THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

VOL. XXIII., No. 137.—AUGUST, 1876.

Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1876.

THE NEXT PHASE OF CATHOLICITY IN THE UNITED STATES.

The history of the universal church, replete as it is with miraculous conversions and great moral revolutions, presents no parallel to the growth and spread of the Catholic faith in this republic; and if we be allowed to forecast the future by the light of the past, we may without presumption predict for Catholicity a career of usefulness and glory, an influence far-reaching and all-pervading, on American soil, hitherto unequalled, even in the most triumphant days of our holy and venerable mother.

In the early ages of Christianity whole tribes and nations were won over bodily to the Gospel, not alone by the superhuman efforts of a comparatively small number of apostolic men, but incidentally by the attractions of the purer and higher order of civilization which everywhere followed their footsteps and resulted naturally from their teachings. The primitive missionaries were reformers of manners and governments, advocates of mercy and equity, promoters of peace, industry, and education, as well as expounders of divine law. They indeed realized the fabled power of Orpheus, and tamed the brute passions of paganism by the harmony of their lives and the melody of their doctrines.

Far different have been the circumstances which surrounded the first permanent introduction of Catholicity into what is now the United States. Though we can dwell with commendable pride on the devotion and self-sacrifice which characterized the Spanish and French Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits in their arduous labors among the aborigines; and recall with deep gratitude the beneficent and indefatigable exertions of the zealous pioneers of our present hierarchy and priesthood, we cannot help feeling that we have had no national inheritance in the merits of those extraordinary men of the Old World, those confessors and martyrs, whose names shine forth with such resplendent lustre in the calendar of the saints of God.

Still, this very obscurity was their safeguard and defence. Though soon declared free by the fundamental law of the new confederacy, public opinion, or rather popular prejudice, was against them, and for many years after the achievement of our independence their numbers increased with more steadiness than rapidity. Recruits came from all quarters. Attracted by the guarantees presented by the Constitution, Catholics of various nationalities hastened to place themselves under its protecting ægis. The hurricane of revolution which swept over France and the greater part of Europe, and reached even the West Indies, drove many pious priests and exemplary laymen to our shores. On the north the French Canadian crossed the frontier, while as our southern boundaries were enlarged so as to embrace the valley of the Lower Mississippi, the inhabitants of that large region, who were nearly all of one faith, helped materially to swell the Catholic population of the Union. At that period Ireland had not begun to pour in her myriads, but a small, steady stream of emigrants was setting in from other ports as soon as it was ascertained that the new nation of the west had discarded the penal code of England when it had thrown off her authority.

In 1810 the Catholics within the limits of the United States were estimated at upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand, and the clergy numbered eighty, or double the number reported in 1800. Twenty years afterwards the laity had increased to 450,000 and the clergy to 232. The hierarchy, which only dated from 1789, at this time reckoned thirteen bishops.

Satisfactory as were these results, the next decade was destined to witness an advance much more magnificent as to numerical strength, and infinitely more salutary when we reflect on the quarter from which some of that strength was drawn.

The Oxford movement, as it was called, had already spread consternation among the Anglicans. Many of the ablest and most erudite scholars of Oxford University, wearied and dissatisfied with the contradictions and pretensions of English Protestantism, had sought peace and rest in the bosom of the church. Their writings and example produced a profound sensation wherever the English language was spoken, and nowhere a more decided one than in this country. Men who had formerly exhibited nothing but contempt or indifference for Catholicity, and some even who had displayed a marked hostility to the faith, eagerly read the works of such thinkers as Newman, and, as a consequence, guided by Providence, abandoned their favorite heretical notions and became reconciled to the church. This spirit of investigation and submission pervaded all classes, particularly the more studious, conscientious, and influential. Judges, journalists, artists, authors, physicians, ministers, and doctors of divinity openly declared their adhesion to the Catholic faith, and arrayed themselves beside the contemned and obscure Irish immigrant and his children. Many of the ablest publicists of to-day, not a few of the most energetic of the clergy, and at least one illustrious member of the hierarchy are the fruits of this sympathetic movement which had its origin in the cloisters of the once Catholic university.

