THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES,

1776-1876.

The social conditions of life which have been developed in the European colonies of North America, though to a certain extent the result of the physical surroundings of the early settlers, are chiefly the freer growth of principles which had been active, for centuries, in the Christian nations of the Old World. The elements of society here, unhindered by custom, law, or privilege, grouped themselves quickly and spontaneously into the forms to which they were tending in Europe also, but slowly and through conflict and struggle. The great and most significant fact, that it was found impossible in the New World to create privileged classes, clearly pointed in the direction in which European civilization was moving. Another fact not less noteworthy is the failure of every attempt to establish religion in this country.

Though there is but little to please the fancy or fire the imagination in American character or institutions, it is nevertheless to this country that the eyes of the thoughtful and observant from every part of the world are turned. The Catholicity of Christian civilization has generalized political problems and social movements. Civilization, like religion, has ceased to be national; and the bearing of a people’s life upon the welfare of the human race has come to be of greater moment than its effect upon the national character. It is to this that the universal interest which centres in the United States must be attributed.

We are a commonplace and mediocre people; practical, without high ideals, lofty aspirations, or excellent standards of worth and character. In philosophy, in science, in literature, in art, in culture, we are inferior to the nations of Europe. No mind transcendentally great has appeared among us; not one who is heir to all the ages and citizen of the world. Our ablest thinkers are merely the disciples of some foreign master. Our most gifted poets belong to the careful kind, who with effort and the file give polish and smoothness, but not the mens divinior, to their verse; and who, when they attempt a loftier flight, grow dull and monotonous as a Western prairie or Rocky Mountain table-land. Our most popular heroes—Washington and Lincoln—are but common men, and the higher is he who is least the product of our democratic institutions.

Our commercial enterprise and mechanical achievements are worthy of admiration, but not so far above those of other nations as to attract special attention.

The essential life of the Catholic Church is independent of her worldly condition; and though we are bound to believe that she is to remain amongst men until the end, we are yet not forbidden to hold that at times she may to human eyes seem almost to have ceased to be; that as in the past Christ was entombed, the deletum nomen Christianum was proclaimed, in the future also the heavens may grow dark, God’s countenance seemingly be withdrawn, and the voice of despair cry out that all have bent the knee to Baal.

“But yet the Son of Man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?” We may hope, we may despond; let us, then, dispassionately consider the facts.

First, we will put aside the assumption that it is possible to organize this modern society so as to crush the church by persecution or violence. In a social state, which can be strong only by being just, attempts of this kind, if successful, would inevitably lead to anarchy and chaos, out of which the church would again come forth with or before the civil order. We cannot, then, look forward to a prolonged and open conflict between the church and the civilized governments of the world without giving up all hope in the permanency and effectiveness of the social phase upon which we have entered. In the end the European states, like the American, must be convinced that, if they would live, they must also let live; since a modus vivendi between church and state is absolutely essential to the permanence of society as now constituted.

If we would understand the history of our country, we must not lose sight of the religious character of the men by whom it was explored and colonized. Religious zeal led the Puritans to New England, the Catholics to Maryland, and the Quakers to Pennsylvania; and among the Spaniards and the French there were many who, like Columbus and Champlain, deemed the salvation of a soul of greater moment than the conquest of an empire. We might, indeed, without going beyond our present subject, speak of the heroic and gentle lives of the apostolic men who, from Maine to California, from Florida to the Northern Lakes, toiled among the Indians, and not in vain, that they might win them from savage ways and lift them up to higher modes of life. The Catholics of the United States can never forget that the labors of these men belong to the history of the church on this continent; that the lives they offered up, the blood they shed, plead for us before God; and that if their work is disappearing, it sinks into the grave only with the dying race which they more than all others have loved and served. But in this age men are little inclined to dwell upon memories, however glorious. We live in the present and in the future, and, in spite of much cheap sentiment and wordy philanthropy, we have but weak sympathy with decaying races. We are interested in what is or is to be, not in what has been; and perhaps it is well that this is so. We have but feeble power to think or act or love, and it should not be wasted. If Americans to-day are busy with thoughts of a hundred years ago, it is not that they love those old times and their simple ways, but that by contrast they may, in boastful self-complacency, glory in the present. They look back, not to regret the fast-receding shore, but to congratulate themselves that they have left it already so far behind. It is enough, then, to have alluded to the labors of the Catholic missionaries among the North American Indians, since those labors have had and can have but small influence upon the history of the church in the United States. To understand this history we need only study that of the Europeans and their descendants on this continent.

