CONTENTS.
Ancient Saints of God, The, [19].
Ars, A Pilgrimage to, [24].
Alexandria, The Christian Schools of, [33], [721].
Animal Kingdom, Unity of Type in the, [71].
Art, [136], [286], [420].
Art, Christian, [246].
Authors, Royal and Imperial, [323].
All-Hallow Eve, or the Test of Futurity, [500], [657], [785].
Arks, Noah's, [513].
Babou, Monsieur, [106].
Blind Deaf Mute, History of a, [826].
Church in the United States, Progress of the, [1].
Constance Sherwood, [78], [163], [349], [482], [600], [748].
Catholicism, The Two Sides of, [96], [669], [741].
Cardinal Wiseman in Rome, [117] Catacombs, Recent Discoveries in the, [129].
Chastellux, The Marquis de, [181].
Church of England, Workings of the Holy Spirit in the, [289].
Cochin China, French, [369].
Consalvi's Memoirs, [377].
Church History, A Lost Chapter Recovered, [414].
Canova, Antonio, [598].
Cathedral Library, The, [679].
Catholic Philosophy in the Thirteenth Century, [685].
De Guérin, Eugénie and Maurice, [214].
Divina Commedia, Dante's, [268].
Dinner by Mistake, A, [535].
Dramatic Mysteries of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, [577].
Dublin May Morning, A, [825].
Extinct Species, [526].
Experience, Wisdom by, [851].
Falconry, Modern, [493].
Fifth Century, Civilization in the, [775].
Guérin, Eugénie and Maurice de, [214].
Glacier, A Night in a, [345].
Grand Chartreuse, A Visit to the, [830].
Hedwige, Queen of Poland, [145].
Heart and the Brain, [623].
Irish Poetry, Recent, [466].
Jem McGowan's Wish, [56].
Legends and Fables, The Truth of, [433].
London, Catholic Progress in, [703].
London, [836].
Laborers Gone to their Reward, [855].
Mont Cenis Tunnel, The, [60].
Mongols, Monks among the, [158].
Mourne, The Building of, [225].
Memoirs, Consalvi's, [377].
Maintenon, Madame de, [799].
Miscellany, [134], [280], [420], [567], [712], [858].
Nick of Time, The, [124].
Perilous Journey, A, [198].
Poucette, [260].
Prayer, What came of a, [697].
Russian Religious, A, [306].
Saints of God, The Ancient, [19].
Science, [134], [280], [712].
Streams, The Modern Genius of, [233].
Stolen Sketch, The, [314].
Swetchine, Madame, and her Salon, [456].
Shakespeare, William, [548].
St. Sophia, The Church and Mosque of, [641].
Species, The Origin and Mutability of, [845].
Three Wishes, The, [31].
Terrene Phosphorescence, [770].
Upfield, Many Years Ago at, [393].
Vanishing Race, A, [708].
Wiseman, Cardinal in Rome, [117].
Winds, The, [207].
Women, A City of, [514].
Wisdom by Experience, [851].
Young's Narcissa, [797].
POETRY
A Lie, [245].
Avignon, The Bells of, [783].
Domine Quo Vadis?[76].
Dream of Gerontius, The, [517], [630].
Dorothea, Saint, [666].
Ex Humo, [33].
Gerontius, The Dream of, [517], [630].
Hans Euler, [237].
Limerick Bells, Legend of, [195].
Mary, Queen of Scots, Hymn by, [337].
Martin's Puzzle, [739].
Saint Dorothea, [666].
Speech, [829].
Twilight in the North, [344].
Unspiritual Civilization, [747].
{iv}
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
Archbishop Spalding's Pastoral, [144].
At Anchor, [287].
American Annual Cyclopaedia, US.
A Man without a Country, [720].
Banim's Boyne Water, [286].
Beatrice, Miss Kavanagh's, [574].
Cardinal Wiseman's Sermons, [139].
Cummings' Spiritual Progress, [140].
Christian Examiner, Reply to the, [144].
