Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

ple of New York, possessing means, are a very liberal and philanthropic class. That there is still remaining a great deal of "evangelical" religious zeal and activity is also manifest. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the influence of the old, orthodox Protestant tradition has remarkably diminished, and that the majority of nominal Protestants have lapsed into a state of indifference to positive Christianity. We doubt if 25,000 men can be found in the city who sincerely profess to believe the tenets common to what are called the "evangelical" churches; and of these but a small fraction adhere intelligently to the distinctive doctrines of any one sect; e. g., the Protestant Episcopal, or Presbyterian. The remainder have a general belief in the truth of Protestant Christianity, more or less vague, with a great disposition to consider positive doctrines as matters of indifference. Outside the communion list of the different churches, we believe the general sentiment to be, among the educated, that Christianity is a very useful, moral institution, containing substantially all the truth which can be known respecting ultra-mundane things, but without any final authority over the reason, and completely subject to the criticism of science. Among the uneducated, we believe that negative unbelief, and a supine indifference to everything beside material interests, prevails. We will not attempt to assign causes or reasons for it; but the fact is evident. A vast mass of the population is completely outside of the influence of any religious body, or any class of religious teachers professing to expound revealed truths concerning God and the future life. Moreover, the traditional belief in revealed truths is much weaker in the young and rising generation, even of those brought up under positive religious instruction, than it is in the present adult generation. There appears to be no tangible, palpable reason for thinking that Protestant Christianity, under any form, is in

VOL. III. 25

a condition to revive its former sway; to keep what it retains, or to recover what it has lost. The mere lack of church accommodation will not account for this, and if at once this lack were remedied, it would not change it materially. For, in those places which are furnished with a superabundance of churches, the same undermining of religious belief is going on. The fact that the most respectable Protestant publishers make no scruple of republishing the works. of such writers as Renan and Colenso, and that these books are read with such avidity, indicates the way the current is setting.

What the result of all this will be, is a matter for very serious consideration. Our political, civil, and moral order is founded on Christianity. The old Christian tradition has been the principle of the interior life of the nation. Take away positive Christian belief, and the moral principles which are universally acknowledged are still only a residuum of the old religion. The spirit of Christianity survives partly in civilization as its vital principle. How long a certain political and social order may continue after faith has died out, we cannot say. We cannot but think, however, that a disintegrating principle begins to work as soon as religious belief begins to die out. There is nothing, therefore, more destructive to the temporal well-being of men, than the spread of sceptical and infidel principles. Merely from this point of view, therefore, the decay of religious belief and earnestness ought to be deplored as the greatest of evils, and one for which no advance in physical science or material prosperity can compensate. What the moral fruits already produced by this decay are, and what the prospects are for the future in this direction, we leave our readers to gather from the perusal of the secular papers; and it may be estimated from the cry of alarm which is from time to time forced from them, as new and startling developments of the progress in vice and criminality are made.

We turn our attention now to the Catholic population of the city, and the religious institutions under the control of the Catholic Church.

The Catholic population is variously estimated at from 300,000 to 400,000. As no census has been taken, all estimates must be merely approximate. One way in which an estimate may be made, is by taking the returns of the census giving the total population of foreign birth, and getting the proportion of Catholics to non-Catholics among the various nationalities. Some probable estimate of the native-born Catholics must then be made and added to the number of foreign-born. In 1860 the number of inhabitants of foreign birth was 383,717, out of a total of 813,669. If we suppose that the foreign-born population has increased to 460,000, it seems not improbable that the Catholic proportion of it, with the home-born Catholics added, will reach the total of 400,000.

Another basis of calculation is the ratio of baptisms to the whole population. A register is kept with the utmost exactness in each parish, and the result transmitted once a year to the chancery, where it is entered in the diocesan record. We are furnished, therefore, with an authentic census of births from Catholic parents each year, and if the exact multiplier could be ascertained by which to multiply this number, we should reach a certain result. It can only be conjectured, however, with more or less probability, and varies in different localities remarkably according to the character of the population. The baptisms for one year are 18,000. Multiply the number by 33, as is usually done in making the estimates of the general census, and you have 594,000. This number is too large, however. If we take 20, it gives us 360,000; 25, 450,000. We do not profess to come any nearer than this to an estimate of the actual Catholic population. The two conjectural calculations, compared with each other, appear to settle the point

that it is, as we have already stated, between 300,000 and 400,000.

The number of churches is 32, or one to from 10,000 to 12,000 people; and the number of priests 93, or one to about 4,000 people. In the lower section, embracing the first seven wards, there are five churches: St. Peter's in the Third ward, St. James's in the Fourth, St. Andrew's and Transfiguration in the Sixth, and St. Teresa's in the Seventh. These churches furnish nearly three times as much accommodation as the Protestant churches in the same district. It must be remembered that the capacity of a Catholic church includes standing room as well as sittings, and must be multiplied by the number of masses. A church which will hold, when crowded, 2,000 persons, and where four masses are celebrated, will accommodate 8,000 on one Sunday; and, considering the causes which keep many from attending church regularly, 12,000 different individuals who attend regularly or occasionally. One of these churches, St. Teresa's, is a very fine building of stone, which was purchased about four years ago from the Presbyterians, and was called in former times the Rutgers street Presbyterian church. No Catholic church in the lower part of the city has ever been closed, or moved up town, with the exception of St. Vincent de Paul's.

