Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T03:04:01.741Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Whore of Babylon and the Abomination of Abominations: Nineteenth-Century Catholic and Mormon Mutual Perceptions and Religious Identity1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Matthew J. Grow
Affiliation:
doctoral candidate in the department of History at the University of Notre Dame.

Extract

In 1846, Oran Brownson, the older brother of the famed Catholic convert Orestes A. Brownson, penned a letter to his brother recounting a dream Orestes had shared with him much earlier. In the dream, Orestes, Oran, and a third brother, Daniel, were “traveling a road together.” “You first left the road then myself and it remains to be seen whether Daniel will turn out of the road (change his opinion),” Oran wrote. At approximately the same period in which Orestes converted to Catholicism “because no other church possessed proper authority,” Oran joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because he believed that “proper authority rests among the Mormons.” Indeed, in an era characterized by denominational proliferation, democratization, and competition, Catholic and Mormon claims to divine authority proved appealing to some Americans, like the Brownsons, wearied by the diversity and disunity of the Protestant world. Oran cautioned Orestes to not trust polemical literature against Mormonism, but to “get your information from friends and not enemies.” Orestes could have repeated the same warning about Catholicism, given the number and intensity of nineteenth-century attacks on both Catholics and Mormons. Leaving mainstream Christianity to join the most despised religions in nineteenth-century America, the Brownson brothers embarked on spiritual quests that few contemporary Americans would have understood, much less approved.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2. Converts to both Mormonism and Catholicism regularly cited authority claims as a crucial factor in their conversions. For the Mormon case, see De Pillis's, Mario classic article, “The Quest for Religious Authority and the Rise of Mormonism,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 1 (spring 1966): 6888Google Scholar; and the exchange between Bushman, Richard L., Cletsch, William B., and Pillis, De in “The Quest for Authority,” Dialogue: A journal of Mormon Thought 1 (summer 1966): 8297.Google Scholar Marvin Hill has similarly argued that early Mormons sought a refuge from the chaotic pluralism of Jacksonian America; see Quest for Refuge: The Mormon Flight from American Pluralism (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1989).Google Scholar For Catholic converts, see Bochen, Christine M., The Journey to Rome: Conversion Literature by Nineteenth-Century American Catholics (New York: Garland, 1988), 377, 383.Google Scholar See also Hatch's, Nathan description of this era in The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

3. Oran Brownson, Dublin, Ohio, to Orestes A. Brownson, Boston, Massachusetts, 5 April 1846, Orestes Brownson Collection, Archives of the University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana (hereafter Notre Dame Archives). Oran later left Mormonism for Catholicism after reading some books Orestes had sent him; see Oran Brownson to Orestes A. Brownson, undated [1850s?], Orestes Brownson Collection, Notre Dame Archives. See also Lathrop, George Parsons, “Orestes Brownson,” Atlantic Monthly 77 (06 1896): 779Google Scholar, which places Oran's conversion to Catholicism in 1860.

4. This is the approach of the influential works of Givens, Terryl L., The Viper on the Hearth: Mormons, Myths, and the Construction of Heresy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; and Franchot, Jenny, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).Google Scholar

5. I will limit my analysis to the perceptions of Catholics and Mormons in America. For helpful analyses of the public image of Mormonism in European Catholic nations, see Decoo, Wilfried, “The Image of Mormonism in French Literature: Part I,” BYU Studies 14 (winter 1974): 157–75Google Scholar; Decoo, , “The Image of Mormonism in French Literature: Part II,” BYU Studies 16 (winter 1976): 265–76Google Scholar; and Homer, Michael W., “The Church's Image in Italy from the 1840s to 1946: A Bibliographic Essay,” BYU Studies 31 (spring 1991): 83114.Google Scholar

