“To-day, my dear friends, the celebration of an important and certainly noteworthy event is taking place in this town of New Milford. With pageantry and music and speech, in gayety and festivity, with reunions of old friends and neighbors, the historic happening is receiving ample recognition and celebration. And they do well, the people of New Milford, proud of their town and its history, to recognize on such a splendid scale its two hundredth birthday. With all their ceremonies of civic and social celebration, the religious side of their town’s history has been given equal attention. Almighty God has not been forgotten--He who is the Creator and Supreme Ruler of the Universe, from whom comes all that we are and all that we have, who holds in the palm of His hand the destiny of the world and the fate of its people. “To-day, in her different houses of worship, special religious exercises appropriate to the occasion are being held. This morning, in particular, sermons are preached of the history of her different churches. “I need not tell you the history of your church; you all know it. It is the common history of the Roman Catholic Church the world over. It cannot well or easily be separated from that magnificent general history stretching back through the ages nineteen hundred seven years to that ever memorable first Christmas morn when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, taking flesh of the Virgin Mary, was born in Bethlehem’s stable. And, in that wonderful stretch of history, two hundred years are as a drop in the bucket, as a sand on the seashore. From the days when the Holy Sacrifice of the mass was first offered up in the home of Matthew Dunn near the railroad station, or in Wright’s Hall on Main Street, or in the residence of Edmond Finn, to this very day, Roman Catholic history in New Milford has been the same as it has been the world over--a history of early trials and sufferings and labor, all of which have gradually and surely melted away before the grand old faith of the ages. The loyal Catholics first in New Milford, though their future looked dark and stormy, clung to the faith richly planted in their noble hearts, and put their trust in the words of Him who first established their Church upon this earth, ‘Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.’ And they did well to put their trust in Him who had also promised, ‘Behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world.’ In the language of St. Paul, those pioneers of the Roman Catholic Church in New Milford have fought the good fight, they have saved the faith, and they have gone to receive from their Divine Master the crown of eternal glory....