Catholicism (Pre-Vatican II)

Catholicism has never been well-received in America, a predominantly Protestant country. In the middle of the 19th century, a nativist movement swept the country, stoking intolerance and hatred toward immigrants, many of them from Ireland and Germany and many of them Roman Catholic. In Louisville, the gubernatorial election of August, 1855 found Catholics intimidated at the polls by nativist thugs, intent on keeping a concerted Catholic vote from denying a Know-Nothing (aka, the American Party) candidate the governor’s chair in Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky. This would put a third Know-Nothing in the most powerful offices in Kentucky. A Catholic (convert) mayor of Louisville, Kentucky’s largest and most influential city, had been forced out of office earlier in the year and replaced by a Know-Nothing. That same election in April seated a majority of the city council with Know-Nothings. In May of the same year, a majority of the county court judges elected were also Know-Nothings. The gubernatorial vote was the most important by far, however, and the Know-Nothings were determined to keep Catholic citizens from voting. The night before the election, a KKK-like torch parade through Catholic neighborhoods of Louisville pointedly threatened those voters to stay away from the polls. The election was marred by numerous beatings of Catholics daring to exercise their rights as citizens of both Louisville and Kentucky. The merciless beatings, with lead-weighted clubs, became wholesale murder as the night progressed. Catholic-owned buildings were torched and only the pleadings of the new Know-Nothing mayor saved two Catholic churches from the same fate. The official tally was 22 dead, though anecdotal accounts put the number around 100. With Know-Nothings in complete control of Louisville, no arrests were made for the crimes committed that night. Catholics left Louisville in droves in the following months, taking with them their considerable trade dollars and leaving behind them failing businesses, a depleted tax base, and the unemployment spawned by these two effects.

The Know-Nothing party slowly fizzled out, but the sentiments never died. After the Civil War, the paranoia of Protestants extended to Catholic children who happened to attend tax-supported public schools. Catholic parents resented their children being indoctrinated in these tax-funded schools through the use of the Protestant King James Bible (Catholics use the Douay-Rheims Bible, based on St. Jerome’s Vulgate). This was at a time when the Bible was almost universally taught in public schools. The debate over which Bible was to be used in public schools — or any at all — culminated in the great “Bible Wars” of Cincinnati between 1869 and 1873. The result was that Bible readings were eliminated from Cincinnati schools, a decision supported at the Ohio State Supreme Court. The case garnered national attention, and amendments to the national constitution were unsuccessfully suggested, including adding references to God to the Preamble and adding a new amendment to the Constitution directly and explicitly addressing religious freedom. The debate about religion in public schools continues in some form or another today, but the Cincinnati case more solidly established the separation of church and state where taxes are concerned.

Catholicism as practiced before Vatican II (or, the Second Vatican Council, begun in 1959) was a great deal more isolated from the world at large than it is today. Catholics tended to keep to themselves (probably as much in response to Protestant prejudice and terrorism as out of a need to keep ‘pure’) and rarely married outside their faith (unless the non-Catholic spouse agreed to convert; either way, the spouse was required to promise that any children of the union would be raised Catholic). Services were held in Latin, homilies and sermons were given in the language of the parish (i.e., German in German parishes, English in English parishes, etc.). It was this determination to keep the culture of one’s ancestors (the language spoken at home and the Latin used at Mass) that spawned suspicion among Protestants — if Catholics weren’t speaking English all the time, who knew what they were saying, and they couldn’t possibly really be American. In addition and possibly overarching everything, was the Catholic loyalty to the Pope. If Catholics were loyal to the Pope, how could they be loyal to the Constitution of the United States? Adding fuel to this particular fire was the Church’s declaration of papal infallibility in 1870 (at the First Vatican Council). Understandably, a word like ‘infallible’ implies a sense of universality, of infallibility in all things, and this is how Protestants and others understood this new dogma coming out of Rome (it is still misunderstood by many today). Papal infallibility, however, only pertains to declarations made by the pope ex cathedra (from the Chair of Peter, at Rome); it does not pertain to everything uttered by any pope, nor does it mean popes can never be fallible when they are not speaking ex cathedra or during any other activity. One need only think of Pope Alexander VI (of the Borgia dynasty) to be disabused of that notion. Only once since 1870 has a pope spoken in this manner, that is, infallibly, and only two doctrines were declared under this dogma. Both instances were to formally, officially establish Marian doctrines that had been held by Catholics long before public declarations: that the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, was conceived without sin (Immaculate Conception; Pope Pius IX, 1854, declared infallible doctrine in 1870) and that Mary entered heaven whole and hale, having never been touched by sin or decay (Assumption of Mary; Pope Pius XII, 1950)

The history of Catholicism in Kentucky goes back to 1775 when Catholics first entered the area of Virginia that would later become the state of Kentucky. Enough Catholics were in Kentucky by 1808 (especially in the three counties of Nelson, Marion, and Washington, taken together, known as the Kentucky Holy Land) that Pope Pius VII made Bardstown, Kentucky (Nelson County) the first inland diocese in America (the Diocese of Bardstown, like those of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, was created from the mother diocese of Baltimore, Maryland). In 1841, the seat of the diocese was moved to more populous Louisville (Jefferson County).