Alfred E. Smith and the Americanization of the Catholic Church

What is it about?

Prompted by the likelihood that a Catholic politician, Alfred E. Smith, would contest the 1928 presidential election on behalf of the Democratic Party, numerous Catholic and Protestant writers debated church-state relations. If Smith won the presidency, Protestants feared that papal influence would undermine the principle of religious freedom protected by the American Constitution. Catholics themselves were divided on this question and the debate led to the revival of arguments previously aired during the Americanist controversy of the late-nineteenth century. At that time, several U.S. bishops were promoting the separation of church and state, well established in their home country, as a model for the universal Church. However, Pope Leo XIII rejected this and, despite renewed interest in the matter following the debate over the Smith candidacy, an uneasy stand-off persisted between Roman teaching and American experience. It was not until the 1960s, mainly through the advocacy of the American delegates at the Second Vatican Council, that the Church enshrined the concepts of church-state separation and religious liberty in Dignitatis Humanae (Declaration on Religious Freedom). Thus the principles of Americanism, previously the subject of papal disapproval, were extended to the entire Church.

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Why is it important?

The article describes how, in the 1920s, certain influential figures in the United States argued that a presidential candidate would be subject to undue influence by a foreign power, i.e. the Vatican. That candidate was defeated so the allegations were never put to the test. Nevertheless the evidence suggests that those allegations contained at most only theoretical substance. Almost a century later, a similar controversy has arisen about the possible influence of the Kremlin on the newly-elected president, Donald Trump. Will the current charges against Trump prove to be more substantial than those levelled at Smith?