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“The Crisis in Church-State Relationships in the U.S.A.” A Recently Discovered Text by John Courtney Murray

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Joseph A. Komonchak
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Extract

In October 1950, John Courtney Murray, S.J., wrote for the use of Msgr. Giovanni Battista Montini of the Vatican Secretariat of State a memorandum: “The crisis in Church-State Relationships in the U.S.A.” An attempt by Murray to encourage a development of Catholic teaching on church and state and religious freedom that would enable American Catholics to give support in principle to the First Amendment of the U.S Constitution, the memorandum was submitted to some American churchmen and to the Vatican's Holy Office. The dossier here published for the first time includes the texts of Murray's memorandum and of responses to it written by Samule Cardinal Stritch and Fr. Francis J. Cornell, C.SS.R. The introduction to these texts sets the memorandum in context and explains the Holy Office's actions against Murray.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 61 , Issue 4 , Fall 1999 , pp. 675 - 686
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1999

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References

1. See Pelotte, Donald E., John in Courtney Murray: Theologian in Conflict (New York: Paulist Press, 1975);Google ScholarGonnet, Dominique, La liberté religieuse à Vatican II: La contribution de John Courtney Murray (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1994);Google ScholarKomonchak, Joseph A., “The Silencing of John Courtney Murray,” in Cristianesimo nella Storia: Saggi in onore di Giuseppe Alberigo, ed. Melloni, A. et al. (Bologna: II Mulino, 1996) 657–702Google Scholar (a shorter version of this essay has been published as “Catholic Principle and the American Experiment: The Silencing of John Courtney Murray,” U.S. Catholic Historian 17 [1999]:28–45).Google Scholar

2. Connell, Francis J., “The Catholic Position on Freedom of Worship,” Columbia 23/3 (12 1943): 6, 24;Google Scholar reprinted as Freedom of Worship: Catholic Position (New York: Paulist Press, 1944).Google Scholar

3. Murray, John Courtney, “Governmental Repression of Heresy,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 3 (1948): 26–98;Google ScholarConnell, Francis J., “Discussion of ‘Governmental Repression of Heresy:”Google Scholaribid., 98–101; see also Connell, , “Christ the King of Civil Rulers,” American Ecclesiastical Review 119 (10 1948): 244–53.Google Scholar

4. Murray, John Courtney, “The Problem of ‘the Religion of the State’” American Ecclesiastical Review 124 (05 1951): 327–52;Google ScholarConnell, Francis J., “The Theory of the ‘Lay State,’”Google Scholaribid., 125 (July 1951):7–18; Murray, , “For the Freedom and Transcendence of the Church,”Google Scholaribid., 126 Qanuary 1952): 28– 48; Connell, , “Reply to Fr. Murray”Google Scholaribid., 126 (January 1952): 49–59.

5. Connell to Pizzardo, Washington, 1 August 1950 (copy), Redemptorist Archives Baltimore Province (RABP), “Church-State Letters”; the accompanying memorandum, “Adnotationes de quadam nova theoria theologica,” is dated 2 August 1950; RABP, Connell Papers, “Church-State Writings, John Courtney Murray.”

6. Connell to Fenton, Washington, 29 June 1951 (copy); Fenton to Connell, 29 August 1951; RABP, Connell Papers, “Church-State Letters.”

7. Connell to Cicognani, Washington, 23 February 1952 (copy); Cicognani to Connell, Washington, 27 February 1952; RABP, Connell Papers, “Church-State Letters.”

8. On this meeting see Fouilloux, Etienne, Les catholiques et l'unité chrétienne du XIXe au Xxe siècle: ltinéraires européeens d'expression française (Paris: Centurion, 1982) 705–709;Google Scholar“Catholic Leaders in Unionistic Field Meet at Grottaferrata,” Unitas, 2 (1950) 303;Google Scholar“A Conference on Christian Unity at Grottaferrata,” Eastern Churches Quarterly 8 (Winter 1950): 494–97;Google ScholarCongar, Yves, Dialogue between Christians: Catholic Contributions to Ecumenism (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1966), pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

9. Boyer had been in touch with Murray in the planning stages of Unitas and had asked him to consider establishing “a national committee of Unitas for America” (Murray to Parsons, 13 December 1945, Woodstock, WCA, Parsons Papers, Box 11, File 40).

