The evidences of a movement towards the Catholic Church are still clearer and more general in the United States. There is less prejudice and hostility against the church in the United States than in England, and hence her progress is much greater.
The Catholics, in the beginning of this century, stood as one to every two hundred of the whole population of the American Republic. The ratio of Catholics now is one to six or seven of the inhabitants. The Catholics will outnumber, before the close of this century, all other believers in Christianity put together in the republic.
This is no fanciful statement, but one based on a careful study of statistics, and the estimate is moderate. Even should emigration from Catholic countries to the United States cease altogether—which it will not—or even should it greatly diminish, the supposed loss or diminution, in this source of augmentation, will be fully compensated by the relative increase of births among the Catholics, as compared with that among other portions of the population.
The spirit, the tendencies, and the form of political government inherited by the people of the United States are strongly and distinctively Saxon; yet there are no more patriotic or better citizens in the republic than the Roman Catholics, and no more intelligent, practical, and devoted Catholics in the church than the seven millions of Catholics in this same young and vigorous republic. The Catholic faith is the only persistently progressive religious element, compared with the increase of population, in the United States. A striking proof that the Catholic Church flourishes wherever there is honest freedom and wherever human nature has its full share of liberty! Give the Catholic Church equal rights and fair play, and she will again win Europe, and with Europe the world.
Now, who will venture to assert that these two mixed Saxon nations, of England and the United States, are not, in the order of divine Providence, the appointed leaders of the great movement of the return of all the Saxons to the Holy Catholic Church?
The sun, in his early dawn, first touches the brightest mountain-tops, and, advancing in his course, floods the deepest valleys with his glorious light; and so the Sun of divine grace has begun to enlighten the minds in the highest stations in life in England, in the United States, and in Germany; and what human power will impede the extension of its holy light to the souls of the whole population of these countries?
XVII. TRANSITION OF THE LATIN-CELTS
Strange action of divine Providence in ruling the nations of this earth! While the Saxons are about to pass from a natural to a supernatural career, the Latin-Celts are impatient for, and have already entered upon, a natural one. What does this mean? Are these races to change their relative positions before the face of the world?
The present movement of transition began on the part of the Latin-Celtic nations in the last century among the French people, who of all these nations stand geographically the nearest, and whose blood is most mingled with that of the Saxons. That transition began in violence, because it was provoked to a premature birth by the circumstance that the control exercised by the church as the natural moderator of the Christian republic of Europe was set aside by Protestantism, particularly so in France, in consequence of a diluted dose of the same Protestantism under the name of Gallicanism. Exempt from this salutary control, kings and the aristocracy oppressed the people at their own will and pleasure; and the people, in turn, wildly rose up in their might, and cut off, at their own will and pleasure, the heads of the kings and aristocrats. Louis XIV., in his pride, said, “L’Etat c’est moi!” The people replied, in their passion, “L’Etat c’est nous!”
Under the guidance of the church the transformation from feudalism to all that is included under the title of modern citizenship was effected with order, peace, and benefit to all classes concerned. Apart from this aid, society pendulates from despotism to anarchy, and from anarchy to despotism. The French people at the present moment are groping about, and earnestly seeking after the true path of progress, which they lost some time back by their departure from the Christian order of society.