CARDINAL GIBBONS, AMBASSADOR OF CHRIST

New Zealand Tablet, 26 May 1921, Page 17

CARDINAL GIBBONS, AMBASSADOR OF CHRIST

(By John 0. Reville, S.J., in America.) In ! The Ambassador of Christ, published in 1896 by the dead Cardinal, whom the whole country is mourning, he unconsciously drew his own picture, and wrote with hisown hands the noblest epitaph to be carven on the Cross which marks his last resting place. From the moment he was robed in priest’s vestments, James Gibbons lived and spoke as an envoy of God to the Catholics of the wide fields in which he labored. In the truest sense of s the word, he was Christ’s Ambassador, in North Carolina and Virginia, to his beloved fold of Baltimore, and to that still larger flock which listened to his words and admired his ideals and life, in every Catholic diocese and parish in the United States. Thousands who did not acknowledge his spiritual sway or bow before his pastoral staff, recognised in him the qualities which, with a Catholic instinct, they realised as the marks of a true priest of Christ. The credentials -of his ambassadorship, the dead Cardinal received in all their fulness from the Pontiff, who raised him to the episcopate, later dignified by the purple of the Princes of the Church of Christ. These credentials lifted him to a position of jurisdiction and dignity which even in the eyes of the world is exalted ?o a wonderful degree. By his office ho was officially and formally a successor to the Apostles, duly commissioned Ambassador of the Divine Founder of Christianity. If these credentials honored the venerable old man, the Nestor of ecclesiastics and of statesmen in the United, States, he in turn conferred ,_upon them an added lustre by his own virtues. He had a wide fifeld on which ‘to display them. We knew from every word he spoke that he was pre-eminently a man of his own times. We realise that there was not a problem of the day in which he did not take a lively interest, not a virtue he did not praise, not a crime he did not condemn. The United States eagerly awaited the sane and cautious verdict of this octogenarian, the clear-voiced spokesman, the- calm, temperate, far-visioned Cardinal of Baltimore. Here lived the man of the day, who understood the needs of the hour, was proud of his country’s greatness, but was not afraid to point out.its evils, and like the prophets of old, spoke burning words to rouse the moral sense of his people. . But if he was essentially a man of his times, thoroughly sensitive to every current and vibration in the national life, he enhaloed around him something of the simple but glorious attributes of Church and State of wellnigh a century ago. \ • In the year 1834, Baltimore, the city in which he was born, had not fully outgrown the limits of a colonial town. The United States, which at the beginning‘of the Civil War, when Father Gibbons was beginning his ministry, had not quite 32,000,000 inhabitants, now counts 116,000,000. When the future Cardinal was born the Catholics in this country numbered 600,000 under one Archbishop and 10 bishops; they now number 18,000,000 under two Cardinals, an Apostolic-Delegate, 15 archbishops, and a hundred-bishops. He watched with pride the growth of our empire. He was but a child when Andrew Jackson was sending United States veterans to the savannahs of the South to fight the treacherous Osceola. In his early manhood he saw North and South locked in deadly strife, he went to his grave broken-hearted -over the tragedy of the most titanic war of history. He lived under 22 Presidents of the United States. His sturdy father, Thomas Gibbons, lifted him, a mere infant in his arms, to look upon “Old Hickory” when the hero of New Orleans met with a triumphal reception from the loyal Democrats of Baltimore. Of the five Popes who succeeded each other on the Throne of Peter during his lifetime, four knew him personally, revered and loved him. In all that concerned the interests of Church and country in the United States, . Leo XIII. never failed to consult him and to yield to his intimate knowledge of the needs and the ideals of , the Republic of the West. .. At the/ Vatican Council in 1870, Bishop Gibbons, then Vicar-Apostolic of North Carolina, and only 36 years old, was the youngest Bishop present. The eminent men of that assembly have passed away. James Cardinal Gibbons survived them all. He saw them

