American prelate
Bernard John McQuaid (December 15, 1823 – January 18, 1909) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He was the first and longest-serving Bishop of Rochester, serving for 40 years from 1868 until his death in 1909. He previously served as the first president of Seton Hall University (1856-1868).
As a bishop, McQuaid was a leading voice of the American church's conservative wing. He publicly clashed with the liberal-minded Archbishop John Ireland and vigorously opposed Americanism.
Early life and education.
Bernard McQuaid was born on December 15, 1823, in New York City to Bernard and Mary (née Maguire) McQuaid, who were both natives of Ireland. Shortly after his birth, he moved with his parents to Paulus Hook (later incorporated as Jersey City), where his father worked in a glass factory operated by the brothers George and Phineas C. Dummer. His mother died in 1827, when McQuaid was only three years old. It was in the McQuaid home that Mass was celebrated for the first time in Paulus Hook, performed on November 29, 1829, by Rev. John Conroy, the uncle of future Bishop John J. Conroy.
In 1832, McQuaid's father was killed by a fellow factory worker and eight-year-old Bernard was placed in the Catholic orphanage on Prince Street in Lower Manhattan, staffed by the Sisters of Charity. In 1839, he was discharged from the orphanage and began his preparatory studies for the priesthood at the minor seminary in Chambly, near Montreal. He returned to New York City in 1843 and then entered St. Joseph's Seminary at Fordham (then affiliated with St. John's College, now Fordham University).
As a seminarian, McQuaid suffered from poor health due to tuberculosis. Many years later he recounted that "friends expected to put me under the sod," but he eventually recovered and noted "I have downed them all." In addition to his studies, he served as a tutor at St. John's College (1843-1846).
Priesthood.
McQuaid was ordained a priest on January 16, 1848, by Bishop John Hughes at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral. Bishop Hughes initially assigned the new priest to St. Mary's Church on Grand Street in Manhattan, but Hughes' secretary, Rev. James Roosevelt Bayley, believed a country post would be better for McQuaid's health. Thus, McQuaid was instead appointed an assistant pastor to Rev. Louis Senez at St. Vincent's Church in Madison, New Jersey, becoming full pastor a few months later in April 1848.
St. Vincent's parish then covered all of Morris, Sussex, and Warren Counties, as well as parts of Union and Essex. McQuaid bought two horses and carriages to travel through this expansive territory, and celebrated Masses in private homes and hotel ballrooms where there was no church. He erected Assumption Church, the first Catholic church in Morristown, in 1848 followed by St. Rose of Lima Church in Springfield in 1852. In 1849, McQuaid opened the first permanent Catholic parochial school in New Jersey at St. Vincent's in Madison, also fitting the church in Morristown for a school the following year. Of these two accomplishments, he later said, "I feel prouder...that so many years ago I founded and established, and carried along successfully the humble parochial schools of Madison and Morristown than I ever felt at having established Seton Hall College and Seminary."
When the Diocese of Newark was created in 1853, Rev. Bayley became its first bishop and named McQuaid as rector of St. Patrick's Pro-Cathedral in September of that year. In one of his first acts as rector, McQuaid recruited the Sisters of Charity, who had cared for him as a child in New York and had been founded by Bishop Bayley's aunt Elizabeth Ann Seton, to take charge of the orphanage attached to the cathedral. He also played a leading role in establishing the Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth as a diocesan community at Newark in 1859, becoming the Sisters' first superior general.
President of Seton Hall.
When Seton Hall College was opened in September 1856, McQuaid served as its first president (1856–1857, 1859–1868). He directed a staff of three other priests and five lay instructors, serving a student body that grew from five to 54 by the end of the college's first year. He returned to St. Patrick's at Newark for two years before resuming his duties as president in July 1859, retaining his role as rector of the cathedral and remaining in those positions until he became a bishop. He also served as professor of rhetoric at the college, and was known as "a rigid disciplinarian [who] insisted on promptness and exactness in every detail." In 1860, McQuaid moved Seton Hall from its original location in Madison to South Orange, which was more accessible to Newark. A large marble mansion on the estate served as a seminary while a new brick building was erected for the college. The cornerstone of the new building was laid in May 1860 and the college was opened the following September with 50 students.
On the Sunday following the Battle of Fort Sumter, McQuaid addressed the congregation at St. Patrick's Cathedral and expressed his support for the Union. The following week, the American flag was raised above the cathedral and McQuaid was invited to address a public meeting at the local courthouse, where he declared that "this glorious Union would be sustained against any enemy, whether in our land or from a foreign country." In the spring of 1864, he volunteered as a chaplain and ministered to the wounded and dying soldiers at Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he was the only Catholic priest. During his service, he allegedly converted a Protestant soldier who witnessed him offering whisky to a fellow soldier.
When the newly ordained Rev. Michael Corrigan joined the faculty of Seton Hall in September 1864, a lasting friendship and partnership began between him and McQuaid, who would become the two most prominent conservative leaders among the American bishops of their time. As one historian described their relationship:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;The McQuaid-Corrigan relationship developed at Seton Hall and so highly did McQuaid esteem the mind and administrative talents of the young Corrigan, that rightly or wrongly, McQuaid later would claim credit for Corrigan's advancement: first to Seton Hall, then to [Bishop of] Newark and finally his promotion to Archbishop of New York. After 1880, Corrigan was technically McQuaid's superior, but to the very end it remained the relationship of a former teacher to his pupil with McQuaid playing the role of friend, advisor and trusted confidant, who always encouraged Corrigan to act clearly, boldly and decisively.
