USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 5 > Part 46
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ANTI-CATHOLIC LEGISLATION
American Revolution. On these occasions an effigy of the Pope, usually accompanied by that of the Devil, and some- times by figures of monks and friars, was paraded through the streets on a platform, with much hilarity and firing of crackers, and was duly burnt in a bonfire amid the huzzas of the crowd. In Boston, unhappily, the affair was likely to lead to a pitched battle between the North and the South Ends for possession of the "pope" and rights of cremation. Such lessons and traditions as these, drilled into the New England mind for many generations, help much to explain the periodi- cally recurring anti-Catholic movements of later times: the Nativists of the 1830s, the Know-Nothings of the '50s, the "A. P. As." of the '90s, and the Ku Klux Klan of our own day.
ANTI-CATHOLIC LEGISLATION (1647-1700)
In their effort to keep a Bible Commonwealth free from the incursions of the Scarlet Woman, the Puritans very wisely concentrated their attention upon barring the doors to the Catholic clergy. The chief law enacted for this purpose was the Act of 1647, which was directed not merely against Jesuits, as has often been said, but against every "spirituall or ecclesiastical person (as they are tearmed), ordained by the authority of the pope or sea of Rome." Every such per- son caught within the Colony was, after trial and conviction, to be "proceeded with by banishment or otherwise, as the Corte shall see cause"; and if he returned and was convicted a second time, the punishment was death. Exemption from these stringent provisions was duly made, however, for priests who might be cast upon "our shoares" by shipwreck, or who might come here "upon publike occasions," i.e., upon a diplo- matic mission. In 1700 it was prescribed that any "Romish" priest found within the province was to be condemned to imprisonment for life; and if such an one escaped and was retaken, he was to be put to death.
As for Catholic laity, the law denied them either civil or political rights, whether under the early Puritan theocracy or under the regime of "liberty of conscience" (for Protes- tants only) inaugurated by the charter of 1692.
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CATHOLIC CLERGY IN MASSACHUSETTS (1643-1674)
Under such conditions it is comprehensible enough that the Catholic Church as such was non-existent in Massachusetts throughout the colonial period, and that few individual Cath- olics cared to stray into the Province.
It is true that several priests did make brief visits here in the seventeenth century. In 1643 and again in 1646 French ships stopped in Boston harbor, with "two friars" on board in the first case, and two priests in the second. On both occasions these dangerous persons were allowed to go into the town, but they did so just once "lest they should give offence." In the winter of 1650-1651 Fr. Gabriel Druillettes, S. J., visited Boston and Plymouth, sent by the governor of Canada to negotiate for a trade agreement and an alliance against the Iroquois. Though unsuccessful in his mission, he was courteously received by the authorities and leading men of the two Colonies, notably by "Master Heliot" (Rev- erend John Eliot) in "Rogsbray." Indeed, these two exemplary soldiers of Christ, so opposite in their beliefs, conceived such sympathy for each other that the Puritan Apostle to the Indians wished to keep with him all winter the brave Jesuit who was to spend his life in evangelizing the savages and who died with the reputation of a saint.
As Fr. Druillettes was allowed a room in Maj .- General Gibbons's house in Boston in which he could "say his prayers and perform the exercises of his religion in all liberty," it is generally believed that he was the first who offered the sacrifice of the Mass upon the soil of this Commonwealth (December, 1650). After this, except for one Jesuit (Fr. Pierron), who travelled through in disguise in 1674, we have no sure knowledge of the presence of any priests in Massa- chusetts down to the Revolution.
CATHOLIC IMMIGRANTS (1640-1772)
In the time of Charles I and Cromwell there was a small im- migration of Irish and Scotch Catholics, mainly redemptioners and deported prisoners of war. After 1654 the Massachusetts authorities succeeded in stopping this influx for about sixty years. In 1689 it could be boasted that there was not a single "papist" in all New England.
