RAPID CATHOLIC GROWTH IN AMERICA.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 45, 7 March 1874, Page 13

RAPID CATHOLIC GROWTH IN AMERICA.

WE are always being told by such writers as the Dunedin ' Star ' that the Catholic religion is not fitted for a fres and educated people, but only tor the ignorant and enslaved, the unreflecting and the priestridden. To such writers let me submit the annexed extract from aa American Protestant paper :—" Ouly think, thirteen per cent, of the Confirmations in Baltimore converts from other seels, and New England becoming Catholic faster than any other part of America." How the ghosts of the " Pilgrim Fathers " must be troubled if they ever revisit New England and see such things. The German persecution must have given a considerable impetus to tho Catholic eauee in America as it has done in England. Bismarck is proving a reil benefactor^ to the Catholic Church in more ways than one. The Dunedin. ' Star ' may prove the same in a small way if he only persevere in his attempt to " run down " the Church, and to prove how to be oppn 3 ed or indifferent to the education of the people. With reference to the remark about tho one-third of the Irish in New England having more children than the other two thirds vvlu ure not Irioh, Hepworth Dixon, in his work 'New America,' makes a similar remark, and he hints at an explanation—" That the New England.'? American wive? don't wish to become mothers; too much bother." For the credit of the sex it is to be hoped this is not the real cause, and that Hepworth Dixon has been mislel. I wonder if the Dunediu ' Star ' and Itis party fear that the " Anglo Saxon " will become less energetic, l«s« devoted to the pursuits of literature, science, and commerce, by becoming Catholics ; or, ia other words, by returning to the faith of Alfred the Great. What other sovereign who ever ruled ia England has come up to him in wisdom or in virtue? He alone, of all the sovereigns in Englund since the days of Hengist and Horsa down to the reign of Queen Victoria, has earned the title of " Great," and he was a Catholic, and the founder oi Oxford University. The Saxon and Plantagcuct sovereigns of England, all Catholics, were the real founders am! architects of that noble temple of freedom, tho British Constitution, and secured to the people those rights which the first Protestant sovereign did so much to destroy.