Catholic societies organized to foster social aims, provide fraternal insurance and or ganize public opinion against abuses and im moralities of various kinds have become in creasingly prominent in American life. The Holy Name Society, organized to discourage blasphemy, but doing social work of many kinds, counts a membership of a million. The temperance societies of the Church represent another million. The American Federation of Catholic Societies, organized to oppose immoral tendencies and intolerant legislation, has nearly 5,000,000 members affiliated. The Knights of Columbus, who came , into public prominence in connection with the war in their organization of social life for the soldiers in the canton ments here and behind the line in France, have a membership of 400,000 men definitely engaged by their fraternal pledges to patriotism and work for social purposes. Some 350 Catholic periodicals, most of them weeklies, are pub lished in the United States. They include 46 German, 18 French, 15 Polish, 7 Bohemian, 5 Italian, two each Slovene, Dutch and Magyar and one each Spanish, Croatian and Indian pub lications.
In 1918 the Catholic population in the con tinental United States was estimated to be nearly 18,000,000, with the hierarchy consisting of three cardinals, 16 archbishops and 100 bishops. There are 20,000 priests, about 5,000 of whom are members of religious orders— Jesuits 1,200, Benedictine 750, Franciscans 700, Redemptorists 500, Vincentians 300, Dominicans 250 and many smaller orders. There are some 85,000 women in religious communities. The American occupation of the Philippines added a Catholic population of 7,000,000 with one archbishop, 11 bishops and 1,250 priests; Porto Rico another 1000,000, with a bishop and 150 priests; Hawaii, 40,000, with a bishop and 50 priests; Guam, 14,000, with a bishop and 10 priests; Samoa, 1,000, with 4 priests, and the Canal Zone about 4,000, with 4 priests.
Shea, J. Gilmaiy,