These tables show at a glance the disproportion between the Catholics of the North and those of the South. In only one Northern state (that of Maine) is the proportion of Catholics as small as 5.45 per cent, of the whole population; while there are no fewer than five Southern states in which it is less than three per cent. If we leave out New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Maryland, where the preponderance of the faithful is due to special causes, we find that in the other Southern states the average proportion is not above four per cent. In other words, in these regions the Church has little better than a nominal existence. This is partly because the stream of European immigration has always flowed in other directions, and partly because the negroes generally adhere to the Baptist or Methodist sects in preference to the Church.
But when we examine the tables more in detail, we see that in both sections the ratio of Catholics varies greatly in different states. It is easy to account for this difference in the South. Six states only have any considerable number of Catholic inhabitants. Louisiana and Missouri owe them to the old French colonies around which the Catholic settlers clustered. In New Mexico, more than three-fourths of the people are of Spanish-Mexican origin. Texas derives a great number of her inhabitants from Mexico, and has received a large Catholic emigration both from Europe and from the United States. Maryland, the germ of the American Church, owes her religious prosperity to the first English Catholic settlers; and the Church in Kentucky is an offshoot of that in Maryland. Such are the special causes of the great differences between the churches of the various Southern states. In the North there is less disparity. European immigration has produced a much more decided effect in this section than in the preceding. From this source come most of the faithful of New York, Oregon, California, Ohio, and New Jersey. In Ohio the Germans have done the principal part, and they have done much also in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The effect of conversions is more perceptible in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York than elsewhere. In many of the states, however, and especially in Pennsylvania, we find numerous descendants of English Catholic settlers, while the old French colonies of the West have had their influence upon the population of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois, and also of the northern part of New York, where the French Canadians are daily spreading their ramifications across the frontier. If we look now at the localities in which the proportion of Catholics is greatest, we shall notice several interesting points touching the laws which have determined the direction of the principal development of the Church, and which will probably promote it in the future. In the South there are what we may call three groups of states in which the Catholic element is notably stronger than in the others. One belongs exclusively to the Southern section, and consists of Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico, having an aggregate Catholic population of 380,000 in 1,363,800, or 28 per cent. The other groups (Missouri, that is to say, and Maryland and Kentucky) form parts of much larger groups belonging to the Northern states. The first of these latter, and that to which Maryland and Kentucky are attached, consists of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. Its aggregate population is 11,647,477, of whom the Catholics are 2,240,000, or nineteen per cent. This group contains the ancient establishments of Maryland and Pennsylvania—good old Catholic communities, in which the zeal and piety of the faithful possess that firm and decided character which comes of long practice and time-honored traditions. It contains, too, the magnificent seminary of Baltimore, founded and still directed by the Sulpitians. This is the largest and most complete [{11}] establishment of the kind in the United States, and derives from its connection with the Sulpitian house in Paris special advantages for superintending the education of young ecclesiastics, and training accomplished ministers for the sanctuary. Kentucky, likewise, has some important and noteworthy institutions, such as the seminary of St. Thomas and the college of St. Mary, both of which are in high repute at the West, and the magnificent Abbey of Our Lady of La Trappe at New Haven, with sixty-four religious, eighteen of whom are choir-monks. The Kentucky Catholics deserve a few words of special mention. The descendants, for the most part, of the first settlers of Maryland, who scattered, about a century ago, in order to people new countries, they partake in an eminent degree of the peculiar characteristics which have given to Kentuckians a reputation as the flower of the American people. They are more decidedly American than the Catholics of any other district, and they are remarkable for their homogeneousness, their education, and their attachment to the faith and traditions of the Church.
The most important and numerous Catholic population is found in the state of New York, where the faithful amount to no fewer than 800,000. They have here religious establishments of every kind. This condition of things is the result, in great measure, of the well-known ability of Archbishop Hughes, whose death has left a void which the American clergy will find it hard to fill. His reputation was not confined to the Empire City. He was as well known all over the Union as at his own see, and was everywhere regarded as one of the great men of the country. Although the progress of the faith in New York has been owing in a very great degree to immigration, it is in this city and in Boston that conversions have been most numerous; and in effecting these, Archbishop Hughes had a most important share. It is not surprising, then, that his death should have caused a profound sensation in the city, and that all religious denominations should have united in testifying respect for his memory.
It is difficult to apply a statistical table to the study of the question of conversions. These are mental operations of infinite variety, both in their origin and in their ways; for the methods of Providence are as many and as diverse as the shades of human thought upon which they act. It may be remarked, however, that the different Protestant sects furnish very unequal contingents to the little army of souls daily returning to the true faith; and it is a curious fact that the two sects which furnish the most are the Episcopalians, who, in their forms and traditions, approach nearest to the Catholic Church, and the Unitarians, who go to the very opposite extreme, and appear to push their philosophical and rationalistic principles almost beyond the pale of Christianity. These two sects generally comprise the most enlightened and intellectual people of North America. On the other hand, the denominations which embrace the more ignorant portions of the population (such as the Baptists, the Wesleyan Methodists, etc., etc.) furnish, in proportion to their numbers, but few converts. The principal Catholic review in the United States (Brownson's Review, published in New York) is edited by a well-known convert, whose name it bears, and who was formerly a Unitarian minister.
