He was the founder and first president of the New York Catholic Protectory, an institution for the shelter and education of destitute and abandoned children.

[3] After the unexpected death of the Right Reverend John Stark Ravenscroft in 1830, Ives was elected bishop of North Carolina on May 21, 1831.

Having become deeply attracted to the Oxford Movement while studying Church history, Ives founded a religious community called the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross at Valle Crucis, North Carolina.

These views were not shared by members of the Low Church party who felt that it tended to obscure the differences between Anglicanism and Catholicism.

[6] Despite these concessions, Ives's theological convictions continued to evolve until he was no longer able to accept that his denomination was a branch of the true Catholic church.

"But in a time of rabid, irrational anti-Catholicism, Ives's espousal of a more inclusive and flexible historical catholicism within Anglicanism received a suspicious and horrified hearing.

As a lay Catholic, whose marriage barred him from the priesthood, Ives spent his last years as a professor of rhetoric at St. John's College (now Fordham University).

Ives was a moving force behind the establishment in 1863 of "The Society for the Protection of Destitute Catholic Children in the City of New York", which founded the New York Catholic Protectory, an institution for the shelter and training of the young, designed to afford neglected or abandoned children shelter, food, raiment and the rudiments of an education in religion, morals, science and manual training or industrial pursuits.