The first Catholic committee (1757), composed of noblemen, doctors and merchants, presented an address of loyalty to the king, signed by 400 members, which brought the first official recognition of the Catholic body. Another address to George III. (1760) on his accession was signed by 600. Relief bills were passed in 1771, 1774 and 1778 permitting Catholics to acquire leases of land, inherit and bequeath property provided they took an oath that the Pope could not depose princes or exercise any civil authority in these realms. Catholics found no difficulty in taking this oath. In 1782 other penal laws were repealed. The spread of democratic ideas was softening the bigotry bequeathed by the 16th and 17th centuries. Men like Grattan and Edmund Burke advocated equal rights for Catholics and Protestants, whilst Wolfe Tone, a Republican, favoured a more forward policy in a union of Catholics and Dissenters. The first club of the United Irishmen, composed chiefly of Presbyterians, was formed in Belfast (1791). Their petition that the penal laws be repealed was rejected by Parliament. A Relief bill, however, permitting Catholics to vote—for Protestants—was passed (1793). Pitt's promise of State aid for Catholic clergy alarmed Protestants. It was his deliberate intention to play off Catholic against Protes tant in the hope of securing the Union of the English and Irish parliaments. The country resorted to secret societies which were condemned by the bishops, and the rebellion (1798) was sup pressed with wanton cruelty. The Union was ultimately carried (I800). With the promised State pay for the clergy a veto in the appointment of Catholic bishops was sought by English ministers. After bitter controversy both were refused by the bishops who declared that the oath of allegiance was sufficient guarantee of their loyalty. Daniel O'Connell, a young lawyer, put new heart into the people and opened their minds to the power of the vote. Elections at Waterford and elsewhere were won for candidates favouring Emancipation. O'Connell was elected for Clare but re fused to take the anti-Catholic oath (1828). The Emancipation Act was carried by Peel (1829). It had two great defects: the 40/– freeholder was disfranchised, and severe regulations against Jesuits and other religious bodies were inserted in it. And twenty years afterwards nine-tenths of all offices of emolument and power were still in the hands of the dominant minority. With richly-endowed schools Protestants now opened a campaign of proselytism and vilification of Catholic doctrine, but bishops like Drs. Doyle and McHale strongly opposed them. After a veritable war Catholic tithes for the support of Protestant wor ship were abolished (1838). To remove the legal insecurity sur rounding Catholic donations for religious purposes a body styled the "Commissioners of Charitable Bequests" was set up As to education; Maynooth college was founded (1795) for the education of Catholic clergy and endowed by Parliament with £8,000 a year (£40,000 in 1914 value), commuted in 1869 to a capital sum of £370,000. National primary schools for Protes tants and Catholics were opened in 1831. The intermediate school system was introduced (1878) and, by prizes, exhibitions and result fees, gave indirect financial assistance which was of im mense help to schools such as those of the Christian Brothers de pending on private resources. The Queen's colleges (1845) were condemned at the Synod of Thurles (1850). A Catholic university founded in 1850, with Dr. Newman as rector, was a failure through want of a charter and funds. The Royal university (1879) pleased no one, and finally the Irish Universities Act (1908) established two universities, Belfast and Dublin, leaving Trinity college with its status and endowments. (M. V. R.) Whatever may be the final verdict of history in regard to the very ancient and fascinating Celtic tales of ocean wanderings in which St. Brendan and his companions figure so prominently, many historians of the Catholic Church in the New World have accepted some of these legends as an initial page in their chroni cles. A well-documented study of the Navigatio Brendani and the Land of Promise with an exhaustive bibliography was pub lished in the Catholic Historical Review (Jan. PP. by Prof. Joseph Dunn, head of the Celtic department of the Catholic University of America. The historical link between the alleged pre-Columbian discoveries of the New World and the mediaeval Church in Greenland is found in the Norse Sagas. The Norse Church in mediaeval America attracted the attention of scholars owing to the publication (1893) of the documents from the Vatican archives pertaining to the diocese of Gardar in Greenland. This first Catholic diocese in the New World was established about 1125, and had resident bishops until 1377. After this date until 1492, few of the incumbents of the see resided in Greenland. The letter of Pope Alexander VI. (1493) appointing the last bishop says that "on account of the freezing of the sea no ship is supposed to have touched there during the past eighty years" (cf. "The Norse Church in Medieval America," in the Cath. Hist. Rev., July, 1925: bibliography).
