FROM THE HOUSETOPS*
Abraham Lincoln was brought up a Catholic.
At some point in his early manhood he ceased to practice his religion and joined a secret society.
The evidence for this interesting sidelight on our sixteenth president appears to be quite weighty.
First, we have an article written by an anonymous "Pioneer Priest" in the Kansas City Catholic Register and preserved in the Catholic Historical Review, in which a certain Father Cyr, in whose Kentucky parish the Lincolns lived, is quoted as saying that Abe's father, Thomas Lincoln was once Catholic. And he adds, "I often said Mass in his house and heard the confessions of his children." (At some period when Abe was well into his career, he and his father had a serious quarrel. So severe was the resulting rift, that the famed American statesman refused to even attend his dying father's bed.)
The same author goes on to express his amazement that with all the trivia unearthed about "Honest Abe's" childhood, year after year, on his birthday "his religion as a youth is seldom mentioned." The reason for this obvious omission is "that in his youth Lincoln was Catholic."
The article also contains the testimony of Bishop Lefever of Detroit who personally knew the Lincolns, having said Mass at times in their home, and of Bishop Ireland of St. Paul, who was quoted in the New York Tablet (1869) as saying, "Lincoln never denied his religion, but after having joined some society condemned by the Church, he naturally, fell away."
Bishop Lefever's testimony is astounding. At the time of the president's assassination (Good Friday, 1865) this prelate was in France. When questioned by a reporter for the Paris Monde he said: "I am pained to hear of poor Lincoln's death." He went on to declare that the tragedy might not have happened "had he taken the advice I gave him when he was a boy living in New Salem (Illinois) to avoid all places of public amusement during the Holy Season of Lent. 'Say your beads Abe', I told him... he was a good, kind boy. He used to help me fix a place to say Mass... after I left there I lost track of him. I was told he married a Presbyterian and fell away from the religion of his young days."
The book "Catholics and the cινιℓ ωαr" by Rev Benjamin Blied contains a letter written to King Louis of Bavaria by one of his subjects in America, Abbot Wimmer, head of a Pennsylvania monastery, in which the monk writes, "It is surprising that the president of the United States (Lincoln) is a Catholic but only a bad one."
In light of such evidence we can conclude that our sixteenth president was raised a Catholic, but some time in his adolescence fell away from the Faith.
* Page 75. (Issue no. and date of publication still undetermined).
Topic: Lincoln was one of the "bad Catholics" St. Bernadette feared (Read 4502 times)