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In the toiling masses, who, from childhood, are brought face to face with want and vice, we do not expect to find the moral graces of a Channing or a Cheverus; and we do not hold them to a very strict responsibility for the deficiency.
One concerns the rector of Alencon, who had formerly taken the constitutional oath, and who was now conquering the repugnance of the Catholics by a display of the highest virtues. He was Cheverus on a small scale, and became in time so fully appreciated that when he died the whole town mourned him.
A native of Boston, he was reared in its public grammar and Latin schools until the age of seventeen, when he began his studies for the priesthood, which he finished in France. Both of these prelates continued the tradition of Cheverus so far as their own persons were concerned.
Cheverus was not wrong in counting with assurance upon American love for and understanding of true liberty, but he doubtless owed more than he thought at the time to the insignificance and scanty numbers of his flock.
Here, in 1803, we have almost a repetition of the death of the poor woman Glover; and, had it not been for the high character of the admirable man who hastened to their assistance, those two young Irish Catholics would have had for their only religious preparation before death a sermon from one or more Protestant ministers; and, as the great and good Cheverus could not be everywhere in New England, there is little doubt but that such was the fate of more than one of the newly-arrived immigrants.
The people who had banished Quakers had for a long while tolerated Roman Catholics. He had known Father Matignon, and enjoyed the scholarly and well-trained John Cheverus, who had lately been consecrated bishop. The Protestants had even been generous to their brethren of another faith when they were building their church.
We have, happily, some means left us of forming an opinion; and it will be seen that their situation was much the same as that of their earlier compatriots. For instance, in the "Lives of American Bishops" we read the following startling story: "The Abbe Cheverus very frequently made long journeys to convey the consolations of religion or perform acts of charity.
According to custom, the prisoners were carried to the nearest church, to hear a sermon preached immediately before their execution; several Protestant ministers presented themselves to preach the sermon; but the Abbe Cheverus claimed the right to perform that duty, as the choice of the prisoners themselves, and, after much difficulty, he was allowed to ascend the pulpit.
THE first Bishop of Boston, John Louis de Cheverus, who left that diocese to become successively the Bishop of Montauban and the Cardinal-Archbishop of Bordeaux, was, in the strictest sense, a missionary during his American episcopate.
We had with us one of our Trappistines, whose object was also to found a community; with this intention she had preceded her companions, but now found herself alone, as passports were refused to the other sisters. We were welcomed by the worthy Mr. Matignon, parish priest of the town, who coaxed us to remain in the diocese of Bishop Cheverus.
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