In 1886 the agrarian socialist Henry George ran for mayor of
New York City as the Union Labor Party candidate. His opponents were the reforming Democratic
candidate, Abram Stevens Hewitt, and Theodore Roosevelt on the Republican
ticket. Hewitt won, George came in
second, and Roosevelt finished a distant third.
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| Milk cartons, feh. Get your mug on a cigar box lid. |
The day after losing the election, George announced that he
was giving up politics in order to devote himself to journalism: “I shall buy a bottle of ink and a box of
pens and again go to writing.” (Henry George, Jr., The Life of Henry George, Third Period: The Propagation of the
Philosophy. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1904, 482.)
This sounds innocuous enough, until we realize that what
George intended to write about was all the people and institutions he blamed
for causing him to lose the election.
Chief among these was the Catholic Church, especially as represented by
Archbishop Michael A. Corrigan of New York.
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| McGlynn heroically staving off two popes, George and Leo XIII |
One of George’s most active supporters during the campaign
was Father Edward McGlynn, a priest of the New York Archdiocese. McGlynn had
been censured a number of times for his publicly expressed views on such
matters as Catholic education, clerical garb, vows of obedience, and,
especially, private property in land, the abolition of which was the
cornerstone of George’s program.
Ironically, had McGlynn kept his opinions to himself, or
made it clear he was speaking strictly as a private citizen and not a
representative of the Catholic Church, nothing would have been done, at least publicly. He insisted, however, on appearing in public
in his capacity as a Catholic priest, and declaring that his views, not those
of the popes or the bishops, were authentic Catholic teaching. He was finally excommunicated in July 1887,
not for his political or personal views, but for disobedience. It seems Henry George talked McGlynn out of
going to the Vatican to explain himself and his position, and present his own
case. . . .
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| Archbishop Michael A. Corrigan |
In any event, on November 27, 1886 Corrigan published a
pastoral letter in the New York Catholic newspaper, the New York Freeman's Journal and Catholic Register, that, among other things,
presented the correct Catholic doctrinal position on the natural right of
private property in land. The letter was read in all the churches of the
archdiocese.
George was not mentioned by name. It was, however, generally
agreed that his concept of collective or communal ownership of land had called
forth the document. (Henry George, Jr., The
Life of Henry George, op. cit., 486.)
Unfortunately, because Corrigan focused on responding to
George directly on the question of private property in land, the pastoral did
not mention the rights of labor, except to note that owners were taking unfair
advantage of propertyless workers.
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| Leo XIII |
This gave George the opening he needed. He claimed that by not stressing the rights
of labor, Corrigan was actually oppressing labor. He also went to great lengths (as he did a
few years later when Leo XIII issued Rerum Novarum) to explain very carefully why
the Catholic doctrine regarding private property in land Corrigan defended was
wrong, and he, George, was right.
It was at this point that Cardinal Simeoni at the Vatican issued
an order for McGlynn to appear in Rome. As McGlynn’s superior, Corrigan
naturally had to give permission for McGlynn to absent himself from the
diocese, and consequently issued an exeat, official permission to leave the diocese.
Obviously not understanding the protocol involved, George
took the exeat (permission to leave
the diocese) as an order arbitrarily
given by Corrigan. To George, Corrigan was knuckling under to a foreign prince
and violating the rights of free Americans. George also took Corrigan’s pastoral letter as
an example of how organized religion in general, and the Catholic Church in
particular, oppresses the poor.
Is that really what Corrigan did in his pastoral letter,
however? We’ll start to look at that
question tomorrow — and post the relevant portions of the letter to see if you
agree with George’s assessment.