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THE ACADIANS
About 1717 Irish immigration set in again, both Protestant and Catholic, and henceforth it was rather encouraged as a stimulus to industry. By 1732 a Boston newspaper, the Weekly Rehearsal, could report: "We hear that Mass has been performed in town this winter by an Irish priest among some Catholics of his own nation, of whom it is not doubted we have a considerable number among us." By the end of the colonial period Massachusetts must have had a far from insignificant Irish population; as is shown, for instance, by the surprisingly large number of Irish (and Catholic) names on the muster-rolls of Bunker Hill or Lexington and Concord. Some infiltration of French Catholics came about, as illus- trated in 1746, when the authorities of Boston, fearing an attack by a French fleet, arrested about one hundred such persons "to prevent any danger the town may be in from Roman Catholicks residing here."
Nevertheless, all this immigration represented no gain for the Catholic Church. Cut off from the worship and sacra- ments of their Church, and presented with the strongest prac- tical motives for conforming to the dominant religion of the country, these French and Irish immigrants were within a generation or two lost to Catholicism.
THE ACADIANS (1755-1775)
How little prospect there still was for the open profession of the older faith was shown in the winter of 1755-1756, when 2,000 exiled Acadians landed in Massachusetts. They were indeed received with much sympathy and allowed even to say their prayers "in their families in their own way", but as Hutchinson writes, "the people would upon no terms have consented to the public exercise of religious worship by Roman Catholick priests." As the last word of colonial Massachusetts upon the subject we may take a passage from the Boston Town Records of 1772, where it was affirmed that, while religious toleration was "what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced," its benefits were not to be extended to Roman Catholics, because their belief was "subversive of society."
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RESULTS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION FOR CATHOLICS (1775-1801)
The change began with the American Revolution. The patriotism displayed by Catholics during that struggle; the aid received by the United States from two foremost Cath- olic nations, France and Spain; the general trend of the time towards liberal ideas; and the weakening of the hold of Calvinism upon the community-all these things combined to pave the way for at least partial Catholic emancipation in Massachusetts. Symbolic of the new era was Washington's order of November 5, 1775, forbidding to his soldiers "the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the effigy of the Pope"-after which this annual outrage to Catholic feelings almost everywhere fell into oblivion.
The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, in theory at least, extended the equal protection of the law to "every denomi- nation of Christians demeaning themselves peaceably and as good subjects of the Commonwealth." Unfortunately, it also prescribed an oath for officeholders, so framed that no Cath- olic could conscientiously take it (a provision repealed only in 1821). It also left Catholics under the necessity of paying taxes for the support of "public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality" (an injustice maintained until 1833). As late as 1801 the judges of the State supreme court could declare : "Papists are only tolerated, and as long as their ministers behave well, we shall not disturb them; but let them expect no more than this" (a view that suggests lingering doubts whether Catholics could be considered as Christians). At all events, legal barriers and old prejudices had now been reduced to the point where it was possible to begin the organ- ization of the Catholic Church in Massachusetts.
THE FIRST CATHOLIC PARISH (1788-1792)
"The foundation of a Catholic Church in Boston," William Tudor wrote in 1819, was a marvel that "only could be sur- passed by devoting a chamber in the Vatican to a Protestant chapel." The first of these wonders came to pass in 1788. But the beginnings were singularly unfortunate. A former chaplain in the French navy, the Abbé de la Poterie, appeared
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FIRST CATHOLIC PARISH
in Boston-no one knows just how or from where-with faculties from the apostolic prefect, Dr. John Carroll, and gathered around him a little congregation of French and Irish Catholics, perhaps 100 persons. After at first saying Mass in the house of a Mr. Baury on Green Street in the West End, he was soon able to lease the old and then vacant Huguenot church on School Street ( three or four doors from Washington Street and opposite the present City Hall). Here on November 2, 1788, for the first time in the history of this Commonwealth, Mass was publicly celebrated, "amid a large concourse of people of all persuasions."