Of the three principal colonizing nations—Spain, France and England—the two former were Catholic and the third began its voyages of discovery under a Catholic king, Henry VII. The first attempt to set up Church organization in the newly-discovered continent was the appointment in 1493 of Rt. Rev. Bernard Boyl,
or Buil, as vicar-apostolic of the "Indies." Bishop-elect Boyl accompanied Columbus on his second voyage. His labours were of short duration and of no permanent value. In 1504, Pope Julius II. appointed three bishops to Hispaniola (Haiti), but the Spanish crown refused to confirm their election and the sees were suppressed. Seven years later the permanent dioceses of San Domingo and Conception (Haiti) and San Juan (Porto Rico) were established. The see of Santiago de Cuba, erected in 1522, was the ecclesiastical centre of the Spanish missions on the mainland until 1545, when the three provinces or arch bishoprics—Lima, Mexico City and San Domingo—were erected by Pope Paul III. In 1565, the parish of St. Augustine, the first within the confines of the present United States, was founded as part of the diocese of Santiago. Thus, three-quarters of a century after the discovery by Columbus, the regular canonical life of the Church was well established. Out of the archdiocese of Mexico City grew later the suffragan Mexican sees of Guadala jara, Durango, Linares and Sonora which ruled the south-western portion of the United States until the middle of the 19th century. One of the heroic chapters in American history is that on the Franciscan, Dominican and Jesuit missions of the South-west and in California (cf. Engelhardt's Missions and Missionaries of Cali fornia, San Francisco, 1908). The former Mexican Church is now represented within the United States by 14 dioceses (cf. "Dio cesan Organization of the Spanish Colonies," in the Cath. Hist. Rev., July, 1918).
The French explorers and colonizers of the i6th and 17th cen turies were, with few exceptions, Catholics and were ably sup ported by missionary groups ; among them were the Recollets, Jesuits, Sulpicians, Capuchins and the secular clergy. New France was erected into a vicariate-apostolic in 1658, with Bishop Laval at its head. The see of Quebec (1674) had spiritual juris diction over all the vast province of France in North America, including the wide-spreading valley of the Mississippi, together with Louisiana. Seven of the 15 ecclesiastical provinces which now constitute the American Church were eventually erected in this former French territory, and there are at present about 50 dioceses in this same region (cf. Rothensteiner, History of the Archdiocese of St. Louis [1673-1928], St. Louis, 1928).
In the English colonies along the Atlantic coast, Catholicism was generally legally proscribed. The exceptions were : Maryland, from its foundation by the Catholic Calverts in 1634 until the Puritan uprising of 165o, Rhode Island, presumably from its settlement by Roger Williams in 1636 and historically from the charter of 1663 ; and Pennsylvania, founded by Penn in 1682, where there is evidence of Catholics from its earliest settlement.
Thus, according to Catholic historians, Maryland has the dis tinction of being the first English settlement where religious free dom was part of the common law (cf. Russell, Maryland, Land of Sanctuary, Balto., 1907). From 1634 to 1773, Jesuits, of English and American origin, ministered to the Catholics in Maryland, Pennsylvania and northern Virginia. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus (1773), the legal Corporation of the Roman Catholic Clergy continued to carry on missionary work, with Father John Lewis as superior. In 1784, Father John Carroll, who had won national reputation through his part in the corn mission to Canada (1776), was appointed prefect-apostolic of the Church in the United States. Six years later he became the first bishop of Baltimore, with jurisdiction over the entire Church in the new Republic. There were at this time (179o) 25 priests and about 30,00o Catholics in the United States. In 1808, Baltimore became a province or archdiocese with suffragan sees at Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Bardstown (Ky.). Ten years later, Archbishop Marechal reported to the Holy See that there were 52 priests and about ioo,000 Catholics in the United States (cf. Guilday, Life and Times of John Carroll, New York, 1922). There is hardly any parallel in the history of Catholicism to the rapid growth of the Church in the United States during the Ioo years from the death of Archbishop Marechal (1828) to the present. This growth has given rise to serious discussion among Catholic writers. Some hold the increase from 25,00o in 1785 to be about 25,000,000 in 1929 to warrant the stand that there has been no leakage; others, basing their study upon the same figures (immigration, statistics, census reports, etc.) hold that there has been a considerable loss (cf. Canevin, An historical and statistical Examination into the Progress and Population of the Catholic Church in the United States from 5780 to 5920). The growth of the Catholic Church in the United States is due primarily to immigration, natural increase and conversions. The statistics generally accepted by Catholic writers, based upon the estimates made by John Gilmary Shea in 1891 and continued to 192o. are as follows:— This computation would apparently support the claim that there are in the neighbourhood of 25,000,000 Catholics in the United States at the present day (1929), although the Official Catholic Directory for 1928 gives the total Catholic population as 19,689,049.