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

24 Romani Catholicism in America.
misapprehension as to things American is caused by travellers
forming their judgments from what they see in New York,
which is emphatically not a microcosm of the United States
for the reason that in no other city does the immigrant population
remain unassimilated so long. Visitors sometimes leave
New York with the idea that the Catholic Church in America
is represented by Tammany Hall, on account of the prominence
of that institution; but if they went down town to the
neighborhood of the Church of St. Antony of Padua, they
might equally well imagine that the Church in America is
exclusively Italian, and in another quarter they would find
German priests serving German congregations. The unceasing
flow of immigration makes New York the least American
city of the United States; but throughout the Union the
grandchildren of men born in Westmeath or in Westphalia
are as thoroughly American as are the descendants of the ladies
who " refused George Washington," who, from the number of
their progeny, must have been more numerous than St.
Ursula's virgins at Cologne. Of course, the Irish accent is
heard at many a Catholic altar between Boston and Santa
Barbara. The first church I entered in the United States
was the Cathedral at San Francisco, where the preacher was
a fair-haired young priest, with the face of an angel and a
brogue which carried one from the Golden Gate to the Cove of
Cork; but the vicar-general of the diocese, who is a member
of the old Irish family of Prendergast, is as polished an
American gentleman as is Archbishop Corrigan of New York,
or Archbishop Ryan of Philadelphia, both of whom bear
Irish names, and neither of whom has any more brogue than
has President Harrison who is descended from the Puritan
regicide.
Nor must it be imagined^ that the Catholics of America
are in great preponderance Irish, even by descent. Opening
at random the clergy list of the United States, I find at
the commencement of the letter B the following names:
Baak, Baart, Baasen, Babinski, Bachand, Bachmann, Backes,