American Catholics in the war; National Catholic war council, 1917-1921

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Library of Che Theological Seminary PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY

American Catholics in the WAT _

Preface

By JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS r NHIS BOOK might in very truth be called the “promise fulfilled’—the promise made by the Hierarchy assembled in Washington, April 1917.

That promise meant the consecration in patriotic service not only of our priests and of our religious but also of our laymen and laywomen; it meant not only one organization but every organization; not only one source of support within the command of the body Catholic—chaplains in the service: men in the army and navy: trained Catholic men and women who would devote themselves to all the men of the service: the support of government appeals by our Catholic parishes, the erection of huts and visitors’ houses within the camps here: of service clubs in the cities: of welfare work both at home and abroad.

That promise was big in its vision; it looked beyond the war into the trying days that would follow. Almost immediately after war was declared the National Catholic War Council was established. Composed of the fourteen Archbishops, the Council operated through an Administrative Committee of four Bishops; this committee, in turn, functioned through two sub-committees, the Committee on Special War Activities and the Knights of Columbus Committee on War Activities. The splendid work of the Knights of Columbus brought glory to them, and to the Church, and great benefits to the country, and has been dealt with by the historians of our devoted Order. This book is particularly concerned with the work accomplished by the Committee on Special War Activities. From the first day of the War Council’s activity, its interests were in care of Rev. John J.

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Vill PREFACE

Burke, C.S. P., Chairman of the Committee on Special War Activities. While the text of this narrative will bear testimony to his singular insight, efficiency and devotion, I feel it a duty to add here the expression of my gratitude to him and of my admiration for the qualities of mind and heart that he brought to the doing of a great work for Church and country.

The National Catholic War Council united in patriotic effort all Catholic organizations: it aided the government by immediate contact in Washington: it explained and it defended Catholic rights. Its beneficial work was extended to all soldiers and sailors: its employment and reconstruction work was not, and is not, confined to Catholics: its community welfare work is for the entire community.

It has brought into national expression the Catholic principles of justice and of fraternal service that bespeak the continued prosperity and happiness of America as a nation.

It has opened the way for its successor—the National Catholic Welfare Council—to win still greater achievements in the days of peace for God and for country.

J. CARD. GIBBONS.

Note.—This prefatory note was written by the late Cardinal Gibbons during August of 1920, after reading the proof sheets of this book, the publication of which had been originally planned for the autumn season of 1920.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY HIRTY-THREE years before the Great

War, the Fathers of the Third Plenary

Council of the Catholic Church in the United'States, assembled in Baltimore in 1884, made this declaration:

“We consider the establishment of our country’s independence, the shaping of its liberties and laws, as a work of special providence, its framers ‘building better than they knew,’ the Almighty’s hand guiding'them. . . We believe that our country’s heroes were the instruments of the God of nations in establishing this home of freedom; to both the Almighty and to the instruments in the work we look with grateful reverence; and to maintain the inheritance of freedom which'they left us, should it ever—which;God forbid—be imperilled, our Catholic citizens will be found to stand forward as one man, ready to pledge anew ‘their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.’ ”’

In the fulness of time, God did permit the imperilling of our inheritance of freedom. There came the great testing of the Catholic citizens of the United States. The hour struck on April 6, 1917, when President Wilson,issued his proclamation declaring that ‘“‘a state of war exists: between the United States and the German Imperial Governmen t.”’

The President in the address he made to Congress on April 2, when he appeared before fi AMERICAN CATHOLICS IN THE WAR that body to ask for a declaration of war against Germany, summing up the mind of the nation, said:

. . We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no: conquest, no domination. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them ,,..) ¢

“Tt is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to bein the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts—for democracy, tor the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

“To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”’

On April 4, the Senate adopted a declaration of war by eighty-two votes to six; and.on the next day the House also adopted it by three hundred and seventy-three votes to fifty. On April 6, 1917, the President issued his proclamation. Two days later the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Austria- Hungary, although a declaration of war against the Dual Monarchy was delayed until December 7.

So, the event foreshadowed since July, 1914, when the war began, had at last occurred. The one Great Power which had so far escaped the maelstrom of blood and tears was now entering the field. Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the seven seas, had long before been part of the scene of carnage. Now America completed the fatal circle. The war was literally world-wide. Nearly sixty millions of men were under arms, comprising most of the races and nations of humankind, from savage Africans to the most highly developed classes.

