Fathers on the Frontier, French Missionaries and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the United States, 1789–1870 (review)

With a fine command of the rich array of primary sources, Michael Pasquier has crafted a distinctive narrative of the ”lived experience[s]” (p. 61) of French missionaries in the United States from the French Revolution to the Civil War. He is committed to presenting “the Private Lives of Priests” (p. 19), symbolized by the eighty-five pages of endnotes with citations of their letters and diaries.

Pasquier’s chapters are organized topically with more than a nod to chronology. The Sulpicians, who arrived in Baltimore in 1791, play various roles in the narrative. They passed on the ideals of the priesthood in the practical service of the Church. Although Pasquier frequently refers to the “Sulpician Order,” the Society of St. Sulpice, founded in France in 1642, is actually a community of diocesan priests on leave from their bishops to teach and form seminarians according to Sulpician ideals. In contrast to the other seminaries that appointed one spiritual director for all students, the Sulpician seminaries provided each student with his own spiritual director within the context of the sacrament of penance. This process forms a meaningful bond between director and penitent. Letters from priests of Sulpician seminaries voice a deep concern with the missionaries’ commitment to a life immersed in the sufferings of Christ.

Pasquier focuses on Benoit Joseph Flaget and Jean-Baptiste David, Sulpicians on the Kentucky frontier; Simon G. G. Bruté in Emmitsburg, MD; and Louis G. B. Dubourg in New Orleans. Other prominent figures such as Bishop Jean-Baptiste Blanc of New Orleans and Jean-Marie Odin of San Antonio and later of New Orleans also are featured. Although seminaries were formative of vocations, they had not prepared these men for the harsh realities of the frontier. These French priests “often failed to maintain the integrity of their missionary ideology. . . .Hunger, sickness, fatigue, boredom, loneliness, isolation, indifference, all these physical and emotional states affected how French missionaries lived throughout the dioceses of the trans-Appalachian West” (p. 61). Few in number, they became demoralized by the scandalous behavior of other French priests, particularly in Louisiana and Texas. Because the missionaries confronted these harsh conditions with a rough-hewn honesty, they were not overcome by them and achieved a solid resilience guaranteeing their continued service to the Church.

Besides his research in the Sulpician archives, Pasquier also consulted material from the Oeuvre pour la propagation de la foi in Lyon and Paris and from Propaganda Fide in Rome. The latter sheds light on Roman authority and discipline of the United States as a mission country. The Oeuvre published letters from missionaries throughout the world to encourage vocations and to provide the basis for contacting donors and financing missionaries. Letters from French missionaries to the Oeuvre were sometimes edited to give them positive character. It was common for French frontier bishops to spend a year or more recruiting priests and seminarians to volunteer for service in the trans-Appalachian West. Pasquier titles chapter 3, which encompasses these developments, “Missionary Revival and Transnational Catholicism.”

Pasquier describes the increasingly Ultramontane Catholicism among frontier bishops dependent on Propaganda Fide to resolve issues between trustees and their pastors, the appointments of coadjutors, and relations with Protestants. The rise of Marian and other forms of devotional Catholicism promoted by the Vatican gained popularity among the French clergy. The Sulpicians in France and Baltimore countered these trends by maintaining their Gallicanism. The French missionary priests were in accord with their bishops’ Ultramontanism, but they were so deeply immersed in ministering to the uniformed laity that ecclesiology became almost irrelevant.

The final chapter “Slavery, Civil War, and Southern Catholicism” is a fascinating account. The French clergy were committed to serving the needs of the local Church. Pasquier remarks they became “amenable to southern concepts of social conservatism and white supremacy. . .” (p. 9).

Because this...