The Plenary Councils of Baltimore

Baltimore, the first Catholic metropolis of the United States

At the beginning of American history, Baltimore held a central place. The Diocese of Baltimore, erected in 1789, became the first Catholic episcopal see of the United States; its first bishop, John Carroll, was consecrated in 1790. As long as Baltimore was the only ecclesiastical province, its provincial councils sufficed to give common rules to the whole country.^[5]

The situation changed in the mid-nineteenth century. The United States was no longer a small coastal mission. Irish and German immigration, expansion toward the West, the creation of new dioceses and the multiplication of provinces made the provincial framework insufficient. The Catholic Encyclopedia sums up the turning point: once several ecclesiastical provinces existed, a plenary council became necessary to maintain a common discipline.^[6]

The challenge of a fast-growing Church

The sources of 1884 stress the change of scale. In the pastoral letter of the Third Council, the bishops observe that the clergy, the religious, the Catholic institutions and the faithful have multiplied since the previous council. The territory too has widened: the regions of the West, formerly described as deserted or almost inaccessible, are now travelled by missionaries and Catholic settlers.^[7]

The question was not only numerical. A Church growing too fast risks four disorders: poorly formed priests, parishes without stable rules, insufficient schools, and an appointment of bishops left to improvised solutions. Baltimore therefore answered a need of government: to turn a missionary Church into a structured Church, without losing the bond with Rome.

The Roman framework: real autonomy, explicit communion

The councils of Baltimore were not a project to "nationalize" American Catholicism. On the contrary, the acts stress that the Holy See authorizes, recognizes or revises the decisions. The Third Council was convoked at the request of Leo XIII, who appointed the Archbishop of Baltimore, James Gibbons, as apostolic delegate to preside over the assembly.^[8][9]

This Roman dependence is crucial. The American bishops wanted to adapt discipline to local conditions, but they refused to create a separate American Church. The constructive tension lies there: building thoroughly American institutions, on the soil of the United States, with the resources of Roman Catholicism.

The three dates

The figures vary slightly depending on whether one counts visitors, procurators, abbots, vicars apostolic, religious superiors or theologians. The 1885 memorial volume gives for the Third Council an assembly far larger than the body of signatory bishops: fourteen archbishops, sixty bishops, five visiting bishops from Canada and Japan, seven abbots, one apostolic prefect, eleven monsignori, eighteen vicars general, twenty-three religious superiors, twelve seminary rectors and ninety theologians.^[10]

Why Baltimore?

Baltimore was the natural place for these assemblies because it was the first American metropolitan see. The Cathedral of Baltimore was not merely a building; it embodied the continuity between the missionary Church born of John Carroll and the national episcopate taking shape in the nineteenth century. The assemblies thus kept a historic centre, even as the American Church spread toward New York, Boston, Cincinnati, Saint Louis, New Orleans, San Francisco and the territories of the West.

The choice of Baltimore also explains the title of "Councils of Baltimore." This was not a local council of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, but a national assembly held in the historic metropolis of the American Catholic Church.

Extending the provincial rules to the whole nation

The First Plenary Council opened on 9 May 1852. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that it gathered six archbishops and thirty-five suffragan bishops; the bishop of Monterey, recently separated from Mexico, and the bishop of Toronto were also present, a sign of an ecclesiastical geography still in flux.^[11]

Its first doctrinal decision was simple and strong: the Fathers professed their fidelity to the pope as the divinely established head of the Church, charged with confirming his brethren in the faith. They declared that they received the whole Catholic faith as expounded by the ecumenical councils and the constitutions of the Roman pontiffs.^[12]

The practical decisions

The First Council made the decisions of the seven provincial councils of Baltimore obligatory for all the dioceses of the United States. It prescribed the use of the Roman Ritual and the Baltimore Ceremonial, called for diocesan chancellors, encouraged bishops to choose consultors, imposed the publication of marriage banns, asked pastors to teach Christian doctrine to the young and the ignorant, recommended a Catholic school in each parish and a seminary in each province.^[13]

This list may look administrative. It was in reality foundational. It meant that American Catholicism could not depend only on the individual zeal of immigrant priests or pioneer bishops. It had to have a law, usages, a sacramental discipline and a common pedagogy.

