April 30: The Bishop and the Oath

Welcome to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Today is April 30th, and our story is The Bishop and the Oath. They called it the Ironclad Oath, for there was no getting around it. Devised during the American Civil War to guarantee all public servants' loyalty to the Union, the ironclad oath was expanded by the U.S. Congress after the war to prevent former Confederate soldiers and sympathizers from voting or holding public office. The state of Missouri, however, made its ironclad oath even stricter, writing a post-Civil War constitution that required the oath to apply to teachers, ministers, and lawyers, as well as public servants.

When St. Louis' Archbishop Peter Kenrick learned of the oath, he ordered his priests not to take it. Missouri had sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War, and there was hardly a priest in his diocese who hadn't fed or housed soldiers, prayed with troops, helped families affected by the war, or aided the wounded.

Most couldn't take the oath honestly, which meant they also wouldn't be able to legally carry out their priestly duties. Kenrick's priests obeyed their bishop. Some went to prison for refusing to take the oath. But the Irish-born bishop would not back down. After all, he'd faced greater challenges before.

When Kenrick was ordained as the diocese's coadjutor bishop on April 30, 1841, and assumed full responsibility for it shortly thereafter, he inherited a diocese roughly the size of the Louisiana Purchase and laden with debt. Yet he rose to the challenge, transforming St. Louis from a frontier diocese into a major metropolitan sea. He also saved the diocese from bankruptcy with shrewd real estate investments made with his personal savings. By 1865, he reasoned that if he could handle angry creditors, he could handle the Missouri government, which he did, fighting the oath straight to the U.S.

Supreme Court. After two years of legal wrangling, in 1867's Cummings v. State of Missouri, the court sided with the church, striking down Missouri's provisions regarding ministers and teachers. Kenrick outlasted the ironclad oath by almost 30 years, dying in St. Louis in 1896.

Bishop Kenrick's life reminds us that conscience is not optional, and that standing for truth sometimes challenges secular power. Reflect on an area where your conscience may conflict with expectations. Pray for courage and clarity to act faithfully. Thank you for listening to the American Catholic Daily Reader Podcast. Join us tomorrow, May 1st, for another story of faith and courage in America.