The last decade of the nineteenth century witnessed a number of trends in the American Catholic religious scene with special reference to new immigrants:
(a) The immigrants developed a cohesion and identity based on language that tended to obscure provincial loyalties and to transcend village patriotism.
(b) This new sense of identity, a product of nationalist ideology and the influence of the American experience, received its primary expression in the ethnic church. This institution, founded primarily on linguistic lines, encompassed those who spoke the same tongue and resided within the same ghetto or patch.