I
CHAPTER V
FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR THE CHURCH IN TEXAS
Even before the Prefecture of Texas had been organized in 1840, Timon and Odin realized that the re-establishment of the Church in the distant and tom Republic was an undertaking that would require means beyond the resources of the American Province of the Congregation of the Missions and of the struggling settlers of Texas. For this very reason-Timon had delayed accepting the commission given him by Bishop Blanc until he could hear from the Motherhouse in Paris, for he knew that the spread of the Faith from the Atlantic to the Missouri and the Mississippi had required outside aid both in men and money. With the rapid increase in population due to the flood of immigrants after 1800, the zealous missionaries had had to follow the settlers into the wilderness; hence the need for financial aid had daily become greater. Timon and Odin knew from experience how impossible it was to secure men to disseminate the Faith and carry the comforts of religion to the scattered settlers without first obtaining funds for their subsistence. Few today realize how much the Church in America owes to European generosity. The time when the very existence of the missionaries depended on financial support from abroad has been forgotten. Many now think that too much is being done for Christians abroad; they are ignorant of or forget the fact that for more than a century the Church in America depended for its growth and development almost wholly on the charity of Europe. Few remember that millions of dollars were supplied the Church in America by the modest pennies contributed weekly by peasants and sweatshop workers of France, Germany, Austria, and Italy. Chief among the benefactors of the Church in Texas in those trying years, and, for that matter, in the entire United States, is the Society for the Propagation of Faith. 1 The Society for the P,·o,pagat.iun of tlte Faitlt. The Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which spread raphlly to embrace the whole Catholic world, had its origin in Lyons, France, in May 1882. When this Society was first formed there were in the United States only eight dioceses under one Metropolitan, the Archbishop of Baltimore, Arch- bishop Carrol.
1 See Chapter IV.
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