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The Catholic Democracy of America, 68
This enormous growth of the Catholic population in
America is not exclusively due to immigration. Other causes
of the increase are the annexation of territories, such as Florida,
Texas and California, the scattered inhabitants of which
were for the most part Catholic; conversions; and the multiplying
of families. The last of these alone is numerically of
importance. A considerable number of Protestants of influence
have become Catholics, and no less than three archbishops
and seven bishops of the American hierarchy in the last
fifty years were born in other creeds; moreover, in the days
when the echo of the Oxford movement was borne across the
Atlantic there occurred the strange case of an Anglican
prelate, Bishop Ives, of North Carolina, divesting himself of
his episcopal office and becoming a layman in the Church of
Rome. It is, however, certain that the defections of immigrants
have been overwhelmingly more numerous than the
conversions. For example, at the end of the decade in which
we have seen that two millions of Irish people landed in
America, the increase of Roman Catholics in the country
amounted to about two millions. It must be remembered
that during that period there was also a large immigration of
German Catholics, and, moreover, a large family increase both
among the immigrants and the Catholic population already in
the country. It is impossible to calculate the number of those
who fell away from the Church in the period, but they probably
amounted to at least a million. Admirable as the
organization of the Roman Catholic Church is, the sudden
accession to the American nation after the famine in Ireland
and the revolution in Germany could not have been foreseen,
and the Church in the United States doubtless lost many of
her children, not from any defect in her marvellous machinery
but from a lack of laborers needed at a time of high pressure.
It requires all the resources of the most energetic branch of
the most active organization in the world to maintain a condition
of preparedness for the incessant growth of the Catholic
population. "Messis vuidem multa, operarii autem