The middle district has nine churches: St. Alphonsus' in the Eighth ward (German and English), St. Joseph's in the Ninth, St. Bridget's in the Eleventh, St. Mary's in the Thirteenth, St. Patrick's in the Fourteenth, St. Ann's in the Fifteenth, Holy Redeemer (German), St. Nicholas's (German), Nativity, in the Seventeenth.

Below Fourteenth street we have. therefore, fourteen churches, most of them very large, surrounded by a dense Catholic population, and crowded with overflowing congregations. A very large proportion of our Catholic population is in this part of the city.

Between Fourteenth and Eighty

sixth streets we have fifteen churches: St. Columba's and St.Vincent de Paul's (French) in the Sixteenth ward, St. Francis Xavier's and the Immaculate Conception in the Eighteenth, St. Francis's (German), St. John Baptist's (German), and St. Michael's in the Twentieth, St. Stephen's and St. Gabriel's in the Twenty-first, Holy Cross, Assumption (German), and St. Paul's in the Twenty-second, St. Boniface's, St. John's, and St. Lawrence's in the Nineteenth. Above Eighty-sixth street we have St. Paul's, Harlem, and the Annunciation and St. Joseph's (German), Manhattan

ville.*

After the old Catholic fashion of jamming and crowding, all these churches might allow somewhere near 200,000 persons, or two-thirds of the adult Catholic population, to hear mass on any one Sunday, if they should all attempt to do so on the same day. Judging by the way churches are crowded, we would suppose that more than two-thirds attend occasionally; and of those who do not, the majority neglect it through poverty, discouragement, indolence, and a careless habit, or some other reason which does not imply loss of faith. As to confessions and communions, they flow in a ceaseless stream throughout the year, as if the paschal time were perpetual. In each one of our churches there are from 100 to 500 communions every week, and a much greater number on the principal festivals. Probably the usual number of communions in the city, on any Sunday taken at random, is not short of 5,000. At least 8,000 children receive first communion and confirmation every year; and from 40,000 to 50,000 are instructed every week in the catechism, the Sunday schools varying in their numbers from 500 to 2,500.

*Of these churches, St. Teresa's, Immaculate Conception, St. Michael's, St. Gabriel's, St. Boniface's, Assumption, St. Paul's, and St. Joseph's (German), are comparatively new; and a very large cathedral, capable of containing 10,000 persons, is building. St. Stephen's is also being enlarged to a capacity of 5,000, and a church has been purchased for the Italians.

The Catholic population is increasing at the rate of at least 20,000 a year. New York is now about the fourth city in the world in Catholic population, and bids fair, in a few years, to rank next to Paris in this respect.

The Catholic institutions for education, strictly within the city limits, are:

1. Two colleges, St. Francis Xavier's and Manhattan colleges, the first conducted by Jesuits, and the second by Christian Brothers.

2. Two academies for boys and twelve for girls.

3. Twenty-one parochial schools for boys, and twenty for girls, the whole containing about 14,000 pupils.

There are other very large and fine establishments in the vicinity of New York, practically belonging to the city, but not within its limits.

There are 4 orphan asylums, a protectory for the reception of vagrant children in two departments, male and female, which is out of town, another for servant girls out of place, a very fine industrial school for girls, 2 hospitals, 4 religious communities of men, and 11 of women. The most numerous of these religious congregations are the Jesuits and the Sisters of Charity; the former having in the diocese 39 fathers, beside numerous members of inferior grade, and the latter 333 sisters and 39 different establishments.

In every sense except as regards municipal government, Brooklyn, which is on the other side of East River, is a part of New York; and there we have another diocese of immense proportions, with another great congeries of Catholic institutions. On the opposite side of the town, and on the Jersey shore of the Hudson, the churches of Jersey City, which is remarkably advanced in Catholic institutions, are plainly visible.

Our object in this article has been to give a general idea of the provision made for the religious wants of the mass of the population in the city of New York.

