19th-century lessons in lay governance - Analysis

National Catholic Reporter, Nov 1, 2002 by Raymond A. Schroth

"Frankly, sometimes, I am tired of commentaries and prattle about what some think is needed to correct and reform the church. Probably, I have also contributed to the plethora of supposed infallible assertions."

So wrote Fr. Aldo J. Tos, 72, pastor of St. Joseph's Church in Greenwich Village, N.Y., in a June newsletter to his flock, the week before the American bishops were to meet in Dallas to discuss the church's scandal. In May, St. Joseph's Pastoral Council had sent a letter to every bishop in the country outlining how they wanted the bishops to respond.

But the deepest issue--which Tos calls the "culture of mendacity" that has nurtured the abuse and cover-up--was not on the agenda.

St. Joseph's, 165 years ago put under interdict by Bishop John Dubois, might have been called then one of the worst parishes in the country. Today it may have some non-infallible answers to some of the church's problems.

In the 21st century in the world's leading democracy, a bishop is still a feudal lord, answerable to no one but the pope in Rome, who has appointed him bishop because he would not raise tough questions and not challenge the authority who has given him a ring to be kissed, a throne and a pointed hat.

In America it was not always that way.

Up through the 1830s, laymen, through a system called trusteeism, virtually controlled the daily operations of the church. According to state, not ecclesiastical, law intended partly to limit the influence of religious institutions, churches and colleges were incorporated under the ownership of lay boards of trustees. The boards bought the property, built the church, selected the pastor, set his salary and fired him--or attempted to, depending on the guts and political skill of the local bishop.

If lay trustees had owned the churches and controlled the finances of the parishes in Boston, Los Angeles, New York and Milwaukee, would an offending priest have been shifted under a cloud of secrecy from one set of victims to another? Would hush money have been slipped to a blackmailer?

New York Daily News columnist Pete Hamill, letting his mind wander during Mass on a rainy Sunday at old St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street, the oldest Catholic church in New York and a short walk from St. Joseph's, wrote in the May 13 issue of his newspaper: "No, the answer is in the past."

Conditions have changed. Catholics are no longer threatened by nativist mobs, when they needed a tough Irish prelate like Bishop "Dagger John" Hughes to whip Protestant antagonists and rebellious trustees into line. "But," says Hamill, "the system created by Hughes, and endorsed by the Vatican, remains in place. A tiny group of careerist clergymen still runs the American church, adept at the intricacies of church politics, but immune from the scrutiny of 633 million Catholics."

Most historians, theologians and priests with whom I have spoken give the trustee system credit, would not apply it to today's scandal, but embrace its central principle: The voice of the laity must be heard.

But if trusteeism was so great, what happened to it?

In the early 19th century, democratic elements in church government emerged from several sources: prelates like Archbishop John Carroll, who insisted that American bishops, including himself, be elected by the priests; civil law which mandated trusteeships; national parishes, particularly German and Polish, who brought over European traditions of the laypeople establishing and directing the parish; visionaries like John England, bishop of Charleston, S.C. (1820-1842), sent from Ireland, who arrived with a diocesan constitution, modeled on the American Constitution. His parishes governed themselves through periodic conventions where elected delegates of clergy and laypeople discussed the region's problems.

From the beginning, American Catholic leaders, known as "republican" Catholics, inspired by the politics of Andrew Jackson, got the idea that American institutions presented a unique soil in which the church could thrive.

At the end of the century a group of progressive prelates, known as "Americanists"--including founders of The Catholic University of America--fought an ultimately futile battle to demonstrate that democratic institutions and Catholic belief could complement one another.

But how could that be when the Roman Catholic church is by definition hierarchical, while American Protestant Congregationalism works from the bottom-up? In heartland America, where belief is determined by the experience of the community moved by the Spirit, not by an authority that claims a pipeline to God?

Trusteeism died for several reasons.

Hughes' brand of Irish Catholicism, which respected authority, came to dominate the church. Vatican I (1870) declared infallibility. "Americanism" was condemned as a heresy.

As historians Patrick W. Carey and Msgr. Thomas J. Shelley have pointed out, trusteeism was not strictly democratic. The trustees were elected not by the congregation but by the pew holders, the wealthier businessmen who rented the church seats while the poor people stood in the back.