In 1790, the French revolutionary government reformed the Catholic Church and demanded that clerics swear an oath of allegiance to the nation and its vision for French Catholicism. Although half of France's parish clergy refused to accept the state-sponsored reforms, others became embroiled in this decade-long ecclesiastical experiment. This included Jean-Baptiste Volfius, a patriot, priest, and professor who embraced the changes in France and believed in the revolution's potential to create a purer church. Patriot and Priest presents a social and intellectual history of the French constitutional church in the Côte-d'Or and the career of Volfius, who became its bishop in 1791, as he struggled to create and run the church. Annette Chapman-Adisho addresses the daily experience of the constitutional clergy over the course of ten years, exploring the interactions between priests and local and national authorities, the response of the laity to the divisions in the French Catholic Church, the evolution of these issues over time, and the eventual reconciliation of the clergy following the Napoleonic Concordat with Pope Pius VII in 1801. Using a rich collection of archival sources, this book demonstrates that although the constitutional church was ultimately a failed project, its legacy had a lasting impact on the catholic Church in France. Tracing the social, political, and theological history of this reform effort, Patriot and Priest offers new insights into the French Revolution and its impact on French Catholicism.
After serving two and a half years as a stretcher-bearer on the Western Front, Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote that he would “a thousand times rather be throwing grenades or handling a machine gun than be supernumerary as I am now.” Mobilized by military laws dating to 1889 and 1905 that opened the clergy’s ranks to conscription and removed their exemption from combat, Teilhard and his fellow men of the cloth served France in the tens of thousands—and nearly half of them served in combat positions. Patriot Priests tells us how these men came to be at war and how their experiences transformed them and French society at large. The letters and diaries of these priests reveal how they adapted to the battlefields of World War I. Influenced by patriotic ideals of bravery, they went into the war hoping to make converts for the Catholic Church, which had long been marginalized by the Third Republic’s secularizing policies. But through direct fraternal contact with their fellow soldiers, they came out with a sense of common identity and comradeship. Historian Anita Rasi May documents how these clergymen used their religious values of sacrifice to define the meaning of the war for themselves and for their comrades, even as the discipline of military life effectively transformed them from missionaries into soldiers. In turn, their courage and solicitous care for their fellow soldiers won them new respect and earned the Church renewed esteem in postwar French society. These clergymen’s story, recounted here for the first time, elucidates a unique milestone of church-state relations in France. Their experiences—their hopes and fears, their struggles to reconcile their mission of peace with the demands of war, and their sense of belonging to France as well as to the Church—reveal a new perspective on the Great War.
The 115,000 priests on French territory in 1789 belonged to an evolving tradition of priesthood. The challenge of making sense of the Christian tradition can be formidable in any era, but this was especially true for those priests required at the very beginning of 1791 to take an oath of loyalty to the new government—and thereby accept the religious reforms promoted in a new Civil Constitution of the Clergy. More than half did so at the beginning, and those who were subsequently consecrated bishops became the new official hierarchy of France. In Priests of the French Revolution, Joseph Byrnes shows how these priests and bishops who embraced the Revolution creatively followed or destructively rejected traditional versions of priestly ministry. Their writings, public testimony, and recorded private confidences furnish the story of a national Catholic church. This is a history of the religious attitudes and psychological experiences underpinning the behavior of representative bishops and priests. Byrnes plays individual ideologies against group action, and religious teachings against political action, to produce a balanced story of saints and renegades within a Catholic tradition.
"Patriot Priest" tells one mans personal experience over several epochs and areas of history. It is also, in part the story of one unique individual, author Patricia Daly-Lipe's great Uncle, Msgr. William A Hemmick. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, and raised in Europe, he became fluent in five languages. When the First World War broke out, he felt committed to help the troops. After the war, he was proclaimed the Patriot Priest of Picardy by the Army and Navy. After years spent in Paris, William Hemmick was asked by the Vatican to come to Rome. Ultimately he became the only American Canon of St, . Peter's representing the Knights of Malta to the Holy See. It was he who performed the nuptials of American film star Tyrone Power and Linda Christian. He also converted the future Queen Astrid of Belgium.
Stephen J. Ochs chronicles the intersecting lives of the first black military Civil War hero, Captain André Cailloux of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards, and the lone Catholic clerical voice of abolition in New Orleans, the Reverend Claude Paschal Maistre. Their paths converged in July 1863, when Maistre, in defiance of his archbishop, officiated at a large public military funeral for Cailloux, who had perished while courageously leading a doomed charge against the Confederate bastion of Port Hudson. The story of how Cailloux and Maistre arrived at that day and what happened as a consequence provides a prism through which to view the black military experience and the complex interplay of slavery, race, radicalism, and religion during American democracy's most violent upheaval.
The Culture Of Disbelief has been the subject of an enormous amount of media attention from the first moment it was published. Hugely successful in hardcover, the Anchor paperback is sure to find a large audience as the ever-increasing, enduring debate about the relationship of church and state in America continues. In The Culture Of Disbelief, Stephen Carter explains how we can preserve the vital separation of church and state while embracing rather than trivializing the faith of millions of citizens or treating religious believers with disdain. What makes Carter's work so intriguing is that he uses liberal means to arrive at what are often considered conservative ends. Explaining how preserving a special role for religious communities can strengthen our democracy, The Culture Of Disbelief recovers the long tradition of liberal religious witness (for example, the antislavery, antisegregation, and Vietnam-era antiwar movements). Carter argues that the problem with the 1992 Republican convention was not the fact of open religious advocacy, but the political positions being advocated.
