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An Irish-American Journalist and Catholicism: Patrick Ford of the Irish World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

James P. Rodechko
James P. Rodechko
Affiliation:
Mr. Rodechko is associate professor of history inBloomsburg State College, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania
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Extract

During the late nineteenth century, Irish immigrants were not always sympathetic toward the Catholic Church. Observers indicated that large numbers of Irish-Americans were dissatisfied with Catholic attitudes toward American conditions and might consequently sever their ties with the church. At times, priests, members of the hierarchy, and the American Catholic press showed particular concern that Patrick Ford, the influential and controversial editor of the New York Irish World, encouraged immigrants to question their traditional place in the church. In the late 1870s, Ford's opinions of American socio-economic and political affairs directly challenged those of Catholic spokesmen.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 39 , Issue 4 , December 1970 , pp. 524 - 540
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1970

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References

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4. Although Irish World offices were located in New York City and the paper was primarily circulated in that area, Ford also had subscribers in other parts of the United States and even in Ireland. The paper had a circulation of 35,000 in 1876 and 60,000 in 1882. By the 1890s and early twentieth century the circulation was regularly listed at 125,000. See Wittke, Carl, The Irish in America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956), p. 213Google Scholar; Hubbard's Newspaper and Bank Directory of the World (New Haven: H. P. Hubbard, 1882), I, 667Google Scholar; American Newspaper Annual (Philadelphia: N. W. Ayer and Son, 1898), p. 571, and (1907), p. 617Google Scholar; and Pettingill's Newspaper's Directory and Advertisers' Hand-Book for 1878 (New York: S. M. Pettingill and Company, 1878), p. 42.Google Scholar

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13. Ibid., January 28, 1871, 4.

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20. John MeCloskey, the Archbishop of New York, became the first American Cardinal in 1875. He died in 1885 and was succeeded as Archbishop of New York by Michael Corrigan. Under these leaders, the church in New York was a conservative stronghold. This conservatism occurred primarily because of the “accidents of personality …” But a second cause was “that New York was where the Irish first captured political power and held it for a long time. There they first built up a substantial group of upper-middle-class property owners. The fact that Irish Catholics were almost a majority and had power and property subtly conditioned the outlook of the Irish clergy running the Catholic Church in New York.” See Shannon, William V., The American Irish (New York: Macmillan Company, 1963), pp. 114–118.Google Scholar

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25. Ibid., October 21, 1876, 4; and October 9, 1880, 4.

26. Ibid., December 27, 1879, 4.

27. Ibid., November 15, 1873, 4.

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29. The Clan-na-Gael was an Irish nationalist society that Ford held membership in. See Irish World, 02 21, 1874, 7.Google Scholar

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32. Ibid., December 6, 1879, 4; and May 15, 1880, 4.

33. Patrick Ford to Henry George, March 29, 1883, Henry George Collection; and Irish World, 01 5, 1884, 4.Google Scholar

34. The Anglo-Saxon ascendancy was more apparent to Irishmen in America than in Ireland. In Ireland poverty was widespread and British oppression indirect, mainly through an Irish representative of the absentee landlord. But in America the contrast between the well-to-do Anglo-Saxon native and the poor Irish immigrant was all too sharp. In this atmosphere, the Irishman's feeling for Ireland and hostility to England was more pronounced than in Ireland. See Brown, Thomas N., Irish-American Nationalism, 1870- 1890 (New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966), pp. 17–41Google Scholar; and Bagenal, , American Irish, pp. 129–130.Google Scholar

35. Irish World, 01 3, 1874, 4.Google Scholar

36. Ford was the most influential leader of the American branch of the Irish Land League. After the league was formed in 1879, he organized some 2,500 local units in the United States. By 1882, through various collection campaigns that were publicized in the World, he was able to send over $343,000 to Ireland. See Brown, , Irish American Nationalism, p. 196Google Scholar; and Gaelic American, 10 20, 1923, 1.Google Scholar

37. Freeman's Journal, 03 27, 1875, 4Google Scholar; April 24, 1875, 3; and May 22, 1875, 4.

38. Irish World, 12 2, 1876, 4.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., May 22, 1880, 4; March 12, 1881; and November 5, 1881, 4.

40. Bagenal, , American Irish, p. 66.Google Scholar

41. Irish World, 01 24, 1880, 4Google Scholar; and April 10, 1880, 4.

42. Higham, John, Strangers in the Land; Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New York: Atheneum, 1963), p. 59.Google Scholar

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45. Ibid., May 4, 1889, 4; and February 25, 1893, 4.

