There are other very large and fine establishments in the vicinity of New York, practically belonging to the city, but not within its limits.
There are 4 orphan asylums, a protectory for the reception of vagrant children in two departments, male and female, which is out of town, another for servant girls out of place, a very fine industrial school for girls, 2 hospitals, 4 religious communities of men; and 11 of women. The most numerous of these religious congregations are the Jesuits and the Sisters of Charity; the former having in the diocese 39 fathers, beside numerous members of inferior grade, and the latter 333 sisters and 39 different establishments.
In every sense except as regards municipal government, Brooklyn, which is on the other side of East River, is a part of New York; and there we have another diocese of immense proportions, with another great congeries of Catholic institutions. On the opposite side of the town, and on the Jersey shore of the Hudson, the churches of Jersey City, which is remarkably advanced in Catholic institutions, are plainly visible.
Our object in this article has been to give a general idea of the provision made for the religious wants of the mass of the population in the city of New York.
In spite of the uncertainty of the estimates and statistics we have given in regard to exact numbers, it is plain that this provision is very inadequate; that a vast mass of our population is unprovided for or totally indifferent; that the orthodox Protestant societies have lost to a great extent their influence over the mass of the population, and that a great body of practically heathen people has been gradually forming and accumulating in the very bosom of our social system.
Where are we to look for a remedy to this state of things? It is necessary to our political and social well-being that crime and vice should be restrained, that the mass of the people should be instructed and formed in virtue, taught sobriety, chastity, honesty, obedience to law, fidelity to their obligations, and universal morality. Soldiers, policemen, prisons, poor-laws, and all extrinsic means of this kind are insufficient preventives or remedies for the disorders caused by a prevalence of vice and immorality. They will burst all these bonds, and disrupt society, if not checked in their principle. Can liberal Christians, philanthropists, philosophers, political economists, and our wealthy, well-informed gentlemen of property, who have thrown away their Bibles, and who sneer at all positive revelation, indicate to us a remedy? Can they apply it? Is it in their power, by scientific lectures, by elegant moral discourses, by material improvements, by societies, by laws, by any means whatever, to tame, control, civilize, reform, make gentle, virtuous, conscientious, this lawless multitude? Can they give us incorruptible legislators, faithful magistrates, honest men of business, a virtuous commonalty? Can they create truth, honor, and magnanimity, patriotism, chastity, filial obedience, domestic happiness, integrity? If not, then give them their way, let their doctrines prevail, throw away faith in a positive revelation, and they will not be safe in their houses. The rogues will hang the honest men, and might will be the only right. One of the leaders of the party has not hesitated to avow that the prevalence of his principles would necessarily produce a social and moral chaos of disorder, before mankind could learn in a rational way that their true happiness lies in intellectual and moral cultivation. What has the sect of the philosophers ever done yet to produce virtue and morality in the mass of mankind? What can they do now? They cannot even reproduce what was good in heathenism, for that was due to an imperfect and corrupted tradition of the ancient revelation, and the influence of the sophists tended to destroy even that. Our modern sophists act on the same principle, and are busily at work to destroy the Christian tradition of faith, and with it the principle which vitalizes Christian civilization.
Can orthodox Protestantism recover its ancient sway, and reproduce a state of religions belief and moral virtue equal to that which once prevailed? We would like to have them prove their ability to do so, and show that they have even made a fair beginning toward recovering their lost ground. We leave them to do what they can, and to try out their experiment to the end on the non-Catholic majority of our population. If their intelligence, wealth, zeal, and prestige of position were thrown into the defence of the common cause of Christian revelation by union with the Catholic Church, the victory would be certain. Unbelief and indifferentism could never make any stand against a united Christianity, in a population so full of religions reminiscences and predilections, and so susceptible to persuasive logic and genuine eloquence, as our own. The Christian cause is weakened by its divisions, and by the political and social schisms which are bred by the schisms in religion. Not only those who are separated from the common trunk of the Catholic Church suffer from the separation, but the trunk itself suffers and is mutilated by the loss. [{389}] The Catholic Church cannot do her work completely where the majority of those who prefer Christianity are opposed to her, especially when this majority includes the greater part of the more elevated classes.
It is evident, nevertheless, that the Catholic Church in New York has done a great work in our population, and has a great work to do. We have much more than one-third of the whole population, and the majority of the laboring class, and of the poor people, on our hands. The Catholic clergy alone possess a powerful and extensive religions sway over the masses of the people. The poor are emphatically here, as they have been always and everywhere, our inheritance. Nearly all that has been done, and is now doing, in an efficacious manner and on a large scale, for the religions welfare of the populace, is the work of our priesthood and their coadjutors. It is impossible to estimate the benefit to society in a political, social, and moral point of view, accruing from the influence and exertions of the Catholic clergy. This is persistently denied by a certain class of writers, who never do justice to the Catholic Church except under compulsion. One of them, writing in one of our principal weeklies, recently qualified the Catholic Church in the United States, whose growth and progress he could not ignore, as a mere empty shell without any moral life or power. He accused the Catholic clergy of not exercising that moral influence in the country at large which they ought to exercise, and have exercised in other times and places.
What a change of base this is! But now, the Catholic religion was a kind of embodied spirit of evil, and her ministers had to vindicate their title to the rank of men and Christians. Religion, morality, liberty, happiness, would be swept from the country if they were not exterminated! Now, forsooth, we are gravely asked why we do not exert a greater influence for promoting the general well-being of the country? The truth is, that the influence of the Catholic clergy on the people at large has until now been a cipher. They have had no recognized position, and have been counted for nothing, except so far as certain individuals have commanded a personal respect. There is, moreover, a great amount of sham and trumpet-blowing about the great moral demonstrations of the day. The Catholic clergy have not chosen to meddle with questions which were none of their business, or to parade and speechify on platforms or at anniversaries. They have enough to do in looking after the immediate and pressing spiritual and temporal wants of their own people. And in doing this they prevent and reform more vice, produce more solid morality, and work more effectually for the well-being of their fellow-men, than could be done by the best devised philanthropic schemes. One mission in a city congregation, one paschal-time with its labor in the confessional, will do more to uproot drunkenness, dishonesty, and licentiousness, or to hinder these upas-trees from striking root in virgin soil, than our amateur philanthropists could describe if they were all to write and lecture on the subject for a year.