The influence of the Catholic priesthood must continue very great till
there is a complete transfusion of character in the minds of their
charge. But as the Irishman, or any other foreigner, becomes
Americanized, he will demand a new form of religion to suit his new
wants. The priest, too, will have to learn the duties of an American
citizen; he will live less and less for the church, and more for the
people, till at last, if there be Catholicism still, it will be under
Protestant influences, as begins to be the case in Germany. It will
be, not Roman, but American Catholicism; a form of worship which
relies much, perhaps, on external means and the authority of the
clergy,--for such will always be the case with religion while there
are crowds of men still living an external life, and who have not
learned to make full use of their own faculties,--but where a belief
in the benefits of confession and the power of the church, as church,
to bind and loose, atone for or decide upon sin, with similar
corruptions, must vanish in the free and searching air of a new era.
* * * * *
Between employer and employed there is not sufficient pains taken on
the part of the former to establish a mutual understanding.
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