6. Davis, David Brion, “Some Themes of Counter-Subversion: An Analysis of Anti-Masonic, Anti-Catholic, and Anti-Mormon Literature,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47 (09 1960): 205–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. For comparisons of anti-Catholicism and anti-Mormonism besides Davis, see Cannon, Mark W., “The Crusades Against the Masons, Catholics, and Mormons: Separate Waves of a Common Current,” BYU Studies 3 (winter 1961): 2340Google Scholar; Bunker, Gary L. and Bitton, Davis, The Mormon Graphic Image, 1832–1914 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1983), 7586Google Scholar; and Gordon, Sarah Barringer, The Mormon Question: Polygamy and Constitutional Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 11, 33, 70, 206.Google Scholar For anti-Catholicism, see Billington, Ray Allen, The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (New York: Macmillan, 1938)Google Scholar; Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955)Google Scholar; Franchot, Roads to Rome; Pagliarini, Marie Ann, “The Pure American Woman and the Wicked Catholic Priest: An Analysis of Anti-Catholic Literature in Antebellum America,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 9 (winter 1999): 97128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and McGreevy, John T., Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003).Google Scholar For anti-Mormonism, see Givens, The Viper on the Hearth; Pingree, Gregory, “‘The Biggest Whorehouse in the World’: Representations of Plural Marriage in Nineteenth-century America,” Western Humanities Review 50 (fall 1996): 213–32Google Scholar; and Eliason, Eric A., “Curious Gentiles and Representational Authority in the City of the Saints,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 11 (summer 2001): 155–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Bitton, and Bunker, , Mormon Graphic Image, 7594.Google Scholar

9. Reproduced in Bunker, and Bitton, , Mormon Graphic Image, 85.Google Scholar

10. Strong, Josiah, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis (New York: Baker and Tayler, 1891;CrossRefGoogle Scholar reprint, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963, ed. Herbst, Jurgen), 109.Google Scholar

11. Givens, , Viper on the Hearth, 48, 104–5, 114–15, 146–47.Google Scholar

12. Revelation 17:5.

13. 1 Nephi, chapters 13 and 14. Two of Joseph Smith's canonized revelations from the early 1830s also refer to the Whore of Babylon; see The Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1981), 29:21 and 86:3.Google Scholar

14. Dursteler, Eric, “Inheriting the ‘Great Apostasy’: The Evolution of Mormon Views on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,” Journal of Mormon History 28 (fall 2002): 2359Google Scholar. Dursteler argues that the writings on the “Great Apostasy” by early-twentieth-century Mormon theologians reflected the assumptions of nineteenth-century Protestant historiography.

15. Underwood, Grant, The Millenarian World of Early Mormonism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 4257.Google Scholar

16. Winchester, Benjamin, A History of the Priesthood from the Beginning of the World to the Present Time (Philadelphia, Penn.: Brown, Bicking, and Guilbert, 1843), 79.Google Scholar

17. [Oliver Cowdery], Editor of the Star, “The Outrage in Jackson County, Missouri,” Evening and Morning Star (Kirtland, Ohio) 2 (03 1834): 137–38.Google Scholar See also Fielding, Joseph, “What is Babylon,” Times and Seasons (Nauvoo, Illinois) 4 (1 09 1843): 314–16Google Scholar, for another early Mormon association of Catholicism with the Whore of Babylon.

18. Pratt, Parley P., Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt (Salt Lake City, 1874; Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, 1985), 366, 368.Google Scholar Pratt's manuscript letters, which are partially reproduced in his Autobiography, also indicate his harsh views of Catholicism. See especially Pratt, Ship Dracut, Pacific Ocean, to Brigham Young, Salt Lake City, Utah, 13 March 1852, and Pratt to Family, 15 September–21 November 1851, Archives, Family and Church History Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. An analysis of Pratt's mission is Palmer, A. Delbert and Grover, Mark L., “Hoping to Establish a Presence: Parley P. Pratt's 1851 Mission to Chile,” BYU Studies 38 (1999): 115–38.Google Scholar

19. Pratt, , Proclamation! Extraordinaria, para los Americanos Espanoles, or Proclamation Extraordinary! To the Spanish Americans (San Francisco, Calif.: Monson, Haswell, 1852).Google Scholar Pratt's pamphlet, written in both Spanish and English, also included a summary of the Mormon complaints about Catholic doctrine and practice. For similar comments from a missionary in Italy who later became Mormonism's fifth prophet, see Snow, Lorenzo, The Italian Mission (London: W. Aubery, 1851), 910, 19.Google Scholar