In January 1866, a fire destroyed the seminary building at Seton Hall and McQuaid raised the funds to build the larger Immaculate Conception Seminary, which was ready for occupancy by the following year. In addition to his duties as college president and cathedral rector, McQuaid was appointed vicar general of the Diocese of Newark in September 1866. In his two years as vicar general of Newark, he became "a terror to delinquents" and regularly suspended priests for financial misdeeds, drunkenness, and insubordination.
McQuaid accompanied Bishop Bayley to the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore in October 1866, serving as Bayley's theologian and a member of the Council's committee on bishops, priests, and seminarians.
Bishop of Rochester.
On March 3, 1868, McQuaid was appointed the first bishop of the newly created Diocese of Rochester by Pope Pius IX. Archbishop John McCloskey of New York noted in a letter to Archbishop Martin John Spalding of Baltimore that McQuaid had been "determined not to accept, [and] had in this the sympathy and encouragement of his own Bishop, but he has finally yielded to considerations." McQuaid received his episcopal consecration on July 12, 1868, from Archbishop McCloskey, with Bishop Bayley and Bishop Louis de Goesbriand serving as co-consecrators, at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in New York.
McQuaid formally took charge of the Diocese of Rochester on July 16, 1868, when he was installed in a temporary frame building that had been erected to accommodate Rochester's unfinished St. Patrick's Cathedral. The new diocese consisted of eight counties in western New York (Monroe, Livingston, Wayne, Ontario, Seneca, Cayuga, Yates, and Tompkins) that were separated from the Diocese of Buffalo (with the addition of Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, and Tioga in 1896). At the beginning of McQuaid's tenure in 1868, the diocese contained 54,500 Catholics, 39 priests, 35 parishes, and 29 missions. In his final year as bishop in 1909, there were 121,000 Catholics, 164 priests, 93 parishes, and 36 missions.
Conflicts with priests.
McQuaid's disputes with other clergymen began early in his tenure. In February 1869, he tried to remove Rev. Thomas O'Flaherty from his position as pastor of Holy Family Church in Auburn due to the priest's financial mismanagement of the parish and his subsequent refusal to provide an itemized statement. When O'Flaherty refused the reassignment, McQuaid suspended him. The case received wide publicity, with McQuaid blaming the newspaper editor James McMaster "for a great deal of the wrong judgment towards myself entertained by many Priests in distant parts of the U.S. with regard to my action in O'Flaherty's case." McQuaid only lifted the suspension 23 years later, at the behest of Apostolic Delegate Francesco Satolli, on the sole condition that O'Flaherty not be allowed to resume active ministry within the Diocese of Rochester.
Another prominent conflict involved Rev. Louis Lambert, pastor of St. Mary's Church in Waterloo. In addition to his pastoral work, Lambert edited the Waterloo "Catholic Times" (1877-1880) and later the New York "Freeman's Journal" (1895-1910). Although he originally approved of Lambert's work, McQuaid's opinion soured after Lambert's newspaper began to criticize him and other clergymen in Rochester and beyond. Thus, in April 1881, he restricted Lambert's ministry to his own parish. Lambert twice appealed McQuaid's decision to Rome, which upheld the bishop both times. In 1888, McQuaid dismissed Lambert from the diocese but the priest appealed again, which required both men to appear in Rome to present their case. Like the O'Flaherty affair, the Lambert case attracted bad press for McQuaid, who complained to Bishop Richard Gilmour in April 1889, "Here I am like a culprit snarled at by all the cheap Catholic newspapers of America from the Atlantic to the Pacific." Rome's final decision came in January 1890, when it refused to reinstate Lambert at Waterloo and instead required him to accept a new parish from McQuaid. Lambert then served as pastor of Assumption Church in Scottsville until his death in 1910.
Outside of Rochester, McQuaid advised his protégé Michael Corrigan, the Archbishop of New York (1885-1902), during the latter's high-profile conflict with Rev. Edward McGlynn. McGlynn was a social reformer who actively supported Henry George and the "Single Tax" movement, which McQuaid believed ran contrary to the Church's teaching on the right to private property. McQuaid encouraged Corrigan to be "clear, strong and bold, and not afraid" with McGlynn and to prohibit New York Catholics from attending McGlynn's Anti-Poverty Society. Corrigan followed this advice, even excommunicating McGlynn in July 1887.
Constant appeals to Rome from American priests against their bishops led to early discussions of appointing an Apostolic Delegate to the United States in order to settle these disputes. McQuaid opposed this idea from the start, writing to then-Bishop Corrigan in February 1877, "The 'Apostolic Delegate' business is a very serious one, and one destined to make trouble if followed up. Instead of keeping up our own warm love for Rome, it will have a contrary effect. The only reason for the change that I have heard indicated has been to lessen appeals to Rome. Will he lessen them? I doubt it." While visiting Rome in late 1878, McQuaid vowed to "use all judicious efforts with all suitable persons from the Pope down to put a stop to this Delegate arrangement." His efforts succeeded in delaying the appointment of an Apostolic Delegate until 1892, when Francesco Satolli was named to the post and secured the reinstatement of priests like Thomas O'Flaherty and Edward McGlynn.
First Vatican Council.
In late 1869, McQuaid arrived in Rome to participate in the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), where he was a strong opponent of papal infallibility. While he did have theological reservations about the doctrine, McQuaid's opposition was primarily based on the expediency of what he described as "this most unnecessary question." In a letter from Rome on April 24, 1870, McQuaid wrote to the rector of Rochester's cathedral:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;Opposed to the definition are so many Bishops of unquestionable