The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1914-03-14
CATHOLIC LOSSES IN THE
UNITED STATES.

We were sorry to see in a recent
issue of Lies Cloches de Saint
Boniface' an article copied from
"La Croix,'' of Paris, in which
the writer, reviewing a History
of the French in the United
States written by Able Magnan,
declares that the Catholic Church
should have 100000 subjects in
the United States instead of the
100000 credited to her. He
claims that this figure is based on
reliable statistics showing the
number of immigrants into this
country during the nineteenth
century and their natural increase.
He asserts that this enormous loss
to the Church is easily accounted
for by the absorption of the i'm
migrant into American surround
ings which are unfavorable to
Catholicism. The Catholic i'm
migrant who, on arrival in the
United States, loses his mother
tongue and with it his ancestral
traditions is foredoomed also to
lose his faith. The non-English
speaking immigrants, like the
French Canadians, the Poles, the
Germans, the Italians, etc., who
are grouped together in national
parishes, and do not easily merge
with their English-speaking fellow
citizens, constitute the majority of
American Catholics and the bull
wark of the Church. The Irish
immigrants have suffered most be-
cause they have become American
lied on arrival and have fallen
away from the Church. According
to this writer, if we take into con-
sideration the number of Irish
immigrants who have landed in
this country during the past two
centuries and their descendants,
there ought to be at least 26,000,-
900 Irish Catholics in the United
States, while, as a matter of fact,
they number scarcely 100000.
This leaves a net loss to the
Church of more than 100000
Irish Catholics.
This is certainly a very grave
Indictment of a people who, in
their native land, have for CEN
turtles suffered untold misery in
the preservation and defence Of
their Catholic heritage. One s
first impulse is to deny absolutely
the truth of the assertion, and as
one studies the problem more and
more in the light of facts, one be-
comes thoroughly convinced that
the grain of truth which this state
ment contains has been exagger-
ated enormously for the purpose
of clarifying another race.
What are the facts of the case?
Making allowance for every pos
sible source of leakage, the Catho-
lie Church has not suffered a loss
even approximating one-tenth Of
this number. The pessimistic views
so often expressed concerning the
enormous losses which the Catho-
lie Church in the United States
is alleged to have suffered by de-
lection from her ranks, have been
shown to be without foundation
by more than one historian. No
one denies that there has been a
leakage; but it is insignificant
compared with the loss imagined
by certain class Of writer's.
One of the most recent and re-
liable works on this subject is
An Examination, Historical and
Statistical, Into Losses and Gains
of the Catholic Church in the
United States, from 1890 to 1870"
by the Right Reverend Bishop
Canevin Of Pittsburgh. Bishop
Canevin s pamphlet was published
in 1912 and contains a study of
the problem of the losses and gains
of the, Church as told by the off
cial statistics of the United States
census and the Commission ON I'm
migration.
In order to ascertain the real
increase Of the Catholic popula-
ton in any period the author
takes into consideration two fac
tors, namely, the rate Of natural
increase (births over deaths), and
the increase by immigration.
From these data he ascertains the
entire Catholic population of the
United States at the close of each
decade, and shows that, estimat-
ing the foreign-born Catholic
population at the highest percent
age allowed by the census and i'm
migration reports, and it's natural
increase in each decade at rate
much higher than the average
natural increase Of the whole
population, the entire number of
Catholics to be accounted for at
the end of 1910 was 18,483, 800.
How, then, is it possible that the
Church has suffered loss of over
100000 from defections among
I'll CoAIo1sao a1o-o0