Catholicism during the American Revolution

Steven M Baule, Ph.D.

Angered many, as it gave Catholics the right to worship freely in British America – specifically Quebec

Quebec was defined as modern day Canada, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin

This act greatly unnerved the 13 Protestant Colonies

Bourbon and Hapsburgs were pulling at the Roman Church

The Church was in a time of turmoil in that the curial and political cardinals and their supporters were in conflict over royal influence in episcopal appointments

1775 was a formal holy year (announced late due to the conclave)

Due to the Pretender to the English throne living in Rome, the British throne had an antagonistic relationship with the Papal States.

Of Maryland

Signed the Declaration of Independence

Estimates vary between 25,00 and 35,000 or 0.5% to 1.6% of American Colonists

Nearly all in the middle colonies

Jansenism (mostly Dutch / French)

Ultramontanism (means beyond the mountains or non-Italian or Italian depending upon perspective)

Febronism

Jubilee years established. Currently every 25 years

Index Librorum Prohibitorum

•First created in 1559•Final Version was printed in 1948 and remained in force until 14 June 1966 by Pope Paul VI•Diderot•Voltaire•Rousseau •Galileo•Pascal

Under the Catholic Bishop of the London District. During the war, he refused to have any communication with those who were his American ecclesiastical subjects.

At the close of the war, however, Bishop Talbot went so far as to refuse to give faculties to two Maryland priests who asked to return home.

Ultimately the papacy allowed the American Church their own bishop with the Diocese of Baltimore

Saint Augustine Florida is the oldest European city in the United States. The city was founded on September 8, 1565. Martin Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajalesbecame first parish priest of St. Augustine, the first established parish in the United States.

St. Ignatius was founded in 1641 by Jesuits who arrived on the Ark and the Dove to assist in the forming of a new English Colony. St. Inastius is located in Port Tobacco, Maryland. It remains the oldest continuously serving catholic church in the United States.

In 1733 the first public Catholic mass in Philadelphia was celebrated at St. Joseph’s Church by Joseph Greaton, SJ. Although challenged as contrary to English law, the right to such worship was upheld by the Provincial Council under William Penn’s 1701 Charter of Privileges. In 1757, the chapel was replaced by a larger church and six years later, St. Mary’s was constructed a block away.

Founded in 1770

Maryland was originally settled by Lord Baltimore to allow for Catholics to worship freely, but the rights were restricted during the Puritan Revolution

Ste. Anne's Church was the first building constructed in Fort Pontchartrain du Detroit, which later grew into the city of Detroit. Cadillac and French settlers arrived at the bank of the Detroit River on July 24, 1701. Construction began on a church on July 26, 1701, the feast day of Saint Anne. The parish was founded and named by the settlers in honor of the patron of France, Saint Anne, mother of Mary and grandmother of Jesus. Nicholas Constantine del Halle, a Franciscan, and Francois Vaillant, a Jesuit, were the two priests who accompanied the group. Vaillant returned east in the fall

Father Simple Bocquet began a new church building in 1755, within a year after he arrived. Bocquet stayed nearly 30 years during which time Detroit passed from French to British ownership and then to American.

He remained at the pastor of St. Anne’s until 1781. He was a member of the OFM.

British authorities moved the Michilimackinaccommunity to the safety of Mackinac Island during the American Revolution. Hoping to encourage the French-Canadian residents to move as well, Lieutenant Governor Patrick Sinclair ordered Ste. Anne’s Church dismantled and taken to the island in 1780. The sturdy log church was rebuilt along the shore of the island’s protected bay below the towering bluff that became home to the new fort.

The Holy Family Parish Church in Cahokia is the oldest continuously sited church in the state of Illinois.

Established in May of 1699 when Father Jean St. Cosme erected a missionary cross, a chapel and a log rectory.

Only a bell suspended from a tree in the churchyard, a missal printed in 1683, a monstrance made in 1717, a chalice, and a paten were saved from the 1783 fire.

Pope John Paul II used the chalice in his Mass when he visited St. Louis in 1999.

