James Francis McIntyre

His Eminence James Francis McIntyre
Cardinal, Archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles
McIntyre in 1970
See	Los Angeles
Appointed	February 7, 1948
Installed	March 19, 1948
Term ended	January 21, 1970
Predecessor	John Joseph Cantwell
Successor	Timothy Manning
Other post(s)	Cardinal Priest of Santa Anastasia
Previous post(s)	Coadjutor Archbishop of New York (1946–1948) Auxiliary Bishop of New York (1940–1946)
Orders
Ordination	May 21, 1921 by Patrick Joseph Hayes
Consecration	January 8, 1941 by Francis Spellman
Created cardinal	January 12, 1953 by Pius XII
Personal details
Born	(1886-06-25)June 25, 1886 New York, New York, US
Died	July 16, 1979(1979-07-16) (aged 93) Los Angeles, California, US
Buried	Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles, California
Motto	Miserere mei Deus (God, have mercy on me)

Ordination history of James Francis McIntyre
History Episcopal consecration Consecrated by Francis Spellman Date January 8, 1941
Episcopal succession Bishops consecrated by James Francis McIntyre as principal consecrator Walter Philip Kellenberg October 5, 1953 Edward Vincent Dargin October 5, 1953 Alden John Bell June 4, 1956 John James Ward December 12, 1963

Styles of James McIntyre
Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	Los Angeles

James Francis Aloysius McIntyre (June 25, 1886 – July 16, 1979) was an American prelate of the Catholic Church. He served as archbishop of Los Angeles in California from 1948 to 1970, and was created a cardinal in 1953. He previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of New York from 1940 to 1948

He was a highly successful builder of new parishes, churches, and schools. He was notable in church politics, and his reputation remains highly controversial.

Early life

James McIntyre was born on June 25, 1886, in Manhattan to James and Mary (née Pelly) McIntyre. His father was a native of New York City and member of the mounted police, and his mother was from Kiltormer, County Galway, Ireland. McIntyre attended Public School No. 70 because there was no room for him at the local parochial school.

His father became totally disabled after falling from his horse in Central Park in Manhattan ; his mother then opened a dressmaking business to support the family. Following his mother's death in 1896, McIntyre and his father were taken into the nearby home of a relative. He did not attend high school, instead becoming an errand boy in the financial market. He attended night school at Columbia University and City College, both in Manhattan.

At age 16, McIntyre became a runner on the New York Stock Exchange, working for the brokerage firm of H.L. Horton & Co. He was offered a junior partnership at Horton in 1914, but declined it in order to enter the priesthood. He then studied at Cathedral College in Queens for a year before entering St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, New York, where he was a friend of future Cardinal Patrick O'Boyle.

Priesthood

McIntyre was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Patrick Hayes for the Archdiocese of New York on May 21, 1921, at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. After his ordination, the archdiocese assigned him as assistant pastor of St. Gabriel's Parish on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In 1923, he was named assistant chancellor for the archdiocese. He was promoted to chancellor in 1934, and named privy chamberlain by Pope Pius XI on December 27, 1943. Pius XI elevated him to the status of a domestic prelate on November 12, 1936.

Following the appointment of Auxiliary Bishop Francis Spellman to archbishop of New York in 1939, McIntyre was named to the archdiocesan board of consultors. In 1939, he formed the Columbiettes, a Knights of Columbus women's auxiliary.

Episcopate

Auxiliary Bishop of New York

On November 16, 1940, McIntyre was appointed auxiliary bishop of New York and titular bishop of Cyrene by Pope Pius XII. He received his episcopal consecration on January 8, 1941, from Spellman, with Auxiliary Bishops Stephen Donahue and John O'Hara serving as co-consecrators, in St. Patrick's Cathedral. Spellman appointed McIntyre as vicar general of the archdiocese on January 27, 1945; he received the Grand Cross of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre in May 1946.

On July 20, 1946, McIntyre was named coadjutor bishop of New York and titular archbishop of Paltus. Despite never succeeding Spellman as archbishop, he assisted in the governance of the archdiocese while Spellman was busied by his additional duties as Apostolic Vicar for the Military Forces. Spellman once said,

"I have never undertaken any important matter without consulting [McIntyre]. In nothing have I gone contrary to his advice."

In 1947, McIntyre spoke out against legislation that would "permit further encroachments on the parental function of education."

Archbishop of Los Angeles

Reverend DuBay (1968)

McIntyre was appointed the second archbishop of Los Angeles on February 7, 1948 by Pius XII. McIntyre was installed as archbishop at St. Vibiana's Cathedral in Los Angeles on March 19, 1948. In McIntyre's first four years, the archdiocese established 26 new parishes, 64 new parochial schools, and 18 new high schools . At one point during his tenure, he oversaw the construction of a new church every 66 days and a new school every 26 days to accommodate the post-World War II population boom in Southern California. As archbishop, he led the successful effort to repeal the state tax on Catholic schools.

Pius XII created McIntyre as cardinal priest of the Basilica of Sant'Anastasia al Palatino in Rome during the consistory of January 12, 1953. At that time, McIntyre became the first cardinal of the Western United States. At the consistory, the photographer's flash bulb failed to go off when the biretta was conferred on McIntyre. He and, Pius then re-enacted the ceremony to get the picture. McIntyre participated in the 1958 papal conclave that elected Pope John XXIII and again in the 1963 papal conclave that elected Pope Paul VI.

