John Hughes (archbishop)
Titular Bishop of Basilinopolis (1838–1842); Priest of the Diocese of Philadelphia (1826–1838) | |
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Orders | |
Ordination | October 15, 1826 by Henry Conwell |
Consecration | January 7, 1838 by John Dubois |
Personal details | |
Born | Annaloghan, County Tyrone, Ireland | June 24, 1797
Died | January 3, 1864 New York City, US | (aged 66)
Denomination | Roman Catholic Church |
Alma mater | Mount St. Mary's Seminary |
Signature |
John Joseph Hughes (June 24, 1797 – January 3, 1864) was a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. He was the fourth Bishop and first Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, serving between 1842 and his death in 1864.[1] In 1841, he founded St. John's College, which would later become Fordham University.
A native of Ireland, Hughes was born and raised in Augher in the south of
Early life
Hughes was born in the
Patrick Hughes, a poor but respectable
At that time, the president of Mount St. Mary's was the brilliant Simon Bruté, who also lectured on Sacred Scripture and taught Theology and Moral Philosophy. (Bruté would later become the first bishop of the Diocese of Vincennes, Indiana.) Hughes would on numerous occasions consult with his former teacher for advice long after he had left Emmitsburg.[6]
Priesthood
As a
Hughes' first assignment was as a
About this time Hughes became engaged in a public controversy over Catholic beliefs with the Rev. John A. Breckinridge, a distinguished
Episcopacy
Coadjutor bishop
Hughes was chosen by
Trusteeism
One challenge Hughes took on upon arriving in New York was the dispute between the trustees of various parishes in the city, who held the control of these institutions. This practice was known as trusteeism, and the bishop challenged both the practicality and the legitimacy of it. Hughes drew upon his experience with this situation in Philadelphia and was able to get a referendum passed by the Catholics of the city in 1841 supporting the authority of the bishop.[5]
Education
In 1840-1842 Hughes led a political battle to secure funding for the Catholic schools. He rallied support from both the Tammany Hall Democrats, and from the opposition Whig Party, whose leaders, especially Governor
Bishop of New York
Hughes was appointed
In 1844 anti-Catholic riots instigated by Nativist agitators threatened to spread to New York from Philadelphia, where two churches had been burned and twelve people had died. Hughes put armed guards at Catholic churches and, after learning a Nativist rally was scheduled to take place in New York, famously told the Nativist sympathizing mayor that "if a single Catholic Church were burned in New York, the city would become a second Moscow" – a reference to the Fire of Moscow.[13] City leaders took him at his word, and the anti-Catholic faction was not allowed to conduct its rally.
Hughes founded the
Hughes held a "strong commitment to the cause of Irish freedom" but also felt that immigrants, particularly his fellow Irish immigrants, "should demonstrate their unswerving loyalty to their adopted land."[15]
Archbishop
Hughes became an
In an address in March 1852, Hughes lionized what he referred to as the "spirit of the
Hughes also stated that "the great men who framed the Constitution saw, with keen and delicate perception, that the right to tolerate implied the equal right to refuse toleration, and on behalf of the United States, as a civil government, they denied all right to legislate in the premises, one way or the other."[16] He affirmed the role of Catholic soldiers in American wars and declared, "I think I shall be safe in saying that there has not been one important campaign or engagement in which Catholics have not bivouacked, fought, and fallen by the side of Protestants, in maintaining the rights and honor of their common country."[16] Hughes also said that "It is... out of place, and altogether untrue, to assert or assume that this is a Protestant country or a Catholic country. It is neither. It is a land of religious freedom and equality; and I hope that, in this respect, it shall remain just what it now is to the latest posterity" and also that "Catholics, as such, are by no means strangers and foreigners in this land.... The Catholics have been here from the earliest dawn of the morning."[16]
Slavery and John Mitchel
While Hughes did not endorse slavery, he suggested that the conditions of the "starving laborers"[15] in the Northern states were often worse than that of those held in bondage in the South. He believed the Abolitionist movement veered towards ideological excess.[12] In 1842 Hughes had cautioned his flock against signing O'Connell's abolitionist petition ("An Address of the People of Ireland to their Countrymen and Countrywomen in America") which he regarded as unnecessarily provocative.[17]
Against what he saw as the Protestant republican agenda promoted by the
Death
Hughes served as archbishop until his death. He was originally buried in the
Character
Monsignor Thomas Shelley in his study on Hughes described him as a very "complex character," with one side that was "impetuous and authoritarian, a poor administrator and worse financial manager, indifferent to the non-Irish members of his flock, and prone to invent reality when it suited the purposes of his rhetoric." But Shelley finds this did not detract from the effectiveness of Hughes, who established 61 new parishes along with many other institutions.[12]
Historian Daniel Walker Howe writes that Hughes "labored to bring a largely working-class Irish community into a meaningful relationship with Catholic Christianity" while at the same time working "to conciliate middle-class Catholics and Protestant well-wishers whose financial support he needed for his amazingly ambitious program of building." Howe continues, "Although no theologian, John Hughes ranks high for political judgment and in the significance of his accomplishments among nineteenth century American statesmen, civil as well as ecclesiastical. He successfully coped with fierce party competition in New York, bitter battles over the public school system, revolutions in Europe, the rise of nativism across the United States, and soaring rates of immigration after the Great Famine of Ireland. He encouraged his people to hard work, personal discipline, and upward social mobility." "Crucially, he combined his staunch American patriotism with staunch devotion to a nineteenth-century papacy deeply suspicious of all liberalism, especially American." Hughes "succeeded in fostering a strong Irish American identity, one centered on the Catholic faith rather than on the secular radicalism of the Irish nationalists who competed with him for community leadership." This achievement, however, came "at the cost of losing to the Irish-American community the Irish Protestant immigrants."[21]
According to his later successor,
Legacy
In New York, Hughes founded St. John's College (now
"Hughes Hall," the first purpose-built home of Fordham Prep, was named for the archbishop in 1935.[22] The building currently houses Fordham University's Gabelli School of Business on its Rose Hill campus.[22] There is also a dining space on the Rose Hill campus named "Dagger John's" in honor of Hughes.[23] A street near Fordham University is named in his honor (Hughes Avenue).[24] In addition, each year, Fordham recognizes a graduating senior who has demonstrated achievement in the study of philosophy with an award named in honor of Hughes.[25]
To the dismay of many in New York's
See also
References
- ^ a b c d "Archbishop John Joseph Hughes". Catholic-Hierarchy.org.[self-published source]
- ^ a b c Bryk, William (March 25, 2003). "Dagger John and the Triumph of the Irish". New York Press. Archived from the original on June 6, 2011.