one by one : surrender > their ■ shepherd’s staff to the , summons that will not be denied. So had Charles Carroll of Carrollton long outlived the great men, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, and Washington, who had signed with the pen and safeguarded with the sword the great charter of our national independence. Quick indeed had been the rise of young Father James Gibbons from the ranks of the clergy. Brought back by his father and mother to the land of his forefathers in Ireland, he had begun his classical studies in one of those humble schools of the West of Erin, that boasted neither material equipment nor financial endowment, but had the gift, the only one worth while where education is concerned, of turning out ripe scholars and thoroughly Catholic gentlemen. On his father’s death he was brought back by his dauntless mother to the United States, the one place in which God intended him to work, and where his rare gifts of ambassador, conciliator, patriot, and priest were needed. Had that brave mother not brought her boy back to the land that had given him birth, the United States would have met with an irreparable loss. A distinct void would have been felt in our national life. Other ambassadors of Christ would have spoken their message, but the note which the dead Prince of the Church sounded as priest, Bishop, Archbishop, Cardinal, patriot, statesman, controversialist, American citizen, writer, interpreter of the doctrines of the Catholic Church to the American nation, would have been wanting. * After the years of final preparation; for the priesthood at St. Charles College, Ellicott City, and St. Mary’s College, Baltimore, whither the young lad had gone from New Orleans, the future-Cardinal was ready to meet the crisis both in Church and State upon which the country was entering. A new era was opening. A man was needed for the new tasks. When in July, 1861, the little congregation of St. Patrick’s, Baltimore, saw their new assistant pastor’s strong face, winsome smile, firm mouth, and wellknit frame, and heard his clear-toned, fascinating voice, delivering his priestly message with a sweetness, authority, and elegance of diction which for 70 years never lost its Addisonian charm, they knew that they had no ordinary man to look after their spiritual welfare. It was the same at St. Bridget’s, Canton, at St. Lawrence’s Church, on the Patapsco, at Forts McHenry and Marshall. Parish-priest and missionary, Father Gibbons was his own sexton, bell-ringer, driver over snow-covered fields, pilot and rower across swollen streams. He had his ambassador’s message. No obstacle or fear kept him back. As gentle as that heroic mother who twice gave him to America, he was absolutely fearless. He had an iron will and would not be beaten. These humbler days of the life of the great American Cardinal shine with a light altogether their own. They were spent among the poor. Father Gibbons shared their poverty. He performed the humblest duties of the priesthood. He catechised, taught school, rode miles and miles on sick-calls. His large humanity, his zeal, his refinement and piety made him loved everywhere. American himself in the noblest sense of the word, he saw that Americans naturally loved the truth. Ambassador of his Master Christ, he longed to bring the truth of Christ and the Church He founded, home to his countrymen. He had scarcely passed seven years in the ranks of the priesthood when, at the age of 34, he was consecrated, August 16, 1868, titular Bishop of Adramyttum and Vicar-Apostolic of North Carolina. Here the field was white unto the harvest, but there were scarcely any laborers but the Bishop himself and a few- devoted priests. But North Carolina and Richmond, to which see he was appointed on the death of Bishop McGill in 1872, were but the initial stages of the real apostolate of the youthful prelate. Baltimore, the city of his birth, was to welcome him as its Archbishop, October, 1873. Archbishop Bayley had died but a few months before. No matter where he lived, James Gibbons would have by his own talents, virtues, and innate worth risen above any obstacle. As a simple parish priest, as Vicar-Apostolic in the spiritually deserted mountain tracks of North Carolina, as Bishop of Richmond, he had already . won the esteem and affection of his people and his elders in the episcopate. He was already a power for good in the country. The archiepiscopal see of Carroll, Eccleston, Spalding,

