Background
Griffin, James Aloysius was born on February 27, 1883 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Thomas J. and Catherine (Woulfe) Griffin.
Griffin, James Aloysius was born on February 27, 1883 in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Son of Thomas J. and Catherine (Woulfe) Griffin.
He attended Saint Gabriel High School and Saint Ignatius College in Chicago before furthering his studies in Rome at Propaganda College, from where he obtained a Doctor of Philosophy (1906) and a Doctor of Divinity (1910).
He served as Bishop of Springfield in Illinois from 1924 until his death in 1948. While in Rome, he served as secretary to Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val. Griffin was ordained to the priesthood on July 4, 1909.
Upon his return to the United States in 1910, he served as a curate at Saint James Church in Chicago until 1915, when he was transferred to Saint Brendan Church.
He served as pastor of Assumption Church in Coal City (1917–1921) and of Saint Mary Church in Joliet (1921–1924). On November 10, 1923, Griffin was appointed the fourth Bishop of Springfield by Pope Pius XI. He received his episcopal consecration on February 25, 1924 from Archbishop George Mundelein, with Bishops Samuel Stritch and Edward Francis Hoban serving as co-consecrators.
He dedicated the new Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in 1928. Griffin erected 51 new churches, schools, convents and charitable institutions.
The total cost spent in his first ten years was close to $6.5 million.
He established Marquette Catholic High School in Alton, and Springfield College. In 1939 he joined Bishop John Mark Gannon and Monsignor Michael Joseph Ready in a visit to Mexico to confer with Archbishop Luis Martínez on a seminary founded in Las Vegas, New Mexico, to supply priests for the Mexican Church, since seminaries were at that time illegal in that country. Following the election of George Doctorate. Stoddard as president of the University of Illinois in 1945, Griffin condemned Stoddard"s assertion in his book The Meaning of Intelligence that, "Manitoba-made concepts, such as devils, witches, taboos, hellfire, original sin..and divine revelation..have distorted the intellectual processes of millions of persons." Griffin said, "We want to know what we"re paying foreign.Thousands of future students believe in the objective validity of..He will evidently try to dispossess his charges of their feeble-mindedness." In response, Stoddard said he "should be much happier if the Bishop and his group read the whole book" and that, taken as a whole, it actually urged a "return to religion."
Griffin died, aged 65.
He is buried in one of five crypts of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception.
Quotations: "Manitoba-made concepts, such as devils, witches, taboos, hellfire, original sin..and divine revelation..have distorted the intellectual processes of millions of persons.".
Member Ancient Order Hibernians.