Another cause which helped to swell the Catholic census about the same time was the annexation of Texas, which eventually led to the acquisition of New Mexico and California. The population of those Territories could have scarcely numbered less than two hundred thousand, nearly all of whom were Catholics. By a strange coincidence the sons of the Puritans, who claimed the land and the fulness thereof as theirs, were brought into the same fold and under the same jurisdiction simultaneously with the native Mexican, whose ancestors were Catholics before the keel of the Mayflower was laid.

German immigration, also, had assumed large proportions. From 1840 to 1850 the arrivals were 440,000, of whom it may be safely said one-fourth, or 110,000, were Catholics. This stalwart element sought what was then considered the far West-Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Territories—where to-day we find them and their descendants among the most devoted children of the church.

The destruction of the potato crop of Ireland in 1846-7-8 was undoubtedly the act of an inscrutable Providence; the misery, suffering, and wholesale sacrifice of human life which followed were the work of man. At the worst times of the famine there was always more than enough cattle and grain in the country to feed the entire population. Under a wise or just government a sufficiency of these would have been retained to supply the primary wants of the people; as it was, they were exported and sold in foreign markets to satisfy that most insensate and insatiable of all human beings, the Irish landlord.

Appalled by the suddenness and extent of the calamity, the peasantry at first stood mute, and before assistance could reach them many hundreds had actually lain down and died of starvation. Then, when public and private charity was exhausted; when pestilence was superadded to want, and all earthly succor seemed to have failed; when nothing but death or the poorhouse threatened even the best of the middle class, the people, with, it would appear, one accord, resolved to give up home and kindred, rushed like a broken and routed army to the nearest sea-ports, and abandoned a country apparently doomed to destruction. Many crossed to England and Scotland, others fled even to the Antipodes, but the great mass looked to the United States as their haven of refuge. Thenceforth every day witnessed the arrival of crowded immigrant ships in our harbors, while the streets of our large cities were literally thronged with swarms of strange and emaciated figures. From 1840 to 1850 over one million Irish immigrants arrived in the United States, one-fourth of whom landed at New York during the last three years of that period.

Then began in earnest the labors of the resident priesthood, which, though reinforced by numbers of their brethren from abroad, were still hardly equal to the herculean task of providing for the spiritual wants of so vast a mass of people scattered in every direction. Some means, however, had to be found to reach and minister to those faithful though helpless outcasts; some roof under which the holy sacrifice of the Mass might be occasionally offered up and the essential sacraments of the church administered. The churches already built scarcely sufficed for the Catholics settled in the country, yet here was a new congregation arriving in every ship. In the large centres of population the difficulty was not so great; for with the increase of priests the number of Masses said in each church was multiplied, while the sick and the penitent seldom went unattended or unshriven. In the smaller towns and remote settlements the case was far different. Private houses, “shanties,” barns, ball-rooms, court-houses, lecture-halls, markets, and even sectarian meeting-houses were brought into requisition. Yet, with all these appliances, there were hundreds of small, isolated congregations who seldom were enabled to hear Mass oftener than once a month, and in many cases less often, one priest having to attend four or five such missions in rotation.

But the clergy had other and scarcely less sacred duties to perform. Such heterogeneous masses of humanity huddled together for weeks in the foul holds of rotten emigrant vessels, where was germinated the seeds of disease sown by famine and pestilence, could not but bring infection to our shores. From Gros Isle in the St. Lawrence, and along the Atlantic seaboard to New Orleans, the deadly ship-fever polluted the atmosphere, and hundreds who, flying from starvation, had braved the dangers of the ocean, found that they had endured those hardships only to die within sight of the promised land. One prelate and several heroic priests fell victims to the dire pestilence, but others were found equally zealous, not only to soothe the last moments of the dying with the consolations of religion, but to comfort and care for the helpless survivors.

At the beginning of the second half of the century we find the Catholic population of the country estimated at two and a quarter millions, the clergy at eighteen hundred, or one to every thirteen hundred of the laity, while the number of dioceses had increased to thirty-three.

Thus another million and a quarter were added to the church in America, making a grand total at the end of this decade of four and a half millions of souls under the charge of 2,235 priests, or one for every 2,000 persons. Thus we see that, though the priesthood had received an accession of 435 members in ten years, the labors of each individual had been almost doubled.