The problem of church property and trusteeship

One subject returned insistently: ecclesiastical property. In several American regions, lay trustees had tried to control parish property, sometimes against the bishop or the pastor. Baltimore reaffirmed that property given to the Church cannot be diverted from its end nor withdrawn from legitimate ecclesiastical authority.^[14]

This matter explains a difference between Europe and the United States. In a society where the Church had to incorporate its property according to American civil law, the question of title, trustees and the bishop's authority became pastoral as much as juridical. Without a solution, each parish could become a field of conflict.

A Church after the Civil War

The Second Council opened on 7 October 1866 and closed on 21 October. It was presided over by Martin John Spalding, Archbishop of Baltimore, as apostolic delegate. President Andrew Johnson attended the final solemn session as an observer, a revealing detail: the American Catholic Church was publicly taking its place in the national reconstruction after the Civil War.^[15]

The 1866 council dealt not only with internal organization. Its decrees were divided into fourteen titles: orthodox faith and present errors, hierarchy, ecclesiastical persons, church property, sacraments, divine worship, life and honesty of clerics, regulars, religious women, Christian education, books and newspapers, secret societies, creation of new bishoprics, execution of the decrees.^[16]

The errors addressed

The first title treats of divine revelation, the one Church of Christ, faith, Scripture, the Trinity, the future life, the invocation of the Virgin Mary and the saints. It also names several errors judged particularly active in the American context: religious indifferentism, Unitarianism, Universalism, Transcendentalism, pantheism, superstitious magnetism and spiritism.^[17]

The passage on spiritism is historically significant. Nineteenth-century America saw a strong vogue of mediums, séances, supposed communications with the dead and spiritualist movements. The bishops saw in it not an innocent curiosity, but a phenomenon tending to deny the divinity of Christ and the Christian supernatural.^[18]

Clergy and sacramental discipline

The Second Council developed the rules on bishops, diocesan synods, clerical conferences, vicars forane, seminaries, foreign priests, parish registers, reception of converts, mixed marriages and secret societies.^[19]

It recommended preparatory and major seminaries. It asked that future priests learn not only theology, philosophy, Scripture and Latin, but also, as needed, languages useful to the ministry, such as German in dioceses where German-speaking immigrants were numerous.^[20]

Christian education before 1884

The Second Council already prepared the great school choice of 1884. Its pastoral letter affirmed that religion must be part of all school education, because the child is to be formed not only for a trade, but for his moral and supernatural vocation.^[21]

"Religious instruction must form a part of every system of school education." — Pastoral Letter of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1866^[22]

This conviction would become one of the axes of the Third Council: not merely adding catechism classes to a neutral school, but building an institution in which school, family and Church work together.

An assembly prepared in Rome

The Third Council officially opened on 9 November 1884 in the Cathedral of Baltimore and closed on 7 December 1884. A conference of the American bishops had been held in Rome the previous year, under the direction of cardinalitial congregations, in order to prepare the schemata of the council.^[23]

Leo XIII appointed James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, as apostolic delegate. Gibbons was not yet a cardinal; he would become one in 1886. But he already embodied the maturity of American Catholicism: born in Baltimore, formed in the Church of the United States, a pastor in the South and in North Carolina, then Archbishop of Baltimore, he presided over the greatest American Catholic assembly of the nineteenth century.^[24]

Growth that had become ungovernable without common rules

The pastoral letter of the Third Council gives the underlying reason. Eighteen years after 1866, institutions had grown, the number of the faithful had increased, the West had opened, parishes, schools, hospitals and missions had multiplied. The bishops therefore wished to keep the spirit of the earlier decisions while adapting them to new circumstances.^[25]

"It was deemed wise and opportune, if not absolutely necessary, to re-examine the legislation of our predecessors, not with a view to radical change, still less to abrogation, but to preserve and perfect its spirit by adapting it to our altered circumstances." — Pastoral Letter of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884^[26]

The sentence matters: Baltimore III was not a revolution. It was a reform of consolidation. The council sought to make stable what had until then too often depended on local situations, diocesan customs or provisional solutions.

