Bishop’s Palace,
Life Span: 1856-1871
Location: Michigan Avenue and Madison streets
Architect: John M. Van Osdel
Chicago Tribune, September 13, 1858
Bishop of Chicago.
Editors Press and Tribune:
In the last issue of the Boston Pilot, a Chicago subscriber to that paper undertakes to give utterance to the sentiments of the great body of the faithful. He tells us Bishop Duggan is not only willing but most anxious to become Bishop of Chicago. He tells us Bishop Duggan is the choice of all parties. He must know much of public sentiment to be thus capable of representing it; but we would suggest to the Chicago subscriber of the Boston Pilot to speak for himself and for himself only.
He must be a very interested party, and as such has perhaps assisted the young and inexperienced administrator to fill the Catholic laity with a holy joy and peace, to which, alas! they have too long been strangers. Alas! to the memory of the good Bishop Quarters, the mention of whose name is and will ever be Jespect-ed in Chicago. He has done nothing for the good of religion. Alas! to the good Bishop Vandevelde who had to leave this unfortunate Diocese because of the unhappy and insubordinate conduct of “Chicago subscribers to the Boston Pilot.” And what shall we say of the respected Bishop of Dora? Let those who were obedient and devoted to him, such as Wm. Dunne, answer this question. Away now with all the past, and good-speed to Bishop Duggan. They were pigmies compared with him. We hope the Provincial Council, now in session in St. Louis, will be inspired by the Holy Ghost to see that his delicacy, his youth and inexperience entirely unfit him for the government of this long-distracted but important Diocese. We emphatically assure the Chicago subscriber to the Boston Pilot, that Bishop Duggan is not the choice of the great body of the faithful lay or clerical. This assertion is made by
—One Who Knows.
Chicago Tribune, April 1, 1859
New Bishop of Chicago.—We learned from an official source says the Catholic Mirror, that Rev. James Duggan has been appointed Bishop of Chicago.
Chicago Tribune, October 25, 1859
AN OLD SUGGESTION.
We suggested two years ago, in view of a severe winter then approaching, and tho certainty that the Protestant people of Chicago would be obliged to food, clothe and warm, during the inclement season, hundreds if not thousands of Catholic Irish poor, that the unfinished Cathedral on the North Side, and the Bishop’s Palace on Michigan Avenue, be converted into Houses of Industry, and that the six-pennies filched from servant girls and laborers for the support of a useless and gluttonous priesthood; be devoted to the support and maintenance of the hungry that would need the offices of the charitable to keep life within their bodies. We repeat the suggestion now, in the hope that it will be received in a more Christian and charitable spirit than it was then. And we are impelled to it by the rank ingratitude and the stubborn and rebellious spirit with which all Protestant endeavor, in a charitable direction, is received by the American Catholic world. Wo printed yesterday a letter from Rev. O’Flaherty, of Crawfordstilla, Ind, who defends the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and sells cheap indulgences in that place, in which an association of gentlemen, animated br the holiest motives and doing incalculable good, is virulently as sailed.
We speak of the Children’s Aid Society of New York; and our readers will remember the comment which the assault upon it called forth. We cannot expect that the Relief Society or the Ministry-at-Large (Unitarian) of Chicago, will excel that Society in the good which it accomplishes, or that either will shame its managers in the purity of the philanthropy by which they are prompted. If, then, Protestant charity elsewhere be received with such curses, what guaranty have wo, that for every loaf of bread, every load of wood, every pound of meat, flour or tea, every rag of clothing and every pair of shoes, given to the Catholic poor of this city, the givers may not get a malediction in return? If the rescuing of houseless, homeless, abandoned children of abandoned, vicious and drunken parents, and the placing of them in homes where they may have full bellies, warm backs and a common school education in return for a bog’s or girl’s labor, be a crime against the Pope and the Virgin, to what depths of depravity will not those charitable Protestant gentlemen and ladies descend, who spend ten thousand per annum in saving from starvation the lazy and idle of the Irish persuasion and Catholic faith, who us up the summer in improvidence, and the winter in importunately asking alms? In behalf of the Protestant givers of this city, we ask the well-fed Catholic clergy where these heretics are to get absolution if they continue doing this thing? By all means let that great burn of a Cathedral be fitted up as an Alms-house, and the Bishop’s Palace as an Infirmary; and by all means let the Catholics take care of the Catholic poor, at least until the rosy-filled diguitaries of the Church learn that curses and scoffings are not the currency with which they may pay the charitable, even of another faith, for bread!
Bishop House
Michigan Avenue and Madison Street
1862
Bishop House
Sanborn Fire Map
1869
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