Sacramento and the Catholic Church: Shaping a Capital City

4. Catholics and the Ethnic Consensus, 1880–1930

Sacramentans reveled in the results of a 2002 study by Harvard University that acclaimed the city “the most diverse” in the country.1 Time reported approvingly that Sacramento had a “Crayola culture” in which you could see a “Sikh casually strolling into a Mexican restaurant for takeout” and “an Eskimo and a white punk hanging out together downtown.” Mayor Heather Fargo declared, “Sacramento has been a diverse city throughout our history. From the earliest days of incorporation through today, our city is home to families from all cultures.”2 Literally speaking, the mayor was correct. Sacramento has always been home to a medley of ethnic groups. But diversity was not always celebrated. Sacramentans of earlier generations sometimes reacted to the foreignborn with suspicion and even outright hostility. Active nativist movements flourished at different times in the city’s past. These targeted not only the city’s “unassimilable” Chinese and Japanese but also other foreignborn groups who were the alleged source of certain social pathologies— for example, drunkenness, prostitution, petty theft, and so on.3 Certain c h a p t e r 4 Catholics and the Ethnic Consensus, 1880–1930 “Quietly accomplishing a distinctly valuable service” 100 ethnic groups were excluded from city housing by restrictive covenants. Eventually, the care and handling of the foreign-born became a Catholic “problem” since so many immigrants were Catholic. It was an easy step for some to equate Catholicism with social decay. To be sure, it was hard to tar all Catholics as bad citizens. As noted earlier, intermarriage and Catholic participation in commercial, civic, and political life made blanket accusations of disloyalty anomalous. In the small spatial and social confines of Sacramento, chances were that one either lived near or was related to a Catholic and found them to be good neighbors and loyal citizens. Likewise, prominent Catholic leaders like Bishops Manogue and Grace and groups like the Sisters of Mercy and the Franciscans were beloved public figures to whom it was impossible to attribute malice and of whom one could scarcely be afraid. But the foreign -born, many of them Catholics, did pose a problem for Sacramento. They were the “other.” Sacramento was not exempt from California’s history of racial exclusion. These attitudes and policies were directed mainly at people of color, especially Asians, but they also created a hostile climate toward foreign-born or other nationalities. Policy and opinion makers in the state capital at times regarded the foreign-born in their midst with suspicion and insisted on their assimilation into American culture (for instance, speaking English, practicing temperance, and dutiful hard work) as a condition for social peace. Sacramentans who came from abroad were expected to shed their “foreign” ways, learn English, and integrate themselves into the wider community. In 1920 Harry Muddox, executive secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, summed up Sacramento’s expectations of its foreign-born citizens: “I am not so much concerned with the actual naturalization of the foreigner, neither am I so much interested in knowing that he can write his name legibly or say American words, but I am deeply concerned as to whether he and his wife and children learn to fit in and become really Americanized.”4 Sacramento Catholic leaders at times embraced the racism inherent in exclusionary policies and were disposed to go along with the city consensus . However, it was not easy. Although they were sympathetic to the demand for assimilation, they had to contend with those who insisted on another course. Foreign-born Catholics of southern and eastern European backgrounds in particular and their patrons in the American hierarchy c at h o l i c s a n d t h e e t h n i c c o n s e n s u s 101 102 s a c r a m e n t o a n d t h e c at h o l i c c h u r c h rejected an overly hasty assimilation process into American culture. They demanded distinctive national churches to preserve their Catholic faith. Caught up in the pressures within the church, Sacramento’s Catholic leaders initially temporized and permitted ethnic churches, while insisting that they be way stations to Americanization. When this solution proved unsatisfactory, though, the demands of lay Catholics and their clerical supporters had to be accommodated despite the urgent requests of the local community. the california legacy...