Correlation and Conservation of Forces, The, [288], [425].
Confessors of Connaught, [574].
Curé of Ars, Life of the, [575].
Ceremonial of the Church, [720].
Darras' History of the Church, [141], [575], [860].
England, Froude's History of, [715].
Faith, the Victory, Bishop McGill's, [428].
Grace Morton, [574].
Heylen's Progress of the Age, etc., [142].
Household Poems, Longfellow's, [719].
Irvington Stories, [143].
Irish Street Ballads, [720].
John Mary Decalogne, Life of, [576].
Lamotte Fouqué's Undine, etc[142].
La Mère de Dieu, [432].
Life of Cicero, [573].
Moral Subjects, Card. Wiseman's Sermons on[287].
Mystical Rose, The, [288].
Mater Admirabilis.[429].
Month of Mary, [720].
Martyr's Monument, The, [860].
New Path, The, [288], [576].
Our Farm of Four Acres, [143].
Protestant Reformation, Abp. Spalding's History of the, [719].
Real and Ideal, [427].
Religious Perfection, Bayma's, [431].
Russo-Greek Church, The, [576].
Retreat, Meditations and Considerations for a, [720].
Songs for all Seasons, Tennyson's, [719].
Sybil, A Tragedy, [860].
Translation of the Iliad, Lord Derby's, [570].
Trübner's American and Oriental Literature, [576].
William Shakespeare, [860].
Whittier's Poems;[860].
Young Catholic's Library, [432].
Year of Mary, [719].
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. I., NO. 1.—APRIL, 1865.
From Le Correspondant.
THE PROGRESS OF THE CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES.
BY E. RAMEUR.
[The following article will no doubt be interesting to our readers, not only for its intrinsic merit and its store of valuable information, but also as a record of the impressions made upon an intelligent foreign Catholic, during a visit to this country. As might have been expected, the author has not escaped some errors in his historical and statistical statements—most of which we have noted in their appropriate places. It will also be observed that while exaggerating the importance of the early French settlements in the development of Catholicism in the United States, he has not given the Irish immigrants as much credit as they deserve. But despite these faults, which are such as a Frenchman might readily commit, the article will amply repay reading.—ED. CATHOLIC WORLD.]
After the Spaniards had discovered the New World, and while they were fighting against the Pagan civilization of the southern portions of the continent, the French made the first [permanent] European settlement on the shores of America. They founded Port Royal, in Acaclia, in 1604, and from that time their missionaries began to go forth among the savages of the North. It was not until 1620 that the first colony of English Puritans landed in Massachusetts, and it then seemed not improbable that Catholicism was destined to be the dominant religion of the New World; but subsequent Anglo-Saxon immigration and political vicissitudes so changed matters, that by the end of the last century one might well have believed that Protestantism was finally and completely established throughout North America. God, however, prepares his ways according to his own good pleasure; and he knows how to bring about secret and unforeseen changes, which set at naught all the calculations of man. The weakness and internal disorders of the Catholic nations, in the eighteenth century, retarded only for a moment the progress of the Catholic Church; and Providence, combining the despised efforts of those who seemed weak with the faults of those who seemed strong, confounded the superficial judgments of philosophers, and prepared the way for a speedy religious transformation of America.
This transformation is going on in our own times with a vigor which seems to increase every year. The [{2}] causes which have led to it were, at the outset, so trivial that no writer of the last century would have dreamed of making account of them. Yet, already at that time, Canada, where Catholicism is now more firmly established than in any other part of America, possessed that faithful and energetic population which has increased so wonderfully during the last half century; and even in the United States might have been found many an obscure, but a patient and stout-hearted little congregation—a relic of the old English Church, which after three centuries of oppression was to arise and spread itself with a new life. But no one set store by the poor French colonists; England and Protestantism, together, it was thought, would soon absorb them; and as for the Papists of the United States, the wise heads did not even suspect their existence. The writer who should have spoken of their future would only have been laughed at.
