THE action of the Parliament of Christiania, which severed the last bonds that united Sweden and Norway, has centred upon these two kingdoms the attention of the whole world. But no

where, we suppose, has this action aroused greater interest than in the United States, because of the large number of better-class emigrants which it receives from the Scandinavian countries.

The comparative ease and quiet with which this revolution. was effected must have astonished all who are not well acquainted with Norway. That country really had nothing in common with Sweden, save the crown of King Oscar and the consuls charged with its commercial interests abroad. Because of its inability to obtain the right to have its own special consuls, Norway informed the King of the complete dissolution of the Union and of its resolve to have a distinct government of its own. Nor does it attach any very great importance to the choice of its future sovereign. If the house of Bernadotte denies it a Prince, it will ask one of the house of Denmark. If it experiences too great a difficulty in securing a King, it will just as willingly become a republic.

Moreover, from a sentimental standpoint the separation is of no greater import that it is from an administrative one. Arbitrarily reunited by the Allied Powers, in 1815, the Norwegians and the Swedes feel no sympathy for one another, and differ decidedly in ideas, customs, and institutions. In all Copyright. 1905. THE MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE

VOL. LXXXII.-I

IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.

my travels I have seldom experienced a more complete sense of change than that which I felt on passing from Christiania, Bergen, and Trondhjem to Stockholm and Upsala. Norway is emphatically the most democratic nation of all Europe; Sweden is one of the most aristocratic. The nobility, abolished in Norway, still wields a great influence in Sweden, and the electoral franchise in the latter kingdom is conditional on an income of 1,000 crowns, or about $300. This requirement excludes the larger part of the laboring class.

We wish to bring out these points of difference before we proceed to the study of the present state of Catholicism in the two countries. We will see that in the first, Norway, that is to say the more modern, the Catholic Church prospers best. The conditions there are comparatively the same as those found in comparing the excellent state of Catholicism in the United States with the crisis through which the Church is passing in the oldest countries of Europe.

Norway, which entered the Church in the tenth and eleventh centuries, was violently torn from her in the sixteenth by the Lutheran kings, who ruled both it and Denmark. The people resisted long and desperately, but finally yielded to force. Exile and the fear of death extinguished little by little every spark of Catholicism, and from the beginning of the seventeenth, until the middle of the nineteenth century Lutheranism enjoyed a complete triumph. It was not until July 16, 1845, that the Storthing passed the first law favorable to dissenters. After its passage, Lutheranism still remained the established religion, but those who did not believe in it had the right to leave the established church and publicly worship as their consciences dictated. This same liberty of religious worship was granted by Denmark in 1847, but not until 1860 by Sweden.

The Catholic Church lost no time in profiting by this decree of tolerance. The very year in which the law was promulgated saw a priest doing missionary work in Christiania where, in the year following, he built a chapel. Ecclesiastical jurisdiction over Norway was exercised then by the Hanoverian Bishop of Osnabrück, to whom belonged the care of all the missions of Northern Europe. In 1855, however, Pius IX. created the Apostolic Prefecture of the North Pole, which com

prised all of Scandinavia, Greenland, Iceland, and the northern coast of Scotland. In 1869 Propaganda divided this extensive mission into six parts. To Sweden was given an Apostolic Vicar and to Norway and Denmark Apostolic Prefects. At length, in 1892, both Norway and Denmark were raised to the rank of vicariates apostolic with episcopal dignity for the first appointees-Mgr. von Euch for Denmark and Mgr. Falize for Norway. These two prelates are still laboring most zealously for the benefit of their missions.

There are hopeful signs that show the progress of Catholicism in Norway. That progress is slow certainly, but its regularity is most encouraging, particularly when one remembers that it depends entirely upon conversions and the newly born. Immigration, which does so much to promote the increase in Catholicism in the United States, cannot be a factor in such increase in Norway. Far from receiving foreigners, Norway suffers the loss of many of her children, as is evident to one conversant with the nationalities of the people of Minnesota and the Dakotas. Every year numbers of the Catholics converted in Norway leave the mother-country. Mgr. Falize complains that, in 1903, two hundred left Christiania alone. These emigrants are not lost to the Church at large, because they remain faithful to their religion, but their going is a sad loss to the little Norwegian Church.

