OCR Text |
Show THE CHURCH IX AMERICA. In les,s than a century the land of William Penn has become the fourth Catholic power in the world from the point of view of numbers, being surpassed sur-passed only by France, Austria and Italy, while it surpasses even these countries if we take into consideration consider-ation the loyalty of the faithful, their generosity and their progressiveness. The Catholic Church in the United States, although remaining Roman, has a thorough American character of enterprise, of cvpansion and of grandeur, owing to the vastness of its institutions and the splendor of its buildings, which will soon rival in size and artistic beauty historic Cathedrals Cathed-rals of the Old World, so that before long to the latter will only remain the superiority of coming from centuries of tradition. Thus the balance will be maintained; the history of Europe, the vigor of modern' genius in America. Amer-ica. New York is today the strongest Catholic city in the world, though Paris may have more people baptized into the church or there may be numerically nu-merically more in Vienna, but neither Paris nor Vienna, nor Rome itself can boast such a truly devout . Catholic population, so prosperous, intelligent and active. Besides being the metropolis of the western world, second only to London in population. New York, with its Catholics Ca-tholics numbering about a million, almost al-most as many as in the whole of England Eng-land and certainly more than in the whole of Australia, constitutes the most powerful center the Papacy possesses pos-sesses in the Christian world. Statistics Sta-tistics demonstrate that more . than a million souls are added every year to the United States through immigration, immigra-tion, three-fourths of whom are Catholics. Cath-olics. New York Sun. |