. 581]} took a prominent part in the revolts, either as publicists for Latin American interests, chaplains in the rebel forces, or advisors to the constitutional conventions of the new states. Outstanding in the latter role was the Dominican friar, Santa Maria de Oro. As a participant in the Argentine Congress of Tucuman in 1816, he not only declared unequivocally for independence, but defeated a proposal for a monarchy on the ground that the delegates to the convention would not thereby execute the wishes of the people who had elected them. The democratic precedent thus set by the largest of the Spanish-American states probably did much to influence the setting up of republics in Latin America. That monarchy was the preference is indicated in the Mexican and Brazilian experiments. Clerical patriotism, therefore, did much to preserve Catholic influence in the new countries irrespective of political animosities: at first each of the republics declared Catholicity the state religion. Although many of the revolutionary chieftains were sincere Catholics, such as O’Higgins of Chile, others had been influenced by the Rationalism of the French Revolution. Clerics participating in the movement for independence were consequently brought into contact with the Liberals of the future. Such association was not always felicitous: some clerics, like Camilo Enriquez in Chile, became apostates, while the career of Hidalgo in Mexico is ambiguous to say the least. On the other hand, some clerics, alarmed at these latitudinarian ideas, were repelled into a reactionary conservatism in politics. But on the whole, lack of patriotism during the independence movement is not a charge that can be laid against the Latin American clergy.

Recognition crisis. On the one hand, the sympathy of the Latin American hierarchy with the mother country of Spain prejudiced the revolutionary leaders against these bishops and made it practically impossible for them to continue to reside in their sees. By 1822 the six archbishoprics and thirty-two bishoprics of South America were without resident titulars, while in Mexico only four bishops remained—and by 1829 there were none. In their place, as well as in that of religious ordinaries, the new governments were prone to install sacerdotal vicars whom many people refused to acknowledge. On the other hand, the Spanish crown declined to recognize the independence of its revolted colonies, even long after military operations had ceased. This created a problem of providing a new hierarchy, inasmuch as the real patronado had virtually made the king of Spain papal vicar-general in the choice of prelates. During the early days of the insurrections, Pius VII had been under Bonapartist surveillance (1809-14) , and doubtless remained ill informed about Latin American affairs. On his release, he urged the ^{[p. 582]} bishops to win over their subjects to obedience to Ferdinand VII, restored to the Spanish throne since 1813. From 1814 to 1820 the Roman Curia continued to confirm royal nominations to Latin American sees, but the recommendations of the Holy See fell on deaf ears in the New World.

Hierarchical restoration. Latin American governments then sought to change the papal attitude, while claiming patronage privileges for themselves. In 1822 Chile sent a delegation headed by Padre José Cienfuegos, which Cardinal Consalvi received over Spanish protests. A cardinalatial commission was then set up to study the proposals, and the pope sent back an apostolic delegate extraordinary to examine the Latin American situation. Monsignor Muzi, the legate, was accompanied by Canon Mastai, the future Pius IX. This mission visited Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, while corresponding with Bolivar in Peru. Muzi’s refusal to recognize a patronado nacional made his mission, terminated in 1825, a failure. Meanwhile Mexican envoys at Rome, Canons Marchena and Vasquez, were unsuccessful in making the same demands. During 1825, recognition of Brazilian independence by Portugal made possible a settlement of jurisdictional difficulties in that former colony. But Ferdinand VII of Spain still refused to yield, even after all hostilities had ceased in 1826. Finally in a consistory of May 27, 1827, Pope Leo XII resumed the privileges of patronage conceded to the Spanish crown, and himself named six bishops for sees in Greater Colombia, following recommendations by Bolivar. The next year he made other appointments in Chile and Argentina. King Ferdinand then dismissed the papal nuncio, Monsignor Tiberi, but the pope stood his ground. Pius VIII tried in vain to placate the Spanish monarchy, but continued his predecessor’s course. Pope Gregory XVI in 1831 named six bishops for Mexico, and in 1832 further sees in Argentina and Chile were filled. The papal bull, Sollicitudo Ecclesiarum (1831) enabled him to extend de facto recognition to the new governments without committing himself as to their legitimacy. The death of Ferdinand VII in 1833 removed a great obstacle to peace, and in 1835 the pope conceded complete diplomatic recognition to Colombia, a procedure presently imitated in regard to other Latin American states.

