The History of Liberal Catholicism in America

The Angelus - November 1979


Liberal Catholicism in America can trace its origins right back to Bishop John Carroll, the very first Bishop to be appointed to lead the American Catholics after independence. It is possible to trace Liberal Catholicism from his writings down to Fr. John Courtney Murray of more recent times and, of course, the proliferation of Modernists to be found today of whom nothing more be said here.

Bishop Carroll was born in Maryland and after studying in France spent some time in England. In France it is said that Benjamin Franklin came to see him. At the Sorbonne he will have picked up Gallican ideas; that is to say, a reduction in Papal powers and a denial of any type of Papal infallibility. In England he met all the leading members of the notorious "Catholic Committee" which caused so much trouble to the English Bishops in the latter part of the 18th Century. In particular, he met Fr. Joseph Berington, a leading "progressive" of his day and member of the "Committee". He had been dismissed as a Professor of Philosophy at Douay for "rejecting current metaphysics and for the boldness of his opinions and the manner of answering his opponents in public disputation." Later on he was twice suspended from the use of his priestly faculties until he made a more ample and formal retraction of certain errors in his writings. In particular, one remark caused much scandal: "I am no Papist nor is my religion popery...the Pope is the first magistrate in a well regulated State...he has no absolute jurisdiction over each Bishop and Pastor." This is pure Gallicanism, and as we shall see it became the basis for what is known as "Americanism," the American version of the same heresy.

When Carroll moved to America as Bishop after a five-year delay, because even then his orthodoxy was suspect, he continued to correspond with Berington. The correspondence was published in The Catholic Miscellany for 1828. At one time John Carroll asked Berington for explicit suggestions as to further "Church reforms". He asked his mentor, "What about having the Mass in English much simplified? What about abolishing clerical celibacy?" Berington replied strongly in favor of an English Mass and asked why should not Carroll use the opportunity of the establishment of American Catholic diocesan bishops for a declaration of independence from Papal absolutism. He suggested a married clergy and joint Catholic-Protestant Sunday schools. In a later letter he wrote,
Fr. Berington would clearly have been quite at home with the 20th-century progressives!

Bishop Carroll's seal of office was crowned with 13 stars round the Madonna instead of the usual 12, to signify the 13 states of America. He delayed introducing the ban on Freemasonry as long as possible and introduced as much English in the administration of the Sacraments as was possible to the great annoyance of the thousands of non-Irish immigrants.

Not all the early bishops shared the views of Carroll, but Americanism received another boost from Bishop England (died 1842) who spoke to Congress in 1826.
Bishop England was responsible also for starting the policy of stamping out the Catholic customs of large national immigrant Catholic groups like the Spanish.

Americanism came into full bloom with Cardinal Gibbons in the latter part of the 19th Century together with his henchmen Bishops Ireland, Keane, and O'Connell. It was at this time that the heresy of Americanism was condemned by Rome, but before looking at the circumstances of this condemnation we can consider some quotes from the leaders. In 1892 for instance, Archbishop Ireland lectured in Paris on the Catholic Church in America where the phrases of this frock-coated prelate, so unlike a bishop in appearance, thrilled his hearers. One little gem from a Paris conference: "An intimate union of the Church and the age is desirable for both. It is better to study works on social economy than those of Bourdaloue." Back at home Archbishop Ireland is quoted as saying, "The Catholic Church, I am sure, has no fear of democracy, this flowering of her own most sacred principles of the equality, fraternity and liberty of all men, in Christ and through Christ." On another occasion he related to his hearers that "Christ made the social question the basis of his ministry."

Archbishop Gibbons was known for his very close allegiance to the State. He celebrated grand public Masses on Thanksgiving Day to the horrified opposition of the Bishop of Savannah who said, "Gibbons has out-Heroded Herod by wanting to recognize the damnable puritanical substitute for Christmas." There was no doubt that the American style of democracy could lead towards religious indifferentism, and Gibbons once boasted that his catechism contained "not a single line which might offend Protestantism."

The "troubles" which led to the condemnation of Americanism can be traced directly back to 1891. There were in America a large number of Catholic immigrant groups who were objecting to the ascendency of the "Irish" bishops who were mainly Americanists. Some German immigrants petitioned Leo XIII to "grant priests devoting themselves to the immigrants all the rights, privileges, and perogatives enjoyed by the priests of the country...and it seems desirable that the Catholics of each nationality where it is deemed possible, have in the episcopacy of the country where they emigrate, several bishops who are all of the same origin...(then) every immigrant race would be represented and needs protected."

