The Irish Race in the Past and the Present

by Augustus J. Thébaud

Yet one difficulty seems to cast some doubt on this view of the subject, and strengthen the opposition of those who ardently advocated the country as the true home for Irish Catholics; and, as the point involves a universal interest, it is better to discuss it at once in its chief bearings.

At the time when those wonderful events were being enacted, any one opening a copy of those general State Directories, with which New England is particularly blessed, wherein not only the great commercial and industrial enterprises of each State are enrolled, but also correct lists of the educational establishments and various churches of all cities, towns, and villages, are given —a cursory glance, even, would show him the striking fact that, as far as the great centres of population were concerned, Catholic churches, educational establishments, and primary schools were found in respectable numbers; but many a page had to be turned when the reader came to places of lesser importance, to rural populations chiefly, before he met with any indication of the Catholic Church entering yet upon that large country domain. This experience was encountered by the writer at the time, and caused him a moment of doubt.

But beyond the reflection that, in matters of this kind (of the propagation of a doctrine or a creed), the first thing to be looked to is the centre, and that this, once mastered, will in course of time draw under its influence the outer circles; that all things cannot be effected at once, and the best thing to be done is to begin with the most important; that, moreover, those statistics are often incorrect with respect to Catholic matters, whether from malicious design, or inadvertence, or want of knowledge, on subjects to which the compilers attached very little importance, so that, if their statements be compared with Catholic official intelligence with regard to the same places, it will be found that many towns and villages which, according to the State Directories would seem to have been altogether forgotten by the Church, were actually in her possession, at least by periodical or occasional visits; apart from all these considerations, there is one more important remark to be made, which includes in its bearing not only the present point of consideration, but, it may be said, the whole life of the Church from the beginning; so that it is really a law of her birth, existence, and propagation.

To illustrate our meaning, let us see how the Christian religion first forced its way in heathen lands, throughout the whole Roman Empire, whether in its Oriental division where Greek was spoken, or among its Western, Latin-speaking populations.

All the apostles fixed their sees in the largest or most important cities of the ancient world; St. Peter, under the special guidance of God, taking possession of the capital and mistress of the whole. All the bishops ordained by the first apostles did the same by their direction; and it is needless to add that the like law has been followed down to our own times whenever the Church has had to spread herself in a new country.

In accordance with this plan, the cities of the Roman world were the first to be evangelized, and their populations were converted with greater or less difficulty, according to the dispositions of the inhabitants, before almost an effort had been made for the conversion of the rural populations, except as they happened to come in the way of the "laborers in the vineyard." Hence the result, so well known: heathenism remained rooted in the country for a much longer time than in the cities, so that the heathen were generally called pagans—pagani—as if it were enough, when desiring to convey the intimation that a man was a worshipper of idols, to designate him as a dweller in the country. 1 (1 Another meaning is given to the word paganus by some writers; but the old and common interpretation is the surest, and is confirmed by the best authorities.) And if the word "pagans" became synonymous with heathens in all European countries, it is a proof that the fact underlying the name was universal wherever Christianity spread. It is known, moreover, that the dissemination of the Gospel in those rural districts was a work of centuries, and that, for nearly a thousand years after Christ, pagans were to be found in villages of countries already Christian.

The fundamental reason which governs and regulates these strange facts is that already given, namely, that Christianity— that is, Catholicity—is a growth, and follows the laws of every thing that grows. True, its first increase is from without, by the conversion of infidels or erring men; but even in that first stage of its existence, its growth is the faster where the numbers are greater; hence its establishment invariably in large cities. But when it has passed beyond this first stage, it increases from within, like all growths, and the work is accomplished by the increase of families agglomerated in the same large towns.

How true is it that the Church, once firmly planted in the midst of one of those agglomerations of men called cities, is sure in the end to invade the whole as "the yeast that leavens the whole! "How easy is it to see that in the course of time those cities of the Union, among which a large proportion of Catholics is found, will belong almost exclusively to the true Church, if for no other reason by the births in families, even supposing that the flow of immigration should finally cease! If any one entertains some doubt on this point, he has only to consult the records containing the number of children baptized in her bosom, and compare it with the corresponding number in families still outside her.

Hence the really astonishing fact, whose truth is recognized to- day in all the Northern States along the Atlantic coast, that suddenly almost in the cities of New England, for instance, where the number of Catholics was simply insignificant, they took an apparently unaccountable prominence, and in the course of a few years, increasing steadily by birth as well as by immigration, the fact became the most curious though evident of the times, completely changing the moral and social aspect of the country, and foretelling still greater changes to come. For, in the face of this wonderful increase to the ranks of Catholicity, appears another significant fact, but very different as to direction and energy— the gradual disappearance of names once prominent in those parts, and the daily narrowing area of Protestantism in the numerous sects of which it is composed.

At the same time a great danger was averted (or at least wonderfully lessened and modified), from the whole country, by the settlement of those immigrants in the large centres of population. The manufacturing enterprises, which at that time assumed such vast developments in North America, received among their workers, men and women, a large proportion of Catholics, and the fear of future political and social peril to the peace and security of society at large could never, on this continent, reach the extreme point witnessed in Europe to-day. The great danger of the European future nestles principally in those vast hives of industry with which that continent abounds. Our eyes have witnessed, our ears have been affrighted at those stupendous plans and projects in which, not only the great questions of capital and labor are involved, but the whole fabric of society is threatened with downfall. Religion, government, property, the family, the state—all those great principles and facts on which the security of mankind depends, enter now into the programme of artisans and laborers enlisted in gigantic and many-ramified secret societies, while the whole world trembles at the awful aspect of this unwelcome phantom, that no government, however powerful, can lay.