RHODE ISLAND, CATHOLIC CHURCH IN

Rhode Island is the smallest state in the United States (1,212 square miles) and the eighth smallest in population (1,048,319). It is the most Catholic of states, however, with 635,590 Catholics making up 61 percent of its population. Founded by Roger williams (1603–83) as an enclave of religious tolerance, and confirmed as such by the royal charter of 1663, Rhode Island became a haven for every sort of religious dissenter, even a few Catholics. However, by a statute of the General Assembly in 1719, not removed until 1783, Catholics were excluded from full citizenship. The first public Mass said in Rhode Island was at Newport in 1780 for the funeral of the commander of the French fleet sent to help the colonists in the War of Independence.

Rhode Island was first under the jurisdiction of Bishop carroll of Baltimore and then under the bishops of Boston, first Jean cheverus (1808–23) and then Benedict fenwick (1825–44). In 1844 the Vermont-born convert, William Barber Tyler, was created the first bishop of Hartford (which included all of Connecticut and Rhode Island) with his cathedral and residence at Rhode Island's capital of Providence. With Tyler's death in 1849, Irish-born Bernard o'reilly became the second bishop, but his ship was lost at sea on a return trip from Europe in 1856. Francis P. mcfarland, a native-born son of Irish immigrants, became the third bishop of Hartford in 1858. When in 1872 the diocese of Providence was created, it included all of Rhode Island and, until 1904, southeastern Massachusetts. Thomas F. Hendricken (1827–86), a zealous Irish-born priest who once dreamed of being a missionary in the Far East, was its first bishop.

Until the 1820s Catholics were few and far between, with priests making periodic trips to the scattered Catholic population. The first permanent church in Rhode Island, now St. Mary's, was founded in Newport in 1828; the second, also St. Mary's, was erected in 1829 in Pawtucket; and in 1837 the parish of SS. Peter and Paul, which would become the cathedral, was established in Providence. The growth of the Church was primarily due to the transformation of the state from a mercantile and agrarian economy to one based primarily on manufacturing in metals and textiles, and the need for cheap labor to maintain it. The factories and mills of Providence and the Blackstone and Pawtuxet valleys in the northern half of the state drew mostly Catholic immigrants in great numbers, with the Irish being the first and largest group.

The influx of the Irish, which would become a flood in the late 1840s, led to a transformation of the state's population so that the Irish made up nearly three out of every eight people by 1865. This led to the growth of anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic feeling. The constitution of 1843, by retaining property requirements for voting by naturalized foreign-born citizens while removing them for the native-born, was designed to disfranchise Irish Catholics. In the 1855 elections the nativist Know-Nothings swept the state, winning five of every seven votes. Their anti-Catholicism seems to have been based primarily on religious and cultural issues, lacking the economic aspect that was so important, for example, in Massachusetts. The Know-Nothings (see knownothingism)

were soon eclipsed by the newly born Republican party which, while eschewing the Know-Nothings' anti-Catholic sentiments, absorbed most of their supporters. While the old English stock became the pillar of the Republican party, the Irish became wedded to the Democratic party. In 1888, with the Bourn Amendment, the property qualification was removed. By then the Republicans saw the virtue of using newer immigrants, particularly the French Canadians, as a counter to the Democratic Irish. While the first Catholic governor was the Irish Democrat, James H. Higgins (1906), the second was the French Canadian Republican Aram J. Pothier (1908). While the sectarian violence that was seen in other places never occurred in Rhode Island, the divisions were deep and long-lasting, and anti-Catholic bigotry continued well into the next century.

The demands of the Civil War led to an expansion of mills and factories and the need of workers to fill them. This was the beginning of the next great immigration, the French Canadians: between 1860 and 1910 over 35,000 came to Rhode Island. The city of Woonsocket became the "Quebec of New England." They were like the Irish both in the firmness of their Catholicism and their nationalism, and in their fusion of the two, creating their own national parishes, schools and organizations to preserve their language and culture. However, they did not get along well with the Irish, who considered them a threat to their jobs, or with the Irish-dominated Church, which pushed for much greater centralization and Americanization.

