CAPG's Blog 

"How ironic it would be if the “Christian house church” — that concept so dear to the antiquarianizing liturgical revolutionaries who took it as a pretext for their streamlined modern prayer-service — turned out to be the place where the Tridentine Mass in all its medieval and Baroque density, albeit in temporarily humble circumstances, survived the coming persecution of Catholics." New Liturgical Movement.

• Building Home Altar (New Liturgical Movement)
• Private Chapels brought to Light by Social Distancing (Liturgical Art Journal)
• Portable Altars in Malta (Liturgical Art Journal)
• The Domestic Church: The Catholic Home (The Fish Eater)
• A family realizes a longtime dream of a Home Chapel (Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis)

Catholic Persecution and Private Chapels in America

"It was to gain religious liberty that the pioneer Catholics of the old world left their comfortable homes in Europe to brave the unknown hardships of the new Province upon the shores of Maryland; which freedom of conscience they granted to all comers as far as was in their power. But they themselves met with intolerance when English rulers later came into power and sought to enforce the then bigoted laws of Great Britain.

Colonel Bernard U. Campbell in his “Life and Times of Archbishop Carroll” tells us that as late as 1758 an attempt was made to pass a bill to prevent the growth of Popery, by which priests were to be rendered incapable of holding any lands and forbidden to make any proselytes under penalty for high treason; and which further provided that no person educated at foreign Popish seminaries should be qualified to hold land or inherit any estate within the new province.

This bill, which did not pass, seems to have been aimed particularly at John Carroll, who later became the first Catholic Bishop of the New World; Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence; and Robert Brent, afterwards, first Mayor of Washington, who were all heirs to large estates in Maryland and at that time were boys being educated abroad at Catholic institutions.

Colonel Campbell further states that though this bill did not pass, the early Catholics were compelled to pay a land tax exactly double that exacted from others; that Catholic places of worship were forbidden and Catholic education not permitted; that Catholics were declared unfit to hold public office and that the Council even granted orders to take children away from the “pernicious contact of their Catholic parents.”

Nor did these days of intolerance pass until the Revolutionary period had broadened the minds of men and united all Americans in a more truly Christian spirit.

“In 1774 when the Reverend John Carroll returned to America, a priest, it is not believed,” says Colonel Campbell, “that there was a public. Catholic Church in all of Maryland.” “St. Peter's in Baltimore had been begun but never finished, being closed by the authorities.” And it was not until 1776 that the ban against public Catholic worship was removed.

It is not to be inferred from this, however, that Catholicity was crushed out, nor Catholic worship abolished. The well-to-do Catholics of that period had private chapels in their own homes upon their large estates and here the family and its many retainers, would gather for service whenever a faithful pastor came that way in the ministry of his duties. Of these early private chapels, in the vicinity of the present city of Washington are known to have been three: Queen's Chapel, a part of the large estate of Richard Queen, Esq., situated amid the wooded hills of Langdon; the Capitol Hill Chapel of Cern Abbey on the Duddington estate; and one in the manor house of Notley Young near the present corner of Tenth and G Streets S. W., where Father Devitt, Professor of History at Georgetown College says public Mass was first said in Washington, after it was permitted.

Father John Carroll finding this condition of catholicity in 1774 began his ministry from his own home near Rock Creek in the vicinity of Forest Glen. Here his zealous mother had maintained a small private chapel for her own family use and this was the nucleus of the present St. John's Church. After 1776, however, when the law against public Catholic worship was abolished, Father Carroll built an humble frame Church near his home, which was without doubt the first public Church in the vicinity of the District of Columbia. Father Carroll was ordained the first Catholic Bishop of the New World and was later made Archbishop. In 1789, Georgetown College was built with a small chapel attached, which in 1792 was superseded for public worship by Trinity Church, served by the same Jesuit Fathers."

Source: Records, Volume 23,Columbia Historical Society (Washington, D.C.)

Archbishop Lynch of Toronto used to say: " The average priest secures the salvation of five thousand souls." The more thoroughly and minutely this statement is examined, the more manifest becomes its truthfulness. Hence the priest who secures but one successor to his sacred office has a perennial source of hope and consolation during his declining years, such as is particularly inspiring at the moment of death. But, why should any priest rest content with having secured one? The more the better. It is related of an aged and venerable priest of Orleans, France, that when about to die he gave expression to this beautiful thought: "I am eighty-three and shall soon die. I have not done all the good I would, but one thing consoles me - I leave after me thirty-three priests whom I have formed to the ecclesiastical state; they will do better than I have done."

