The Pope Did It?

[Paul Serup]

(12-31-2015 08:37 PM)maharba Wrote:  I was reading through Paul's long interesting answer and trying to refresh my memory of what (little) I know of Chiniquy. But I was framing a question about JWBooth and Catholicism. Then you anticipated me, Roger, and asked nearly the same question I was going to. In another thread here (The Legend of John Wilkes Booth), I am pursuing the notion that JWBooth survived into Texas and Oklahoma in the time frame 1870-1903 and used such alias as John St. Helen and David George.

I pointed out that the John St.Helen who nearly died in 1870 Granbury TX requested a catholic priest come to his bedside, apparently all the way from Dallas to Granbury TX. And I had commented that it appeared to me that St.Helen WAS a Catholic, while I had no other evidence that John Wilkes Booth was Catholic. So, I'll join your question (to Paul): was JWBooth a catholic, did he convert to catholicism?

Was the assassin of Abraham Lincoln a Roman Catholic? As I state in my book:

In Fifty Years, Charles Chiniquy alleged that the actor was a “Protestant pervert to Romanism“. In her 1982 article in the Lincoln Herald, “Insights on John Wilkes Booth from His Sister Asia‘s Correspondence“, historian Constance Head stated that strong evidence pointed to the fact that Booth indeed was a Catholic. Booth’s sister, Asia Booth Clarke, wrote a memoir of her brother which was published after her death. College history professor, Terry Alford, a leading authority on the life of John Wilkes Booth, attested to how valuable a witness Booth Clarke is regarding her brother’s life. He stated, “Asia Booth Clarke‘s memoir of her brother John Wilkes Booth has been recognized as the single most important document available for understanding the personality of the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln“, adding that “no outsider could give such insights into the turbulent Booth‘s childhood or share such unique personal knowledge of the gifted actor“. Alford edited a recent edition of the memoir.
Ms. Head agreed, declaring that “Asia should be accurate in the matter of her brother’s religious preference”. Head quoted from a letter the actor’s sister had written to a friend regarding the assassination and the conspirators. Booth Clarke wrote, “I was shocked and grieved to see the names of Michael O’Laughlin and Samuel Arnold [among the conspirators.] I am still more surprised to learn that all engaged in the plot are Roman Catholics. Wilkes was of the faith professedly and I was glad that he had fixed his faith on one religion”

Head also stated:

Although the Booth family was traditionally Episcopalian, Asia personally was very much inclined toward Catholicism as the result of her schooling at the Carmelite convent in Baltimore. Eventually she became a Catholic herself, and although the date of her conversion is unknown, it is a matter which she and Wilkes may have discussed. It is even conceivable that it was Asia who converted him. On the other hand, perhaps as an actor, he was simply attracted by the dramatic beauty of the Mass. He seems moreover to have entertained a low opinion of certain protestant clergymen who preached the sinfulness of the stage, and thus may have been drawn toward Catholicism as a faith more congenial to his vocation. In any case, it seems certain that Booth did not publicize his conversion during his lifetime. And while there is no reasonable cause to connect Booth’s religious preference and his “mad act”, the few who knew of his conversion must have decided after the assassination that for the good of the church, it was best never to mention it. Thus the secret remained so well guarded that even the most rabidly anti-Catholic writers who tried to depict the assassination of Lincoln as a Jesuit or Papist plot were puzzled by the seemingly accurate information that John Wilkes Booth was an Episcopalian.

Other evidence presented at the 1865 Trial of the Conspirators point towards Booth’s Catholicism as well.

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(01-01-2016 05:59 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Paul, in addition to the questions maharba and I have for you, I thought of another one overnight. How did Chiniquy recall for 20+ years the exact words of Abraham Lincoln? Wasn't his book published more than 20 years after the assassination? Here is a word-for-word example of what Chiniquy claimed he remembered from what President Lincoln said to him:

“This war would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits. We owe it to Popery that we now see our land reddened with the blood of her noblest sons. Though there were great differences of opinion between the South and North, on the question of slavery, neither Jeff Davis nor any one of the leading men of the Confederacy would have dared to attack the North, had they not relied on the promise of the Jesuits, that, under the mask of Democracy, the money and the arms of the Roman Catholics, even the arms of France, were at their disposal if they would attack us.”

If I think back to conversations I had with people in 1996 there is no way I could present word-for-word examples like this. Don't you find this the least bit suspicious? The quote above is in the Fehrenbachers' book and is given an "E" - the lowest possible grade.

Yes, could Chiniquy remember these conversations with Abraham Lincoln? Coming from the President of the United States, a man Chiniquy had tremendous respect for, a man who he viewed a giant of the ages, while he was President and while visiting him in the White House, would Lincoln’s words not have stayed with him? As well, how is it known for certain that the source of these discourses came from Chiniquy's memory and not from a journal, perhaps written very soon after the visits? Again, as I point out in my volume:

Rev. Chiniquy said he kept a journal, noting in Fifty Years, "I had almost lost sight of those emotional days of my young years of priesthood. Those facts were silently lying among the big piles of the daily records, which I had faithfully kept since the very days of my collegiate life at Nicolet”. Regarding a question he asked Rev. Baillargeon, curate of Quebec, Chiniquy also stated, “The next day I took down in writing his answer, which I find in my old manuscripts, and I give it here in all its sad crudity”

In a footnote in his 2009 biography of Chiniquy, The Controversial Conversion of Charles Chiniquy, Richard Lougheed reported on Chiniquy's accuracy when quoting from his correspondence, "We have found all the letters quoted by Chiniquy to be accurate (except for occasional dates) when checkable." As well, the “Letter From Father Chiniquy” published in the Chicago Tribune while Abraham Lincoln was in power, gave a description of Lincoln in office and the White House reception of the National Union Convention delegates, as well as a quote of the President to them which agreed with the newspaper reports at the time.