The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1917-09-08
LEAKAGE IN UNITED STATES.

LEAKAGE IN UNITED STATES.
DR.. Thomas O'Hagan, noted Cath
olic writer and editor, writing in the
Michigan Catholic gives the follow
ing reasons why he thinks the leak
age in the Catholic population of the
United States is grossly exaggerated:
1T has always seemed to me that
many writer's greatly exaggerate the
losses in the Catholic Church in the
United States.
Some put it at five million, others
at ten, and I have seen it estimated
at twelve. l believe that any one Of
these figures is gross exaggeration.
If we take the last figure, it would
mean that, were it not for the losses
to the Catholic faith, the Catholics of
the United States today would num-
Der not twenty, but forty million.
well, let us see how this would
work out on the scale Of immigration.
AS matter of fact, as Bishop Canevin
points out in a recent interesting con-
tribution on this subject to The Cath
Ollie Historical Review, quoting from
Prescott F. Hall in his History of
Immigration: In the thirteen orig
inal States the pioneers were practic-
ally all British, Irish, Dutch and Ger
man, with few French, Portuguese
and Swedes. The Germans were
pretty generally scattered, having col
onized in New York, Pennsylvania,
Maryland and Virginia. The Swedes
settled along the Delaware River
The French were Huguenots, driven
from home by Louis XIV; the Irish
were descendants of Cromwell's army
and came from the North of Ireland
"In the spring of 1915 l spent some
ten weeks in research work in the
Congressional Library at Washington,
D. G.. In looking up the early Irish
settlements of Virginia and Pennsyl-
| vania, | found ample confederation
credited to Prescott f. Hall. For in
stance, you come across letter after
letter sent by the colonists to their
friends in Europe containing such a
statement as this: There are few
Papists amongst u.s. showing that a
Catholic colonist was an exception.
Catholic immigration Came Late.
elm truth, it was not till the Irish
famine in the forties Of the last cen
fury that great wave Of Irish Cath
Ollie immigration poured into the
United States. Coeval with this was
the great influx of Irish Catholic i'm
migrants into Canada, too.
ct should be remembered also that,
with the exception of the Irish Cath
Ollie immigration from Ireland, which
was at it's flood-tide about the middle
Of the last century, and ebbed but
little for the succeeding twenty-five
years, the general character of the i'm
migration into the United States from
1900 to 1850 was Protestant. OF
course, there was German Catholic
immigration but this was limited to
certain Catholic sections of Germany,
as Bavaria and some of the provinces
on the Rhine.
1T has only been during the past
thirty or forty years that Catholic
Italy and Catholic Poland have poured
their emigrants upon American shores.
If you estimate then, the Catholic and
Protestant countries in Europe from
which the tide of emigration has
steadily flowed to our American
shores, it will be found that, until re-
cent years, the character of the emf
grafton has been overwhelmingly Pro-
testant. How, then, could you look for
a Catholic population of forty million,
or indeed of thirty million?
"The statistics show that in the
year 1900 there were in all the United
States 1O,213,871 of foreign birth, and
of these, 4,761,199 were Catholics.
These foreign-born Catholics represent
the food-tide of Catholic immigration
from Europe during the past fifty
years. But the fifty preceding years,
if looked into, will show an over
whelmingly Protestant immigration.
mo doubt there have been losses
to the Catholic faith in the United
States, but these losses are inevitable,
for, as DR.. Jameson, head of the his
tory department of the Rockefeller
FOunQdLlOIl, "dSHluSIOu, -. ", oaAo
to the writer of this paper, In the
early Colonial days the few scattered
Catholics were focks without shep-
herd and, consequently, losses to the
faith were inevitable. One thing is
certain, that reckless statements lack
ing the support of facts and figures,
can prove nothing in discussion of
this subject"