Catholics in America – A respected prelate-theologian of the early 19th century

I have a college friend who graduated from the now-defunct Kennedy-Kenrick High School in Norristown, Pa. The second half of the moniker honored former Philadelphia bishop Francis Kenrick, one of the most widely respected American prelate-theologians of the early 19th century.

Though Irish by birth and Roman by training, Kenrick remains an important figure in the history of American Catholic thought.

He lived and wrote in the frontier diocese of Bardstown, Ky., before coming East to Philadelphia and eventually Baltimore, an historically prominent episcopal see because of its stature as America’s first. Bishop Lori of Bridgeport, whom I know through Fairfield, just became Baltimore’s 16th archbishop, and will almost certainly get the traditional “red hat” as John Carroll’s and Kenrick’s successor.

There were interesting dialogues about the teaching authority of the pope occurring in Kenrick’s era. One group of thinkers, of which Kenrick was loosely associated at least as a forerunner, was called the “ultramontanes,” from the Latin for “over the mountains.” These figures ardently defended Roman centralized authority, in the Vatican and in the personal authority of the pope. They sought to answer all doctrinal questions by appealing to the pontifical voice “over the Alps” which ringed the top of the Italian peninsula.  The pinnacle victory of these elements within the church would come after Kenrick’s death at the First Vatican Council, when the infallibility of the pope in certain instances was solemnly defined and made official Catholic teaching. Kenrick did, however, lay the groundwork for acceptance of these teachings on American soil.

Not every thinker in the church felt the impulse to prioritize the universal, worldwide church centered in Rome and the papacy, over the local experience of particular churches dispersed throughout the world. These debates had been going on for centuries in the Gallican and Febronian controversies in France and Germany respectively.  Englishman John Henry Newman was also somewhat dubious of excessive papal power, but he did dutifully accept and defend Vatican I’s pronouncements on the matter after they took place.

These conversations also continue today. In a highly publicized exchange between Cardinal Kasper and then-Cardinal Ratzinger, the latter extolled the primacy of the universal church over local instantiations of it in a disagreement about which had temporal and ontological priority, the worldwide Catholic church or the small communities in which it is often directly experienced.

The last few hundred years have seen an increase in recognition of the pontifical office as a trans-national and centralized authority, but with proper counterbalancing limits. Positions which would hold that the pope is “the third Incarnation of the Son of God — in the Virgin, in the Eucharist, and now in the Vatican” or that he cannot err in deciding which brand of soda is the best (Benedict supposedly loves orange Fanta), are rightly deemed excessive and heretical caricatures of Catholic doctrine. Nevertheless, the – it is hoped fruitful — tension between local diocesan churches and unique papal prerogative in confirming the brethren as Bishop of Rome (Luke 22) continues to coexist and keep us theologians in business.

While in Philadelphia, Kenrick founded St. Charles Borromeo Seminary. It was originally located near his residence on Fifth Street, before eventually moving to its current location near St. Joseph’s University. It sought to train men for devotional and intellectual success in the priesthood, a common theme in the Kenrick family — his uncle was schooled at Maynooth and the head of a prominent parish in Dublin, his brother the first Archbishop of St. Louis. But Francis was undoubtedly the most famous and widely respected thinker of the three.

His legacy in the Delaware Valley and beyond continues to remain an important one, with or without Kennedy-Kenrick High.

Michael M. Canaris is an administrator at Fairfield University’s Center for Faith and Public Life and is on the faculty for the Department of Philosophy, Theology, and Religious Studies at Sacred Heart University.