20. Moses Thatcher, Mexico City, to Wells, Junius F., 4 August 1881, “Correspondence,” The Contributor 2 (09 1881): 381.Google Scholar See also Godfrey, Kenneth W., “Moses Thatcher and Mormon Beginnings in Mexico,” BYU Studies 38 (1999): 139–55.Google Scholar

21. Tobler, Douglas F., “Europe, The Church in,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols., ed., Ludlow, Daniel H., (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 2:269Google Scholar; Tullis, F. Lamond, “California and Chile in 1851 as Experienced by the Mormon Apostle Parley P. Pratt,” Southern California Quarterly 67 (fall 1985): 291307CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Tullis, , “Early Mormon Exploration and Missionary Activities in Mexico,” BYU Studies 22 (summer 1982): 289310.Google Scholar

22. Eliza R. Snow, Milan, Italy, to Jane S. Richards, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1 January 1873, in Smith, George A., Snow, Lorenzo, Schettler, Paul A., and Snow, Eliza R., Correspondence of Palestine Tourists (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News, 1875Google Scholar; reprint, New York: Arno, 1977), 106–7. For information on Protestant travel narratives in Catholic Europe, see Franchot, , Roads to Rome, 1634.Google Scholar

23. Pratt, Orson, “Baptism for the Remission of Sins,” The Seer (Washington, D.C.) 2 (04 1854): 255.Google Scholar For information on Pratt, see England, Breck, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1985).Google Scholar

24. Pratt, Orson, “Questions and Answers on Doctrine,” The Seer 2 (01 1854): 205–6.Google Scholar

25. Pratt, Orson, “New Revelation,” The Seer 2 (05 1854): 258.Google Scholar

26. Pratt, Orson, discourse, 10 July 1859, Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, U.K.: Albert Carrington and others, 18531886), 7:184.Google Scholar

27. Pratt, Orson, discourse, 10 March 1872, Journal of Discourses, 14:346.Google Scholar

28. Pratt, Orson, A Series of Pamphlets by Orson Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Liverpool, U.K.: Franklin D. Richards, 1851), 177–80.Google Scholar See also “Review of the World,” in Pratt, Prophetic Almanac for 1846, 6–13, reprinted in Watson, Elden J., The Orson Pratt Journals (Salt Lake City, Utah: Elden Jay Watson, 1975), 243–46.Google Scholar

29. Taylor, John, discourse, 12 June 1853, Journal of Discourses, 1:154.Google Scholar For other instances of the mother of harlots/daughter of harlots imagery, see Smith, George A., discourse, 15 November 1868, Journal of Discourses, 12:335Google Scholar; Cannon, George Q., discourse, 11 June 1871, Journal of Discourses, 14:167–68Google Scholar; and Taylor, John, discourse, 8 October 1882, Journal of Discourses, 23:262–63.Google Scholar

30. Thatcher, Moses, “Mormon Polygamy and Christian Monogamy,” The Contributor 3 (06 1882): 263.Google Scholar

31. Cannon, George Q., discourse, 6 April 1884, Journal of Discourses, 25:127–28.Google Scholar See also Taylor, John, discourse, 19 October 1884, Journal of Discourses, 25:383.Google Scholar

32. Young, Brigham, discourse, 6 May 1870, Journal of Discourses, 14:13.Google Scholar

33. Whittaker, David J., “Early Mormon Polygamy Defenses,” Journal of Mormon History 11 (1984): 4363Google Scholar; Bitton, Davis, “Polygamy Defended: One Side of a Nineteenth-Centui Polemic,” in The Ritualization of Mormon History and Other Essays (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 3453.Google Scholar

34. For a good discussion of the development of religious “enclaves,” which define themselves in opposition to the outside community, see Sivan, Emmanuel, “The Enclave Culture,” in Fundamentalisms Comprehended, eds. Martin Marty and Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 1170.Google Scholar For an insightful (though over stated) argument of how Mormons created an identity in opposition to American culture through a “rhetoric of deviance,” see Moore, R. Laurence, Religious Outsiders at the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 2547.Google Scholar