Norway, in 1869, counted two hundred and twenty Catholics, with one Apostolic Prefect, twelve missionaries, and seven religious of St. Joseph. At this time there were but two missions in Norway, one at Christiania and one at Bergen, and three in Lapland, Tromsö, Altengaard, and Hammerfest. By the year 1895 other missions had been established in Fredrikstad, Fredrikshald, and Trondhjem. At that time Norway had twenty-three priests; 875 lay-Catholics; ten parochial schools with 275 pupils; one higher school of Christian doctrine; five Catholic hospitals; and four communities of Sisters.

From the official statistics, published in December, 1904, we learn that at that date there were 2,150 Catholics (out of a total population of 2,250,000); twenty-two priests, three of whom are native born; twenty-one chapels; and thirteen missions. Each mission has a Catholic grammar school. The Catholics have two high schools-one for boys, the other for girls; two orphan asylums; ten hospitals; a training school

for nurses; two novitiates for religious; and a printing and publishing house which issues Catholic books, apologetical and devotional, as well as the St. Olaf, a Catholic weekly newspaper. The progress of the Church in Norway may be seen more accurately and readily perhaps from this table which shows its progress during the last seven years:

The fact that there are already three native priests and two novitiates for religious speaks hopefully for the future, and one may foresee the day when the Church in Norway, like the Church in the United States, will be self-supporting. That day will signalize its complete establishment. Considering presentday conditions, it would be well, in a general way, if the Church, without abandoning or neglecting less developed and less civilized peoples, would direct more and more the efforts of her missionaries to the evangelization of civilized and more promising countries. Once having sown its seed in these fertile soils, the true religion will there grow of itself, unaided by care and nourishment provided by other countries. When, for example, countries like Norway and Japan have converts sufficient in number to recruit their own clergy, they cease to be an expense to the rest of the Church; and they themselves may, indeed, be able to contribute to the extension of the faith in other lands. Moreover, no matter how great may be the zeal or the intelligence of foreign missionaries, they can never understand so intimately the people nor work so efficaciously as the zealous and intelligent native born priest.

The Catholic Church in Norway is not yet able to create its own clergy. On the contrary, she is in need of every manner of help from without. She is dependent still on other countries for her priests, her religious, her financial resources. The liberal contributions of her few children, generally poor themselves, are insufficient to defray even the cost of maintain

ing her priests. Several foreign charities assist her and sometimes travelers, or foreigners who have heard of her need, contribute generously. But the greatest and the most regular help that comes to her is the funds given by the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. This admirable society, which America has begun to understand and appreciate, gives yearly to the Church in Norway the sum of 28,500 francs ($5,700); the lowest sum given since 1892 was 28,000 francs ($5,600).

The revenues of the mission are not absorbed by the churches alone, for the schools are a weighty burden of expense. Since the country enjoys absolute liberty in the matter of instruction, Catholics with a keen sense of their duty, take advantage of the privilege to give their children a religious training. But, considering the paucity of their numbers, they must make great sacrifices to maintain a grammar school in every parish. The two high schools are self supporting; indeed the one for girls, conducted by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Chambery, has met with such success that it has drawn to itself pupils from even Protestant families.

The hospitals are not an additional expense. Their beginnings undoubtedly entailed hard work and much difficulty in the collection of the necessary funds. Soon, however, the successful work accomplished by them gained the confidence of financiers, and the funds were quickly raised. These investors knew that the rich patients would pay for the poor ones, and, moreover, that patients would never be wanting, so thoroughly does all the world, and particularly, in this case, Protestant physicians, appreciate the work and care of the Sisters for their charges. Many of the city governments exempt the hospitals from all taxation. Some cities appropriate to these Catholic hospitals a part of the profits derived from the tax on the selling of intoxicating liquors, as they have done for some time. to Protestant works of charity. Bishop Falize relates, in his interesting Promenades en Norwege,' "how a representative committee of Protestant physicians begged him to establish a Catholic hospital in Bergen; how they guaranteed to raise the necessary money; how, finally, they offered to rent, at their own expense, a house in which a temporary dispensary might be installed in charge of the Sisters, until the hospital itself was completed.

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*Missions Catholiques. April 6, 1900. Page 167.