1. Now and Two Centuries Ago. The First Civilizers of North America. The Native Americans. Features of Their Social and Domestic Life. Their Intellectual, Moral, and Religious State (Cont.) (3)

Roman Catholicism cherishes the brightest hopes for its future in the United States. By the expression of Roman Catholic publicists the future of the North American Republic belongs precisely only to Roman Catholicism which alone can bring the people to religious unity and make it as unified in religious respects as it is unified in political respects[1]. The extraordinary successes of Roman Catholicism in the country which it has achieved in the course of one century apparently justify such hopes. If in one century it has succeeded in rising from insignificance to almost the first position in the country and in working out an organization before which weakened Protestantism torn by internal discord trembles then it is natural to expect that relying now on this powerful organization it can without difficulty extend its dominion to the small Protestant communities and absorb them into its powerful organism. But such a conclusion would be hasty and would not correspond to the real significance of the premises. The chief source of rapid spread of Roman Catholicism in the United States was emigration that is its increase is owed not to its internal organic growth but rather to a purely external process—increase or collection of already existing Catholic masses. Such a process of increase took place not at the expense of the American people but apart from it. Consequently from this side despite all its extraordinary character the past successes of Roman Catholicism have no relation to the religious problem occupying us concerning which Church can in the future become the one Church of the united American people and therefore give no grounds for conclusions concerning future successes. But Roman Catholicism has another side to its development. Not only did it arrive from Europe to American soil but also it attempted to become acclimated on it to take root in the organic environment of the American people itself. In this respect it already directly approaches our problem and presents important data for investigation. Both the success of these attempts and the general receptivity of American soil with respect to Roman Catholicism constitute direct data for our question. This success considered from its external side also does not have important significance and numerically far from constitutes a firm foundation for the entire mass of Roman Catholic population that has arrived. But it has another—internal side and in this respect it deserves serious attention. This is the moral side of success and it can serve as an indicator of the general predisposition of the American people toward Roman Catholicism. In what then does this predisposition express itself and what degree of tension does it have in this direction? We have seen that the American people both by their origin and by their present state are a Protestant people. The principles of Protestantism received wide development in them and expressed themselves in wandering sectarianism. They have in considerable degree even been embodied in the political institutions of the country and penetrated into the cast of public life. From this side Roman Catholicism as the opposite religious system can encounter only opposition from the American people which indeed has gone through the whole century-long history of its independent life and manifested itself both in indirect legislative measures against Roman Catholicism and in open anti-Catholic movements of the popular masses. But at the same time in the very religious-Protestant character of the American people in the various turns of its historical development there appeared increasingly the features of the inadequacy of Protestantism in the sense of a religious system corresponding to the basic character of the people. Its extreme individualism proved in contradiction with the healthy mediocrity of American character and when it reached the greatest development necessarily had to be followed by a reaction in favor of the process of centralization. The people began to be oppressed by the fragmentation of their religious state and in view of the non-correspondence of individualism with their character began to seek the one Church which could give authoritative rest to its religious feeling exhausted by fruitless work and removing from it the unbearable weight of personal responsibility would appear as a powerful and infallible guide on the path of salvation. With the birth of the idea of the one Church religious consciousness sought that real foundation around which ferment could settle and which would be capable of accepting the heterogeneous elements of ferment into its organism and thus create the one Church. If in this process many stopped at Methodism and the Episcopal Church then an even greater number began to turn toward Roman Catholicism. The latter presented in this respect important advantages before the two first. It had such historical antiquity behind it as neither Methodism nor the Episcopal Church could equal; and for religious consciousness exhausted by the variability of sectarian forms this historical antiquity presented the chief pledge of stability and immutability of principle. It presented such a powerful organization which no Protestant community could develop. Finally its confessional and disciplinary system had all the external signs of the “one” Church which religious consciousness vainly sought in the systems of Protestant communities. In view of such undoubted advantages of Roman Catholicism before Protestant communities it is inevitable to suppose that the inclination of religious consciousness of the American people in the search for the one Church must surely and irrevocably have occurred in favor of Roman Catholicism. In reality this did not occur and cannot occur. Roman Catholicism presenting immeasurable advantages compared with Protestant communities in the sense of a whole unchanging historical Church at the same time has in itself many aspects which contradict the religious intellectual and social-state meaning of the American people. If the American people are exhausted by the weight placed upon them by Protestantism of personal responsibility in the matter of salvation they nevertheless possess such developed sense of personal independence that in no case will they tolerate its restriction to the extent which is inevitable in Roman Catholicism. They thirst only for such a Church to which they could freely relate as to the supreme tribunal of their personal conscience. If the American people present a mediocre intellectual character this mediocrity is not of such kind as to tolerate stubborn denial of progressive development of thought with which is inseparably bound in their conception the idea of the Roman Catholic Church[2]. Finally they feel complete non-correspondence of the principles of Roman Catholicism with their political and social cast. And indeed in this respect the Roman Catholic tendency of extreme centralization with its newest apotheosis in the person of the infallible Pope stands in complete contradiction with the historically developed and consolidated sense of the American people[3]. It will forever serve as an insurmountable barrier on the path to Roman Catholicism. Individual persons especially deeply feeling the inadequacy of Protestantism will convert to the Roman Catholic Church notwithstanding its non-correspondence with the principles of the social-state life of the people. But the sense of the whole people will never be able to reconcile this contradiction and therefore Roman Catholicism cannot become that “one Church” of the American people whose idea confusedly ferments in their religious consciousness.

Thus notwithstanding the developing in the American people the need to have one strong Church which in religious respects would become parallel with their state system among the presently existing confessional forms they do not have one which could factually realize their idea. Methodism is too new and unstable in its form and is one of the extreme manifestations of Protestant individualism which burdens the people. The Episcopal Church itself has no firm foundation beneath it and all the more cannot take upon itself all the weight of the American people. Finally Roman Catholicism with its historical stability on its side in turn suffers from the extreme development of the principle of centralization and as such stands in irresolvable contradiction with the entire cast of American worldview.

Where then is the desired way out?