The Catholic Church and the American Civil War

[CarmelJerome]

It’s always unpleasant the hear pro-life speakers invoking Abolitionists as exemplars because Abolitionism was fiercely anti-Catholic; Catholics were regarded as being as debased by their faith as slaves were by their chains. Moreover, the Abolitionists were vehemently in favor of violent revolution and the idea that higher law justified overriding all laws and conventions, something inimical to the Church’s moral theology.
Not an Abolitionist himself, Lincoln’s reduction of civic morality to expedience and his exultation sophistry have long carried the day in American political life. The Catholic Confederates were right in opposition to the delirious form of national despotism that Lincoln made into a new gospel.

 

[DavidFilmer]

As a southerner and a life-long resident of the south…lemme just point out that one of the groups that the KKK most hates is our beloved Church

You don’t need to be a Southerner. I’m a Southern transplant in Oregon, and I was surprised to learn that my Dominican Parish was subject to such harassment by the KKK (guys in robes & hoods blocking the doors at Mass time) that, in the summer of 1893, the whole building (built in 1885, just eight years earlier) was jacked off of its foundations and moved eleven blocks west (rolled on logs, pulled by teams of mules) to get the Parish “out of town” (it’s amazing what a difference 11 blocks made in those days).

As a Georgia native, I know that the early colony of Georgetown was established with only three laws: No slavery, no alcohol, and no Catholics. Of the three, the prohibition against Catholics was (by far) the last to go (not surprisingly, alcohol was the first to go, the prohibition against it having never effectively been enforced in the first place).

Although I will admit that the prohibition against Catholics probably had more to do with a lingering suspicion about the loyalty of people from Florida, which had been a Spanish colony and had lots of Catholics still loyal to Spain.

As a sometime resident of North Carolina, I had the dubious privilege of living in the least Catholic state in the Union. I moved to Oregon, and traded for the least Christian state in the union. Out of the pan…

 

[Mintaka]

Pope Gregory XVI, “In supremo apostolatus,” a condemnation of the slave trade. Composed to be read at the 4th Provincial Council of Baltimore, December 3, 1839.

"[W]e have judged that it belonged to Our pastoral solicitude to exert Ourselves to turn away the Faithful from the inhuman slave trade in Negroes and all other men. …]

"[D]esiring to remove such a shame from all the Christian nations, having fully reflected over the whole question and having taken the advice of many of Our Venerable Brothers the Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, and walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors, We warn and adjure earnestly in the Lord faithful Christians of every condition that no one in the future dare to vex anyone, despoil him of his possessions, reduce to servitude, or lend aid and favour to those who give themselves up to these practices; or exercise that inhuman traffic by which the Blacks, as if they were not men but rather animals, having been brought into servitude, in no matter what way, are, without any distinction, in contempt of the rights of justice and humanity, bought, sold, and devoted sometimes to the hardest labour. Further, in the hope of gain, propositions of purchase being made to the first owners of the Blacks, dissensions and almost perpetual conflicts are aroused in these regions.

“We reprove, then, by virtue of Our Apostolic Authority, all the practices abovementioned as absolutely unworthy of the Christian name. By the same Authority We prohibit and strictly forbid any Ecclesiastic or lay person from presuming to defend as permissible this traffic in Blacks under no matter what pretext or excuse, or from publishing or teaching in any manner whatsoever, in public or privately, opinions contrary to what We have set forth in this Apostolic Letter.”

The Bishop of Charleston, John England, despite privately abhorring slavery, interpreted “In supremo apostolatus,” as a condemnation of large-scale slave-trading, as opposed to the individual owning, or buying of slaves, or the individual declaring the children of slaves to be slaves too. (Yep, he was “personally opposed,” but he still wouldn’t speak out. Granted, 1839 was when Know-Nothingism and Anti-Catholicism were very big, but sheesh.)

Over the next twenty-five years, not all Southern bishops said that it was okay to own slaves; but a fair number did. Likewise, not all Northern bishops obeyed and spread the Pope’s teaching, but a fair number did. Wherever there was dissent, disobedience, and mealymouthed justifications for slavery, it caused a fairly deep amount of trouble and bitterness. (And it has slowed Catholic evangelism among African-Americans.)

On the other hand, I believe it’s correct to say that there were more religious orders in the South that accepted black and Indian members, although that may have been a numbers and demographics thing, rather than a lack of willingness. Many orders were forced to segregate later, although others seem to have avoided it in various ways.

 

[Mintaka]

It’s also not fair to say that all abolitionists were anti-Catholic, or that Republicans were anti-Catholic. Since many of the mainline Protestant churches were officially okay with slavery or didn’t oppose it, or were rapidly splitting over it, abolitionists tended to come from smaller Protestant denominations with stronger views. All else being equal, any Protestant was quite likely to be anti-Catholic in those days.

However, as today with the pro-life movement, Protestant abolitionists were largely willing to work with anyone who saw slavery as an injustice. Abolitionist Papists started to look pretty good when the neighbors thought Philemon was some sort of justification for treating humans like animals.

The Republican Party was the party of anybody who didn’t want to be in the Democratic Party. So you got ex-Whigs, ex-Know Nothings, Abolitionists… and Irish and Catholics, in any area where the local Democratic Party didn’t like Irish or Catholics around (ie, there weren’t enough of them to make it profitable to make nice for votes). I know a fair amount about this, as my Irish immigrant great-great-great-grandfather was one of the founding members of the Republican Party in his rural Ohio town. Like many Ohioans, he’d visited New Orleans via flatboat while working for extra cash, so he hated slavery with a passion. His town had a separate neighborhood for black people (technically a separate town), and he and his descendants stood out for their willingness to do business with and for the folks on the other side of the tracks. The family would be later attacked by the KKK in the 1920’s, which resulted in the KKK receiving brass knuckles in their faces. So that side of the family was never raised to see Democrats as particularly Irish- or Catholic-friendly…

Irish Nationalists living in the US often were very hot against slavery, because US patriotism and hatred of being “slaves to England” mixed very nicely with hatred of chattel slavery. Unfortunately, ethnic bigotry and fear of competition for jobs often trumped idealism in many cities, North and South.