Archbishop John Ireland commissioned the cathedral in 1904.

“The next century of the life of the Church in America will be what we make it. … As we will it, so shall the story be. … There is so much at stake for God and souls, for Church and country!”

Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles shared these words Nov. 16 in his presidential address during the General Assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. But they weren’t his own — they were proclaimed more than a century ago by Archbishop John Ireland of St. Paul.

Drawn from his 1889 address “The Mission of Catholics in America,” the speech continued, as Archbishop Gomez quoted, “There is so much dependency upon our cooperation with the divine action in the world. The duty of the moment is to understand our responsibility, and to do the full work that heaven has allotted to us … . With us it will be done, without us it will not be done.”

Speaking to his fellow bishops gathered in Baltimore for their biannual meeting, Archbishop Gomez called Archbishop Ireland’s speech “remarkable,” noting that the turn-of-the-twentieth century bishop “believed deeply in what Rev. Martin Luther King and others have called the ‘American creed’ — the belief expressed in our founding documents, that all men and women are created equal and endowed with sacred dignity, a transcendent destiny, and right that must never be denied.”

Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, gives his presidential address Nov. 16, 2021, during a session of the bishops' fall general assembly in Baltimore. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is the first in-person bishops' meeting since 2019.

Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, gives his presidential address Nov. 16, 2021, during a session of the bishops’ fall general assembly in Baltimore. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it is the first in-person bishops’ meeting since 2019. CNS photo/Bob Roller

A native of Ireland, Archbishop Ireland led the Diocese — and beginning in 1888, Archdiocese — of St. Paul from 1884 to his death in 1918. Before that role, he was a Civil War chaplain with the Fifth Minnesota Regiment and pastor of the Cathedral of St. Paul, and then served from 1875 to 1884 as a co-adjutor bishop. As bishop, he was both a religious and civic leader who championed the causes of African-Americans and immigrants, Catholic education and the social temperance movement. He founded The St. Paul Seminary and the now-University of St. Thomas, and commissioned the building of the archdiocese’s co-cathedrals, the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul and Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis.

Elected to a three-year term as USCCB president in 2019, Archbishop Gomez said Archbishop Ireland’s “The Mission of Catholics in America” address teaches that “every Catholic shares responsibility for the Church’s mission,” and that “the Church’s purpose does not change with the culture, or the politics, or the spirit of the age.”

“The Church’s mission is the same in every time and place,” Archbishop Gomez said. “It is to proclaim Jesus Christ and to help every person to find him and to walk with him.”

“I know each one of us feels that same urgency that Archbishop Ireland felt more than a century ago,” he continued. “We realize that God is calling us to bring souls to Christ and build his Kingdom, to infuse our culture and society with the values of the Gospel.”

Archbishop Gomez said that the contemporary challenge of the Church in America is how to carry out its mission in a highly secularized culture, and in a society that “seems to be losing its ‘story.’” He said “our neighbors … are looking for a new story to give meaning to their lives, to tell them what they are searching for and why.”

“Our neighbors do not need a new story,” he said. “What they need is to hear the true story — the beautiful story of Christ’s love for us, his dying and rising from the dead for us, and the hope he brings to our lives.”

He continued: “Archbishop Ireland talked about ‘the duty of the moment.’ I believe the duty of our moment is this beautiful responsibility that we have to tell the Christian story once again to the people of our times.”

Archbishop Gomez also concluded his address with a reference to the Minnesota bishop. “As Archbishop Ireland said more than a century ago, there is so much at stake in our mission, for God and for souls, for Church and for country: ‘As we will it, so shall the story be.’”