Such a policy was clearly contrary to the Americanists who wished to stamp out any trace of foreign cultures which might arouse "suspicion" among their fellow countrymen. Archbishop Ireland commented on the petition:

In 1893 a "World Exposition" was held at Chicago, and some of its directors decided to summon an "International Congress of Religions," at which representatives of each explained what it was doing for the good of mankind. For over two weeks at the behest of Cardinal Gibbons, priests mingled with not only Protestant ministers but with archimandrites, Buddhists, and Moslems with a view to "reaching agreement on common moral and religious principles aiming to concerted action against common foes." Rome looked on with stunned silence at the time but when the same caper was proposed for Paris in 1900, Leo XIII stepped in with a quiet but firm "No!"

In 1895 the Americanists protested at the setting up of an Apostolic Delegation for America. Pope Leo XIII firmly insisted in a letter known as Longinqua Oceani. This contained the first warning against the dangers of Americanism. After praising the work done by the Church in America the Pope wrote, "The Church...would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of public authority...!" Later on, as we will see, Fr. Murray would try every means to evade this simple statement and replace it with his own doctrine.

The final condemnation of the Americanists came in 1899 with a letter from the Pope to Cardinal Gibbons known as Testem Benevolentiae. The issue which gave rise to the printing of this letter was a biography of a certain Father Isaac Hecker, a convert Jew, who had died in 1888. Father Hecker founded the Missionaries of St. Paul (Paulists) a congregation without vows like the Oratorians but intended solely for the apostolate among Protestants. He was evidently a very strong character, some would say saintly. He was hostile to book-learning and considered himself to be directly guided by the Holy Spirit. He attached little importance to tradition and the hierarchy. He told his hearers that the Catholic Church offered a "flight to God much more direct than any of which they had ever dreamed." Fr. Hecker's brand of spirituality emphasized the active virtues but in the context of his approach to the modern world there was little room for the Christian virtues of obedience, sacrifice, and humility.

The difficulties really started when the Biography was translated into French by Felix Klein, who also wrote a long preface to the work in which he presented Hecker as the "apostle of the new age" who had "found and realized himself as the ideal priest of the future." There was violent reaction to this nonsense in France and soon afterwards the work was condemned by the Congregation of the Index. This led those in high places in America to ask if the condemnation applied to Americanism as a whole. Leo XIII replied not with an encyclical but with a friendly yet firm letter (known as Testem Benevolentiae) to Cardinal Gibbons in which he pointed out exactly what it was that was unsatisfactory in the Americanist system.

Here are two quotations from the Letter.

Later on we can read,

The Archbishop, of course, accepted the condemnation but denied that it affected him or his supporters in any way. Readers will note that the points referred to have recently come to the fore again not only in American but throughout the Church since the Council.

Other points from the letter were a condemnation of "an excessive love of freedom which ran the risk of endangering authority in the Church, " "an exaltation of merely natural and active virtues to the detriment of the passive spiritual virtues which are fundamental to Christianity" and "a disdain for monastic vows as unsuitable for modern man."

One good result of the early condemnation of Americanism and the simple fact that most of the bishops and priests were more concerned with problems of administration and the needs of their flock than with theology, was that America was spared the worst excesses of the full Modernist crisis at the start of the 20th Century. America produced only one Modernist of any real note, William L. Sullivan, and he was not in the same league as Loisy or Tyrell.

William Sullivan was born in 1872 of Irish immigrant parents in Boston. He entered the diocesan seminary at the age of 16 and during his theological training he began to entertain strange ideas. In his "Diary" he described the famous "Synopsis of Fundamental Theology" by Fr. Tanquerey as "trash" and wrote, "I'm insulting the reason God has given me by learning it." In 1897 he joined the Paulists inspired largely by the life of Fr. Hecker which we have just considered. Ordained a priest in 1899 he worked for two years as a missionary in the deep South. While down there he read some of the works of the famous English writer Lord Acton. Acton was well known for his virtual refusal to accept Papal infallibility and his liberal views on doctrine. From Acton, Sullivan picked up his Church history and in particular a violent hatred for the inquisition and the whole of the First Vatican Council.

