THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON THE ISLAND OF NEW-YORK.
THE REPUBLIC.
The history of Catholicity in colonial days, with its romance, its terrors, and the last impotent struggles of fanatical opposition have, we trust, not been without interest. The peace opened New-York to Catholic immigration, and the influence of the French officers, of both army and navy, had done much to dispel prejudice. The church to which Rochambeau, La Fayette, De Kalb, Pulaski, De Grasse, Vandreuil belonged was socially and politically respectable—nay, it was not antagonistic to American freedom.
The founder of the Catholic congregation had looked anxiously forward to this moment.
The venerable Father Farmer came on to resume his labors, and gather such Catholics as the seven years' war had left or gathered. His visits and pastoral care, then resumed, were continued till the arrival of the Rev. Charles Whelan, an Irish Franciscan, who had been chaplain on one of the vessels belonging to the fleet of the Count de Grasse. He was the first regularly settled priest in the city of New York. Catholicity thus had a priest, but as yet no church. Mass was said near Mr. Stoughton's house, on Water street; in the house of Don Diego de Gardoqui, the Spanish ambassador; in a building in Vauxhall Garden, between Chambers and Warren streets; and in a loft over a carpenter shop on Barclay street. An Italian nobleman, Count Castiglioni, mentions his attending mass in a room any thing but becoming so solemn an act of religious worship. The use of a court-room in the Exchange was solicited from the city authorities, but refused. Then the little band of Catholics took heart and resolved to rear an edifice that would lift its cross-crowned spire in the land. It is a sign of the good feeling that had to some extent obtained, that Trinity church sold the Catholic body the five lots of ground they desired for the erection of their church. Here, at the corner of Barclay and Church streets, the corner-stone of St. Peter's church was laid November 4th, 1786, by Don Diego de Gardoqui, as representative of Charles III., King of Spain, whose aid to the work entitles him to be regarded as its chief benefactor.
This pioneer Catholic church was a modest structure forty-eight feet in front by eighty-one in depth. Its progress was slow; and divine worship was performed in it for some years before the vestry, portico, pews, gallery, and steeple were at last completed in 1792.
The congregation, living so long amid a Protestant population whose system Halleck describes so truly,
"They reverence their priest; but disagreeing
In price or creed, dismiss him without fear,"
had adopted some of their ideas, and forgetting that the mass was a sacrifice, and the peculiar and only worship of God, thought that an eloquent sermon was every thing. A vehement and impassioned preacher it was their great ambition to secure, and as the trustees controlled matters almost absolutely, the earlier priests had to endure much humiliation and actual suffering.
The reader will find this period of struggle well described in Bishop Bayley's pages, with the culmination of the evils of trusteeism in the bankruptcy of St. Peter's.
A pastor was at last found who filled the difficult position. This was the Rev. William O'Brien, assisted after a time by Doctor Matthew O'Brien, whose reputation as a preacher was such that a volume of his sermons had been printed in Ireland. Under their care the difficulties began to diminish; the congregation took a regular form, and the young were trained to their Christian duties; and the devotion of the Catholic clergy during the visits of that dreadful scourge, the yellow fever, gave them an additional claim to the reverence and respect of their flock.
Beside the church soon sprang up the school. The Catholics of New York signalized the opening of the nineteenth century by establishing a free school at St. Peter's, which before many years could report an average attendance of five hundred pupils.
This progress of Catholicity naturally aroused some of the old bitterness of prejudice.
The sermons of the Protestant pulpits at this period exulting over the captivity and death of Pius VI. produced their natural result in awakening the evil passions of the low and ignorant. The old prejudices revived against Catholics with all their wonted hostility. The first anti-Catholic riot occurred in 1806, as a result. On Christmas eve, some ruffians attempted to force their way into St. Peter's church during the midnight mass, in order to see the Infant rocked in the cradle which they were taught to believe Catholics then worshipped. The Brief Sketch details the unfortunate event from the papers of the day.