46. McAvoy, Thomas T., “The American Catholic Minority in the Later Nineteenth Century,” The Review of Polltics, 15 (07, 1953), 296.Google Scholar

47. For details involving the liberal-conservative split in Roman Catholicism, see Cross, Robert, The Emergence of Liberal Catholicism in America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958).Google Scholar

48. Ford, of course, never admitted that he took money from the Republicans and claimed that his support for the party stemmed solely from personal conviction. The evidence, however, indicates that Hoag almost assumed control of the paper when Ford could not pay his debts and that the editor accepted Republican funds to stave off disaster. See Patrick Ford to Henry George, March 29, 1883, Henry George Collection; Irish American, 06 23, 1883, 4Google Scholar; August 16, 1884, 4; November 29, 1884, 4; Gaelic American, 10 20, 1923, 1Google Scholar; December 22, 1923, 8; Breslin, John J. to Devoy, John, 04 18, 1883, Devoy's Post Bag, II, 190–191Google Scholar; and Beach, Thomas Miller, Twenty-Five Years in the Secret Service, The Recollections of a Spy (London: William Heinemann, 1892), p. 132.Google Scholar

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52. Irish World, 05 15, 1886, 4Google Scholar. It has been established that British newspaper charges implicating Trish revolutionaries in the Haymarket incident were Incorrect. See David, Henry, The History of the Haymarket Affair (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1936), p. 218.Google Scholar

53. In 1886, Ford supported George as an alternative to Tammany Hall corruption, but did not give coverage to his land programs. When Ford did break with George in 1887, the World not only denounced his land theories, but also criticized him for anti-Catholic views. See Irish World, 10 23, 1886, 4Google Scholar: October 30, 1886, 4; November 13, 1886, 4: October 22, 1887 4; and Rodechko, , “Patrick Ford,” pp. 95–102.Google Scholar

54. Irish World, 11 30, 1889, 7.Google Scholar

55. Ibid., June 15, 1907, 11; and January 22, 1910, 11.

56. Cross, Liberal Catholicism, chapter VIII.

57. Irish World, 04 25, 1891, 4.Google Scholar

58. Ibid., July 1, 1893, 8; August 5, 1893, 4; July 2, 1898, 8; and January 22, 1910, 11.

59. Cross, , Liberal Catholicism, p. 126Google Scholar; Irish World, 10 24, 1891, 4Google Scholar; and July 18, 1891, 7.

60. Irish World, 07 20, 1889, 4.Google Scholar

61. Ibid., October 15, 1887, 4; and Cross, , Liberal Catholicism, p. 116Google Scholar. Gibbons also defended Henry George's work against papal condemnation. Gibbons, however, did not defend George out of sympathy for his views. As with the Knights of Labor, Gibbons did not want the church to lose followers by condemning a reasonably popular and generally ineffective social program. See Ellis, John Tracy, The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, 1834–1921 (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Company, 1952), I, 588–589.Google Scholar

62. Irish World, 05 23, 1891, 4Google Scholar; May 30, 1891, 4; and February 11, 1893, 4.

63. Cross, . Liberal Catholicism, p. 101.Google Scholar

64. As early as 1880, Ford was aware that “men of ‘respectability’—the men of education—the men of good cloth”were in the Republican Party. See Irish World, 10 16. 1880. 4.Google Scholar

65. Irish World, 08 27, 1892, 4.Google Scholar

66. Ibid., May 28, 1892, 4.

67. Kinzer, Episode in Anti-Catholicism. chapter VII.

68. Irish World, 01 6, 1900, 5Google Scholar; February 3, 1900, 4; February 10, 1900, 11; May 31, 1902, 4; January 17, 1903, 4; and January 24, 1903, 1, 4.

69. Gaelic American, 09 10, 1904, 4Google Scholar; and Irish World, 10 8, 1904. 12.Google Scholar

70. Irish World, 05 28, 1910, 4Google Scholar; April 30, 1910, 4; June 11, 1910, 4. Roosevelt's trouble in Rome also caused considerable embarrassment for Cardinal Gibbons, who considered Roosevelt a close friend. See Ellis, , The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, II, 509–514.Google Scholar

71. Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, I Speak My Own Piece; Autobiography of ‘The Rebel Girl’ (New York: Masses and Mainstream, 1955), p. 66Google Scholar; Irish World, 01 6, 1912, n.p.Google Scholar; and March 9, 1912, 5.

72. Irish World, 02 8, 1908, 4.Google Scholar

73. Ibid., August 3, 1912, 5; August 24, 1912, 4; and October 26, 1912, 4.

74. Ibid., June 1, 1912, 11.

75. Ibid., March 21, 1908, 4.

76. Ibid., August 10, 1912, 11; and August 24, 1912, 4.

77. Ibid., April 28, 1888, 4; and May 5, 1888, 4.

78. Ibid., March 23, 1895, 1; and January 6, 1912, 4.

79. American Newspaper Annual, p. 571.

80. Irish American, 09 15, 1888, 4Google Scholar; and Cross, , Liberal Catholicism, p. 43.Google Scholar

81. Smith, John Talbot, Patrick Ford of the Irish World (New York: Irish World Publishing Company, 1913).Google Scholar

82. Irish World, 06 25, 1898, 5.Google Scholar

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