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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2007

Les Confrères Et Les Pères: French

Missionaries and Transnational Catholicism

in the United States, 1789-1865

Michael Pasquier

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THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

LES CONFRÈRES ET LES PÈRES: FRENCH MISSIONARIES AND TRANSNATIONAL CATHOLICISM IN THE UNITED STATES, 1789-1865 By

MICHAEL PASQUIER

A Dissertation Submitted to the

Department of Religion

In Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Awarded:

Spring Semester, 2007

Copyright © 2007

Michael Pasquier

All Rights Reserved

iiThe members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Michael Pasquier defended on March

27, 2007.

____________________________________

John Corrigan

Professor Directing Dissertation

____________________________________

Sally Hadden

Outside Committee Member

____________________________________

Amanda Porterfield

Committee Member

____________________________________

Amy Koehlinger

Committee Member

Approved:

_____________________________________

John Corrigan, Chair, Department of Religion

The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. iiiACKNOWLEDGMENTS Robert Penn Warren had the protagonist of All the King's Men, Jack Burden, believe that "A student of history does not care what he digs out of the ash pile, the midden, the sublunary dung heap, which is the human past." With this sentiment in mind, Warren had Burden try and fail to write a dissertation on the life of a Confederate soldier named Cass Mastern. He had Burden walk away from his slatternly apartment containing a pine desk covered with the picture, journal, and letters of a dead man with a morally perplexing past. He had Burden walk away

from the historian's craft "because in the midst of the process I tried to discover the truth and not

the facts. Then, when the truth was not to be discovered, or discovered could not be understood by me, I could not bear to live with the cold-eyed reproach of the facts." The confessional qualities of letter and journal writing can be startling, but they can also be illuminating. Over the past four years, and over the course of reading thousands of letters and journal entries, I've been both disquieted and impressed by the lives of Catholic missionaries in the early American republic. I've tried not to dabble in the business of truth-making, choosing

instead to let the actors of the past live with their own truths and thereby leave matters of fact for

a young historian like me to put into some narrative order. But then I'm reminded, sometimes by my academic mentors and most often by my own conscience, that I'm not just telling a story. I'm also asking personal questions of my priestly subjects and extrapolating truths about the institution of the Roman Catholic priesthood within particular social, cultural, and historical contexts. I'm reminded by the confessional statements of dead priests - none of whom ever thought that I would take their disparate words and squeeze them through the meat grinder of my mind and then mold them into a verbal creation of my own - that I too am complicit in making meaning out of the words of others. I'm reminded, again by the authorial voice of Warren and the narratorial voice of Burden, that "the end of man is knowledge, but there is one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him." Fortunately, the stakes involved in writing a dissertation really aren't that high. I'm not splitting atoms and I'm not getting any closer to the meaning of life. But my life has changed, and for that change I am indebted to many friends, professors, and institutions. Archivists and librarians at several repositories provided me with access to the written words of Catholic missionaries. I owe special thanks to Charles Nolan of the Archives of the ivArchdiocese of New Orleans; Mike Veach and Jacob Lee of the Filson Historical Society in Louisville; Tricia Pyne and Alison Foley of the Associated Archives at St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore; Brian Fahey of the Charleston Diocesan Archives in South Carolina; and Kevin Cawley and Sharon Sumpter of the University of Notre Dame Archives. I would not have been able to spend so much time at these archives without the financial assistance of several grants and fellowships. I am obliged to Maria Mazzenga and the staff of the American Catholic Research Center and University Archives of the Catholic University of America for a Dorothy Mohler Research Grant; Glenn Crothers and the staff of the Filson Historical Society for a Filson Fellowship; and the Graduate Studies staff of Florida State University for a research travel grant. Timothy Matovina and Kathleen Sprows Cummings of the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame were especially generous to me over the course of a long summer month in South Bend. There are many professors who guided me through the process of organizing and writing my dissertation. I am grateful to those who responded to some of my conference papers, including Joseph Chinnici, Thomas Tweed, Christine Heyrman, and Paula Kane. I am immeasurably thankful to the faculty of the FSU Department of Religion for their mentorship and friendship over the last five years. John Corrigan, Amy Koehlinger, and Amanda Porterfield, in particular, gave to me more than I can give to them. And then there is Rodger Payne of Louisiana State University, the professor who introduced me to the study of religion as an undergraduate and who has remained a friend throughout my graduate studies. I have made several lifelong friends in graduate school. You might call them friends with benefits, for they are good at both criticizing my ideas about religion and giving me a good laugh about anything but religion. Arthur Remillard, Kelly Baker, Howell Williams, Michael Gueno - thank you. But when all is said and done, I have my family to thank most of all. I thank my parents, Donna and Michael Pasquier, for encouraging me to pursue my studies until my heart was content, though I'm still not content. And I thank Kristen and Sara, my two most favorite people. I dedicate this book to Kristen, who managed to love me throughout this long process, and to Sara, who sat on my lap for the last five months of writing and whose impending birth motivated me to finish. I love you both. vTABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Abbreviations ..................................................................................................................... vi

Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... vii

INTRODUCTION: CATHOLIC PRIESTS AND CATHOLIC HISTORY IN THE UNITED

STATES ...............................................................................................................................1

1. PERSONAL SUFFERING, INSTITUTIONAL DISORGANIZATION, AND

FRONTIER CATHOLICISM ................................................................................18

2. SCANDALOUS PRIESTS, HOLY PRIESTS, AND SULPICIAN IDENTITY ..............49

3. RECRUITING AND IMAGINING MISSIONARIES IN FRANCE ................................81

4. INDIFFERENT CATHOLICS, HERETICAL PROTESTANTS, AND CLERICAL

AUTHORITY ......................................................................................................113

5. SLAVERY, CIVIL WAR, AND SOUTHERN CATHOLICISM ...................................143

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................177

AFTERWORD: THE SECRET LIVES OF PRIESTS ................................................................183

NOTES .........................................................................................................................................187

