Untitled article | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, January 21, 1868

PLANS OF THE CATHOLICS.

It is very evident that the Catholics are in earnest to get the control of this country. During the past twenty-five years they have been gaining ground here very rapidly. They now have great power in the political elections, and a large influence in religious matters. Many prominent men in this country are Catholics. No pains are spared to bring the youth under their influence. The abolition of slavery has opened a new and important field to them. The ignorance of the freedmen makes them easy subjects for the shrewdness of the Catholic priesthood.

At the late Catholic Congress, held at Malines, where distinguished men made speeches, some noted American prelates were present. Among the rest was Bishop Lynch, of Charleston, S. C., who delivered an address, of which it is said in the Catholic Mirror: “After giving some interesting details concerning the late Council in Baltimore, and the progress of Catholicity in the United States, the Bishop spoke of an enterprise somewhat novel in its character, which owes its origin to the late civil war in America, which was nothing less than the evangelization of the freedmen. Their number was estimated at 4,000,000, which has been reduced by war, famine and other casualties, to 3,500,000. Of this last number the Bishop estimates that 150,000 are Catholics. These last are generally good Catholics, many of them very exemplary. They are a testimony of what the church can do for the blacks. ‘There are negroes and negresses, in religious orders, who are,’ says the Prelate, ‘our consolation and our joy. It is the aim of the church to enlighten and elevate these pariahs of American society.’ It has prepared special catechisms for them, it has enrolled them in confraternities, it has founded new churches for them as in Baltimore, New Orleans, St. Louis, and in Charleston, where her eminent Prelate will open one for them on Christmas day. ‘In the meantime,’ asks the pious and zealous Bishop, ‘can nothing more be done for these poor unfortunates? I ask you this question: How was your Europe civilized? Was it not by the monastic orders? How did the Jesuits found the Reductions of Paraguay, destroyed by your modern philosophy, which preferred a return to savage life to the civilization of the gospel? The moment appears to me opportune. St. Philip commenced a work because he was poor, because he had in his purse but twenty centimes. Well, Messieurs, I am poorer than St. Philip Neri. I have nothing; yet I begin! (Applause.) Alas! I have less than nothing. I have seen my cathedral in ashes, my seminary burned, religious houses, orphanages, asylums ravaged by the bombs and bullets of civil war; have seen the religious seek the forests to live, or rather to die!’ The Prelate, overcome by emotions, in which his auditors participated, paused for awhile, and then proceeded. ‘However, I commence, I put my hand to the work. (Applause.) It is decided, it will be done. (Acclamations.) I have been borne down with grief, my head blanched by sorrow, yet there is enough courage left in me to undertake this work. I propose to buy an island of 600 hectares on the confines of my Diocese, and establish three religious orders, and open there the Benedictine colonies of Paraguay and California. (Applause.) A Protestant minister said of them, ‘the blacks are like a fallow field’ and will belong to whoever can secure them. Well, Messieurs, the negroes will belong to the church. In ten years we will have ten colonies. The Protestants wish to imitate us; they will not succeed, and we will accomplish at last, what is our grand aim, the introduction of multitudes of saints into Heaven.’ ‘We cannot express,’ says the reporter, ‘the enthusiasm with which the Bishop’s speech was greeted.’”—World’s Crisis.