We look in vain, also, for any great name, distinguished for political
power or intellectual supremacy, among the humble immigrants who first raised the standard of the cross in the hostile atmosphere of colonial Protestantism. As in the crumbling yet still luxurious Roman Empire, the foundations of our infant church were laid on what, in a worldly sense, may be called the lowest class in the social scale, the poor, the simple, the neglected and despised. Wealth, fashion, and self-interest were opposed to it. A people shrewd, intelligent, and in their own way religious, were in possession of the country, and had neither the will nor the disposition to yield one jot to the professors of a faith which they had been taught to regard as debasing and idolatrous. Only a hundred years ago the Catholics of the United Colonies consisted of a few isolated groups, principally in Maryland and Pennsylvania, without influence, authority, or legal recognition. In the aggregate they counted about one in every thousand of the population, and, save some descendants of the original Maryland settlers, and a few private gentlemen who afterwards rose to eminence in the Revolutionary War, they were alike devoid of wealth and social standing.
Still, this very obscurity was their safeguard and defence. Though soon declared free by the fundamental law of the new confederacy, public opinion, or rather popular prejudice, was against them, and for many years after the achievement of our independence their numbers increased with more steadiness than rapidity. Recruits came from all quarters. Attracted by the guarantees presented by the Constitution, Catholics of various nationalities hastened to place themselves under its protecting ægis.
The hurricane of revolution which swept over France and the greater part of Europe, and reached even the West Indies, drove many pious priests and exemplary laymen to our shores. On the north the French Canadian crossed the frontier, while as our southern boundaries were enlarged so as to embrace the valley of the Lower Mississippi, the inhabitants of that large region, who were nearly all of one faith, helped materially to swell the Catholic population of the Union. At that period Ireland had not begun to pour in her myriads, but a small, steady stream of emigrants was setting in from other ports as soon as it was ascertained that the new nation of the west had discarded the penal code of England when it had thrown off her authority.
In 1810 the Catholics within the limits of the United States were estimated at upwards of one hundred and fifty thousand, and the clergy numbered eighty, or double the number reported in 1800. Twenty years afterwards the laity had increased to 450,000 and the clergy to 232. The hierarchy, which only dated from 1789, at this time reckoned thirteen bishops.
From 1830 may be dated the extraordinary growth in numbers, influence, and activity of the Catholic Church in this country. The tide of European immigration, which has flowed on with undiminished volume till within a year or two, then fairly began. Between that year and 1840 over 300,000 arrivals were reported from Ireland, 58,000 from France, Spain, and other Catholic countries, and 150,000 from Germany, a strong minority of whom may also be credited to the church. All these accessions, added to the native-born and already adopted element, brought the Catholic
strength in the latter year to over one million, and swelled the ranks of the priesthood to 482, or one for every 2,000 souls.
Satisfactory as were these results, the next decade was destined to witness an advance much more magnificent as to numerical strength, and infinitely more salutary when we reflect on the quarter from which some of that strength was drawn.
The Oxford movement, as it was called, had already spread consternation among the Anglicans. Many of the ablest and most erudite scholars of Oxford University, wearied and dissatisfied with the contradictions and pretensions of English Protestantism, had sought peace and rest in the bosom of the church. Their writings and example produced a profound sensation wherever the English language was spoken, and nowhere a more decided one than in this country. Men who had formerly exhibited nothing but contempt or indifference for Catholicity, and some even who had displayed a marked hostility to the faith, eagerly read the works of such thinkers as Newman, and, as a consequence, guided by Providence, abandoned their favorite heretical notions and became reconciled to the church. This spirit of investigation and submission pervaded all classes, particularly the more studious, conscientious, and influential. Judges, journalists, artists, authors, physicians, ministers, and doctors of divinity openly declared their adhesion to the Catholic faith, and arrayed themselves beside the contemned and obscure Irish immigrant and his children. Many of the ablest publicists of to-day, not a few of the most energetic of the clergy, and at least one illustrious member of the hierarchy are the fruits of this sympathetic movement
which had its origin in the cloisters of the once Catholic university.