Catholicism and the American Colonies

It's important to remember that King George III was indicted in the Declaration of Independence for granting toleration to the Faith in the Quebec Act.

From One Peter Five

By Charles Coulombe, STM, KCSS

A troop of subjects revolting against their legitimate sovereign, who is at the same time ours, has just made an irruption into this province, less in the hope of being able to support themselves there than with the view of drawing us into their revolt, or at least of engaging us not to oppose their pernicious design.

The singular kindness and gentleness with which we have been governed by His Most Gracious Majesty King George III, since, by the lot of arms, we have been subjected to his empire, the recent favors with which he has just lavished upon us, in restoring to us the use of our [Catholic] laws, the free exercise of our [Catholic] religion, and in making us participate in all the privileges and advantages of British subjects, would doubtless suffice to excite your gratitude and your zeal to support the interests of the Crown of Great Britain.

—Jean-Olivier Briand, Catholic Bishop of Quebec, May 22, 1775.

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence, it would be wise if we, as American Catholics, celebrated our own origins in this country, which – like the country itself – is far older than its mere political institutions.  Although partly fought as an attack against the Crown’s 1774 Quebec Act which – as Bishop Briand stated – safeguarded the Catholic Faith in the newly conquered Province of Quebec, its orientation changed in 1778.  In that year, King Louis XVI joined the rebels in their war against their Mother Country; the following year, his cousin, King Carlos III of Spain, came in with him.  Considering this entrance into the rebellion by his brother Sovereigns to be betrayal, George III lost all interest in Catholic Emancipation – that is, giving Catholics in his kingdom the freedom to celebrate the Holy Mass and be Catholics and free citizens.

Nevertheless, leaving aside the areas of the United States initially settled by the Spanish and French, a number of what were the Thirteen Colonies had Catholic roots, and we’ll look at each in turn.  We’ll also include places inside each where the French and Spanish did have a presence at one time.  We may look at the Spanish and French too in later articles, as part of our contribution to the Semiquincentennial.  Although most of the colonial churches surviving to-day are Episcopalian, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, Congregational, or Unitarian, there are a few of ours that predate Independence.

Virginia, founded in 1607, oddly enough did contain some Crypto-Catholics at the beginning of the settlement at Jamestown; thus, a visit to the Jamestown Memorial Church can be coupled with prayers for the first English-speaking Catholics in America where they rest in the adjoining cemetery.  Near the banks of the Potomac in Stafford County is the site of the Brent Plantation owned by the Catholic Diocese of Arlington. It contains the remains of a 1680s cemetery.  Dating to over a century before that was Padre Segura’s mission, an abortive Spanish attempt to evangelise the local Indians.  But the Commonwealth would have to wait until 1795 for its first legal parish, when President George Washington would make the first contribution to the building of St. Mary’s Church, Alexandria.

The Carolinas and Georgia were initially evangelised from St. Augustine, Florida, beginning with that town’s foundation in 1567.  But despite a great deal of success in the first century of effort, the settling of the Carolinas by Protestant settlers would see the Faith pushed back to what is now the northern border of Florida.  Huguenots settled in large numbers in the Carolinas; after 1732 Georgia became a convict settlement – for a short while.  The colonial Catholic remnant is primarily to be found in archaeological sites.

A greater contrast could not be found than in Virginia’s northern neighbour, Maryland.  Founded by Lord Baltimore in 1632 as a Catholic refuge with the willing support of his King, Charles I, Maryland remains the cultural centre of English-speaking Catholic America.  After Charles I was murdered in 1649, the triumphant Puritans conquered Maryland; the Wars of the Three Kingdoms ironically ended at Maryland’s Severn Creek in 1652.  The colony welcomed Charles II’s Restoration in 1660; 28 years later, the then Lord Baltimore was forced to surrender his territory, and it became a Royal colony.  A later Lord Baltimore apostatised in 1702, after which the local Protestants began squeezing the Catholic population with various legal disabilities; this was called to a halt after Good Queen Anne’s personal intervention in 1708.  The Jesuits were the primary religious force in the colony and neighbouring places from the founding until the Order’s dissolution in 1773.  At that time, Fr. John Carroll was the provincial superior, and he continued as the head of the Maryland priests.