Twelve days after the declaration of war, on April 18, the Archbishops of the Catholic Church in the United States, assembled for their annual meeting at the Catholic University in Washington, expressed the loyalty of their clergy and their faithful laity, and proffered their services to the Government in a message which repeated the pledge given at Baltimore thirty-three years before.

The Pledge of the Catholic Church

This letter ran as follows:

“Standing firmly upon our solid Catholic tradition and history, from the very foundation of this nation, we affirm in this hour of stress and trial our most sacred and sincere loyalty and patriotism toward our country, our government, and our flag.

‘“ Moved to the very depths of our hearts by the stirring appeal of the President of the United States, and by the action of our national Congress, we accept whole-heartedly and unreservedly the decree of that legislative authority proclaiming this country to be in a state of war.

‘We have prayed that we might be spared the dire necessity of entering the conflict, but now that war has been declared we bow in obedience to the summons to bear our part in it with fidelity, with courage and with the spirit of sacrifice which as loyal citizens we are bound to manifest for the defense of the most sacred rights, and the welfare of the whole nation.

“Acknowledging gladly the gratitude that we have always felt for the protection of our spiritual liberty and the freedom of our Catholic institutions, under the flag, we pledge our devotion and our strength in the maintenance of our country’s glorious leadership, in those possessions and principles which have been America’s proudest boast.

‘Inspired neither by hate nor fear, but by the holy sentiments of truest patriotic fervor and zeal, we stand ready, we and all the flock committed to our keeping, to codperate in every way possible with our President and our national government, to the end that the great and holy cause of liberty may triumph and that our beloved country may emerge from this hour of test stronger and nobler than ever.

“Our people, as ever, will rise as one man to © serve the nation. Our priests and consecrated women will once again, as in every former trial of our country, win by their bravery, their heroism and their service new admiration and approval.

‘We are all true Americans, ready as our age, our ability and our condition permit, to do whatever is in us to do for the preservation, the progress and triumph of our beloved country.

‘“May God direct and guide our President and our government, that out of this trying crisis in our national life may at length come a closer union among all citizens of America and that an enduring and blessed peace may crown the sacrifices which war inevitably entails.”’

The President, to whom this message was sent by Cardinal Gibbons, had, when he appeared before Congress on April 2, demanded that immediate steps be taken not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war. His sense of the importance of the Catholic pledge may be seen in his reply to Cardinal Gibbons, in which he said:

“The very remarkable resolutions unanimously adopted by the Archbishops of the United States at their annual meeting in the Catholic University on April eighteenth last, a copy of which you were kind enough to send me, warms my heart and makes me very proud indeed that men of such large influence should act in so large a sense of patriotism and so admirable a spirit of devotion to our common country.”

The action of the Archbishops was an event of prime importance.

Spontaneously, and as a matter of inevitable action springing from principles out of which no less worthy fruits could issue, one great and powerful part of the population, the nearly twenty millions of Catholics, were thus committed by their leaders to the cause of their country; being the first of the religious bodies of the land to volunteer for service.

What, however, did their action mean? Was it simply a gesture of good will? Granting, of course, its sincerity, did those who took this step have the power to make good their tremendous promise? Granting that they possessed this power, and that they wielded it, what, after all, was the promise worth?

In a word, what could and what did the Catholic Church of the United States, clergy and people, do to help the government win the war?

For a pledge given in all good faith may yet remain unfulfilled, or at least but partly accomplished. What the Catholic pledge actually amounted to was authoritatively stated two years after the Great War had been triumphantly brought to a close (mainly by the power of the United States), when the Archbishops and Bishops, assembled in conference at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, for the first time since the Third Plenary Council in 1884, issued a Pastoral Letter to their clergy and faithful people, in which they quoted the passage from the decree of the Third Plenary Council given above, with this comment:

The Fulfilling of the Pledge

“The prediction has been fulfilled. The traditional patriotism of our Catholic people has been amply demonstrated in the day of their country’s trial, and we look with pride upon the record which proves as no mere protestation could prove the devotion of American Catholics to the cause of American freedom.”