Unfortunately, however, the Abbé de la Poterie was, as Dr. Belknap wrote, but a "speckled bird," a fantastic adven- turer with an unsavory past. Within a few months he had to be removed from his post by Dr. Carroll, as soon as the facts about him became known. Nor was his successor, the Abbé Rousselet, another French volunteer whom Carroll in his dire need for priests felt forced to accept, much of an improve- ment. Great hopes, on the other hand, were attached to the Rev. John Thayer (1758-1815), who in 1790 was sent to take charge of the discouraged little flock in Boston. For Thayer, already a famous man, a graduate of Yale, a former Congregational minister, and an ex-army chaplain, was the first notable New England convert to Catholicism. He was returning, after years of study abroad, consumed with zeal to spread his new faith in the land of his birth. But he, too, proved a disappointment. Though a man of fine character, blessed with learning, genius, and wit, he suffered from a certain arrogance, tactlessness, and overfondness for contro- versy, which led him not only to quarrel with his own con- gregation but also rather to antagonize the non-Catholic com- munity. After two years of strenuous, brave, and blundering activity, he had to be sent away to other fields. At any rate, it was a gain that, when for the first time a Catholic bishop (John Carroll) visited Boston in 1791, he was received every- where with profuse courtesy-Governor Hancock even at- tended Mass as a mark of respect; and the bishop could write, "It is wonderful to tell what great civilities have been done to me in this town, where a few years ago a 'Popish' priest was thought to be the greatest monster in the creation."
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MATIGNON AND CHEVERUS (1792-1823)
Fortunately for the sorely-tried church in Boston, the French Revolution was now beginning to drive towards our shores priests who well represented the élite of the clergy of old France. One such refugee was Dr. François Matignon (1753-1818), a former professor of theology in the Collège de Navarre at Paris, who arrived in 1792 to replace Fr. Thayer. A second was Fr. Jean Lefebvre de Cheverus (1768- 1836), who, at Matignon's invitation, came over in 1796 to assist his old friend at Boston. These two admirable French- men were the true founders of the Catholic Church in Massa- chusetts.
They were a remarkable pair, united by a friendship that reminded contemporaries of David and Jonathan, and linked also by a singular community of tastes, temperament, and lofty purpose. Both were men of broad culture, talent, and refinement, who chose to lead lives of poverty and hardship in the whole-souled service of their poor and scattered flock. Both came to be loved and venerated by Catholics and Protestants alike. They made no effort, indeed, to carry the Protestants by storm, as Thayer had done. But, as a con- temporary writes, "nothing could withstand the influence wrought by the beautiful life of zeal, charity, and devotedness exhibited by Dr. Matignon and M. Cheverus." By their simple friendliness and benevolence, by their mildness and gentleness, by sheer force of goodness, they not only dis- armed hostility and prejudice, but "laid the Puritan com- munity under something like a spell."
THE FIRST CATHEDRAL (1803)
For over twenty years these two labored together, minister- ing not only to the congregation in Boston but to scattered Catholics all over New England, such as the faithful Abnaki Indians of Maine. The first notable achievement was to re- place the small and dilapidated leased chapel on School Street by building an adequate new church. As this involved a severe strain on the resources of a small flock, gifts from outside were welcomed. Catholics have always gratefully remembered that, out of the $20,000 required for their first
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FIRST BISHOP OF BOSTON
church in Boston, nearly $3,500 was contributed by generous Protestants. John Adams, then President of the United States, headed a subscription list that included the names of most of the best-known Boston families of that period. Located on Franklin Street, in what was then the most fash- ionable part of town, built in brick in dignified Ionic style according to plans gratuitously furnished by Bulfinch the architect, the Church of the Holy Cross was dedicated Sept. 29, 1803. Soon raised to the rank of a cathedral, it was to be for more than half a century the centre of Catholicism in New England; and even today the memory of the "first" or "old" cathedral is a hallowed one to Boston Catholics, as- sociated as it is with many of the most famous scenes and most venerated figures in their Church's history. 1
THE FIRST BISHOP OF BOSTON (1808-1823)
April 8, 1808, Pius VII, by the brief "Ex debito pastoralis officii," raised Boston to the rank of a bishopric. This change was due much less to the number of Catholics in these parts than to the need of reducing the size and burdens of the diocese of Baltimore, which had hitherto embraced the whole of the United States. The new see included all New England. As its first incumbent Cheverus was chosen, since Matignon had insisted that the honor must go to his younger and more brilliant friend.