To-day, St. Clement’s Island in St. Mary’s County is a state park.  This is the place where, in 1634, Lord Baltimore’s colonists disembarked and their Jesuit chaplains offered the first Mass under English-speaking auspices on the territory of the United States.  That took place on the Feast of the Annunciation, and henceforth this feast is also celebrated as “Maryland Day” by Marylanders.  Nearby, in St. Mary’s City, is Maryland’s first colonial capital – very much a Colonial Williamsburg for Catholics.  Close by, at St. Inigoes, is the oldest English-speaking parish in the country; St. Ignatius, founded in 1641.  At Newtowne, Charles II’s restoration allowed the Jesuits to establish a headquarters, St. Francis Xavier.  Leonardtown, now the country seat of St. Mary’s Country, has boasted St. Aloyius’ parish (although not the current church) since 1734.  Port Tobacco had a Jesuit church from 1741, and although the Carmel of Port Tobacco was only founded in 1790, and refounded in 1976, it was the first monastery in the Thirteen Colonies – and its foundress was a native. 

It will be obvious that Southern Maryland was and is very Catholic – eventually too much so for the non-Catholics.  When the Catholic Governor was overthrown in 1694, after Maryland was seized from Lord Baltimore, the capital was moved from St. Mary’s County to Puritan-founded Annapolis, which was hastily renamed in honour of Princess (later Queen) Anne – ironically later the salvatrix of the colony’s Catholics.  There was no Catholic parish here of course, but it was a mission station, eventually in the home of the prominent Carroll family.  The colonial Jesuits did not neglect the Eastern shore, but established a centre at what is now Warwick, Maryland in 1704 – St. Francis Xavier, or “Old Bohemia.”  This would become the cradle of the Faith not only in Maryland’s Eastern Shore, but Delaware as well.  In 1772, the Jesuits bought a stretch of land across the colonial line at Coffee Run, and built the church of St. Mary, the first permanent Catholic church in Delaware.

Of course, they were only able to do this because, as in Maryland, Catholicism was legal in Delaware.  In Maryland, of course, this was due to the ownership by the Lords Baltimore – Catholic until they were not.  But Delaware, like its much larger northern neighbour, Pennsylvania, owed its toleration of the One True Faith to the Penn family, whose progenitor, William Penn, had been given these colonies by Charles II in 1684, to settle debts owed Penn’s father.  A Quaker, Penn decided that all faiths would be tolerated in his new domains.  But the overthrow of James II, the earlier Jacobite struggles, and much else mitigated against a permanent public Catholic church being opened.  At last, in 1733, the Maryland Jesuits opened St. Joseph’s Church, Philadelphia.  From that time on, Catholic immigration to Pennsylvania from the British Isles and Germany grew heavily.  The year after, St. Mary’s, a lone chapel was founded at Conewago on the frontier – to-day housed in a grand basilica. This would be followed at Lancaster in 1741 by St. Mary’s – primarily for Germans. Another Catholic Church was needed in Philadelphia by 1764, and so another St. Mary’s was built.

Of course, these churches were primarily headquarters for Jesuits who would also serve any number of informal chapels-of-ease in between.  They also offered Mass on the sly, and often enough, on the run, for Catholics scattered here and there in the colonies of New Jersey and New York.  Indeed, there was, with one notable exception, not a single Catholic parish beyond Pennsylvania, all the way to the New England colonies.  That one lay, for a very few years, in the Mohawk Valley of New York, and was more a chaplaincy than a parish per se.  It was also one chapter of a very strange tale.

Long before the Quebec Act, King George III had shown himself very interested in Catholic Emancipation.  One practical result of this was that while the Penal Laws remained on the books, they ceased to be enforced so stringently; the King himself began to visit Catholic nobility.  One result of this was that the Catholics of the Three Kingdoms began to have much freer communications among themselves.  When a Scots Catholic laird in South Uist, a Catholic island in the Hebrides, attempted to force his tenants to work on Michaelmas, he was forbidden by their pastor to enter the Church for Mass.  He apostatised and began pressuring his tenants to convert to Protestantism.  Several other such incidents occurred in the Highlands in 1772, until at last, a Catholic laird who had purchased land on Prince Edward Island offered to give them refuge there.  With his money and a good deal raised by the English and Scots Vicars Apostolic, the brig Alexander brought the first wave of Catholic Scots emigrants – many of the older ones, including this writer’s forebear, being veterans of Culloden – to Canada.  From Prince Edward Island, a great many moved on to Cape Breton, establishing the uniquely Scots Catholic identity.