35. For an earlier exception, see Joseph Rosati, St. Louis, Missouri, to John Timon, 1 March 1832, Dame, Notre Archives, published in American Catholic Historical Research 14 (1897): 143–44.Google Scholar

36. Following the 1844 martyrdom of Joseph Smith, a writer for the United States Catholic Magazine had similarly reasoned that “however monstrous the doctrine, and however pernicious the practices of a false religion, adherents will be gathered in from those who are guided more by their distempered imaginations than by the safe teaching of God's holy church.” “The Mormons, or Latter Day Saints,” The United States Catholic Magazine and Monthly Review (June 1845): 354–63.Google Scholar

37. Samuel Mazzuchelli to Archbishop Anthony Blanc, 9 February 1858, Notre Dame Archives; Mazzuchelli stated that he had already sent two articles on Mormonism for the Catholic Standard and would send two others. For a brief biographical sketch of Mazzuchelli, see McGreal, Mary Nona, “Mazzuchelli, Samuel Charles,” in American National Biography 24 vols., eds. Garraty, John A. and Carnes, Mark C. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 14:804–5.Google Scholar

38. Turner, J. B., Mormonism in All Ages, or the Rise, Progress and Cause of Mormonism (New York: Platt and Peters, 1842), 8Google Scholar, cited in Homer, , “The Church's Image in Italy,” 90, 110.Google Scholar

39. Mazzuchelli, Samuel, The Memoirs of Father Samuel Mazzuchelli (Chicago: Priory, 1967), 267–73Google Scholar; initially published as Memoire istoriche ed edificanti d'un missionario apostolico dell'Ordine dei Predicatori fra varie tribu di selvaggi e fra i Cattolici e Protestanti negli Stati-Uniti d'America (Milan: coi tipi della Ditta Boniardi-Pogliani, 1846).Google Scholar

40. Carriker, Robert C., Father Peter John De Smet: Jesuit in the West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995), 105, 147–48.Google Scholar For a brief biographical sketch, see Forbes, Bruce David, “De Smet, Pierre-Jean,” in American National Biography, eds. Garraty and Carnes, 6:486–87.Google Scholar

41. De Smet, extract from a letter to his nephew Charles, March 1851 (original in French), reprinted in Life, Letters and Travels of Father Pierre-Jean De Smet, S. J., 1801–1873, 4 vols., eds. Chittenden, Hiram Martin and Richardson, Alfred Talbot (New York: Francis P. Harper, 1905; reprint, New York: Arno, 1969), 4:1406.Google Scholar In reality, De Smet's report merely confirmed the Mormons' decision to settle in the Salt Lake Valley; see Arrington, Leonard J., Brigham Young: American Moses (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 129.Google Scholar

42. Carriker, , Father Peter John De Smet, 146.Google Scholar

43. De Smet to “Very dear Francis,” 12 December 1857, in Chittenden and Richardson, 4:1407–8.

44. Smet, De, New Indian Sketches (New York: D. and J. Sadlier, 1865?), 6785.Google Scholar

45. De Smet to the editor of the Précis Historiques (Brussels), 19 January 1858, in Chittenden and Richardson, 4:1408–15. Besides publication in the Précis Historiques, Smet's, De letter was published in his Western Missions and Missionaries: A Series of Letters (New York: James B. Kirker, 1868), 390–97.Google Scholar He primarily relied on Hyde, John, Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs (New York: W. P. Fetridge, 1857).Google Scholar

46. For a short discussion of Brownson's anti-Mormonism, see Introvigne, Massimo, “Old Wine in New Bottles: The Story behind Fundamentalist Anti-Mormonism,” BYU Studies 35:3 (19951996): 4850.Google Scholar For Hecker, and Pratt, , see Farina, John, ed., Isaac T. Hecker: The Diary, Romantic Religion in Ante-bellum America (New York: Paulist, 1988), 158, 194Google Scholar; and Farina, , An American Experience of God: The Spirituality of Isaac Hecker (New York: Paulist, 1981), 3338.Google Scholar For the context of Brownson's liberalism in nineteenth-century Catholicism, see McGreevy, , Catholicism and American Freedom, 4390.Google Scholar

