Priest (1837–1900)
Edward McGlynn, who was born in New York City to Irish immigrants, studied in Rome and was ordained a priest in 1860. At the age of twenty-nine, he was appointed pastor of St. Stephen’s Church, one of the largest parishes in Manhattan.
There, McGlynn became a famous orator and preacher. Having come to the conviction that “the highest form of charity is doing justice,” he won wide attention for his dedication to the poor and the working class. Increasingly, he was drawn to the “single-tax” theories of Henry George, a popular economist of the Progressive era, who taught that the cause of inequality was the accumulation of wealth through land speculation. As McGlynn preached, “Involuntary poverty is the result of human laws that allow individuals to hold as private property that which the Creator provided for the use of all.”
Archbishop Corrigan, a staunch conservative, believed that McGlynn was preaching socialism and ordered him to desist. When McGlynn refused, Corrigan suspended him from priestly ministry. This was extended to actual excommunication in 1887. Five years later, a papal legate of Pope Leo XIII met with McGlynn, declared him free of doctrinal error, and lifted the excommunication. He continued to preach his Catholic version of the Social Gospel until his death on January 7, 1900.
“From earliest childhood my heart has ever beaten with sympathy for the wronged, the oppressed, the outcast, the downtrodden.”
—Rev. Edward McGlynn