But the problem remained in Scotland, and an even more remarkable scheme was underway, which like the Alexander effort could not have happened without the relaxed conditions brought in by the new King.  As it happened, the Highland district of Lochaber had as its Catholic priest an Irishman from Meath named Fr. John McKenna.  Appointed in 1768, he was confronted not by persecution such as faced the earlier emigrants, but crop failure and no way for his flock to pay their rents.  Fortunately, Fr. John was in touch with a fellow Meathman who had made good in the Colonies – Sir William Johnson, Baronet.

Indian Agent for the Province of New York, Sir William had risen from relatively modest means at his birth in 1715 to become the most influential single man in his adopted colony, due to his friendship with the Iroquois (their supreme chief’s sister was his wife).  He played a huge part in the British victory in the French-and-Indian War, owned thousands of acres in the Mohawk Valley, and the colonial government in New York City could refuse him nothing.  Thus, when Fr. John McKenna arrived in New York with over 300 Scots (and a few Irish) emigrants aboard a Royal Navy warship secured by Sir William, not a word was said against this illegal debarquement of a Catholic priest.  The new arrivals swift sailed up the Hudson and over to Sir William’s estate at Johnstown.

All went well, to begin with.  Fr. McKenna served his flock at Johnstown, as the first openly functioning priest in the Province of New York since 1689.  Sir William died on July 11, 1774, but his son, Sir John, was quite as pleased with his new tenants as his father had been – and as they were with him.  It seemed that priest and people had at last found a place where they practise their Faith freely, and live out their days in peace.  But it was not to be.

Their Dutch and German Calvinist neighbours, bitterly anti-Catholic and envious of the favour showed these Papists by both the King and the Lord of the Manor joined the rebels, and over the next two years made life increasingly difficult for them and Sir John.  Over the course of 1776, priest, people, and baronet made their way to Montreal, with some loss of young and elderly along the way.  Once ensconced there, most of the men of his flock joined the Royal Yorkers, a Loyalist regiment headed by Sir John.  For two years, Fr. McKenna – as the first Catholic chaplain in the British Army since 1688, hearing confession in Gaelic, English, French, and German – accompanied his men in various battles against the rebels in Upstate – or “Up-Province” – New York.  At last, his health wrecked, he was sent back to Ireland to recuperate, with the expectation that this onetime giant of a man would recover sufficiently to rejoin the forces.  It was not to be.  He was appointed priest at Kilbride in 1782, and died there seven years later – in the year that the revolution he had fought in America would in some sense erupt in France.  Certainly, he would have seen it that way.

Sir John and his Catholic tenants were granted land after the war – since they could not return to their homes – in what is now Glengarry County, Ontario.  As with Cape Breton, this section would continue to attract Scots Catholic emigrants; between them, Cape Breton and Glengarry County are the reason that Canada has both more native speakers of Scots Gaelic and Catholics of Scots descent then there are in Scotland.  But of this last colonial-era Catholic settlement in New York, no church building remains – only Johnstown’s Johnson Hall, where once Sir William had Fr. John McKenna in for sherry and chats in Gaelic.  The only other remaining testaments to this colony are Johnson Hall in Williamstown, Ontario, where Sir John settled, and the haunting ruins of St. Raphael’s Church, built by descendants of Fr. McKenna’s parishioners.

In a way, ending our pilgrimage in Canada is perhaps fitting, because the history of both American and Canadian Church and State are actually tied together by our common colonial origins – a reality which these 250 years of separation have not ended.  But we Americans have forgotten what we were before 1776, and Canadians have lost their sense of who they are entirely.  We shall visit that sad truth in our next outing.