The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 1907. A MIGHTY UPGROWTH

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 5, 31 January 1907, Page 21

The New Zealand TABLET THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 1907. A MIGHTY UPGROWTH

<fiEms&> HE unused muscle gro^ys flabby and becomes {•rdiltv* atrophied at last. And on the line of :proJ&niil -JL S^ss, whore there is no. advance, there is "jkgH^F retrogression. In the United States there XjS^gSjp* is no standing at ease in the grand march jjHJ%^§Hk of the Catholic Church. Year by year she ' w ■ moves forward to v fresh -conquests. There have been, of course, the inevitable stragglers and deserters -on the line of march. But what a proud pageant the Church presents '_ under ' th"c ". Stkrs and ' Stripes ! Only eight years ago (in 1899), the. Ca.iholic hierarchy in the United Scales celebrated the -centenary of the consecration of the first bishop, Dr. Carroll, of Baltimore. Catholics were in Dr. Carroll's day a mere handful of people scattered over a vast area and- ministered to .by a- few priests. To-day in riuftvbers they are the strongest, and in every ecclesiastical "activity the -most energising, •of ~ all ' the religious bodies in the country. They form a great part of' the wedge of Christianity that is driven into- the vast mass— the

' rudis indigestaque moles '—of the 40,000,000 or more . of the churchless masses that are estimated to inhabit J * the -great Republic ; of the West. In 1890 I)r. Ellen- -. wood stated in the ' Missionary Review ' (an American Protestant publication) that - the Catholic population of the United States then stood, in round numbers ,_.at 9,000,000 — ' a strong-stranded, hard-twisted agency which no one can ignore '.. He then added (we quote from the ' Review of Reviews ') :— ' From 1800 to 1850 the population of the country - increased nine-fold, the membership of all Evangelical Churches twenty-seven fold, the Roman Catholic sixtythree fold. From 1850 to 1880 the population increased 116 per cent., the communicants of Protestant Churches 185 per cent., and the Roman Catholics 294 per cent. Or, to take another line of comparison, in 1850 the Catholics equalled 45 per cent, of the -total Protestant Church membership, and, in 1880, 63 per cent. 1 According to a non-Catholic estimate before us, no religious body in the United States receives so large an accession of members by increase as does the Catholic Church. ' And Mulhall has shown that, in the forty years from 1850 to 1890, l the Roman Catholic churches multiplied (in the United States) sevenfold and church property thirteen fold, while Methodists, Baptists, or Presbyterians showed a much lower rate of progress '. To-day the churches number about 11,000, the schools some "4000, the colleges albout 1000, the hospitals and asylums some. 6oo, and the country is governed by a hierarchy that is more .numerous than that of Austria, France, or Spain. • Under the star-spangled banner the Church still moves onward as if shod with the shoes of swiftness. The various diocesan chancery offices are now gradually furnishing returns of the baptisms of converts.. That of Mobile (say our latest exchanges) gives, for tbe year 537, or one in 53 of its entire Catholic population. - The San Francisco ' Monitor ' of December 17 says :— ' According to the recent returns at the Apostolic Mission House, and published in the November issue of the " Missionary ", twenty-nine dioceses whose aggregate Catholic populaAon amounts to 422,611 show up 8,35i2 converts to the Church. This proportion is -1 in 506. If this same proportion is maintained throughout ' the 103 dioceses in the country, there would be a total of 25,056 converts received into the Church in this country every year.' By the same mail we received the following striking paragraph from the ' Catholic Universe ' :— 1 A remark of the venerable metropolitan of Boston, Archbishop Williams, at the consecration T~ of Bishop Walsh, of Portland, expressed very strikingly tbe marvellous progress of the Church in- New England. He himself was living, he said, when there was not a priest in Maine, and none in all New' England except one in Boston. The Church in the- New England States is now so strong, so easily dominating all creeds and including all classes, that it is almost incredible -that this strength should have been gained in the lifetime of one man. ' ,-. Some months ago— -in its issue of August 2, 1906— the Boston ' Citizen '" (a violent A.P.A. and anti-Cath-olic organ) took down its harp and relieved its overstrained soul of the burden of the following prophecy : lln fifty .years the French-Canadians and the Irish will have every town in the_ New England States, and the Jews will absolutely control the finances of New England. The Americans of that date will be " the hewers of wood and the drawers "of water "-^driven to it by the supremacy of their foreign-generated rulers. This^is not a " pipe-dream "or a nightmare— our prediction is based upon, facts and figures. There are a score of towns within fifty "miles of Boston that at present are governed by French-Canadians— old one-time Puritan towns. And still the French-Canadian- deluge has hardly begun.' - __ There is no race-suicide or pre- natal murder among the virile and moral stocfis that are supplanting the . decadent descendants of the. once strong, austere, and Godfearing - Puritans that were so long the "undisputed lords of New England.

'The , .Hemisphere ', says the , Milwaukee ' Catholic Citizen ' of November 24, 'is preponderantly a -Catholic Hemisphere. In South America there- are 38,500,000 people, according to. latest statistics. Of these, 38,000,000 may be classed as Catholics .%, bur Milwaukee contemporary then goes_on to say :- - . lln North America the- population- is about > 105,500,000. , Mexico, with 13,500,000 people, the Central American States with 3,500,000 people, and Cuba, Porto Rico, and Martinique, with 3,000,000, are- Catholic, and • there are 1,000,000 Catholics in the other West Indies. There are 3,000,000 Catholics in British North America and 15,000,000 in the United States. Here, then, is the summary :— ' Population of North America 105,500,000 Population in South America -38,600,000 • 144,000,000 Catholibs in South America ... 38,000,000 Cathol os in North America (south of the United States)... 21,000,000 Catholics in the United States... 15,000,000 Catholics in British America... 3,000,000 Total Catholics 77,000,000 Total non-Catholics 67,000,000 ' 144,000,000* There are 60,000,000 non-Catholics in the United-States ; 4,000,000 in British America, and (an extra liberal estimate), 3,000,000 in British West Indies and South America. ' " \ In his \ Little Tour in America' (published in 1895) the noted' Anglican writer, l>ean 'Hole, dwells with wonder upon ~ the l enthusiastic zeal ' of — the Catholicbody in the United ' Not only"--',, he continues, 1 are then buildings the most beautiful— there is- no church in New York compare with the Cathedral of St. Patrick— but they are used more' frequently for their sacred purposes than any- other places of worship '. -We are witnessing the beginnings of the fulfilment" of the prophecy of a non-Cathoftc writer in the ' Edinburgh Review ' for April, ' 1890. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States (said he^ is -' one of the most, powerful and most democratic religious communities which the world has ever seen, and one which is fated to leave a lasting mark on the history of- Christendom '.