By Joe Menkevich

July 03, 2013

Notes/Opinion on the closing Philadelphia Churches

With the stroke of a pen, Bishop Chaput in an instant, managed to complete what could not be accomplished in 300 years – which was to purge the Catholics from Philadelphia.

In 1683 William Penn welcomed Catholics who suffered religious persecution in England.

The Catholic Church in America was a mission, it was not a business.

In Philadelphia, 1707/08 Mass was being “set up” and “read publicly.”

There was no regular appointed pastor in Philadelphia until 1720, and no priest until much latter. “Roman Catholics were as scarce as comets.”

However the Catholic Church flourished right through the Anti-Irish Riots of 1844. In those Riots, the Protestants were burning Philadelphia Catholic Churches.

To the Catholics of the City and County of Philadelphia.

 

BELOVED CHILDREN— In the critical circumstances in which you are placed, I feel it my duty to suspend the exercise of public worship in the Catholic churches which still remain, until it may be resumed with safety, and we can enjoy our constitutional right to worship God according to the dictates of our conscience. I earnestly conjure you to practise unalterable patience under the trials which it has pleased Divine Providence to subject you, and remember that afflictions will serve to purify us, and render us acceptable to God, through Jesus Christ, who patiently suffered the cross.

 

FRANCIS PATRICK,

Bishop of Philadelphia.

Philadelphia, May 9th, 1844.