47. Brownson, , The Spirit-Rapper: An Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1854), 164–67.Google Scholar The experiences of his narrator may well have reflected Brownson's own life. Just two years older than Joseph Smith, Brownson hailed from the same region (even the same town of Royalton for some years) of rural Vermont as the Smith family. In addition, the prominent English Catholic Lord Acton once wrote of a conversation with Brownson, “When I asked him about the Mormons, he told me that they had once hoped to make a Mormon of him and let him learn all the secrets and the true story.” Altholz, Josef L. and Conzemius, Victor, “Acton and Brownson: A Letter from America,” Catholic Historical Review (January 1964): 525.Google Scholar

48. Brownson, , “Christianity and the Church Identical,” Brownson's Quarterly Review (July 1857), republished in Brownson, Henry F., ed., The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, (Detroit, Mich.: T. Nourse, 18821887), 12:7576.Google Scholar

49. For Mill's defense of Mormon freedom of religion, see On Liberty and other Writings, ed. Collini, Stefan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 9192.Google Scholar

50. For the conciliatory trends in Brownson's writings, see Carey, Patrick W., introduction to Orestes A. Brownson: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist, 1991), 36.Google Scholar

51. Brownson, , “Our Lady of Lourdes,” Brownson's Quarterly Review 29 (07 1875): 386.Google Scholar

52. Cowdery, Oliver, “Extract from the Columbia Hive,” Latter-day Saints' Messenger and Advocate (Kirtland, Ohio) 1 (04 1835): 107Google Scholar; Oliver Cowdery, Boston, Massachusetts, letter to Warren A. Cowdery, Kirtland, Ohio, 24 August 1836, in Latter-day Saints' Messenger and Advocate 3 (October 1836): 386–93.Google Scholar

53. Deseret Evening News, 22 March 1886, citing an article from the New York Katholische Volksblatt.

54. Besides a few articles, the history of Catholicism in Utah has not yet been the subject of a scholarly study. Nevertheless, three useful, though celebratory, studies have been published: Harris, W. R., The Catholic Church in Utah, Including an Exposition of Catholic Faith (Salt Lake City, Utah: Intermountain Catholic, 1909)Google Scholar; Fries, Louis J., One Hundred and Fifty Years of Catholicity in Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah: Intermountain Catholic, 1926)Google Scholar; and Mooney, Bernice Maher, Salt of the Earth: The History of the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, 177–1987 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City, 1987).Google Scholar

55. Dwyer, Robert J., “Pioneer Bishop: Lawrence Scanlan, 1843–1915,” Utah Historical Quarterly 20 (04 1952): 135–58.Google Scholar

56. Besides the reports republished by the Utah Historical Quarterly (cited below), Scanlan's reports can be found in two sources: the papers of the Société de la Propagation de la Foi (available on microfilm at the University of Notre Dame); and in Jerome C. Stoffel, Editor, “Annual Reports to the Société de la Propagation de la Foi, 1873–1894,” unpublished manuscript at the Catholic Archives of the Diocese of Salt Lake City.

Portions of Scanlan's reports were occasionally published in the Société's journal. See “Etats-Unis: Utah,” Annales de la Propagation de La Foi (Lyon) 47 (1875): 383–84Google Scholar; Annales 49 (1877): 292–95Google Scholar; Annales 55 (1883): 274–80Google Scholar; Annales 59 (1887): 2427.Google Scholar The Bishop of Colorado, Machebeuf, Joseph, also wrote reports on Utah that were published in the late 1860s: “Etats-Unis: Vicariat Apostolique de Colorado et Utah,” Annales 40 (1868): 474–81Google Scholar, and “Utah,” Annales 41 (1869): 320–22.Google Scholar

57. Scanlan, Report to Société de la Propagation de la Foi, 2 November 1888, cited in Mooney, , Salt of the Earth, 95.Google Scholar

