NOTE: Enjoy this excerpt from The American Daily Reader, by CatholicVote president Brian Burch and Emily Stimpson Chapman. To order the complete volume, visit the CatholicVote store today!
In 1892, despite the urgings of Pope Leo XIII, many French Catholics refused to embrace their constitutional government, believing instead that the future of the Faith depended on the restoration of the monarchy. To convince them otherwise—and alleviate mounting tensions between church and state in France—Pope Leo asked the archbishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota, to pay the French a visit.
Archbishop John Ireland was the perfect man for the job. Born in Ireland, raised in America, and educated for the priesthood in France, the archbishop’s French was fluent and his manners were polished. More important, he’d spent much of his priestly career confronting the problems the Church faced in a pluralistic society.
Although some accused Archbishop Ireland of going too far in his efforts to make Catholicism palatable to Protestant America, he was nevertheless well-versed in what Catholics brought to democracy and what democracy brought to Catholics. He learned those lessons as he partnered with his state to relocate thousands of immigrants to Minnesota farmland, helped secure the rights of laborers through unions, and found creative ways to educate children in the Faith while still working through the public schools.
Archbishop Ireland brought that experience with him when, on June 18, 1892, he went before the elites of Catholic Paris to make Pope Leo’s case.
“In America,” he reassured his audience, “we have a free church in a free country, and the Church is happy in her freedom.”
He continued:
“Of all the forms of civil government which the Church has recognized, and of which she has made trial, she cannot say from which she has received more harm or more good. Just now, she is resolved to make trial in France of the republic, and I, as a citizen of a republic, say to the Church, ‘In this experiment, thou shall succeed.’”
His words had their desired effect. Lauded for swaying at least some royalists to the constitutional cause, Archbishop Ireland returned to Minnesota to shepherd his see for another 26 years.