Continuing, the Pastoral Letter outlines the means by which the high idealism and spiritual inspiration of the call to the Catholics on the part of their leaders were translated into terms of action: |

“To safeguard the moral and_ physical welfare of our Catholic soldiers and sailors, organized action was needed. The excellent work already accomplished by the Knights of Columbus pointed the way to further undertaking. The unselfish patriotism with which our various societies combined their forces in the Catholic Young Men’s Association, the enthusiasm manifested by the organizations of Catholic women, and the eagerness of our clergy to support the cause of the nation, made it imperative to unify the energies of the whole Catholic body and direct them toward the American purpose. With this end in view, the National Catholic War Council was formed by the Hierarchy. Through the Committee on Special War Activities and the Knights of Columbus Committee on War Activities, the efforts of our people in various lines were coérdinated and rendered more effective, both in providing for the spiritual needs of all Catholics under arms and in winning our country’s success. This action was worthy of the Catholic name. It was in keeping with the pledge which the Hierarchy had given our government.

“To our chaplains especially we give the credit that is their due for the faithful performance of their obligations. In the midst of danger and difficulty, under the new and trying circumstances which war inevitably brings, they acted as priests.

“The account of our men in the service adds a new page to the record of Catholic loyalty. It is what we expected and what they took for granted. But it has a significance that will be fairly appreciated when normal conditions return. ‘To many assertions it answers with one plain fact.”

The Intention of This Book

This book is the simple story of that plain fact of magnificent service—not the complete, statistical, historical record, however,—of the fulfilling of the prediction of the Fathers of the Third Plenary Council; the short story of how our American Catholics fought and worked for God and for country during the Great War, and in the days of reconstruction, under the direction of the National Catholic War Council. It will take many months, perhaps years more, of assiduous labor before the full record can be gathered and made available. This book is the outline sketch of a vast literary canvas which some day must be painted; it is merely a running chronicle, a summary of a tremendous mass of material; but though it is suggestive and fragmentary rather than exhaustive and definitive, nevertheless it is based solidly upon documentary evidence; it is drawn directly from the archives of the department of historical records which has been one of the chief labors of the National Catholic War Council to build up ever since that Council was created by the Hierarchy to serve as the mechanism through which that Episcopal authority, which alone was competent for the task, might guide, codrdinate, and inspire the multitudinous, incessant, and exceedingly 'diversified. activities of the nearly twenty millions of men, women, and children who form the Catholic Church in the United States of America.

These Catholic citizens constituted a mighty factor in the sum total of that irresistible power of the American nation which was sees into action by the President in April, 1917.

The services they rendered form a chapter of prime importance in the history of American war work, and led directly to the most momentous action taken by the American Catholic Church since the decisions of the last Plenary Council—namely, the permanent organization and coérdination of Catholic activities, both clerical and lay, under the control of the Hierarchy, in the National Catholic Welfare Council. ‘‘Catholic action, of whatever description it may be,’ as Pope Leo XIII stated in his encyclical on Christian democracy, ‘‘will work with greater effect if all the various associations, while preserving their individual rights, move together under one primary and directive force.”

And now, together with all other American citizens, Catholics have even a greater task than that of helping in the winning of the war; the task of reconstructing our tottering civilization.

They should not fail in this latter task any more than they did in the first one. For they work not blindly, nor with hesitant hands. They know Him whom they serve, the God of nations, and they know that Christianity is the only safe foundation for social reconstruction; because Christianity is the application of the immutable principles of justice and charity incarnated in Jesus Christ, Who siill lives and moves and has His being on earth in the Catholic Church.

Perhaps the story of what Catholics accomplished in the difficult and dangerous days so recently passed may help and inspire, in some degree at least (God willing!), the work of social reconstruction.

Certain Fundamental Questions

First of all, however, let us settle a matter of primary importance.

When it is affirmed—as indeed it most truthfully may be affirmed—that the Catholic Church in the United States fulfilled its duty of loyalty and of patriotic service to the government of the country during the unique crisis of the Great War, what does the statement really mean? What is this Catholic

Church in the United States? What are its principles; and what are its ways and means of acting upon these principles?

These questions must be answered before any intelligible account can be rendered of the part played by American Catholics during the epochal years of 1917 to 1920. It will be necessary, at least briefly, to sketch the historical background of the mighty story. The roots even of such a sketch go back to long before _ the birth of the nation. The Catholic Church,

and all the many and highly specialized instrumentalities of human service which the Church utilized when it summoned its children to fight or to work, to suffer, to pray, or to die on behalf of the United States, were not things invented by any hastily formed committee of national defense or bureau of efficiency engineers. They were functioning before the birth of any of the nations that took part in the apocalyptic struggle that has shattered the modern world; and they will continue their divine work until the end of time.

