The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

How many Catholics scattered over the broad colony of Pennsylvania, immigrants like Miss McGauley, but unlike her in their poverty, and therefore unable to hire a clergyman, never knew that they might unburden their consciences and enjoy the consolations of their religion, by travelling a hundred miles or so to the house "on the road leading from Nicetown to Frankfort?" How many lived and died within a short distance, and never knocked at the door, owing to their ignorance of the class of inmates? Thus, although there were some ministers of God in the country, their number was so small, and they were so far distant from each other, that their labors were utterly unavailing for the great body of the Catholic immigrants, who would have rejoiced to throw themselves at their feet, and ease their hearts and purify their souls by confession.

Some Irishmen, it is true, had emigrated before such concealment was requisite, in Maryland at least, where an asylum for all had been opened by Lord Baltimore, a Catholic. Thus, the Carrolls had settled in Prince George County. They were at liberty to make open use of the services of the English fathers of the Society of Jesus, who for a long time officiated undisguisedly among their English Catholic flocks; but, as was seen, after the Revolution of 1688, Catholics were disfranchised in Maryland even, their religious rites proscribed, and penalties enacted against the open profession of their worship.

Thus, concealment became a necessity, there also; the policy of keeping the existence of clergymen and the celebration of the holy mysteries secret had to be adopted there as in other colonies. The Carroll family, like Miss Elizabeth McGauley, gave refuge in their house to a minister of their own religion, and it was in such a chapel-house that John Carroll was born, on the 8th of January, 1735—the first Bishop and Archbishop of Baltimore.

It is therefore no matter for wonder that the number of children of the Church in North America did not increase in proportion to the number of Catholic immigrants; on the contrary, the posterity of the majority of those who chose the British colonies, for their home was lost to her. The immigrants themselves, we are confident, never lost their faith. Although living for years without any exterior help, without receiving a word of instruction or advice, without the celebration of any religious rite whatever, or the reception of any sacrament, yet, faith was too deeply rooted in their minds and hearts to be ever eradicated, or shaken even.

But, though they themselves clung fast to their faith in the midst of so many adverse circumstances, what of their children?

There is no doubt that many of them did, individually, every thing possible to transmit that faith to their children; but all they could do was to speak privately, to warn then against dangers, and set up before them the example of a blameless life. Not only was there no priest to initiate them into the mysteries, granted by Christ to the redeemed soul; there was not even a Catholic school-master to instruct them. Even the "hedge-school" could not be set on foot. Books were unknown; Catholic literature, in the modern sense, had not yet been born; there was no vestige of such a thing beyond, perhaps, an occasional old, worn, and torn, yet dearly-prized and carefully-concealed prayer-book, dating from the happy days of the Confederation of Kilkenny.

There is no reason, then, for surprise in the fact that, although the families of those first Irish settlers were numerous and scattered over all the district which afterward became the Middle and Southern States, only a faint tradition remained among many of them that they really belonged to the old Church and "ought to be Catholics." How often was this the case thirty years ago, particularly in the South!

It would not be right to conclude that all this was a pure and unmitigated loss to the Church of Christ. Later on, we shall have to speak of more numerous and serious losses: but a few words on this first one may not be thrown away.

As in the material world an infinite number of germs are lost, and quantities of seeds, wafted on the breeze from giant trees and humble plants, fall and perish on a barren rock, in the eddies of a swift-running brook, or, oftener still, on the hard and unkind soil on which they have happened to alight; so that, out of a thousand germs, a few only find every thing congenial to their growth, and attain to the full size allotted them by Nature —nevertheless, despite this loss, the species is not only preserved, but so multiplied as to produce on the beholder, in after-time, the impression that, not only no loss has been sustained, but that much has been gained. So is it with the Catholic Church in general, and in particular with the momentous events now being considered.

The cultivated field of the "father of the family" was about to be extended over a new and vast area. A whole continent was to be "fenced around," and "olive-trees," and "fig-trees," and all plants useful and ornamental, were destined to flourish in that vast garden to the end of time. The great and eternal Father was, by his providence, directing the mighty operation from above, and marking the various points of the compass to which the floating germs were to be wafted. He knew that he was planting a new garden for his Son, who would, as usual, be the first husbandman, and employ many workmen to help him.