The early colonists of the present territory of the United States were as unlike in their religious as in their national characters. English Puritans founded the colonies of New England; New York was settled by the Dutch; Delaware and New Jersey by the Dutch and the Swedes; Pennsylvania by Quakers from England, who were followed by a German colony. Virginia was the home of the English who adhered to the Established Church of the mother country, and North Carolina became the refuge of the Nonconformists from Virginia; in South Carolina a considerable number of Huguenots found an asylum; and in Maryland the first settlers were chiefly English Catholics. Nearly all these colonies owed their foundation to the religious troubles of Europe. The Puritans, the Catholics, and the Quakers were more eager to find a home in which they could freely worship God than to amass wealth.

The measures, therefore, which the colonies of New England took to prevent the establishment of the Catholic Church on their soil, were merely the expression of the horror and dread of what they conceived its influence and tendency to be. In 1631, just eleven years after the landing of the Mayflower, Sir Christopher Gardiner, on mere suspicion of being a papist, was seized and sent out of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and in the same year the General Court wrote a letter denouncing the minister at Watertown for giving expression to the opinion that the Church of Rome is a true church. Three years later Roger Williams, whose tolerant temper has been an exhaustless theme of praise, joined with the Puritans in declaring the cross a “relic of Antichrist, a popish symbol savoring of superstition and not to be countenanced by Christian men”; and, in proof of the sincerity of their zeal, these godly men cut the cross from out the English flag. Priests were forbidden, under pain of imprisonment and even death, to enter the colonies; and the neighboring Catholic settlements of Canada were regarded with sentiments of such bigoted hatred as to blind the Puritans to their own most evident political and commercial interests. So unrelenting was their fanaticism that one of the grievances which they most strongly urged against George III. was that he tolerated popery in Canada. In the New England colonies, down to 1776, the Catholic Church had no existence, and the same may be said of the other colonies, with the exception of Maryland and of a few families scattered through parts of Pennsylvania. In Maryland itself, where the principles of religious liberty, which now form a part of the organic law of the land, had been first proclaimed by the Catholic colonists, the persecution of the church early became an important feature in the colonial legislation. In successive enactments the Catholics were forbidden to teach school, to hold civil office, and to have public worship; and were, moreover, taxed for the support of the Established Church. The religious character of Virginia, though less intense and earnest than that of New England, can hardly be said to have been less anti-Catholic; and it is therefore not surprising that we should find the cruel penal code of the mother country in full vigor in this colony.

In the presence of the impending conflict with England political questions became supreme, and the Convention of 1774, in its appeal to the country, entreated all classes of citizens to put away religious disputes and animosities, which could only withhold them from uniting in the defence of their common rights and liberties. Though this appeal was probably meant to smooth the way for a more cordial union between New England and the Southern colonies, which were even then as unlike as Puritan and Cavalier, it was also an evidence of the public feeling, showing that with the American people religious questions were fast coming to be merely of secondary importance. At any rate it was responded to cheerfully and generously by the Catholics, who, without stopping to think of the wrongs they had suffered, threw themselves heartily into the contest for national independence. The signer of the Declaration who risked most was a Catholic, and a Catholic priest was a member of the delegation sent to Canada to bring about an alliance, or at least to secure the neutrality of that province.

The conduct of the Catholics in the war made, no doubt, a favorable impression, and the very important aid given to the American cause by Catholic France had still further influence in softening the asperities of Protestant prejudice; but, unless we are mistaken, we must seek elsewhere for the explanation of the clause of the federal Constitution which provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the United States”; as well as of the First Amendment, to the effect that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These provisions were merely a part of a general policy, which restricted as far as possible the functions of the federal government, and left to the several States as much of their separate sovereignty as was consistent with the existence of the national Union.

The provision which denied to the general government all right of interference in religious matters was a political necessity. Any attempt to introduce into Congress religious discussions would have necessarily rent asunder the still feeble bands by which New England and the Southern States were held together. The reasons of policy which forbade the federal government to meddle with slavery applied with ten-fold force to questions of religion.