Patronage disputes. It was with regret that the Holy See learned that outworn patronage rights had been terminated in the Old World only to be reasserted in the New. For most of the newly founded states jealously clung to the patronado which they claimed had been inherited by their governments from the crown of Spain. Dictators, like Francia in Paraguay (1814-40) and Rosas in Argentina (1835-52), were no improvement ^{[p. 583]} on the despotic Bourbons of the eighteenth century. Thus, transition from Spanish absolutism, difficult at best, became a problem requiring unusual tact. The solutions, expressed in concordats or other pacts, with caudillos or Liberal regimes, varied with the individuals concerned. If any generalization may be ventured, conservative views of close union of Church and state tended to prevail down to 1870, while thereafter Liberal insistence on broad toleration or even separation of Church and state came to the fore. Unique was the thoroughly clerical regime of President Gabriel Garcia Moreno of Ecuador (1860-75), but the reaction that followed his assassination was severe. At the other extreme was the ferocious dictatorship of Antonio Guzman Blanco in Venezuela (1870-77) which included wholesale exile of clerics and attacks comparable to the contemporary German Kulturkampf. Brazil, like Portugal, tended to have a great problem with Freemasonry, which insinuated itself even into clerical circles. “The Church was thus severely hampered in her endeavor to accommodate herself to the new order. On the one hand were inimical governments, and on the other, ecclesiastics powerless to effect an arrangement, too strongly attached to outworn customs and traditions, or perhaps not sufficiently mindful of the duties of their state.” ¹¹

Papal relations. Pius IX (1846-78), mindful of his South American visit, displayed special interest in Latin American problems. In 1855 he named Monsignor Nunguia his representative to promote clerical reform in Mexico, but the latter was encountering resistance from the beneficiaries when his mission was cut short by the accession of the anticlericals to power. French intervention in Mexico raised new difficulties, which were met with intransigence by nuncio Meglia and Archbishop Labastida. But by this time the pontiff had lost his earlier prestige with the Liberals, and most disputes were approached with insuperable prejudice. By his foundation of the Latin American College in Rome (1858), Pius IX tried to develop a devoted and learned clergy outside this oppressive secular climate.

“In the last quarter of the century, Leo XIII (1878-1903) felt that a more conciliatory policy might be safely adopted and in several accidental matters saw fit to diverge from the rigid policies of Pius IX. The concordat between the Holy See and Colombia, made in 1887, is a good example of the arrangement of a modus vivendi between the Vatican and a modern state. Certain old privileges were yielded in return for guarantees of a substantial nature by government in return.” ¹² The pope also assembled at Rome during 1899 a plenary council of Latin ^{[p. 584]} American prelates. The 54 members of this council enacted 998 decrees, among which can be singled out the proclamation of Our Lady of Guadalupe as the universal patroness of Latin America, and the unanimous condemnation of Freemasonry as “peste nefaria.” ¹³ From this distinguished meeting a distinct revival of Catholic life in Latin America can be traced.

“ Ibid., p. 49.

‘² John Bannon and Peter Dunne, Latin America (Milwaukee: The Bruce Publishing Co., 1950), p. 456.

Missionary survival. “In Latin South and Central America, the missions, like the ecclesiastical situation in general, were gravely impaired by the abolition of the reductions and by the revolutionary disturbances which in the wars for independence usually brought anticlerical governments into power.” ¹⁴ It has been estimated that possibly three million Indians relapsed into a state of paganism during this period. But the Franciscans had taken over some of the Jesuit missions and had maintained many of their own, for the Gran Chaco Indians in northern Argentina had preserved their Christian faith for years without priestly ministrations. In 1832 the Friars received their first re-enforcement from abroad, and in succeeding years could resume their apostolic work, aided by the returning Jesuits and many other religious communities. The new Salesian Congregation of St. John Bosco under the future Cardinal Caglieri were particularly active from 1880. In Mexico and Central America, if missionary work was slowed by the political transition, few of the Indians abandoned the Faith entirely, although there were some superstitious interpolations.

Introduction. Since a summary such as this cannot treat in detail each of the Latin American countries, some of the general trends will be illustrated in the history of that Mexican state which, besides exhibiting unusual problems for the Catholic Church, has also had the most intimate relations with the United States.