58. Cited in Roberts, Brigham H., A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret News, 1930), 5:493.Google Scholar

59. Scanlan, Report to Société de la Propagation de la Foi, 8 November 1880, reproduced in Francis J. Weber, ed., “Father Lawrence Scanlan's Report of Catholicism in Utah, 1880,” Utah Historical Quarterly 34 (fall 1966): 289Google Scholar; Scanlan, Report to Société de la Propagation de la Foi, 12 October 1876, reproduced in McGloin, John Bernard, “Two Early Reports Concerning Roman Catholicism in Utah, 1876–1881,” Utah Historical Quarterly 29 (10 1961): 335–41.Google Scholar

60. Lyon, T. Edgar, “Religious Activities and Development in Utah, 1847–1910,” Utah Historical Quarterly 35 (fall 1967): 293306.Google Scholar

61. Salt Lake Tribune, 24 April 1876, cited in Dwyer, Robert Joseph, The Gentile Comes to Utah:: A Study in Religious and Social Conflict, 1862–1890 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1941), 159. See pages 156–59 for his description of Scanlan's usually conciliatory tactics.Google Scholar

62. Madsen, Brigham D., Glory Hunter: A Biography of Patrick Edward Connor (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990).Google Scholar

63. Denis Kiely, Report to Société de la Propagation de la Foi, 31 October 1879, reproduced in Francis J. Weber, ed., “Catholicism among the Mormons, 1875–79,” Utah Historical Quarterly 44 (spring 1976): 146–47.Google Scholar

64. Quoted in [Mother Austin Carroll], M. A. C., “Forty Years in the American Wilderness,” American Quarterly Catholic Review 15 (1890): 147.Google Scholar

65. Scanlan, , “The Doctrine and Claims of the Roman Catholic Church,” Improvement Era 1 (11 1897). Scanlan wrote an additional article in 1908: “Pope Leo XIII,” Improvement Era 6 (August 1908).Google Scholar

66. “The Right Reverend Laurence Scanlan,” Improvement Era 18 (June 1919).Google Scholar

67. Jay P. Dolan, “Catholic Attitudes toward Protestants,” in Bellah, Robert N. and Greenspahn, Frederick E., Uncivil Religion: Interreligious Hostility in America (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 7285, quote on 79.Google Scholar

68. Carroll, , “Forty Years,” 139.Google Scholar Mother Austin Carroll (1836?–1902), a prominent educator and author of historical works, was a leader of the Sisters of Mercy in New Orleans and Mobile. Besides her articles on Mormonism published in the ACQR, she also wrote an article for an Irish periodical: “A Glance at the Latter-day Saints,” The Irish Monthly 18 (June 1890): 309–19.Google Scholar See Muldrey, Mary Hermenia, Abounding in Mercy: Mother Austin Carroll (New Orleans, La.: Habersham, 1988).Google Scholar

69. “The Two Prophets of Mormonism,” Catholic World 26 (November 1877): 227.Google Scholar

70. [Mother Austin Carroll], M.A.C., “About the Utah Saints,” American Quarterly Catholic Review 20 (1895): 492.Google Scholar

71. Carroll, , “Forty Years,” 128.Google Scholar See also Clinche, Bryan, “The Mormon Question and the United States Government,” American Quarterly Catholic Review 9 (1884): 279Google Scholar; [Mother Austin Carroll], M. A. C., “When Brigham Young Was King,” American Quarterly Catholic Review 15 (1890): 296Google Scholar; and Corcoran, James, “Martin Luther and His American Worshippers,” American Quarterly Catholic Review 9 (07 1884): 550–51. Corcoran argued that Luther's permission of polygamy paved the way for Mormon success in Protestant Europe, as it is “only where Luther prepared his way that the Mormon evangelist finds willing ears to hear his message.”Google Scholar

72. Russell, Charles Lord of Killowen, , Diary of a Visit to the United States of America in the Year 1883 (New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1910), 154.Google Scholar In general, Russell, whose diary was only published posthumously, took a much more balanced stance towards the Saints than did the published American authors. See Russell, , Diary, 148–55.Google Scholar

