Pius IX. And His Time

by Æneas MacDonell Dawson

In the Archdiocese of Glasgow, one hundred and twenty-one priests, of whom twenty-four are members of religious societies, attend to the spiritual wants of the missions and congregations. The Glasgow missions count fifty-nine, with seventy-eight churches, chapels and stations. The congregational or parochial schools number one hundred and eighty-six, in addition to religious educational institutions.

Aberdeen has forty-seven priests, of whom seven are members of the Benedictine Order. It has thirty-two missions, with fifty-one churches, chapels and stations. Colleges, convents, and congregational schools, are in proportion to the Catholic population.

Dunkeld contains within its borders the important seaport town of Dundee, and the ancient city of Perth, where may still be seen the Church of St. John, against which the Knox Iconoclasts cast the first stone—the sad prelude to their furious onslaught on all the sacred edifices of the land. At Dundee there is a numerous Catholic population. In the whole diocese there are thirty-three priests, of whom twelve are members of the religious Society of Redemptorists. There are religious communities of Sisters of Mercy, Little Sisters of the Poor, and Ursulines of Jesus. The Marist Brothers and Redemptorists have their monasteries, and there is a creditable number of congregational schools.

The ancient See of Whithorn (Candidacasa) is now known as the diocese of Galloway. It dates from St. Ninian, the apostle of the Southern Picts, by whom it was founded in 397. It was destroyed in the time of the Scandinavian invasions, and remained extinct from 808 till 1189. It fell again at the epoch of the Reformation, and had no bishop from the death of Andrew Durie, in 1558, till the appointment of Bishop McLachlan by Leo XIII. The residence of the bishop is at Dumfries, where there is a numerous congregation and an elegant church.

Argyll and the Isles is a diocese full of promise. The traditions of its piety in ancient days are a rich inheritance. It [pg 421] has already thirty-eight churches, chapels and stations, together with some numerous congregations.

INCREASE AND NUMBER OF CATHOLICS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD IN THE TIME OF PIUS IX.

About the time of the accession of Pius IX., the Catholic population of the world was estimated by scientific men at two hundred and fifty-four million six hundred and fifty-five thousand (see the Scientific Miscellany of the time). Since that time there has been a very considerable increase. How great it has been we may judge from the statistics with which we are most familiar, those of Great Britain and the British Colonies, as well as those of the United States of America. The eminent statisticians, Drs. Behm and Wagner, hold that the number of Protestants has more than doubled in the same period. Some thirty-five years ago, according to the Scientific Miscellany, the Protestant population of the world was forty-eight million nine hundred and eighty-nine thousand. Without saying that the learned men alluded to are wrong in estimating them now at one hundred and one million, it may be claimed that Catholics have enjoyed at least as great an increase. The tendency of the latter, in the present age, is to spread and to spread rapidly, whilst among Protestants, according to their own ablest writers, there exists no such expansive power. An opinion prevails among those who are not friendly to the Catholic Church, that such an institution can only take root and grow in an age of ignorance, or among ignorant people. This opinion enjoys not the sanction of the most distinguished Protestant authors and preachers. Baron Macaulay writes: “We often hear it said that the world is constantly becoming more and more enlightened, and that the enlightenment must be favorable to Protestantism and unfavorable to Catholicism. We wish that we could think so. But we see great reason to doubt whether this is a well-founded expectation. We see that during the last two hundred and fifty years the human mind has been in the highest degree active; that it [pg 422] has made great advances in every branch of natural philosophy; that it has produced innumerable inventions, tending to promote the convenience of life; that medicine, surgery, chemistry, engineering, have been very greatly improved; that government, police and law, have been improved, though not to so great an extent as the physical sciences. Yet we see that during these two hundred and fifty years Protestantism has made no conquests worth speaking of. Nay, we believe that as far as there has been change, that change has been in favor of the Church of Rome. We cannot, therefore, feel confident that the progress of knowledge will necessarily be fatal to a system which has, to say the least, stood its ground in spite of the immense progress made by the human race in knowledge since the time of Queen Elizabeth.” If, then, Protestantism, as regards increase and development, has been at a stand-still for the last two[13] hundred and fifty years, whilst it is admitted on all hands that Catholicism has been growing rapidly, it is not, surely, unreasonable to claim that the increase of Catholics keeps pace with that of Protestants. The claim, however, must be waived, as it would give a greater expansion to the Catholic Church than Catholics can suppose it is entitled to. If the number of Catholics had doubled within the last five-and-thirty or forty years, as that of Protestants is alleged by the learned statisticians to have done, they would now count five hundred and nine million three hundred thousand. Behm and Wagner estimate them at two hundred and seventy million.

Judging by the facts alluded to, this estimate is certainly below the mark, and we shall still be considered as determining for a low figure when we reckon the Catholic population of the whole world at three hundred million.

The heathen masses are still the most numerous. But, if the statement recently made by the Secretary of the Chinese Legation, at Washington, may be relied on, they are not overwhelmingly so. This statement reduces the population of China from the fabulous number of four hundred million to one hundred million. It is not, surely, reasonable to suppose, as the world has so long supposed, that one nation, China, has a population double that of all the nations of India. The whole heathen world, therefore, cannot count more than six hundred and fifty million souls—too many to be still in darkness and the shadow of death. But let each believer labor to convert a heathen, and there will be light at last. The believing portion of mankind is not so far behind, in point of numbers, at least. It consists of (according to Drs. Behm and Wagner):

300,000,000 Catholics.
90,000,000 members of the Greek Church.
101,000,000 Protestants.
7,000,000 Jews.