The First Amendment to the Constitution, of which we Americans are so fond of boasting, cannot, then, be interpreted as the proclamation of the principle of toleration or of the separation of church and state; it is merely the expression of the will of the confederating States to retain their pre-existing rights of control over religion, which, indeed, they could not have delegated to the general government without imperilling the very existence of the Union. Nearly all the leading statesmen of that day recognized the necessity of some kind of union of church and state, and their views were embodied in the different State constitutions.

The year before the first battle of the Revolution no less than eighteen Baptists were confined in one jail in Massachusetts for refusing to pay ministerial rates; and yet John Adams declared “that a change in the solar system might be expected as soon as a change in the ecclesiastical system of Massachusetts”; and at a much later period Judge Story was able to affirm that “it yet remained a problem to be solved in human affairs whether any free government can be permanent where the public worship of God and the support of religion constitute no part of the policy or duty of the state.”

Events were just then taking place in France which were of great moment to the young church on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. The French Revolution was getting ready to guillotine priests and to turn churches into barracks; and M. Emery, the Superior-General of the Order of Saint Sulpice, who was as far-seeing as he was fearless, entered into correspondence with Bishop Carroll, in England, with a view to open an ecclesiastical seminary in the United States. The offer was gladly accepted, and the year following (1791) M. Nagot organized the Theological Seminary of Baltimore, and in the same year the first Catholic college in the United States was opened at Georgetown, in the District of Columbia. In 1790 Father Charles Neale brought from Antwerp a community of Carmelite nuns, who established themselves near Port Tobacco, in Southern Maryland. This was the first convent of religious women founded in the United States, the house of Ursuline nuns in New Orleans having come into existence while Louisiana was still a French colony. A few years later a number of religious ladies adopted the rule of the Order of the Visitation and organized a convent in Georgetown; and in 1809 Mother Seton founded near Emmittsburg, in Maryland, the first community of Sisters of Charity in this country, just one year after Father Dubois, the future Bishop of New York, had opened Mt. St. Mary’s College. In 1805 Bishop Carroll reorganized the Society of Jesus, and in 1806 the Dominicans founded their first convent in the United States, at St. Rose, in Kentucky. Two years later episcopal sees were established at New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Bardstown, with an archiepiscopal centre at Baltimore.

In this way the church was preparing, as far as the slender means at her command would permit, to receive and care for the vast multitudes of Catholics who began to seek refuge in the United States from the persecutions and oppressions of the British and other European governments. But her resources were not equal to the urgency and magnitude of the occasion, and her history, during the half-century immediately following the close of the Revolutionary war, though full of examples of courage, zeal, and energy, shows her in the throes of a struggle which, whether it were for life or death, seemed doubtful.

Bishop England, though inclined to exaggerate the losses of the church in this country, was certainly not mistaken in holding that during the period of which we speak, though there was an increase of congregations, there was yet a great falling away of Catholics from the faith in the United States.

Unfortunately, the want of priests and churches cannot with truth be said to have been the greatest evil, especially in the early years of the organization of the hierarchy. A spirit of insubordination existed both in the clergy and the laity. “Every day,” wrote Bishop Carroll, “furnishes me with new reflections, and almost every day produces new events to alarm my conscience and excite fresh solicitude at the prospect before me. You cannot conceive the trouble which I suffer already, and the still greater which I foresee from the medley of clerical characters, coming from different quarters and of various educations, and seeking employment here. I cannot avoid employing some of them, and soon they begin to create disturbances.” There were troubles and scandals in nearly all the larger cities, which in some instances were fomented by the priests themselves. The trustee system was a fruitful cause of disturbance, threatening at times to bring the greatest evils upon the church; especially as there seemed to be reason to fear lest the dissensions between the clergy and the laity might serve as a pretext for the intermeddling of the civil authority in ecclesiastical affairs. Except in the two or three colleges of which we have spoken, there was no Catholic education to be had; and for a long time the few elementary schools which were opened were of a very wretched kind. Indeed, we may say that it is only within the last quarter of a century that many of the bishops and priests of this country have come to realize the all-importance of Catholic education.

Another unavoidable evil was the mingling of various nationalities in the same church, giving rise to jealousies, and frequently to dissensions; and to this we may add that the very people to whom above all others the church in this country is indebted for its progress met with peculiar difficulties in the fulfilment of their God-given mission. This fact did not escape the keen eye of the first bishop of Charleston.