Revolution was first proclaimed by Miguel Hidalgo (1753-1811), eccentric pastor of Dolores, whose previous moral lapses were notorious and whose views were Liberal. He had defied the mercantilist regulations and agitated against Spanish domination, though the Inquisition which prosecuted him may have been largely political in aim. On September 16, 1810, he raised his “Grito de Dolores,” a war cry of: “Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe and death to the Spaniards.” Though the ^[p.585] latter scarcely numbered 40,000 in a population of 1,000,000 creoles, 1,500,000 mestizos, and 3,500,000 Indians, the disorderly mobs of Hidalgo were dispersed after initial successes. Hidalgo was shot at Chihuahua in 1811, but another clerical patriot, Don José Morelos (1765-1815), continued guerilla warfare until suffering Hidalgo’s fate. The viceroy of the restored Ferdinand VII, Don Ruiz de Apodaca, won over all of the remaining insurgents save Vicente Guerrero in the south. But when he sent the Creole general, Augustin Iturbide (1783-1824) , against Guerrero, the two joined forces at Iguala. Following the Liberal revolt in Spain, the viceroy had proclaimed the Spanish Constitution of 1812. This, however, was not acceptable to the conservative Iturbide, who on February 24, 1821, announced his “Plan of Iguala” with its “Three Guarantees”: (1) exclusive supremacy of Catholicity; (2) immediate independence; (3) equal treatment for Spaniards and creoles. Without forces to meet the ever-growing army of Iturbide, the royal representative, Don Juan O’Donoju, endorsed the “Plan” on August 24, pending choice of a Bourbon prince as sovereign of Mexico.

“Mariano Cuevas, Historia de Iglesia en Mexico (El Paso: Revista Catolica, 1928) , V, 419.

“ Joseph Schmidlin, Catholic Mission History, trans. Matthias Braun (Techny, Ill.: S.V.D. Mission Press, 1933), p. 675.

Organization. The Spanish Cortes repudiated O’Donoju’s pact, but Spain had no means to effect reconquest and Iturbide occupied Mexico City on September 27, 1821, and formally proclaimed Mexican independence. Failing to obtain a Bourbon prince, Iturbide had himself proclaimed monarch on May 18, 1822, and he was anointed by Bishop Ruiz of Guadalajara and crowned by President Cantarines of Congress the following July 21. Though Iturbide’s regime, Catholic, conservative, agrarian, and nativist, probably enjoyed popular support, it alienated a masonic and militarist clique. Provoked into arbitrary acts by the difficulties of his position, Iturbide gave the generals an excuse to revolt. Under the lead of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna (1795-1876) they forced Iturbide to resign on March 19, 1823. He departed for Italy with the promise not to return; when he broke this in July, 1824, he was shot by the ruling junta. Archbishop Fonte of Mexico City, who had held aloof from the movement as much as he could, now departed for Europe where he remained until his death in 1839. By 1822 only four bishops remained in Mexico, and with the death of Bishop Perez of Puebla during 1829, the land was without a resident hierarchy.

Political parties. During the early days of the Republic, proclaimed after Iturbide’s fall, Mexico was torn by the rivalries of two masonic societies. The Yorkistas were more republican and plebeian, encouraged by Joel Poinsett, the first American envoy. The Scotistas were more aristocratic, but even more hostile toward the Church. Masonry of one brand or another has ever since dominated the ruling class throughout ^{[p. 586]} most of Mexican history; even Maximilian was a member of the society. But these feuds of factions were complicated by endless personal rivalries. For the first decade after Iturbide’s deposition, a federal republic was nominally in operation, but generals, largely inexperienced in statesmanship, alternated in office, often anticipating the legal term of office by revolts. No strong man arose until 1833 when Santa Anna seized the government which he dominated intermittently for a generation (1833-55).

Hierarchical re-establishment. During this time Roman Catholicity remained the state religion, and the government, whether more or less anticlerical, insisted on claiming the real patronado. The Holy See was not pleased with the importunate demands of Mexican envoys on this point, and delayed in restoring the hierarchy. At length in 1831 Gregory XVI named six bishops, implicitly recognizing the patronado to the extent of accepting the nominations of President Bustamente (1829-32).

Farias attack. Santa Anna, though not hostile to the Church, was a sort of Robin Hood not above profiting from clerical wealth, or letting others do so. He frequently delegated his presidential powers to others, and thus during 1833-34 acting vice-president Farias was enabled to persecute the Church. The latter secularized mission properties, discontinued the tithe, decreed suppression of monastic vows and clerical participation in education. When the hierarchy protested, four bishops were exiled. But in September, 1834, Santa Anna, sensing popular displeasure, came out of retirement, recalled the bishops and mitigated the anticlerical measures. The Conservatives remained in control of Congress until 1855. Farias fled to New Orleans where he formed a secret society pledged to an anticlerical program in the future.

War with the United States induced Santa Anna to reconcile himself with Farias, though the latter, again acting vice-president in 1847, devoted more attention to annoying the Church than to supplying Santa Anna on the military front. Santa Anna gained little glory in the war and his prestige was seriously weakened. The Liberals, led by Benito Juarez (1806-72) , announced in 1854 the “Plan of Ayutla” which called for the secularization of Church property in exchange for governmental subsidies, in accord with projects concocted at New Orleans in 1835. After trying to put down the spreading revolt, Santa Anna recognized that he could no longer maintain his dictatorship. He resigned in August, 1855, and his departure from Vera Cruz on the S.S. Iturbide marked the end of an era, for though he twice attempted a comeback, he could never regain power. He died reconciled with the Church.