Other major Catholic immigrant groups followed: from the late 1880s, the Italians, and from 1900, Poles and Lithuanians. The Portuguese long had a presence in the state, especially from the whaling days, but in the 1870s, and particularly after 1890, they came in great numbers. The Portuguese were divided by their place of origin: the Azores, Cape Verdes, and mainland Portugal. Syrians (Melkite and Maronite) and Ruthenians also immigrated to the state, though in much smaller numbers. National parishes were created for all these groups. The enactment of the national origins quota system (1924) and the decline of the mills (from 1923) led to a great decline in immigration. In more recent years, however, there has been some Catholic immigration, though not to the high degree of the earlier groups, from the Portuguese islands, Hispanics from Latin America, and to a lesser extent refugees from Southeast Asia. Except for the Portuguese from Cape Verdes, for whom a national parish was created in 1979, these groups have been cared for within already existing parishes.

In its early years Rhode Island was missionary country and depended on the financial support of foreign missionary societies and from priests from Ireland. By the late 1860s the Church was able to maintain itself, to start building churches and schools on their own, and to find vocations among themselves. This was less true for the newer immigrant groups, and finding priests for them was often difficult and a source of friction. Even if priests could be found who spoke their language, national pride or cultural differences could get in the way. While Catholics were at the bottom of the social ladder, and the over-whelming majority of Catholics were laborers whose jobs depended on the vagaries of the business cycle, some had prospered and had become professionals and businessmen themselves. The growing wealth and security of the Church was manifested by Bishop Hendricken's beginning the construction of a magnificent new cathedral in 1878. While only consecrated in 1889, its first Mass was for Hendricken's funeral in 1886. Another manifestation of stability was Hendricken's founding of the Weekly Visitor in 1875, which would eventually become the diocesan newspaper under the name the Providence Visitor —and which has become the state's second largest newspaper with a circulation of 40,000.

The death of Hendricken led to the appointment of Matthew Harkins (1845–1921), whom Archbishop John Ireland once called "my ideal type of bishop." He was a learned and able Boston priest, under whose tenure the diocese experienced phenomenal growth. On his arrival there were 39 parishes and 63 diocesan priests in Rhode Island, and when he gave up the administration of the diocese in 1919 to his coadjutor, Bishop William A. Hickey (1869–1933), there were an additional 62 parishes (a majority of them national parishes) and 207 diocesan priests, all but one of whom were ordained during his episcopacy. He also created an extensive system of charitable institutions. To better serve the non-English speaking faithful he brought in the Scalabrini Fathers, the Marist Fathers, the Holy Ghost Fathers, and the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. The Brothers of the Sacred Heart and 20 different congregations of women religious entered the state, joining the Sisters of Mercy, the Society of the Sacred Heart, the Ursulines, the Religious of Jesus and Mary, and the Christian Brothers in the work of education. Following the decrees of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884) which mandated parochial schools, Harkins created a Diocesan School Board and pushed for the construction of schools wherever feasible. By 1921 there were 41 parish schools, three academies for young men and five for young ladies. As the capstone of this educational system Harkins wished to create a Catholic college. The Jesuits had taken on a parish in Providence (1876) in the hope that they would eventually open a college, but when they left the state in 1899, Harkins had to look elsewhere. Eventually the Dominican friars agreed to staff such a college, and in 1919 Providence College opened with 71 students. It has become a flourishing coeducational school, still run by the Dominicans, of some 3,600 students on a 105-acre campus in the city of Providence. Harkins also cared for the educational quality of his priests. He raised the standards for accepting young men as seminarians and sent many of his young priests for further studies to universities in Europe and America. He was an early supporter of The Catholic University of America, in Washington, D.C., and became a trustee in 1903.

