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 CHURCH IN AMERICA 353

was a mere shell, because the Society had been banned from all Russian and Polish provinces. This fate was incurred by reason of the So- ciety's propaganda in the army and the aristocracy. During the next thirty years Nicholas I reigned and there was little delay in carrying out the Russian system of separating Catholics from Rome by strategy and force.

The United States Constitution of 1787 had granted freedom to all religions, and the Congress of 1789 had decreed separation between Church and State. During this period Rome sent its first Apostolic Vicar to the new Republic, and established the first bishopric in Balti- more. Diligent labour and hard competition with other confessions placed the parochial life of Catholics emigrating unceasingly from Europe on a firm foundation. The fact that the Church was not tied up with the governmental system made it necessary for these masses, the great majority of whom were poor and moreover (as Orestes Bron- son said) hardly brave enough to declare in the presence of their enemies that their souls were their own, to seek the strong support afforded by a firmly-established and well-knit hierarchy. The Church which embraced the whole world could make a deep impression of unity on North America, where the domain of religion was divided up into innumerable parts. But Catholic life suffered not a little from the intellectual environment in which it was placed, from prag- matism and from the conception that economic success was God's blessing. For this reason the European often finds the writings of American religious leaders alien to his own conception. But the growing efficacy of Roman leadership, which manifested itself also during the era of "Americanism," brought home to Catholics of the New World what religion, the Church and missionary activity are adjudged to be in the shadow of St. Peter's.

After the blow received in Russia, the Society of Jesus advanced victoriously in other countries. Its General whom popular parlance termed the "Black Pope" was once again in Rome and his troops were now free to labour in the Papal States, Italy, Portugal, France, Belgium, Holland, England and America. Under the leadership of John Philip Roothaan, a wise, imperturbable, unflinching native of Amsterdam and one of the exiles of Polozk, the Order developed out- wardly and inwardly. Italy's troubled and sorrowful history during

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