Establishment of the Dioceses, I847-1948
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The conditions he described, however, were characteristic of all of Texas. Business was paralyzed. Worse still, the German settlers in Gil- lespie, Kerr, Kendall, Comal, Bexar, Medina, and many other counties in the west were declared in rebellion against the Confederacy, because they were opposed to slavery. Under martial law and the unrestrained fury of unscrupulous mobs, the people of these counties suffered the most shameful persecution during the Civil War-not infrequently loss of life and property. They sorely missed the reassuring counsel of Odin. "We have no bishop now to get advice from," wailed a bewildered Benedictine in Fredericksburg. 38 Upon his arrival in Matamoros with the Sisters, Brothers, and Priests recruited in Europe, Dubuis had immediately crossed to Brownsville, where he celebrated his first Pontifical Mass in Texas and took formal possession of his Diocese. A month later, after incredible hardships, he arrived in Galveston. The 'city was a shambles. Of the once beautiful Cathedral now scarred by battle he wrote, "It is riddled with bullets. Only on dry days can I say Mass within its walls." But it was consoling, he added, to find that the missionaries were "loved and respected by all." By way of explanation, he said, "With politics, we have no part, and on the battlefield, the Catholic priests meet with none but brothers. Cathol- icism, consequently, has gained respect and favor." 39 Out of the holocaust that had tried the soul of every man, the Church in Texas and the rest of the United States had risen and now "walked forth before the eyes of the nation clothed in the panoply of undiminished strength and of unbroken unity." The people, "bowed beneath the double weight of the memory of the past, which could no more return, and of the thought of the future which seemed hopeless ... were ready to applaud any power that had been able to live through that frightful struggle unhurt and unharrned." 40 After the cessation of hostilities, Bishop Dubuis applied himself with renewed vigor to repair the damages suffered by religion during the devastating conflict. Under his inspiring leadership hospitals were erected, schools were established, the sick and suffering were more adequately 38 Faure to Odin, August 6, 1861; Peter Baunach to Odin, Fredericksburg, March 27, 1862, C. A. T.; Rupert Richardson, Tlte LoM Star Stat,, 241-245. 39 Dubuis to Odin, May 13, 1863, C. A. T. 40 ]. L. Spalding, Life of tlte Most Rev. M. J. Sjalding, D.D., Arcnbislto,; of Baltimore, 305; R. J. Murphy, "The Catholic Church in the United States during the Civil War Period," in Records (American Catholic Historical Society of Phil- adelphia), XXXIX, 1928, 271-346.
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