From that time anti-Catholic excitements have been pretty regular in their appearance; for a time, indeed, eleven years was as sure to bring one, under some new name, as fourteen years did the pestilent locusts. Yet mob violence has been less frequently and less terribly shown in New York than in some other cities with higher claims to order and dignity.
Once we remember how a mob, flushed with the sacking of a Protestant church where a negro and a white had been married, resolved to close their useful labors by demolishing St. Patrick's cathedral. They marched valorously almost to the junction of the Bowery and Prince street, but halted on the suggestion of a tradesman there, that a reconnoissance would be a wise movement. A few were detached to examine the road. The look up Prince street was not encouraging. The paving-stones had actually been carried up in baskets to the upper stories of the houses, ready to hurl on the assailants; and the wall around the churchyard was pierced for musketry. The mob retreated with creditable celerity; but all that night a feverish anxiety prevailed around St. Patrick's cathedral; men stood ready to meet any new advance, and the mayor, suddenly riding up, was in some danger, but was fortunately recognized.
What might have been the scenes in New York in 1844, when murder ran riot in Philadelphia! The Natives had just elected a mayor; the city would in a few days be in their hands; a public meeting was called in the park, and all seemed to promise a repetition of the scenes in the sister city. A bold, stern extra issued from the office of The Freeman's Journal that actually sent terror into the hearts of the would-be rioters. It was known at once that the Catholics would defend their churches to the last gasp. The firm character of the archbishop was well known, and with that to animate the people the struggle would not be a trifling one.
The call for the meeting was countermanded and New York was saved; few knew from what.
To return to the earlier days of the century. If attacks were made, inquiry was stimulated. Conversions to the truth were neither few nor unimportant. Bishop Bayley mentions briefly the reception into the church of one nearly related to himself, Mrs. Eliza Ann Seton, daughter of the celebrated Doctor Bayley, and widow of William Seton, a distinguished New York merchant. Born on Staten Island, and long resident in New York, gracing a high social position by her charming and noble character, she made her first communion in St. Peter's church on the 25th of March, 1805, and in a few years, giving herself wholly to God, became, under him, the foundress in the United States of the Sisters of Charity, whose quiet labors of love, and charity, and devotedness in the cause of humanity and education in every city in the land seek no herald here below, but are written deep in the hearts of grateful millions.
Several Protestant clergymen in those days returned to the bosom of unity, such as the Rev. Mr. Kewley, of St. George's church, New York; Rev. Calvin White, ancestor of the Shakespeare scholar, Richard Grant White; and Mr. Ironsides. Strange, too, was the conversion of the Rev. Mr. Richards, sent from New York as a Methodist preacher to Western New York and Canada. We follow him, by his diary, through the sparse settlements which then dotted that region, whence he extended his labors to Montreal. There, good man, in the zeal of his heart he thought to conquer Canadian Catholicity by storming the Sulpitian seminary at Montreal, converting all there, and so triumphantly closing the campaign. His diary of travel goes no further. Mr. Richards died a few years since, a zealous and devoted Sulpitian priest of the seminary at Montreal.
New York was too far from Baltimore to be easily superintended by the bishop of that see. His vast diocese was now to be divided, and this city was erected into an episcopal see in 1808, by Pope Pius VII. The choice for the bishop who was to give form to the new diocese, fell upon the Rev. Luke Concanen, a learned and zealous Dominican, long connected with the affairs of his order at Rome. Bishop Bayley gives a characteristic letter of his. He had persistently declined a see in Ireland with its comparative comforts and consolations among a zealous people; but the call to a position of toil, the establishment of a new diocese in a new land, where all was to be created, was not an appeal that he could disregard. He submitted to the charge imposed upon him, and after receiving episcopal consecration at Rome, prepared to reach his see, wholly ignorant of what he should find on his arrival in New York. It was, however, no easy matter then to secure passage. Failing to find a ship at Leghorn, he proceeded to Naples; but the French, who had overrun Italy, detained him as a British subject, and while thus thwarted and harassed, he suddenly fell sick and died. Thus New York never beheld its first bishop.
