Today marks the day that Cardinal James Gibbons (1834-1921) of Baltimore (seen above) issued his defense of the Knights of Labor. The Knights of Labor was one of America’s first labor unions, founded in 1869. By the 1880’s, it was the largest, with nearly 700,000 members led by Terence V. Powderly, a devout Irish Catholic from Scranton. A number of Catholic bishops, including New York’s Archbishop Michael Corrigan, opposed the Knights and fought for its condemnation by Rome. The thing... Read more

Today marks the death of Georges Bernanos (1888-1948), one of the leading Catholic novelists of the twentieth century. Born in Paris, he studied at Jesuit schools, and for a while he thought about becoming a priest. Instead, he studied law and literature at the Sorbonne, after which he became editor of a royalist newspaper. Since 1870 France had been a republic, but royalists wanted to restore the French monarchy. During World War I, he served in the army and was... Read more

No matter how long you study a subject, you never know everything. And today I found out something I never knew, namely, that the two main characters in the Dred Scott case are both buried in Catholic cemeteries. I knew that Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney (1777-1864) was born to an old Catholic family that came to Maryland in the 1600’s. He’s buried at St. John’s Cemetery in Frederick, Maryland. Now here’s the part I never knew, and the part... Read more

From the thirties through the sixties, The Brooklyn Tablet was considered “the most influential diocesan paper in America.” Jesuit historian James Hennesey writes that few papers “had the spice” of the Tablet, with its hardcore anticommunism and general conservative tenor. No one embodied the image of the pugnacious Brooklyn Irish Catholic better than its longtime editor Patrick F. Scanlan (1894-1983), one of the most controversial figures in the American Catholic press. At 23, Scanlan took a temporary job as the... Read more

When he was a child, future Confederate President Jefferson Davis attended Catholic school for a short while, the College of St. Thomas near Springfield, Kentucky. (In those days, “college” was a loose term meaning anything from grammar school through junior college.) Founded by the Dominican Fathers in 1812, St. Thomas was the first school west of the Appalachians, so many of its students were Protestant. But daily attendance at Catholic religious services was mandatory, and “little Jeff” (as his teachers... Read more

Sister Anne’s Hands, written by Marybeth Lorbiecki and beautifully illustrated by K. Wendy Popp, is a neat little book about an African-American nun in an unnamed religious order teaching white European ethnic school children in an unnamed city during the 1960’s. When Sister Anne is the subject of a racial comment, she uses the incident as a teaching opportunity to show her students what’s going in the Civil Rights-era South. In the process she touches the lives of her students... Read more

Today marks the death of Bishop Matthias Loras (1792-1858), first Bishop of Dubuque, Iowa. Born in Lyons during the French Revolution, he lost seventeen relatives to the Reign of Terror(including his father when he was ten weeks old). At school he befriended Jean Vianney, the future saint. After his ordination in 1815, he spent a dozen years in seminary work. In 1828 he volunteered to work in the United States with fellow Lyons native Bishop Michael Portier, Bishop of Mobile,... Read more

Today marks the day that New York’s Archbishop Francis Spellman (1889-1967) and 31 other men were elevated to the College of Cardinals. Born in Massachusetts, he graduated from Fordham in 1911 and studied at the North American College in Rome, where he was ordained in 1916. He returned to Massachusetts as a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston. But Cardinal William O’Connell had little use for the new priest, assigning him to such unglamorous positions as circulation editor for the... Read more

Today marks the death of St. Francis Regis Clet (1748-1820), a Vincentian missionary martyred in China. Born in Grenoble he joined St. Vincent De Paul’s Congregation of the Mission in 1769. He was ordained in 1773, and spent fifteen years teaching at the order’s seminary at Annecy. In 1788 he was named novice director at St. Lazaire, the motherhouse in Paris. Father Clet had long wanted to go to the missions, but his grant wasn’t requested until 1791, when a... Read more

Today marks the founding of the world’s first Jesuit university, the Gregorian, in 1551. Originally named the Roman College, it was raised to university status in 1553. The university’s great patron was Pope Gregory XIII (1572-1585), who gave a new building and endowment to the school, which was renamed in his honor. When the Society of Jesus was suppressed (1773-1814), diocesan clergy ran the Gregorian. The Jesuits resumed charge of the school after the restoration. Under Blessed Pope Pius IX... Read more