Among the other orders that entered the diocese at this time were also the Trappists (1900) and the Benedictines (1919). The Trappists moved from Nova Scotia to Lonsdale on land donated by Harkins but moved to Spencer, Massachusetts, after their monastery burned down in 1949. The Benedictines of Portsmouth Priory (raised to an abbey in 1969) have remained and direct a flourishing, coeducational, preparatory school, first opened in 1926. Harkins had studied with the English Benedictines for a year in the English College at Douai, France, before going to train with the Sulpicians in Paris. When Father Leonard Sargent, a convert priest on his way to join an English abbey, broached the subject of founding a Benedictine house in the state, Harkins was enthusiastic, and when Sargent returned, Harkins not only gave him permission to set up a house at Portsmouth but also supplied $5,000 to make the foundation possible.

At Harkins's death, his coadjutor, Hickey, immediately became the ordinary, and while some 16 parishes were created during his tenure, he gave greater emphasis to the consolidation and improvement of already existing institutions. He was extremely active, however, in the area of education, creating 14 parish schools, and expanded the size of already existing schools. He also reorganized the establishing and funding of the high schools. He was an aggressive fundraiser, raising a million dollars for his high school fund and vast sums for diocesan charitable institutions in his centralized annual Catholic Charity Fund Appeal. With the beginning of the Great Depression, Hickey speeded up church construction work so as to provide jobs, and in order to relieve immediate needs for food and clothing he directed that branches of the St. Vincent de Paul Society be established in every parish.

It was Hickey's centralization of Catholic high schools and their funding that led to a rebellion of the ultranationalists among the French Canadians, led by Elphege Daignault of Woonsocket, who saw it as a threat to their separate existence, customs, and way of life. In 1924 they began a French-language newspaper, La Sentinelle, to promote their views and be "on the watch" against assimilationist trends. In 1925 they appealed to Rome against Hickey's "illegal assessment" of parish funds. When their petition was denied, they appealed in 1927 to the civil courts (unsuccessfully) and began a boycott of all contributions to the Church. All those who had appealed to the civil courts were excommunicated by Hickey in April 1928, and La Sentinelle was put on the Index. The controversy gained national attention and led to much bitterness and division in the French Canadian community. By February, 1929, virtually all of those excommunicated, including Daignault, had capitulated and the conflict was over.

The 1930s were a turning point for Rhode Island Catholics, for it marked their ascent to political power. From the 1850s till the 1930s the state had been dominated by a Yankee Republican oligarchy supported by wealthy businessmen and rural voters. From the 1920s, a disenchantment among French Canadians and Italians began toward the Republicans. This was partly due to the negative Republican reaction to the major strikes that punctuated this period. It was also due to the revival of nativism. This nativism was seen in the rise of the avowedly anti-Catholic ku kluxklan (even in Rhode Island), in the immigration restriction laws of 1922 and 1924, and in the Peck Act passed by the Republican General Assembly in 1922, which prohibited school instruction for the basic subjects in languages other than English. The Peck Act was never enforced and it was repealed in 1925, but it intensified the distaste for the Republicans. The presidential election of 1928 was the political "coming of age" for Catholics in the state. The Catholic Al Smith was only the second Democrat to have carried the state since the founding of the Republican party. But the voting showed a polarized electorate, with Smith doing very badly in the Yankee areas and extremely well in the Catholic ethnic ones. Also, there was a substantially larger turnout in the Catholic ethnic districts. In 1928 the restrictive qualifications for voting in city council elections were also removed. While the Great Depression and New Deal continued the political transformation of the state, it was not until the "Bloodless Revolution" of 1935, when the Democratic administration forced through the General Assembly a massive reorganization of the state government, that the structures that kept the Yankee minority in power were removed and the triumph of the Catholic ethnics was made complete.