Incredible as these figures may seem, the next decade showed little diminution in amount. From 1860 to 1870 the Catholic immigration, calculating on the above basis, may be set down as follows:

If to this reinforcement be added those who have come among us since 1870, we find that the past fifteen years have increased the Catholic census by about one and a half millions from abroad, and materially helped to bring it up to what, on the best authority, it is said to be in this year of grace, 1876—seven millions, or about one-sixth of the entire population.

Fortunately for the interests of religion, the increase in the number of priests kept pace with the wonderful augmentation of the laity. In 1785 there was one priest to every 1,000 laymen; in 1808, one to every 1,500; in 1830, one to every 1,900; in 1840, one to 2,000; 1850, one to 1,200; 1860, one to 2,000; and in 1875, one to every 1,300, or 5,074 priests of all ranks.

Thus it may be well said that the past quarter of a century was the era of church-building as well as of increase. But the vast energy so displayed was not employed solely in one direction. While thousands of temples have arisen to the honor and glory of God, his afflicted creatures, the sick, unfortunate, and helpless; the foundling infant and decrepit grandsire; the orphan bereft of its natural protectors, and the worse than orphaned—the pariah of her sex—all have been cared for, fed, clothed, consoled, and housed. Eighty-seven hospitals and two hundred and twenty asylums of various kinds attest the practical charity and active benevolence of the Catholics of America.

It was formerly said that the Catholic Church could not prosper under a free government; that it needed the help of kingcraft and despotic laws to enforce its decrees and sustain its authority. We have proved the fallacy of this calumny pretty thoroughly—so conclusively, indeed, as to excite real or pretended alarm among bigots of all sects and of no sect at all. No people are more at home and thrive better in all respects in this land of liberty than Catholics.

It has also been asserted that we are the enemies of enlightenment. Our hundreds of convents and academies, and thousands of parochial schools, might be considered a sufficient answer to this falsehood. But, in the providence of God, the time has come when we are called upon to take a further step and demonstrate that in the domain of the highest intellectual studies we are a match for the best of our opponents.

Though our seminaries and colleges do not show a proportionate ratio of increase, either in numbers or attendance, the result, if taken by itself, is highly satisfactory. In the last century only two of them existed in the United States; up to 1850 ten more were added; in 1874 we had eighteen theological seminaries, attended by 1,375 students, and sixty-eight colleges with over ten thousand pupils and about six hundred professors and teachers.

With all this it must be confessed that, as far as human knowledge is concerned, the Catholics of the United States are as a body behind their non-Catholic fellow-citizens. We acknowledge this inferiority, and can satisfactorily account for it. Under the peculiar difficulties of our position it became a matter of primary necessity that our co-religionists should first have churches wherein to worship God, asylums and hospitals to shelter and succor the weak and afflicted, and free schools for the training of the children of the poor, whose faith and morals were endangered by the plan of instruction pursued in the schools of the state. But now that all these wants have been supplied as far as practicable, and that we may safely confide to posterity the task of completing the work already so far advanced, our next duty plainly is to provide for the generation growing up around us facilities for a higher and more thorough system of education than has yet been attempted in our colleges and academies, equal in all respects, if not superior, to that so liberally afforded by the sectarian and secular seats of learning which so plentifully besprinkle the land.

Remembering what has been already wrought by the zeal and unswerving perseverance of the Catholic body in other directions in the past, we should look forward with undiminished courage and confidence to the future. If with a disorganized, unsettled people like ours, generally poor in the world’s goods, and with never-ending personal demands on their limited resources, we have been able to build and maintain so many churches, institutions, convents, and schools in so short a time, what may not be expected from the same class, now that they are regularly domiciled, and a portion, at least, of the wealth that ever rewards industry and application is fast becoming theirs?

