Ex-Priests, Fenians, and the Independent Irish Catholic Church in New York City, 1878–1883

Abstract

Ex-Priests, Fenians, and the Independent Irish Catholic Church in New York City, 1878–1883 Alexander E. Callaway (bio) After leaving the priesthood in 1878, James A. O'Connor (1846–1911) became an evangelical Protestant and vigorous opponent of the Roman Catholic Church. By the time he died thirty-three years later, his "Reformed Catholic" movement, dedicated to the conversion of Catholic priests, was well established. The ministry's headquarters, Christ's Mission, and its monthly magazine, The Converted Catholic, would remain in operation for nearly a century.1 O'Connor's evangelistic work was detestable to his former coreligionists. Catholic officials and the Catholic press cast him as "a bad man" who was "suspended by his Bishop … for acts which unfitted him not only to serve as a priest … but even to associate with well behaved, respectable men"; a "renegade priest" and an "unfortunate man," who lived "to imitate the Prodigal"; and even as a picture of "insanity."2 Upon learning of his death, the Catholic Messenger [End Page 117] memorialized him with like opprobrium: "he devoted his life to villifying [sic] Catholics," and "died as he lived, unrepentant."3 O'Connor's Catholic critics claimed that he had been suspended from the priesthood for debauchery and that his evangelical ministry was a sham.4 O'Connor adamantly denied these accusations. He had given up the priesthood voluntarily, not been dismissed for drunkenness or immorality.5 Having "lost faith in the Sacraments which he was giving to the people," he "resolved at all hazards to free himself from the deplorable state of hypocrisy in which he saw so many other priests spend their lives."6 Even when he was arraigned on two separate occasions for public intoxication, he insisted that he never imbibed. He maintained that he had left the Roman Catholic Church for conscience's sake, and that the "Romanists" sought to destroy him—be it by libelous accusation, drugging, or trumped-up charges and Catholic judges—in order to stymie his evangelistic success.7 Catholic opposition did not impair O'Connor's ministry, though. Official accounts claimed that by the end of his life, Christ's Mission and his internationally circulated publications had been instrumental in the conversion of more than 160 Catholic priests, and many times that number of lay Catholics.8 [End Page 118] In stark contrast to Catholic perspectives, Protestant ministers such as Josiah Strong and Reuben A. Torrey lauded O'Connor throughout his evangelical career.9 According to the New York Observer and Chronicle, he "was a preacher of unusual ability … gentle in his relations with all men … extremely courteous to those from whom he differed," and "a friend of every man who needed material, intellectual or spiritual aid."10 O'Connor "died as he had lived, a true Christian, with rock-ribbed faith in the merits of his Savior by whose blood he had been redeemed."11 The truth about someone who is simultaneously extolled and reviled may often be found somewhere between the extremes. The following narrative, therefore, avoids profiling O'Connor as either a morally compromised anti-Catholic bigot or a beleaguered Protestant saint. It focuses on his five-year transition from Roman Catholic priest (1878) to founder of the Reformed Catholic movement (Fall 1883). During this time, O'Connor joined another ex-priest, James V. McNamara, an Irish nationalist and Fenian who, seeing Vatican I as issuing in the spiritual subjugation of Irish Catholics by "Italians," resolved to form an Independent Catholic Church (ICC). In support of Emmet Larkin's observation that nineteenth-century Irish nationalists sought to "make Irish rather than Catholic the inclusive term" of Irish cultural identity, McNamara sought to unite Catholic and Protestant Irish in his ICC.12 O'Connor became McNamara's coadjutor, but the alliance foundered as O'Connor's deepening evangelical convictions and emphasis on converting Catholics diverged from [End Page 119] McNamara's political anti-Catholicism, which became increasingly pugnacious and eventually led to his affiliation with the American Protective Association (APA).13 In addition to shedding light on two understudied figures who deserve more attention, this account, reconstructed from press reports, pamphlets, and manuscript material, illustrates the complex negotiations between...