Some years later, one of these thirty-three, on the occasion of his silver jubilee to the priesthood, had gathered around him twenty-five other priests, whose vocations to the religious state he in turn had fostered. To him his pastor had said on the day of ordination: "Always have pupils in your presbytery; you will be their angel, and they will be yours." (Quest on Vocations.) Would that God might inspire more to emulate the zeal of such priests as these.

Comparatively few dioceses can be found which are not in actual need of more religious workers who have consecrated their lives to the service of Christ. Pastors are petitioning the various religious communities for Sisters and Brothers to teach in the parish schools. Bishops, especially those of the West and South, as also of our newly acquired possessions in the Orient, are appealing for priests to take charge of missionary work. "Send us priests, wise zealous, holy priests," comes as a cry almost universal. Vast multitudes in every land are groping amid the darkness of error and in the shadows of death, seeking for some one to lead them forth into the light of truth and unto the life of Christ. This need is both instant and imperative, and unless there are found some followers of Christ, ardently devoted to His Church and nobly obedient to His call, who will voluntarily offer themselves for this service and consecrate their lives to this endeavor, these benighted ones, so unfortunate in their error, so well disposed for the right, so precious in the sight of God, will continue, in all probability, to search in vain for the way of salvation; and at least many of them, will be lost.

"The harvest indeed is great but the laborers are few." The work to be done is the work of Christ. He is present all days, directing an assisting and blessing. He calls for help. He chooses some favored ones from among His followers and commands them to go forth into the highways and byways and search our laborers and bring them into His vineyard. Some are found who leave this command practically unheeded, not from malice, but rather because they do not thoroughly realize how intense is the desire of Christ for additional laborers in His work and how dire is the need of the Church at the present time for their consecrated service. Thrice blessed, therefore, and well assured of eternal happiness is the priest who can truthfully say at the hour of death: "I shall soon die; I have not done all the good I would, but one thing consoles me - I leave after me others whom I have formed to the priestly life; they will do better than I have done. "

Source: The Sunday-School Director's Guide to Success by Rev. Patrick James Sloan 1909

"Man being such," Says the Council of Trent, "that, without the help of sensible signs, he can only with difficulty rise to the consideration of divine things, the Church, like a tender mother, has establish certain rites, has ordered that certain parts of the Mass should be said in a low and other in a loud voice. She has also instituted ceremonies: such are mysterious blessings, lights, incense, vestments, and many other things, in accordance with discipline and apostolic tradition. " The end of all this is to add to the majesty of the Adorable Sacrifice, and to lead the minds of the Faithful, by means of these visible signs of piety and religion, to the contemplation of the great mysteries hidden in Christianity.

On this point, the impious agree perfectly in their words and deeds with us. Religion reduced to pure spirituality, says one of them, is very soon banished to the regions of the moon. Another adds that dogmas disappeared with the external signs bearing witness to them. When, at the close of the last century, the disciples of these men, who could argue so well, were pleased to destroy religion among us, with what did they begin? With external worship. They first turned ceremonies into ridicule. They then pulled downs temples, crosses, and altars.

But in vain does man wage war against nature. These pitiless enemies of external worship had scarcely taken the reins of government into their own hands, when they felt all the necessity for public and solemn rites. In order to convert people to their ideas of morality, they hastened to practice what they had condemned, by calling to their aid external worship. They only changed its immortal object, and referred it altogether to human virtues, which are but pompous nonentities when separated from their Author.

They scoffed in their writings and in their lyceums at the worship of the Saints, and substituted for it the worship of heroes, after the manner of the pagans, who rendered the honors of apotheosis only to persons remarkable for extraordinary feats, most generally the ravagers of nations. They jeered at the piety of Catholics towards the precious remains of the just man, and they rendered honors almost divine to their own great men. In fine, is there a single part of Catholic worship that they did not employ to win favor and credit for their lessons with the multitude? Hymns, canticles, altars, the tables of the law, the ark of the constitution, candelabra, sacred fire, holidays, statues of liberty and equality, tutelary genii, and other emblems of the revolution: did they not offer us a collection of religious ceremonies as extensive as that of any other worship?"

Source: Catechism of perseverance, Msgr. Gaume