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Crisis of An American Catholic Modernist: Toward the Moral Absolutism of William L. Sullivan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Warren E. Duclos
Warren E. Duclos
Affiliation:
Mr. Duclos is instructor in theology inSpring Hill College, Mobile, Alabama.
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Extract

Thomas T. McAvoy has written in his study of “Americanism” in the Roman Catholic Church: “The history of the modernist controversy in this country has not been written and the destruction of pertinent records will make such a study very difficult.”. “Modernism” was quite evidently a movement within the Roman Catholic Church in Europe. It had its roots and took its strength there. There, too, it was destroyed. For the most part, American Catholics did not contribute to “modernism”s evolution, development and defeat. But eventually the main current of “modernism” in Europe rolled its waves onto American shores. Amidst many other streams, its waters flowed into the life of one man, William L. Sullivan, an Irish Catholic and Paulist priest.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , September 1972 , pp. 369 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1972

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References

1. MeAvoy, Thomas T., The Great Crisis in American Catholic History (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1957), p. 364.Google Scholar

2. Sullivan, William Laurence, Under Orders (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), pp. 198–200.Google Scholar Biographical data will be taken from here, unless noted otherwise.

3. Hecker, , quoted in McSorley, Joseph, Father Hecker and His Friends (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Company, 1953), p. 104.Google Scholar

4. In the late nineteenth century the Catholic Church in the United States was placed in a difficult situation. Many European Catholics, especially in France, envied the separation of church and state in the United States and wished to adapt their own nations to the American system. The writings of these Europeans often presented a distorted picture of the American Catholic situation, resulting in a great uneasiness among more conservative Catholics in Europe. “Americanism” was the name given to the assumed heretical practices of some American Catholics. Further discussion will be included below.

5. Sullivan, op. cit., p. 60.

6. Ibid., pp. 53–54.

7. Ibid., pp. 63.

8. Ibid., pp. 64ff.

9. Ibid., pp. 96.

10. Ibid., pp. 106–108.

11. These papal documents will enter into our discussion below.

12. Sullivan, op. cit., p. 114.

13. Sullivan, William L. (published anonymously), Letters to His Holiness Pius X (Chicago: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1910), p. ix.Google Scholar

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24. Ibid., pp. 60–62.

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30. Ibid., p. 331.

31. Ibid., p. 332.

32. Ibid., p. 326.

33. Sullivan, “The Tenth Anniversary …,” p. 227.

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58. Ibid., pp. 126ff. Note that this seems to be supported; see, for example, The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 10, J. P. T. Bury, ed., (Cambridge: The University Press, 1960), p. 94.Google Scholar This whole matter was more complicated than Sullivan seemed to realize. We deliberately offer the major factors of which Sullivan himself acknowledges awareness—the meaning of Vatican I's statement as he seems to have understood it.

59. Sullivan, , Under Orders, pp. 65–66.Google Scholar Also see Latourette, Kenneth Scott, The Nineteenth Century in Europe, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), pp. 284 and 381.Google Scholar

60. Sullivan, , Under Orders, p. 119.Google Scholar It will be argued by most Catholics that this is a distorting over-simplification of the Catholic dogma of papal infallibility.

61. Ibid., pp. 119ff.

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71. Quoted in Binkley, R. C., Realism and Nationalism: 1852–1871 (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935), p. 60.Google Scholar

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73. Klein, , Abbé Felix, Americanism: A Phantom Heresy (Paris, 1951), p. iii.Google Scholar

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77. Ibid., p. 63.

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80. Ibid., p. 188.

81. McSorley, op. cit., p. 285: “There is no denying that the mention of Father Hecker's name in the papal letter cast a temporary shadow on his memory and on the prestige of the Paulists. All sorts of suspicions, rumors and distortions came into circulation. But within a short time, events fell into perspective and the true significance of the whole became plain.”

82. Cross, op. cit., p. 200; McAvoy, “Americanism, …,” op. cit., pp. 146–147.

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85. Sullivan specifically mentions some of the major “modernists,” but especially Loisy, Von Hügel, Fogazzaro, Tyrrell, Turmel, Buonaiuti, Hebert and Duchesne (all of whom Sullivan looked upon as “modernist.”), Under Orders, pp. 80–81. Tyrrell had a few articles published in Catholic World during the time Sullivan wrote for the journal (September, 1905 to April, 1906).

86. Sullivan, , Letters …, p. xxvi.Google Scholar

87. Ibid., p. 48.

88. Quoted by Ratte, p. 264.

89. Sullivan, , Letters …, pp. xvi–xvii.Google Scholar

90. Ibid., pp. 172ff. and 180ff.; Under Orders, pp. 70–77.

91. Sullivan, , Letters …, p. xv.Google Scholar

92. Ibid., p. 152.

93. Ibid., pp. xxi.

94. Ibid., p. 163.

95. Sullivan, , Under Orders, p. 114.Google Scholar

96. Sullivan, , Letters …, p. 4.Google Scholar

97. Sullivan, , Under Orders, pp. 84–85.Google Scholar

98. Sullivan, , Letters …, p. 7.Google Scholar

99. Daskam, op. cit., p. 21.

100. Sullivan, , Letters …, p. 107.Google Scholar

101. Ibid., p. 12.

102. Ibid., p. 13.

103. Sullivan, , Letters …, p. xix.Google Scholar

104. Ibid., p. 190.

105. Ibid., p. 84; pp. 8–9 and 189.

106. Sullivan, , Under Orders, p. 158.Google Scholar

107. Ibid., pp. 96–106.

108. Sullivan, , Under Orders, pp. 120ff.Google Scholar

109. Ibid., p. 105.

110. Ibid., pp. 108ff.

111. Ibid., p. 142.

112. Ibid., p. 26; Sullivan, , Letters …, pp. 276f.Google Scholar

113. Sullivan, , Under Orders, p. 157.Google Scholar

114. Ibid., p. 167.

115. Ibid., p. 160.

116. Ibid., p. 168.

117. Sullivan, The Flaming Spirit, op. cit., pp. 41–42.

118. Sullivan, , Under Orders, pp. 65–66, p. 16.Google Scholar

119. Ibid., p. 159; p. 156.

120. Ibid., p. 138.

121. Ibid., pp. 19ff and 161. Articles in The Atlantic Monthly: “Our Spiritual Destitution,” 143, (03, 1929), pp. 373–382Google Scholar and “The Anti-Religious Front,” 145, (January, 1930), pp. 96–104.

122. Sullivan, , Under Orders, pp. 135–153.Google Scholar Also see G. H. Kennedy in his introduction to The Flaming Spirit, op. cit., pp. 12ff.

123. Sullivan, , Under Orders, p. 159.Google Scholar

124. Ibid., p. 159.

125. Ibid., p. 138.

126. Sullivan, The Flaming Spirit, op. cit., p. 39.

127. Ibid., p. 113.

128. Ibid., p. 132.

129. Sullivan, “Our Spiritual Destitution,” op. cit., p. 379.

130. Sullivan, , Under Orders, p. 85.Google Scholar

131. Ibid., pp. 93–94.

132. McAvoy, The Great Crisis …, op. cit., p. viii.

133. Lilley, A. L., “Modernism,” in The Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, (J. Hastings, ed.), 8, pp. 763–768, p. 763.Google Scholar