Then followed a long vacancy, highly prejudicial to the progress of the church, but a vacancy that European affairs caused. The successor of St. Peter was torn from Rome, and held a prisoner in France. The Catholic world knew not under what influence acts might be issued as his, that were really the inventions of his enemies. The bishops in Ireland addressed a letter to the bishops of the United States to propose some settled line of action in all cases where there was not evidence that the pope was a free agent. The reply of the bishops in the United States is given in the volume before us.
Meanwhile, the Archbishop of Baltimore extended his care to the diocese of New York. When Father O'Brien at last sank under his increasing years, New York would have seen its Catholic population in a manner destitute, had not the Jesuit fathers of Maryland come to their assistance. Rev. Anthony Kohlmann, a man of sound theological learning and great zeal, who died many years after at Rome, honored by the sovereign pontiffs, was the administrator of the diocese. With him were Rev. Benedict Fenwick, subsequently Bishop of Boston, and Rev. Peter Malou, whose romantic life would form an interesting volume; for few who recollect this venerable priest, in his day such a favorite with the young, knew that he had figured in great political events, and in the struggle of Belgium for freedom had led her armies.
Under the impulse of these fathers a collegiate institution was opened, and continued for some years on the spot where the new magnificent cathedral is rising; and old New York Catholics smiled when a recent scribbler asserted that the site of that noble edifice was a gift from the city. Trinity, the Old Brick church, and some other churches we could name were built on land given by the ruling powers, but no Catholic church figures in the list. The college was finally closed, from the fact that difficulties in Maryland prevented the order from supplying necessary professors to maintain its high position.
To secure to young ladies similar advantages for superior education, some Ursuline nuns were induced to cross the Atlantic. They were hailed with joy, and their academy was wonderfully successful. The superior was a lady whose appearance was remarkably striking, and whose cultivation and ability impressed all. Unfortunately they came under restrictions which soon deprived New York of them. Unless novices joined them within a certain number of years, they were to return to Ireland.
In a new country vocations could be only a matter of time, and as the Ursuline order required a dowry, the vocations of all but wealthy young ladies were excluded, and even of these when subject to a guardian.
As the Catholic body had increased, a new church was begun in a spot then far out of the city, described as between the Broadway and the Bowery road. This was old St. Patrick's, of which the corner-stone was laid June 8th, 1809. This was to be the cathedral of the future bishop; and the Orphan Asylum, now thriving under the care of an incorporated society, was ere long to be placed near the new church.
During this period a strange case occurred in a New York court that settled for that State, at least, a question of importance to Catholics. It settled as a principle of law that the confession of a Catholic to a priest was a privileged communication, which the priest could not be called upon or permitted to reveal.
"Restitution had been made to a man named James Keating, through the Rev. Father Kohlmann, of certain goods which had been stolen from him. Keating had previously made a complaint against one Philips and his wife, as having received the goods thus stolen, and they were indicted for a misdemeanor before the justices of the peace. Keating having afterward stated that the goods had been restored to him through the instrumentality of Father Kohlmann, the latter was cited before the court, and required to give evidence in regard to the person or persons from whom he had received them. This he refused to do, on the ground that no court could require a priest to give evidence in regard to matters known to him only under the seal of confession. Upon the case being sent to the grand-jury, Father Kohlmann was subpoenaed to attend before them, and appeared in obedience to the process, but in respectful terms again declined answering. On the trial which ensued, Father Kohlmann was again cited to appear as a witness in the case. Having been asked certain questions, he entreated that he might be excused, and offered his reasons to the court. With consent of counsel, the question was put off for some time, and finally brought on for argument on Tuesday, the 8th of June, 1813, before a court composed of the Hon. De Witt Clinton, mayor of the city; the Hon. Josiah Ogden Hoffman, recorder; and Isaac S. Douglass, and Richard Cunningham, Esqs., sitting aldermen. The Hon. Richard Riker, afterward for so many years recorder of the city, and Counsellor Sampson, volunteered their services in behalf of Father Kohlmann....
