IRELAND, JOHN 1838-1918
Archbishop of saint paul
Social Gospel
John Ireland, the first archbishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota, was very much a man of his times, and in regard to the Catholic Church, perhaps a man of the future. Along with James Cardinal Gibbons, John L. Spalding, John Keane, and Denis O'Connell, Ireland was instrumental
in bringing the Catholic Church to prominence as a political as well as a social force in the United States. Ireland was frank, energetic, progressive, and controversial not only within the church in America but within the church worldwide. The Vatican paid attention to John Ireland, who insisted that his faith not only adapt itself to this new land but also to the times. He was interested in what the church was, its ancient rites and stature, but also interested in what it could do. "Church and age!" he proclaimed. The age was one of social concerns, and Ireland confronted them despite the controversy involved in doing so. He believed in just wages for workers, workers' rights against the forces of capital, desegregation, separation of public schools from religious doctrine, and reform in urban life. He was a social liberal who championed a more "democratic" church for Americans while they retained their ties to Rome.
American
"I am an American citizen," he would sometimes say to open his lectures. But he had been born in Kilkenny, Ireland, in 1838, the son of a carpenter. The family was part of the great Irish immigration to the United States during and after the Irish potato famine of the 1840s. John Ireland arrived in America in 1849 and moved to Saint Paul in 1853. The local bishop, Joseph Crétin, noted the intelligence of the teenage Ireland and sent him to the Séminaire de Meximieux in France and later to the Scholasticat à Montbel. He returned to Saint Paul in 1861 and was ordained. Within months he had joined the Union army, serving the Fifth Minnesota Volunteers. Two years later, after an illness at Vicksburg, he left the army and returned to Saint Paul, where he became pastor of the cathedral in 1867. His life of social activism then truly began.
Crusader
Although he never fully supported the drive toward Prohibition, Ireland believed strongly in temperance. He began organizing temperance societies in order to help working people while also attacking the organized liquor trade. Temperance would remain one of his main themes, though on this issue he was in the minority among American Catholics. He spoke at conventions of the Catholic Total Abstinence Union and pushed temperance in his newspaper, The Catholic Bulletin. In 1879 Ireland promoted a plan to colonize the still sparsely populated areas of Minnesota. He procured railroad land and allowed colonists to purchase it cheaply through his Catholic Colonization Bureau. He had been made coadjutor bishop at the urging of Bishop Thomas Grace, with rights to succession upon Grace's death. In 1884 he succeeded Grace and became even more active, always urging the involvement of others as well. He was active in such organizations as the Minnesota State Historical Society, the Saint Paul Law and Order League, the American Civic Federation, and the Saint Paul Catholic Historical Society, which he founded. He was also instrumental, along with John J. Keane, in the founding of Catholic University in Washington, D.C., in 1889.
Controversies
In May 1888 Bishop Ireland became Archbishop Ireland when the diocese of Saint Paul became an archdiocese with five suffragan bishops. He was already nationally known, and the next two decades saw him involved in controversies both in America and with the Vatican. He clashed with German Catholics over the use of German in American churches and parochial schools. Ever insistent on Americanizing the church, Ireland believed English should be the sole language used in worship and education. Over labor issues he, along with Gibbons, Keane, and O'Connell, clashed with Canadian bishops and the Vatican when an incipient labor organization, the Knights of Labor, was condemned as a secret society. Through the American bishops' progressive lobbying efforts, Catholic workers were given the right to join such organizations. Ireland also clashed over the issue of parochial schools. In 1891 he organized an experiment in which Catholic schools were turned over to two Minnesota towns, Faribault and Stillwater. The towns ran the schools and allowed for religious education after school hours. Protestants condemned the experiment while American Catholics split over the issue. The Vatican declared that the plan could be "tolerated," but nonetheless it was eventually abandoned.
The Blizzard
Ireland's activities forced the Vatican to pay attention to him. Along with other progressive Catholics, he felt the sting of rebuke when a papal encyclical of 1895 condemned a host of propositions known collectively as "Americanism." But Ireland remained undaunted. He did not hesitate to employ backroom diplomacy through his friend Denis O'Connell at the Vatican, nor to bring the issues facing the Catholic church into the wider public eye via the mainstream media. It was not without reason that his allies and detractors alike referred to him as "the consecrated blizzard of the Northwest."
Church and State
Ireland was active in the political realm as well. In the early 1890s he denounced Tammany Hall in New York and was denounced by conservative Archbishop McQuaid of Rochester for interfering in local politics (among other sins). He opposed the mobilization for the Spanish-American War, but once hostilities began he voiced his support for the effort. However, when the United States emerged victorious and began to consider launching massive Protestant missionary efforts among the Catholic inhabitants of the Philippines, Ireland lodged strenuous objections. He saw no easier way for the United States to lose the respect of the islands' residents than by having a host of Protestant missionaries arrive and tell them "that their historic faith is wrong." As on the school question, in this issue Ireland expressed his devotion to the principle of separation of church and state—which in order to be fully realized often entailed the removal of the distinctly Protestant undertones that ran through America's government and public schools. With such separation achieved, Ireland believed the Catholic Church in America would have an opportunity for unprecedented vitality as it exerted its influence in
every sphere of the lives of Catholic citizens. As a man who believed in a socially active church, Ireland used his position to comment upon and participate in the daily operations of his country as well as his church.
Builder
Although he might fairly be labeled an activist, progressive, or politician, Ireland believed that all of his efforts should be directed toward the growth of the church in America, a goal that he fostered in deeds as well as words. In 1885 he established Saint Thomas Seminary (later called Saint Thomas College) in Saint Paul. In 1894 he established the Saint Paul Seminary, and a decade later he helped found the College of Saint Catherine. In 1907 work on the new Saint Paul Cathedral began, and a year later Ireland laid the cornerstone of the Basilica of Saint Mary in Minneapolis. Although many of his personal aspirations for the church had been frustrated by his superiors' inaction and rebuke, by the time of his death in 1918 at the age of eighty, Ireland could point to an ample number of physical and doctrinal landmarks in the church that bore his personal stamp.
Source:
Marvin O'Connell, John Ireland and the American Catholic Church (Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1988).
