Irish Apostolate Notes

Poor Ireland is suffering badly at the moment. The economy is in turmoil and the recession is causing mass unemployment. The very latest disaster is widespread flooding. Large areas of Counties Galway, Clare, Cork, Kilkenny and Carlow have been devastated. My niece in Ballinasloe told me how her law office was flooded to several feet, but luckily they were able to move up the essential files and computers to safe ground.

Many other offices and businesses suffered grave losses of furniture, carpets, clothing etc. as the water penetrated through walls and floors and many other businesses were destroyed. Cork City has been hit hard also as well as Ennis, Kilkenny and Carlow. The waters crossed over the rather high walls surrounding St. Flannan's College in Ennis.

This amazes me as I am very familiar with the Ennis area. I have spoken with some of my family and friends in Ireland and they are almost in a daze over this ongoing tragedy. I hope that things improve but it is going to be a tough winter and spring in Ireland. We also have our economic and employment problems here in America but certainly things seem much worse in Ireland. Our prayers and sympathies are with our country people in Ireland at this time.

Growth of the Catholic Church in America

Last week I wrote about early Irish immigration to the United States. I enclose some more information about the growth of the Catholic Church in the USA.

By the year 1930 there were 461 Churches dedicated to St. Patrick in the United States, which included the five Cathedrals of New York, El Paso (Texas), Lead (S.Dakota), Rochester (NY) and Corpus Christi (Texas).

In 1792, Catholics who lived in the south-eastern section of Baltimore, finding it inconvenient to attend the pro-Cathedral, asked for a priest and rented a bare room in the third storey of a house in their own district where the first Mass was said by Right Rev. Bishop Carroll in the presence of a congregation of twelve. In 1795 a permanent priest was appointed and the following year a church, 42 feet by 30, was erected. In 1807 the new church of St. Patrick (Broadway-Bank Street) was consecrated, it being then the most important Church in the Diocese. The Catholic School begun in 1815 then preceded all public schools in Baltimore. St. Patrick's is now a Hispanic parish under the care of the Redemporists.

Patrick Cassidy, a native of Newry, Co. Down came to Newry, Pennsylvania in 1798. He laid out the town (he was a civil engineer) and granted ten acres to the parish. Newry, Blair County in Altoona Diocese, had its first Mass celebrated in the Cassidy homestead.

The first Church in Pennsylvania was at Newry, Blair County, in Altoona Diocese. Patrick Cassidy, a civil engineer from Newry, Co. Down came to the district in 1798, and laid out the town, giving 10 acres for a parish. The first Mass was celebrated in the Cassidy homestead.

In 1806 the congregation built the first Church and in 1832 the present brick structure was erected. The bricks were made on the grounds and all labor and materials were supplied by the sturdy and rugged Irish Catholics of the time.

We are told that in 1643 Fr. Isaac Jaques came to New York to minister to the wants of "two Roman Catholics". Thus began the great Catholic community now living on Manhattan Island. When New York became an English colony there was, within the fortifications of Fort James, a small wooden Chapel for the Catholic Community.

The act of Incorporation of St. Peter's, New York (the oldest Catholic Church in the city) was secured in 1785, mainly through the good offices of the Spanish Ambassador. New York was then part of the Diocese of Baltimore, which included in its territory all the United States. In 1808 when the Pope created New York as a separate diocese, the trustees of St. Peter's began the erection of a Cathedral Church on land which had been acquired for a cemetery. The corner stone was laid in June 1809. Due to the hostilities between England and the United States, the church was not completed until after the Treaty of Ghent in 1815.

On May 4th 1815 it was solemnly dedicated to St. Patrick by Bishop Cheverus of Boston. In November, Bishop Connolly arrived from Rome to take up the administration of the new diocese. In 1817 St. Patrick's passed from the control of the trustees of St. Peter's and about that time a school (then called a "Charity School") was opened in the basement.

Bishop John Hughes was consecrated in St. Patrick's in 1838 before a huge assembly. In 1850 he was appointed Archbishop of the new Province of New York. He became active in establishing the legal and social position of the Catholic Church and Catholic people of New York. The Catholics of New York at that time were fighting every inch of the way.

Championed by John Hughes they succeeded in smashing the anti-Catholic Public School Society which controlled education in New York and which tried to proselytize Catholic children. Led by Hughes, 3000 well armed Catholic men entrenched themselves within the walls of St. Patrick's, on that night, in 1844, when the "Native American" mob thought to repeat in New York the burning and destruction they had perpetrated in Philadelphia.<