In 1901 he had a complete breakdown and was sent back to the Paulist house in Washington to teach Scripture and Theology. He started writing articles for learned reviews. His articles were liberal in spirit without being definitely modernistic. His crisis came in 1908 and was sparked off initially by conversations with other priests who were also undergoing crises of conscience. He asked to be sent back to parish work and the final breaking point came in Chicago when a priest-professor told him that he, too, had been troubled over points of dogma and that his cure had been to close his critical studies of the New Testament and Church history, resolve that nothing would ever move him from the Church or priesthood, and resume daily recitation of the Rosary. The effect of this on Fr. Sullivan was quite the opposite of what was intended. He wrote, "If that is what he calls peace, I do not want it, I reject it." By that time Sullivan considered he could no longer remain in a Catholic Church which was corrupt and unfaithful to the teachings of Christ. He sought for the ideal Church but was unable in conscience to remain in what he saw as the present corrupt body. In 1909 he left the priesthood and the Church together with five other Paulist Fathers. Shortly afterwards he became a Unitarian minister, marrying in 1913 and dying in 1935.

His modernism is outlined in two works he wrote just after leaving the Church. The intellectual work was Letters to His Holiness Pope Pius X by a Modernist. This work contained the full outpouring of all that had been largely locked up in his tortured mind. There was a violent diatribe against the Inquisition, the execution of heretics, a long list of Papal scandals, and an attempt to disprove infallibility. The recent condemnations by the Pope were linked to the sad history of clerical oppression.

His personal modernism was simply Americanism carried to its logical extremes.

From this it followed that the American Catholic Church as part of that civilization was alone qualified to rescue the rest of the Church from its immoral history, devotional superstition, and primitive institutions to which Papal rule bound it." Sullivan went on to stress the American system as the embodiment of the "gospel" of democracy, The modern world was being regenerated by the idea of democracy which it "worshipped". "There is no measuring the fervor of the loyalty with which we hold it. Eventually even the Papacy must bow before Liberty, the Mistress of the modern world." Sullivan insisted on the restoration of the original democracy of the Church in the first century. He claimed that reform had always come from the people and would do so again. He called for a "representative government, autonomous local synods, and home rule." The papal contention that a state not united with the Church was in germ, at least, atheistic, Sullivan dismissed, writing, "Was it (the State) not Christian when it promotes justice, cherishes peace, elevates its colonies and leaves the human conscience free...when its rulers enter upon their office with a solemn recognition of the Deity, when it provides its seamen and soldiers with every facility for worship?"

Sullivan also promoted his modernism in a novel entitled The Priest. The hero is a certain Father Hanlon, much troubled by the discussions going on in the Catholic Church and seeking for the "truth". The various characters in the book propound the modernist views which Sullivan held. For instance, a certain professor in discussion with Hanlon speaks of Catholicism as "the highest and fullest revelation of God in the modern age as were the prophets in their day. The truth of Catholicism as a whole can be understood in terms of this growing revelation containing within it the eternal truth of each particular dogma."

This is roughly the teaching of the great modernists Tyrell and Loisy that revelation is an ongoing process with dogmas being changed for each age. The same idea of progressive revelation is also to be found in the works of Teilhard de Chardin and his supporters.

Later on in the novel, Hanlon meets a certain "Father Fleming" who tells our hero that "he remained a priest because he believed he could forward the processes of the diviner life of developing humanity by using his office to inculcate the virtues of a noble character, love of truth, love of justice and a spirit of service into his parishioners." Fleming tells Hanlon that "he stood in no awe of the hierarchy, and advised prayer and fidelity to conscience to all who came to him feeling they must leave the Church."

With the crushing of the modernists between 1908 and 1914 there came a period of theological calm for the American Church. However, from 1950 onwards disputes started up again, this time centering on the person of Fr. John Courtney Murray, S.J., and his views on the relationship of Church and State.

Father Murray was born in 1904 of a Scottish father and Irish mother. He joined the Jesuits in 1920 and was ordained in 1933. He then studied in Rome at the Gregorian University and obtained a doctorate there in 1937. He returned to Woodstock, Maryland,as a Professor of Theology specializing in the field of Grace and the Trinity. He held this post until his death in 1967, and combined it with various fellowships and visiting lectureships at other universities to say nothing of his work as a peritus at Vatican II.