The 15th of next August eighty-six years will have passed since the consecration of Bishop Carroll, and to this period the organized efforts of the church to secure a position in this country are confined. The work then begun has not for a moment been intermitted. In the midst of losses, defeats, persecutions, anxieties, doubts, revilings, calumnies, the struggle has been still carried on. Each year with its sorrows brought also its joys. The progress, if at times imperceptible, was yet real. When in the early synods and councils of Baltimore were gathered the strong and true-hearted bishops and priests who have now gone to their rest, there was doubtless more of sadness than of exultation in their words as they spoke of their scattered and poorly-provided flocks, of the want of priests, of churches, of schools, of asylums, of the hardships of missionary life, and of labors that seemed in vain. Still, they sowed in faith, knowing that God it is who gives the increase. Like weary travellers who seem to make no headway, by looking back they saw how much they had advanced. New churches were built, new congregations were formed, new dioceses were organized. On some mountain-side or in deep wooded vale a cloister, a convent, a college, a seminary arose, one hardly knew how, and yet another and another, until these retreats of learning and virtue dotted the land. The elements of discord and disturbance within the church grew less and less active, the relations between priest and people became more intimate and cordial, the tone of Catholic feeling improved, ecclesiastical discipline was strengthened, and the self-respect of the Catholic body increased.

The danger, which at one time may have seemed imminent, of the estrangement of the laity from the clergy, disappeared little by little, and to-day in no country in the world are priest and people more strongly united than here. With the more thorough organization of dioceses and congregations parochial schools became practicable, and the great progress made in Catholic elementary education is one of the most significant and reassuring facts connected with the history of the church in the United States. The number of pupils in our parochial schools was, in 1873, 380,000, and to-day it is probably not much short of half a million, which, however, is even less than half of the Catholic school population of the entire country. But the work of building schools is still progressing, and the conviction of the indispensable necessity of religious education is growing with both priests and people; so that we may confidently hope that the time is not very remote when in this country Catholic children will be brought up only in Catholic schools. By establishing protectories, industrial schools, and asylums we are growing year after year better able to provide for our orphan children.

In 1875 there were, according to the official statistics of the various dioceses, five thousand and seventy-four priests, twelve hundred and seventy-three ecclesiastical students, and six thousand five hundred and twenty-eight churches and chapels in the United States. There were also, at the same time, thirty-three theological seminaries, sixty-three colleges, five hundred and fifty-seven academies and select schools, sixteen hundred and forty-five parochial schools, two hundred and fourteen asylums, and ninety-six hospitals under the authority and control of the Catholic hierarchy of this country.

One hundred years ago there was not a Catholic ecclesiastical student, or theological seminary, or college, or academy, or parochial school, or asylum, or hospital from Maine to Georgia.

Father Badin, the first person who ever received Holy Orders in the United States, was ordained in the old cathedral of Baltimore on the 25th of May, 1793, just eighty-three years ago. It is now eighty-six years since Bishop Carroll was consecrated, and down to 1808 he remained the only Catholic bishop in the American Church, whose hierarchy is composed at present of one cardinal, ten archbishops, forty-six bishops, and eight vicars-apostolic.

In 1790 there was not a convent in the United States; in 1800 there were but two; to-day there are more than three hundred and fifty for women, and there are probably one hundred and thirty for men.

We may be permitted to refer also to the increase of the wealth of the church in this country, especially since this seems to be the cause of great uneasiness to the faithful and unselfish representatives of the sovereign people. The value of the property owned by the church in this country, as given in the census reports, was, in 1850, $9,256,758; in 1860, $26,774,119; and in 1870, $60,985,565. The ratio of increase from 1850 to 1860 was 189 per cent., and from 1860 to 1870 128 per cent.; while the aggregate wealth of the whole country during these same periods increased in the former decade only 125 per cent. and in the latter only 86 per cent. In 1850 the value of the church property of the Baptists, the Episcopalians, the Methodists, and the Presbyterians was greater than that of the Catholics, but in 1870 we had taken the second rank in point of wealth, and to-day we think there is no doubt but that we hold the first.

