page_title: Americanism (heresy)
section_title: Suppression
hierarchical_section_title: Americanism (heresy) / Suppression
caption_attribution_description: English: Pope Leo XIII. Halftone Photomechanical Prints.
context_page_description: Americanism was, in the years around 1900, a political and religious outlook attributed to some American Catholics and denounced as heresies by the Holy See. In the 1890s, European "continental conservative" clerics detected signs of modernism or classical liberalism, which the Pope had condemned in the Syllabus of Errors in 1864, among the beliefs and teachings of many members of the American Catholic hierarchy, who denied the charges.
  Pope Leo XIII wrote against these ideas in a letter to Cardinal James Gibbons, published as Testem benevolentiae nostrae. The Pope lamented an America where church and state are "dissevered and divorced" and wrote of his preference for a closer relationship between the Catholic Church and the State along European lines.
  The long-term result was that the Irish Catholics who largely controlled the Catholic Church in the United States increasingly demonstrated total loyalty to the Pope, and suppressed traces of liberal thought in the Catholic colleges.
context_section_description: In the encyclical Longinqua oceani (1895; "Wide Expanse of the Ocean"), Pope Leo XIII indicated a generally positive view of the American Church, commenting mostly on the success of Catholicism in the US but also noting the view that the Church "would bring forth more abundant fruits if, in addition to liberty, she enjoyed the favor of the laws and the patronage of the public authority." Leo warned the American church hierarchy not to support this unique system of separation of church and state.
  In 1898, Leo lamented an America where church and state are "dissevered and divorced", and wrote of his preference for a closer relationship between the Catholic Church and the State, along European lines.
  Finally, in his letter Testem benevolentiae nostrae (January 22, 1899; "Witness to Our Benevolence") addressed to Cardinal James Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore, Leo condemned other forms of Americanism. Catholicism had long allowed nations to tolerate other religions, but the Church believes that the Catholic Faith must be favored when possible.
  Pope Leo XIII also expressed concerns about the Cultural liberalism of some American Catholics: he pointed out that the faithful could not decide doctrine for themselves (see Cafeteria Catholic). He emphasized that Catholics should obey the magisterial teaching authority of the Church. In general, he deemed it dangerous to expose children to schools that would prove to be detrimental to their Christian upbringing. The Pope derided the idea that all opinions should be aired publicly, as he felt certain speech could harm general morality. He also condemned the biography of Hecker and Americanism.
  This document condemned the following doctrines or tendencies:
  undue insistence on interior initiative in the spiritual life, as leading to disobedience
  attacks on religious vows, and disparagement of the value of religious orders in the modern world
  minimizing Catholic doctrine
  minimizing the importance of spiritual direction
  The brief did not assert that Hecker and the Americans had held any unsound doctrine on the above points. Instead, it merely stated that if such opinions did exist, the local hierarchy was to eradicate them.
caption: Pope Leo XIII
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