The English Catholics, like the Puritans, early learned to look toward America as a refuge from persecution, and in 1634, under the direction of Lord Baltimore, they founded the colony of Maryland. Despite persecution from Protestants whom they had freely admitted into their community, they prospered, increased, and became the germ of the Church of the United States, now so large and flourishing.
In the colonial archives of the Ministry of the Navy we have found a curious manuscript memoir upon Acadia, by Lamothe Cadillac, in which it is stated that in 1686 there were Catholic inhabitants in New York, and especially in Maryland, where they had seven or eight priests. Another paper preserved in the same archives mentions a Catholic priest residing in New York; and William Penn, who had established absolute toleration in the colony adjoining that of Maryland, speaks of an old Catholic priest who exercised the ministry in Pennsylvania.
The Catholics at this time are said to have composed a thirtieth part of the whole population of Maryland. This estimate seems to us too low. At all events, the increase of our unfortunate brethren in the faith was retarded by persecution and difficulties of all kinds which surrounded them. In the Puritan colonies of the North, they were absolutely proscribed. In the Southern colonies, of Virginia, Georgia, and Carolina, their condition was but little better; in New York they enjoyed a precarious toleration in the teeth of penal laws. In Maryland and Pennsylvania alone they were granted freedom of worship, and a legal status; though even in those colonies they were exposed to a thousand wrongs and vexations. Maryland persecuted them from time to time and banished their priests; and William Penn, in his tolerant conduct toward them, was bitterly opposed by his own people.
Nevertheless, despite difficulties and violence, the Anglo-American Catholics increased by little and little, wherever they got a foothold; the descendants of the old settlers multiplied; new ones came from England and Ireland; and a German immigration set in, especially in Pennsylvania, where several congregations of German Catholics were formed at a very early period. In the archives of this province we have found several valuable indications of the state of the Church in 1760. There were then two priests, one a Frenchman or an Englishman, named Robert Harding, the other a German of the name of Schneider. It seems probable that they were both Jesuits. [Footnote 1] In a letter to Governor Loudon, in 1757, Father Harding estimates the number of Catholics in Philadelphia and its immediate neighborhood at two thousand—English, Irish, and German; but in the absence of Father Schneider he could not be positive as to these figures. A letter from Gouverneur Morris in 1756 [{3}] speaks of the Catholics of Maryland and Pennsylvania as being very numerous and enjoying freedom of worship, and adds, that in Philadelphia there is a Jesuit who is a very able and talented man. The Abbé Robin, a chaplain in Rochambeau's army in 1781, informs us in his narrative that there were several Catholic churches at Fredericksburg, Va., and even a Catholic congregation at Charleston, S.C.
[Footnote 1: In De Courcy and Shea's "Catholic Church in the United States" pp. 211, 212, an account will be found of both these missionaries. The first mentioned was an Englishman. Both were— Jesuits. ED. C. W.]
The toleration accorded to the Jesuits in the United States was precarious, but it amounted in time to a pretty complete freedom; and as they were not disturbed when the order was suppressed in Europe, some of their brethren from abroad took refuge with them; so that in 1784, we find, according to Mr. C. Moreau, in his excellent work on the French emigrant priests in America, [Footnote 2] nineteen priests in Maryland, and five in Pennsylvania. To these we must add the priests of Detroit, Mich., Vincennes, Ind., and Kaskaskia and Cahokia, Ill., all four originally French-Canadian settlements which were ceded to England along with Canada, and after the American Revolution became parts of the United States. Counting, moreover, the missionaries scattered among the Indian tribes, we may safely say that the American Republic contained at the period of which we are speaking not fewer than thirty or forty ecclesiastics. The number of the faithful may be set down as 16,000 in Maryland, 7,000 or 8,000 in Pennsylvania, 3,000 at Detroit and Vincennes, and about 2,500 in southern Illinois; in all the other states together they hardly amounted to 1,500. In a total population therefore of 3,000,000 they numbered about 30,000, and of these 5,500 were of French origin. Such was the condition of the Church in the United States when it was regularly established in 1789 by the erection of an episcopal see at Baltimore, and the appointment, as bishop, of Mr. Carroll, an American priest, born of one of the oldest Catholic families of Maryland. The dispersion of the clergy of France, in 1790, soon afterward supplied America with numerous evangelical laborers, who gave a new impulse to the development which was just becoming apparent in the infant Church.