In spite of the uncertainty of the estimates and statistics we have given in regard to exact numbers, it is plain that this provision is very inadequate; that a vast mass of our population is unprovided for or totally indifferent; that the orthodox Protestant societies have lost to a great extent their influence over the mass of the population, and that a great body of practically heathen people has been gradually forming and accumulating in the very bosom of our social system. Where are we to look for a remedy to this state of things? It is necessary to our political and social wellbeing that crime and vice should be restrained, that the mass of the people should be instructed and formed in virtue, taught sobriety, chastity, honesty, obedience to law, fidelity to their obligations, and universal morality. Soldiers, policemen, prisons, poorlaws, and all extrinsic means of this kind are insufficient preventives or remedies for the disorders caused by a prevalence of vice and immorality. They will burst all these bonds, and disrupt society, if not checked in their principle. Can liberal Christians, philanthropists, philosophers, political economists, and our wealthy, wellinformed gentlemen of property, who have thrown away their Bibles, and who sneer at all positive revelation, indicate to us a remedy? Can they apply it? Is it in their power, by scientific lectures, by elegant moral discourses, by material improvements, by societies, by laws, by any means whatever, to tame, control, civilize, reform, make gentle, virtuous, conscientious, this lawless multitude? Can they give us incorruptible legislators, faithful magistrates, honest men of business, a virtuous commonalty? Can they create truth, honor, and magnanimity, patriotism, chastity, filial obedience, domestic happiness, integrity? If not, then give them their way, let their doctrines prevail, throw away faith in a positive revelation, and they will not be safe in their houses. The rogues will hang

the honest men, and might will be the only right. One of the leaders of this party has not hesitated to avow that the prevalence of his principles would necessarily produce a social and moral chaos of disorder, before mankind could learn in a rational way that their true happiness lies in intellectual and moral cultivation. What has the sect of the philosophers ever done yet to produce virtue and morality in the mass of mankind? What can they do now? They cannot even reproduce what was good in heathenism, for that was due to an imperfect and corrupted tradition of the ancient revelation, and the influence of the sophists tended to destroy even that. Our modern sophists act on the same principle, and are busily at work to destroy the Christian tradition of faith, and with it the principle which vitalizes Christian civilization.

Can orthodox Protestantism recover its ancient sway, and reproduce a state of religious belief and moral virtue equal to that which once prevailed? We would like to have them prove their ability to do so, and show that they have even made a fair beginning toward recovering their lost ground. We leave them to do what they can, and to try out their experiment to the end on the non-Catholic majority of our population. If their intelligence, wealth, zeal, and prestige of position were thrown into the defence of the common cause of Christian revelation by union with the Catholic Church, the victory would be certain. Unbelief and indifferentism could never make any stand against a united Christianity, in a population so full of religious reminiscences and predilections. and so susceptible to persuasive logic and genuine eloquence, as our own. The Christian cause is weakened by its divisions, and by the political and social schisms which are bred by the schisms in religion. Not only those who are separated from the common trunk of the Catholic Church suffer from the separation, but the trunk itself suffers and is mutilated by the loss.

The Catholic Church cannot do her work completely where the majority of those who prefer Christianity are opposed to her, especially when this majority includes the greater part of the more elevated classes.

It is evident, nevertheless, that the Catholic Church in New York has done a great work in our population, and has a great work to do. We have much more than one-third of the whole population, and the majority of the laboring class, and of the poor people, on our hands. The Catholic clergy alone possess a powerful and extensive religious sway over the masses of the people. The poor are emphatically here, as they have been always and everywhere, our inheritance. Nearly all that has been done, and is now doing, in an efficacious manner and on a large scale, for the religious welfare of the populace, is the work of our priesthood and their coadjutors. It is impossible to estimate the benefit to society in a political, social, and moral point of view, accruing from the influence and exertions of the Catholic clergy. This is persistently denied by a certain class of writers, who never do justice to the Catholic Church except under compulsion. One of them, writing in one of our principal weeklies, recently qualified the Catholic Church in the United States, whose growth and progress he could not ignore, as a mere empty shell without any moral life or power. accused the Catholic clergy of not exercising that moral influence in the country at large which they ought to exercise, and have exercised in other times and places.

He

What a change of base this is! But now, the Catholic religion was a kind of embodied spirit of evil, and her ministers had to vindicate their title to the rank of men and Christians. Religion, morality, liberty, happiness, would be swept from the country if they were not exterminated! Now,

forsooth, we are gravely asked why we do not exert a greater influence for promoting the general well-being of the country? The truth is, that the influence of the Catholic clergy on the people at large has until now been a cipher. They have had no recognized position, and have been counted for nothing, except so far as certain individuals have commanded a personal respect. There is, moreover, a great amount of sham and trumpet-blowing about the great moral demonstrations of the day. The Catholic clergy have not chosen to meddle with questions which were none of their business, or to parade and speechify on platforms or at anniversaries. They have enough to do in looking after the immediate and pressing spiritual and temporal wants of their own people. And in doing this they prevent and reform more vice, produce more solid morality, and work more effectually for the well-being of their fellow-men, than could be done by the best devised philanthropic schemes. One mission in a city congregation, one paschaltime with its labor in the confessional, will do more to uproot drunkenness, dishonesty, and licentiousness, or to hinder these upas-trees from striking root in virgin soil, than our amateur philanthropists could describe if they were all to write and lecture on the subject for a year.

The one great, palpable fact which confronts us on every side is, that the religious and moral education of nearly one-half our population is in the hands of the Catholic Church, and that the well-being of our commonwealth depends, therefore, to a great degree on the thorough fulfilment of this task. It is evident that we have enough to do in making provision for our vast and increasing Catholic population, to employ all the energies and resources which can possibly be brought into play, both by the clergy and the laity.

« НазадПродовжити »