Patriot And Priest

In 1790, the French revolutionary government reformed the Catholic Church and demanded that clerics swear an oath of allegiance to the nation and its vision for French Catholicism. Although half of France's parish clergy refused to accept the state-sponsored reforms, others became embroiled in this decade-long ecclesiastical experiment. This included Jean-Baptiste Volfius, a patriot, priest, and professor who embraced the changes in France and believed in the revolution's potential to create a purer church. Patriot and Priest presents a social and intellectual history of the French constitutional church in the Côte-d'Or and the career of Volfius, who became its bishop in 1791, as he struggled to create and run the church. Annette Chapman-Adisho addresses the daily experience of the constitutional clergy over the course of ten years, exploring the interactions between priests and local and national authorities, the response of the laity to the divisions in the French Catholic Church, the evolution of these issues over time, and the eventual reconciliation of the clergy following the Napoleonic Concordat with Pope Pius VII in 1801. Using a rich collection of archival sources, this book demonstrates that although the constitutional church was ultimately a failed project, its legacy had a lasting impact on the catholic Church in France. Tracing the social, political, and theological history of this reform effort, Patriot and Priest offers new insights into the French Revolution and its impact on French Catholicism.

Though independence had been won from England in 1783, and with it greater religious freedom, Catholics in the new United States of America still faced prejudice and fear engendered by decades of anti-Catholicism. Rome needed to find the right man to become the first Catholic bishop in the new republic and Fr. John Carroll was just the one. According to Benjamin Franklin, “Father Carroll is a brilliant man of tact and courtesy; a vigorous man of great physical endurance, he also has unlimited patience.” Bishop Carroll definitely had need of all his gifts. First, while accomplishing the delicate task of building a respectful understanding between the Church he represented and the leadership of the new nation, he began a much-needed seminary to train American priests, also starting schools for educating the people. He patiently instructed hot-headed parishes accustomed to self-governance, and he sought priests for Native Americans. By 1810, Carroll had erected four separate dioceses—New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Bardstown, Kentucky (out of the original all-encompassing Baltimore Diocese)—to care for a growing Church as the young nation itself grew. This book provides a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look at the decisions faced by a wise and unshakable man chosen by God to help the Catholic Church in America flourish.

After serving two and a half years as a stretcher-bearer on the Western Front, Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote that he would “a thousand times rather be throwing grenades or handling a machine gun than be supernumerary as I am now.” Mobilized by military laws dating to 1889 and 1905 that opened the clergy’s ranks to conscription and removed their exemption from combat, Teilhard and his fellow men of the cloth served France in the tens of thousands—and nearly half of them served in combat positions. Patriot Priests tells us how these men came to be at war and how their experiences transformed them and French society at large. The letters and diaries of these priests reveal how they adapted to the battlefields of World War I. Influenced by patriotic ideals of bravery, they went into the war hoping to make converts for the Catholic Church, which had long been marginalized by the Third Republic’s secularizing policies. But through direct fraternal contact with their fellow soldiers, they came out with a sense of common identity and comradeship. Historian Anita Rasi May documents how these clergymen used their religious values of sacrifice to define the meaning of the war for themselves and for their comrades, even as the discipline of military life effectively transformed them from missionaries into soldiers. In turn, their courage and solicitous care for their fellow soldiers won them new respect and earned the Church renewed esteem in postwar French society. These clergymen’s story, recounted here for the first time, elucidates a unique milestone of church-state relations in France. Their experiences—their hopes and fears, their struggles to reconcile their mission of peace with the demands of war, and their sense of belonging to France as well as to the Church—reveal a new perspective on the Great War.

Father Carl Hausmann, SJ, spent his life serving others, leading a life of asceticism and holiness as a Jesuit priest in the Philippines. He also wrote hundreds of letters to his devout German-American family detailing his calling. In this intimate biography, Father Carl s niece, Cynthia Joy Hausmann, has translated an expansive collection of letters dating from her uncle s youngest days. Through his letters, we meet a youngster who buys candy instead of putting his pennies in the church collection. Later, as a Jesuit student, he counsels his father not to take the day s prevalent anti-German sentiment personally. As a compassionate missionary, Father Carl serves lepers on an isolated island. Finally, in World War II, this self-sacrificing man shares both the word of God and his meager rice ball with American soldiers imprisoned by the Japanese. Up to the hour of his death by starvation, Father Carl calms his family s worries about the dangers besetting him. Clearly, Father Carl s biography illustrates how letter writing is a personal endeavor: one that has been virtually lost amid today s technology. Father Carl s missives endure as a guidepost for future generations, giving us a window into how deeply capable we can be in ministering to others.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

After serving two and a half years as a stretcher-bearer on the Western Front, Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote that he would “a thousand times rather be throwing grenades or handling a machine gun than be supernumerary as I am now.” Mobilized by military laws dating to 1889 and 1905 that opened the clergy’s ranks to conscription and removed their exemption from combat, Teilhard and his fellow men of the cloth served France in the tens of thousands—and nearly half of them served in combat positions. Patriot Priests tells us how these men came to be at war and how their experiences transformed them and French society at large. The letters and diaries of these priests reveal how they adapted to the battlefields of World War I. Influenced by patriotic ideals of bravery, they went into the war hoping to make converts for the Catholic Church, which had long been marginalized by the Third Republic’s secularizing policies. But through direct fraternal contact with their fellow soldiers, they came out with a sense of common identity and comradeship. Historian Anita Rasi May documents how these clergymen used their religious values of sacrifice to define the meaning of the war for themselves and for their comrades, even as the discipline of military life effectively transformed them from missionaries into soldiers. In turn, their courage and solicitous care for their fellow soldiers won them new respect and earned the Church renewed esteem in postwar French society. These clergymen’s story, recounted here for the first time, elucidates a unique milestone of church-state relations in France. Their experiences—their hopes and fears, their struggles to reconcile their mission of peace with the demands of war, and their sense of belonging to France as well as to the Church—reveal a new perspective on the Great War.