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The Catholic Democracy of America, 64
Bishop Carroll visited Boston in 1791 he was publicly and
privately entertained by Protestant societies and individuals.
Nevertheless at the end of the century, when President Adams
was contributing to the building of the first Catholic church
in New England, following Washington's example in Philadelphia,
Boston contained only 210 Roman Catholics. At the
present day there are 225,000 Catholics among the 400,000
inhabitants of the Puritan capital. Yet this prodigious
change is not more amazing than others in the United States
which have been instrumental in causing the increase of the
national population, and with it the growth of Catholicism.
For example, a visitor to the Centennial Congress last November
might have entered the cars at Baltimore any evening
after dinner, and have heard mass in Boston Cathedral the
next morning; whereas Bishop Carroll, writing from the former
city in 1803, says that by starting thence at the beginning
of September he hopes to reach Boston a few days before a
ceremony fixed for Michaelmas.
An ingenious American priest has suggested that the rise
of Roman Catholicism in New England was the logical consequence
of the Revolution, inasmuch as the proclamation of
man's natural rights involved the overthrow of the whole theological
structure which the reformed theologians built upon
the corner stone of man's " total depravity;" the Puritans,
therefore, in signing the Declaration of Independence, signed
their own death warrant. The weak point in this philosophic
theory is the fact that two generations passed away after the
revolution before Roman Catholicism gained an extensive
domain in Puritan territory. As late as 1822 Mr. Jefferson
wrote: " I trust there is not a young man now born in the
United States who will not die a Unitarian and it is an interesting
study, though this is not the place for it, to trace
how the stern faith of the Pilgrim Fathers gave way to the
cultured Arianism of Massachusetts, which, after a long reign
among the most highly educated community in America, is in
turn being dethroned by less barren creeds. The early devel-