Part 4. The Material and Moral Strength of Roman Catholicism

XV. The rapid development of the material wealth of the Roman Catholic Church and its causes. Sources of material well-being. The significance of male and female monastic orders. Management of church property. “Trusteeism” and the struggle against it. The Protestant tendency of state laws regarding church property. Council protest against it. Property and duty. XVI. The acclimatization of Roman Catholicism on American soil. Conversions to the Roman Catholic Church. Historical examples of conversions and their connection with different periods of the historical life of Roman Catholicism in the country. The “Tractarian movement” and its echoes in America. Anti-Catholic movements, the Civil War, and their significance for strengthening conversions to the Roman Catholic Church. Quantitative and qualitative significance of converts.

XV

Nothing can be more striking than the difference that distinguishes Roman Catholicism at the end of the last century from that of the present time in respect to external grandeur and prosperity. This is the difference between two extremes—abject poverty and colossal magnificence. Less than a hundred years ago, over the entire vast stretch between Philadelphia and Canada, there was not a single Catholic church nor a single permanent priest. In New York, only a small group of Catholics, numbering about a hundred people, were living there, and for Easter services they had to travel to Philadelphia. [1] With the proclamation of political independence and the establishment of freedom of religious profession, the hierarchy gained great freedom of action in organizing church life, and it hastened to satisfy the religious needs of its distant and neglected flock. In 1783 the Jesuit Farmer ventured from Philadelphia to New York and there performed Mass—in the upper floor of a carpenter’s shop—for lack of other accommodations. [2] In 1786, exactly ten years after the declaration of independence, the foundation was laid for the first Catholic church in New York—a small brick building, to which the Spanish King Charles III contributed ten thousand dollars for its construction. [3] At the present time this building no longer exists, and in its place stands the great church of Saint Peter, which continues to serve as a sacred shrine of church history to the Roman Catholic population of New York. The insignificant brick church of a small group of “Papists” attracted no one’s attention and gave no promise of particular success. But in fact, it was like a grain of mustard seed, which soon grew into a magnificent tree. Churches began to spring up one after another in rapid succession, and soon Roman Catholicism not only surpassed all Protestant denominations in its temples in the city, but even erected a temple equal to which, in respect to architectural elegance and luxury, is not found on the entire American continent—namely, the church of Saint Patrick in New York, on Fifth Avenue. [4] This magnificent temple, representing an immeasurable contrast not only with the carpenter’s workshop in which a Mass was performed by a Jesuit a hundred years ago, but also with the first church built at the generous gift of the Spanish king, serves as the most complete expression of the external grandeur and prosperity which Roman Catholicism has achieved in less than a century of its existence. [5] The same process of development of the prosperity of the Roman Catholic Church has taken place throughout the country, and everywhere during the century of its freedom from persecution, Roman Catholicism has succeeded in erecting temples which, under the ordinary course of events, should have required centuries of effort. [6]