McIntyre in 1966 suspended Reverend William DuBay from his ministerial duties. DuBay, an advocate for unionizing priests, had threatened to sue McIntyre if he tried to block the creation of such a union in the archdiocese. DuBay in 1964 had accused McIntyre of failing to support the American Civil Rights Movement for African-Americans. After DuBay published a book calling for a union, McIntyre assigned him to a different parish and demoted him to assistant pastor. DuBay never returned to ministry; he married in 1968.

In 1967, McIntyre banned members of Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary from teaching in schools in the archdiocese. The nuns had recent abandoned some traditional elements of cloister life, such as compulsory daily prayer and the wearing of habits in the classroom. In 1968, the Sacred Congregation of Religious in Rome ruled that the nuns had to restore their former practices or request dispensation from their vows. Of the 380 members of the order, 315 chose to leave.

According to the New York Times, by the end of his tenure, McIntyre was the subject of protests by blacks, Hispanics, and his own clergy. As the result of rule changes by Pope Paul VI he lost, on January 1, 1971, the right to participate in a Papal conclave due to being over the age of 80.

Retirement and legacy

The tomb of Cardinal McIntyre in the crypt of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Los Angeles (2008)

McIntyre retired after 21 years as archbishop of Los Angeles on January 21, 1970. He then served as a priest at St. Basil's Parish in Downtown Los Angeles, where he privately celebrated the Tridentine Mass on the side altars of St. Basil's.

McIntyre died at St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles, at the age of 93. In 2003, his remains were transferred to the crypt of the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

Reputation

John Cooney writes in his 1984 book The American Pope that McIntyre harbored racial prejudices and was approached privately by the priests of his archdiocese who asked him to refrain from making racial slurs.

Charles Morris in his 1997 book American Catholic states:

Today, McIntyre's name is associated mostly with his sad, slightly ridiculous octogenarian flailing against the cultural and religious revolutions of the 1960s. But if he had retired at the canonical age of 75 in 1961...he would be remembered as one of the great builders of the American Church.

Monsignor Francis Weber, in his two-volume biography of McIntyre, tries to rehabilitate the cardinal's reputation. In a 1997 review of Weber's book, historian Kevin Starr agrees with Weber and articulates the alternative version of McIntyre and the 1960s. Starr writes:

Sadly, this kindly (most of the time) and, in his own way, holy prelate became the scapegoat for those pushing the ecclesial revolutions, so frequently self-destructive, of the 1960s after the Second Vatican Council.

Viewpoints

Abortion

In 1967, McIntyre lobbied California Governor Ronald Reagan regarding a proposed law to legalize abortion in that state under certain conditions. He convinced Reagan to veto the law if it allowed abortions in case of birth defects. The California State Legislature dropped that provision from the bill and Reagan signed the law, which decriminalized abortions when done to protect the health of the mother.

Anti-Semitism

In 1944, while auxiliary bishop, McIntyre said that accounts of anti-Semitism in New York were "a manufactured movement...for the deliberate purpose of besmirching the minority Catholic population."

Church reform

McIntyre opposed the liturgical revisions of the Second Vatican Council, held between 1962 to 1965.

When Bishop James P. Shannon expressed views critical of the Church hierarchy in an NBC documentary in the late 1960s, McIntyre described Shannon's views as constituting "incipient schism."

Communism

McIntyre sent his priests to meetings of the John Birch Society, a right wing group of the 1950s, to supposedly educate themselves about communism. He also recommended subscriptions to American Opinion and other Birch publications in his diocesan newspaper.

Media

By 1955, filmmakers in the United States were ignoring some of the restrictions in the Hollywood Production Code. which engendered criticism from the Catholic Legion of Decency. In a statement to the pastors in the archdiocese, McIntyre warned them about "an obvious trend toward laxity" in films.

Further reading

• Burns, Jeffrey M. "Postconciliar Church as Unfamiliar Sky: The Episcopal Styles of Cardinal James F. McIntyre and Archbishop Joseph T. McGucken." US Catholic Historian 17.4 (1999): 64-82 online.
• Caspary, Anita Marie. Witness to integrity: The Crisis of the Immaculate Heart Community of California (Liturgical Press, 2003).
• Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (1990, 2006) pp 323–72.
• Day, Dorothy. "The Case of Cardinal McIntyre.”." The Catholic Worker (1964). online Archived 2020-05-18 at the Wayback Machine
  • Lynch, Thomas A. "Dorothy Day & Cardinal McIntyre: Not Poles Apart." Church (Summer 1992) (1992): 10–15.
• Donovan, John T. "The 1960s Los Angeles Seminary Crisis." Catholic Historical Review 102.1 (2016): 69–96. summary
• DuBay, William H. The Priest and the Cardinal: Race and Rebellion in 1960s Los Angeles (CreateSpace, 2016).
• Lothrop, Gloria Ricci. "A Remarkable Legacy: The Story of Secondary Schools in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles." Catholic Historical Review 88.4 (2002): 809–810.
• Real, James. "Immaculate Heart of Hollywood." Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 3.3 (1971): 48–53.
• Steidl, Jason. "The Unlikely Conversion of Father Juan Romero: Chicano Activism and Suburban Los Angeles Catholicism." US Catholic Historian 37.4 (2019): 29–52.
• Weber, Francis J. His Eminence of Los Angeles: James Francis Cardinal McIntyre (Mission Hills, Calif.: Saint Francis Historical Society, 1997).

Primary sources

• Sister Mary Rose Cunningham, C.S.C., ed. Calendar of Documents and Related Historical Materials in the Archival Center, Archdiocese of Los Angeles, for the Most Reverend J. Francis A. McIntyre, Volume One: 1948-1960 and Volume Two: 1961-1970 (1995)

External links

• Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church Archived 2007-12-14 at the Wayback Machine