The modern world has not often seen such, a figure as this first Bishop of Boston. New Englanders had heard much of the horrors of "prelacy," but what were they to make of this bishop, who lived in one small room, with so little furni- ture that visitors often had to sit on the bed; who stinted himself to the utmost on food and clothes; who split his own firewood; who might be found visiting the poor and the sick at all hours of the day and night; who often tramped to Salem on foot in order to save money to give to the needy; who was seen one day walking back to Boston in a pouring rain from Hingham, where he had gone to visit a dying man; and who periodically travelled all over New England to find and succor the lost sheep of his flock?
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Innumerable are the picturesque tales that have come down to us about him : of his heroism amid two epidemics of yellow fever; of his tending with his own hands for a long period a poor, friendless negro, suffering from a loathsome disease; of his going to split and carry firewood for a poor invalid woman before daybreak-that none might know that he, the bishop, had had to do what charitable neighbors ought to have done; of his getting out at the head of his flock to labor on the fortifications of Boston-trundling a wheelbarrow-at a time when a British attack was feared during the War of 1812.
He entered with tact and dignity into movements for public betterment. He helped to found the Athenaeum, to which he gave a considerable number of books. He was a charming and welcome figure in the best society, whenever he chose to appear in it. On one occasion he was seen at a large banquet seated next to the President of the United States. But he was equally at home, and doubtless happier, among his beloved Maine Indians, whom he long visited annually, learning their language, sharing their squalid huts and their "terrible" meals, and bringing back with him as his only "fees," as he liked to jest, a horde of vermin which it took him months to get rid of. Morally, it was of incalculable value to the Church that it had for its first bishop in New England-of all places !- a man with the gracious, winning, and truly apostolic personality of Jean de Cheverus.
Material progress, however, was by no means rapid during this period. Immigration, long held back by the Napoleonic Wars and our conflict with England, supplied as yet but few additions to the fold. The scarcity of priests made it difficult to follow up, reclaim, and organize what Catholics there were, sprinkled over a vast diocese. Converts, although now begin- ning to appear in some numbers, made, after all, but a thin stream of new recruits. At the end of Cheverus's rule the number of Catholics in Massachusetts had risen from about 100 (in 1790) to about 3,500; apart from the cathedral, three poor little churches had been built at South Boston, Salem, and New Bedford; there were but five priests in the whole diocese; and one small group of nuns, the Ursulines, had ar-
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INFLUENCE OF CHEVERUS
rived (1819) to set up a girls' school which was to attain mournful celebrity in the future.
INFLUENCE OF CHEVERUS (1808-1823)
After Matignon's death in 1818, the bishop's health de- clined to the point where his physicians warned him that it would be fatal for him to remain much longer in the climate of Massachusetts. In 1823 Louis XVIII offered him the see of Montauban if he would return to France. The decision was a hard one for Cheverus, the more so when over 200 of the leading Protestant citizens of Boston joined in a public appeal to the French government not to take away from them one who had been "a blessing and a treasure in our social community," and who could "never be replaced." Finally, in deference to what was virtually a command from the sov- ereign of his native country, the bishop decided to go. He divided what little property he possessed between the Church, his friends, and the poor, and taking with him only his cross, his chalice, and the old trunk with which he had arrived in this country twenty-seven years before, he left Boston (September, 1823) amid the regrets and eulogies of the whole community. In France he soon gained the same universal popularity as here; and he died in 1836 a cardinal and Arch- bishop of Bordeaux.
His influence here may best, perhaps, be gauged from the words of William Ellery Channing (written in 1829) : "To come down to our own times, has not the metropolis of New England witnessed a sublime example of Christian virtue in a Catholic bishop? Who, among our religious teachers, would solicit a comparison between himself and the devoted Chev- erus? ... How can we shut our hearts against this proof of the power of the Catholic religion to form good and great men? . .. It is time that greater justice were done to this ancient and widespread community."
Bostonians long loved to recall that familiar figure-in the shabby black coat, with the knee-breeches, stockings. and buckled shoes of the older generation-trudging tirelessly through the streets, while children ran after him, "delighted to receive a smile and a kind word from one whose personal
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presence was like a benediction" and whose face seemed "visibly aglow with the light that springs from some unearthly source."