The prosperity of the Church, as an institution freely accepted and maintained by society, is naturally entirely dependent both on the number and on the generosity of society itself. In the first respect, the increase in the prosperity of the Roman Catholic Church finds a simple and natural explanation in the increase of the number of the Catholic population. The process of this increase was shown above. It was not limited to natural slow growth, but flowed in a turbulent stream—in the form of European emigration. “Millions of newcomers who sought a new homeland in America could not bring their churches with them,” says a Catholic writer. “They had to acquire them here, and the American priest of necessity became a builder and financier. When in 1847 the extraordinary emigration began, we had only 812 churches, many of which were small buildings hastily constructed and wholly inadequate even to the needs of those who erected them. Many of them have since been destroyed, rebuilt, or replaced with solid brick or stone buildings. This in itself is work of considerable value; but when we consider that since that time no fewer than four thousand three hundred (4,300) churches have been added to that number, we are struck with amazement at the magnitude of work accomplished in so short a time. And besides, these newer buildings are generally not of the rough and unstable character that was the case fifty years ago, but on the contrary, many of them represent excellent examples of solid construction and architectural art. The magnificent cathedrals, especially those that adorn Baltimore, Albany, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Boston, and other episcopal sees, are models of design, strength, and grandeur of which any country and any age might be proud. The same may be said, but with especial force, of the cathedral of Saint Patrick in New York—this magnificent epic in marble, from whose lofty spire the shining emblem of our salvation is destined soon to shine upon a million faithful followers of the cross.” [7] The fact of the immediate dependence of both the rapid construction of churches and their maintenance on external emigration is established also by the fact that the majority of churches in New York, as well as in other cities, were built chiefly by emigrants and especially by Irish. [8] The cathedral of Saint Patrick itself, this pride of Roman Catholicism, owes its appearance to the Irish population of New York, which consists entirely of settlers and their descendants. [9] The construction of churches is the first and most notable expression of the religious zeal of the Roman Catholic population—with it are connected other manifestations of it, appearing in earnest contributions for the needs of the Church. The Irish people are distinguished by extraordinary devotion to Roman Catholicism, and this is fully understandable in view of their historical fate. They are a much-suffering people who have endured as much hardship as no other people in Europe. They were deprived of all land property and delivered to the mercy of English exploiting lords, who brought them to utmost poverty and periodic starvation. For their devotion to Catholicism, they were until the beginning of the second quarter of the current century deprived of all political rights, subjected to persecution, and had no right to use their native language. In this harsh struggle, they lost everything, forgot their language and the glory of their nationality, and all that remained as a legacy from the historical past was their Catholic faith, and they devoted themselves to it with all their soul as to the sole national treasure. [10] When unbearable afflictions forced him to leave his homeland and seek a new home in America in masses, he naturally carried with him his religious zeal, which under the new circumstances of life in an unknown country became even stronger from the fact that he constantly had to turn to the clergy as the sole counselor and guide. In view of this, the first thought of Irish emigrants upon settling in the New World was the construction of a church, [11] and around it were already built the huts of the pioneers. To the maintenance and management of this as religious and also public temple, the people with a generous hand brought their possessions, and therefore the prosperity of the Church not only kept pace with the development of the people’s prosperity, but developed faster than it.

As far as the method of collecting and forming church property in the Roman Catholic Church is concerned, it consists in the usual voluntary contributions of parishioners for church needs, in payment for the performance of masses and church rites. But besides these usual means, American practice has developed several special sources of church income. One of the main sources is bequests left by wealthy people, by which all property or part of it is bequeathed to the Church. Bequests in favor of churches are known in Europe, but in America they have achieved extraordinarily wide development and constitute one of the characteristic phenomena of American life. Every American considers it his sacred duty to set aside from his property a portion for public needs—educational, charitable, or religious—and one can judge the extent of them by the fact that annually the budget of the educational department of the country receives up to 10 million dollars from this source of voluntary bequests alone. [12] There are no accurate data for determining the amount of property collected by the Church through bequests. But if we take into account that the religious sphere is one of those three to which voluntary contributions go preferentially, we can form an approximate idea of the amount of this sum in comparison with the amount of donations to education. [13] Sometimes individual donations reach enormous sums—in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. [14] Another means is the so-called annual church bazaars—The Church Fairs. During the year, various donations of articles are made to the churches, which at a specified time are offered for sale, sometimes at fixed prices, and sometimes through auction, and thus converted into cash value. [15] Finally, one of the most reliable sources of income is the sale of church pews. This sale has achieved extraordinary development in America, to the point that there are almost no free churches. The sale takes place annually at a specified time, either at fixed prices or even by auction, and there are examples of remarkable competition. [16] When an auction was first opened to determine prices for pews in the new cathedral of Saint Patrick, instead of the nominal price of 150 dollars for the first pews, people paid 6,000 dollars. [17] Of the amount of this income, one can form an idea from the fact that the gross income from the sale of pews in the cathedral of Saint Patrick, at nominal value, amounts to 29,160 dollars. [18] By this sale, the pew is rented only for a certain number of masses, and since in Catholic churches there are usually several masses a day, visitors to the temple pay separately each time for the use of a pew, and in general the entrance to the temple for outside worshippers not having a rented pew is purchased for a certain sum, from 10 cents to 1 dollar, depending on the nature of the service. [19]