As the Catholic body had increased, a new church was begun in a spot then far out of the city, described as between the Broadway and the Bowery road. This was old St. Patrick's, of which the corner-stone was laid June 8th, 1809. This was to be the cathedral of the future bishop; and the Orphan Asylum, now thriving under the care of an incorporated society, was ere long to be placed near the new church.
During this period a strange case occurred in a New York court that settled for that State, at least, a question of importance to Catholics. It settled as a principle of law that the confession of a Catholic to a priest was a privileged communication, which the priest could not be called upon or permitted to reveal.
"Restitution had been made to a man named James Keating, through the Rev. Father Kohlmann, of certain goods which had been stolen from him. Keating had previously made a complaint against one Philips and his wife, as having received the goods thus stolen, and they were indicted for a misdemeanor before the justices of the peace. Keating having afterward stated that the goods had been restored to him through the instrumentality of Father Kohlmann, the latter was cited before the court, and required to give evidence in regard to the person or persons from whom he had received them. This he refused to do, on the ground that no court could require a priest to give evidence in regard to matters known to him only under the seal of confession. Upon the case being sent to the grand-jury, Father Kohlmann was subpoenaed to attend before them, and appeared in obedience to the process, but in respectful terms again declined answering. On the trial which ensued, Father Kohlmann was again cited to appear as a witness in the case. Having been asked certain questions, he entreated that he might be excused, and offered his reasons to the court. With consent of counsel, the question was put off for some time, and finally brought on for argument on Tuesday, the 8th of June, 1813, before a court composed of the Hon. De Witt Clinton, mayor of the city; the Hon. Josiah Ogden Hoffman, recorder; and Isaac S. Douglass, and Richard Cunningham, Esqs., sitting aldermen. The Hon. Richard Riker, afterward for so many years recorder of the city, and Counsellor Sampson, volunteered their services in behalf of Father Kohlmann....
"The decision was given by De Witt Clinton at some length. Having shown that, according to the doctrine and practice of the Catholic Church, a priest who should reveal what he had heard in the confessional would become infamous and degraded in the eyes of Catholics, and as no one could be called upon to give evidence which would expose him to infamy, he declared that the only way was to excuse a priest from answering in such cases."
This decision, by the influence of De Witt Clinton, when Governor of the State, was incorporated into the Revised Statutes as part of the lex scripta of the State.
With this period, too began the publication of Catholic works in New York, which has since attained such a wonderful development. Bernard Dornin stands as the patriarch of the Catholic book trade of New York, of which an interesting sketch will be found in the appendix to Bishop Bayley's work. He also gives a list of subscribers to some of the earliest works, which will possess no little interest to older Catholic families, who can here claim ancestors as not only Catholic, but devoted to their faith, and anxious to spread its literature. We have looked over the list, and amid familiar names have endeavored to find the oldest now living. If we do not err greatly, it is the distinguished lawyer Charles O'Conor, Esq.
When Pope Pius VII. was restored to Rome, another son of St. Dominic was chosen; and the Rev. John Connolly was consecrated the second bishop of New York. After making such arrangements as he could in Ireland for the good of his diocese, he set sail from Dublin, but experienced a long and dangerous passage. From the absence of all notice of any kind, except the mere fact of his name among the passengers, his reception was apparently a most private one. He was utterly a stranger in a strange land, called from the studies of the cloister to form and rule a diocese of considerable extent, without any previous knowledge of the wants of his flock, and utterly without resources.
His diocese, which embraced the State of New York and part of New Jersey, contained but four priests, three belonging to the Jesuits in Maryland, and liable to be called away at any moment, as two were almost immediately after his arrival. The college and convent had disappeared, and the church seemed to have lost in all but numbers. Thirteen thousand Catholics were to be supplied with pastors, and yet the trustee system stood a fearful barrier in his way. As Bishop Bayley well observes,
"The trustee system had not been behind its early promise, and trustees of churches had become so accustomed to have every thing their own way, that they were not disposed to allow even the interference of a bishop.
"In such a state of things, he was obliged to assume the office of a missionary priest, rather than a bishop; and many still living remember the humility and earnest zeal with which he discharged the laborious duties of the confessional, and traversed the city on foot to attend upon the poor and sick.
"Bishop Connolly was not lacking in firmness, but the great wants of his new diocese made it necessary for him to fall in, to a certain extent, with the established order of things, and this exposed him afterward to much difficulty and many humiliations."
Yet he secured some good priests and ecclesiastical students from Kilkenny College, whom he gradually raised to the priesthood, his first ordination and the first conferring of the sacrament of holy orders in the city being that of the Rev. Michael O'Gorman in 1815. One only of the priests ordained by this first bishop occupying the see of New York still survives, the Rev. John Shanahan, now at St. Peter's church, Barclay street.
Under the care of Bishop Connolly the Sisters of Charity began their labors in the city so long the home of Mother Seton; and, so far as his means permitted him to yield to his zeal, he increased the number of churches and congregations in his diocese.