It might have been better if Fr. Murray had stuck to Grace or Trinity, but from around 1950 he became well known for maintaining that America's brand of church-state relationship was actually more consistent with Church doctrine than the Church's usual claim to a preferred status in the ideal State. Following criticism from Rome which was relayed to the American Superior General of the Jesuits, he restricted his pronouncements from 1957 onwards until he was solemnly reinstated to favor and appeared as a peritus to the American bishops at the Council. He was, in fact, largely responsible for the final draft of the Decree on Religious Liberty which is based on his ideas although the International Group of Fathers were able to introduce certain amendments to the text which toned down the arrogant liberalism of the original and restated that the Catholic Church remained the One, True Church. It is said that Murray was greatly upset by late alterations to the text.

In the 1950's Fr. Murray spent much time trying to get around Leo XIII's teaching in Longinqua Oceani that the American system was not the ideal system for church-state relationships. In particular, he attacked the Spanish system which was at that time the closest to the normal position for ideal relations between Church and state. Under General Franco there was a concordat which gave most favored status to the Church. Of course, it is now fashionable to decry Franco and his regime as Fascist, but the fact remains that Franco saw Spain emerge as an important power, while internally he kept the Basque and Catalan quiet. Now, after a few short years of so-called "democracy" there is almost civil war in Basque lands, strikes are commonplace, and pornography, previously driven deep underground, is now flourishing in its many guises in the streets, shops and cinema.

Yet democracy was put forward as an ideal by Fr. Murray as early as 1949. He wrote:
After the Council Fr. Murray had hoped to move on to other areas of Church teaching, but Our Lord called him to His own in 1967 before he could develop his ideas about the Church now being called on to build an earthly city. Almost the last words he wrote were:

To conclude, we might look briefly on standard orthodox Church teaching on Church-State relationships and see if Vatican Council affected this teaching under the influence of Fr. Murray.

The teaching on Church-State relationships is given its most classic exposition by St. Robert Bellarmine who follows St. Thomas Aquinas closely. They both speak of what is termed an "indirect power" of Church over State. St. Thomas writes, "

In effect this will mean that the State should not pass laws legalizing divorce, abortion, pornography, etc., and should protect and encourage the Church. If a particular government acts in this way against the Church, then the local hierarchy have the right and duty to protest loudly and clearly. Behind this teaching is the obvious point that both Church and State are bound by Divine Laws. As for toleration of other religions, the rule is that "error has no rights". However, having said that, we can allow a person who sincerely but, of course, erroneously holds beliefs which differ from those of the Catholic Church, may be allowed to worship according to his own lights providing the common good of Society is not affected. This would, in effect, mean that non-Catholics would be able to worship freely but not be allowed to seek converts to their faith and that if any of their teachings were contrary to divine law (i.e. abortion, divorce, etc.) then they would not have freedom in those matters. This was in effect near enough the position in Spain under General Franco.

The doctrine on the evils of separation of Church and State is well put by Pope St. Pius X in the document Vehementer.

The denial of the Church's indirect power over civil rulers can be traced back to one Honoré de Tournely who was Professor at the Sorbonne at the start of the 18th Century. Both Fr. Berington and Bishop Carroll would have found his teachings prevalent during their studies. Bishop Carroll, as we have seen, took them to America thus preparing the way for Cardinal Gibbons, Sullivan, and Fr. John Courtney Murray.

It was Fr. Murray, as we have seen, who prepared the document on Religious Liberty and on this question of Church and State we read:

The International Group of Fathers wanted the words "public order" replaced by "common good" thus preserving the reality of the Church's doctrine. But this amendment was rejected. This can only be reckoned as a serious blunder, for in effect it means that any sect at all can propagate ideas totally at variance with Christian morality while Church leaders can hardly say a word against them. Many people believe that this is why many National hierarchies have not made more fuss over the introduction in their countries of anti-Christian legislation. All we can now do is to hope that the orthodox Christian teaching on the matter can be reinstated as soon as possible. Such has been the legacy of Americanism.



General historical material taken from "A Fight for God", History of the Church, Vol. 9, Daniel-Rops, Dent (London, 1966).

Quotations from various American Bishops taken from "The Irish Connection", Big Rock Papers, Leesburg, Va.

The story of Fr. W. Sullivan and the quotations from his works taken from Three Modernists, John Ratte, Sheed & Ward, (London, 1968).

General material and quotations for Fr. John Courtney Murray taken from his biography Theologian in Conflict by Donald E. Pelotte, SSS, Paulist Press (New York, 1975).

Information on the relationship between Bishop Carroll and Fr. Berington taken from The Handle and the Axe by J.C.H. Aveling, Blond & Briggs (London, 1976).


[Emphasis - The Catacombs]