1887 $81,898.01
1888 76,175.30
1889 69,637.68
1890 70,461.87
1891 63,386.84
The receipts for 1892 to date stand 66,068.09
In 1887 thirty-one dioceses received help from this fund and forty-six in
1892.
* * * * *
The following Pastoral Letter issued last year by the Rt. Rev. Bishop of
Louisville, sets forth strongly and earnestly the claims of the Negro and
Indian Mission work on our sympathy and generous aid.
The Colored and Indian Missions.
The following is taken from a Pastoral Letter issued last year by Rt.
Rev. Bishop McCloskey of Louisville. It sets forth strongly and earnestly
the claims of the Negro and Indian mission work to our sympathy and
generous aid.
“If thousands of these wretched beings of whom we speak, are still as
ignorant and destitute of the light of Christianity, as heathen, so to
say, as when the first settler landed on our shores, whose fault is it?
And if they are now fast falling back into the practice of their old
heathen rites, who are responsible for abominations which disgrace the
Christians’ name? Christ died for all; for the African as well as the
European. Have we recognized this fact? Have we come up to the full
measure of the duty we owe to our less favored brother? and when we found
him lying in helpless misery, bruised and beaten,—have we taken him up
and carried him to an inn, and like the good Samaritan, pored oil into
his wounds? or have we not rather, like the unfeeling priest and cold
hearted Levite, passed him by and left him lying by the way-side, as
if _his_ heavenly Father was not ours also? These, dearly beloved, are
questions that we must answer at the judgment seat. “I was hungry and you
gave me not to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me not to drink: naked and
you clothed me not; sick and you did not visit me;” and the answer will
come to you as distinct and definite as to the astonished culprit, who
could not see Christ in the person of the poor and needy. “Amen, I say to
you, as long as you did it not to one of these least ones, neither did
you do it to me.”
Yes, dearly beloved, He who died to redeem us all, will surely hold us
accountable, unless we make such tardy reparation as we are able, for the
wrongs done these neglected creatures, in whose behalf the Church pleads
so earnestly and yet so tenderly to-day. “Now is the acceptable time; now
is the day of salvation.”
What the Church wishes you to do just now is to strengthen the hands of
those noble bands of missionaries—priests of God and devoted Sisters of
Mercy and Charity; heroic Ursulines and brave daughters of St. Benedict,
now laboring among our Colored brethren in the South, and, in the far
West, among the scanty remnants of a race that still clings (and who can
blame them?) with the tenacity of despair to their last footholds in a
land they once proudly called their own.
The Church, which to the Catholic, is the voice of God, wishes you to put
in the hands of the self-denying workers in that rougher portion of the
Lord’s vineyard, the funds they need to carry on the work they have in
hand. These holy missionaries would carry the glad tidings of salvation
to the benighted children of the forest. They would plant in their midst
schools in which young Indian boys and girls may be trained in civil
learning; and churches into which all may be gathered round the altar of
God, and taught to know and worship in spirit and in truth Jesus Christ,
their Redeemer, whose children they are, and, equally with us, heirs of
eternal life. “Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them
not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” It is the humility and the
meekness of Jesus that is to win for us the great prize of eternal life
for which each one, in his own way, is daily striving. “Blessed are the
meek, for they shall possess the land.” It is the beauty of our soul not
the color of our skin that will be the real test of our right to gaze
upon the glory of God in paradise. “Blessed are the clean of heart, for
they shall see God.”
Such then, in brief, is the object for which this collection is to be
taken up at all the Masses on the First Sunday in Lent—a noble and a
blessed work, and full of richest merit for all who approach it in the
spirit of Christian charity, and with kindly feelings toward those of
their brethren, who, as you know too well, are utterly unable to help
themselves.
