The History of Catholic America
The Church Keeps Building

In the same year that British flames consumed our capital during the War of 1812, three Sisters of Charity of Emmitsburg were engaged in the founding of this country's first Catholic institution for homeless children in Philadelphia, St. Joseph's Orphanage.

The first free school for Blacks in the South was begun in Georgetown by Father John McEIroy, S.J., in 1818. Father McElroy later founded Boston College. Each Sunday afternoon Black children would be tutored in reading, writing, arithmetic, and Christian doctrine. A number of previous attempts, in other times and places, had been foiled by ardent racists. However, historian Carter G. Woodson states in The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861:

"Most interest in the cause in Maryland was manifested near the cities of Georgetown and Baltimore. Long active in the cause of elevating the colored people, the influence of the revolutionary movement was hardly necessary to arouse the Catholics to discharge their duty of enlightening the blacks. Whenever they had the opportunity to give slaves religious instruction, they generally taught the unfortunates everything that would broaden their horizon and help them to understand life. The Abolitionists and Protestants were also in the field, but the work of the early Fathers in Georgetown made it, by the time of its incorporation into the District of Columbia, a center sending out teachers to carry on the instruction of Negroes. So liberal were the white people of this town that colored children were sent to school there with white boys and girls who raised no objection."

Right into the early 1820s, Long Island lacked a resident priest. Since only eight priests under Bishop John Connolly served the diocese - an area comprised of the entire state of New York plus part of New Jersey - it is understandable that the faithful of this out-mission seldom had a priestly visit and usually had to row across the river to attend Mass in the old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mott Street or St. Peter's Church on Barclay Street.

On New Year's Day 1822, the Catholics of Brooklyn held their first meeting at the home of Peter Turner to plan a church and initiate a building fund.

Much of the funding for the developing Church in America was to come from European missionary societies. The Ludwig Mission Society of Munich and the Leopoldine Foundation of Vienna provided for the German immigrant in particular. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith, then based in Lyons and Paris, took a more general interest but occasionally displayed partiality toward dioceses with larger French populations or with French bishops. It is clear that the Church in America could never have come to prosperity without the critical aid of these mission-minded groups.

In April of 1825, Father John Farnan came from Utica, New York, where two years earlier he had been suspended from a pastorate, to serve as Brooklyn's first pastor. His reinstatement and subsequent assignment to St. James in Brooklyn came only after the death of Bishop Connolly, who had suspended him. He was an inspiring and hard-working priest with great charisma, but he got embroiled in politics and militant Irish freedom organizations and was even charged with "being drunk at vespers" before Bishop John DuBois again suspended him in 1829.

Father Farnan had become a popular hero by this time and within two years he rallied enough support to begin his own church building. The ensuing public battle brought headaches and embarrassment to the hierarchy, but the church was never quite finished by the Farnan faction. It was used only once - to bury the suspended priest's brother - and in the mid-thirties the mortgage holder foreclosed and began leasing the building to private businesses. In a sudden move, Bishop John Hughes bought the structure in 1840 and had it completed as Brooklyn's third Catholic church - The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Catholic sisters earned the gratitude of city officials in Philadelphia and Baltimore when their dedicated labors provided inestimable hours of free nursing care to the victims of cholera epidemics in 1832. Many dedicated nuns were felled at the side of their patients by the dread disease.

In 1833, the village of Chicago was incorporated and its first parish - St. Mary's - was founded. At least half of the total population of two or three hundred was Catholic, being mainly of French and Jesuit-converted Indian origin. Only a few years earlier, Chicago had consisted of seven rustic cabins nestled in a wilderness on the border of Lake Michigan. Its inhabitants, trappers and traders, daily intermingled with Indians in the forests. By the time St. Mary's Parish was one year old, Chicago was placed in the jurisdiction of the new Diocese of Vincennes. That year, Bishop Simon Brute visited the city and was amazed at its swift expansion and delighted by its unexpected ecumenism:

"Of this place the growth has been surprising, even in the west, a wonder amidst its wonders. From a few scattered houses near the fort it has become, in two or three years, a place of great promise. Its settlers sanguinely hope to see it rank as the Cincinnati of the North. Here the Catholics have a neat little church."

"Americans, Irish, French, and Germans meet at a common altar, assembled from the most distant parts of this vast republic or come from the shores of Europe to those of our lakes. Reverend Mr. St. Cyr is their pastor. They already have their choir supported by some of the musicians of the garrison. Many of the officers and a number of the most respectable Protestants attend. The bishop on his arrival in the diocese had been invited by the Protestants as well as the Catholics of this place to fix his residence among them and felt his gratitude revived by the kind reception he now received."

At least at this point in time, a beautiful example of brotherhood prevailed in Chicago.