Twelve titles of decrees

The decrees of the Third Council are organized into twelve titles. The preliminary title maintains the decrees of the Second Council except where they are abrogated or modified. The other titles treat of the Catholic faith, ecclesiastical persons, worship, the sacraments, the formation of clerics, the education of youth, church property, missions, books and newspapers, forbidden societies and the execution of the decrees.^[27]

The council is therefore not reducible to the Baltimore Catechism. The latter is its most popular legacy, but the whole body of decrees gives a practical constitution of the American Catholic Church.

The appointment of bishops

The Third Council established a procedure for vacant sees. The consultors and irremovable rectors of the diocese must propose three names; the bishops of the province examine them, may keep or reject them, then transmit a list to the Holy See. The vote of the clergy is consultative and secret; Rome keeps the final decision.^[28]

This procedure answered a concrete problem: how to choose bishops in an immense Church, without falling either into local arbitrariness or into a poorly informed Roman centralization? Baltimore proposed a mixed solution: local knowledge, provincial discernment, pontifical decision.

The diocesan consultors

The Latin acts of the Third Council explain that, since cathedral chapters could not yet be erected everywhere in the American dioceses, diocesan consultors were instituted. They must be priests of piety, doctrine and prudence, experienced in affairs and in men, observant of the canons and diocesan statutes.^[29]

Their role was not decorative. The bishop had to seek their counsel in order to convoke a diocesan synod, divide a parish or mission, entrust a parish to a religious family, organize seminaries, choose new consultors or examiners, and handle certain important matters of ecclesiastical property.^[30]

Irremovable rectors

The council recommended that certain parishes be entrusted to irremovable rectors. Such a parish had to have a suitable church, a school for boys and girls, and revenues stable enough to support the priest, the church and the school. The rector could be removed only for a canonical cause, according to a determined procedure.^[31]

This point looks technical, but it signals a profound evolution: the American priest was no longer only a mobile missionary; he was becoming the pastor of a stable community, with a school, property, responsibilities and defined rights.

"Multiplying our schools and perfecting them"

The pastoral letter of the Third Council devoted a long development to Christian education. It affirmed that popular education had always been a major object of the Church's care; that knowledge is a weapon against errors; but that a solid education must form not only the intelligence, but also conscience, virtue and the relationship to God.^[32]

"We have therefore two objects in view: to multiply our schools and to perfect them. We must multiply them until every Catholic child in the land shall have within reach the means of education." — Pastoral Letter of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884^[33]

The text gives the most famous formula:

"No parish is complete until it has schools adequate to the needs of its children." — Pastoral Letter of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884^[34]

The Latin acts turned this conviction into a norm: near each church where there was not yet one, a parish school was to be erected within two years of the promulgation of the council and permanently maintained, unless the bishop judged that grave difficulties justified a delay.^[35]

The debate with the "neutral" public school

The bishops did not condemn instruction in itself; they wanted excellent schools. The pastoral letter explicitly rejected the idea that a Catholic school could be inferior to any other. It asked on the contrary that Catholic schools be raised "to the highest standard of educational excellence."^[36]

The disagreement concerned religious neutrality. For Baltimore III, a school excluding religion did not produce a pure neutrality; it practically taught children that God is absent from the ordinary affairs of life. Hence the doctrinal formula: the three great educational agencies are the home, the Church and the school, and each must foster religion in order to form whole persons.^[37]

"Education, in order to promote civilization, must promote religion. Now the three great educational agencies are the home, the Church, and the school." — Pastoral Letter of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, 1884^[38]

The Roman nuance

The council also cited Leo XIII and the Roman instructions: Catholic parents could, in certain cases, entrust their children to public schools if there was sufficient cause, for instance the absence of a Catholic school or a gravely inadequate Catholic school; but this judgment belonged to conscience and to the ordinary, and dangers had to be made remote by appropriate precautions.^[39]

This nuance avoids two caricatures. Baltimore III did not say that any attendance at a public school was automatically a sin; it said that the Church could not, as a matter of principle, abandon the education of its children to an institution from which religion was structurally excluded.

