VISUAL THEOLOGY

In the year 1846, on May 10, the Fourth Sunday after Easter, Archbishop Samuel Eccleston and twenty-two bishops of the United States were gathered in the city of Baltimore, in the Cathedral of the Assumption of Our Lady, for the opening of the First Session of the Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore. Archbishop Eccleston offered up a Solemn Holy Mass, and Bishop Purcell of Cincinnati preached an appropriate sermon. The ecclesiastical province of Baltimore at this time comprised the whole United States, and hence the Sixth Provincial Council was able to issue decrees for the entire country. On May 13 the bishops of the United States who were gathered in the residence of the Archbishop and under his chairmanship for the third private meeting of the Council, which began at nine in the morning, adopted a decree by which they chose the Blessed Virgin Mary, conceived without sin, as Patroness of the United States. This decree, translated from the Latin into English, is as follows: With enthusiastic acclaim and with unanimous approval and consent, the Fathers [of the Council] have chosen the Blessed Virgin Mary, conceived without sin, as the Patroness of the United States of America; without, however, adding the obligation of hearing Mass and abstaining from servile work on the feast of the Conception of Blessed Mary. And, therefore, they decided that the Supreme Pontiff be humbly asked to transfer the solemnity, unless the feast fall on a Sunday, to the nearest Sunday, on which both private and solemn Masses may be celebrated of the feast thus transferred, and the vesper office of the same feast may be recited •