{"id":1457,"date":"2024-03-31T08:58:30","date_gmt":"2024-03-31T14:58:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/workingcatholic\/?p=1457"},"modified":"2024-03-31T08:58:30","modified_gmt":"2024-03-31T14:58:30","slug":"immigrants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/workingcatholic\/2024\/03\/immigrants\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigrants"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The Working Catholic, Immigration Part Three by Bill Droel<\/p>\n

Archbishop John Hughes (1997-1864) of New York is probably not a suitable role model for a bishop today. And yet\u2026<\/p>\n

Hughes was born in Ireland. He once tellingly wrote: For first four days of my life, I was \u201con social and civil equality with the most favored subjects of the British Empire.\u201d But then I was baptized a Roman Catholic.<\/p>\n

Hughes emigrated to the U.S. in 1817 where he worked in a quarry and in landscaping. He was eventually ordained for the Philadelphia diocese and within 12 years was appointed as a bishop to New York City. From the time he arrived on these shores, Hughes strongly felt that Catholicism was in harmony with our Constitution and our democratic ideals. He was consistently positive about pluralism, the electoral process and the law. At the same time, Hughes was a controversial opponent of certain assumptions and attitudes embedded in the dominant culture of his day. Using today\u2019s term, Hughes was a cultural warrior<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Machine Made: Tammany Hall<\/em> by Terry Golway (W.W. Norton, 2014) explains the tension that made Hughes a champion of immigrants and a threat to others. The dominant culture of his time was associated with New York\u2019s elites, with evangelical Protestants. They fancied themselves as reformers, as technocrats. They knew what was best for society. But Hughes judged them to be an outdated aristocracy whose hypocrisy denied opportunities to immigrant families. He saw heavy-handed moralizing in their campaigns for temperance, child welfare and the like. In fact, to him their notion of social improvement was anti-Catholic, anti-Irish American.<\/p>\n

Concurring with the First Amendment of our Constitution and anticipating a key insight of Vatican II (1962-1965), Hughes believed that a religion does better within pluralism than in a theocracy. \u201cThere is no such thing as a predominant religion\u201d in the U.S., said Hughes. Ours is not \u201ca Protestant country or a Catholic country or a Jewish country or a Christian country in a sense that it would give any sect or combination of sects the right to oppress any other sect.\u201d A minority, he continued, \u201cis entitled to the same protection as the greatest majority.\u201d Further, a minority has \u201cthe right to reject the values of a dominant culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hughes was best-known for applying his understanding of the Constitution to education. To Hughes, as Golway writes, the public schools \u201cwere imbued with Protestant assumptions and attitudes.\u201d Hughes judged that they were sectarian and thereby undermined our Catholic style of Christianity. The school system \u201cconveyed cultural disrespect.\u201d Hughes first attempted to gain public funding for a small number of parish schools, but his political and legal efforts were thwarted. Hughes then concentrated on bricks-and-mortar. \u201cBuild our own schools first,\u201d he said. Church buildings can come later. Today, Hughes is considered a founder of the Catholic school system through which thousands upon thousands of immigrant children and their descendants have moved into the mainstream.<\/p>\n

Hughes \u201cwas outspoken, aggressive and political to his very marrow,\u201d Golway writes. His nickname was Dagger John<\/em>. His style would not go over among Catholics today, accustomed as they are to breezy, polite clergy. Further, his style is unacceptable in post-Vatican II theology in which lay people, not Church employees, are expected to be competent leaders in civic affairs. But Hughes\u2019 insights are still relevant.<\/p>\n