"The decision was given by De Witt Clinton at some length. Having shown that, according to the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church, a priest who should reveal what he had heard in the confessional would become infamous and degraded in the eyes of Catholics, and as no one could be called upon to give evidence which would expose him to infamy, he declared that the only way was to excuse a priest from answering in such cases."
This decision, by the influence of De Witt Clinton, when Governor of the State, was incorporated into the Revised Statutes as part of the lex scripta of the State.
With this period, too began the publication of Catholic works in New York, which has since attained such a wonderful development. Bernard Dornin stands as the patriarch of the Catholic book trade of New York, of which an interesting sketch will be found in the appendix to Bishop Bayley's work. He also gives a list of subscribers to some of the earliest works, which will possess no little interest to older Catholic families, who can here claim ancestors as not only Catholic, but devoted to their faith, and anxious to spread its literature. We have looked over the list, and amid familiar names have endeavored to find the oldest now living. If we do not err greatly, it is the distinguished lawyer Charles O'Conor, Esq.
When Pope Pius VII. was restored to Rome, another son of St. Dominic was chosen; and the Rev. John Connolly was consecrated the second bishop of New York. After making such arrangements as he could in Ireland for the good of his diocese, he set sail from Dublin, but experienced a long and dangerous passage. From the absence of all notice of any kind, except the mere fact of his name among the passengers, his reception was apparently a most private one. He was utterly a stranger in a strange land, called from the studies of the cloister to form and rule a diocese of considerable extent, without any previous knowledge of the wants of his flock, and utterly without resources.
His diocese, which embraced the State of New York and part of New Jersey, contained but four priests, three belonging to the Jesuits in Maryland, and liable to be called away at any moment, as two were almost immediately after his arrival. The college and convent had disappeared, and the church seemed to have lost in all but numbers. Thirteen thousand Catholics were to be supplied with pastors, and yet the trustee system stood a fearful barrier in his way. As Bishop Bayley well observes,
"The trustee system had not been behind its early promise, and trustees of churches had become so accustomed to have every thing their own way, that they were not disposed to allow even the interference of a bishop.
"In such a state of things, he was obliged to assume the office of a missionary priest, rather than a bishop; and many still living remember the humility and earnest zeal with which he discharged the laborious duties of the confessional, and traversed the city on foot to attend upon the poor and sick.
"Bishop Connolly was not lacking in firmness, but the great wants of his new diocese made it necessary for him to fall in, to a certain extent, with the established order of things, and this exposed him afterward to much difficulty and many humiliations."
Yet he secured some good priests and ecclesiastical students from Kilkenny College, whom he gradually raised to the priesthood, his first ordination and the first conferring of the sacrament of holy orders in the city being that of the Rev. Michael O'Gorman in 1815. One only of the priests ordained by this first bishop occupying the see of New York still survives, the Rev. John Shanahan, now at St. Peter's church, Barclay street.
Under the care of Bishop Connolly the Sisters of Charity began their labors in the city so long the home of Mother Seton; and, so far as his means permitted him to yield to his zeal, he increased the number of churches and congregations in his diocese.
The Brief Sketch gives his portrait, as well as that of his predecessor.
After an episcopate of nearly ten years, the bishop was taken ill on his return from the funeral of his first ordained priest, and soon followed him to the grave. He died at No. 512 Broadway, on the 5th of February, 1825, and was buried under the cathedral, after having been exposed for two days in St. Peter's church. The ceremonial was imposing and attracted general attention, and the remarks of the papers of the day show the respect entertained for him by all classes of citizens.