But the Irish and their descendants, who will long continue to form the majority of the Catholic population of this republic, would derive most benefit from such an establishment. That subtle Celtic intellect, so acute yet so versatile; fully capable of grappling with the most difficult problems of human existence and social responsibility, yet so replete with poetry, romance, and enthusiasm; so long repressed, yet never dimmed, would, we feel assured, spring into life and activity beyond the conception of most men, were such an opportunity presented. In the three centuries following the conversion of the Irish their schools were unsurpassed throughout Christendom in extent, numbers, and attendance. The whole island, in fact, seemed to be turned into one vast reservoir of learning, from which flowed perennial streams of Christian knowledge over the then sterile wastes of semi-civilized Europe. The number of missionaries and teachers which Ireland produced in that most brilliant epoch of her history is almost incredible, and her zeal and energy in the dissemination of Catholic doctrine, even in the most remote parts of the Continent, became proverbial.

Civil wars, long, bloody, and desolating, destroyed her institutions and scattered her libraries, while penal laws of preternatural ingenuity and cruelty completed the work of desolation by denying her even the commonest rudiments of instruction. But as she kept the faith pure and undefiled throughout the long night of slavery, so she has preserved the moral tone and vigor of thought which ever follow a strict observance of the divine code. One generation alone, removed from the barriers and devices of the oppressor, has been enough to show that, in mind as well as in body, the Irish race is at least the equal of even the most favored nations of the globe. In the strength of pure religious conviction lies the greatness of a people.

We have had our epochs of immigration and church-building, of extraordinary growth in popular education and incredible effort to supply the wants of the poor and friendless. We are now entering upon an era of mental culture, higher, more elaborate, and more general in its application than it was possible, or even desirable, to initiate amid the distractions and occupations of the busy past. But, ardent as is our desire to see such an important step taken in a direction which we feel would lead to certain success, we only look on it as a means to definite and ennobling ends, and not as the end itself. Mere mental training, dissociated from moral tuition and habits of manly thought and action, would be worse than useless; it would be dangerous alike to the student, to society, and to the cause of morality and religion. To develop the intellect merely at the expense of those greater attributes of the soul in the proper cultivation of which consists the real ostensible difference between man and the brute creation, would be to multiply infinitely the number of educated imbeciles of which the world has already too many.

It cannot be denied that the object of all education ought to be truth, a knowledge of God and of his works, that in the study of them we may learn to love and worship his holy name. Though the custodians of the divine gift of Pentecost are few, as children of the church we may all become sharers in the ineffable benefaction conferred on the apostles. Truth is one and indivisible, It is found not only in the doctrines and discipline of the church, but in every department of life—in every pursuit, study, and calling incidental to the existence of accountable beings. The nearer we come to the apprehension of this truth, the more we are disposed to seek and treasure it when found, no matter in what sphere of life our lot may be cast.

Unfortunately for religion and civilization, the last three centuries have been remarkable more for confusion of ideas on this important subject, and utter perversion of the natural laws, than any other period in the whole Christian era. The war engendered by the Protestant Reformation, the atheistic philosophy of the Encyclopedists, the destructive dogmas of the secret societies, and, in our own day, the gross materialism of the new school of scientists, have so clouded and bewildered, so perverted and debased, the human understanding that the world has come to look upon mere brilliancy of diction, novelty of opinion, and audacity of assertion as the highest evidences of intellectual superiority. Modern Europe, from end to end, is the victim of this lamentable delusion, and our own otherwise favored country is rapidly falling under its malign influence. Shall this foul plague be allowed to enshroud us all, and blight with its deadly breath the future of our young republic?

If we contemplate the condition of modern art, we witness degeneracy almost as lamentable. Men wonder that no great sculptors and painters have arisen since the Italian, Spanish, and Flemish schools of the middle ages ceased to exist. Since then we have had artists who draw as well as, and who understood anatomy better than, the best of the old masters; but the inspiration, the spirit that made the figure on the canvas seem to live, is wanting.

The best of our modern painters are but copyists of nature, of landscape, man, or animals. They display no creative power; they are incapable of producing anything original, anything like the least of those historic pieces, those almost superhuman groups, which illustrate in a thousand varieties the incidents in the earthly career of our Redeemer and his holy Mother. Why? Because the mind must first be able to conceive in all its integrity and beauty what the hand is designed to execute. No matter how exact the eye or how deft the touch, if the imagination be not purified by religion and guided by truth, it is vain to attempt to represent on canvas or in marble pure, exalted types of excellence of which we are incapable of forming within ourselves more than an indefinite conception.

