THE ROMAN CATHOLICS AMONG THE FREEDMEN.
The Independent closes a careful and, in the main, accurate summary of the work of Christian education among the negroes, with a view of what the Roman Catholics are doing. After speaking of the large estimates of money expended, and pupils taught by that church, it says:
“Nothing approaching a confirmation of these estimates has been brought to our notice. We have carefully examined the Roman Catholic papers with reference to this subject for a year past, and have been able to glean from them only the most barren record of facts and isolated movements.... We believe that, if the Roman Catholics really had facts to prove that they have made the progress they claim to have made, they would not hesitate to publish them conspicuously. As they fail to produce them, we are contented to believe, for the present, that they are doing no more than their fair share of the work, if so much, and receiving no more than their share of the conversions.”
In a later issue, the same paper says:
“We are glad to have been able to capture and expose the spectre which has been frightening Protestants so much. We mean the wholesale conversion of negroes to Catholicism. In a recent article in our ‘Religious Intelligence’ we gave all the information we could gather about the extent and results of Catholic missions among the freedmen, and there was nothing in it to alarm or annoy anybody. The Catholic Review quotes liberally from the article, and virtually concedes the accuracy of our statements in the following sentences:
“‘Like our contemporary, we have noticed the “extravagant estimates” to which it refers; but we never happened to notice their having been made by any Catholic authority whatever. They usually make their appearance in papers of the Christian Advocate stamp, and are employed as a stimulus to rouse missionary zeal in people who are much more readily moved to give money by their hatred of Popery than by their love for what they believe to be the truth taught by our Divine Lord. The Independent wants facts to substantiate these boastings. We suggest that it can always be accommodated with facts enough to substantiate the truth of whatever assertions are actually made by our missionaries. They can hardly be held responsible for any wild stories which other people may circulate at their expense.’
“Those who have been most troubled by reports of the gains of Catholicism among the negroes may give to the winds their fears.”
We, too, have been for more than a year making special inquiries. We have read the large estimates, which have been through the newspapers, of money expended, and pupils taught. The statement that $600,000 in gold (nearly one million dollars in our currency) was given to this work by the Propaganda at Rome, in 1867, and that, in the same year, sixty-six priests landed in New Orleans to undertake missionary work among the blacks, we trace to the Christian Intelligencer of that year.
The fact is, that it is extremely difficult to get at accurate and authorized statements in regard to all Roman Catholic missions. Their funds are not raised by appeals, based on special needs or special encouragements, or addressed to the general public; and their policy is one of quiet foundation-laying, rather than of demonstrative up-building. It is not an easy task, even, to secure reliable information of what they are doing here at our doors, or behind their own.
Recognizing this difficulty, we are not ready to agree with the Independent that, if the Roman Catholics had facts to prove, they would not hesitate to publish them conspicuously. Nor are we ready yet to congratulate ourselves that we “have been able to capture and expose the spectre,” while we are obliged to confess that we have not had it in our grasp sufficiently to take the measure of its outlines, or tell its height and girth.
A careful reading of the ‘virtual concession’ of the Catholic Review makes it amount to virtually nothing, except an ingenious evasion of responsibility for any statements which may have been made. It does not even say that the estimates have been extravagant, but uses that expression as a quotation from the Independent. It only suggests that assertions actually made by missionaries (who are careful not to make assertions) can always be substantiated.
We would merely caution the friend of the negro, and those who fear the influence of Romanism over him, that an argument based on ignorance is not very securely founded. And, while we would not have omne ignotum pro magnifico, or believe because the spectre is vague, it must be very large; on the other hand, we would not say of one whose wont is to hide itself, “Because we cannot dissect it, it is nothing.”