Gothic Pride: The Story of Building a Great Cathedral in Newark

Stilled Project, Ceaseless Change

Three factors stilled the Newark cathedral project for more than two decades, from 1875 to 1897. Oscillating economic conditions made it diªcult to make long-range plans. Leadership troubles plagued and distracted the bishop of Newark. And an onslaught of new immigrants sorely stretched the resources of the diocese. The zigzagging trajectory of the Newark cathedral project cannot be followed without appreciating the administrative issues associated with these matters, especially immigration. The second wave of European émigrés arriving in the United States in this era transformed northern New Jersey, which is adjacent to New York City, the nation’s largest port of entry for immigrants. Frequently, new immigrant groups succeeded earlier ones in the least expensive (and least desirable) city neighborhoods, as the former gained economic footing and could a¤ord the better housing that their improving circumstances made possible. Statistics convey the challenge for the region and the Catholic Church. In 1850, New Jersey’s population was about half a million, and one in ten residents was born abroad. By the end of the century, the population approached 1.9 million, and the foreign-born ratio was about one in three, with the state’s northeastern region responsible for most of the shift. Even though the Diocese of Newark shed the southern portion of New Jersey in the 1881 reorganization that created a new diocese centered in Trenton, Newark’s membership more than doubled after the division and approached three hundred thousand by 1900. The number of churches also almost doubled in those two decades. 10 Stilled Project, Ceaseless Change 86 A Complex Catholic Culture For the Church, serving the new immigrants, mostly Catholics, brought special challenges. Language di¤erences raised high communication barriers. From dissimilar European lands and cultures, each group spoke separate languages, and these were sometimes subdivided into dialects. Although Catholic rituals were universally conducted in Latin, sermons and some sacraments were intended to be in a congregation’s vernacular, as were social ministries. This meant training or bringing in priests able to speak with the new members in their native tongue. The Church’s outreach became sharp-eyed and at times defensive: bishops and priests understood that other denominations stood poised to lure away Catholic newcomers struggling in a strange land, putting immigrants’ attachment to their traditional faith at risk. All this represented a new order in American Catholicism. First- and second-generation Irish and Germans had predominated in the Newark diocese since its founding. The Famine-era Irish had posed severe challenges that were partially mitigated because they were English-speaking. Few German Catholic immigrants arrived speaking English, but many German clergy came alongside them; young German Americans later entered the priesthood and joined in serving their coreligionists. Thus, for about three decades the diocese was essentially bilingual: English- and German-speaking. It fast became polyglot. Whereas in 1881, it administered seven national (or language) parishes, all German, by the turn of the century, it had thirty-five language parishes: thirteen German, nine Italian, four Polish, three Slovak, two Greek rite, single Hungarian, Lithuanian, and French parishes, and a joint French-Italian parish. The territorial parish (often called “the Irish parish” in these years) frequently first attended to non-English-speaking immigrant groups, often turning over its church basement to them; but the goal was usually to establish a parish specifically to serve their needs. And, as had been true for German Catholic immigrants , the national parish was a critical means for assuring that these new Americans preserved their old faith, language, and culture, which became passionate aims for most of them. Compounding the diocese’s challenge, the new arrivals also brought religious practices and customs less monolithic than the Catholic way of life that Irish and German Americans shaped. New immigrants from the first-wave countries slowed in number but did not cease. Through much of the second half of the century, ongoing Stilled Project, Ceaseless Change 87 political and religious oppression drove Catholics out of Germany. They continued to come to New Jersey, which had a German American culture that was now well rooted. As with earlier Germans, they tended to have more vocational skills than most immigrants. In the Newark diocese, as elsewhere, German American Catholics remained deeply invested in their language churches and parish schools. Newark remained a popular destination for Irish émigrés, who also found an existing ethno-religious culture, but the number...