Shall we have a Catholic Congress?
All our readers must have read with interest the account given of the last Catholic Congress at Malines. The importance and utility of such assemblies are generally understood. Shall we have a Catholic Congress? The feasibility of introducing it into the United States can scarcely be doubted. The people here are more accustomed to self-government than in Europe. We are thoroughly acquainted with the management and rules of popular, deliberative assemblies. We have learned members of the clergy, and educated laymen, who appreciate the value of a congress, and are competent to render its workings practical and make its deliberations effective. The episcopacy is ever ready to aid undertakings for the benefit of religion. There can, therefore, be no doubt of obtaining the necessary sanction from the ecclesiastical hierarchy for the assembling of the congress.
Who, then, will begin it? And when will it be held? Many earnest Catholics of the country, who have seen the great benefits derived to Belgium and France from the congresses at Malines; and to Germany from those at Munich and elsewhere; who have witnessed the powerful influence for propagating doctrines and concentrating forces of the sectarian or philanthropical assemblies which annually meet in New York or elsewhere, are asking these questions. Our forces are scattered; a congress would unite them. There is no centre, no unanimity, no harmony of action among us in reference to many important matters which might be treated of in a congress.
Let us briefly enumerate some of the objects which could be discussed and studied in an assembly of our learned clergy and educated laity.
FREE SUNDAY AND DAY SCHOOLS, their regulation and amelioration, might be one of the objects. In large cities like New York, Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia, where Catholics are, many of them, wealthy and instructed, the teachers of parochial or Sunday schools are often highly capable of conducting their establishments. The large cities afford so many opportunities of study and improvement that every one can learn. But in the poor country districts, how is it? The teachers are isolated. They need more system. There is no central point to which they may look for light. The rural clergy in remote districts are often suffering from want of some large and powerful organization which could assist them in their labors, either for the improvement of their schools, their choirs, etc., or for the counteracting of Protestant propagandism.
The influence which has been exercised on education in Belgium by the Catholic congresses is well known. The labors of the German Catholic congresses is not so public. The Nineteenth General Assembly of the Catholic associations of Germany took place at Bamberg, in Bavaria, during the interval between the 31st of August and the 3d of September, A.D. 1868. These German congresses, like those of Belgium, are composed of laymen as well as ecclesiastics. They exclude all political questions from their sessions. Their only aim is to sustain and support the Catholic cause. In the three first meetings, one at Mayence, in 1848, under the presidency of the Chevalier Buss; the other at Breslau, presided over by M. Lieber, while the city was in a state of siege, in 1849; and in the third, held at Ratisbon in 1850, the members organized a unity of action among the societies of St. Vincent de Paul, established schools and reading-rooms in the interest of Catholic literature, and watched over the religious wants of the Germans in Paris and throughout the rest of France. The Congress of Ratisbon, presided over by Count Joseph de Stolberg, founded the Society of St. Boniface, which has since then realized the sum of $700,000, and by this means established one hundred and ten missions and one hundred and fifty schools for the poor German Catholics living in Protestant countries.
Münster, in Westphalia, had a Congress in 1852. The president was the Baron of Andlau. In it was discussed the method which the Catholic associations could take to promote Christian education and to found a Catholic university. These deliberations were continued the following year at the Vienna Congress, where Dr. Zell presided. In 1856, at another Congress, in which Count O'Donnel was president, the foundation of children's asylums was discussed. Salzburg was proposed as the seat of the Catholic university. The Salzburg Congress, in 1857, was specially occupied with this project, and with the means of developing the power of the Catholic press, founding Catholic publication societies, and giving pecuniary aid to the Catholics of the East. At Freyburg, in 1859, the Congress, presided over by the Count de Brandis, treated of the Catholic press and religious music. The Thirteenth Congress at Munich, in 1861, founded the literary review known as the Litterarischer Handweiser, edited by Hulskam and Rump, at Münster.
The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, in the following year, took up again the question of the establishment of a Catholic university. A committee was appointed to found it; but the government opposed them. This rather excited than diminished the zeal of the persevering German Catholics. Professor Moeller, of Louvain, on this occasion said: "The word impossible is not Christian." There was not one of those congresses that did not oppose the secularization of education; not one of them that did not materially and morally aid the cause of Christian doctrine.