Edward McGlynn

McGlynn in Green-Wood Cemetery, August 1898, speaking at the unveiling of a monument to Henry George.

McGlynn first drew national attention and came into conflict with his ecclesiastical superiors over his opposition to parish schools, as he claimed that public schools were good enough for all American children. He refused to build a parochial school in his parish, despite the fact that the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore, held in 1866, stated a school should be established in every parish. James McMaster's New York Freeman called McGlynn a liberal Catholic.[4] He also drew criticism for his open friendship with Protestant clergymen, even giving an address once in Henry Ward Beecher's church, even though Beecher was outspoken against Catholicism.

McGlynn was deeply impressed by Henry George's Progress and Poverty. To conservatives, George's philosophy that the economic value derived from land, including natural resources should belong equally to all residents of a community, bordered on socialism. Archbishop Corrigan believed such reforms would violate an individual's right to private property. McGlynn met George in 1882 and took an active part in the 1886 failed campaign of Henry George for the office of Mayor of New York City.

About four years previously, Cardinal Simeoni, prefect of the Congregation of the Propaganda, had directed the authorities of the Archdiocese to compel McGlynn to retract his views on the land question as opposed to Catholic teaching.[6] Cardinal McCloskey, at that time head of the Archdiocese, reprimanded McGlynn and required him to refrain from defending these views in public.

On September 29, 1886, Archbishop Corrigan forbade him to speak on behalf of Henry George's candidacy at a public meeting scheduled to take place on October 1 in Chickering Hall. McGlynn replied that to break this engagement would be imprudent, but promised to refrain from addressing any later meeting during the political campaign. The Archbishop immediately suspended him from the exercise of his priestly functions for a period of two weeks.[6] McGlynn went ahead with the address, and later on election day, made the rounds of the polls with Henry George and Terence V. Powderly, of the Knights of Labor.[5] On November 27, 1886, Archbishop Corrigan issued a pastoral letter, published in the New York Freemen's Journal, condemning theories that would violate an individual's right to private property.[7] McGlynn publicly criticized the letter. Toward the end of November, a second temporary suspension was imposed.

McGlynn's association with the Knights of Labor proved problematic. The Second Plenary Council of Baltimore had condemned secret societies. The Knights of Labor use of secrecy to help prevent employers from firing members, nevertheless, concerned a number of bishops. At the Third Plenary session in 1884, the members decided that the archbishops should determine whether a group fell under censure, and if they could not agree, the subject be referred to Rome. James Cardinal Gibbons, perhaps the most prominent American prelate at that time, was sympathetic to the labor. A copy of a letter Gibbons sent to the Propaganda in February 1887 opposing condemnation of the Knights of Labor wound up published the following month in the New York Herald. This increased the tension between Gibbons and Corrigan, although the influential Cardinal Manning of Westminster expressed support for Gibbons's views.[6]

In December 1886, McGlynn was called to Rome by the Propaganda, which was reviewing George's theories. McGlynn declined unless the suspension was first lifted and, on January 14, Archbishop Corrigan removed McGlynn from the pastorate of St. Stephen's for insubordination. In February, Cardinal Gibbons, who was concerned about maintaining episcopal authority and happened to be in Rome, sent word to McGlynn's canonical advocate, the Rev. Dr. Richard Lalor Burtsell, that McGlynn ought to go to Rome as soon as possible, and informed Archbishop Corrigan that he had done so. Once again a private correspondence of Gibbons ended up published and, much to his embarrassment, the American papers viewed him as sympathetic to McGlynn. When he saw the interpretation put on his actions, Gibbons decided to do nothing more.[8]

Burtsell wrote a long letter to Cardinal Gibbons explaining fully the canonical situation from McGlynn's viewpoint, which Gibbons passed on to Denis J. O'Connell, Rector of the North American College in Rome. Late in May, Cardinal Simeoni advised McGlynn to come to Rome within forty days under penalty of excommunication.[6]

Holding that he had been guilty of no stubborn resistance and unaware that the reply made on his behalf by Burtsell had never reached the Pope, McGlynn, claiming ill health, refused to obey the order, and the excommunication became effective on July 4, 1887. The curia drew a distinction between ecclesiastical discipline and doctrinal error. A determination had not as yet been made on George's philosophy. For more than five years following this censure he defended the Single Tax doctrine at the Sunday afternoon meetings of the Anti-Poverty Society, which he had founded with George in March 1887 and of which he was the first president; he also made a tour of the West and virtually declared himself an unbeliever in the supremacy of the Pope. He lived at the home of his widowed sister in Brooklyn.

In 1892 Pope Leo XIII sent Archbishop Francesco Satolli to the United States as papal legate with instructions to review the McGlynn case. An examination was held at the Catholic University; McGlynn had authorized Burtsell to promise that he would no longer promulgate doctrines unauthorized by the Church. This, combined with the assurance of four professors at the university that McGlynn's Single Tax views were not contrary to Catholic teaching, led Satolli to lift the excommunication on December 23 and reinstate him in the ministry the next day.[5] In 1892, on Christmas morning, McGlynn said mass for the first time since his excommunication in 1887, celebrating three liturgies in Brooklyn. That evening he spoke at Cooper Union before an immense and enthusiastic gathering, not uttering a word of regret for his actions, instead declaring that he intended to continue advocating Single Tax doctrines; he then delivered a traditional Christmas sermon.

The following June, he visited Rome and was cordially received in private audience by the Pope. In his description of this event shortly afterwards, McGlynn reported that the Pope had said to him, "But surely you admit the right of property," and that he had answered in the affirmative as regards "the products of individual industry." Apparently, the Pope was satisfied with this answer. In the years following his restoration to his priestly functions he frequently spoke at Single Tax meetings and made it quite clear that he had not been required by the Pope to retract his view on the land question.

A passage in the Pope's 1891 encyclical, Rerum novarum, reads: "The right to possess private property is derived from nature, not from man; and the State has the right to control its use in the interests of the public good alone, but by no means to absorb it altogether. The State would therefore be unjust and cruel if under the name of taxation it were to deprive the private owner of more than is fair." The implication of McGlynn's reinstatement is that if the Single Tax could be shown to be fair, it would not be a contravention of the Church's ethical teachings.[9] McGlynn remained a friend of Henry George, delivering his eulogy in 1897.

Robert Emmett Curran, in Shaping American Catholicism: Maryland and New York, 1805-1915, argues that they went to Rome for help in suppressing him, giving the Vatican an opening to crack down on the growing independence of the American Church. Historians generally agree that Corrigan's handling of the McGlynn matter probably cost him a cardinalate.[5]