Some 30,000 Converts

New Zealand Tablet, 22 July 1909, Page 1130

Some 30,000 Converts

One of the most maddening features of the great Irish famines of the nineteenth century was this: that there was abundant food in the country to prevent a single death ny starvation, btrb it was seized for Tent and exported in the sight of the famishing people, reduced to ' Bone and skin, two millers thin.' It is estimated that there are in the United States some fifty million persons without church connection—though, of course, not necessarily without religion. They are in a state of spiritual destitution or famine. Yet year by year the United States is exporting men and funds to bring religious faith of some kind or other to peoples in Europe and the East, and thereby creating, in the spiritual order, a situation somewhat analogous to that which Irish landlords brought about in the Niobe of the' western natioas when the long famine of the forties came, ' Cruel as death and hungry as the grave.' The Philadelphia Catholic Standard of May 22 reports Judge Sadlcir as having heavily flailed this policy of sending armies of missionaries to far-ofi lands while there exists at home so rich a field for spiritual endeavor.. ' The judge, says the Standard, ' was sentencing a heartless fellow for desertion and cruelty to wife and child, and the details of his barbarity sent a shudder through the court. Unable to restrain his anger at the recftal, the Judge, in delivering sentence, said: "It may not be proper for the Bench to make this statement; but I want to say here now that I am surprised that such a thing could happen in a civilised community. I am heartily of the opinion that more mission work should be done at home. One dollar expended in home missions would do more good than 50 dollars'in China or Japan. A story such as this, coming from Japan or China, would be horrible; but it is astounding, coming from this community." ' * Catholics have, happily, an eager and zealous organisation that has been for years flinging itself against the great, spiritually inert, and cliurchless masses of the United

States. This is the Mission to non-Catholics. Its headquarters are at the Apostolic Mission House, and its reports year by year" make cheerful reading. The Philadelphia Catholic Standard of June 5 gives the Missionary Fathers' statistics of recorded converts for 1908 as 28,709. 'These figures,' says our able Philadelphia contemporary, ' were given in reports from [diocesan] chancery offices, and while some f e\y returns are missing, still with these few exceptions this number, 28,709, represents the, aggregate of adult baptisms in all the 'dioceses of this country. This record of converts is very interesting. In 1906, in preparation for the [missionary] congress of that year, thoi>e were found to be 25,055 converts. Two years later the number had grown to 28,709, or 3644 more. In 1906 it was difficult to get at exact figures, for in many chancery offices there was no note taken of converts at all. In some dioceses they were a negligible quantity. Since that congress of 1906 the idea has so grown that with very little difficulty accurate results have been secured. In compiling the returns the impression has grown that quite a percentage of converts are never recorded. None of the converts who have been validly baptised as Protestants, and therefore received into the Church on simple profession of faith,* are included in this list, and also a percentage of adults baptised on reception into the Church and not recorded for one reason or another. Probably 10 per cent, would cover these categories. Adding this to the actual figure of record, it would run the aggregate to 31,580. However, to be conservative, we shall accept as a stereotyped figure for convert making in the United States in one year 28,709, and we feel that we are well within the mark. The figures range from 1491 in New York to a vanishing quantity in some places. It is noteworthy that in the dioceses where apostolic bands are established the numbers rise above the average, as, for example : New York, 1491 converts; Cleveland, 737; Mobile, 488. In New England convert making is very much below the mark. There were only 1772 converts' in a population of over 2,000,000, or one in 1200, while tho average for the country-at-large is about one in 500. The Southern States have an enviable record of about 2000 converts in a Catholic population of 1,000,000. Catholicity has made its way in these States in spite of strong Protestantism and the opposition of rooted prejudices and bitter antagonism. In, these States an active and aggressive missionary work has gone on for the last few decades of years.'