The Catholic World, Vol. 01, April to September, 1865 / A Monthly Eclectic Magazine

by Various

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.]