Hughes was an Irish farmer’s son who was denied initial entry into the seminary in
Ireland because of his lack of education. He remained at the seminary and worked as a
gardener until they admitted him into the theologic. Twenty-one years later he would be
sent to New York as bishop to replace the ailing bishop and a diocese in chaos. His
working class background and his bluntness to a fault made him the "tyrant but with
feeling"! He was militant and unapologetic about Catholicism and this was new
thinking to American Catholics still suffering from earlier prejudices against them from
the Protestant majority. He threatened to turn New York into a battlefield if Catholics
were singled out or harassed.
When Archbishop Hughes broke the ground for the new cathedral 100,000 people arrived to
celebrate the beginnings of a great edifice dedicated to God. New York shops closed
reluctantly, but then the workers (Catholics)all went to the dedication ground breaking.
Of New York’s one million people in 1858, nearly half of them were foreigners; and
most of the foreigners were Catholic; and the most of them were poor Irish Catholics.
Though they were poor whatever money they could spare went to the Church to build this
cathedral and it was with great pride that somehow they knew they some small part in its
construction.
Not
all of the immigrants of Irish descent arrived in America poor. The upper class had
already established themselves in America by the turn of the century and supported
Hughes’ project. They were a group of people deeply conservative on social issues and
they saw the Church as the chosen instrument for raising up America’s dispersed poor
Irish class through education and discipline, not by charity. And so the Irish
presence in America began.
