id="pgepubid00006">II.

Having traced the progress of the Church step by step in the United States, it will now be equally interesting and instructive to see how this progress has been made in different places. The Catholics are by no means uniformly dispersed over the country, and their increase has not been equally rapid in all the states. It will be worth our while to see in which quarters they are settled with the most compactness and in which they are widely dispersed; and thus we may predict without great risk which regions are destined to be the Catholic strongholds in the New World. We have already said that the proportion of the Catholics to the whole people in 1860 was as one to seven; but if we divide the country into two parts we shall find that in the Southern states there are only 1,200,000 Catholics in a population of 12,000,000—that is, they are 1/10th of the whole; while in the North they number 3,200,000 in 19,000,000, or more than 1/6th. Even these figures give but a very general idea of the distribution of the faithful. If we take the whole country, state by state, we shall find the proportions still more variable. In some places the Catholic element is already so strong that its ultimate preponderance can hardly be doubted, while its slow development in other quarters promises little for the future. The following tables will enable our readers to comprehend at once the distribution of the Catholics among the various states:

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NORTHERN STATES.

SOUTHERN STATES.

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These tables show at a glance the disproportion between the Catholics of the North and those of the South. In only one Northern state (that of Maine) is the proportion of Catholics as small as 5.45 per cent, of the whole population; while there are no fewer than five Southern states in which it is less than three per cent. If we leave out New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, and Maryland, where the preponderance of the faithful is due to special causes, we find that in the other Southern states the average proportion is not above four per cent. In other words, in these regions the Church has little better than a nominal existence. This is partly because the stream of European immigration has always flowed in other directions, and partly because the negroes generally adhere to the Baptist or Methodist sects in preference to the Church.

But when we examine the tables more in detail, we see that in both sections the ratio of Catholics varies greatly in different states. It is easy to account for this difference in the South. Six states only have any considerable number of Catholic inhabitants. Louisiana and Missouri owe them to the old French colonies around which the Catholic settlers clustered. In New Mexico, more than three-fourths of the people are of Spanish-Mexican origin. Texas derives a great number of her inhabitants from Mexico, and has received a large Catholic emigration both from Europe and from the United States. Maryland, the germ of the American Church, owes her religious prosperity to the first English Catholic settlers; and the Church in Kentucky is an offshoot of that in Maryland. Such are the special causes of the great differences between the churches of the various Southern states. In the North there is less disparity. European immigration has produced a much more decided effect in this section than in the preceding. From this source come most of the faithful of New York, Oregon, California, Ohio, and New Jersey. In Ohio the Germans have done the principal part, and they have done much also in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The effect of conversions is more perceptible in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York than elsewhere. In many of the states, however, and especially in Pennsylvania, we find numerous descendants of English Catholic settlers, while the old French colonies of the West have had their influence upon the population of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois, and also of the northern part of New York, where the French Canadians are daily spreading their ramifications across the frontier. If we look now at the localities in which the proportion of Catholics is greatest, we shall notice several interesting points touching the laws which have determined the direction of the principal development of the Church, and which will probably promote it in the future. In the South there are what we may call three groups of states in which the Catholic element is notably stronger than in the others. One belongs exclusively to the Southern section, and consists of Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico, having an aggregate Catholic population of 380,000 in 1,363,800, or 28 per cent. The other groups (Missouri, that is to say, and Maryland and Kentucky) form parts of much larger groups belonging to the Northern states. The first of these latter, and that to which Maryland and Kentucky are attached, consists of Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Ohio. Its aggregate population is 11,647,477, of whom the Catholics are 2,240,000, or nineteen per cent. This group contains the ancient establishments of Maryland and Pennsylvania—good old Catholic communities, in which the zeal and piety of the faithful possess that firm and decided character which comes of long practice and time-honored traditions. It contains, too, the magnificent seminary of Baltimore, founded and still directed by the Sulpitians. This is the largest and most complete {11} establishment of the kind in the United States, and derives from its connection with the Sulpitian house in Paris special advantages for superintending the education of young ecclesiastics, and training accomplished ministers for the sanctuary. Kentucky, likewise, has some important and noteworthy institutions, such as the seminary of St. Thomas and the college of St. Mary, both of which are in high repute at the West, and the magnificent Abbey of Our Lady of La Trappe at New Haven, with sixty-four religious, eighteen of whom are choir-monks. The Kentucky Catholics deserve a few words of special mention. The descendants, for the most part, of the first settlers of Maryland, who scattered, about a century ago, in order to people new countries, they partake in an eminent degree of the peculiar characteristics which have given to Kentuckians a reputation as the flower of the American people. They are more decidedly American than the Catholics of any other district, and they are remarkable for their homogeneousness, their education, and their attachment to the faith and traditions of the Church.

The most important and numerous Catholic population is found in the state of New York, where the faithful amount to no fewer than 800,000. They have here religious establishments of every kind. This condition of things is the result, in great measure, of the well-known ability of Archbishop Hughes, whose death has left a void which the American clergy will find it hard to fill. His reputation was not confined to the Empire City. He was as well known all over the Union as at his own see, and was everywhere regarded as one of the great men of the country. Although the progress of the faith in New York has been owing in a very great degree to immigration, it is in this city and in Boston that conversions have been most numerous; and in effecting these, Archbishop Hughes had a most important share. It is not surprising, then, that his death should have caused a profound sensation in the city, and that all religious denominations should have united in testifying respect for his memory.

It is difficult to apply a statistical table to the study of the question of conversions. These are mental operations of infinite variety, both in their origin and in their ways; for the methods of Providence are as many and as diverse as the shades of human thought upon which they act. It may be remarked, however, that the different