The next bishop of New York was one well known in the country by his labors, especially by his successful exertions in giving the church in our republic a college and theological seminary suited to its wants—Mount St. Mary's College at Emmettsburg, Maryland. The life of the Rev. John Du Bois had been varied. Born in Paris, he was in college a fellow-student of Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins; but actuated by far different thoughts from those which filled the brains of such men, he devoted himself to the service of God. The revolution found him a laborious priest at Paris. Escaping in disguise from France during the Reign of Terror, through the connivance of his old fellow-collegian, Robespierre, he came to America, bearing letters of introduction from La Fayette to eminent personages in the United States.
"Having received faculties from Bishop Carroll, he exercised the holy ministry in various parts of Virginia and Maryland. He lived for some time with Mr. Monroe, afterward President of the United States, and in the family of Gov. Lee, of Maryland. After the death of Father Frambach, he took charge of the mission of Frederick in Maryland, of which mission he may be said in reality to have been the founder. When he arrived there, he celebrated mass in a large room which served as a chapel, and afterward built the first church. But though Frederick was his headquarters, he did not confine himself to it, but made stations throughout all the surrounding country, at Montgomery, Winchester, Hagerstown, and Emmettsburg, everywhere manifesting the same earnest zeal and indomitable perseverance. Bishop Bruté relates, as an instance of his activity and zeal, that once, after hearing confessions on Saturday evening, he rode during the night to near Montgomery, a distance of thirty-five to forty miles, to administer the last sacraments to a dying woman, and was back hearing confessions in the morning, at the Mountain, singing high mass and preaching, without scarcely any one knowing that he had been absent at all.
"In 1808, the Rev. Mr. Du Bois, having previously become a member of the Society of St. Sulpice, in Baltimore, went to reside at Emmettsburg, and laid the foundation of Mount St. Mary's College, which was afterward destined to be the means of so much usefulness to the Catholic Church in America. From this point, now surrounded by so many hallowed associations in the minds of American Catholics, by the sound religious education imparted to so many young men from various parts of the United States, 'by the many fervent and holy priests, trained under his direction,' and by the prudent care with which he cherished the rising institute of the Sisters of Charity at St. Joseph's, he became the benefactor, not of any particular locality, but of the whole Catholic body throughout the United States."
On coming to his diocese after his consecration in Baltimore in October, 1826, he found three churches and four or six priests in New York City; a church and one priest at Brooklyn, Albany, and a few stations elsewhere. But the trustee system fettered the progress of Catholicity.
Long devoted to the cause of education for secular life or the service of the altar, Bishop Du Bois's fondest desire was to endow his diocese with another Mount St. Mary's, but all his efforts failed. A hospital was also one of his early projects; but these and other good works could spring up only when the way had been prepared by his trials, struggles, and sufferings.
During his administration the number of Catholics increased greatly, and new churches sprang up in the city and other parts of the diocese. Of these various foundations and the zealous priests of that day many interesting details are given, to which we can but refer—the erection of St. Mary's, Christ church, Transfiguration, St. Joseph's, St. Nicholas's, St. Paul's at Harlem. The services of the Very Rev. Doctor Power, of Rev. Felix Varela, of Rev. Messrs. Levins and Schueller, and other clergymen of that day are not yet forgotten.
