American Catholic Progress

New Zealand Tablet, 15 October 1908, Page 9

American Catholic Progress

The epigraph to Bancroft's History of the United States is this variant of a famous line of Bishop Berkeley : ' Westward the star of empire takes its way.' • Westward, too,, the Church's brightest triumphs take their way. A century ago" Catholics were a sjnall and scattered flock in tlvj United States; to-day there are some 22,000,000 adherents of the Old Faith under the Stars and Stripes. The Louisville Catholic Record gives, in a recent issue, an idea of the triumphal march of Catholicism in the United States by quoting the.figures of its progress for one year. It says:* 'A-conservative estimate of the growth of ihe - Church. in this country last year.-as against the previous year, 1906, may be stated as follows :—lncrease:—lncrease in the number of the" reverend clergy, 1171 ;-increase-in the number of churches, 699; increase in the number of students in our seminaries, 876; increase in the number of academies "and colleges, '28; increase in the number of parochial schools," 162 ; increase in our Catholic populationl, 1,225,482. For the current year we estimate that fifteen Catholic churches,, are built and dedicated .weekly in the United States.' - —

Catholicism is now, and has long been, the dominant 'faith in the once great Puiitan stronghold of New England. In a comment on a recent sermon "of Archbishop O'Connell," Zion's Herald (a noted organ of- American quoted -by . the S.H. Review of August 29) says : ' We are led to ask if, after all, this Church [the Catholic Church] might not become the hope of the world as the repository and conservator of the essen-tial-fundamentals of the Christian revelation. Certainly, Protestantism — the Protestantism of this old New England — has now too little fibre in it, in doctrine and works; to successfully" compete with the Roman Catholic Church. We believe too little, and hold that little in too weak and "colorless a solution, to adequately evangelise and church the- multitudes. It still remains true that Protestantism in New England is being outranked by the Roman Catholic Church ; and the reason lies conclusively in the fact that -it does not believe, as does the Catholic Church, in the essential certitudes of the Christian revelation. Protestantism in our midst, in substituting for a hearty, loyal, ' passionate faith in Jesus Christ as Saviour, Redeemer, Lord, a naturalistic, philosophic creed, adjustable and constantly in need of readjustment, has shorn itself of evangelistic power and divine certification.' '