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From Advent to Easter: Catholic Preaching in New York City, 1808–1809.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

James M. O'toole
James M. O'toole
Affiliation:
associate professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston,Massachusetts.
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Extract

The recent interest in reconstructing the history of spirituality and religious belief is nowhere more welcome than in the history of Roman Catholicism in the United States. From the very point of its emergence as a recognizable subdiscipline at the turn of the century and lasting into very recent scholarship, American Catholic history has been a relentlessly “topdown”affair. It focused on the leaders of the church—almost all of them white males—and on official church institutions. Episcopal biography was the preferred form and, as often as not, “progress” was the theme: the hierarchy established itself steadily along the advancing frontier; populations of clergy, religious, and laity all increased heroically; immigrants once despised were transformed into the American mainstream. There was even an inspirational final chapter to the tale, as one American Catholic finally grasped the brass ring of acceptance and moved into the White House. The story was a deliberately edifying one, but it was a story primarily for insiders. Perhaps for that reason alone, American Catholic history seemed to remain, as Leslie Tender has recently observed, “on the margins” of serious scholarly discourse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 63 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 365 - 377
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1994

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References

1. Leslie Woodcock Tentler, “On the Margins: The State of American Catholic History,” American Quarterly 45 (1993): 104–127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Dolan, Jay P., Catholic Revivalism: The American Experience, 1830–1900 (Notre Dame, Ind., 1978);Google ScholarAnn Taves, The Household of Faith: Roman Catholic Devotions in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (Notre Dame, Ind., 1986);Google ScholarOrsi, Robert A., The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880–1950 (New Haven, Conn., 1985);Google ScholarChinnici, Joseph P., Living Stones: The History and Structure of Catholic Spiritual Life in the United States (New York, 1989).Google Scholar

3. For some descriptions of recent Catholic archival activity, see Thomas, Evangeline, Women Religious History Sources (New York, 1983),Google Scholarand O'Toole, James M., “Catholic Diocesan Archives: A Renaissance in Progress,” American Archivist 43 (1980): 284–293.CrossRefGoogle ScholarAlso useful are the volumes in the “Sources of American Spirituality Series” (now, unfortunately, discontinued), published by Paulist Press.Google Scholar

4. Like many other historical sources, these sermons have survived largely through happenstance. Kohlmann wrote them out, one after another, in the pages of a small notebook. When he left New York in 1815, the notebook was kept by his young assistant priest, a fellow Jesuit named Benedict J. Fenwick. In 1825, Fenwick was made the second bishop of Boston, and he apparently brought the notebook with him, where it was discovered again in the 1840s. Today, the manuscript is in the collections of the Archives of the Archdiocese of Boston. I am grateful to the Archives for permitting me to examine and photocopy the original notebook. I am at present preparing a scholarly edition of these manuscripts.Google Scholar

5. The American Catholic Sermon Collection in the Archives and Special Collections Department of Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, for example, contains nearly five hundred sermons, composed by more than forty different priests, covering the period 1723–1800.Google Scholar

6. See Butler, Jon, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass., 1990); on parish missions, see Dolan, Catholic Revivalism.Google Scholar

7. Kohlmann, to Strickland, , 7 November 1808, “Unpublished Letters of Father Anthony Kohlmann, S.J., with a Short Account of His Life,” Historical Records and Studies 1 (1899): 66–76.Google Scholar

8. Carroll, to Strickland, , 25 February 1807, John Carroll Papers, ed. Hanley, Thomas O'Brien, 3 vols. (Notre Dame, Ind., 1976), 3:10;Google Scholar Carroll to Strickland, 8 December 1808, ibid., 3:75.