Immaculate Conception parish dates to Easter Sunday, 1675 when Father Marquette administered to the Indian Village at Utica, now Starved Rock, Illinois. The tribe migrated southward in the period from 1700-1703, and established themselves on a promontory at the confluence of the Kaskaskia and Mississippi Rivers. Great floods severed the promontory from the Illinois mainland, forming an island west of the main channel.

As early as 1734 the settlement was visited by Jesuit missionary priests. The first resident pastor, Sebastian Meurin, S.J., came in May, 1748. The first church was small, of upright posts fixed in the ground, with mud daubing and a bark roof. Parish records begin April 21, 1749.In 1763 the area came under British control. The Jesuits were

expelled and for many years the parish depended upon a lay clerk, Etienne Phillibert, for baptisms, burials, and prayer services. During this time the parish grew from 400 to 700 persons. Fr. Pierre Gibault visited Vincennes in 1769 and was greeted by a desperate crowd crying, Save us, Father; we are nearly in hell!Thereafter Fr. Gibault made periodic visits.. In 1784 Fr. Gibaultbecame the first resident priest in over twenty years. A new church was built of upright hewn timbers in 1786.

In 1775, Catholic settlers, mostly of English and Irish descent, began emigrating chiefly from Maryland to Kentucky, an outpost of the crown colony of Virginia. The first missionaries came around 1787.

Bardstown became one of the four dioceses in 1808.

Robeline (1717)

New Orleans - St. Louis Church - (1720)

La Balize near the mouth of the Mississippi River (1722)

German Coast [later St. Charles in Destrehan] (1723),

Pointe Coupee (1728)

Natchitoches (1728)

Chapitoulas [Metairie] (1729)

First Nuns Arrived in 1727 to manage the Royal Hospital in New Orleans

First permanent Spanish Capuchin friars arrived in 1772

Old Biloxi [Ocean Springs, Mississippi] (1699)

Mobile, Alabama (1703)

Natchez, Mississippi (1716)

Recollects arrived in New France in 1615 also known as Order of Friars Minor or Franciscans

Jesuits arrived in 1625

Sulpicians arrived in 1657 and served Montreal

Ursuline Sisters arrived in 1639 – teaching order. First nuns in the present US landed in 1727 at New Orleans

Hospitalieres de St. Joseph

Congregation de Notre0Dame

Jesuits were expelled from France in 1762In 1773, the Jesuits were disbanded as an order by Clement XIVCatherine the Great ignored the order, so they remained in Prussia and RussiaThe Jesuits in America became either Franciscans or the first diocesan priests in AmericaOnly 23 priests in British colonial America

Born 31 October 1705

Ordained as a Franciscan

Appointed a cardinal in 1759

He became pope in 1769

Suppressed the Society of Jesus in 1773

Clement XIV died 22 September 1774Conclave held from 8 October 1774 to 15 February 1775Called by some the first “modern” conclave

28 Cardinals were there from the start44 Participated in total including 2 who died 11 Did not participate at all

Divided into three groups:Zelanti (pre-Jesuit ~ mostly curialPolitical (anti-Jesuit)Some few in neither camp

265 ballots in order to elect a pope

Papal arms of Pius VI

Pius VI was born Gianangelo Braschi at Cesena, Italy, on Dec. 25, 1717. He took a degree in law and then became secretary to Cardinal Antonio Ruffo, in whose service he remained until 1753. Braschi gained the attention of Pope Benedict XIV and was appointed canon of St. Peter's, Rome, and private secretary to the Pope. He was made bishop in 1758 and treasurer of the apostolic chamber in 1766. The title of cardinal was bestowed upon him on April 26, 1773.

Died in 1799 a prisoner of Napoleon

He was the longest serving pope to that point in history.

