George William Mundelein c. 1916Mundelein as Auxiliary Bishop of Brooklyn
George Mundelein was born on Avenue C in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.[1] He was the only son of Francis and Mary (née Goetz) Mundelein, who were of German descent; one of three children, he had two sisters, Margaret and Catherine.[2] His grandfather fought in the Civil War.[3]
Returning to the United States, he then did pastoral work in the Diocese of Brooklyn and served as secretary to Bishop McDonnell until 1897. From 1897 to 1909, he was chancellor for the diocese.
Mundelein was named the third Archbishop of Chicago, Illinois, on December 9, 1915.[6] The Holy See had originally intended to appoint Mundelein to the Diocese of Buffalo, and the more experienced Dennis Dougherty to Chicago, but the British government reportedly objected to having a bishop of German ancestry so close to the Canadian border during World War I.[7][8] Thus, Dougherty was named to Buffalo and Mundelein to Chicago.
At a large dinner held at the University Club of Chicago on February 12, 1916, an anarchist chef, Jean Crones, slipped arsenic into the soup in an attempt to poison Mundelein and over 100 other guests, including Illinois Governor Edward F. Dunne. The soup was watered down due to the arrival of about fifty extra guests. None of the assembled guests died, as a hastily prepared emetic was supplied by a doctor, J. B. Murphy, who although mildly stricken himself, was able to help the other victims. (Many vomited the poison out of their systems, though suffering considerable agony.)[9][10] Mundelein ate only a bite or two of the soup.[11] Newspapers referred to the mass-murder attempt as the "Mundelein poison soup plot". Jean Crones was suspected at the time of being a German agent but turned out to be an Italian anarchist named Nestor Dondoglio, a member of the Galleanist circle of anarchists who also included Sacco and Vanzetti. Dondoglio allegedly wrote letters to American newspapers after the crime (many of these were hoaxes). He was never apprehended, though police spent years taking men into custody thought to be "Jean Crones".[12] Crones/Dondoglio died peacefully in Connecticut in 1932 "where he had found haven with friends".[13]
Catholic schools
Almost half the Chicago population was Catholic by the 1920s. Many children–perhaps half–attended public schools. The risk of exposure to Protestant proselytizing was minimal since over a third of the public school teachers were Catholics, along with almost as many principals. Still, the parishes built their own schools, using sisters (who had taken vows of poverty) as inexpensive teachers. The language of instruction was often German or Polish. On taking office, Archbishop Mundelein promptly centralized control of the parish schools in his own hands. His building committee decided where new schools would be located, while his school board standardized curricula, textbooks, teacher training, testing, and educational policy. Simultaneously he gained a voice in city hall, and Catholic William J. Bogan became Superintendent of public schools.[14]
Mundelein died from heart disease in his sleep in Mundelein, Illinois (a village renamed in his own honor 14 years prior to his death), at age 67. He is buried behind the main altar of the chapel at Mundelein Seminary, which was founded on his initiative.
Selfish employers of labor have flattered the Church by calling it the great conservative force, and then called upon it to act as a police force while they paid but a pittance of wage to those who work for them. I hope that day has gone by. Our place is beside the workingman.[20]
In 1935, he said "that not war, nor famine, nor pestilence have brought so much suffering and pain to the human race, as have hasty, ill-advised marriages, unions entered into without the knowledge, the preparation, the thought even an important commercial contract merits and receives. God made marriage an indissoluble contract, Christ made it a sacrament, the world today has made it a plaything of passion, an accompaniment of sex, a scrap of paper to be torn up at the whim of the participants."[22] He was an outspoken opponent of contraception.[23]
Ethnic groups
During his tenure in Chicago, Mundelein launched an effort to unify ethnic Catholic groups such as the Poles and Italians into territorial, instead of ethnic, parishes with mixed success. St. Monica's parish, however, was endorsed by Mundelein as the city's sole black parish, leading to distaste for the archbishop in both the early 1900s and today. After constructing the landmark Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary in Chicago, Mundelein built St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, later renamed Mundelein Seminary in his honor, in Area, now Mundelein, Illinois.[24][25] Quigley Seminary was the site of Mundelein's 1937 "paper hanger" speech, criticizing Adolf Hitler. He also organized the construction of other churches in the see, such as the Saint Philip Neri church and the Corpus Christi Church, both designed by Chicago architect Joseph W. McCarthy.[26] He publicly sparred with the Father Charles Coughlin,[27] the Detroit Catholic priest who broadcast anti-banking and anti-Semitic views to millions of radio listeners until he was forced off the air in 1939.
Kantowicz, Edward R. "Cardinal Mundelein of Chicago and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century American Catholicism." Journal of American History 68.1 (1981): 52-68. online
Kantowicz, Edward R. Corporation Sole: Cardinal Mundelein and Chicago Catholicism (U of Notre Dame Press, 1983).
Sanders, James W. The education of an urban minority: Catholics in Chicago, 1833-1965 (Oxford UP, 1977).
Primary sources
Mundelein, George William. Two Crowded Years: Being Selected Addresses, Pastorals, and Letters Issued During the First Twenty-four Months of the Episcopate of the Most Rev. George William Mundelein, DD, as Archbishop of Chicago (Extension Press, 1918) online.
_circa_1916.jpg)
