Conclusion: Father Hyacinthe and the Vatican Council

Abstract

The construction, over the middle decades of the century, of a Transatlantic case against Catholicism culminated in the last months of 1869. Just weeks after the tale of Barbara Ubryk was hitting front pages. New Yorkers, as we have seen, flocked to greet a French Carmelite monk. Father Hyacinthe, who had resigned from his order and launched a public attack on the Vatican. Overshadowing both of these stories, however, was one of the most significant religious events of the nineteenth century, the first Vatican Council. The only ecumenical Council to be held since that of Trent in the sixteenth century, it was scheduled to open in Rome on December 8, 1869. Well before this date, the Council was provoking intense speculation and debate on both sides of the Atlantic. In part, this public interest in the Council was due to its size. A gathering of some 1,050 prelates, the Council was an unmistakable assertion of the strength of the Catholic Church. Furthermore, in an era in which religious matters were treated with great seriousness, such a gathering of senior church figures was bound to dominate public discussion, even in largely Protestant nations such as the United States. The Vatican Council, the New York Times predicted, would surely be the most “extraordinary event of the age.”¹