A Book Review… What Catholic Civil War Experiences Tell Us

By PEGGY MOEN

Faith and Fury: The Rise of Catholicism During the Civil War by Fr. Charles P. Connor. EWTN Publishing: 2019; 259 pp.; paperback $19.95. Order from Sophia Institute Press at sophiainstitute.com or call 1-800-888-9344.

The Civil War might not be much in the news now — at least, not like it was during its centennial from 1961 to 1965 or again in its sesquicentennial from 2011 to 2015.
Nonetheless, Fr. Charles P. Connor’s Faith and Fury: The Rise of Catholicism During the Civil War is timely reading, for at least three reasons.
First, he shows the depth and the extent of anti-Catholicism in the United States, and how it has always recurred.
One example: The trial of Mary Surratt, a Catholic, who was charged with aiding and abetting John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators in the Lincoln assassination, brought “America’s ever-present anti-Catholicism back to the front of the national consciousness. Stories abounded that all the conspirators were Catholics, even taking their orders directly from the pope. Pius IX was clearly suspicious of American-style liberal regimes (the Syllabus of Errors against modern political arrangements had recently been promulgated), and it was said he had deputized scores, if not hundreds, of priests, especially Jesuits, to work tirelessly to destroy democracy.”
Mrs. Surratt became the first woman executed by the federal government. Fr. Connor notes: “The mood of the country was one of revenge, though several historical inquiries have concluded that Mrs. Surratt was the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice.”
Following the nineteenth-century potato famine, Irish immigration to the U.S. ballooned. Irish Catholics therefore fought on both sides of the Civil War — fissures within the Church body are not peculiar to our own times!
But this same growth fueled anti-Catholicism. Anti-Catholic outbreaks on the Eastern Seaboard are best known, especially the founding of the short-lived Know-Nothing Party, but anti-Catholicism also existed in the Midwest.
Fr. Connor quotes this from the Chicago Tribune, February 26, 1855: “The great majority of members of the Roman Catholic Church in this country are Irishmen. The fact is peculiarly true in this city….Who does not know that the most depraved, debased, worthless and irredeemable drunkards and sots which curse the community, are Irish Catholics? Who does not know that five eighths of cases brought up every day before the Mayor for drunkenness and consequent crime, are Irish Catholics?”
Second, the book offers material for apologetics. For example, the Church did condemn slavery, claims of anti-Catholics notwithstanding. As one instance, Pope Paul III in Sublimis Deus (1537) wrote that Christians are equal because of their calling and should not be “deprived of their liberty or their possessions. Rather, they are to be able to use and enjoy this liberty and this ownership of property freely and licitly, and are not to be reduced to slavery.”
Pope Leo XIII gave the definitive condemnation of slavery in Catholicae Ecclesiae, albeit that came in 1890, after the U.S. Civil War. Leo added “the unity of human origins” to the Church’s stance against slavery.
It is true, however, as Fr. Connor explains, that what the Church in the U.S. did in practice left much to be desired. Some bishops and religious orders were slaveholders, as were many Catholic laymen.
One such bishop was the Most Rev. Patrick N. Lynch of Charleston, S.C., who came from a slaveholding family and who over time “acquired a large number of slaves, primarily from estates willed to him and the diocese,” writes Fr. Connor. He quotes from Patrick N. Lynch: 1817-1882: Third Catholic Bishop of Charleston: David C.R. Heisser and Stephen J. White Sr.:
“Bishop Lynch’s slaveholding can be viewed from several angles. The prevailing American Catholic opinion before the Civil War was that slavery was a licit, if not desirable practice. During the war all Southern Bishops were loyal to the Confederacy. . . . [Lynch] displayed ingenuity in devising a plan that combined practical and humanitarian motifs protecting the church’s considerable financial interest, while safeguarding the unity of Black Catholic families.” That is, he kept the slaves willed to him as opposed to selling them, which would have resulted in family breakups.
A prominent Catholic layman who owned slaves was Judge William J. Gaston of North Carolina. During the North Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1835, Judge Gaston nonetheless opposed a measure depriving Black freeholders of their right to vote for members of the State Senate and House of Commons.
Also, the judge, according to local church records, had all of his slaves baptized. Fr. Connor comments: “And yet, of course, this leaves us with the truth that, in spite of everything, Judge Gaston still owned slaves, so embedded into the Southern psyche was the institution.”
Fr. Connor provides examples of Catholics who assisted the slaves, including St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, who wrote in an 1815 journal entry: “so many…mountain children and poor Blacks came today for First Communion instructions. They were told from the pulpit all to repair to the [Convent] so they came, as for a novelty, but we will try our best to fix them.”
Third, especially in writing about the heroic work of women religious in caring for the sick and wounded, Fr. Connor shows how the Church has offered unequaled assistance in times of illness and suffering — much as the Church does now during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Very close to Saint Matthew’s Cathedral in our nation’s capital is a monument to all the religious Sisters who served as nurses in the Civil War,” says Fr. Connor.
“This fitting tribute allows one to reflect on the various religious orders whose women of mercy did immeasurable good — bringing lapsed Catholics back to the practice of the Faith, winning many converts to the fullness of truth, and significantly contributing to breaking down barriers of hostility that had been erected so long ago, and under which so many Americans, not to mention America’s soldiers, operated all their lives.”
He also cites the work of Mary Agnes Grace of Baltimore, who became a Sister of Charity in the 1820s. Known as Mother Gonzaga, she served at Satterlee Military Hospital in Philadelphia during the Civil War, assisted by 40 other sisters. On one day, August 16, 1862, they cared for over 1,500 sick and wounded men. The City of Philadelphia honored Mother Gonzaga on her golden jubilee.
Finally, this scholarly book offers much of human interest, like how Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln had conflicting views about Irish servants in the White House. After Mrs. Lincoln fired an Irish doorkeeper named Edward McManus, he gave stories to the newspapers about her considerable spending habits and alleged infidelities. Mrs. Lincoln then referred to McManus as a “discarded menial” and told a writer that she “never did share her husband’s fondness for the Irish.”
This book is highly recommended.