The utmost that could have been hoped for by the devoted but inadequate body of the Roman Catholic clergy in America, overwhelmed by an influx of their people coming in upon them in increasing volume, numbering millions per annum, was that they might be able to hold their own. But this hope was very far from being attained. How great have been the losses to the Roman communion through the transplantation of its members across the sea is a question to which the most widely varying answers have been given, and on which statistical exactness seems unattainable. The various estimates, agreeing in nothing else, agree in representing them as enormously great.[321:2] All good men will also agree that in so far as these losses represent mere lapses into unbelief and irreligion they are to be deplored. Happily there is good evidence of a large salvage, gathered into other churches, from what so easily becomes a shipwreck of faith with total loss.
It might seem surprising, in view of the many and diverse resources of attractive influence which the Roman Church has at its command, that its losses have not been to some larger extent compensated by conversions from other sects. Instances of such conversion are by no means wanting; but so far as a popular current toward Catholicism is concerned, the attractions in that direction are outweighed by the disadvantages already referred to. It has not been altogether a detriment to the Catholic Church in America that the social status and personal composition of its congregations, in its earlier years, have been such that the transition into it from any of the Protestant churches could be made only at the cost of a painful self-denial. The number of accessions to it has been thereby lessened, but (leaving out the case of the transition of politicians from considerations of expediency) the quality of them has been severely sifted. Incomparably the most valuable acquisition which the American Catholic Church has received has been the company of devoted and gifted young men, deeply imbued with the principles and sentiments of the High-church party in the Episcopal Church, who have felt constrained in conscience and in logic to take the step, which seems so short, from the highest level in the Anglican Church into the Roman, and who, organized into the Order of the Paulist Fathers, have exemplified in the Roman Church so many of the highest qualities of Protestant preaching.