May 11: Moscow on the Hudson

Welcome to the American Catholic Daily Reader podcast. Today is May 11th, and our story is Moscow on the Hudson. In May 1844, anti-Catholic mobs rioted in the streets of Philadelphia, and the city's Catholic churches burned. Yet, Bishop Francis Kendrick ordered his flock to stand down. They were not to respond to violence with violence, he explained, adding that it would be better for all the churches to burn to the ground than for Catholics to shed their fellow man's blood. It was a noble gesture, but New York's Bishop John Hughes was having none of it.

On May 11, 1844, a few days after the Philadelphia riots, anti-Catholic nativists from the city of Brotherly Love threatened to come north and join with nativist forces in New York for another round of rioting. Upon hearing the news, Hughes called upon the city's Catholic men to take up arms and surround their parishes.

He then issued a warning to the city's nativist sympathizing mayor. Evoking the French invasion of Russia in 1812, in which Russians set Moscow on fire rather than see it fall to the French, Hughes declared that if a single Catholic church were burned in New York, the city would become another Moscow.

The mayor took the bishop's warning to heart and convinced the nativists to back off. Hughes later gloated, there is not a Catholic church in the city which was not protected with an average force of one to two thousand men, cool, collected, armed to the teeth, and with a firm determination, after taking as many lives as they could in defense of their property, to give up, if necessary, their own lives for the same cause.

While historians dispute the 1,000 to 2,000 men claim, Hughes' strategy proved effective. Not a church was burned or a person injured by the nativists in New York that year. On the other hand, adherence to the gospel injunction to turn the other cheek did perhaps suffer a heart palpitation or two.

This story reminds us that leadership in faith is not passive. Identify a situation where you can stand up for someone or something vulnerable this week, acting with both courage and integrity. Thank you for listening to the American Catholic Daily Reader Podcast. Join us tomorrow, May 12th, for another story of faith and courage in America.