John Tracy Ellis (July 30, 1905 – October 16, 1992) was a

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

historian and priest, born and raised in

Seneca, Illinois Seneca is a village in LaSalle and Grundy counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. The population was 2,353 at the 2020 census, down from 2,371 at the 2010 census. The LaSalle County portion of Seneca is part of the Ottawa Micropolitan Statis ...

, USA. Ellis was ordained a priest and received a doctorate in history from

Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private Roman Catholic research university in Washington, D.C. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by U.S. ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

, where he worked with Msgr.

Peter Guilday Monsignor Peter Keenan Guilday (March 25, 1884 - July 31, 1947) US Catholic priest and historian.John Tracy Ellis, "Monsignore Peter Guilday" in '' The Catholic Historical Review'' 43:3 (Oct. 1947), 257-268. Life Guilday was born in Chester, Penn ...

to collect the central documents of the American Catholic heritage. He spent most of his career as a faculty member of the Catholic University, but he taught at the

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...

between 1963 and 1976. He was a long serving executive secretary of the American Catholic Historical Association and editor of the ''Catholic Historical Review'' (1941–62). Ellis is best known for his 1952 argument that American Catholic scholars have failed to measure up to European Catholic standards of scholarship and intellectual leadership.

Career

He wrote widely on church history, including a major biography of

James Cardinal Gibbons James Cardinal Gibbons (July 23, 1834 – March 24, 1921) was a senior-ranking American prelate of the Catholic Church who served as Apostolic Vicar of North Carolina from 1868 to 1872, Bishop of Richmond from 1872 to 1877, and as ninth ...

. He attracted widespread attention in Catholic circles for his essay (1955) deploring an anti-intellectual "ghetto mentality" among American Catholics. In his book ''American Catholicism'', first published in 1956, he wrote that a "universal anti-Catholic bias was brought to Jamestown in 1607 and vigorously cultivated in all the thirteen colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia." In 1978, Ellis received what is regarded as the highest honor for US Catholics, the

University of Notre Dame The University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame ( ) or ND, is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, outside the city of South Bend. French priest Edward Sorin founded the school in 1842. The main c ...

Laetare Medal The Laetare Medal is an annual award given by the University of Notre Dame in recognition of outstanding service to the Catholic Church and society. The award is given to an American Catholic or group of Catholics "whose genius has ennobled the a ...

Legacy

Several of Msgr. Ellis's students at Catholic University went on to make contributions to church history, including: Fr. Patrick H. Ahern, Fr. William Au, Fr. Colman J. Barry, OSB, Fr. Henry J. Browne, Sr. Margaret Carthy, OSU, Fr. Joseph P. Chinnici, OFM, Fr. Michael Roach, Cardinal Archbishop Timothy Dolan, Sr. Alphonsine Frawley, Fr. James Hennesey, SJ, Archbishop

Oscar Hugh Lipscomb Oscar Hugh Lipscomb (September 21, 1931July 15, 2020) was an American bishop of the Catholic Church. He served the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mobile, Alabama, for 28 years. Lipscomb attended high school in Mobile, before studying for the ...

, Anabelle Melville, Fr. Peter J. Rahill, Fr. David Sweeney, OFM, Fr. Thomas J. Shelley, and Msgr.

Francis J. Weber Monsignor Francis J. Weber (born January 22, 1933) is an American Roman Catholic priesthood (Catholic Church), priest, author and archivist. He is a noted Catholic scholar, an Honorary Chaplain to Pope, His Holiness, and archivist for the Archdio ...

.Thomas J. Shelley. "Ellis, John Tracy (1905-1992)" He was named by Pope

Pius XII Pius ( , ) Latin for "pious", is a masculine given name. Its feminine form is Pia. It may refer to: People Popes * Pope Pius (disambiguation) * Antipope Pius XIII (1918-2009), who led the breakaway True Catholic Church sect Given name * Pius ...

, a domestic prelate with the title

monsignor Monsignor (; it, monsignore ) is an honorific form of address or title for certain male clergy members, usually members of the Roman Catholic Church. Monsignor is the apocopic form of the Italian ''monsignore'', meaning "my lord". "Monsignor" ...

, an honorific priestly status, in 1955. In 1989, Pope

John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

further elevated him to

Protonotary Apostolic In the Roman Catholic Church, protonotary apostolic (PA; Latin: ''protonotarius apostolicus'') is the title for a member of the highest non-episcopal college of prelates in the Roman Curia or, outside Rome, an honorary prelate on whom the pop ...

, the highest grade of monsignor. He is interred in Mt. Calvary Cemetery on the north side of Seneca.

Published works

*Ellis, John Tracy. ''Cardinal Consalvi and Anglo-Papal Relations, 1814-1825''. Washington, DC:

Catholic University of America Press The Catholic University of America Press, also known as CUA Press, is the publishing division of The Catholic University of America. Founded on November 14, 1939, and incorporated on July 16, 1941,Roy J. Deferrari ''Memoirs of the Catholic Unive ...

, 1942. *Ellis, John Tracy. ''The Life of James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore''. Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce Pub. Co., 1952. *Ellis, John Tracy. ''Catholic Bishops: A Memoir''. Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1983. *Ellis, John Tracy. ''A Commitment to Truth''. Latrobe, PA.: The Archabbey Press, 1966. *Ellis, John Tracy. "American Catholics and the Intellectual Life." ''Thought''. 30 (1955), 351-88. *Ellis, John Tracy. ''Faith and Learning: A Church Historian's Story''. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989. *Ellis, John Tracy. ''American Catholicism''. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1956. *Ellis, John Tracy. "The Formative Years of the Catholic University of America". Washington, D.C.:Murray & Heister

References

Works cited *Minnich, Nelson H., Robert B. Eno, S.S., and Robert F. Trisco. ''Studies in Catholic History in Honor of John Tracy Ellis''. Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1985. *Shelley, Thomas J. "The Young John Tracy Ellis and American Catholic Intellectual Life." ''U.S. Catholic Historian''. 13:1 (Winter 1995), 1-18 *Shelley, Thomas J. "Ellis, John Tracy (1905-1992)" in Michael Glazier, ed. ''The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia'' (1994) pp 277–78 *Thomas, Jack Douglas. "Interpretations of American Catholic Church History: A Comparative Analysis of Representative Catholic Historians, 1875-1975." Ph. D. Diss.: Baylor University, 1976. Treats Ellis's work, in addition to historians John Gilmary Shea, Msgr. Peter Guilday, Theodore Maynard, and Fr. Thomas McAvoy CSC.

External links

Article in Commonweal Magazine
* ttp://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=10705 Article in America Magazinebr>Biography at CatholicAuthors.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ellis, John Tracy Catholic University of America alumni Historians of the Catholic Church People from Seneca, Illinois 1905 births 1992 deaths Laetare Medal recipients 20th-century American historians Catholics from Illinois 20th-century American Roman Catholic priests Presidents of the American Society of Church History