73. Weninger, Francis Xavier S.J., “Father Weninger on the Pacific Coast,” Woodstock Letters 1 (1872): 184.Google Scholar

74. Carroll, , “About the Utah Saints,” 497.Google Scholar

75. Carroll, , “Forty Years,” 145Google Scholar; see also Carroll, , “When Brigham Young Was King,” 295. After reading this article, Edward Kelly, the priest who almost “converted” Young, wrote to Father Daniel Hudson, editor of Ave Maria, describing himself as the “pioneer missionary of our holy Church among the Mormons” and promised to send Hudson an article about his experience in Utah. See Kelly, Los Angeles, California, to Hudson, Notre Dame, Indiana, 25 February 1890, Notre Dame Archives.Google Scholar

76. Shea, John Gilmary, “Puritanism in New England,” American Catholic Quarterly Review 9 (1884): 81.Google Scholar

77. Clinche, , “The Mormon Question,” 274, 283–85.Google Scholar

78. Carroll, , “About the Utah Saints,” 495. See also “Two Prophets of Mormonism,” 239.Google Scholar

79. Hecker, Isaac T., “The Relation of the Rights of Conscience to the Authority of the State Under the Laws of the Republic,” Catholic World 16 (03 1873): 723.Google Scholar See also, “A Plea for Liberty of Conscience,” Catholic World 7 (July 1868): 439Google Scholar: “Mormonism has no rights under our laws, and ought not to be tolerated.”

80. For Irish Catholic attempts to reconcile their memory of the Civil War, see Miller, Randall, “Catholic Religion, Irish Ethnicity, and the Civil War,” in Religion and the American Civil War, eds. Miller, , Stout, Harry S., and Wilson, Charles Reagan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 283–86Google Scholar; and Warren, Craig A., “‘Oh, God, What a Pity!’: The Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg and the Creation of Myth,” Civil War History 47 (09 2001): 193221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

81. Carroll, , “About the Utah Saints,” 489.Google Scholar

82. Gibbon, John, “The Mormons,” American Quarterly Catholic Review 4 (1879): 665.Google Scholar

83. Carroll, , “When Brigham Young Was King,” 289.Google Scholar

84. “Two Prophets of Mormonism,” 249.

85. Gibbon, , “The Mormons,” 678–79.Google Scholar

86. Carroll, , “About the Utah Saints,” 488.Google Scholar

87. Clinche, , “The Mormon Question,” 278–79.Google Scholar

88. Review of Kennedy, James Henry, Early Days of Mormonism: Palmyra, Kirtland, and Nauvoo (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1888)Google Scholar in Catholic World 47 (August 1888): 717–18.Google Scholar

89. Gibbons, James Cardinal, Our Christian Heritage (Baltimore, Md.: John Murphy, 1889), 484–86.Google Scholar In this popular book, Gibbons echoed the assertions he had made two years earlier in “Some Defects in Our Political and Social Institutions,” North American Review 145 (October 1887): 345–55.Google Scholar An important Church congress held in Baltimore in 1889 endorsed Gibbons' views. See Official Report of the Proceedings of the Catholic Congress, Held at Baltimore, Md., November 11th and 12th, 1889 (Detroit, Mich.: William M. Hughes, 1889), 127–28.Google Scholar

90. See Gordon, The Mormon Question, for the most recent and insightful study of the legal, social, and religious campaign against polygamy.

91. Shipps, , “From Satyr to Saint,” in Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years Among the Mormons (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 66.Google Scholar Shipps bases her conclusion on an exhaustive survey of Mormon image in the American periodical press beginning in 1860. In so doing, she challenges earlier interpretations, most prominently associated with historian Klaus J. Hansen that the “true target of the anti-polygamy campaign was not polygamy so much as it was the temporal (social, economic, and political) power of the Mormon church hierarchy”; see Shipps, “From Satyr to Saint,” 62, and Hansen, , Quest for Empire: The Political Kingdom of God and the Council of Fifty in Mormon History (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1967).Google Scholar Other studies that closely examine the Mormon image in the nineteenth century largely support Shipps' position, including Givens, Viper on the Hearth; Lyman, Edward Leo, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Bunker, and Bitton, , Mormon Graphic Image, 3435.Google Scholar