They develop and they shape themselves in ever new and appropriate ways, however, as the ages come and go; and in 1917, when called upon by the State, in the hour of the State’s supreme crisis, they were ready, even as they were in the past, to exert their powers of service on behalf of the nation. But now their powers had reached to an extent and a depth and a breadth that makes the record of the growth—the vast theophony—of the Catholic Church in the United States of America a story full of that marvel which belongs only to the high romance of true religion.

And even a cursory glance at the record of that growth makes it plain that if the Catholic Church in the United States owes a debt of gratitude to the nation, so also does the youngest of great nations owe much indeed to the oldest of organized societies. The debt extends backward from the Great War to the dim beginnings of the United States; and backward beyond the political and social origins of the nation into the far period of discovery and exploration; the period of three centuries between 1492 and 1776, during which the Cross of Christ, carried everywhere by the Catholic missionaries north, south, east and west throughout the vast spaces of the New World, moderated the force of the conquering white man’s sword, and the evils of his cupidity, his lust of power and his pride.

Christ gave the command to His Apostles and to their successors to go forth unto all the peoples of the world bearing His Gospel, and the command has never ceased to bear fruit not only to- Christianity but also in the spheres of geographical knowledge and colonization. Particularly is this true of our own country. In the discovery, settlement, and development of the New World, and hence of the United States, it is clear that the penetrative and persuasive and always progressive force of Catholicism has played and continues to play a major part. The Son of God, Who became man, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, founded a Church in which He ever abides. That truth must necessarily become the permanently predominant influence if the United States is to achieve the full measure of its inherent and partially realized capabilities. The Spirit of God alone may guide our nation to real greatness, and if we follow God we will lead all other nations and guide them also back unto Him.

Chapter II The Catholic Church In The United States

The Dim Beginnings 7 Cy ears was not only a pioneer of knowledge, an advance agent of world

commerce; he was also a fervent lay apostle of the Catholic Faith. The best informed historians of Columbus give full credit to the Apostolic spirit of the Genoese. And certain it is that when Court and Commerce and Science all failed the great dreamer, the Catholic Church sustained and helped him. She blessed his ships sailing out of Palos'into the unknown, and rejoiced in their return, seeing in the new world thus revealed the extension of Christ’s Kingdom on _ earth. Twelve missionaries went with Columbus on his second voyage, and as early as 1512 the episcopal direction of religion in America was detached from the Old World (from Seville in Spain) and a Bishop’s See was erected in San Domingo. —

The American Church was born simultaneously with Spain’s western empire. The duality of motive that may be roughly symbolized in the phrase, “the Cross and the Sword,’’ runs through the whole story of the first great phase of American history, the Spanish phase; characterizes also the second phase, that of the French colonization, though not so simply, and with the admixture of other religious efforts than those of the Catholic Church, namely, the Huguenot expeditions; and it marked also, though now with un- Catholic or anti-Catholic characteristics predominating (at least until Lord Baltimore’s glorious story), the era of English conquest, before which both Spain and France were destined to bow, but which the American Revolution deflected and transmuted.

The Days of the Spanish Dream

The spiritual debt of the United States to the Catholicism of Spain—the debt of all the nations of the new world to that imperial ancestor—is indeed a vast one. And spiritual things matter more than all material things, as the Great War came to prove once more. Through Columbus, Catholic Spain threw open the gates of the Western World. All the tremendous energies, all the forces and powers, all the multiform evolutionary agencies of advancing civilization which have made up the great history of America crowded in through those gates.

Not only, however, did Spain discover the New World and conquer vastly south and north—other and even greater things were accomplished. Where Spanish soldiers and sailors went, the priest went also (usually, indeed, he led the pageant).

In the cedula, or grant, given to Ayllon by the Emperor Charles V., which claimed for Spain all the mainland of America north of the Gulf of Mexico, it is explicitly stated that the principal intent in the discovery of new lands “is that the inhabitants and natives thereof who are without the light and the knowledge of Faith may be brought to understand the truth of our holy Catholic Faith.” And the grant set forth at length instructions to Ayllon to recruit and equip missionaries and maintain them’ out of the crown’s revenue; proving that Spain, while promoting her empire in the New World, was actuated by regard for Christianity, and by the desire to spread the Faith ‘‘no less, if not more, than by lust of conquest and the desire to guard her wealth.’’ And to the Spanish priests, and the Spanish nuns who in many a cloistered convent prayed constantly for the New World missions, and to myriads of devout Spanish laity, who contributed most generously to the funds for the evangelizing of America, the sailing of a new expedition or the founding of a new colony meant another campaign in the endless war to conquer the world not for a material but a spiritual kingdom; not merely for Spain but for Christ.

