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Americanism as Seen through the Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph: Two Editors, Two Perspectives Mark S. Raphael I t is virtually axiomatic among contemporary historians that the Americanism crisis divided the late nineteenth century Catholic Church in the United States. One side believed that the United States, with its separation of Church and State as well as its separation from the encumbrances of European history, offered a priceless opportunity to develop the Church. The other side feared the de jure secularism, but de facto Protestantism of the United States, and felt that only through retaining the cultural bonds of their ethnic heritage could Catholic immigrants remain safe and Catholic in their new land.1 The Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph (established 1831), the oldest continuously functioning English language Catholic newspaper in the United States, provides one window through which this crisis can be viewed from the perspective of active Catholic laity of the time, specifically laymen who had access to public print media.2 For all but the last of the fifteen years between the Third Council of Baltimore in 1884, and the condemnation of Americanism by Pope Leo XIII on January 22, 1899, the Telegraph had two owner/editors. Through them we see the two sides of the Americanism crisis. The first, Irish-American Owen Smith, favored the Americanists, while the second, the German-American Joseph Schoenenberger, opposed them. To understand the effect that their different worldviews had on their coverage of the issues which became prominent during the Americanism controversy, it will be easiest to cover the editors chronologically, and 51 1. Thomas T. McAvoy, The Great Crisis in American Catholic History, 1895-1900 (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1957); Felix Klein, Americanism: A Phantom Heresy (1951); Christopher J. Kauffman, Tradition and Transformation in Catholic Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1988), 133-198; Joseph P. Chinnici, O.F.M., Living Stones: The History and Structure of Catholic Spiritual Life in the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: Orbis, 1996), 87-134; Gerald P. Fogarty, The Vatican and the American Hierarchy From 1870 to 1965 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1985), 65-194; David J. O’Brien, Isaac Hecker: An American Catholic (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 376-396. 2. The Cincinnati Catholic Telegraph, published throughout its history in Cincinnati; hereafter will be cited as CT. then examine the issues as they themselves did, in the order in which they came up, namely: education, The Catholic University of America, labor, and ethnicity. Owen Smith, Telegraph Editor from 1881-1890 The period of interest to the study of the Americanism crisis begins during the time when the Telegraph was published and edited by Owen Smith (1881-1890). Smith was a fierce Irish patriot, who gave the Telegraph an international style. On page one, every week, there was a column devoted to Catholic news from foreign countries, particularly Germany, Austria, and France; and in the body of the paper there were two regular columns devoted to events in the Vatican. Along with this international view, Smith’s Irish sentiments are clear in that an entire page in each week’s issue was devoted to events in Ireland, with focus given to the mistreatment of the Catholic majority in Ireland by the Protestant minority government. Dealing with the events germane to Americanism, Owen Smith showed himself to have a profound sympathy with the labor movement, an abiding concern with Catholic education, and an obvious admiration for John Ireland (1838-1918), Bishop of St. Paul (1884-1918, Archbishop from 1888), and John Joseph Keane (1839-1918), Bishop of Richmond (1878-1888) and later founding rector of The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. (1888-1896). Though the spiritual father of Americanism, Fr. Isaac Thomas Hecker, C.P., died in 1888, before the Americanism controversy became heated, his life and ministry inspired those who promoted rapid assimilation into American culture with an optimistic vision of an adaptable ecclesiology, openness to the modern age, concern for practical transformation of the world through social justice, and hopefulness about the human spirit.3 Smith consistently displayed an undisguised respect for him. I. Schools and Education The Fathers of the Third Council of Baltimore4 devoted considerable space in their 1884 Pastoral to...

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