The Life And Times of John Carroll Archbishop of Baltimore 1735 1815

at have existed in the Catholic Church almost from earliest times. As an integral part of Catholicism, the primary purpose of the religious Orders, Congregations, and Institutes, is personal sanctification. But it is a fact admitted by all historians that the members of these religious communities have never been idle members of society. In the passage of time it has happened more than once that individuals and sometimes whole houses have proven recreant to their ideals; but the story of religious life is so thoroughly a part of the history of civilization that there are few scholars today who fail to recognize the value of these communities in the moral and intellectual advance of humanity. No one but a stranger to the religious life could make the mistake nowadays of accepting the position held by the reformers of the sixteenth century in regard to the utility of these Orders and Congregations. There is no aspect of human need, no work of charity, no phase of education, in which they have not taken a great share. Their care of the sick and the dying; their custodianship of the orphan and of the delinquent; the consoling attention they pay to the aged and the infirm; and especially their devotion to the cause of education? these alone give to the men and women who enter the religious life within the Church the surety of appreciation from all who rejoice in practical evidences of man's love for his fellow-men. When John Carroll became Bishop of Baltimore in 1790, ...