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THE BULLETIN OE THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OE GEORGIA
3
THE DEMOCRACY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
Ey R. J. PURCELL, PH, D„ (Yale)
(Professor of History, Catholic University of America).
The organization of the Catholic Church is
hierarchic in form, hut essentially a perfect type
of democracy. As an axiom, this statement re
quires analysis rather than demonstration.
The Church is ruled from above, but its rulers,
its hierarchy, are democratically, if indirectly, se
lected. They are of the elect in point of training,
service, ability and godliness. They represent no
other caste; certainly never a social or financial
group, where the Church has been free and un-
tranimeled. The method of election is different,
but the result is quite the same as that which
obtains in the choice of officials in a well ordered
political democracy.
Woodrow Wilson, despite the rigidity of his
Calvinistic training, as a student of history rec
ognized the force of the Church for democracy
in the Middle Ages. In his book, the “New Free
dom,” the Church is described as the sole means
by which a man from the masses could rise to
power and dignity. The Church proved a safety
valve. “There was no peasant so humble,” he
writes, “that he might not become a priest, and
no priest so obscure that he might not become a
pope of Christendom.” And as a prelate, the peas
ant might serve the State and control its poli
cies, like an Anslem, a Thomas A Beckett, or a
Langton.
Prelates were counselors of kings and often re
gents during a minority or royal absence, for they
were trained in the laws, canon and Roman, as
well as in morals and in theology. The feudal
lord on the other hand, skilled in the methods
of war, was at ease only in field or castle. The
nobility was a caste, more than today, separated
by wide and impassable barriers, from the free
man, who in turn was of a rank unattainable
to the peasant. Once a serf always a serf, as far
as the Feudal State was concerned. The Church
in doctrine denied the distinction, and in prac
tice broke it down. Through the Church, the
State was saved from “dry rot”, from the sole
rule of an in-bred, deteriorating noble-estate.
Through the Church, new men and new blood
were given opportunity.
Equality before the law and equal opportun
ity, political, economic, and social, are the char
acteristics of a democracy, whether the state be
described as a republic or a constitutional mon
archy. In America, there are class differences
and social distinctions, but they are not perman
ent. They can be bridged.
Fifth Avenue in one generation may be a long
way from Second Avenue, but in the second or
third generations the position may be reversed.
Few American leaders, social, political, or indus
trial, date back more than a couple of genera
tions., The great majority on the contrary are
men, self-made men of the masses, who have
forced their way by sheer strength of character,
by ability, or occasionally by chance. There is
no permanent proletariat, regardless of what dem
agogues may declare.
Good Americans who know their coirtry are
proud of the political leaders who were born and
schooled in poverty. They recall the early strug
gles of Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Webster,
Harrison, Tyler, Jefferson Davis, Lincoln, Andrew
Johnson, Grant, and Garfield. They are aware
that since Washington, we have had no presi
dent-who was wealthy relative to the times in
which he lived. Until recently the Supreme
Court was a poor man’s bench, and until the
period of the eighties few were the senators of
independent means. In industry, the masters of
capital have been men from the soil. Only the
exceptional man has derived his position and
wealth from his ancestors. Far more capitalists
have been immigrants or the sons of immigrants,
who first viewed America from Castle Garden.
This is one phase of American democracy, equal
opportunity for all citizens.
Good Americans who happen to be Catholics
are equally proud of the democracy within the
Catholic church. They see in the Church an in
stitution bridging all barriers, financial, soci
al, intellectual, and racial. They see a church
rooted in the soil, with a hierarchy and a priest
hood from the humbler classes, with sympathies
broadened and intensified by obstacles overcome.
Nowhere and at no time, has this condition been
more true, for nowhere has the Church been
granted greater freedom from outside influences.
Glance over great names in the American hier
archy. Jean Cheverus,. the emigree priest who
worked for a time as a day laborer, and who was
later first Bishop of Boston. A friend of Presi
dent Adams, who headed the subscription list
for a little church, he so won the Boston Puri
tans that they formally protested when he was
recalled to be a cardinal in France. Archbishop
John Hughes started in life as an immigrant and
a gardener, yet he was Lincoln’s personal repre
sentative in Europe during the War between the
States.. John England, the first bishop of
Charleston is remembered as one who on his con
secration in Cork refused an allegience to the
crown on the grounds that he hoped to acquire
American citizenship. John Ireland, the late arch
bishop of St. Paul, was an immigrant boy who
rushed from ordination to serve as a U. S. A.
Chaplain. Cardinal Gibbons, typifying the ideal
Churchman and citizen, was a grocer’s clerk.
The list could be extended until it would appear
a chronicle of the hierarchy.
Such is the democracy of the Church, and such
is the democracy of America. The two are quite
similar. There is no incompatibility. Uncon
trolled and free from pernicious influences, the
American electorate can be trusted to select as
its political leaders men of worth, whatever their
status. Untrammeled, the Church will ever se
lect and advance its best men.
TWO U. S. PRIESTS MURDERED
The same Associated Press report August 11
carried stories of murders of two Catholic priests
one m Birmingham and one in San Francisco. ’
Birmingham, Rev. James E. Coyle, pastor of
St. Paul’s Church, was shot and killed by Rev. E.
R. Stephenson, Methodist minister. Stephenson
then surrendered. Father Coyle was well known
to many Georgians.
Rev. Patrick Heslin, who disappeared the night
of August 3 after being called from his San Fran
cisco rectory to administer the last sacraments
to a dying man, was found buried a week later.
He had previously been shot. Archbishop Hanna
of San Francisco had received letters demanding
large sums for the return of Father Heslin. The
police are holding a suspect.