Francis P. Keough (1890–1961), a priest of Hartford, was made bishop at Hickey's death in 1933 and remained until he was made archbishop of Baltimore in 1947. When he arrived there were 328,528 Catholics, 270 diocesan priests and 95 religious priests, and when he left there were 427,364 Catholics, 344 diocesan priests and 145 religious priests. In his time 15 new parishes, four high schools, and 14 elementary schools were founded. In 1939 he founded a minor seminary in Warwick Neck, and in 1947 the Sisters of Mercy founded Salve Regina College in Newport which is now a successful coeducational school of some 1,800 students.

Russell J. McVinney (1898–1971) was named the fifth bishop of Providence in 1948—the first Rhode Island native to hold that position. The first part of his tenure witnessed a period of remarkable growth, with the construction of 28 parishes and 40 schools, especially in the suburbs and the growing rural areas of the state. The school system reached its peak at this time with 106 out of 154 parishes having a parish school. The expansion in education, however, led to the need for lay teachers and tuition payments for the first time. He opened a new hospital, Our Lady of Fatima, in 1954, a diocesan retreat house at Narragansett in 1952, and a youth retreat center at Peace Dale in 1954. He also expanded the seminary and he founded a diocesan congregation of Sisters, Sisters of Our Lady of Providence (1955), and a society of diocesan brothers, Brothers of Our Lady of Providence (1959).

The final decade of his tenure was as tumultuous and painful as the first part was stable and prosperous. It coincided with the profound social changes of the 1960s and early 1970s as well as the Civil Rights Revolution, the Vietnam War and its protests, and the changes occasioned by the Second Vatican Council. Even before this, with the decline of ethnic enclaves and the movement to the suburbs, Catholics had become far more assimilated to American middle-class life and its mores. Bishop McVinney, while he was essentially politically and religiously conservative, took a leading role in the movement for political and economic rights of minorities and the poor, and was a strong advocate of the Fair Housing laws passed by the General Assembly in 1965. He also dutifully implemented the changes following the Council, always attempting to be faithful to a proper understanding of the Council and the postconciliar directives. In this period there began a profound decline in religious and priestly vocations, with many religious leaving their orders (the Sisters of Our Lady of Providence were dissolved at this time) and even many priests leaving the active ministry. Among those leaving was McVinney's auxiliary since 1964, Bishop Bernard M. Kelly, who resigned on June 14, 1971. Two months later McVinney died, and in December, 1971, Louis E. Gelineau (b.1928), the vicar general of the Diocese of Burlington, Vermont, was appointed bishop.

Bishop Gelineau reorganized the administrative structures of the diocese so as to emphasize the pastoral dimension of his office, to increase participation of the clergy and people in its running, and to develop strategic planning. The decline in Mass attendance and in priestly and religious vocations continued, as did resignations from the priesthood and religious life. With the decline in numbers of teaching religious, more lay faculty had to be hired and schools became much more expensive. From 1968 schools started to close: some 65 elementary schools and 12 high schools either closed or merged with other schools. Enrollments continued to decline until 1980 when the first increase appeared since 1963. The seminary also experienced declining enrollment: in 1989 the high school seminary closed, and in 1975 the college seminary began sending its students to Providence College, the college seminary itself moving to Providence in 1983. While a few new parishes were established, changing demographics also led to the merging of some: in the late 1990s a number of parishes were merged in Warwick, Central Falls, and Woonsocket. In 1995 Bishop Robert E. Mulvee (b. 1930), bishop of Wilmington, Delaware, was appointed coadjutor, and in 1997, with the retirement of Bishop Gelineau, he became the seventh bishop of Providence.

The statistics for 2000 show that the state had 157 parishes, 307 diocesan priests (of which 202 are active in the diocese), 133 religious priests, 96 permanent deacons, 688 sisters, 133 brothers, 12 Catholic high schools, and 46 Catholic elementary schools.

Bibliography: p. t. conley and m. j. smith, Catholicism in Rhode Island: The Formative Era (Providence 1976). r. w. hayman, Catholicism in Rhode Island and the Diocese of Providence: 1780–1886 (Providence 1982); Catholicism in Rhode Island and the Diocese of Providence: 1886–1921 (Providence 1995).

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