Francis Kernan and the Catholic Senate Seat
The election of Francis Kernan as United States Senator from New York, is probably the first instance of the elevation of a Roman Catholic to that body. The fact has no special ecclesiastical significance, for Mr. Kernan is not so much of a churchman as a politician, and it is as a Democrat, not as a Romanist, that he has been raised to this position. Still, his presence there will fan the enthusiasm and excite the political aspirations of the Roman Catholic masses. The Christian people of the United States might well take a hint from a paragraph in the Boston Pilot of a few weeks since:— “Just wait a few years longer, till we send half a dozen priests to the House, and a couple of Catholic Bishops to the Senate—and see then what is thought of ‘clergymen’ in Congress. Perhaps we’ll pick out Jesuit priests, too!”