The excitement caused by the Act of Catholic Emancipation in England had its counterpart here, stimulated too by jealousy at the influx of foreign labor. The church had had her day of penal laws and wild excitement; now war was to be made through the press. About 1835 it began in New York. The use of falsehood against Catholicity seems to be considered by some one of the higher virtues. Certainly there is a strange perversion of conscience on the point. The anti-Catholic literature of that period is a curiosity that must cause some cheeks to tingle if there is any manhood left. They took up Fulkes's Confutation of the Rhemish Testament, reprinted the text from it, and affixed to it a certificate of several clergymen that it was a reprint from the original published at Rheims. It was not. They caught up a poor creature from a Magdalen asylum in Montreal, and concocted a book, laying the scene in the Hôtel Dieu, commonly called the Convent of the Black Nuns, at Montreal. The book was so infamous that the Harpers issued it under the name of Howe & Bates. It was published daily in The Sun newspaper, and had an immense circulation. Colonel William L. Stone, a zealous Protestant, went to the spot, and, there convinced of the fraud, published an exposure of the vile slanders. He was assailed in a satire called The Vision of Rubeta, and the pious Protestant community swallowed the filthy details. At last there arose a quarrel over the spoils. A triangular lawsuit between the Harpers, the Rev. Mr. Slocum, and Maria Monk in the court of chancery gave some strange disclosures, more startling than the fictitious ones of the book. Vice-Chancellor McCoun in disgust turned them out of his court, and told them to go before a jury; but none of them dared to face twelve honest men.
A paper called The Downfall of Babylon flourished for a time on this anti-Catholic feeling, reeking with lewdness and impurity. At last their heroine and tool, Maria Monk, cast off and scouted, ended her days on Blackwell's Island.
Among the curiosities of this period was a work of S. F. B. Morse, (we used in our younger days to think the initials stood for Savage Furious Bigot,) entitled Brutus, or a Foreign Conspiracy against the Liberties of the United States. The queen of France had given the Bishop of St. Louis some altar paintings, and herein was the conspiracy. We saw a picture the other day of Mr. Morse with the stars of several foreign orders of knighthood on his breast; he has received many, some from Catholic sovereigns, and, we believe, one from the pope. Brutus should certainly take him in hand; for some of these orders require knights to swear to things that would be rather awkward for a zealous Protestant to undertake. Et tu Brute!
The controversies of that day would furnish matter for an article in themselves. They were the topic of the day, and led to many curious scenes. Among the Catholic controvertists, the Rev. Mr. Levins was particularly incisive and effective; Rev. Mr. Varela dealt gentler but heavy blows, being keen in argument and sound in learning. A tract on the five different Bibles of the American Bible Society was one of those occasions where, departing from the defensive, the Catholic apologist assumed the offensive. And this time it was highly offensive. At that time the Bible Society published a Spanish Bible, and Testaments in French, Spanish, and Portuguese, all Catholic versions, merely omitting the notes of the Catholic translators. Appleton's Cyclopædia asserts that "the American Bible Society, made up of materials more thoroughly Puritanic, and less Lutheran and continental, ... has never published any other than the canonical (Protestant) books;" but this is not so. The Spanish Bible of 1824 contains the very books which in other editions they reject absolutely. It is true that in the edition of 1825 they left them out of the body of the book, but kept them in the list of books. After that they disappeared, while the title-page still falsely professed to give the Bible translated by Bishop Scio de San Miguel, without the slightest intimation that part of Bishop Scio's work was omitted. We once bought Bagster's edition of the Vulgate, and found ourselves the victim of a similar fraud.
Mr. Varela exposed the inconsistency of their publishing in one language as inspired what they rejected in another; of translating a passage in one sense in one volume, and in another in a Bible standing beside it. The subject caused a sensation. After deliberating on the matter, it was determined to suppress all these Catholic versions; they were accordingly withdrawn. The stereotype plates were melted up; and the printed copies were, as we were assured, committed to the flames, although it took some time to effect this greatest Bible-burning ever witnessed in New York.
Meanwhile New York was not without its organs of Catholic sentiment. The Truth-Teller was for many years the vehicle of information and defence. The editor, William Denman, still survives to witness the progress made since that day when he battled almost alone among the press of the land. The Catholic Diary, and The Green Banner, and The Freeman's Journal followed.
