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Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > C > James Andrew Corcoran


JAMES ANDREW CORCORAN

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Theologian, editor, and Orientalist, b. at Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.A. 30
March, 1820; d. at Philadelphia, 16 July, 1889. In his fourteenth year he was
sent to the College of Propaganda, Rome, where he made a brilliant course and
was ordained priest 21 December, 1842. He was the first native of the Carolinas
who received priestly orders. He remained a year longer in Rome to complete his
studies and was made doctor in sacred theology. He read with ease the
literatures and dialects of Western and Northern Europe, spoke Latin as fluently
as his native tongue, and acquired that thorough mastery of the idiom which
distinguishes the text of the Second Plenary Council of Baltimore. In addition,
he was a profound Semitic scholar, with a special predilection for Syriac. On
the death of Bishop England in 1842 he was recalled to Charleston, where he
taught in the seminary, doing parochial work in the meantime, and in conjunction
with Dr. Lynch edited the "United States Catholic Miscellany", the first
distinctively Catholic literary periodical published in the United States. His
position as a Catholic editor naturally involved him in many controversies, one
being on the life and teachings of Martin Luther, for which Dr. Corcoran
procured from Europe an abundance of Lutherana. He had made great headway with
the preparation of a life of Luther, when in 1861 his manuscript and library
were destroyed by fire. During the Civil War his sympathies were with the South,
and the end of the struggle found him rector of a parish at Wilmington, North
Carolina, where he proved his fidelity to pastoral duty during an epidemic of
cholera which decimated his little flock. He was made secretary to the Baltimore
Provincial Councils of 1855 and 1858; also secretary in chief at the Second
Plenary Council of 1866. He was one of the editors of the complete works of
Bishop England. In 1868 he was chosen by the unanimous voice of the American
hierarchy as their theologian on the commission preparatory to the Vatican
Council. He was assigned to the doctrinal commission presided over by Cardinal
Billio. During the debates on papal infallibility, a doctrine which he firmly
held, he drew up for Archbishop Spalding the famous "Spalding Formula", destined
as an olive-branch, in which the doctrine is rather implied than flatly stated.
But those were no days for compromises. While at the council, Bishop Wood of
Philadelphia, his school-fellow at the Propaganda, perfected arrangements by
which Dr. Corcoran took a theological chair in the newly-opened seminary at
Overbrook, near Philadelphia. This position he retained until death, declining,
on the plea of advancing years, a call to the Catholic University at Washington.
In 1876 the "American Catholic Quarterly Review" was founded, and Dr. Corcoran
was made chief editor. His able articles and book notices were the principal
source of its success. (For a list of his contributions see General Index of the
Review, Philadelphia, 1900, p. 15.) In 1883, when the archbishops of the United
States were invited to Rome to prepare for the Third Plenary Council of
Baltimore, they took Dr. Corcoran with them as secretary, and, at their request,
he was permitted to be present and take notes at the sessions held with the
three cardinals appointed by Pope Leo XIII as a special commission. The
following year he was made a domestic prelate and assisted as secretary at the
Plenary Council. That Monsignor Corcoran did not bequeath to posterity works of
any great size is explained by the circumstances of his life. He was too busy a
man to devote himself to literary pursuits. A great part of his time was
occupied with his immense correspondence. He may be said to have been weighted
down with "the solicitude of all the Churches", for such was the confidence
which the bishops and clergy reposed in his judgment, that they sought his
counsel on all difficult points of theology and canon law. He was apparently
unconscious of his great gifts, claiming no superiority, and was extremely
affable. His love for the Church, and his loyal adhesion to all her doctrines,
were patent in all he said or wrote.




ABOUT THIS PAGE

APA citation. Loughlin, J. (1908). James Andrew Corcoran. In The Catholic
Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04356b.htm

MLA citation. Loughlin, James. "James Andrew Corcoran." The Catholic
Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908.
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04356b.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Gerald M. Knight.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John
M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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