- ^ City Journal.
- ^ Hassard, John (1866). Life of the Most Reverend John Hughes, D.D., First Archbishop of New York. New York: D. Appleton and Company.
- ^ a b c d e f g "John Hughes". Catholic Encyclopedia.
- ^ a b c d Clarke, Richard Henry (1888). Lives of the Deceased Bishops of the Catholic Church in the United States. Vol. II. New York: P.O'shea.
- ^ Smith, Rev. John Talbot (1905). The Catholic church in New York. New York & Boston: Hall & Locke company. p. 84.
- .
- OCLC 727645703.
- ^ Ravitch, Diane (1975). The great school wars: A history of the New York City public schools, pp. 3–76.
- ^ McCadden, Joseph (1966). "New York's School Crisis of 1840–1842: Its Irish Antecedents." Thought: Fordham University Quarterly 41 (4): 561–588.
- ^ a b c d "Archbishop John J. Hughes (1797–1863)". mrlincolnandnewyork.org. Retrieved September 23, 2017.
- ^ Sr. Elizabeth Ann, SJW. ""Dagger John" (1797–1864)" (PDF). Catholic Heritage Curricula.
- ^ McPherson, James M. (1989). Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Bantam Books, p. 132.
- ^ ISBN 978-0691153124.
- ^ a b c d e f Hughes, John (1866). Complete Works of the Most Rev. John Hughes, Archbishop of New York: Comprising His Sermons, Letters, Lectures, Speeches, Etc., Vol. II. Lawrence Kehoe. pp. 102–122.
- ^ Kinealy, Christine (August 2011). "The Irish Abolitionist: Daniel O'Connell". irishamerica.com. Irish America. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
- ^ Quinn, James (February 28, 2013). "Southern Citizen: John Mitchel, the Confederacy and slavery". History Ireland. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
- ^ Trench, Charles Chevenix (1984). The Great Dan. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd, p. 274.
- ^ Collopy, David (February 24, 2020). "Unholy row – An Irishman's Diary on John Mitchel and Archbishop John Hughes". The Irish Times. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
- ^ Howe, Daniel Walker (2007). What Hath God Wrought?, Oxford University Press, pp. 199–200.
- ^ a b "Hughes Hall: 120 Years of Service". Fordham News. September 12, 2011. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
- ^ "Dagger John's - Fordham Campus Dining". Fordham Campus Dining. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
- ISBN 0-941980-15-4.
- ^ "FCRH Graduation and Encaenia Honors". Fordham University. Retrieved May 6, 2020.
Further reading
- Casey, Marion R. (2015). "Cornerstone of Memory: John Hughes & St. Patrick's Cathedral: Sixteenth Ernie O'Malley Lecture, 2014." American Journal of Irish Studies 12: 10–56. online
- Coogan, M. Jane (1982). "A Study of the John Hughes—Terence Donaghoe Friendship." Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia 93.1/4: 41–75. online
- Feighery, Kate (2015). " 'Everything Depends on the First Year': Archbishop John Hughes and his Fundraising Plan for St. Patrick's Cathedral." American Journal of Irish Studies 12: 57–76. online
- Kelly, Mary C. (2010). "A 'sentinel(s) of our liberties': Archbishop John Hughes and Irish-American intellectual negotiation in the Civil War era." Irish Studies Review 18.2: 155–172. online
- Lannie, Vincent Peter (1965). "Profile of an Immigrant Bishop: The Early Career of John Hughes." Pennsylvania History 32.4: 366–379. online
- Lannie, Vincent Peter (1968). Public Money and Parochial Education: Bishop Hughes, Governor Seward and the New York School Controversy.
- Loughery, John (2018). Dagger John: Archbishop John Hughes and the Making of Irish America, a standard scholarly biography; excerpt
- Marlin, George J. (2017). Sons of Saint Patrick : a history of the archbishops of New York from Dagger John to Timmytown. online
- Shaw, Richard (1977). Dagger John: The Life and Unquiet Times of Archbishop John Hughes of New York, also a standard scholarly biography; online
External links
- Media related to John Hughes (archbishop of New York) at Wikimedia Commons