An Americanist hero.

Americanism is a heresy, so proclaimed by Pope Leo XIII in the 1899 papal letter Testem benevolentiae. It's an odd sort of heresy, in that no one was accused of holding he doctrines it condemned (for example, extolling natural over supernatural virtues, rejecting religious vows as incompatible with Christian liberty). Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore, to whom Testem was addressed, denied in his reply that any educated American Catholics held the views described in the letter.

Testem benvolentiae provided a sop, more symbolic than substantial, to conservative clerics in Europe and the United States who harbored dire suspicions of developments in American Catholicism, seeing in them the influence of Protestantism and/or the French Revolution. The letter's only other accomplishment was to give a bad name to a good thing. Gibbons was indeed an "Americanist," as were others: Archbishops John Ireland, John J. Keane, Martin J. Spalding; all of them accepted, advocated, and even celebrated what they saw as the distinctive virtues of the American nation: religious liberty, democracy, openness, separation of church and state.

Though these late-nineteenth-century prelates have had few followers of equal stature, they did have predecessors. The very first "Americanizer" in the U.S. hierarchy was the new country's very first bishop, John Carroll (1735-1815). Born into a founding family of Maryland, the only English colony in the New World established by Catholics and the first to establish religious liberty, Carroll was Rome's choice to become the first bishop of the new country's first diocese. He urged, however, that all the priests of the nation should have a voice in choosing their bishop. Rome acceded, and Carroll became bishop of Baltimore. Government by consensus was a prime element in his legacy to the American church; another was his unqualified devotion to religious liberty.

Between Carroll's death in 1815 and the arrival of Gibbons, Ireland, & Co., there was only one other giant church leader in America: John England (1786-1842) of Cork, Ireland. At age thirty-four, having already been a cathedral lecturer, prison and asylum chaplain, teacher of philosophy and college president, England was pastor of a parish in a town near Cork when he learned in 1820 of his appointment as bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, a vast mission diocese comprised of North and South Carolina and Georgia.

Though he was not yet an American citizen when he assumed office, England showed an immediate appreciation for the values and institutions of American democracy, and their compatibility with Catholic tradition. Soon after his arrival, he wrote a pastoral letter to the faithful of his diocese, the first such letter in the history of the American church. And that was only one of his innovations. First, a brief scan of his policies:

* Again acting without precedent, England composed a constitution for the governance of his diocese, spelling out the rights and responsibilities of all parties: laity, clergy, and bishop, and then submitted it for acceptance to every priest and all the leading laymen of the parishes for voluntary adoption.

* Less than two years after his arrival, England established the first Catholic newspaper in America, the weekly United States Catholic Miscellany - and he himself edited the paper, helped in the printing, and wrote most of the copy; writings of his collected from the paper ran it seven volumes. John Tracy Ellis wrote that the Miscellany was England's "greatest single contribution" to the American Catholic church and that "it exerted a powerful influence on American Catholic thought during the early nineteenth century."

* In 1826, a month before receiving his final citizenship papers, England became the first Catholic clergyman to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress; President John Quincy Adams and the justices of the Supreme Court were also present.

* Though his was a mission diocese with relatively few Catholics, England is generally credited as the chief force behind the holding of the first four American Provincial Councils, beginning in 1829, which resolved many prossing problems of the growing American church in effective collegial fashion. England had serious difficulties with others in the American hierarchy, but the records indicate that he dominated these meetings, and he was chosen to write the pastoral letters they issued.

* In his relations with non-Catholics, England anticipated attitudes that achieved full expression nearly a century-and-ahalf later, in the Second Vatican Council. He spoke often and kindly of "our separated brethren," among whom he had many friends. Of the 207 public discourses of one kind or another recorded in his diary between January 1, 1821 and December 5, 1823, most were delivered in Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, and Episcopal churches and houses. He reported that Protestants had often offered the use of their churches for Catholic services, and even contributed funds for his churches and other projects: the ultimate proof of ecumenical good will!

* At a time when a translation of the Missal into German was condemned in Rome and placed on the Index, and decades before Leo XIII lifted the official prohibition on vernacular translations, England succeeded in publishing an English-language Missal (his own work) in 1822; it also included a 120-page history and explanation of the Mass ritual. It was another American first.

In many ways, then, John England was far ahead of his times in his pastoral career in America. (Not in all ways, it must be added; in 1814 he published a defense of slavery as an institution.) In one respect - the constitution he offered to the faithful of his Charleston diocese-England was not only ahead of his time but is still without worthy successors. Under the constitution, each congregation elected representatives who were to constitute a vestry, which had real powers and responsibilities: "The churches, cemeteries, lands, houses, funds, or other property belonging to any particular district [here meaning parish] shall be made the property of the vestry of that district, in trust for the same." All money belonging to the parish could be "expended only by authority of an act of the vestry of that district."

Another element of the constitution provided for annual diocesan conventions of all the clergy and a proportional representation of the laity from each congregation, elected by all the people. The convention had certain powers parallel to those of the vestry. The bishop was required to make a full report to the convention on the expending of all funds, and England fulfilled this duty in detail every year. In addition, he took the opportunity to present an overview of the state of the church in the whole country as well as in his own diocese, so that his twenty-six convention addresses give a history of the church in America for those years.

