Roman Catholic Colonization.
The Catholic World is always interesting by reason of its vigorous treatment of topics of instant interest from the Roman Catholic standpoint. Its current number, for April, is especially so, with pungent essays on “Our Diplomatists,” “The Proposed Expulsion of the Teaching Orders from the Public Schools of Paris,” “Private Charities and Public Lands,” and “Catholic Colonization as actually Established.” The last-named paper is specially worthy of Protestants’ attention, as throwing light upon the method by which the Roman Catholic Church is quietly pushing ahead in its effort for the ecclesiastical possession of the country through the interior and the great West. We do not think the effort will be a successful one; but in the bravery, intelligence, and fervor of it there is much to admire and imitate. The work in Minnesota may be taken as happily exemplifying the system and its operation. There is in that State a “Catholic Colonization Bureau,” which is under the auspices of the Coadjutor-Bishop of St. Paul’s. It is the object of this Bureau to encourage, direct, and nourish the planting of Roman Catholic colonies in the State, upon lands either bought of the railroad companies or taken up under the Homestead Law. Four such colonies have been successfully placed since 1876. One, that of Swift county, occupies a strip of territory lying for thirty-six miles along the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, one hundred and twenty miles west of St. Paul City. This colony is organized in two parishes, each with its pastor, church, and schools. The farms range from eighty to five hundred acres each. Grain elevators, stores, mills, trade-shops, immigrant depots, and no saloons, dot the landscape; and such township names as St. Michael’s, St. Joseph’s, St. Francis’s, attest the ecclesiastical atmosphere which pervades the same. Beyond Swift county lies the colony of Graceville, where in three months last year one hundred and seventy-five families were located. The first building up was the church. Around this is now grouped a pretty village, and at least a hundred and fifty settlers’ cabins have arisen within a radius of half a dozen miles. In Southwestern Minnesota is a third colony, of St. Adrian, where the Bureau controls seventy thousand acres, of which twenty-two thousand have been already sold to settlers. Here the parish priest was on the ground when only three houses had been built; and there is now a school-house, a church, a pastor’s house; while a population of one hundred and sixty Catholic families is expected by the coming spring. The fourth and newest of these Minnesota colonies is that of Avoca, just north of St. Adrian, comprising fifty-two thousand acres. The rule in the founding of all these colonies has been that the resident priest and the church should go in with the first settlers, whether they be few or many. The Roman Catholic idea is not our idea, but who shall say that it is failing of its effect? Is not the Church of Rome in the United States laying deep and broad foundations for the future? After all, its policy is only that which was followed in a different form by our Pilgrim Fathers at Massachusetts Bay, and it is by no means certain but that the Pilgrims’ sons need to revive it in their time.—Christian Union.