10. From an untitled, undated Chicago lecture, ca. 1965, after the promulgation of Vatican II's Decree on Ecumenism (Woodstock College Archives [WCA], Box 6, File 461). A year or two later, Murray gave a similar description of the event: “In my turn I had to report that there was no ecumenical Catholic bishops”; see Murray, John Courtney, “A Memorable Man,” in One of a Kind: Essays in Tribute to Gustave Weigel (Wilkes-Barre, PA: Dimension Books, 1967), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

11. For these two quotations from Congar's unpublished journal, which may be found in the archives of Le Saulchoir, Paris, I am grateful to Professor Étienne Fouilloux in his letter to me of 20 December 1991, and to Eric Mahieu in a communication, 8 April 1998; my translation from the French.

12. Murray to Robert Leiber, undated but before 12 June 1953, when Leiber replied to it; copy in my possession; my translation from the German.

13. Murray to John Tracy Ellis, Ridgefield, CT, 20 July 1953; Archives of the Catholic University of America (ACUA), Ellis Papers.

14. Murray to Vincent A. McCormick, Woodstock, 24 April 1951 (copy); WCA, Box 2, File 151.

15. It is possible that Murray already knew that his views were under examination in Rome and that Connell was among those who had prompted the interest. When in 1952 Connell had understood Murray's article of public reply to him to disparage Connell's intelligence, Murray's letter of apology included at the end an oblique criticism: “You will doubtless agree that it is more painful to a theologian to have his orthodoxy impugned than his intelligence. I can always try to meet public objections to my opinions. But it is particularly painful when suspicions of unorthodoxy are raised privately, by word of mouth in high places. Up to the present, no one, either in America or in Europe, has brought forward warrant for such suspicions;” Murray to Connell, New Haven, 25 January 1952; RABP, Connell Papers, “Church-State Writings, John Courtney Murray.”

16. “The Crisis in Church-State Relationships in the USA,” Library of Congress, Clare Booth Luce Papers, Box 703, Folder 14.

17. Murray to Vincent A. McCormick, Woodstock, 23 November 1953 (copy); WCA, Murray Papers. A copy of the transcript of Luce's statement on church and state during her appearance before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 17 February 1953, can be found in her papers in the Library of Congress, Amb. File, B642, 2.

18. Montini to Stritch, Vatican City, 4 May 1951; Archives of the Archdiocese of Chicago (AAChicago), Stritch Papers, Box 4, File 10.

19. Msgr. Joseph F. McGeough to Stritch, Vatican City, 5 May 1952; Stritch to McGeough, Chicago, 15 May 1952 (copy); AAChicago, Stritch Papers, Box 4, File 10. Stritch's reply is entitled “Observations on the Memorandum ‘The Crisis in Church-State Relationships in the U.S.A.’”

20. RABP, Connell Papers, “Church-State.”

21. There are at least three versions of Ottaviani's speech. A typed copy of it as delivered can be found in the ACUA, NCWC/USCC. A significantly revised version was published as a pamphlet, Doveri dello Stato cattolico verso la religione (Rome: Ateneo Lateranense, 1953),Google Scholar the basis for the English translation that appeared in The Newark Advocate in 1953 and for another translation published as a pamphlet, Duties of the Catholic State in Regard to Religion (Tipperary: “The Tipperary Star,” 1954;Google Scholar republished Kansas City, MO Angelus Press, 1993). Finally, there is a version, apparently shortened and altered at Ottaviani's direction, in “Church and State: Some Present Problems in the Light of the Teaching of Pope Pius XII,” American Ecclesiastical Review 128 (05 1953): 321–34.Google Scholar There is reason to think that the revisions of the spoken text responded to Vatican criticism of the vigorous and unnuanced character of Ottaviani's remarks.

22. The relevant materials are found in the Gagnebet papers at the Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, Bologna, Italy.

23. Leiber to Murray, Rome, 12 June 1953; WCA, Murray Papers.

24. See Acta Apostolicae Sedis 45 (1953): 794–802;Google Scholar English translation in American Ecclesiastical Review, 130 (02 1954): 129–38.Google Scholar

25. Murray spoke from handwritten notes, which he later typed out, he said, “exactly as I find them on my handwritten autograph.” Both the notes and the typescript can be found in the Murray Papers, WCA, but, in fact, the transcription is not entirely exact.

26. Letters were sent to Ottaviani by Connell, Fenton, and, it seems, Fr. Maurice Sheehy, all professors at Catholic University.

27. The indicted essay was “On the Structure of the Church-State Problem,” in The Catholic Church in World Affairs, ed. Gurian, Waldemar and Fitzsimons, M.A. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1954). pp. 11–32.Google Scholar

28. Fenton, 1954 Roman Diary (in my possession); RABP, Papers, Connell, “Church-State Letters.”Google Scholar

29. There is a copy of this document in the Gagnebet Papers, Istituto per le Scienze Religiose, Bologna.