Further North—in New England—there is another Catholic group, of recent origin, formed of the Puritan states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. The first see here was established by Bishop Cheverus only sixty years ago. These bishoprics, however, have already acquired importance; for in the diocese of Hartford the Catholics are now sixteen per cent, of the whole population, and the rapidity of their increase and the completeness of their church organization give us ground for bright hopes of their future progress. Immigration [{12}] here does much to promote conversions, and it will not be extravagant to anticipate that in the course of a few years the number of the faithful will be doubled. The Pilot, the most important Catholic journal in the country, is published in Boston.
The far West, only a few years ago, was a great wilderness, with only a few French posts scattered here and there in the Indian forest, like little islands in the midst of a great ocean. Now it is divided into several states, and counts millions of inhabitants. In this rapid transformation, Catholicism has not remained behind. Many dioceses have been established, and the quickness of their growth has already placed this group in the second rank so far as regards numerical importance, while all goes to show that Catholicism is destined here to preponderate greatly over all other denominations. The states of Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota contained, in 1860, 4,575,000 souls, of whom 890,000, or 19 per cent., were Catholics. This is as large a proportion as we find in the central group. It is, moreover, rapidly rising, and only one thing is necessary to make these states before long the principal seats of Catholicism in the Union—that is, an adequate supply of priests. It is of the utmost importance that the demand for missionaries in these diocese be supplied at whatever cost.
The principal causes of this remarkable increase are, first, the crowds of immigrants attracted by the great extent of fertile land thrown open to settlers; and, secondly, the fact that the Catholic immigrants on their arrival clustered, so to speak, around the old French settlements, where the missionaries still maintained the discipline and worship of the Church. At first, therefore, it was easy to direct this great influx of people, since they naturally tended toward the pre-existing centres of faith. The consequence was that the Church lost by apostacies fewer members than one might have supposed, and fewer than were lost in other places. But now the daily augmenting crowds of immigrants are dispersing themselves through less solitary regions. They are coming under more direct and various influences; and hence the necessity for increasing the number of churches and parish priests becomes daily more and more urgent. At the same time, the means at the disposal of the bishops become daily less and less adequate for supplying this want, especially since the people of the country, new and unsettled as they are, and absorbed in material cares, furnish but few candidates for the priesthood. Here we see a glorious field for the far-reaching benevolence of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Nowhere, we believe, will the sending forth of pious and devoted priests produce fruits comparable to those of which the past gives promise to the future in this part of the United States. We spoke just now of the old French colonies, and our readers will perhaps be surprised that we should have made so much account of those poor little villages, which numbered hardly more than from 500 to 1,500 souls each when the Yankees began to come into the country. Nevertheless, we have not exaggerated their importance. It is not only that they served as centres and rallying-points; but so rapid is the multiplication of families in America that this French population which, if brought together in one mass in 1800, would have counted at most 14,000 souls, now numbers, including both the original settlements and the swarms of emigrants who have gone from them to the West, not fewer than 80,000. Their descendants are always easily recognized. Detroit, and its neighborhood in Michigan, Vincennes (Ind.), Cahokia and Kaskaskia (Ill.), St. Louis, St. Geneviève, Carondelet, etc. (Mo.), Green Bay and Prairie du Chien (Wis.), St. Paul (Minn.)—all these old settlements have preserved the deep imprint of our race. Even in the new colonies which were afterward drawn from them, the French population have uniformly kept up the practice of their religion, [{13}] the use of their mother tongue, and a lively recollection of their origin. Of this fact we have obtained proof in several instances from careful personal observation. Small and poor, therefore, as these settlements were, they had a powerful moral influence upon the great immigration of the nineteenth century. The Catholic immigrants felt drawn toward them by the attraction of a community of thought and customs; and God, whose Providence rules our lives, directed the movement by his own inscrutable methods.
III.
While the Catholic element was increasing at the rate of 80, 125, and 109 per cent, every ten years, other religious denominations showed an increase of only twenty or twenty-five per cent. Some remained stationary, and a few even lost ground. Whence comes this continued and increasing disparity in the development of different portions of the same people? The principal reason assigned for it is the immense emigration from Ireland to America. As the number of Catholics in the United States when the emigration began was very small, every swarm of fresh settlers added much more to their ratio of increase than to that of other denominations. Ten added to ten gives an increase of 100 per cent.; but the same number added to 100 gives only ten per cent. At first sight, this seems a sufficient explanation; but we shall find, when we come to examine it, that it does not really account for our increase. If the growth of the American Catholic Church were the result wholly of immigration, we should find that as the number of Catholic inhabitants increased, the apparent effect of this immigration would be diminished. In other words, the ratio of increase would gradually fall to an equality with that of other denominations. But, so far from this being the case, the difference between our ratio of increase and that of the Protestant sects is as great as ever--is even growing greater. The ratio which was ten per cent. a year between 1830 and 1840, rose to 12.50 per cent, a year between 1840 and 1850, and was 10.09 per cent, between 1850 and 1860. There are other causes, therefore, beside European emigration to which we must look for an explanation of Catholic progress in America. If we study with a little attention the extent to which immigration has influenced the development of the whole population of the country, and the exact proportion of the Catholic part of this immigration, we shall find confirmation of the conclusions to which we have been led by the simple testimony of figures. Immigration has never furnished more than six or seven per cent. of the decennial increase of the population of the United States, the growth of which has been at the rate of thirty-five per cent, during the same period. Immigration, therefore, contributed to it only one-fifth. Again, of these immigrants, including both Irish and Germans, not more than one-third have been Catholics. Moreover, we must take account of the considerable number of members that the Church has lost in the course of their dispersion all over the country.