The heroic self-abnegation of those priests and nuns who have gone forth
into a sort of voluntary exile to spend themselves and be spent for
Christ in the service of the forsaken and despised Indian, whose lot,
to some extent, they share, is worthy of our highest admiration; for
this, Dearly beloved, is not a field of labor which all would willingly
select—this life of perpetual self-sacrifice, ending only in death. The
very nobility of the sacrifice they have made is in itself one of their
strongest claims on your generous support; for (do not forget it), but
for this their heroic self-denial, you would not easily find a means
of discharging a debt you owe a race which for two long centuries has
been so cruelly dealt with;—a race, too, that has proved itself time and
again, in council and on battle field, as brave, as skillful, and as
magnanimous as your own. And yet, to our shame, be it spoken, nearly all
that are left of this singular, and in some respects, mysterious people,
are now wanderers upon the wild prairie, eking out, as best they can, a
miserable existence on the paltry pittance that is doled out to them, and
are to-day, practically speaking, as destitute of religious instructions
as were their pagan forefathers. Oh! Dearly Beloved, what a commentary
is this sad spectacle on the boasted superiority of our Christian
civilization! Take heed, lest Christ’s words on witnessing the faith of
the centurion, and the want of it on the part of those to whom He was
speaking, may one day rise up in judgment against you: “I say to you
that many shall come from the East and the West, and shall sit down with
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven; but the children
of the kingdom shall be cast out into exterior darkness: there shall be
weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Come, then, We entreat you in the bowels of Christ’s mercy;—in the name
of Him who for your sakes, and for the sake of those for whom We are
pleading, hung naked on the cross, despising the shame; come to the aid
of these devoted missionaries who are doing what they can to save this
people worthy of a better fate; remembering the rich graces poured out
centuries ago on your own ancestors in the faith; for what after all,
are these brave missionaries doing, but just what St. Patrick did for
Ireland, St. Boniface for Germany, St. Francis Xavier for the savage
tribes of India, and St. Francis of Sales, the gentle apostle of the
Swiss, for the tens of thousand whom he rescued from the enemy of souls.
Dearly beloved, a glorious work is going on in your midst and you know it
not. If, then, you hear the voice of God to-day, harden not your hearts;
turn not a deaf ear to the voice pleading within you for your destitute
Colored and Indian Brethren; but take in hand at once the blessed work
which your generous hearts prompt you to do. Rise up like true men, and
shake off the forgetfulness of the past, and let your charity respond in
full measure to this earnest appeal to you for help. It comes to you with
the sanction of grave and venerable prelates who in council have weighed
the matter well, and now make known to you the obligation you are under.
The rich results of your generosity you may not live to see. Leave that
to God. The just man lives by faith, and knows that if in loving kindness
to the poor and destitute he casts his bread upon the waters, it will
come back to him, not in the shape of human praise, but in the fullness
of divine mercy, which will not be wanting to him in that supreme hour
when he will stand most in need of it. Strive thus, dearly beloved, to
make your vocation and election sure; that, for your kindness to the
needy, you may one day hear those words so full of comfort and divine
love: “Come ye blessed of My Father, possess the kingdom prepared for
you; for I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave
me to drink; I was naked and you clothed me; sick, and you visited me;
for as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it
to Me. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”
You will have the sweet consolation of knowing that you have hearkened
to the voice of the Bishops whom the Holy Ghost has placed over the
Church in this our beloved country—this favored land which is ours by so
many pleasing associations;—discovered by a fearless Catholic navigator,
aided, as he was in turn, by the royal munificence of that pearl of
Christian Queens, “Isabella the Catholic;”—its early missionaries devoted
sons of St. Dominic, St. Francis and St. Ignatius, who were the first
to plant the cross and spread the true faith on American soil, which
they watered with their blood;—this blessed land of ours now dedicated
to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and tenderly guarded by our dear Lady, the
Immaculate Mother of our God, and sweet comforter of the afflicted.
Dearly beloved, may the joy of a good conscience, the peace of God, that
peace that surpasseth all understanding, ever be yours.”