Excerpt from The Irish in America

I desired to learn if, as had been confidently and repeatedly asserted, Irish Catholics lost their faith, or became indifferent to religion, the moment they landed in America, or whether, as it had been asserted in their defence, they were at once the pioneers and the pillars of their faith. In this enquiry I was mainly in¿uenced bythe conviction that loss of faith or indifference to religion would be the most terrible of all calamities to Irish Catholics, that the necessary result of that loss of faith, or that indifference to religion, would be fatal to their material progress, would disastrously interfere with the proper performance of their duties as citizens, and would be certain to turn the public opinion of America against them. I have devoted a considerable portion of the fol lowing pages to this vital subject, and given rather elaborate sketch of the history and progress of the Catholic Church of America - of that institution by which, hu manly speaking, the education, the character, the con duct, the material welfare and social position of the Irish and their descendants are and must be profoundly in ¿uenced. And, indeed, in giving a history of the growth and progress of the Catholic Church I was representing the struggles and the dificulties of the Irish emigrant or settler of the present century.

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