Fordham University - Maroon Yearbook (New York, NY)

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given all their energy and failed. That is, they would have failed had it not been for another divine accident in their lives. I his time they were to be presented with THE problem which faced Coadjutor Bishop Hughes, who, because of Bishop Dubois’ illness, became in fact the real ruler of the diocese of New York in 1842, was first to establish order within the Church, then to win recognition of the rights of the Church by the State, and finally to found educational institutions which would lay the ground for a subsequent flowering of the Catholic religion and culture. New York drew the eyes of all America. If he failed, the progress of the Church in America would be put back indefinitely. If he failed, the faith of thousands w'ould disappear like water in the sands of the desert. And if he won—if he could found his schools and his seminary, then perhaps there was some hope for the future. His diocese comprised an area of fifty-two thousand square miles, with twro hundred thousand souls, served by forty priests and tw'enty churches. The parishes wallowed in debts contracted by lay trustees who resisted episcopal control. The Bishop smashed trustee-ism within five years. Less successful, but equally forthright, was his challenge to the control of all education by the private but state-supported Public School Society, which was managed by the most anti-Catholic elements of Protestant clericalism. In 1844 he forced Know'-Nothing Mayor Robert H. Morris and a subservient City Council to prevent, contrary lo their own wishes, the destruction of Catholic life and property in New York by a Nativist mob. He argued, pleaded, wrrotc and fought against intolerance without, and ignorance and rebellion within. These struggles convinced the Bishop of the need of Catholic schools and colleges. Without a native clergy, trained in an American atmosphere and specifically adjusted to the still turbulent conditions of American life, without a higher level of culture among Catholics he foresaw that each succeeding bishop must fight the same fight over and over again. To educate one generation without training successors to carry on w'as analogous to winning a battle and losing a w'ar. St. John’s College, Fordham. How this happened is part of the story of the great John Hughes and the vicissitudes of his diocese of New' York. He was acutely aware of this need for education when he visited Europe in 1839. One of his chief purposes was to persuade the Leopoldinc Association of Vienna to advance him money for the foundation of a diocesan seminary. He approached the heads of teaching orders concerning the establishment of schools. Father Roothaan, the general of the Jesuits, w'as among those invited to open a school in the New York diocese. 1 Catholic education in New’ York in 1839 consisted of parochial schools conducted by parish priests and lay schoolmasters and a number of excellent private academies like those of Patrick Sarsfield Casserly and Thomas N. Brady. But long before this the Jesuits had made tw'o efforts to establish higher education in the diocese. When Governor Dongan, the Catholic appointee of James II, was forced to flee the fanatical partisans of Leisler in 1688, the tw'o Jesuits. Thomas Harvey and Henry Harrison, w'ho with Charles Gage had conducted a Latin School since 1684, were also compelled to leave New York. Theirs was the first attempt to establish a Catholic, school in New' York. I he curriculum and student body of the Latin School remain unknown, although in all probability the institution resembled that of the school at Newton, Maryland, conducted by the same mission of the English Assistancy which in 1681 had sent two excellent scholars to St. Outer's in Belgium. From 1700 to the American Revolution, Jesuits, in fact all Papists, were banned from New York, as well as other States, by rigorous laws. Catholicism wras so feeble a force during the eighteenth century that even the best professional bigots lacked an audience. It was not until 1806 that the last law against Catholics w'as repealed by the state of New’ York. By that time the liberal principles of the Constitution makers plus the respect w'on by Catholic officers and soldiers of Washington had dissipated some of the mists of suspicion and hate.

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inations against the miserable North American climate and suggestions on horticulture and animal husbandry. When he spoke English fluently lie explored the surrounding countryside. His description of the Mammoth Cave, translated by Father Murphy, was one of the first scientific accounts of that wonder of nature. Since by this time the faculty was increasing more rapidly then the student body, Father Thebaud had time to be alone with his ideas. The American scene came into focus. Thumb-nail biographies of notable persons, questions, criticisms, predictions went down in his notebooks. Like his brother Jesuits, he had an enormous appetite for experience. There would be time to chew the cud later. He longed to know his new country more thoroughly and to interpret Catholicism to its inhabitants. He planned books, articles, letters. These plans were temporarily shelved, however, when he became president of St. Mary’s in 1845. ft was not until twenty years later that Father I hebaud found leisure to write his three important works, The Church and Gentilism, The Church and the Moral World, and The Irish Race, the last of which became a standard work of reference. Disaster seemed inevitable in the very first year of Father Thebaud s presidency. Although the college had been improving scholastically and, in the last four years, had attracted students from cities as distant as New Orleans, it was withering away from lack of support. Numbers were declining, possibly because of competition from the Episcopal College at Bardstown and the new Jesuit school in Louisville. Another reason for its failure was the inexplicably unsympathetic attitude of Dr. G. I. Chabrat, Co-adjutor bishop of Bards-town. At all events Father Thebaud was officially ordered to close the college. The announcement of the decision shocked and saddened the Catholics of Ken-t ucky. The whole Jesuit community, now numbering forty-seven, sixteen priests, eighteen scholastics, thirteen coadjutor brothers and four scholastic novices saw their project buried in the graveyard of noble experiments. They had dug their own gardens for food, milked cows, read by homemade candles, conducted a college at the rate of six dollars a semester for a student; they had View of New Amsterdam about flic time of the opening of the first Jesuit School in New York City in 1(183.

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University Chapel, built in 1844-45'- enlarged m i )29- 19