9. Kohlmannn returned to Europe in 1824 and died in Rome in 1836. For the outlines of his life, see Parsons, Wilfred, “Rev. Anthony Kohlmann, S.J. (1771–1824),” Catholic Historical Review 4 (1918): 38–51,Google Scholarand Joachim, Jules, Le P`ere Antoine Kohlmann, S.J., 1771–1836 (Paris, 1937).Google ScholarOn the confession trial, see Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States, 3 vols. (New York, 1950), 1:838–850.Google ScholarKohlmann's, emphasis on respectability is stated in his letter to Strickland, 7 November 1808, “Unpublished Letters,” Historical Records and Studies 1 (1899): 71.Google Scholar

10. For an overview of this entire subject, see Connors, Joseph M., “Catholic Homiletic Theory in Historical Perspective” (Ph.D. dissertation: Northwestern University, 1962).Google ScholarSee also the somewhat controversial interpretation of the essays in Kupke, Raymond J., ed., American Catholic Preaching in the Time of John Carroll (Lanham, Md., 1991).Google ScholarThe synodal decree on preaching is in “Statuta Baltimorensis anno 1791 Celebrate,” Concilia Provincialia Baltimori ab anno 1829 usque ad annum 1849 (Baltimore, 1851), p. 20.Google Scholar

11. Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany; sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent. (Because the manuscript is unpaginated, all citations will identify the sermon only.)Google Scholar

12. The discussions of confession are in the sermons for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, the First and Second Sundays of Advent, and the instructions of the Parish Mission. On the changing emphasis in confession, see Bossy, John, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (New York, 1985), pp. 54–56 and 127–128.Google ScholarO'Malley, John W., The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), pp. 136–152, describes the Jesuit understanding of and approach to confession; on the practice of general confession, see pp. 137—139.Google Scholar

13. On monthly confession and communion, see especially the instructions of the Parish Mission. On the growth of eucharistic devotion in the United States and the movement toward more frequent communion, see Chinnici, Living Stones, pp. 146–156.Google Scholar

14. Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany.Google Scholar

15. Instructions of the Parish Mission. Abstinence from meat was demanded of American Catholics on both Friday and Saturday until about 1830. The so-called Ember Days required fasting and abstinence from meat on the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday of four designated weeks each year.Google ScholarFor all these practices, see New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 5, pp. 841–850, s.v.Google Scholar“Fast and Abstinence.” Kohlmann's promotion of everyday piety continued the traditions of the older European Jesuit sodalities described in Louis Chatellier, The Europe of the Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society (Cambridge, U.K., 1987).Google Scholar

16. Sermon for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost; sermon for the Feast of the Circumcision; Instructions of the Parish Mission.Google Scholar

17. Sermon for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost; sermon for the Feast of the Circumcision; Instructions of the Parish Mission.Google Scholar

18. Sermon for Easter. For the interest in the rational defense of religion, see McCool, Gerald A., Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Century: The Quest for a Unitary Method (New York, 1977), pp. 7–21,Google Scholarand jaroslav Pelikan, Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (Since 1700) (Chicago, 1989), pp. 105–110.Google ScholarKohlmann pursued this line of argument further in the 1820s during a brief pamphlet war with Jared Sparks; these writings were compiled in his Unitarianism Philosophically and Theologically Examined (Washington, D.C., 1821–1822).Google Scholar

19. The following are cited twice in these sermons: Bernard; Gregory the Great; Ignatius of Antioch; Jerome; Tertullian; and Thomas Aquinas. The following merited one mention each: Ambrose; Francis of Assisi; Hilary of Poitiers; Leo the Great; Origen; and Peter Chrysologus.Google Scholar

20. Sermon for the Feast of the Purification.Google Scholar

21. Sermon for the Feast of the Purification; Instructions of the Parish Mission. On the later definition of the Immaculate Conception, see Holmes, J. Derek, The Triumph of the Holy See: A Short History of the Papacy in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1978), pp. 140–142,Google Scholarand Pelikan, Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture, pp. 143–144 and 208–209.Google Scholar

22. Instructions of the Parish Mission. The best studies of the later devotional phenomena are Orsi, Madonna of 115th Street, and Taves, Household of Faith.Google Scholar

23. Speech for the Erection of a Society of Charity; sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent; “Publication,” 1808; charity sermon for the Poor School.Google ScholarFor a recent discussion of the larger theme of respectability, see Bushman, Richard L., The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities (New York, 1992).Google Scholar

24. These examples are from the section identified as “Special Duties” in the Instructions of the Parish Mission.Google Scholar

25. See, for example, Wood, Gordon S., The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992).Google Scholar