United States
The French Spiritans' first contact in North America was in Acadia between 1735–1763 under Father Louis Bouic. Unfortunately, the settlers and natives of this region were caught in the political and military clash between the French and the British. One of the most famous Spiritans was Fr. Maillard named "the Apostle of the Micmacs". After arduous learning in eight years, he wrote the first Micmac grammar. Through this he was able to introduce to them the Catholic faith which they kept even without a priest for a long time.
Father Maillard tried to attenuate the savagery of brutal warfare (instigated at times by the French and the British). Many more missionaries, such as John Le Loutre, came but later had to flee with the Micmacs as the British conquered these areas. Fr. Maillard himself was captured in Louisbourg and deported to a Boston jail.
It was in 1794 that a Spiritan refugee of the French Revolution in Guiana became a highly respected missionary in Baltimore. He started a new mission in the U.S. and two others followed a few years later. However, it was only when Archbishop Purcell repeatedly asked (between 1847–1851) for personnel to staff a seminary in Cincinnati that Spiritans steadily entered. Other dioceses such as Savannah, Florida, Philadelphia, and Natchez requested for personnel too.
For the sake of maintaining a community life the Spiritans concentrated on the Pittsburgh area. Despite knowing of four failures of setting up a Catholic college in Pittsburgh, the Spiritans persisted in setting up an institution which later became known as Duquesne University.
The Spiritans in America concentrate on work among immigrants, black parishes and education in Duquesne University and Holy Ghost Preparatory School (near Philadelphia). Historically, they have supplied missionaries for Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Puerto Rico, Latin America, and Ethiopia. Today, Spiritans are focusing on Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, and Taiwan. In 1964 there was a separation between a Western Province and an Eastern Province (according to the Mississippi River), but they are gradually joining both provinces. Candidates in theological formation are sent to Catholic Theological Union in Chicago where several Spiritans teach.
Read more about this topic: Holy Ghost Fathers, Holy Ghost Fathers Around The World
Famous quotes related to united states:
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“United States! the ages plead,—
Present and Past in under-song,—
Go put your creed into your deed,—
Nor speak with double tongue.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
—Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)
“America—rather, the United States—seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.”
—Edna Ferber (1887–1968)