THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXIII., No. 137.—AUGUST, 1876.
Copyright: Rev. I. T. Hecker. 1876.
THE NEXT PHASE OF CATHOLICITY IN THE UNITED STATES.
The history of the universal church, replete as it is with miraculous conversions and great moral revolutions, presents no parallel to the growth and spread of the Catholic faith in this republic; and if we be allowed to forecast the future by the light of the past, we may without presumption predict for Catholicity a career of usefulness and glory, an influence far-reaching and all-pervading, on American soil, hitherto unequalled, even in the most triumphant days of our holy and venerable mother.
In the early ages of Christianity whole tribes and nations were won over bodily to the Gospel, not alone by the superhuman efforts of a comparatively small number of apostolic men, but incidentally by the attractions of the purer and higher order of civilization which everywhere followed their footsteps and resulted naturally from their teachings. The primitive missionaries were reformers of manners and governments, advocates of mercy and equity, promoters of peace, industry, and education, as well as expounders of divine law. They indeed realized the fabled power of Orpheus, and tamed the brute passions of paganism by the harmony of their lives and the melody of their doctrines.
Far different have been the circumstances which surrounded the first permanent introduction of Catholicity into what is now the United States. Though we can dwell with commendable pride on the devotion and self-sacrifice which characterized the Spanish and French Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits in their arduous labors among the aborigines; and recall with deep gratitude the beneficent and indefatigable exertions of the zealous pioneers of our present hierarchy and priesthood, we cannot help feeling that we have had no national inheritance in the merits of those extraordinary men of the Old World, those confessors and martyrs, whose names shine forth with such resplendent lustre in the calendar of the saints of God.