It is impossible to understand these Spanish missionaries, or the French that followed them, or the English Jesuits who later came to Maryland, or the Irish and Italian and Polish and German priests and nuns, and the priests and nuns of many other nations, who later still followed the trail of the Cross in our United States, unless one possesses an adequate understanding and a correct appreciation of the motive that impelled them, and the dynamic force of that motive, and its permanent character.

That motive was supernatural.

They believed that the most important thing concerning any man was his soul: his immortal, individual self: and that to win the souls of men for God—to bring ‘‘Gentile,”’ or ‘‘Pagan’’ peoples into the Faith of Christ— was a matter vastly, transcendently more worth while than to conquer continents, or to gain cities built (like those fabled Seven Cities of Cibola) of solid gold, or to discover new seas brimming full of pearls, waiting there since creation to enrich the King of Spain.

Not that they were not patriotic Spaniards, or Frenchmen, or Englishmen, for indeed they were, and their human hearts were often sick with baffled longing for their native land, and they loyally codperated in all the colonizing plans of military and governmental officers which did not run counter to their conscience. The flag they followed was their own; they knew the ineffable thrill of national pride and the sovereignty of the State was only second to the Kingdom of God.

As subjects or citizens of the State it was their duty, and a congenial one, to work side by side with the agents of government in the extension of the dominion and the power of their country; but as missionaries, as men set apart from other men by their own free will for the service of Jesus Christ, they were ever conscious that they were engaged in a war of infinitely graver importance than all the wars of the sword, and that their Father’s business was greater than all the business of the State. So absolutely did they hold this belief that thousands upon thousands of missionaries— Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans, Sulpicians, Carmelites, and secular priests and nuns as well—cheerfully devoted all their forces, all their gifts, in its service; sacrificing all things sought after by other men; love of family, of children, of home; pleasure and ease and wealth and power; leading hard and toilsome lives and dying lonely and often bloody deaths.

And how wonderfully the first missionaries labored may be dimly realized when we consider that fifty years after the landing of Columbus the protomartyr of the Church in the United States, Father John Padilla, was slain in Kansas, about six hundred miles west of the Mississippi. Catholic missionaries even at this early date had borne the Cross throughout the whole extent of our Southern States, from the Chesapeake, whither Ayllon went in 1526, to the Mississippi, reached by De Soto in 1542, the year of Padilla’s death, and to the Colorado River in Northwestern Arizona, reached by one of Coronado’s captains in 1540; and at the foot of the Cross was sown the marvellous seed of the Church, the blood of the martyrs; seed which from that time forward was to be scattered broadcast throughout the land.

The Spanish effort in the United States extended from 1520 to 1840, and covered more than three hundred years. It exerted itself from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in the regions which are now covered by our present States of Florida, Alabama, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. In California and New Mexico it put forth its best fruits. There a glorious work was done in the conversion of the Indians and in the introduction of the arts and crafts of civilized society. Under Spanish dominance there was no wholesale extermination of the native races; on the contrary, the Indians survived and showed fair promise of developing into citizens worthy of a place in any civilized community.

In a word, all of South America and a goodly part of North America were gained and largely civilized and greatly beautified by the religion, the statesmanship and the artistry of Catholic Spain. It was all to be for the benefit of other nations or for rebellious children, to be sure; but greater is he who gives than he who receives; and how much more, for that very reason, should the United States be grateful to this imperial ancestor! The links that unite the nation with Old Spain are today not material but spiritual. From Spain there descends to us a heritage of memories and romance, beauty, idealism and _ religion— things more precious than the gold which Spain sought here but did not finally gain—for these spiritual things nourish the mind and the soul of man like unto the bread of a most precious wheat and the wine of the grapes of love.

The Gallant Adventure of France

France did not strike her roots so deeply into the soil of the United States as did her great rival, Spain. It was on trade not on agriculture that French colonization was based. Chains of forts and trading stations, for the most part, were established by France, rather than settled towns or farming communities. The soldier, the trader, and the priest constituted the three forces of French expansion.