It is important to note that in 1823, when England proposed his constitution, a portion of the American church was involved in a struggle over trusteeism, a movement with roots in Catholic Europe that under some state laws in America was at times transformed into a threat to hierarchical control and church unity. These laws more or less presumed lay administration of church property, including the right of "patronage," that is, choice of pastors and other church officials. Undirected, trusteeism could have developed into a Catholic form of congregationalism, so that it is understandable that England's constitution met with a cold response from most of his fellow bishops. (Another factor, according to Andrew Greeley, was that many of these bishops lacked competence to grasp England's vision.) Today England's diocesan constitution is recognized as an ingenious way of recognizing but creatively channeling the democratic impulse that lay at the foundation of trusteeism.

For example, despite the broad powers given to the vestry and the convention, the constitution required the approval of the bishop for the sale of any property, a means of incorporating the American notions of checks and balances and separation of powers, as well as election of representatives, into church administration. "The American people," England said in a letter to Rome, "are a law-abiding people, and the laws are respected so long as the voice of the people is heard in their making." Elsewhere he reported that the American Catholic "will never be reconciled to the practice of the bishops, and oftentimes of the priest alone, giving orders without assigning reasons for the same." He told his 1827 annual convention that he was searching for and training clergy who were "attached to our republican institutions."

The constitution also reflected his grasp of certain Catholic traditions that are always in danger of neglect. At its very beginning, England wrote that he sees the bishop "not as the deputy of the pope, but as a successor to the Apostles." Without using the term subsidiarity, he operated by that principle in sending the constitution to Rome; he told his convention: "I could not look for its approbation, because the power of making the regulations which it enacts, resides within each diocese for itself, subject only to the examination of the Apostolic See, to prevent their containing anything incompatible with our holy faith."

On another theme, separation of church and state, England was almost an absolutist, seeing in the American system the best protection for both religious liberty and civic freedom. The motto at the top of every issue of his United States Catholic Miscellany was taken from the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." In his two-hour-long address to Congress in 1826, he proclaimed: "I would not allow to the pope, or to any bishop of our church, outside this Union, the smallest interference with the humblest vote at our most insignificant balloting box. He has no right to such interference." In other passages, England explained further:

You must, from the view which I have taken, see the plain distinction between spiritual authority and a right to interfere in the regulations of human governments or civil concerns. You have in your Constitution wisely kept them distinct and separate. It will be wisdom, and prudence, and safety to continue that separation.... You have no power to interfere with my religious rights; the tribunal of the church has no power to interfere with my civil rights .... Any idea of the Roman Catholics of these republics being in any way under the influence of any foreign ecclesiastical power, or indeed of any church authority in the exercise of their civil rights is a serious mistake. There is no class of our fellow-citizens more free to think and to act for themselves on the subject of our rights than we are; and I believe there is not any portion of the American family more jealous of foreign influence or more ready to resist it.

England's views of church governance were consistent with his support of religious liberty and church-state separation. He recognized that there could be disagreements with church authorities and legitimate dissent by faithful Catholics. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Forsythe in 1841, he wrote that if the American bishops had found in a papal apostolic letter "anything contrary to their judgment, respecting faith or morals, it would have been their duty to have respectfully sent their statement of such differences to the Holy See, together with their reasons for such dissent."

If almost everything about England is surprising, possibly the most startling, given his views, is that in general he had very good relations with Rome. For example, his Missal, along with a lengthy explanation of the Vatican's Holy Week ceremonies-written in Rome at the Vatican's request - was published in English in a single 310-page volume, and then translated into French and Italian and published in all three languages at the expense of the then reigning pope, who was none other than Gregory XVI (1831-46), whose best-known encyclical, Mirari vos, vigorously condemned notions of religious liberty, separation of church and state, and freedom of speech and the press.

Part of the explanation may be that Gregory recognized a difference between the political liberalism of North America and the continental movements that he found threatening. But England's personality may also have played a part; there are indications that he charmed Gregory XVI while Gregory was still Cardinal Cappellari, prefect of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (England did in fact charm many people with his innocent openness, wit, and articulateness). In 1830, five months before becoming pope, Cappellari sent England a letter of commendation: "Your letter gave me the greatest pleasure; for it contains a very clear proof of the remarkable care which your Lordship is giving to the religious problems of your diocese....I desire eagerly to confess to your Lordship that the Sacred Congregation has a high opinion of your intelligence, your piety, your learning, and your other admirable qualities."

In contrast, most of England's peers in the American hierarchy were bitterly critical of everything he did - his constitution, convention, the Miscellany, hobnobbing with Protestants. The reason, Andrew Greeley has written, was that England "was too much for them and they were too small for him .... For John England committed the unpardonable crime - he was right...and such accuracy was intolerable in a man who had barely arrived on the shores of the new republic."

Though much of England's work seemed to die with him, his memory lives. His principal biographer, Peter Guilday, concluded that it will long be valued because of his "untrammeled Americanism, on account of his thorough grasp of American idealism, and above all because of the unique place he made for himself in American history by interpreting justly and accurately to his own epoch the harmony between Catholic principles and the constitutional bases of the American government." Again, Greeley: "American Catholicism had a splendid opportunity in John England and missed its chance. The opportunity would not return again for almost a half century." That opportunity did return with the arrival of the "Americanists" who were put under a shadow by Testem benevolentiae. From the vantage point of post-Vatican 11 Catholicism, it is clear that the Americanism of John Carroll, of Gibbons, Ireland, Keane, and Spalding, and, above all, of John England was not heresy but heroism. We need new Americanist heroes today.