While the controversy fever lasted, some curious scenes took place. Catholics, especially poor servant-girls, were annoyed at all times and in all places, in the street, at the pump—for those were not days of Croton water—and even in their kitchens. One Protestant clergyman of New York had quite a reputation for the gross indecency that characterized his valorous attacks of this kind. The servant of a lady in Beekman street—people in good circumstances lived there then—was a constant object of his zeal. One day, report said, after dining with the lady, he descended to the kitchen, and began twitting the girl about the confessional, and coupling this with the grossest charges against the Catholic clergy. The girl bore it for a time, and when ordering him out of her realm failed, she seized a poker and dealt her indecent assailant a blow on the head that sent him staggering to the stairs. While he groped his way bewildered to the parlor, the girl hastened to her room, bundled up her clothes, and left the house. The clergyman was long laid up from the consequence of his folly, and every attempt made to hush the matter up; but an eccentric Catholic of that day, Joseph Trench, got up a large caricature representing the scene, which went like wild-fire, attack being always popular, and an attack on the Protestant clergy being quite a novelty. Trivial as the whole affair was, it proved more effective than the soundest theological arguments, and Mary Ann Wiggins with her poker really closed the great controversial period.
It had its good effects, nevertheless, in making Catholics earnest in their faith. Their numbers were rapidly increasing, and with them churches and institutions. Besides the Orphan Asylum, an institution for those who had lost only one parent, the Half-Orphan Asylum, was commenced and long sustained, mainly by the zeal and means of Mr. Glover, a convert whose name should stand high in the memory of New York Catholics. This institution, now merged in the general Orphan Asylum, had in its separate existence a long career of usefulness under the care of the Sisters of Charity.
Bishop Du Bois was unremitting in his efforts to increase the number of his clergy and the institutions of his diocese. The progress was marked. Besides clergymen from abroad, he ordained, or had ordained, twenty-one who had been trained under his own supervision, and who completed their divinity studies chiefly at the honored institution which he had founded in Maryland; among these was Gregory B. Pardow, who was, if we mistake not, the first native of the city elevated to the priesthood. Five of these priests have since been promoted to the episcopacy, as well as two others ordained in his time by his coadjutor.
In manners, Bishop Du Bois was the polished French gentleman of the old régime; as a clergyman, learned and strict in his ideas, his administrative powers were always deemed great, but in their exercise in his diocese they were constantly thwarted by the trustee system. But he was not one easily intimidated; and when the trustees of the cathedral, in order to force him to act contrary to the dictates of his own better judgment, if not his conscience, threatened to deprive him of his salary, he made them a reply that is historical, "Well, gentlemen, you may vote the salary or not, just as seems good to you. I do not need much; I can live in the basement or in the garret; but whether I come up from the basement, or down from the garret, I will still be your bishop."
He had passed the vigor of manhood when he was appointed to the see of New York, and the constant struggle aged him prematurely. It became necessary for him to call for a younger hand to assist. The position was one that required a singularly gifted priest. The future of Catholicity in New York depended on the selection of one who, combining the learning and zeal of the missionary priest with that donum famæ which gives a man influence over his fellow-men, and that skill in firm but almost imperceptible government which is the characteristic of a great ruler, could place Catholicity in New York on a firm, harmonious basis, instinct with the true spirit of life, that would insure its future success. Providence guided the choice. Surely no man more confessedly endowed with all these qualities could have been selected than the Rev. John Hughes, trained by Bishop Du Bois at Mount St. Mary's, and then a priest of the diocese of Philadelphia, where his dialectic skill had been evinced in a long and well-maintained controversy.
The final overthrow of the trustee system gave the church freedom, and new institutions of every kind which had been imperatively required sprang up. A college at Fordham, the forerunner of the several Catholic colleges of the State, was soon founded; a convent of Ladies of the Sacred Heart, for the education of young ladies; Sisters of Mercy with their various important labors came to help the good work. But now a large German Catholic immigration began. Bishop Hughes saw the want and the means; a development of the German churches, especially under the care of the Redemptorist fathers, soon followed.
