The Catholic World, Vol. 15, Nos. 85-90, April 1872-September 1872 / A Monthly Magazine

Catholics are by no means uniformly dispersed over the country, and their increase has not been equally rapid in all the states. It will be worth our while to see in which quarters they are s

whole; while in the North they number 3,200,000 in 19,000,000, or more than 1/6th. Even these figures give but a very general idea of the distribution of the faithful. If we take the whole country, state by state, we shall find the proportions still more variable. In some places the Cathol

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in which it is less than three per cent. If we leave out New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Maryland, where the preponderance of the faithful is due to special causes, we find that in the other Southern states the average proportion is not above four per cent. In other wor

nnsylvania, we find numerous descendants of English Catholic settlers, while the old French colonies of the West have had their influence upon the population of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois, and also of the northern part of New York, where the French Canadians are daily spreading their ramifications across the frontier. If we look now at the localities in which the proportion of Catholics is greatest, we shall notice several interesting points touching the laws which have determined the direction of the principal development of the Church, and which will probably promote it in the future. In the South there are what we may call three groups of states in which the Catholic element is notably stronger than in the others. One belongs exclusively to the Southern section, and consists of Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico, having an aggregate Catholic population of 380,000 in 1,363,800, or 28 per cent. The other groups (Missouri, that is to say, and Maryland and Kentucky) form parts of much larger groups belonging to the Northern states. The first of these latter, and that to which Maryland and Kentucky are attached, consists of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. Its aggregate population is 11,647,477, of whom the Catholics are 2,240,000, or nineteen per cent. This group contains the ancient establishments of Maryland and Pennsylvania-good old Catholic commun

ch the American clergy will find it hard to fill. His reputation was not confined to the Empire City. He was as well known all over the Union as at his own see, and was everywhere regarded as one of the great men of the country. Although the progress of the faith in New York has been owing in a very great degree to immigration, i

g to the true faith; and it is a curious fact that the two sects which furnish the most are the Episcopalians, who, in their forms and traditions, approach nearest to the Catholic Church, and the Unitarians, who go to the very opposite extreme, and appear to push their philosophical and rationalistic principles almost beyond the pale of Christianity. These two sects generally comprise the most enlightened and intellectual pe

already acquired importance; for in the diocese of Hartford the Catholics are now sixteen per cent, of the whole population, and the rapidity of their increase and the completeness of their church organization give us ground for bright hopes of their future progress

he quickness of their growth has already placed this group in the second rank so far as regards numerical importance, while all goes to show that Catholicism is destined here to preponderate greatly over all other denominations. The states of Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota contained, in 1860, 4,575,000 souls, of whom 890,000, or 19 per cent., we

ly since the people of the country, new and unsettled as they are, and absorbed in material cares, furnish but few candidates for the priesthood. Here we see a glorious field for the far-reaching benevolence of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. Nowhere, we believe, will the sending forth of pious and devoted priests produce fruits comparable to those of which the past gives promise to the future in this part of the United States. We spoke just now of the old French colonies, and our readers will perhaps be surprised that we should have made so much account of those poor little villages, which numbered hardly more than from 500 to 1,500 souls each when the Yankees began to come into the country. Nevertheless, we have not exaggerated their importance. It is not only that they served as centres and rallying-points; but so rapid is the multiplication of families in America that this French population which, if brought together in one mass in 1800, would have counted at most 14,000 souls, now numbers, including both the original settlemen