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The Catholic Democracy of America, 56
hear another sermon from his chaplain, Père Séraphin Baudol,
who had preached on the former occasion, in thanksgiving
for the surrender of Lord Cornwallis to the combined
armies of the United States and France at Yorktown.
The close of the war marks an important period in the history
of the Church in the United States. The old vicarapostolic
of the London district had died early in 1781, and
his successor, Monsignor Talbot, was evidently, in spite of
penal laws, first an Englishman and then a Catholic, as he
declined all intercourse with a country which he considered in
a state of rebellion, and declared he would exercise no jurisdiction
in it. The clergy in Maryland and Pennsylvania,
who for the most part had been members of the recently suppressed
Society of Jesus, had much diffidence in approaching
the Holy See. At last, after the peace, Father Carroll and
four of his colleagues, representing different districts, mèt at
Whitemarsh and drew-up a petition in the name of the "missionary
priests residing in the thirteen United States of
America," praying the sovereign pontiff to confirm as superior
the vicar-general, who had been appointed by Bishop Challoner,
with powers to administer the sacrament of confirmation
and to perform other essential functions. Dr. Carroll's
letter to the Propaganda, which accompanied the memorial,
was the first of the series of statesmanlike documents which
the leaders of the Church in America have from time to time
addressed to the Vatican. " You are not ignorant," he writes,
" that in these United States our religious system has undergone
a revolution, if possible, more extraordinary than our
political one," and he sets forth with great skill how along
with toleration of all Christian creeds there exists a strong
jealousy of any semblance of foreign jurisdiction. While
Father Carroll was pleading that the Church in America
must be administered locally by Americans, his friend, Benjamin
Franklin, the envoy of the republic at Versailles, was
intriguing with the Nuncio for its subjection to the Gallican