"Father McGivney's vision remains as relevant as ever in the changed circumstances of today's church and society."—Pope John Paul II Is now the time for an American parish priest to be declared a Catholic saint? In Father Michael McGivney (1852-1890), born and raised in a Connecticut factory town, the modern era's ideal of the priesthood hit its zenith. The son of Irish immigrants, he was a man to whom "family values" represented more than mere rhetoric. And he left a legacy of hope still celebrated around the world. In the late 1800s, discrimination against American Catholics was widespread. Many Catholics struggled to find work and ended up in infernolike mills. An injury or the death of the wage earner would leave a family penniless. The grim threat of chronic homelessness and even starvation could fast become realities. Called to action in 1882 by his sympathy for these suffering people, Father McGivney founded the Knights of Columbus, an organization that has helped to save countless families from the indignity of destitution. From its uncertain beginnings, when Father McGivney was the only person willing to work toward its success, it has grown to an international membership of 1.7 million men. At heart, though, Father McGivney was never anything more than an American parish priest, and nothing less than that, either—beloved by children, trusted by young adults, and regarded as a "positive saint" by the elderly in his New Haven parish. In an incredible work of academic research, Douglas Brinkley (The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc, Tour of Duty) and Julie M. Fenster (Race of the Century, Ether Day) re-create the life of Father McGivney, a fiercely dynamic yet tenderhearted man. Though he was only thirty-eight when he died, Father McGivney has never been forgotten. He remains a true "people's priest," a genuinely holy man—and perhaps the most beloved parish priest in U.S. history. Moving and inspirational, Parish Priest chronicles the process of canonization that may well make Father McGivney the first American-born parish priest to be declared a saint by the Vatican.
For the past three decades, many history professors have allowed their biases to distort the way America’s past is taught. These intellectuals have searched for instances of racism, sexism, and bigotry in our history while downplaying the greatness of America’s patriots and the achievements of “dead white men.” As a result, more emphasis is placed on Harriet Tubman than on George Washington; more about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II than about D-Day or Iwo Jima; more on the dangers we faced from Joseph McCarthy than those we faced from Josef Stalin. A Patriot’s History of the United States corrects those doctrinaire biases. In this groundbreaking book, America’s discovery, founding, and development are reexamined with an appreciation for the elements of public virtue, personal liberty, and private property that make this nation uniquely successful. This book offers a long-overdue acknowledgment of America’s true and proud history.
Charles Carroll was one of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. This wealthy young landowner not only played a key role in founding the United States of America, but a surprising one. He was Catholic. In Maryland, laws prohibited Catholics from all aspects of public life including public worship, schooling, and the right to vote or hold a seat in the House of Burgesses. However, Charles was uniquely prepared by the best of European educations, both religious and secular, to understand and help form the new nation that considered freedom to be a fundamental principle. Though staunchly patriotic, it wasn’t until 1769—when the governor enacted an oppressive policy that would affect all Marylanders—that the young planter began to speak out publicly. Adopting the pen name “First Citizen,” Charles used his well-sharpened reasoning to begin a series of essays in the Maryland Gazette, championing the rights of the people. The author, Milton Lomask, focuses on the early events of Charles’ career in statesmanship. By using lively dialog based in part on Carroll’s own letters, he succeeds in bringing to life not only the character of a man who helped to establish and shape the United States of America, but also the times in which he lived. Includes a useful Author’s Note Historical Insight by Daria Sockey
Historically, black Americans have affiliated in far greater numbers with certain protestant denominations than with the Roman Catholic church. In analyzing this phenomenon scholars have sometimes alluded to the dearth of black Catholic priest, but non one has adequately explained why the church failed to ordain significant numbers of black clergy until the 1930s. Desegregating the Altar, a broadly based study encompassing Afro-American, Roman catholic, southern, and institutional history, fills that gap by examining the issue through the experience of St. Joseph’s Society of the Sacred Heart, or the Josephites, the only American community of Catholic priests devoted exclusively to evangelization of blacks. Drawing on extensive research in the previously closed or unavailable archives of numerous archdioceses, diocese, and religious communities, Stephen J. Ochs shows that, in many cases, Roman catholic authorities purposely excluded Afro-Americans from their seminaries. The conscious pattern of discrimination on the part of numerous bishops and heads of religious institutes stemmed from a number of factors, including the church’s weak and vulnerable position in the South and the consequent reluctance of its leaders to challenge local racial norms; the tendency of Roman Catholics to accommodate to the regional and national cultures in which they lived; deep-seated psychosexual fears that black men would be unable to maintain celibacy as priests; and a “missionary approach” to blacks that regarded them as passive children rather than as potential partners and leaders. The Josephites, under the leadership of John R. Slattery, their first superior general (1893–1903), defied prevailing racist sentiment by admitting blacks into their college and seminary and raising three of them to the priesthood between 1891 and 1907. This action proved so explosive, however, that it helped drive Slattery out of the church and nearly destroyed the Josephite community. In the face of such opposition, Josephite authorities closed their college and seminary to black candidates except for an occasional mulatto. Leadership in the development of a black clergy thereupon passed to missionaries of the Society of the Diving Word. Meanwhile, Afro-American Catholics, led by Professor Thomas Wyatt, refused to allow the Josephites to abandon the filed quietly. They formed the Federated Colored Catholics of America and pressed the Josephites to return to their earlier policies; they also communicated their grievances to the Holy See, which, in turn, quietly pressured the American church to open its seminaries to black candidates. As a result, by 1960, the number of black priests and seminarians in the Josephites and throughout the Catholic church in the United States had increased significantly. Stephen Ochs’s study of the Josephites illustrates the tenacity and insidiousness of institutional racism and the tendency of churches to opt for institutional security rather than a prophetic stance in the face of controversial social issues. His book ably demonstrates that the struggle of black Catholics for priests of their own race mirrored the efforts of Afro-Americans throughout American society to achieve racial equality and justice.