Ayutla regime. The clique of Liberals now in power were long dominated by Benito Juarez (1806-72) and Sebastian Lerdo (1825-89) , both subsequently presidents. The Ley Juarez (1855) ended the immunity  ^{[p. 587]} of the ecclesiastical courts and expelled the Jesuits. The Ley Lerdo (1856) decreed that existing Church properties were to be sold and the Church forbidden in future to own land. The Ley Iglesias denied state support in collecting tithes and regulated clerical fees. In 1857 a new constitution, destined to remain in force until 1917, embodied these and similar provisions.

Conservative reaction took the form of revolts, but in the ensuing “War of Reform” (1857-61) the Liberals were ultimately successful. As a war measure Juârez promulgated in July, 1859, his law “nationalizing clerical property,” which thereafter paralyzed the social welfare work of the Church, while failing to achieve its announced aim of state aid to the underprivileged. During 1861, moreover, Juârez strove to set up a schismatic church, but the sudden death of the bishop-designate led to abandonment of the attempt.

Bonapartist scheme. For some time Spain, Great Britain, and France had held various claims against Mexico for personal or financial injuries. While the United States was involved in the Civil War, the claimant nations sent troops to Vera Cruz, January, 1862, but Spain and Britain withdrew when it became clear that the French Government of Napoleon III had more in mind than collection of debts. Conservative Mexicans, defeated by Juârez, were not averse to foreign assistance, and the expatriates, Estrada and Hidalgo, had sold the scheme of a clerical monarchy to Empress Eugénie, though Bishop Labastida of Puebla, later of Mexico City, disapproved of the plan. Napoleon III took up the venture and enlisted the candidacy of Maximilian of Habsburg, younger brother of Francis Joseph of Austria. On June 7, 1863, General Bazaine at the head of French troops occupied Mexico City, Juârez retiring to the north of the country where he maintained himself in opposition.

Maximilian, proclaimed “Emperor of Mexico” by an “Assembly of Notables,” protected by French troops, arrived in Mexico in May, 1864. He found that he had been committed in advance by Napoleon to a policy of condoning the seizures of the Liberals, and followed this lead on December 27, 1864, by issuing a decree confirming the confiscations made by Juârez. This course was suicidal for his regime: as a foreigner and a monarch, Maximilian had driven many Mexican conservatives into the Juârez camp; now his anticlerical measures forfeited the support of the clergy and aristocrats. Yet Maximilian not only claimed the patronado real, but on January 7, 1865, issued a decree asserting the exequatur as a right. Monsignor Meglia, the papal nuncio, was now recalled and left Mexico City on April 14, 1865. On the same day President Lincoln, ^{[p. 588]} who had asserted that he would not go to war with Maximilian, was assassinated. President Johnson was less war-weary and the victorious Federal Government reasserted the Monroe Doctrine. On May 17, 1865, the president ordered General Sheridan to the Rio Grande to give aid to the Juarists, while Secretary of State Seward sent threatening notes to Napoleon III. The French ruler complied. He withdrew all French troops by February, 1867, leaving Maximilian to his fate. While the latter resolved on a gallant but hopeless stand, his wife Charlotte toured European courts seeking aid until her mind gave way during an audience with the sympathetic but helpless Pius IX. Back in Mexico, Maximilian was the victim of Mexican wrath against the rapacity and arrogance of the French occupation. On May 14 he was forced to surrender. Despite pleas even from the United States Government, the implacable Juarez insisted on Maximilian’s execution by a firing squad at Querétaro, June 19, 1867. With him perished the Conservative Mexican generals, Miramén and Mejia.

Anticlerical relapse followed the overthrow of the French and their puppet. Though the Liberal leaders again claimed to be helping the poor, it would seem that more of the loot went into the pockets of politicians and generals than ever reached the poor. A class of “new rich” was thus created with a vested interest in the perpetuation of the Liberal-masonic regime. The clergy were excluded from control of education, though in virtue of the separation of Church and state now proclaimed, the naming of bishops and the training of the clergy escaped governmental control. But a respite was at hand: in 1876 Porfirio Diaz, a rival of Tejada, successor of Juarez, overthrew his regime, and himself entered into thirty-five years of power, during which he was content to relax, not so much the anticlerical legislation, but its enforcement.

This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 2002....x....  ’ “”.