THE CHURCH IN AMERICA

New Zealand Tablet, 20 October 1910, Page 1725

THE CHURCH IN AMERICA

In less than a century (says the New York Sun) the land of William Penn has become the fourth Catholic power in the world from the point of view of numbers, being surpassed only by France, Austria, and Italy, while it surpasses even these countries if we take into consideration the loyalty of the faithful, their generosity, and their progressiveness. _ The Catholic Church in the United States, although remaining Roman, has > a thorough American character of enterprise, of expansion, and of grandeur, owing to the vastness of its _ institutions and the splendor of its buildings, which will soon rival in size and artistic beauty historic Cathedrals of the Old World, so that before long to the latter will only remain the superiority of coming from centuries of tradition. Thus the balance will be maintained; the history of Europe, the vigor of modern genius in America. New York is to-day the strongest Catholic city in the world, though Paris may have more people baptised into the Church or there may be numerically more in Vienna, but neither Paris nor Vienna, nor Rome itself, can boast such a truly devout Catholic population, so prosperous, intelligent, and active. Besides being the metropolis of the western world, second only to London in population, New York, with its Catholics numbering about a million, almost as many as m the whole of England, and certainly more than in the whole of Australia, constitutes the _ most powerful _ centre the Papacy possesses in the Christian world. Statistics demonstrate that more than a million souls are added every year to the United States through immigration, three-fourths of whom are Catholics.