[Footnote 2: One vol. 12mo. Paris: Douniol.]
A few years before the French Revolution, Mr. Emery, superior of Saint Sulpice, guided by what we must term an extraordinary inspiration, came to the assistance of the American Church, and with the help of his brother Sulpitians and at the cost of the society, founded a theological seminary at Baltimore. His plans were already well matured when Bishop Carroll, soon after his appointment, entering heartily into the project, promised him a house and all the assistance he could give. Four Sulpitians accordingly set out from Paris in 1790, taking with them five Seminarians. They were supplied with 30,000 francs to defray the cost of their establishment, and to this modest sum the crisis which soon overtook the parent establishment allowed them to add but little; but this mite, bestowed by the Church of France in the last days of her wealth, was destined to become, like the widow's mite, the price of innumerable blessings.
Between 1791 and 1799 the storm of revolution drove twenty-three French priests to the United States. As the first apostles, when they set out from Rome, portioned out Germany and Gaul among themselves, so they divided this country, and most of them organized new communities of Christians, or by their zeal awakened communities that slept. Six of them, Flaget, Cheverus, Dubourg, Maréchal, Dubois, and David, became bishops.
The base of operations from which these peaceful but victorious invaders went forth was Baltimore, the episcopal see around which were gathered the old American clergy and the greater part of the Catholic population. It was here that the Sulpitians [{4}] had their seminary, and this establishment became a centre of attraction for a great many of these exiled priests who belonged to the Society of Saint Sulpice. Some (as MM. Ciquard, Matignon, and Cheverus) bent their steps from Baltimore toward the laborious missions among the intolerant and often fanatical Puritans of the North, where the Catholics—a mere handful—were found scattered far and wide; isolated in the midst of a Protestant population; deprived of priests and religious services, and in danger of totally forgetting the faith in which they had been baptized. Nothing discouraged these apostolic men. Aided by divine grace, they awakened the indifferent, converted heretics, gathered about them the few Catholics who immigrated from Europe, attracted all men by their affable and conciliating manners, their intelligence and education, and the disinterestedness of their lives. Soon on this apparently sterile soil Catholic parishes grew up and flourished in the midst of people who had never before seen a priest. Thus were founded the churches of Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut—so quickly that, in 1810 (that is to say, only eighteen years after the beginning of the missions), it was deemed advisable to erect for them another bishopric. Congregations had sprung up on every side as if by enchantment, and the venerable Abbé Cheverus was appointed their first bishop.
Others went westward. The Abbés Flaget, Badin, Barriere, Fournier, and Salmon carried the faith into Kentucky. There they found a few Catholic families who had emigrated from Maryland. With them they organized churches, which increased with prodigious rapidity, and were the origin of the present dioceses of Louisville, Covington, Nashville, and Alton.
The Abbés Richard, Levadour, Dilhiet, and several others, passed through the forest and the wilderness, and joined the old French colonies which still survived around the ruins of the French military posts in the Northwest and in the valley of the Mississippi. They found there a few missionaries, whom the Canadian Church still maintained in those distant countries; but their ranks were thin, and they were old and feeble. This precious reinforcement enabled them to give a fresh impetus to the French Catholic congregations over whom they kept watch in the forest. Detroit, Vincennes, Cahokia, Kaskaskia, and afterward St. Geneviève and St. Louis in Missouri, ceded to the United States in 1803, received the visits of these new apostles, and experienced the benefits of their intelligence and zeal. Nearly all the places where they fixed themselves have since given their names to large and flourishing bishoprics.
