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 GERMANS

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GERMANS

Church, Newark, and in 1856 the Rt. Rev. Abbot Winiraer sent Father Valentine Felder, O. S. B., to that city. Two years hiter. 8t. Michael'.s German church was dedicated. In lS.'):i the Abbot of Einsied- eln, at the request of the Bisliop of Vincennes, sent a colony of Benedictine monks to Indiana. They settled in Spencer County, where they founded the .\bbey of St. Meinrad. At that time, the Very Rev. Jos. Kundeck had been for twenty years vicar- general of the diocese, in which he laboured most zealously. In 1S.57 the sovereign pontiff estaljlished the Diocese of Fort WajTie, selecting for its first bisliop, the Rev. John Henry Luers, born near Miin- ster, Westphalia, 29 September, ISIO. He soon dedi- cated St. Mary's Cierman church, the pastor of which was the Rev. Joseph Wentz. In the summer of 1858 the Franciscan Fathers of the Province of the Holy Cross founded a residence at Teutopolis, Effingham County, Illinois, under the Very Rev. Damian Hennewig. The corner-stone of the college was laid in 1861, and the institution opened in the next year. A similar institution arose at Quincy. The Cierman Catholic church at .\lton was, in June, 1860, destroyed by a tornado, but the congregation courageously set to work to replace it by a more substantial edifice. In 1850, the Salesianura, the famoas seminary of Mil- waukee, was opened, with the Very Rev. Michael Heiss as rector and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Salzmann as leading professor. The church of the seminary was consecrated in 1861. The finechurch of St. Joseph was erected at Milwaukee, Wi.sconsin, in 1856, by Rev. 0. Holzhauer. A community of the Capuchin Order, des- tined to spread to many parts of the United States and to distinguish itself by successful mission work, arose in the diocese. Two secular priests. Fathers Haas and Frey, conceived the idea of establishing a Capuchin house. After some correspondence, a father of the order came from Europe and opened a novitiate, receiving the two priests as novices in 1857. After their profession postulants came, the community grew, and God blessed their labours wonderfully. The first German priest on record in Upper California, was the Rev. Florian Schweninger, who first appears at Shasta, in 1854. He must have arrived in 1853. In 1856 the Rev. Sebastian Wolf had charge of a station at Placerville, California. He was later (1S5S- 59) stationed at St. Patrick's church as assistant, but preached the German sermon at St. Mary's cathedral, at the nine-o'clock Mass on Sundays. He began to erect a church for the Germans early in 1860, and since then St. Boniface's congregation has formed an independent parish. He remained pastor until the archbishop called from St. Louis some Franciscans, who took charge and, in 1893, founded another Ger- man parish, St. Anthony's, in the southern part of the city. In the lower part of the State, the Diocese of Monterey, the first German name found in the parish records of San Diego is that of the Rev. J. Christ. Holbein, missionary Apostolic, who was in charge of both the former Indian mission and the city of San Diego, from July, 1849, to February, 1850. A Ger- man settlement for the first time appears in the Catholic Directory as an out-mission of Santa Anna in 1867, but it had no German priests until years after. It is St. Boniface's. The first Cierman parish of Los Angeles, St. Joseph's, was organized in 1888; the first German church in Sacramento in 1894. German Jesuits went to work in what is now Oregon and Washington, with others of their order, in the early forties, and since then German parishes have arisen. No German priests or settlers of account reached New Mexico until within the last fifteen or twenty years. Gradually German Catholics were to be found in nearly every part of the United States, especially in New York. Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, everywhere establishing flourishing congregations

with schools and churches. The number of German Catholics in the United States can only be given approximately. Over one-third of the Germans from the German Empire, as well as the majority of the Ciermans from Austria, are Catholics; accordingly, almost one-half of the Germans in this country shoukl be Catliolics. Making liberal allowance for the leakage, we may safely say that at least one- fourth, i. e. over three millions, are Catholics. This is a conservative estimate. The leakage is consider- able among Catholics of all nationalities. For the defection of Ciermans in particular, the following reasons must be assigned. Where Germans settled in small numbers, frequently tfiere were no priests of their own tongue. Left to themselves, they were in a condition of religious isolation; they gradually neg- lected religious practices and finally lost their faith. Although this applies to all immigrants who do not speak English, it proved specially disastrous in the case of the Germans. As over one-half of the German settlers were Protestant, and frequently had churches and various church organizations, there was a non- Catholic atmosphere around them; mixed marriages, particularly in such places, frequently resulted in losses to the Catholic Church. Great as the contri- butions of the immigrants of '48 were to the intellec- tual advancement of the L^nited States, it cannot be denied that, on the whole, their influence was not favourable from a religious viewpoint. The same must be said of certain German organizations, as the turnvereins, which frequently manifested an anti- Catholic, and even anti-religious, spirit. Nor can it be denied that Socialistic principles were largely spread by German immigrants and German publica- tions. Small wonder that hundreds of thousands of Germans have been lost to the Catholic Church.

German Churcltes and Religious Communities. — No attempt is made to give exact statistics of German Catholic churches and parishes, because such are not available at the present time. A general idea, how- ever, can be formed from the fact, that among the 15,655 priests in the Catholic Directory- for the United States, about one third bear German names. Among the more distinguished German prelates, mention should be made of John ilartin Henni, first Bishop, and later .\rchbishop, of Milwaukee; Michael Heiss, Archbishop of Milwaukee; Seb. Gebhard Messmer, Bishop of Green Bay, now Archbishop of JlUwaukee; Winand S. W'igger, tliird Bishop of Newark, a wise ruler, a devout priest, and notable for his practical work as head of tlie St. Raphael Society for the pro- tection of immigrants; and most particularly of the saintly Bishop Neumann of Philadelphia, whose beatification is the earnest hope of all American Catholics.

Of the great number of European orders and con- gregations of men and women labouring in the LTnited States for man's spiritual or physical welfare, the following are of German origin and even now (1909) are recruited chiefly from Germans or their descen- dants: —

Religious Orders of Men. (1) Benedictines, — (a) American Cassinese Congregation, founded in 1846, by the Rev. Boniface Wimmer, O.S.B. — At the present time there belong to this congregation the following independent abbeys: St. Vincent's Arch- Abbey, Beatty, Pennsyhania, with r26 fathers, 5 deacons, 23 clerics, 64 lay brothers, and 4 novices; St. John's Abbey, CoUegeville, Minnesota, with 94 fathers. 11 clerics, 26 lay brothers, 9 novices; St. Benedict's .\bbey, .\tchison, Kansas, with 51 fathers, 6 clerics, 18 brothers; St. Mary's Abbey, Newark, New Jersey, with 40 fathers, 7 clerics, 14 lay brothers- Maryhelp .\bbey, Belmont, North Carolina, the Rt. Rev. Leo Haid, D.D,, 0,S,B,, abbot-bishop, 31 fathers, 1 deacon. 4 clerics, 36 lay brothers, 4 novices; St, Ber- nard's Abbey, Cullman Co., Alabama, with 38 fathers,