Those who know more of the history of the church in this country than can be learned from statistical reports, or articles in reviews, or cyclopædias are aware that there are no possessions in the United States more honestly acquired, or bought with money more hardly earned, than those of the Catholic Church; and that her present wealth, instead of being due to special financial shrewdness, has in many instances been got in spite of great and frequent financial blundering; while the bishops and priests of America, with here and there an exception, have neither had nor sought to have any political influence, nor would they, if disposed to meddle with partisan politics, meet with any encouragement from the Catholic people. Their position with regard to the question of education is the result of purely conscientious and religious motives; and while claiming for Catholics the right to give to their children the benefit of religious training, they have everywhere and repeatedly given the most convincing proofs of their sincere desire to concede to all others the fullest liberty in this as in other matters; and though they cannot approve of that feature in the common-school system which excludes all teaching of doctrinal religion, they have never thought of pretending that those to whom it does commend itself should not be permitted to try the experiment of a purely secular education, provided they respect in others the freedom of conscience which is now a part of the organic law of the land.

With very few exceptions, Catholics have, throughout the whole country, been rigidly excluded from all the higher political offices; though now, unfortunately, this can hardly be considered a grievance, since the general corruption and unworthiness of public life have caused the more respectable class of American citizens to shrink from the coarseness and vulgarity of our partisan contests. On the other hand, those nominal Catholics who acquire influence in what are called “ward politics” are generally very much like other politicians, eager to serve God and the country whenever it puts money in their purse. What political reasons may have determined the great body of Catholic voters in this country to prefer the Democratic to the Whig, and later to the Republican, party, we know not; but we are very sure that nothing could be more unfounded than to imagine that the welfare or progress of the church can in any way be connected with the success of Democratic partisanism. As a religious body we have nothing to hope from either or any party. We ask nothing but the liberty which with us is considered the inalienable heritage of all Christian believers; and for the rest, we know that a politician doing a good deed is more to be shunned than an enemy plotting evil.

A more interesting study than the wealth of the church is the growth of the Catholic population in the United States, though, in the absence of reliable or complete statistics on this subject, we are not able to give an entirely satisfactory or exact statement of the facts. The “number of sittings,” to use the phrase of the official reports, given in the United States Census, is of scarcely any assistance in determining the religious statistics of the country. The number of Protestant church sittings, for instance, was in 1870 19,674,548, whereas the membership of all the Protestant sects of the country was only about 7,000,000; and it is well known that, while in most Protestant churches many seats are usually unoccupied during religious service, in the Catholic churches the same seat is frequently filled by three, or four, or even five different persons, who take it in succession at the various Masses.

Our position in this country hitherto has turned the thoughts of our best minds to polemical and controversial writing, which, though useful and even necessary, has only a temporary value, since it is addressed primarily to objections and phases of belief which owe their special significance to transitory conditions of society and opinion. Controversies between Catholics and Protestants which forty years ago attracted general attention and produced considerable impression, would now pass unnoticed; for the simple reason that Americans, in the confusion of sects and religious opinions, have come to realize that Protestantism has no doctrinal basis, and is left to trust exclusively to religious sentiment. Dogmatic Protestantism is of the past, and the most popular preachers are those who appeal most skilfully to the religious instincts without requiring the acceptance of any religious beliefs. Most of our best writers have been men whose arduous labors left them but little time for study or literary composition, and their works frequently bear the marks of hasty performance; but they will nevertheless not suffer from comparison with the religious writings of American Protestants. The ablest man who has devoted himself to the discussion of religion and philosophy, or probably any other subject, in the United States during the last hundred years is Dr. Brownson, all of whose best thoughts have been given to the elucidation of Catholic truth; and though there was something wanting to make him either a great philosopher or a great theologian, or even a perfect master of style, we know of no other American of whom this may not also be justly said; unless, perhaps, we may consider Prescott, Hawthorne, or Irving worthy of the last of these titles. And though we Catholics have no man who is able to take up the pen which has just fallen from the hand of Dr. Brownson, none who have the power which once belonged to England and Hughes, we are in this not more unfortunate than our country, which no longer finds men like Adams or Jefferson to represent not unworthily its supreme dignity; nor any like Webster, Clay, or Calhoun, whose minds were as lofty as their honor was pure, to lend the authority of wisdom and eloquence to the deliberations of a great people.

And now we will crave the indulgence of our readers while we conclude with a brief reference to what we conceive to be the office which the Catholic Church is destined to fulfil in behalf of the American state and civilization.

De Tocqueville, in his thoughtful and singularly judicious treatise on American institutions, makes the following very just remarks: