The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1898-03-05
MISSION SUNDAY.
Collections to Be Taken To-
morrow in All R. c.
Churches for Indian
and Negro Work.
SALVATION! Oh, SALVATION !

DisuopS IlTcujaf " appear ltli-
ing the Good Accomplished
Among the Churches.
In accordance with Instructions laid
down in the Bishops Lepten Regulation
Circular, collections will be taken up in
ally the Roman Catholic churches
throughout the United States tomorrow,
to be devoted to a fund TO assist in the
maintenance OF Negro and Indian Mis-
sions in this country. This is done also
in accordance with a decree Of the Third
Plenary Council of Baltimore. In some
of the churches a neat pamphlet, issued
from the press of st. Joseph's Industrial
School, Clayton, Del, prefaced with an
appeal. signed by His Eminence James
Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop Of Balti-
more; Most Rev. DR.. Ryan, Archbishop
of Philadelphia, and Most Rev. DR.. Kain.
Archbishop of st. Louis, members of the
Commission charged with the distribu-
ton of the fund, was read last Sunday.
This particular appeal was in reality
that of the Rt. Rev. T~heophile Nicer
schaert, d. D., Vicar-Apostolic of the
indian Territory, but selected from scores
of other like appeals, pleading SO elo-
quently in behalf of the church's Negro
and Indian Missions of the nation as to
lead to Its selection by the three eminent
ecclesiastics In charge of the distribu-
ton of the fund as one e~pitomizing the
trials and successes Of Roman Catholic
missionaries. in the fields referred to.
This anpaaJ WaS as fo11nwS.- s
My sincere and heartfelt thanks for
the good help sent to our Indian and
Colored Missions. Would to God our
more Catholics of the States
would understand rightly the great work
which is in their midst They are touched
with sympathy when theyhear of sacrifices
made, and of lives spent through pure de-
y~otedness in heather lands, for the prop
agation of the faith; but are they not
obliyious to the fact that we need not
go out of our own country to find the
heathen and the abandoned?
I'VE have the indian and the colored
people, who are not any longer the saw
ages of other countries, and are, there
fore, better prepared to understand and
to keep the teachings of holy religion.
Those people so favored by Divine
Providence with all the comforts of re-
iigion, should think of the efforts made
by Southern and Western Bishops to do
h%erculean work wholly without or with
hardly any local means, and of the hard
ships, selfisacrifices and heroic daily toll
ing of the poor priests in their abandon
ed and extensive missions.
AS a general rule, the Indian and Col
ored Missions are missions without local
resources. The Bishop and priest must
do it all. The priest must do it ALL, The
priest must live; he must have a little
church to gather his people; to do any
good he must have a school,. 1t must be
supported, and. after having looked to
the comfort of others, the Priest must
have a place to stay in. Too often he
goes round from house to house, and is
glad to AVE d little sacristy and a
bed which he can call his own. When
he has a couple of rooms, he deems him
self a prince.
"More priests are needed for more
work and new missions; the Bishop
has to find his students, pay for
their education, or at least for
their seminary; and what income has
he for all that work, to procure priests,
purchase land, build churches. and
schools, to hold his poor missions and
start new ones? Probably a couple of
thousand dollars from the propagation
of the faith. and a few hundred dollars
from the collections for Indian and Col
ored Missions; not any more, for the
good reason hat they rave no more to
give. And thai is the way they have to
struggle from year to year to do their
hard work when a little goodwill and
Christian charity of the more favored by
Divine Providence could come to the res
cue, make the work much easier, and
multiply wonderfully the good which is
done daily in the missions.
~ know that many Bishops and priests
in these mission fields have their strug-
giles, as great or greater than our own,
but as we know our own best, l will
give a few figures in order thai our more
favored Catholics may have an idea of
what has been before us in the last six
years.
when / was sent to this new vicari-
ate, in the fall of 1891, I found in this inn
mense country of 1910 square miles,
twelve priests, twelve smal churches and
a few schools. without any means or any
ecclesiastical students to provide for the
future. After taking a trip, not of the
easiest, through the whole Territory and
understanding its wants, / left for Bel
GUM to find young and Jealous priests
for the hard work, and for some means
to help them do it. God has sent us more
workers meanwhile, so that we have now
thirty-one priests on the missions instead
of twelve, fifty frame churches instead of
twelve, and over one hundred stations
regularly attended. We have ten schools
for the whites, ten for the Indians, and
two for the colored people, all under
the charge of Sisters, except one taught
by the Benediotine Fathers. Many more
churches n especially schools are need
ed, and more so still, the priests and
means to start them. The priests a
lone this great work, the Bishop has
found and done all he could, helped his
priests in different ways, even with offer
ings for masses; and the priests. of their
poverty. have given their last cent to
help to build those poor churches-happy
as kings-when they had succeeded, they
could invite their Bishop to go and bless
the modest structure, the fruit Of much
toll and hardship.
Every new mission, every new church
and little school would have its own
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