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Archbishop John Hughes The Irish Catholic Who Helped Shape American Catholicism

By Kyle Sanders

            Catholicism suffered through some turbulent times during the formation and early years of the United States.  They suffered from lack of actual numbers, fierce anti-Catholicism, and a lack of clergy to celebrate the sustenance of a Catholic’s faith, the Mass.  From these early years of tumultuousness grew the leaders of America Catholics, Lord Baltimore, Elizabeth Seton, John Carroll, and Archbishop John Hughes.  Archbishop Hughes greatly influenced American Catholic life.

            Before expounding on Archbishop Hughes’ influence, it must be established who Archbishop Hughes was.  Archbishop John Hughes was a native Irishman who immigrated to America.  After being ordained, He moved his ministry from Ireland to Philadelphia.  As a priest he “bested the Hogan rebels of strife-torn St. Mary’s Cathedral and built a new, trustee-less church whose deed was in the pastor’s own name.”[1]  Already establishing himself as a strong leader who does not back down from problems concerning his flock, he is ordained coadjutor bishop to Bishop John Dubois, the bishop of the diocese of New York.  Not soon after the death of Bishop Dubois an excess of Irish immigrants fleeing their poor country arrived in New York looking to start a new life.  This is the environment that Archbishop Hughes found himself in. 

            With all these new immigrants, there became the problem of how to educate their children.  There was a “public” school system run by the Public School Society, which claimed to be non-sectarian.  However, Protestant religious instruction and reading of the King James Version of the Bible were daily occurrences in the Society’s schools along with the use of school books that were

“calculated to the minds of (the Catholic) children with errors of fact, and at the same time to excite in them prejudice against the religion of their parents and guardians . . . (Hughes and the Catholic parents of New York) feel it is unjust that such passages should be taught at all, in schools to the support of which we are contributors, as well as other.  But that such books should be put into the hands of (the Catholic) children, and that in part at (the parents’ and Archbishop’s) expense, was in (their) opinion, unjust, unnatural, and at all events, to (them) intolerable.”[2]

The Catholic parents and especially Archbishop Hughes opposed this.  So Hughes took action.  He petitioned the state government to desectarianize the Society’s school, but the state believed that all public schools should have religious instruction in them—that statement was influenced by the sly tongues of the chairs of the Society.  Still trying to educate the Catholic youth of New York, Hughes appealed to Governor William Seward to acquire state funds to maintain and establish parochial schools, which were small and under-funded at the time of the Archbishop’s appeal.  Again through its political contacts the Society was able to shut down Hughes’ plan.  The state was tired of the religious bickering back and forth so in 1842 they passed a law that incorporated New York City into the state’s common school system, and “New York City was authorized to form a board of education and to establish a city system of ward schools to supplement the school of the Public School Society and those of several approved religious or charitable agencies.”[3]  This was the final straw that forced the Archbishop to recede into the parochial schools, “on the other hand, Bishop Hughes . . . pressed harder than ever to establish a system of Catholic parochial schools.  His fellow bishops in many parts of the country carried on similar campaigns when they failed to gain access to state funds.”[4]    Because of this battle of education institutions, there is a great number of parochial school through out the nation.  Catholics, because of the fear of becoming Protestant, fled public schools and flew into the comfort of the parochial school the Archbishop established.

            The other aspect that the Archbishop affected was the metropolitan dwelling of Catholics.  As the Irish started to get settled in their new home there was a group who wanted to head west to establish Irish agricultural settlements.  To this Hughes was militantly against.  The main supporter of this idea of Irish western settlement was Thomas D’Arcy McGee.[5]  McGee battled each other each with his close-minded arguments; hence, they never achieved any compromise when in discussion about the Irish colonization.  (To clarify, the Archbishop was not against Irish moving westward just not together as an ethnic group; they became American who migrate as Americans not Irish.)  Although McGee’s point influenced a few souls, Hughes’ influence on the Irish Catholics kept them stationary.  Fr. Browne attributes some other reasons for the Irish’s lack of expedition, but the reason stands to be the influence the Archbishop.  Catholics are Metropolitan in residence because they go where they can worship.  If there are more churches that a closer to the home in the city than in the country, then that is where a Catholic will dwell. 

            Archbishop John Hughes helped shape American Catholicism.  He unintentionally established parochial schools as the standard for a Catholic education. He, also, unintentionally established Catholicism as a Metropolitan dwelling religion.  Catholicism would not be as it is now without the influence and work of men like Archbishop John Hughes.

Bibliography

1. Ahlstrom, Sydney. A Religious History of the American People. Binghampton, N.Y: Yale

University Press, 1972.

2. Blum, S.J., Rev. Virgil. “American Catholic Heritage: Archbishop Hughes and Civil Rights.”

Ave Maria National Catholic Weekly 93, no. 20 (May 20, 1961): 5-12.

3. Browne, Fr. Henry. “Archbishop Hughes and Western Colonization,” The Catholic Historical

Review 36, no. 3 (October 1950): 257-283.

4. Butts, R. Freeman.  Public Education in the United States: From Revolution to Reform.  San

Francisco: Holt, Rinehart, and Wilson, 1978.

5. Corrigan, John and Winthrop Hudson. Religion in America. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson

Education, Inc., 2004.

6. McCadden, Joseph.  “Bishop Hughes Versus the Public School Society of New York,” The

Catholic Historical Review 100 (April 1964-January 1965): 188-207.