Peter Cahensly
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Peter Paul Cahensly (1838-1923), a merchant in Limburg an der Lahn, was a member of the German Reichstag and a wealthy Catholic layman.
In 1866, claiming that many German immigrants were leaving the Catholic Church in America, he suggested to the Catholic Congress held at Trier that a society should be established for the systematic protection of German emigrants, both at the point of departure and the port of landing. As a result of his urging, the Mainz Katholikentag of 1871 founded the St. Raphaelsverein zum Schutz deutscher katholischer Auswanderer (de), an aid organization for German Catholics emigrants[1][2].
Claiming that part of the problem was the domination of the church in America by the Irish, Cahensly urged the reorganization of the church in the country, in particular the formation of dioceses and parishes along ethnic lines. The activities of this organization led to the conflict over "Americanism" within the Catholic Church in the United States [3] [4] [5] and also to ill-feeling between American Catholics of Irish and German extraction[6] Long after German-Irish tensions relaxed, Cahensly's efforts still echoed through the church in America. When, in the 1920s, the Vatican urged the creation of an African-American seminary, the American hierarchy reacted strongly to what one bishop called "African Cahenslyism" [7].
[edit] References
- ^ Hubert Jedin (editor) (1994). History of the Church, Volume 10.
- ^ "Emigrant Aid Societies", Catholic Encyclopedia.
- ^ "Cahensly controversy", CatholicHistory.net.
- ^ "How Cardinal Gibbons Fought Pan Germans", New York Times, 1917-06-03.
- ^ Stephan Thernstrom. Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups.
- ^ "The trouble deep-seated; A race controversy in Bishop Wigger's Diocese", New York Times, 1892-11-20.
- ^ John T. McGreevy (1996). Parish Boundaries: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth-Century Urban North.
