To historians the life of Fr. John Dubois is a footnote. His legacy as the third Bishop of New York from 1826-1842 is one of patience, peacemaking, and humility. But Dubois was a revolutionary figure too, a fugitive priest on the run from a war on the Church, who became the most prolific practitioner of religious freedom in American history. As a young priest, he founded a college in rural Maryland and produced progeny—from bishops to saints—who would push the envelope of religious liberty to revolutionary heights.
Arriving in Richmond in 1791, Fr. Dubois was greeted warmly by the Protestant population. Invited to celebrate Mass at the State House, he would glean an early lesson in religious freedom—American style. In France the Catholic monarchy was being crushed. Priests were being hunted in the pews and beheaded in the streets. In America, famed for its reluctance to establish a national religion, a foreign priest was practicing the Catholic rite in a shrine of democratic government.
Friendship with two of America’s Founding Fathers—James Monroe and Patrick Henry—offered a glimpse into the new nation’s Constitution. Invited to live in Monroe’s home, the French priest learned firsthand of the future president’s views on Church and State. Tutored in English by Henry, Dubois was drawn to the Virginian’s devotion to scripture and his fierce defense of the 1st Amendment. Religious freedom in America, Dubois discovered, was not simply a matter of personal conscience. It was a duty to be practiced in the pubic square by courageous individuals willing to risk their lives, fortunes, and honor for the Christian Faith.
Moving to Maryland, Dubois tested the limits of the Constitution and, to his surprise, built a parish in Frederick without political interference. Where was the Revolutionary government kicking down his door? Where was the Committee of Public Safety ready to drag him to the guillotine? Unlike their French counterparts, America’s revolutionaries valued personal agency over political ideology.
On a dark night in Emmitsburg, the immigrant priest stumbled into a mountain cave, and experienced a Marian epiphany. Inspired to start Mount St. Mary’s, Dubois followed in the footsteps of European hill towns where soaring monasteries and Marian apparitions became engines of lasting inspiration. From the splendid isolation of Emmitsburg, a cohort of Catholic heroes emerged under Dubois’ direction, destined to bend the curve of religious liberty to the betterment of the American experiment.
At its founding in 1808, Mount St. Mary’s was called the nation’s second Catholic college, but it would become the first in the fifty states given Jesuit Georgetown’s establishment in a federal territory. Founded far from the temptations of the big city by a persecuted priest wary of political power, Dubois’ trailblazing deeds would become his college’s destiny. In fact, Mount St. Mary’s was so committed to the cause of religious liberty that revolutionary language was inserted into its 1830 state charter:
[S]aid College shall be founded and continued forever upon a most liberal plan, for the benefit of youth of every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted to equal privileges and advantages of education, and to all the literary honors of the College, according to their merit, without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test, or urging their attendance upon any particular place of religious worship or service, other than they have been educated in or have the consent of their parents or guardians to attend, nor shall any preference be given in the choice of a Professor, Master or Tutor, in said College, on account of his particular religious profession, but regard shall be had solely to his moral character, literary abilities, and other necessary qualifications to fill the place for which he shall be chosen.
Mount St. Mary’s—born of two revolutions, the American and French—would introduce revolutionary change. Being the first US College named for a woman was a countercultural achievement in the 1800s. Even more controversial, Mount St. Mary’s was the first US college named for the Mother of God at a time when Protestant America was ill-disposed to public displays of Marian devotion. Calls for the college’s closing were constant. Even the Archdiocese of Baltimore criticized its inaccessible location, abundance of debt, and proximity to the all-girls vocational school in Emmitsburg that was purported to draw too many men away from the priesthood.
Tutored by Fr. Dubois, Elizabeth Seton was the founder of that first Catholic girl’s school in 1809. Together, the Mount, an all-boys college, and Seton’s St. Joseph’s, an all-female institution, would form America’s cradle of Catholic education. Dubois would also play a foundational role in establishing Mother Seton’s religious order, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph. In 1975, Dubois friend and protégé, Elizabeth Seton, would be canonized the first American-born saint.
Another student of Dubois, John Hughes, launched the parochial system in New York City that would become the template for Catholic schools across the nation. Bishop Hughes’s war in the 1840s against the Public School Society of New York, a private corporation controlling the management of educational funds, was the stuff of legend. Known as “Dagger John,” it took two years of bruising legal battles to overthrow that unconstitutional public-private partnership and return power to the legislature. Emerging victorious with a share of public funds for his new system, Hughes spoke with political acumen:
We do not receive benefit from these schools: do not, then, take from Catholics their portion of the fund, by taxation, and hand it over to those who do not give them an equivalent in return.
In 1884, the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore capitalized on Hughes victory and proclaimed: “We decide and decree that near each church, where it does not exist, a parish school is to be erected within two years of the promulgation of this Council.” This ambitious assembly was populated by a plurality of Mount priests.
Dubois’ trusted “number two” at the Mount, Simon Brute’ would proceed as Bishop of Vincennes (Indiana) to purchase the land for the University of Notre Dame in South Bend and recruit its founding priest, Edward Sorin. On behalf of an immigrant Church, Mount priests played pivotal roles in the founding of Notre Dame, Fordham, Seton Hall, Spring Hill College, the Catholic University of America, and many other Catholic institutions of higher learning.
In 1865, the president of Mount St. Mary’s, John McCaffrey, submitted a document to the bishops of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore to establish guidelines for religious education. The Baltimore Catechism was ratified one year later mirroring closely the format, organization, and wording of McCaffrey’s original draft. Born in Emmitsburg, John McCaffrey was yet another unsung student of Dubois who would make heroic contributions to the cause of Catholic education and religious freedom.
With the mournful mutter of the French Revolution ever ringing in his ears, Fr. John Dubois made it his life’s work to prevent history from repeating itself on American soil. Witnessing the destruction of his Faith in France, he established schools, parishes, and religious orders in a new nation, mentoring his students like a man in search of miracles. To protect his adopted country from tyrants, Fr. Dubois fulfilled his patriotic duty by producing giants of the Catholic Faith.
Editor’s Note: For more on the history of Dubois’ university—the Mother of Catholic Education in the United State, read The Meaning of Mount St. Mary’s, available from the Mount St. Mary’s online bookstore.
Photo provided by the Author