A conciliar decision, then a commission

The Third Council ordered the adoption of a common catechism. The memorial volume noted, from the very summary of the decisions, a decree adopting a universal catechism whose profits were to serve the upkeep of Catholic schools.^[40]

The catechism that resulted would be published from 1885 onward and would become, in its various editions, the best-known catechetical manual of American Catholicism. Its question-and-answer form corresponded to a pedagogy of memorization: brief, clear, doctrinal, designed for children and parish classes.

Why a national catechism?

The goal was unity. In a country of immigration, multiple languages and scattered dioceses, the bishops wanted Catholic children to learn the same faith, with common formulations. The catechism did not replace preaching or the Roman Catechism; it gave a national school tool, adapted to the American context.

The first question became famous: "Who made us? God made us." The style was simple, but the logic was solid: creation, last end, knowledge, love and service of God. Such formulas shaped the Catholic memory of several generations in the United States.^[41]

Limits and reception

The Baltimore Catechism is not the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church. It has neither the same nature nor the same scope. It is an American episcopal manual, produced for elementary teaching, within a nineteenth-century canonical and pastoral framework. Its authority was real in its own order, but it remained that of a local catechetical instrument approved by the episcopate.

Its historical importance remains considerable. Until the post-conciliar period, it constituted the ordinary doctrinal language of millions of American Catholics. The contemporary debate over its clarity, its limits or its nostalgia must therefore be set back within this primary function: giving children a stable doctrinal framework.

Indians and African Americans

The sources of the Third Council speak of the missions to the Indians and to the colored people, in the American vocabulary of the nineteenth century. The memorial volume contains long passages on the Indian missions, the schools and the pastoral needs of African-American populations after slavery.^[42]

These texts must be read with two precautions. On the one hand, the vocabulary and certain paternalistic presuppositions belong to the nineteenth century and cannot be taken up naively. On the other hand, the council showed a real missionary consciousness: the bishops did not regard these populations as outside their responsibility. They asked for works, schools, missions and organized charity.

The cause of Kateri Tekakwitha

The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that the Fathers of the Third Council signed a postulation to introduce the causes of beatification of Isaac Jogues, René Goupil and Catherine Tekakwitha.^[43] This detail was prophetic. Kateri Tekakwitha would be beatified by John Paul II in 1980 and canonized by Benedict XVI in 2012, becoming the first canonized Native American saint.

This link shows that Baltimore III was not only administrative. It inscribed the American Church in a memory of missionary holiness: Jesuit martyrs, native peoples, conversion, schools, missions and the sanctification of a continent.

The project of a national university

The Third Council also supported the project of a Catholic university. The Latin acts mention the constitution of funds to found a university of Catholic studies and a commission charged with the beginnings of the institution.^[44]

This orientation would lead to the Catholic University of America, founded at Washington by the American bishops with the approval of Leo XIII. Courses opened in 1889. The project completed the school strategy: the Church wanted not only elementary schools; it wanted a higher intellectual formation capable of producing theologians, professors, clerics and cultivated laypeople.

Forming an American Catholic elite

The pastoral letter insisted on the role of the laity in the intellectual combat between truth and error, faith and agnosticism. The formula is remarkable: in the age of popular rights and civic liberties, each individual becomes an active factor in the body politic; Catholics must therefore be formed for an intelligent and conscientious exercise of their duties.^[45]

American Catholicism did not seek only to protect itself. It wanted to form better citizens by making them better Christians, in Gibbons's formula: the council worked to make the faithful more upright in the city by making them holier before God.^[46]

The question of secret societies

The councils of Baltimore regularly treated of secret societies. The Second Council condemned Freemasonry and also forbade certain groups such as the Odd Fellows and the Sons of Temperance; the Third took up the question again in the American context of fraternities, oaths and organizations whose principles could contradict Catholic obedience.^[47][48]

The issue was not a vague fear of associations. The bishops distinguished legitimate Catholic or civic societies from groups imposing secret oaths, solidarities contrary to the faith or hostility toward the Church. In a highly associative American society, this clarification was pastoral.