Apostolic Vicar of the London District

22 Sept. 1758 to 12 Jan. 1781

Translated the Vulgate into English

Douay Rheims translation

1 of 4 Catholic Bishops in Great Britain

Apostolic Vicar of the London District 12 Jan. 1781 26 Jan. 1790The last English Roman Catholic priest to be indicted in the public courts for saying Mass.The fourth son of George Talbot, and brother of the fourteenth Earl of Shrewsbury, Talbot was educated at the English College, Douai, to which he was a great benefactor. In 1759, at the age of thirty-three, he was consecrated coadjutor bishop. During his episcopate he was twice brought to trial, on the information lodged by the well-known Informer Payne, in 1769 and 1771 respectively. In each case he was acquitted for lack of evidence, but the judge, Lord Mansfield, was seen as being on Talbot's side, in consequence of which, although he was no friend to Roman Catholics in general, his London house was sacked during the Gordon Riots of 1780.

Last of the French Jesuits left in the Illinois Country in 1764.

Was allowed to effectively serve as the region’s bishop given “extraordinary faculties”

He asked for six priests for Illinois, but received only Gibault, who was to be assigned to Cahokia

Born 1737 in Montreal

Ordained in 1768

Arrived at Kaskaskia in September 1768 (same time as the Royal Irish Regiment)

Oversaw circuit of parishes, including Vincennes, Kaskaskia, Ste Genevieve, and Cahokia. He also visited settlements as far as Ouiatenon, Peoria, St. Joseph and Mackinac.

Was successful in getting Vigo released at Vincennes

Didn’t get along with the John Carroll and moved to Spanish Missouri in 1793

Died in 1802

Word of Clark’s expedition came to Father Pierre Gibault. He canoed the eight miles to Kaskaskia, tolled the bell at Immaculate Conception Church and assembled the people. Speaking on behalf of the American cause, in French to the French farmers, he carried the day. The British fled to Vincennes. It was the American expedition against Vincennes in 1780 which made St. Louis vulnerable to attack. Father Gibault accompanied Clark on that campaign and so earned a British price on his head. Later the priest returned to Ste. Genevieve serving as pastor until 1784, riding a horse up and down the Mississippi banks bringing the sacraments to all in need. It is said he was never without his pistols.

San Diego at Mission San Diego de Alcala (1760)

Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo at Carmel-by-the Sea, California in (1770)

Mission San Francisco de Asis (Mission Dolores) at San Francisco (1776)

Mission San Luis Obispo at San Luis Obispo (1772)

Mission Santa Clara de Asis at Santa Clara (1777)

Mission Senora Reina de los Angeles Asistencia in Los Angeles (1784),

1713 to 1784

Established a number of California Missions between 1770 and 1784

He was beatified in 1988

That action was protested by Native Americans partly due to Serra’s use of beatings

For a decade after the War for American Independence, the lands west of the Mississippi remained in Spanish hands while lands east of the great river were given to the newly formed United States of America.

In church matters, the west, including St. Louis, was under the authority of the Bishop of Havana, Cuba, and the east came under the direction of newly appointed "Prefect Apostolic," later Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore. Both sides of the river suffered from a shortage of priests.

After the American victory at Yorktown, aided by a French army and fleet, a French chaplain, Father Paul de St. Pierre, volunteered his services to the western lands. Another, Father Pierre Huet de la Valiniere also came to Illinois after he wore out his welcome in Quebec and, after a brief stay in Baltimore, was encouraged to leave that city also. In Illinois he continued his rowdy ways by picking fights with settlers and attacking Father St. Pierre. In disgust, Father St. Pierre moved to Ste. Genevieve when Gibault moved to New Madrid, Missouri.

Popery Act of 1698 (1700)- effectively banned the Mass, Catholic schools and put a bounty on Catholic priests

Papacy recognized the legitimacy of the Hanoverian Dynasty in 1766 –this opened the door for eventual Catholic emancipation

Quebec Act of 1774 – was the first step

Catholic Relief Act of 1778 allowed Catholics to own property and join the British Army

Spawned riots in Scotland in 1779The Gordon Riots in 1780 were also known as the “No Popery Riots”

Further legislation gave Catholics the right to schools and bishops in 1782

Finally the Catholic Relief Act of 1829 gave British Catholics full rights in the Kingdom