Several of the emigrant priests remained in Maryland and Virginia, and enabled the Sulpitians to complete the organization of their seminary, while at the same time they assisted Bishop Carroll in providing more perfectly and regularly for the wants of those central provinces which might be called the first home of American Catholicism. The number of the faithful everywhere increased remarkably. We can hardly estimate the extraordinary influence which these French missionaries exercised by their exemplary lives, their learning, their great qualities as men, and their virtues as saints; and the Anglo-Saxon inhabitants (who are thoroughly Protestant if you will, but for all that religious at bottom) were struck by their character all the more forcibly because it was so totally different from what their prejudices had led them to expect of the Catholic clergy.
There is something patriarchal and Homeric in the lives of these men, which read like the poetic legends in which nations have commemorated the history of their first establishment. We have seen the journal of one of these missionaries—the Abbé Bourg, [{5}] who labored further North, in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. His life was one long, perpetual Odyssey. In the spring he used to start from the Bay of Chaleur, traverse the northern coasts of New Brunswick, pass down the Bay of Fundy, make the entire circuit of the peninsula of Nova Scotia, and after a journey of five hundred leagues, performed in nine or ten months, visit the islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and so come back to his point of departure. From place to place, the news of his approach was sent forward by the settlers, so that whenever he stopped he found the faithful waiting for him, and whole families came fifteen or twenty leagues to meet him. Hardly had he arrived before he began the round of priestly labor, of confession and baptism, of burial and marriage. He was the arbiter of private quarrels, and often of public disputes. He found time withal to look after the education of the children—at least to make sure that they were well taught at home. Thus he would stay fifteen days perhaps in one place, a month in another, according to the number of the inhabitants. The first communion of the children crowned his visit. Then the man of God, with a last blessing on his weeping flock, disappeared for a whole year; and when the apparition so long desired, but so transitory, had passed, it left behind a halo of superhuman glory, which seemed to these pious people the glory rather of a prophet than of an ordinary man.
In such ways the marks of a messenger from God seemed more and more clearly and unmistakably stamped upon the Catholic missionary, and Protestants themselves began to yield to the subtle influence of so much real virtue and self-devotion. Conversions were frequent even among the descendants of the stern Puritans. Many of the most fervent Catholic families in the United States date from this period. A rich Presbyterian minister of Boston (Mr. John Thayer) was converted, and became a priest and an apostle. So God scattered the seed of grace behind the footsteps of his poor, persecuted children, who, despite their apparent misery, bore continually with them the wealth of the soul, the power of the Word, and the marvellous attraction of their sacrifices and virtues.
Providence, however, had not deployed so strong a force for no purpose beyond the capture of these converts. A very few missionaries might have sufficed for that; but it was now time to prepare the land for the great European immigration which was to cause the astonishing growth of the United States. Spreading themselves over the vast area of the Union, the emigrants found everywhere these veteran soldiers whom the French Revolution had sent forth into the New World as pioneers, tried both by the pains of persecution and the labors of apostleship. Before this great human tide the old emigrant priests were like the primitive rocks which arrest and fix geological deposits, The Catholic part of the tossing flood invariably settled around them and their disciples. All over the West the churches founded by the old French settlers increased, and new ones sprang up wherever a Catholic priest established himself. From that moment the grand progressive movement has never ceased. The blood of the martyrs of France, the spirit of her banished apostles, became fruitful of blessings, of which the American churches are daily sensible.
The first bishop in the United States had been appointed in 1789. Four years afterward another see was erected at New Orleans, La., which, ten years later, became a part of the United States; and in 1808, so rapid had been the Catholic development, that three new bishops were consecrated—one for Louisville, Ky., another for New York, and the third for Boston, Mass. Two of these sees were occupied by the French missionaries who had founded them—Bishop [{6}] Flaget at Louisville, and Bishop Cheverus at Boston. That of New York was entrusted to a venerable priest of English [Irish] origin—the Rev. Luke Concanen. In the whole United States there were then sixty-eight priests and about 100,000 Catholics. Lei us now glance at the rapid increase of the American Church up to our own day.