The Catholic Church in The United States of America

Extract

The Catholic Church in the United States of America is a very impressive institution ; especially if one comes to it as a v'isitor from England. For then one usually lands on the eastern seaboard where Catholicism will be found to be at its strongest. Moreover such an one must bring to it the memory of the Church in England, where Catholicism is, by comparison, small, poor, and overshadowed by the much more impressive Establishment. Anyone who undertakes to give his impressions of America must ask for it to be remembered that it is a vast country, with not only many but with extreme diver, sities ; so that what is true enough of certain areas or strata could be off-set by something just as true, but very different, elsewhere. It is in the eastern States, and, with the exception of a few middle State cities such as Chicago, only again in California, that the Church is well represented, not to say dominant; whereas it is hardly visible in such States ‘as the two Carolinas and Georgia, for it. has made very small conquests among the coloured people, while in what is called ‘the Bible belt’ a still existing, though gradually disappearing, open hostility may be apparent.

Numbers have some meaning, and the latest census gives the professing Catholics as over twenty-two millions : perhaps nearly ten times as many as we can really count upon. Moreover, what tells even more, this record has within ten years beaten the number counted as Methodists, which was for long the leading denomination, and perhaps the most influential, at least politically, for it had much to do with enforcing Prohibition.