r The Catholic Democracy of America,64 - Digital Repository Services

20 Romani Catholicism in America.
humblest priest was certain of receiving from the great American
Cardinal at his " Residence." The old-fashioned unpretentious
house, where a good deal of the world's history is being
moulded, would be scorned by one of those sleek preachers of
the gospel of sleekness who fatly flourish in certain American
cities. For all that, Charles Street, Baltimore, has a dignity
which Fifth Avenue will never attain to. Beacon Street, overlooking
Boston Common, is in the springtime more beautiful,
but there is an air of distinction not found in any other
thoroughfare in the United States in the street which takes its
name from the royal husband of Henrietta Maria, in whose
honor Maryland was named. Baltimore itself was called after
an English title which became extinct years before two-thirds
of our present peerage existed, and its old world associations
are not inappropriate for the headquarters in the new world
of the Church which is here initiating a work undreamed of
by Cecil Calvert, or the daughter of Marie de' Medici, if the
future of their faith ever exercised the minds of those seventeenth-century
Catholics.
A walk with the Cardinal through the tranquil streets of
the residential quarter of Baltimore gives a vivid impression
of the affection with which the Monumental City regards its
distinguished son who was baptized and ordained in the
Cathedral over which he now presides. Though Maryland
is a Roman Catholic stronghold there is a vast Protestant
population in its great commercial capital, yet, as the Cardinal
passes along, nearly every hat is doffed to the simple citizen
who has made a greater impression on European policy than
any American of his generation. One day last spring we
found ourselves in the midst of a congregation streaming out
of a church, the architecture of which the Cardinal drew my
attention to, while he responded to the salutations of the
crowd. I naturally concluded that they were his own people,
but no, he explained, "they are our Episcopalian friends."
The determined prelate who was strong enough to lead the
Vatican to reverse its own decision has nothing of narrow