Americanism (heresy)

Americanism is a term for a heresy, or rather a series of related heresies which were have thought to have been held by many memembers of the Roman Catholic church in America around the turn of the century. In essence, the label was mainly applied to American Bishops by Bishops and Popes outside of America.

Dogmatic/Theological Aspect

The Americanist heresy is defined as the endorsement instead of mere toleration of the what were thought to be anti-Catholic principles of the United States: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, seperation of church and state, etc. These were condemned by the Popes at the time. The most notable and concise condemnation of these things was in the Syallbus of Errors of Pope Pius IX.

Social Aspect

The Irish potatoe famine caused a mass exodus of Irish Catholics to the United States, which caused Catholicism to become the largest sect. The discrimination against the Irish led to them seeking to asimilate themselves as much as possible to the American culture. At the time the Catholic church in the United States was divided amongst ethnic lines, so that Irish Catholics had Irish Bishops, Germans had German Bishops, etc. The famine caused the Irish to have the majority, and thus the most Bishops, who almost unanimously had the view point that freedom of Religion is a good thing, because it seemed to be much better for Catholics in the United States then it was in Ireland, where Catholicism was suppressed by the English. This almost necessarily led to the support of the seperation of Church and State.

The issue that brought this train of thought to the forfront was the translation of a book by one Fr. Hecker, who was admired by the American Bishops, into French. Father Hecker supported the Americanist ideals, but the translation and introductions to his book made it sound much more radical. This caused his book to be condemned by Leo XIII.