The Catholic Church in the United States.
THE following from the Christian World shows how rapidly the Catholic Church is increasing in strength in this country: “Eighty-six years have passed since the consecration of Bishop Carroll, and to this period the organized efforts of the church to secure a position in this country are confined. The work then begun has not for a moment been intermitted. In the midst of losses, defeats, persecutions, anxieties, doubts, revilings, calumnies, the struggle has been still carried on.” . . . With the more thorough organization of dioceses and congregations, parochial schools became practicable, and the great progress made in Catholic elementary education is one of the most significant and re-assuring facts connected with the history of the church of the United States. “One hundred years ago there was not a Catholic ecclesiastical student, or theological seminary, or college, or academy, or parochial school, or asylum, or hospital, from Maine to Georgia.” “Father Badin, the first person who ever received Holy Orders in the United States, was ordained in the old cathedral of Baltimore on the 25th of May, 1793, eighty-three years ago. It is now eighty-six years since Bishop Carroll was consecrated, and down to 1808 he remained the only Catholic bishop in the American Church, whose hierarchy is composed at present of one cardinal, ten archbishops, forty-six bishops, and eight vicars apostolic.” Thus have they steadily increased in the past, and the future presents no less flattering prospects for their advancement. Should they gain strength sufficient, the following from a paper published under the immediate supervision of Archbishop Kendrick clearly shows what the result will be: “We confess that the Roman Catholic Church is intolerant; that is to say, that it uses all the means in its power for the extirpation of error and sin; but this intolerance is the logical and necessary consequence of its infallibility. She alone has the right to be intolerant, because she alone has the truth. The Church tolerates heretics, but hates them mortally, and employs all her force to secure their annihilation.” When the Catholics shall here be in possession of a considerable majority—which will certainly be the case by and bye, although the time may be long deferred—then religious liberty will have come to an end in the republic of the United States. Our enemies say this, and we believe with them. Our enemies know that we do not pretend to be better than our Church, and in what concerns this, her history is open to the eyes of all. They know, then, how the Roman Church dealt with heretics in the middle ages, and how she deals with them to-day, wherever she has the power. “We no more think of denying these historical facts, than we do of blaming the saints of God, and the princes of the Church, for what they have done or approved in these matters. Heresy is mortal sin; it kills the soul, and precipitates the whole soul into Hell. It is moreover a most contagious disease, and propagates itself indefinitely wherever it has got foothold, and thus puts in jeopardy the temporal and moral welfare of innumerable generations to come. This is the reason why princes, truly Christian, extirpate heresy, root and branch, in their kingdoms, and that Christian States drive it out of their territories, as far as they are able to do it. If we now abstain from persecuting heretics here, we boldly repeat it, it is because we are too weak, and because we believe that in this condition of things, we should, in attempting it, do the Church we serve more harm than good.”