It is thus that the Reformers in England, Germany, and the north of Europe, and the Revolutionists in France and the southern part of the Continent, conspired to paralyze, what they could not wholly annihilate, that splendid fabric of Christian thought and genius reared by the church after many centuries of toil and anxiety. In this hemisphere we have suffered from the same malign causes, but our affection is more accidental and sympathetic than chronic. There is nothing in the mental condition of this new and cosmopolitan people to discourage or repel the efforts of those who would earnestly strive after a higher, purer, and more Christian mental development. But such efforts, to be successful, must be made within the bosom of the church. The Protestant sects are incapable of any combined movement in that direction; for they have neither unity of action or thought, nor a common standard by which to measure mental excellence and moral soundness. Clearly the change must originate in the Catholic body.

When we assert this we are well aware of the magnitude of the work to be accomplished and the apparent paucity of the laborers to execute it. But our confidence in the future is sustained by experience. Whoever would have said at the beginning of this century that this hundredth year of our independence would find the Catholics of the United States counted by millions, and their priests, churches, and schools by thousands, would have been looked upon as a dreamer or a rash enthusiast. Who shall say what the beginning of the next century may not be destined to usher in?

Any system of education which falls short of this would be worse than none at all. To confer a degree on a student, and allow him to enter the world with the éclat of a university course to give his opinions a certain intellectual character, without qualifying him to uphold the honor of his Alma Mater and the integrity of his creed, would of course be an act of egregious folly. As well might we uniform a soldier and send him into action without arms, or entrust our lives and liberties to the keeping of a statesman of whose loyalty and fidelity we were not fully assured.

Years ago it was confidently asserted by a prominent dissenting minister of this city that the United States would eventually become the battle-field upon which the contest for permanent supremacy between Protestantism and Catholicity would be waged. We agreed with his views then, and everything that has happened in the religious world since confirms the sagacity of the remark. We desire nothing better than that this struggle, if it have to come, shall take place here, where both parties are equally free and well matched, though each has peculiar advantages not enjoyed by the other. The sects, on their side, have numbers, wealth, social position, political influence, and possession not only of the public schools and institutions of the state, but of all the old colleges and universities. On the other hand, the church in America has all the energy, hopefulness, and enthusiasm of youth united to the mature judgment of advanced years; thorough unanimity; and, above and beyond all, a creed and a doctrine founded on eternal truth, fortified by tradition, upheld by divine assistance, and guarded by an infallible authority. The impending conflict will not be one of arms nor of words, but of works and brains; and as the superiority of our opponents is material, not spiritual, it is not difficult to foresee to which side victory would incline.

Now, it is well known and pretty generally acknowledged that sooner or later the Catholic Church has always suffered from its connection with the state, even when the alliance seemed to be more than favorable to her. From the very nature of her organization she cannot long be made an instrument of despotism or of selfish ambition. In non-Catholic countries she has generally been persecuted and proscribed: in others she has been as often the victim of impertinent interference and injudicious patronage on the part of temporal rulers. In none has she been free to carry out her divine mission; and, sad to relate but true nevertheless, on all the broad and fair earth the only spot where the church of Christ may be said to be unshackled and disenthralled is this young republic of the West.

This fact is in itself a great gain for us in view of the opposition we may expect in the time to come; but there are others which, though less apparent, are well worthy of consideration. Few persons who have not devoted special attention to the matter can form an estimate of the radical change which has been taking place, gradually but surely, in the American mind regarding Catholicity. Fifty years ago there were hundreds of towns and villages where the professors of our faith, few and obscure, were looked upon with downright contempt, while a Catholic priest, because unknown, was regarded as little less than a monster of iniquity. This gross prejudice, the result more of ignorance than badness of heart, was stimulated and fostered by local ministers and itinerant preachers, who, having neither fixed principles in religion nor definite notions of right and wrong upon which to descant, have been too much in the habit of entertaining their hearers with denunciations of the church and her priesthood. In nearly all those places where formerly so little was known about our faith are now to be found substantial churches, large and respectable congregations, zealous and respected priests, and perhaps one or more educational and charitable institutions.

