Жаңа әлемдік католиктер арасындағы шіркеу билігіне қарсы мәдени қарсылық және «Америкалықтық» мәселесі

Cultural resistance to Church authority among some New World Catholics
Catholic definition and its subsequent condemnation

Americanism was, in the years around 1900, a political and religious outlook attributed to some American Catholics and denounced as heresy by the Holy See. In the 1890s, European "continental conservative" clerics detected signs of modernism or classical liberalism, which Pope Pius IX had condemned in the Syllabus of Errors in 1864, among the beliefs and teachings of many members of the American Catholic hierarchy, who denied the charges. Pope Leo XIII wrote against these ideas in a letter to Cardinal James Gibbons, published as Testem benevolentiae nostrae. The long term result was that the Irish Catholics who largely controlled the Catholic Church in the United States increasingly demonstrated loyalty to the pope, and suppressed traces of liberal thought in Catholic colleges. At bottom, the conflict was cultural, as conservative American Catholics from continental Europe, angered at the heavy attacks on the Catholic Church in Germany, France and other countries, sought to weaken individualist attitudes among American Catholics.

During the French Third Republic, which began in 1870, the power and influence of French Catholicism steadily declined. The French government passed laws bearing more and more stringently on the Catholic church, and the majority of French citizens did not object. Indeed, they began to look toward legislators and not to the clergy for guidance. Observing this, and encouraged by the action of Pope Leo XIII, who in 1892 called on French Catholics to accept the Republic, several young French priests set themselves to stop the decline in church power. They determined that because the church was predominantly sympathetic to the monarchists and hostile to the Republic, and because it held itself aloof from modern philosophies and practices, people had turned away from it. Some progressive priests believed that the church had not adapted to modern needs. They began a domestic apostolate which had for one of its rallying cries, "Allons au peuple" ("Let us go to the people"). They agitated for social and philanthropic projects, for closer contacts between priests and parishioners, and for general cultivation of personal initiative, both in clergy and in laity. They looked for inspiration to America, where they saw a vigorous church among a free people, with priests publicly respected, and with a note of aggressive zeal in every project of Catholic enterprise. Hecker had sought to reach out to Protestant Americans by stressing certain points of Catholic teaching, but Pope Leo XIII understood that effort as a watering down of Catholic doctrine. Hecker also had used terms such as "natural virtue," which to the pope suggested the Pelagian heresy. Because members of the Paulist Fathers took promises but not the vows of religious orders, many concluded that Hecker denied the need for external authority. The French liberals particularly admired Hecker for his love of modern times and modern liberty and his devotion to liberal Catholicism. Indeed, they took him as a kind of patron saint. Inspired by Hecker's life and character, the activist French priests undertook the task of persuading their fellow priests to accept the political system, and then to break out of their isolation, put themselves in touch with the intellectual life of the country, and take an active part in the work of social amelioration. In 1897, the movement received a new impetus when Denis J. O'Connell, former rector of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, spoke on behalf of Hecker's ideas at the Catholic Congress in Fribourg. Arthur Preuss (1871–1934) the foremost German American Catholic intellectual in the United States, was an outspoken enemy, filling his scholarly journal Fortnightly Review with criticisms of Americanist theology. Many powerful Vatican authorities also opposed the "Americanist" tendency. Pope Leo XIII was reluctant to chastise the American Catholics, whom he had often praised for their loyalty and faith. In 1899 he wrote Cardinal Gibbons, "It is clear that those opinions that, taken as a whole, some designate as 'Americanism' cannot have our approval."

In response to Testem benevolentiae, Gibbons and many other American prelates replied to Rome with a near unanimous voice, denying that American Catholics held any of the condemned views. They asserted that Hecker had never countenanced the slightest departure from Catholic principles in their fullest and most strict application. The disturbance caused by the condemnation was slight; almost the entire laity and a considerable part of the clergy were unaware of this affair. The Pope's brief did end up strengthening the position of the conservatives in France. Bernard McQuaid, bishop of Rochester, was a forerunner of the Americanism dispute. He was quick to recognize the mingling of liberalism and Catholicism—which he called "false Americanism"—and distinguish it from living the ideals of republicanism and democracy—"true Americanism." McQuaid was very suspicious of secret societies, non Catholic schooling, and even some of his fellow bishops. He was particularly concerned about John Ireland, John Keane, and James Cardinal Gibbons, all of whom McQuaid considered "too conciliatory to Protestant minded America." John Ireland, archbishop of Saint Paul, Minnesota and a foremost modernizer, had to walk on eggshells to avoid condemnation for his views. Ireland, joined by John J. Keane, archbishop of Dubuque,

Others, such as Orestes Brownson—an abolitionist Catholic public intellectual—were not satisfied with the system of national parishes. Considered an Americanizer, he advocated for immigrants to believe their Catholic identities supersede national divides and personally opposed training priests in the ethnically divided American seminaries. Bishop John Hughes believed that Brownson was part of a "'club' of liberal intellectuals who wanted to Americanize the church". He publicly denounced Brownson for giving the 1860 commencement address at Fordham University.