CATHOLIC PLUNDER IN NEW YORK

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, March 4, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 10

CATHOLIC PLUNDER IN NEW YORK.

MR. DEXTER A. HAWKINS, of New York, has published in the Christian Advocate an exposure, such as have frequently come from his pen, of the rapacity of the Roman Catholic Church in the city and State of New York. We make the following extracts:—

Some of the real estate given by the city of New York to the Roman Church.

The cathedral block, and the block in the rear, which has a small brick chapel on it, were obtained from the city as follows: 1. The church got possession of a lease from the city at a nominal annual rent; 2. When forfeited for non-payment of this rent, the city waived the forfeitures, and, on payment of $83.32, converted the lease into a fee; 3. This lot, eight hundred feet long, running from Fifth to Fourth avenues, had no frontage on Fifty-first street, but was cut off from that street by a strip ten inches wide on Fifth avenue, and five feet six inches wide on Fourth avenue. The city made an even exchange with the church of this freehold strip for a much smaller leasehold strip on the block above. This gave the church the whole block—now, by the extension of Madison avenue through it, two blocks; and then the city paid the church $24,000 for said extension of the avenue, and also gave it $8,928.84 to pay an assessment, thus making substantially a donation of these two blocks—worth now, without buildings, at least $1,500,000, and a gift in money of $32,928.84.

The city also gave the church the block above this, from Fifth to Fourth avenues, now two blocks, by two leases for ninety-nine years at $1 a year rent each. These two blocks, without buildings, are now worth at least another $1,500,000.

The city, for $1 a year, gave to the archbishop for the “Sisters of Mercy” half a block of land on Madison avenue, between 81st and 82d streets. This, without buildings, is now worth at least $200,000.

The city, for $1 a year, gave for the “Sisters of Charity” a whole block of land on Lexington avenue, between 58th and 59th streets. This, without buildings, is now worth at least $300,000.

Total, five and a half blocks of land in the best part of the city, worth $3,500,000.

In this city, this church was subsidized by the Tweed Ring and nearly $800,000 paid to it in a single year,—1869. In 1870, petitions from more than one hundred thousand citizens caused the Legislature to repeal the law imposing a perpetual tax of nearly $250,000 on this city for their parochial schools. On Washington’s birthday, 1872, a detailed exposure of this “Tweed Ring” subsidy for the three preceding years to the extent of $1,396,389.51 was made by the writer, and the subsidy in consequence fell that year to $410,251.12. In the autumn of 1872, the “Tweed Ring” were driven from power in both the city and State. The writer remained at Albany nearly the entire sessions of 1873 and 1874 to expose and denounce this class of legislation; and the annual sectarian appropriation bills, that had grown to over $1,000,000, were wholly defeated. This subsidy in this city was, in consequence, reduced for 1873 to $325,628.75, and for 1874 to $313,181.12. Constitutional amendments were prepared in 1873, and finally adopted in 1874, which, had they not been interfered with, and two pestilent clauses Jesuitically introduced into the amendments to Article VIII. by the skill and influence of a Catholic member of the Constitutional Commission, would have cut these subsidies up by the roots.

These two legal wolves in sheep’s clothing were the apparently harmless phrase, “and juvenile delinquents,” in § 10, and the sentence, “This section shall not prevent such county, city, town or village from making such provision for the aid or support of its poor as may be authorized by law,” in § 11.

Under “juvenile delinquents,” this church saved chap. 647, Laws of 1866, giving the Roman Catholic Protectory annually out of the city treasury $50 per head; and chap. 428, Laws of 1867, giving it annually $60 more per head (total $110 per head) of its inmates, thus securing a subsidy of from two to three hundred thousand dollars per year. So profitable to this sect is this Protectory, that they keep sentinels on the watch at each police court to induce commitments to the Protectory, and have had laws enacted compelling justices to commit to it. They made war on a public school connected with the city almshouse, and, by act of Legislature, broke it up for the purpose of getting possession of a portion of the inmates to swell their own numbers.

Charity is the using of one’s own means for the good of others. It is the highest Christian virtue, and the duty especially of all the churches; but to get hold of and use public money to build up a sect under the pretense of charity, is hypocrisy.

Immediately after the above amendment to § 11 of the Constitution, was adopted, this church made haste to set its skilled talent to devise schemes to connect whole broods of their institutions by a sort of sectarian suction-hose with the public treasury. It accomplished this under the word “poor” in the above sentence in § 11. They had the word “poor” defined by chap. 221, Laws of 1875, so as to include, among others, “the sick, destitute, friendless, and infirm,” and the occupants of their enormous boarding-house, built on land given by the city, and improperly called “The Foundling Asylum of the Sisters of Charity;” and by the same statute they grabbed the excise moneys, thus adding several hundred thousand dollars more to their annual subsidy.

These so-called “foundlings” may be two years old when received by the “Sisters,” and may board with them, or under their control, till eighteen years old, if girls; and twenty-one years old, if boys. They may be indentured to this institution, if half-orphans, by either the father or mother; and the mother may board there, also, to look after the children. For every child boarding there, these “charitable Sisters” draw from the city treasury $138.70 per year; and for every mother boarding there, $216 per year; total, for a mother and a child, $354.70 per year, besides having the work of the children and mothers.

Most of the hard-working laborers throughout the country would be glad to turn “poor” and support themselves, if they could draw from the city treasury at this rate. These advantages to this sect are secured by chap. 635, Laws of 1872; chap. 644, Laws of 1874; and chap. 43, Laws of 1877. The cost to the city treasury of this church boarding-house of the Sisters of Charity is now between two and three hundred thousand dollars per year.

By concentrating their forces, and by a change of name or statement as to what they are doing, so as, on paper, to appear to be “aiding or supporting the poor,” nearly all their organizations have got back into the public treasury again, and the annual subsidy to this church is now as great as in the palmy days of the “Tweed Ring.” They may call any persons in their schools and institutions “the poor,” and so pension them upon the public money.

There is but one effectual remedy for these subsidies and this easy way of living on the public money. It is for the tax-payers and the opponents of the State church and a State religion, and all friends of toleration in religion, to insist upon the striking out of these two Jesuitical clauses in the State Constitution, and the repeal of the statutes they protect.