92. For biographical information, see O'Donaghue, D. J., The Poets of Ireland: A Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of Irish Writers of English Verse (Dublin: Hodges Figgis, 1912).Google Scholar Richardson published two books of poetry: Marion Muir Richardson Ryan, Border Memories (Denver, 1903) and Shadows of the Sunset, and Other Poems (1918). For brief information on Hudson, whose extensive papers are housed at the University of Notre Dame, see Delaney, John J., Dictionary of American Catholic Biography (New York: Doubleday, 1984), 267.Google Scholar For a Mormon response to Richardson's accusations, see “What's Wrong with the ‘Post,’” Deseret Evening News, 28 July 1902.Google Scholar

93. Marion Muir Richardson to Father Daniel Hudson, Notre Dame, Indiana, 19 March 1902, Daniel Hudson Collection, Notre Dame Archives.

94. Richardson to Hudson, Notre Dame, Indiana, 5 September 1898, Hudson Collection, Notre Dame Archives.

95. Richardson to Hudson, 19 March 1902.

96. Richardson to Hudson, 5 September 1898.

97. Richardson to Hudson, Notre Dame, Indiana, 25 March 1900, Hudson Collection, Notre Dame Archives.

98. Richardson, Morrison, Colorado, to Hudson, Notre Dame, Indiana, 17 January 1902, Hudson Collection, Notre Dame Archives.

99. Richardson, Grand County, Utah, to Hudson, Notre Dame, Indiana, 16 December 1899, Hudson Collection, Notre Dame Archives. Besides those already cited, see the letters from Richardson to Hudson dated 11 October 1898, 12 March 1899, 20 November 1899, 27 January 1900, and 26 March 1902.

100. “The Menace of Mormonism,” Ave Maria 50 (March 24, 1900): 370–73.Google Scholar

101. The best treatment of this period is Alexander, Thomas, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986).Google Scholar See also Shipps, Jan, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois, 1985), 109–49.Google Scholar

102. For the most famous incident, see Walker, Ronald W., Wayward Saints: the Godbeites and Brigham Young (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998).Google Scholar

103. For good accounts of the debates between liberals and conservatives, see McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom, and Dolan, Jay P., In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

104. While Philip Gleason's contention of thirty years ago that “Americanization is the grand theme in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States” has been mitigated by the rise of studies emphasizing the distinct experiences of ethnic Catholics, his observation still reflects Catholic historiography. See Gleason, , “Coming to Terms with American Catholic History,” Societas 3 (autumn 1973): 305Google Scholar; Moore, , Religious Outsiders, 4850.Google Scholar

105. Wallace, Les, Rhetoric of Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association, 1887–1911 (New York: Garland, 1990), 120–60Google Scholar; and Kinzer, Donald L., An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).Google Scholar

106. Moore, Religious Outsiders, quote on 59; see also 48–71. On the Americanist controversy, see also Dolan, , The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 294320Google Scholar; and Appleby, R. Scott, “Church and Age Unite!” The Modernist Impulse in American Catholicism (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992).Google Scholar

107. The Catholic World supported the Americanists, while the American Quarterly Catholic Review was generally conservative, though often refrained from explicitly taking sides. The Ave Maria was generally viewed as independent and supported both sides on particular issues. See McAvoy, Thomas T., The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895–1900 (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1957), 7980, 376–77.Google Scholar

108. Givens, , Viper on the Hearth, 15.Google Scholar For a perceptive essay on the “narcissism of minor difference,” as applied to the Bosnian War, see Ignatieff, Michael, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1997), 3471.Google Scholar

109. The relationship of Mormons and Catholics has continued to evolve in the twentieth century as both have largely entered the American mainstream. A future study could profitably examine how their rhetorical strategies towards each other have changed as both have gone from despised outsiders to (in the view of many observers) quintessential Americans.