A Catholic press supported

The memorial volume also noted a decision in favour of a Catholic journal to be supported in each province.^[49] The intuition was modern: the Church could not content itself with preaching on Sunday if the formation of opinion went on all week through newspapers, pamphlets and public controversies.

Nineteenth-century America was an age of militant press. A Catholic minority often under attack had to answer, explain, publish, form and defend its institutions. Baltimore therefore inscribed the press in ordinary pastoral care.

Legislation approved by Rome

The acts of the councils were submitted to Roman recognition. For the Second Council, the very title of the Latin edition indicates that it was held at Baltimore and recognized by the Apostolic See. For the Third, the letters of Leo XIII and of Propaganda Fide framed the convocation, the norms and the promulgation.^[50][51]

This reception gave the councils a lasting canonical place in the American Church. They were not mere pastoral conferences: their decrees structured local discipline, as long as universal law or later decisions did not modify them.

An American model before the modern episcopal conference

Before there was an American episcopal conference in the contemporary sense, the councils of Baltimore offered a national mechanism of discernment. They allowed the bishops to speak together, to legislate together, to handle the same problems and to present the Catholic people with a common orientation.

One must not project onto them the categories of the twentieth century. They were neither a parliament, nor an administrative conference, nor a democratic assembly. They were particular councils, with theologians, consultors, religious, commissions, votes, Latin acts and Roman approval.

The Catholic school network

The most visible legacy is the Catholic school network. The Third Council did not create all the parish schools out of nothing, but it gave a national obligation, goal and legitimacy to their multiplication. In 1884, the sources already mentioned about 2,532 Christian schools and 481,834 pupils attending these schools; the council wanted to amplify and perfect this network.^[52]

Even when forms have changed, the idea remains: the transmission of the faith cannot durably be separated from the formation of intelligence, habits, memory and moral life.

The Baltimore Catechism as doctrinal memory

The Baltimore Catechism remains, for many American Catholics, the symbol of a clear catechesis. It does not suffice to handle all modern questions; it does not have the biblical, liturgical and patristic richness of the 1992 Catechism. But it recalls a demand the Church cannot abandon: a faith that no one knows how to formulate quickly becomes a faith that no one knows how to transmit.

A lesson in Catholic inculturation

The councils of Baltimore show a true inculturation: the Church assumed American conditions — civil religious liberty, immigration, territorial expansion, confessional pluralism, corporation law, public schools, the press, democracy — without renouncing its doctrine, its discipline or its communion with Rome.

That is why their legacy goes beyond the United States. They give an example of a Catholicism locally rooted, yet not nationalist; institutionally creative, yet not separated; concerned with civil society, yet not reduced to politics.

"If we meet in council, our object is to make you more upright citizens by becoming holier Christians." — James Gibbons, letter of convocation of the Third Council, 1884^[53]

• The First Vatican Council — the Roman context immediately preceding the Third Council.
• The 1917 Code of Canon Law — the later codification that transformed the canonical framework.
• The Catechism of the Catholic Church — comparison with a modern universal catechism.
• The Role of the Church in Education — a natural extension of the school question.
• Catholic Missions in America — the missionary background of Baltimore.

• Catholic Church in the United States, Acta et decreta Concilii plenarii Baltimorensis tertii. A.D. MDCCCLXXXIV, Baltimore, John Murphy & Co., 1886.
• Baltimore Publishing Company, The Memorial Volume: A History of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore, November 9-December 7, 1884, Baltimore, 1885.
• Catholic Church in the United States, Concilii Plenarii Baltimorensis II... acta et decreta, Baltimore, John Murphy, 1868.
• The Catholic Encyclopedia, "Plenary Councils of Baltimore", New York, Robert Appleton Company, 1907.