"The chief trouble, it seems to me, is in the fact that the Catholic Church is allowed to hold property in any shape or form. But the Catholic Church does hold property, and she will continue to hold it to the end of the chapter, and 'What do you propose to do about it?'
"'The (Catholic) Nursery and Hospital on Fifty-first street and Lexington avenue,' is a Protestant institution.
"The new St. Patrick's Cathedral stands on ground purchased by Catholics about sixty years ago, and ever since in their possession. This fact spoils Parton's compliment to the Archbishop Hughes's foresight, and a nice bit of irony in Putnam's Magazine.
"The Catholics in New York City, in 1817, opened an orphan asylum, which they maintained, without assistance from the city or State, until some time after the year 1840, when they received on a perpetual lease the block of ground between Fourth and Fifth avenues and Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets, at that time of very little value. On these lots they have erected two vast and magnificent buildings, in which they support over a thousand children, at an annual cost to them, and not to the city or State, of from $70,000 to $90,000.
"I make these corrections to show that the writer of the article in Putnam is far astray in his facts. There are many other objectionable statements in the article, but a magazine contribution without a little spice in it would be tame and unreadable. Thus, the allusion to the church trouble in Auburn, and the pretty play on the name of the church, would lose their point if the history of that affair were properly understood.
"Catholics do not claim to have rights above any one else, but they know they have equal rights with others. They have no notion of their church ever becoming the 'Established Church,' and they are just as certain that no other church shall ever assume to be the 'Established Church' in the United States.
B. J. McQuaid,
"Bishop of Rochester."
This is conclusive as far as it goes. We do not know the money value of our churches, the sites and buildings of our schools, colleges, orphan asylums, hospitals, religious houses, and academies; but it is possible that in the five dioceses into which the State is ecclesiastically divided it may be half as much as the value of the real estate owned by Trinity Church in this city; but be it more or be it less, the property of the church has been bought and paid for, so far as paid for at all, with very slight exceptions, by the voluntary offerings of the faithful, and none of it has been obtained by the despoiling of Protestant owners. Very little of it is due to public grants, and the few lots leased us by the city at a nominal rent for a term of years, though of great value now, were of little value when leased. Nor have these lots in any case been leased for sites of churches, but in all cases for purposes in which the city itself is no less deeply interested than the Catholics themselves. The grants to the reformatory for Catholic boys, though apparently large, are measures of economy on the part of the city; for we can manage reformatories and take care of our juvenile delinquents far more economically than the city or Protestant institutions can. The industrial school of the Sisters of Charity is a public benefit, and the city and the State would save money were all their hospitals and asylums placed under the charge of these good sisters, or of the kindred congregation of the Sisters of Mercy. Our hospitals, again, are as open to Protestants as to Catholics. It is never a Catholic practice to inquire what is a man's religion before rendering him assistance. Whoever needs our help, whatever his religion, is our neighbor.
The city has made donations, as far as we are aware, only to such Catholic institutions as are established for really public objects, and which in their operations save the city from what would otherwise be either a public nuisance or a public charge. Take the case of Catholic orphan asylums. The orphans they receive and provide for would otherwise be a charge on the city treasury. Take the institute of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. It has for its object a noble charity, that of rescuing and reforming fallen women. These victims of vice and propagators of corruption, received and cared for by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, and generally restored to health, virtue, and usefulness, would, if not taken up by them, fall into the hands of the correctional police, and the city would have the expense of arresting, punishing, and providing for them in the house of correction, the penitentiary, or its hospitals. Catholic charity not only accomplishes a good object, confers a public benefit, but saves a heavy expense to the Commissioners of Public Charities and Correction. It is only such Catholic institutions as tend directly to promote a public good, and to lighten the public expense, that the city aids with its grants and donations. It aids in the same way, and to a far greater extent, similar Protestant institutions, such as the House of the Friendless, the House of Mercy, the Society for the Protection of Juvenile Delinquents, the Christian's Aid Society, the Magdalen Society, the Nursery and Children's Hospital, etc., for the most part, institutions founded with an anti-Catholic intent.
The Magazine asserts, the "State paid out, in 1866, for benefactions under religious control, $129,025.49, … of which the trifling sum of $124,174.14 went to the religious purposes" of the Catholic Church. We have not been able to find a particle of proof of this, and the mode of reckoning adopted by Putnam is so false, and its general inaccuracy is so great, that, in the absence of specific proof, we must presume it to be untrue, and made only for a sensational effect. The writer in Putnam seems to count as Catholic such institutions and associations as the Ladies' Mission Society, The New York Magdalen Benevolent Society, Ladies' Union Aid Society, Nursery and Children's Hospital, Ladies' Home Missionary Society, Five Points Gospel Union Mission, Five Points House of Industry, Young Men's Christian Association, and we know not how many more, all Protestant, and not a few of them designed, under pretext of charity, and by really rendering some physical relief to the poor and destitute, to detach the Catholic needy, and especially Catholic children, from the church, and yet all of them are beneficiaries of the State or city. No institution supported, even for proselyting purposes, by a union of two or more evangelical sects, is reckoned by Putnam as Protestant or sectarian. We hold them to be thoroughly Protestant, and rabidly sectarian.