Ellis, John Tracy, 1905-1992

Born 30 July 1905 in Illinois, Monsignor Ellis received his A.B. from St. Viator College in 1927 and his A.M. and Ph. D. from the Catholic University of America (CUA) in 1928 and 1930 respectively. He taught at St. Viator, 1930-1932, and the College of St. Theresa, 1932-1934, before returning to CUA to enter the Sulpician Seminary. Ordained a priest in 1938, he also became an Instructor in the CUA history department. In 1947 he became ordinary professor of church history. In addition to teaching, in 1941 he became managing editor of the Catholic historical review as well as secretary (later president) of the American Catholic Historical Association. Beginning in 1964, he taught at San Francisco, Brown, and Notre Dame universities; the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley; and the Gregorian and Angelicum universities in Rome. Returning to CUA in 1976, he taught in both the theology and church history departments until suffering a stroke in 1989. In 1989, Pope John Paul II made him a Prothonotary Apostolic, the highest honor for a Priest short of becoming a Bishop.

The founding of the American Catholic Hierarchy dates from the appointment in 1789 of John Carroll as first Bishop (later Archbishop) of Baltimore, which was coterminus with the United States of that time. Over the next sixty year there were seven Provincial Councils of Baltimore that became increasingly national in scope as additional metropolitan provinces were added. Hereafter followed the First, Second, and Third Plenary Councils, covoked in 1852, 1866, and 1884, respectively. In 1889, upon the occasion of the centennial of the establishment of the American hierarchy, it was decided that there should be annual meetings thereafter. The bishops did meet from 1890 onward but since these meetings had no canonical status they did not issue pastorals. The American Church retained mission status from Rome until 1908 and official meetings of the American bishops with canonical status only began in 1919 in the wake of the establishment of the National Catholic War Council in 1917 and the Bishops' Program of Social Reconstruction in 1919 as well as the Pastoral letter of 1919.