James Andrew Corcoran

James Andrew Corcoran (b. March 31, 1820, Charleston, South Carolina - d. July 16, 1889, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was the editor of the United States Catholic Miscellany, the first distinctively Catholic literary periodical published in the United States and the theologian for the bishops of the United States in the First Vatican Council. He authored "the Spalding formula", an attempted compromise during the First Vatican Council on the doctrine of papal infallibility. At the age of 14 he was sent to the College of Propaganda, Rome, where was ordained a priest on 21 December 1842. He was the first person native to the Carolinas who received priestly orders. He remained a year longer in Rome to complete his studies and was made doctor in sacred theology.

He learned to read the literatures and dialects of Western and Northern Europe, and spoke Latin fluently, as can be seen in the text of the Second of the Plenary Councils of Baltimore. In addition, he was a profound Semitic scholar, with a special predilection for Syriac. On the death of Bishop John England in 1842 he was recalled to Charleston, where he taught in the seminary, doing parochial work in the meantime, and in conjunction with Dr. Lynch edited the United States Catholic Miscellany. His position as a Catholic editor involved him in many controversies, one being on the life and teachings of Martin Luther, for which Corcoran procured from Europe an abundance of Lutherana. He had made great headway with the preparation of a life of Luther, when in 1861 his manuscript and library were destroyed by fire.

During the American Civil War his sympathies were with the South, and the end of the struggle found him rector of a parish in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he stayed during an epidemic of cholera which decimated his congregation. He was made secretary to the Provincial Councils of Baltimore of 1855 and 1858; also secretary in chief at the Second Plenary Council of 1866. He was one of the editors of the complete works of Bishop England.

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