Colored Catholic Convention

The recent convention of colored Catholics at Washington may be noted as quite an epocb in the progresa both of that raco and that church in America. The convention did its work so well and gave publicity to facts of so much interest and importance that reading Americans confesa a surprise at the peculiar relations, both present and historie, of the negroes and the Catholic church. There are in the United States twenty distinct colored Catholic churches, each with a school attached, though the church does not encourage separate organization, and most of its colored communicants attend white I churches. The colored Catholics also have sixty-five schools, eight orphan asylums and three reformatorios; seven educated colored men are now preparing for the priesthood, and there are 150 colored women in the various sisterhoods. The schools now includo 5,000 colored children. # # It is not generally known that the first movement towards general emancipation began in the Catholic church, that more than one pope has made it an objOct of special address, and that the confessor of Charles V of .Spain was the first to inaugúrate a crusade against African slavery and the slave trade. As to the abolition of white slavery in England, Macaulay, despite lus strong anti-Catholio feeling, gives this testimony: "The church of Rome creates an aristocracy altogether independent of race, inverts the relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and compeLs the hereditary master to kneel beI0T3 the tribunal of the hereditary bondsman. To this day (1843) in somecountries where negro slavery exists, popery appears in advantageous contrast to other rormsof Christianity; it is notorious that the antipathy between the two races is by no nieans so strong at Rio Janeiro as at Washington. Iïow great a part the Catholic ecclcsiastics had in the abolition of villeiiage, we learn froni unexceptiona b 1 e testimony. When the Uyinjj slaveholder asked for the last sacramenta, his spiritual attendants regulaily a d - iured hiui, as he loved lus own soul, to emancípate his brethren for whom Christ had died." In the United States and adjacent islands there were peculiarities of race which long hindered the natural tendency of the church. In Louisiana and the Indies the white colonists were Catholic, and so the slaves were. bred in that faith, and after the revolution in San Domingo about 2,000 oducated and well to do colored men removed to New Orleans. They spoke the Frcnch language, wero Catholics, and educated their chiklren in France, the northern states or in private schools at home. Thus there has existed for many years in New Orleans a colored society unlike any in any other part of the country. Víctor Sejour, once the private secretary of Louis Napoleon, and a fanious dramatic writer of Paris, was a native quadroon of New Orleans. # At the close of the civil wai the best and probably the largest colored school in the United States was that directed by the "Catholic Society for the Instruction of Indigent Orphans" at New Orleans, and its history is an encouragement for all the race. In 1837 there died in New Orleans a black woman, a native of Guinea, known as Widow Bernard Convent, who had acquired her freedom and a small competency. By her will she gave a lot and the buildings on it for a school for colored orphans. Ten infïuential freemen of color associated themselves to give effect to the bequest, were incorporated under the laws of the state, and on the 20th of April, 1847, the institution was founded. It received some slight help from the state and city, but was chiefly maintained by contributions, and in 1860 coutained 260 pupils. The I recent growth of free schools and colleges for the colored has made it relatively less important. In New Orleans, and probably there only, are the colored Catholics able to do what they wish in churcli extensión. Everywhere else they are confronted, not by tlie color line," as in other churches, but by the far more prosaic problem of poverty. The great ïnass of the white Catholics in America have not yct been in the country long enough to have created many largo fortunes, and the colored Catholics are tnuch poorer still. Nevertheless, they have achieved some Btriking successes. The Cliurch of St._ August ine, in Washington, is a magnificent ediflce, built entirely by the colored Catholics, and the muso, cspecially the vocal choir, is noted oven in that city of excellent choirs. Tlie plenary council of Catholio prelatesof the United States, hplfl in Balümore in 1881, made considerable provisión for churches, school liouses and priests lor the colored people. The recent convention was in ïurtheranct! of that object. After a busy session of several days and a cali upon President Cleveland the conrention adiourned Jan. 4 to meet a year later at Richiiionil. Va. Doctor (passing a stonecutter's yard) - Good morning, Mr. Jones. ILird afc work, I seo. 1 suppose yon finish your gravestonea as faras"ín Memory of," and tlien wait for sorne one to dio, ch? Stoneeutter- Why, yes; iinless somebody's gick and you're (íoctoring 'em; then I keep right on.- Boston Gazette. A tame crow belonging to a farmer near Ridgeway, Ont., has been taught to distinguibh colors, and will pickout from a pile oí articles of various colors one of any color asked for.