The position of the Catholic children in regard to their participation in those educational advantages next attracted his care. The prevalent spirit in those institutions for which Catholics as well as Protestants were taxed was essentially anti-Catholic; the books used were often vile in their character, whenever Catholicity was touched upon. Think of Huntington's Geography with a picture at Asia of "Pagan Idolatry," and at Italy of "Roman Catholic Idolatry." Think of an arithmetic—Pike's, we believe—with a question like this, "If a pope can pray a soul out of purgatory in three days, a cardinal in four, and a bishop in six, how long would it take all three to pray them out?" A Catholic girl in the Rutgers Female Institute, when the geography was given to her, happened to open to Italy, and, outraged at the wanton insult to her feelings, threw the book on the floor, burst into tears, and left the school; but Rutgers Female Institute could use such books as they chose, and Catholics could send there or elsewhere. It was not a State creation, supported by taxes drawn from all; but did any right exist to force Catholics to the alternative of submitting to such degrading insults or keep aloof from schools which they were taxed to support? or rather, the question was, Could Catholics in the State of New York be compelled to support the Protestant church and aid in its extension?
Bishop Bayley sketches briefly the other important acts of the administration of Bishop Hughes, and concludes,
"But though much has been done, much remains to be accomplished. The 'two hundred Catholics' of 1785 were better provided for than the two hundred thousand who now (1853) dwell within the boundaries of the city of New York. It is true that no exertions could have kept pace with the tide of emigration which has been pouring in upon our shores, especially during the last few years. The number of priests, churches, and schools, rapidly as they have increased, are entirely inadequate to the wants of our Catholic population, and render it imperative that every exertion should be made to supply the deficiency. What has been done so far has, by God's blessing, been accomplished by the Catholics of New York themselves. Comparatively very little assistance has been received from the liberality of our brethren in other countries. And while we have done so much for ourselves, we have contributed liberally toward the erection of churches and other works of piety in various parts of the United States.
"Though the Catholic Church in this country has increased much more largely by conversions than is generally supposed, yet, for the most part, its rapid development has been owing to the emigration of Catholics from foreign countries; and, if we desire to make this increase permanent, and to keep the children in the faith of their fathers, we must, above all things, take measures to imbue the minds of the rising generation of Catholics with sound religious principles. This can only be done by giving them a good Catholic education. In our present position, the school-house has become second in importance only to the house of God itself. We have abundant cause for thankfulness to God on account of the many blessings which he has conferred on us; but we will show ourselves unworthy of these blessings if we do not do all that is in our power to promote every good work by which they may be increased and confirmed to those who shall come after us."
And though we may now rate the number of Catholics in the city at four hundred thousand, the language is still applicable.
There are now, we may add, forty Catholic churches on the island, with parish schools educating twenty-one thousand children of both sexes; houses of Jesuits, Redemptorists, Fathers of Mercy, Paulists, Franciscans, Capucins, Dominicans; convents of the Sacred Heart, houses of Sisters of Charity, Sisters of the Good Shepherd, of Notre Dame, of the order of St. Dominic, of the Poor of St. Francis, and of the Third Order of St. Francis; several orphan asylums, two hospitals, reformatories for boys and girls, a house of protection for servants, a home for destitute children, a home for aged women, and a foundling asylum just begun. Yet it is but true that all this is little for the wants of four hundred thousand Catholics.
Glancing back to the early history, we see in all the work of the many. In comparison, we have had fewer men of wealth than those around us; but it must also be added that among those few there have been still fewer, in proportion, to identify their names with the great religious works. As we look around through the country, we see great institutions, churches, colleges, libraries, asylums, each the act of a single man of wealth; but we cannot show in New York a single such Catholic work. There are monuments in our great cemeteries, on each of which more money has been expended than would erect a church in some neglected part of New York. Which would be the nobler monument?
We trust that this work, full of interest as it is to all, will circulate widely among the Catholics of New York and bring home to all that respect to their predecessors, respect to themselves, requires of all to take in hand earnestly what yet remains to do to give us what are absolutely required for worship, for instruction, for the works of mercy.