Kenfick, and Bayley was now to furnish him with an external glamor and prestige which would add to his influence. Occupant of the oldest see in the United States, he could now speak with more authority. He would in. a- far larger sense than before be the Ambassador of the Catholic Church to the people of America. ' As Bishop of Richmond he had published in 1876 one of the most remarkable books, written in the nineteenth century, The Faith of Our Fathers. The title alone is an inspiration and a masterpiece. The Faith of Our Fathers is not a book of controversy, nor strictly can it be called a work of apologetics. It is a clear, simple, exposition of the Catholic Faith, the old unvariable and unvaried Faith of Christendom. It avoids the rigid methods of the schools. No parade of recondite learning mars its pages. It is a book that a toiler can understand for its simplicity, candor, and straightforwardness, and scholars admire for the infallible psychological insight of the author into- the peculiarities of the American mind, ever lover of the truth, and quick to seize it, but restless under the heavy logic, and metaphysics often brought to the defence of the Eaitln Of The Faith of Our Fathers over 1,000,000 copies have been sold. Its calm and dignified exposition of the Faith, its Virgilian sweetness, its tone of authority unmarred by dogmatism or harshness, have won thousands to the Catholic Church. When, a Catholic layman, priest, orbishop asks himself what book is best suited to the mind seeking for the truth in religion, he- infallibly concludes with the answer The Faith of Our Fathers. Long did the star of the Pastor of Baltimore remain in its full meridian; for it can scarcely be said to have had any eclipse. « Archbishop Gibbons up to the day of his creation as Cardinal was a prominent, beloved, and wellknown, figure. And since 1886 James Cardinal Gibbons has been a national institution. What if he made mistakes. In the life of James Cardinal Gibbons, these specks, disappear in the splendor of noble deeds. He had the esteem and the love of Benedict XV., Leo XIII., of Pius IX., and Pius X., the affection of his people of Baltimore, children, old and young, Catholic and Protestant and Jew. To his brothers in the episcopate he spoke with something of the authority of a Father in Christ. To those not of his fold he represented worthily the authority of the Church, and proved by his timely, judicious utterances’that the Catholic Church was the friend of those free and democratic institutions of which his countrymen were so proud. He proved that there was no antagonism between the Catholic Church and progress, science, sound industrial and political theories. When the cause of the Knights of Labor was in danger of facing ecclesiastical censure and condemnation at Rome, he addressed in February, 1887, to Cardinal Simeoni, Prefect of the Propaganda, for presentation to the Holy Office, a report on the subject, the ablest document he ever wrote perhaps. Good men called the American Cardinal a Socialist. But Manning in England looked upon the document as one worthy of a true friend of the poor. The head of the Knights of Labor in the United States, Terence V. Powderly, and the tens of thousands of working men whose cause had been so gallantly championed by the Archbishop of Baltimore, saw their side of the question placed in its true light and the condemnation with which they were threatened was never pronounced. The cause of the laborer and the workingman never had such splendid champions as Leo XIII. and the prelate whom he had but a short while before lifted to the honors of the purple. In the person of James Cardinal Gibbons Labor had an eloquent and able ambassador in the Holy City. When the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore was held in 1884, James Cardinal Gibbons was appointed by Leo XIII. Apostolic Delegate; and in that capacity presided over the sessions of the assembly with 1 a dignity, sweetness, and authority that won all hearts. To the cause of the Catholic University he gave his unflagging and intelligent, co-operation, for he knew the necessity of a thoroughly educated clergy. ’ Evil influences within the Church itself attempted to divide the faithful by bringing into action in their ranks the mischievous effects of nationalism by claiming for certain elements ,of the Catholic population bishops of the natioii to which they .belonged. The Cardinal left no doubt as to his position in the matter

when he exclaimed, “Woe to him that would sow. the tares ■ of discord in the fair field of the Church of America.” Thoroughly Catholic, thoroughly priestly, in his every-day life the dead Cardinal of Baltimore was a thorough American. y In the terrible conflict, which can scarcely said to be over, his heart beat high to the ideals of the country. He gave chaplain after chaplain to the service of our men across seas. He was foremost in every relief work, and the Red Cross and the Knights of Columbus never appealed to him in vain. Under his red robes there beat the heart of a soldier of liberty and justice. His last, years were crowned with endless works of mercy, as his first had been with those of priestly zeal. In the work of reconstruction, social, moral, and economic, which he had long at heart, he played a part, in spite of his advancing years, which younger men envied... His life has been a blessing to his countrymen. Americans, no matter to what denomination they belong, pause in silence before the grave,in which he rests. There, wrapped in his robes of red, lies a Prince among men. The voice now still was never raised in civic or religious strife. It ever pleaded for. justice for his own Catholic brethren, for liberty, for suffering humanity wherever found. Its last accents were heard in defence of the persecuted Jew and suffering Ireland. He was the Ambassador of the Prince of Peace. He frowned on discord and hate. His

message was love. Long ago his sun had reached its meri- j dian. But by a graceful disposition of Providence, it did not too* quickly hasten its descent in the v western skies. That orb has set at last and the land is shrouded in gloom. A Patriarch of God, a great American, is no more. But Americans of every class and every creed will ever hold him dear, and give to him something of the affection which they reserve for the captains and leaders of their heroic story. He was a great citizen, a priest of blameless life, a Bishop and a Cardinal, after the Heart of God. James Cardinal Gibbons worthily fulfilled his high office of Ambassador of Christ. His Master and King has recalled the faithful envoy, to give him the well-merited reward of his long and faithful services. • The red-robed Ambassador rests in peace in the city and cathedral which he loved. Something. great, tender, and simple, a figure truly American and Catholic, has gone out of our national life. In the hearts of Americans in the United States and Catholics throughout the world, there is a great void. But the voice of the gentle ambassador will not be silenced. In moments of doubt it will teach succeeding generations how to blend patriotism and piety, love of humanity and love of God. It is an incontestable sign of the innate greatness of the American people, that it realised at its true worth the simplicity and the splendor of the life which has just closed.