CHAPTER VII.

AN ERA OF ACTIVITY-BISHOP KENRICK'S FORESIGHT-NEW CHURCHES.

In countries of settled Catholic populations, the duties of a Bishop are such as to leave him free to cultivate the spiritual virtues in his priests and in his flock, and to deal with administrative problems of his diocese as they arise. But in a terra nova like the United States, in those early days, they were far more complex. The ground was there; the churches and the congregations were things in posse. Nearly every Bishop had to play the part of a magician in conjuring these up where vacuity only had existed. None was more active in this creative work, as it may be designated, than Bishop Kenrick-the St. Patrick of Pennsylvania, one may style him. His activity was incessant; his success wonderful. Prior to the beginning of any new church he had taken steps, as he had found it, by bitter experience, necessary, to eliminate the vicious trustee principle forever. This plan he began to put in operation in the city of Philadelphia. Resolving to shake himself free once for all from the pragmatic trustees of St. Mary's, he began to cast about for a site for a pro-Cathedral which should serve its sacred purpose until such day as one really worthy of a great city might rear its crest to heaven. To the Rev. John Hughes, his energetic secretary, he confided his ambition and the task of realizing it. There happened to be a piece of ground quite sufficient for the purpose on South Thirteenth street. Father Hughes secured it, and had plans prepared for the church by Mr. William Rodrigue. Then the Bishop called a meeting of Cath

A NEW CATHEDRAL PLANNED.

105 olics, to lay before them his plans for a new church, a free school, and a girls' refuge. The president at this meeting was the celebrated Matthew Carey, and the substantial result was such that on the 31st of May, 1831, the Bishop had the pleasure of laying the corner-stone of the new edifice, and in the April of the following year it was solemnly dedicated by the venerable Bishop Conwell, under the invocation of St. John the Evangelist, as the Cathedral or pro-Cathedral of the Philadelphia diocese. This it continued to be until the completion of the stately pile which now serves the purpose on Logan Square. St. John's, however, continued its functions as a parish church after the passing of its Cathedral dignity. It was partly destroyed by fire in 1900, but it has risen from its embers, in its original form, externally, but a thing of beauty as regards its interior, such as any city might feel proud to possess, emblematic in its white vesture and chaste carving, and the richness of its noble stained glass windows, of the purity and glory of the faith which has raised it.

Much as we may deplore the spirit which animated the lay Catholicity of those days, as exemplified in the attitude of trustees toward Bishops and priests, when we recall the consequences which flowed from their tyranny, we find compensation for much of the scandal, the grief, and the heartburning which it brought to the Church, its prelates, and its flocks. It was the refining fire which tempered and strengthened the instrument by which it was at last to be smitten down and utterly routed and blotted out of existence. The gentle nature of Bishop Kenrick-calm in times of quiet as the sleeping Mediterranean on a summer day-might never have been wakened to a consciousness of its innate strength were it not for the fractious behavior of the crotchetty trustees whom he encountered on his entrance into his diocese.

It opened his eyes to the inherent weakness of the existing ecclesiastical system, and soon his fertile mind was busy with the problem of providing an antidote for the evil and a safeguard against its recurrence. We have seen how this problem was solved in the erection of the Philadelphia pro-Cathedral and in the surrender at Pittsburg; and the victories there achieved were felt as victories for the whole Church in the United States-for Philadelphia was by no means the only place wherein the pretensions of the laity to rule the Church had been insolently and persistently put forward and asserted. His mental vision swept far beyond the bounds of the immediate field of struggle; he looked into the future, and his fancy beheld the vast possibilities which lay within the grasp of the Church in the proximate years. Though he was a splendid dreamer, his dreams were the outcome of a keen observation and practical spirit. From what he had beheld, in his journey through portions of his diocese, he felt assured of the coming greatness of Pennsylvania and its chief city. If it was a land almost literally flowing with milk and honey, it was not less one dowered by nature with those subterranean riches, in minerals and metals, which have ever made the nations which were so fortunate as to possess them, with knowledge of their uses, strong in character and great in achievement, whether in the fields of industry or those of war. The development of such resources was in his period only beginning, but he foresaw that the infant of to-day must be the colossus of to-morrow. Every stroke of the hammer on the anvil, every blow of the pick on the rock, he knew to be the sound that would summon a fresh worker from some far-off field, attracted by the hope of transmuting into gold the metal wrung from the clutch of tenacious Nature. Viewing the living tide that was soon to begin its flow toward the shores

HIS FIRST DIOCESAN SYNOD.

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of Pennsylvania, his fancy, fired with apostolic zeal, pictured the wants of such a population-pastors to minister to their spiritual needs and guard the gates of morals, schools to train their children, orphanages and hospitals to minister to their bereaved and disabled. Ardent as was his fancy, his constructive faculty was no less masterful. The greater the need of the hour, the more apparent grew the responsive power of his innate resources. His ardor was not the less contagious from the fact that it was of the quiet and resolute order, rather than the emotional; and few who heard him plead for an object on which he had set his heart, for the accomplishment of God's work and the redemption of imperilled souls, could long resist the charm of his pleading and the magnetism of his kindly presence. Thus it was that he so quickly succeeded in rearing his darling Seminary, the cherished ideal of his earliest day-dreams, once he had scanned the condition of his diocese and got a fore-glimpse of its mighty destiny and its imperative needs.

He began by putting his house in order, in a very practical and systematic way. In accordance with the acts of the Council of Baltimore, he issued a notification for a diocesan synod to assemble, in the May of 1832. Thirty priests attended; nine others were absent, on account of illness or extreme age, or some other reasonable cause. In the enactments adopted at this gathering was laid the groundwork of the system of reorganization and discipline which was destined to obviate in the future such disasters and storms as had nearly shattered the bark of the Church previous to the new pilot's advent. Beginning with the ratification and adoption of the Baltimore decrees, they laid down the emphatic rule that no new church was to be begun, nor no old one enlarged, without the sanction of the Bishop of the diocese; and

in every such case that the title must be vested in the Bishop, as trustee for the congregation. Any priest who encouraged trustees to infringe on episcopal authority was rendered liable to the penalty of suspension. The ancient law of the Church that no money was to be either asked or received for the sacraments was revived; although it was conceded that offerings might be accepted for marriages and baptisms, but only for these. Pending the adoption of a universal Catechism, with Papal approbation, the use of the Baltimore one was advised. The Bishop's imprimatur was made a necessary condition for works intended for Catholic circulation. Priests were forbidden to officiate out of their own parishes, or leave these without the Bishop's sanction. Regulations for the conveyance of the Blessed Sacrament to the sick were drawn up. It was also enacted that Midnight Mass at Christmas must be discontinued, because of the danger attendant on the practice. Furthermore, the Bishop's consent was made a necessary condition for the entrance of any religious community of women into the diocese. The result of these salutary enactments soon became apparent in the orderly discipline of the diocese and the elevation of its ecclesiastical morale.

At the time of the synod the Catholic population of the whole diocese was estimated by the Bishop at one hundred thousand, ministered to by 38 priests, 29 seculars, with members of the Jesuit, the Augustinian, and the Franciscan orders to help. These had to attend to fifty churches and many stations. Many of these priests were incapacitated by reason of age and infirmity. The army of the Church was suffering from the vicissitudes of war, aggravated by the evils of internecine conflict. It required the brain and the will of a strong captain to mould it into a puissant force. Sufficient allowance is not made in these "piping times of peace" for what the

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