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................246

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................257

viLIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Acta Sacrae Congregationis de Propaganda Fide Records (ASCPF) American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives, Catholic University of

America, Washington, D.C. (CUA)

Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana (AANO) Archives of the U.S. Province of the Society of St. Sulpice, Baltimore, Maryland (AUSPSS) Associated Archives at St. Mary's Seminary and University, Baltimore, Maryland (AASMSU) Charleston Diocesan Archives, Charleston, South Carolina (CDA) Filson Historical Society, Special Collections, Louisville, Kentucky (FHS) Francis Clark Collection of Copies, Transcripts, and Translations (CCOP) Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, Kentucky, Records (NAZ)

Timothy Matovina Personal Papers (MPP)

University of Notre Dame Archives, Notre Dame, Indiana (UNDA) Virginia Tech, Special Collections, Blacksburg, Virginia (VT) viiABSTRACT This is a study of the practice of the Roman Catholic priesthood and a history of French missionaries in the United States. From 1789 to 1865 - from the beginning of the French Revolution to the end of the American Civil War - hundreds of Catholic priests and seminarians migrated from France to the United States and assisted in the establishment of new dioceses and church parishes stretching west from Maryland to Kentucky, and south from Missouri to Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. They thought of themselves as missionaries in a "New World" composed of "heretical" Protestants and "indifferent" Catholics. In the course of their evangelistic endeavor, however, missionaries realized just how difficult it was to practice the priesthood in accordance with what they learned in French seminaries and what they knew Rome expected of them. They recognized just how uncomfortable it felt to serve as transnational arbiters of Catholic beliefs and practices between French, Roman, and American interests. This collective feeling of operating in-between ideal standards of the priesthood and actual circumstances of foreign missions convinced many missionaries of their vocational inadequacies and pastoral deficiencies. It also precipitated changes in the direction of the Catholic Church in the United States from a strictly Tridentine model of devotion and clerical authority to a transnational process dependent upon the everyday negotiations of priests and laypeople. The decision of French missionaries to justify the institution of slavery and support the Confederate cause of war, in particular, represented the reorientation of missionary Catholicism away from strictly European sources of authority and toward regional and national trends in American culture and politics.

1INTRODUCTION

CATHOLIC PRIESTS AND CATHOLIC HISTORY IN THE UNITED STATES This is a study of the practice of the Roman Catholic priesthood and a history of French missionaries in the United States. From 1789 to 1865 - from the beginning of the French Revolution to the end of the American Civil War - hundreds of Catholic priests and seminarians migrated from France to the United States and assisted in the establishment of new dioceses and church parishes stretching west from Maryland to Kentucky, and south from Missouri to Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama. They thought of themselves as missionaries in a "New World" composed of "heretical" Protestants and "indifferent" Catholics. And they looked to their former colleagues in France and Vatican authorities in Rome for guidance in the transmission of Tridentine Catholicism to foreign peoples on the American frontier. In the course of their evangelistic endeavor, however, missionaries realized just how difficult it was to practice the priesthood in accordance with what they learned in French seminaries and what they knew Rome expected of them. They recognized just how uncomfortable it felt to serve as transnational arbiters of Catholic beliefs and practices between French, Roman, and American interests. This collective feeling of operating in-between ideal standards of the priesthood and actual circumstances of foreign missions convinced many missionaries of their vocational inadequacies and pastoral deficiencies. It also precipitated changes in the direction of the Catholic Church in the United States from a strictly Tridentine model of devotion and clerical authority to a transnational dependent upon the everyday negotiations of priests and laypeople. The decision of French missionaries to justify the institution of slavery and support the Confederate cause of war, in particular, represented the reorientation of missionary Catholicism away from strictly European sources of authority and toward regional and national trends in American culture and politics.

The Practice of the Priesthood

As a study of the practice of the priesthood, this dissertation employs the title Les

Confrères and les Pères in an effort to capture the double life of French missionaries, the life of

uncertainty and contingency as expressed between brothers of the priesthood and the life of confidence and strength as expressed by fathers to their lay constituencies. It respects the middle

2position of priests between the formal ecclesiastical standards of the church and the informal

experiences of missionaries in service of the church. Recognition of the dual identity of French missionaries - as brothers to each other and as fathers to others - is also recognition of the process by which men learned what it meant to be an ideal priest and what it was like to be a priest-in-practice. Fortunately, the candor of missionary correspondences allows for a close look at the ways in which these confrères imagined themselves as priests and fathers, struggled to maintain a fatherly persona before a diverse laity, and tried to reconcile their missionary experiences with the demanding expectations of their European counterparts. By focusing on the ways in which French missionaries received religious instructions from Europe and responded to the quotidian circumstances of daily life in the foreign missionary fields of the United States, historians have an opportunity to reflect upon the unstable perspectives of even the most authoritative missionary leaders. No matter how strong the insistence upon Catholic truth, French missionaries continued to express doubt, confusion, despair, frustration, and triumph in the face of personal and social obstacles. Such frankness was rare in public spaces like church sanctuaries and confessionals, spaces where priests were expected to act in persona Christi and in accordance with moral, canonical, and theological prescriptions. Insight into the private thoughts and actions ofquotesdbs_dbs25.pdfusesText_31

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