They were seen as having a unique importance for the Church in the United States, inasmuch as the earlier ones legislated for practically the whole territory of the Republic, and furnished moreover a norm for all the later Plenary Councils of Baltimore covering the whole country.
[1]The First Provincial Council was held in 1829 and was attended by James Whitfield, the Archbishop of Baltimore, and four bishops.
3) The ceremonies of baptism need not be supplied for converted heretics who had been previously validly baptized.
5) The offerings of the faithful are to be divided into three parts: for the support of the pastor, the relief of the poor and the sustentation of the church.
16) In mixed marriages the non-Catholic must promise before witnesses to bring up the offspring of the union as Catholics.
20) Catholics may work on days of obligation owing to the circumstances of place, but they must hear Mass if possible.
23) The rich are to be warned that they sin grievously if, through their parsimony, pastors cannot be sustained and multiplied.
The second series of enactments of the First Council referred to are the articles concerning ecclesiastical discipline sanctioned by the common consent of the Archbishop of Baltimore and the other American bishops in 1810.
2) Regulars should not be withdrawn from pastoral work without the consent of the bishops, if their assistance be deemed a necessity to the existence or prosperity of their missions.
At one of the sessions of this council several lawyers (among them Roger B. Taney, afterwards Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States) gave advice to the bishops on points of American law concerning property rights and ecclesiastical courts.
In addition to their decrees, the bishops asked for and obtained from Rome permission to use for adults the formula of infant baptism; to consecrate baptismal water with the form approved for the missionaries of Peru and to extend the time for fulfilling the paschal precept, i.e. from the first Sunday of Lent to Trinity Sunday.
Approval of the Council's decisions on diocesan boundaries was confirmed by Pope Gregory XVI in a papal bull entitled Benedictus Deus, issued on 17 June 1834.
Among those attending this council was Charles Auguste Marie Joseph, Count of Forbin-Janson, the exiled Bishop of Nancy and Toul, France, to whom the fathers granted a right to a decisive vote.
A letter of consolation was sent by the council to the persecuted bishops of Poland, and another of thanks to the moderators of the Leopold Institute of Vienna, Austria.
1) that the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived without sin is chosen as the patron saint of the United States.
2) Priests ordained titulo missionis may not enter a religious order without permission of their ordinaries.
At the request of the fathers, the Holy See sanctioned a formula to be used by the bishops in taking the oath at their consecration.
2) The Holy See is to be informed that the fathers think it opportune to define as a dogma the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The fathers moreover petitioned the Holy See to raise the New Orleans, Cincinnati and New York City dioceses to Metropolitan dignity and to make a new limitation of the Provinces of Baltimore and St. Louis.
The pope granted the first part of the petition, but deferred acting on the question of primacy.
1) The fathers joyfully receive the dogmatic decision of the pope defining the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
2) Priests are warned that after August, 1857, adults must be baptized according to the regular formula for that service in the Roman Ritual and not according to that for infant baptism.
6) Bishops are exhorted to increase the number of their diocesan consultors to ten or twelve, but it will not be necessary to obtain the opinion of all of them, even on important matters, the counsel of three or four will suffice.
On the death of the bishop, all the consultors shall send to the archbishop their written opinions as to an eligible successor for the vacant see.
To the Acts of this council is appended a decree of the Holy See, sanctioning a mode of procedure in judicial causes of clerics.
The main work of this synod consisted in drawing up petitions to the Holy See concerning a dispensation from abstinence on Saturdays; the conceding of certain honorary privileges to the Archbishop of Baltimore; the granting to the bishops the permission to allow the Blessed Sacrament to be kept in chapels of religious communities not subject to the law of enclosure.
That concerning the Archbishop of Baltimore granted to him, as ruler of the mother-church of the United States, an honorary pre-eminence, to consist in his taking precedence of any other archbishop in the country, without regard to promotion or consecration, and in his having the place of honour in all councils and conventions.
The fathers also sent to Rome an inquiry as to the nature of the vows (solemn or simple) of religious women, especially of Visitation Nuns in the United States, an answer to which was deferred to a later time (1864).
In 1869, the Tenth Council enacted decrees that were signed by the archbishop, twelve bishops and one abbot.