Wednesday, January 10, 2024

It is the 10th of January 2024. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

Dateline: January 10th, 1984. Folks waking up to their newspaper likely had a similar front-page story to that of the New York Times: U.S. and Vatican Restore Full Ties after 117 Years.

That night it was the lead story on Nightline with Ted Koppel, a popular evening newscast. Koppel began the show by stating that this news “did not cause a furor” where “once upon a time it would have.” He then went on to interview a number of representatives from the government and various church bodies.

Representatives from conservative evangelicals and the more progressive National Council of Churches condemned the act by Ronald Reagan, who instigated the rapprochement with the Vatican and Pope John Paul II. Their complaint, they claimed, was constitutional, that doing so violated the First Amendment’s prohibition of the establishment of religion by the government. In short, it was a violation of the separation of church and state.

The argument was that an official recognition of a church body with the Federal government excessively entangled the state with a religion. The argument went nowhere, and I think it tells us something about modern politics and the history of Catholicism in America.

It is true that the colonies could be virulently anti-Catholic. But with the inclusion of the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Georgia- havens for Catholics and other religious dissenters the early American Republic would resist the old prejudices.

Upon being inaugurated as the first President, George Washington wrote a letter addressed to “Roman Catholics in America” in which he wrote: “May the members of your Society in America, animated alone by the pure spirit of Christianity, and still conducting themselves as the faithful subjects of our free Government, enjoy every temporal and spiritual felicity. 

In 1797, diplomatic relations were established between the United States and the Papal States. So, what happened such that they dissolved and had to be reinstated on this day 40 years ago?

The short answer: The American Civil War and Italian unification. The Papal States ceased to exist in 1870, 5 years after the end of the Civil War. But in 1867, it was President Andrew Johnson who formally signed congressional legislation that banned the United States from having diplomatic relations with the Vatican.

To understand that is to remember the second rail of groups like the KKK and other nativists. While anti-catholicism has been present in America, it lay dormant for some time during the Republic's early years. The impetus behind the new wave of anti-Catholicism was not theological but political. The 19th century saw waves of immigrants from both Italy and Ireland, two predominantly Catholic countries, and thus catholicism came to be associated with poor immigrants (add to this American expansion into the West and the presence of Spanish Catholics). President Johnson signed the bill to garner support, trying to assuage those upset with reconstruction. 

There were also those who claimed that Catholics were behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and that a Jesuit plot had been hatched to destroy the United States from within- both dubious claims.

However, what about the modern argument that the new relations violated the First Amendment? It should be noted that the relationship between the entities in the late 1700s and then again in the 1980s was between the U.S. Government and the Papal States or the Vatican. These would be the formal political structures and not the religious (for Catholics, the Pope holds power over the Holy See, which is his spiritual prerogative).

And it would make sense for Ronald Reagan to seek such a reconciliation with the rise of the new Pope, John Paul II. Like Reagan, the New Pope was concerned with the specter of the Soviet Union. John Paul II, the former Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, had opposed the Soviet Union in his native Poland. This was, in some ways, Cold War expediency. Secondly, the new Pope had condemned Liberation Theology in Central and South America, and Reagan had concerns about Marxists he believed were infiltrating the church through the theology that gave “preferential treatment to the poor.” The story of the Pope and the President was a remarkable one that sowed seeds of destruction for the USSR and heralded a new age- or rather, harkened back to the early years of America for relations between Americans and Catholics. 

The last word for today is from the daily lectionary, a nice epiphany text from John 1:

29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

32 Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 10th of January 2024, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man always on the lookout for Jesuit tricks- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man still transfixed by Ted Koppel’s hair after all these years. I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.