A Conservative Voice for Black Catholics: The Case of James Martin Gillis, C.S.P.

Abstract

In the United States religious and political conservatives traditionally have not supported the rights of minorities. During the nineteenth century nativism, expressed in political, social, and religious contexts, flourished and was championed most actively bv those of a conservative and isolationist mindset who rebelled against any possible contamination of the American ideals of democracy and social assimilation. Minorities were welcome when they filled a vacancy in a sweat shop, could drive spikes into railroad ties, or occupied a parcel of land to advance the western drive ofmanifest destiny. However, when these groups gained strength in numbers, formed separatist communities, or in any way threatened the beliefs or livelihood of native citizens, they were opposed and declared unwanted on all fronts. The Know-Nothing party between 1850 and 1854 gained a great following in its campaign against immigrants, especially the rapidly growing Catholic community.1 Chinese laborers, who helped construct the transcontinental railroad, were, after the California depression of 1873, considered a threat to local workers and banned from immigrating after 1882. Similar obstacles were experienced by other minority peoples culminating in the establishment of a quota system through the immigration restriction acts of 1921 and 1924. Historically the isolation and injustice perpetrated against black Americans has been the harshest experienced by any minority group.2 The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation led to the adoption of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which eliminated slavery but did little to improve social conditions and nothing to change attitudes toward blacks. Social neglect of blacks in the nineteenth century was institutionalized by nativists during the Progressive Era into a rigid system of segregation (Jim Crow) which was enforced throughout the South, continuing to the onset of the Civil Rights Movement in 1955. James Martin Gillis, a Paulist priest and Irish-American, championed a staunchly conservative religious and political agenda during a colorful career as a mission preacher, magazine editor, and essay,ist. Gillis was highly critical of moral laxism, repudiated war while promoting isolationism, and rejected the growth of government control over people as a direct violation of Abraham Lincoln's famous dictum-government of, by, and for the people. The consummate conservative as described by Clinton Rossiter in 1955,3 Gillis was, nonetheless, as described in this essay, a social progressive in his advocacy of the rights of all minorities, most especially black Catholics, through essays, radio talks, and, most prominently, his leadership in the Northeastern Clergy Conference for Negro Welfare. James Martin Gillis Conservative Catholic Born in 1876 to first-generation Americans of Irish heritage and reared in the Yankee tradition of Boston, James Gillis developed a rigorist mentality which demanded much of himself and the world. Through the influences of his father and the famous Paulist evangelist, Walter Elliott, whom he first met when he was a student at St. John's Seminary in Brighton, Gillis came to perceive the world as one where the right of the individual to do good in compliance with God's law was paramount and needed to be safeguarded at all cost. During the years of his religious formation (1895-1901), which took him from St. Charles minor seminary in Ellicott, Maryland, to St. John's, and ultimately to St. Thomas College, the Paulist house of studies in Washington, D.C., Gillis gradually came to perceive the role of priesthood as a state of perfection5 which he must attain. Frustrated in his initial priestly ministry on the Chicago (1904-1907) and New York (1910-1922) mission bands and disappointed through years of retreats, where he chastised himself for his inability to achieve spiritual perfection, Gillis in his years as editor of The Catholic World (1922-1948) berated the world for its sins and imperfections. …