ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH 81 ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH
Maryland, and in 1704 a law was passed to prevent " the increase of popery." The stringent provisions of this act remained in force until the Revolution ; only the first provision, which forbade bishops and priests to say mass or exercise their ministry, was so far modified that " Catholics were permitted to hear mass in their own families and on their own grounds."
The colony of Pennsylvania was founded by Penn on the basis of religious toleration, and the Catholic immigrants from Ireland and Germany were allowed to live in com- parative peace, but their creed was regarded with con- tempt. In the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, Protes- tantism was declared to be the religion of the State, but actually the few Catholics appear not to have been troubled. In 1664 the colony passed into the hands of the Catholic duke of York, afterwards James II, and its name was changed to New York. In 1083 the colony received a Catholic governor, colonel Thomas Dongan ; and in the same year the Hrst legislative assembly of the colony granted, like JNIaryland, religious liberty to all " professing faith in God by Jesus Christ." After the expulsion of James, another assembly in 1691 re- pealed the Toleration Act of 1683, and passed stringent laws against the Catholics. In 16% only seven Cath- olic families were found on Manhattan Island. New laws of extreme severity were passed against Catholics in 1700, 1701, and 1702; and at the beginning of the Revolutionary War the Catholic Church was almost unknown in New York, and the few Catholic inhabi- tants of New York city had to go to Philadelphia to re- ceive the sacraments. The laws of the New England colonies, of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, re- tained rigid penal laws against Roman Catholics on their statute-books. At the beginning of the Revolu- tionary War, out of the 3,000,000 inhabitants in the American colonies, only about 25,000 were Roman Cath- olics, of whom 15,000 lived in Maryland. There were about twenty-five priests and about twice as many con- gregations.
3. On the eve of the War of Independence, the Con- tinental Congress of Philadelphia, in 1774, pronounced for the broadest toleration. In 1776 the Catholics of Maryland were fully emancipated, owing largely to the influence of Charles Carroll, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The other twelve orig- inal states, one after another, granted the Catholics lib- erty of conscience, the right to build churches and wor- ship as they pleased; but full and unreserved equality of civil and political rights was withheld from them in some of the states much longer. The Federal Consti- tution, adopted in 1787, provides in art. vi, sec. 3 : "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification for any office or trust under the United States." Among the framers and signers of this Constitution were two Catholics — Daniel Carroll, of Maryland, and Thomas Fitzsimmons, of Pennsylvania. The right thus obtain- ed was further secure<l l)y the enactment of the first ar- ticle of the amendments to the Constitution, which de- clares " that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exer- cise thereof."
Until the close of the Revolutionary War, the Cath- olics of the United States were under the jurisdic- tion of the vicar apostolic of the district of Lon- don, England, who, during the whole of the war, held no kind of intercourse with the American churches. After the establishment of the independence of the United States, the clergy of Maryland and Pennsylvania were naturally impressed with the importance of hav- ing an American superior for American churches, and they asked the pope to allow the clergy to elect a supe- rior, subject to the approbation and confirmation of the pope. In reply to the request, the pope, after consult- ing Benjamin Franklin through the nuncio in Paris, a|)pointed in 1784 the Rev. Dr. Carroll priefect apostolic, with many of the powers of a bishop. In view of the extraordinary difficulties which the new prefect eji- IX.— F
countered from the vastness of his territory, and also from the insubordination of several priests and a part of the laity, it was soon deemed necessary to ai)[)ly to Rome for a bishop. The recpiest was granted, with the privilege of selecting the candidate and of locating the new see. Accordingly, Dr. Carroll was elected bishop, and Baltimore chosen as his sec. On Aug. 15, 1790. Dr. Carroll was consecrated bishop in England. The num- ber of Catholics at this time was estimated by Dr. Car- roll himself at about 30.000, in a total population of 3,200,000. Of these. 16,000 lived in Maryland, 7000 in Pennsylvania, 3000 at Detroit and Vincennes, 2500 in Illinois, and in all the other states there were not more than about 1500. Tlie arrival, between 1791 and 1799, of twenty-three French priests who fled from France in consequence of the Revolution, enabled bishop Carroll to extend and partly consolidate his vast diocese. Many of the immigrant priests were men of considerable abil- ity; and six of them— Flaget, Cheverus, Dubois, David, Dubourg, and ]\Iarechal — afterwards became bishops. Another important addition to the ranks of the priests was made in 1795 by the consecration of the young Russian prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin, who dis- played great and successfid activity for the extension of the Catholic Church in Western Pennsylvania. In 1787, the first priest appeared in Kentucky ; in 1789, the first church was commenced in Charleston, S. C; in 1803, the first church was consecrated in Boston. Several missionaries began to penetrate into the al- most trackless wilds of Indiana, Ohio, and Michigan. Soon after the dawn of the 19th century, the great tide of immigration from the Old World began to set in, and as a large portion of it came from Catholic Ireland, the Catholic Church in the United States in- creased very rapidly in number. The city of New York, which had in 1790 a Catholic population of about 100, numbered 14,000 Catholics in 1807. At the same time there were about 70 priests and 80 churches in the United States, with a Catholic population of probably 150,000.