It may now be justly said that bigotry of the former malignant type which affected all classes can at present only be found among the lowest and most ignorant, and that Protestants of a higher grade in society, convinced of their errors, have gracefully abandoned them. So far have they advanced in charity that they are now willing to admit that Catholics may be good citizens, agreeable neighbors, and honest dealers; but still they cannot be persuaded but that mentally, if not morally, they are inferior in natural capacity and acquired information to their own co-religionists. There only remains one thing more to be done to make persons who think thus sincere friends and possible allies, and that is to demonstrate to their satisfaction that there is nothing in the teachings or practices of our religion tending to dwarf the intellect or weaken the understanding; but, on the contrary, that the more closely we assimilate human knowledge to the revealed law of God as expounded by the church, and the more we are governed by the rules which she has laid down for our mental conduct, the better qualified we become to stand in the front rank of the highest social and intellectual movements of the age. This accomplished, as we fondly hope it soon will be, the future destiny of our half-converted brethren lies in the hands of a power superior to that of man.

Every indication of the popular desire for such an educational establishment as we have foreshadowed points out the present as the most propitious time for its foundation. By and by it may be too late. The national character of our people, though not yet definitely formed, is fast crystallizing, and whatever impress is made on it now will be defined and permanent. We do not aim to distort or subdue the intellect of our young men, but to captivate and to cultivate it by holding up for its ambition the noblest of careers—the pursuit of virtue and the study of the great truths of religion and of nature. We would make, if we could, the Catholic laymen of the next generation, each in his own sphere, leaders in a new crusade against error, not through the use of force or legal compulsion, but by the greater purity of their lives and the superiority of their genius.

We cannot have a healthy Catholic literature and a correct standard of public taste without lay aid any more than we can fill our colleges, schools of art and science, conservatories and gymnasiums, without such cordial assistance. Catholic laymen have to a great extent the destiny of their children and of the church in America in their keeping; and as their responsibility is heavy, so will be their reward or condemnation signal, according as they use or abuse the trust reposed in them by an all-wise Providence.

So far they have shown every indication of a willingness to make all possible sacrifices for the education of their children, and a reasonable desire to encourage Catholic literature, much more so than those can appreciate who do not know our country and the peculiar difficulties we have had to overcome. Some of our foreign contemporaries, in England especially, are in the habit once in a while of drawing pleasing distinctions between the state of Catholic literature abroad and in this country. In this comparison we naturally appear to no very great advantage. We are frequently reminded of the lamentable condition of things that compels us to draw on foreign sources for our literary stores, while it is hinted that it is almost time we looked to ourselves for intellectual support. All this, of course, we take placidly enough, while thoroughly understanding the spirit that gives rise to it. We are proud to concede the superiority of the great body of English and other Catholic writers who have done such service to the church and conferred such honor on the Catholic name. Still, we do not feel so utterly hopeless of future success in this line, nor even despondent as to the degree of success to which we have already attained. And considering the means at our disposal, glancing back at the century behind us and its fruits, the 25,000 swelled to 7,000,000, the solitary bishop to a great hierarchy, the few scattered priests to a valiant army, the little out-of-the-way chapels to a multitude of massive churches and towering cathedrals, the communities of religious of both sexes, the asylums for the waifs and strays, the deserted and sorrowing, the maimed, the halt, and the blind of the world—glancing at all this, we are in a fair position to say to literary critics: Gentlemen, thus far our hands have been pretty full. We grant you all the culture you please; may it increase a hundred-fold! We have not had much time to sit down and study. From the beginning we have been in the thick of a fierce fight. Peace is at last coming; the smoke of battle is clearing away; the heavens are opening and smiling above us. Our dead are buried; our wounded are gathered in; the prisoners taken from us are being sullenly but surely returned; our frontier is guarded and respected. Now we turn to the arts of peace. All that has been accomplished thus far has been done without any abundance of fine writing. This has been mainly the work of our faithful Catholic laity under the guidance of a loyal clergy and episcopacy. To that same laity we look for greater triumphs to come.