BISHOP FENWICK (1825-1846)
After an interval of two years, during which the diocese was administered by the vicar-general, the Very Rev. William Taylor, Boston received its second bishop in the person of Benedict Joseph Fenwick, S.J. (born 1782), president of Georgetown College, and a scion of one of the old Catholic families of Maryland. The new bishop was a robust, vigor- ous man, whose somewhat leonine form (he weighed 300 pounds) and strong, if not handsome, face seemed to radiate energy, health, and geniality. In true Jesuit fashion, he com- bined the talents of a scholar "who seemed to have read everything and to have retained all he had read," with those of a practical, prudent man of affairs, and with as complete and self-sacrificing a devotion to his faith and flock as even Cheverus had shown. By nature rather irascible, he had by self-discipline acquired a patience, gentleness, and serenity that nothing could exteriorly disturb-and of these qualities he had much need during his stormy episcopate. All in all, this was probably the ablest of the early bishops of Boston, certainly the most sorely tried, and one of the finest charac- ters that the American Church has produced.
The new regime opened under promising auspices. Immi- gration soon began to throw large and ever-increasing num- bers of Irish Catholics on our shores, although the great deluge came two decades later. Under Fenwick the Catholic Church here first came to face a situation that has since been permanent, in which the main problem has been, not how to gain or hold adherents, but how to find priests enough and build churches fast enough to provide for a swarming popula- tion. Fortunately, Ireland also commenced to export priests, and native candidates for holy orders were at last coming forward in some numbers. Like Cheverus before him, Fen- wick at first cherished high hopes of effecting conversions on a large scale among the people of old New England stock. It was primarily for this purpose that he founded in 1829 . The Jesuit or Catholic Sentinel, one of the first Catholic jour-
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THE NATIVIST MOVEMENT
nals printed in the United States. After an eventful history and various changes of name, character, and management, this paper, now called The Pilot, is today the official organ of the archdiocese of Boston.
THE NATIVIST MOVEMENT (1829-1840)
Meanwhile the cloudless horizon was beginning to show signs of the coming storm-the first of a series of periodical outbreaks of anti-Catholic feeling that marked the history of Massachusetts in the past century. These movements, of course, have by no means been confined to this Common- wealth; they have, on the whole, been less violent here than in several other States; and it is pleasant to record that here at least they have never led to actual bloodshed.
The "Nativist" agitation of the '30s may be explained primarily by alarm over the increasing tide of Catholic immi- gration. It may be noted that New Englanders at that time were brought up on schoolbooks in which it was still the fashion to describe all Catholic nations as "ignorant," "super- stitious," "deceitful," "licentious," "cruel," "lazy," etc. Even a would-be generous writer like "Peter Parley" would regale his readers with such statements about the Irish as that they set apart St. Patrick's Day "for going to church, drinking whiskey, and breaking each other's heads with clubs." Hence when Irish immigrants then began to appear here in great numbers, people were prepared in advance to find their worst suspicions realized.
Naturally, the newcomers were often the poorest mem- bers of a shamefully oppressed nation; but their poverty, not the causes of it, was noted. They were largely unschooled, not exactly through their own fault. They were said by un- friendly neighbors to be addicted to drunkenness, brawling, and fighting, though in these respects it would hardly seem that native Americans of that time were in a position to throw stones. Above all, the Irish were thought to be too clannish, flocking by themselves and cutting themselves off from the life of the community like an alien element; although one wonders what else could have been expected in view of the attitude of mingled dislike, distrust, and contempt which
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they so frequently encountered from the natives. In fact they could usually find real friendliness and help only from people of "their own kind" and from their priests.
The native American's aversion to the immigrant was doubtless much stimulated by economic motives. The laborer, teamster, or factory hand who found himself "done out of his job" by an Irishman, was likely to have strong convictions as to the danger of this foreign invasion for the Protestant religion and "our free institutions." The religious bigotry which pervaded the Nativist movement was aggravated by the fact that this country was just then receiving a flood of anti-Catholic literature from England, called forth by the struggle over Catholic Emancipation. Moreover, during the "revivals" so frequent in the '30s, not a few Protestant ministers felt it a major duty to berate the Church of Rome and to revive all the old accusations in the best style of the sixteenth century.
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