The Religious Life of London

by J. Ewing Ritchie

churches many, such as the Oratory, Commercial Road, Farm Street, Islington, the Italian Church, Bayswater, Brook Green, St. John’s Wood, and others, are of a size and beauty which thirty years ago would have been deemed a folly even to hope for. There are now as many masses said at the Oratory, Bayswater, and Farm Street, as thirty years ago there were in all the chapels in London, so great has been the increase of priests in London since 1839. On the south side of the water, in the diocese of Southwark, the change for the better is even more manifest than in that of Westminster; but, the congregation being poorer, the churches are also smaller. In what is now the diocese of Westminster, there were, in 1839 (writes the same correspondent), about seventy priests, and of these but two were regulars—Jesuits—who lived almost as private individuals in the Marylebone Road. There are now a hundred and thirty secular priests—fifteen Oratorians, sixteen Oblates of St. Charles, sixteen Jesuits, ten Marist Fathers, seven Oblates of Mary, six Carmelites, six Dominican Fathers (besides as many more not yet ordained), six Passionists (in addition to ten or twelve not yet ordained), five Servite Fathers, five Fathers of the Society of Missions (Italians), five

Augustinians, two Franciscans, and three Fathers of Charity—in all, between regulars, seculars, and priests not attached to any particular mission, there are two hundred and forty-one priests in this diocese. Of convents for women there were in 1839 two within what is now the diocese of Westminster; there are at present thirty-eight.

In calculating the amount of Roman Catholic influence and activity, we must remember that in their churches and chapels service is always being performed; and that thus one Romanist place of worship for all practical purposes may often be considered as equivalent to a dozen Protestant places, especially where the incumbents are of the class of old-fashioned clergymen who have a relish for port and what used to be considered a gentlemanly religion. For instance, let us see what is the round of services at the cathedral, Blomfield Street, Moorfields. On Sundays and holidays there is mass at seven, eight, nine, ten, and high mass at eleven. At three there is catechism, at four baptism, and on Wednesdays and Fridays at eleven a.m.; vespers, sermon, and benediction at seven. On week-days mass is performed at half-past seven, eight, and ten. On Thursday, rosary, sermon, and benediction at eight; on the other evenings of the

week rosary and night prayers at that hour. On the first Friday of the month there is sermon and benediction in honour of the Sacred Heart; on the second Friday of the month the Way of the Cross. There are the confessions, sometimes twice a day; and the Confraternities of the Blessed Sacrament, of the Sacred Heart, of Holy Angels for Children. Then there are the Societies, such as the Holy Family Total Abstinence Society, Holy Family Provident Society, Benevolent Society for the Relief of the Aged and Infirm Poor, and the Night Refuge for Homeless Women of Good Character. Nor is this the only way in which Roman Catholic influence is felt in this district. On good works the Roman Church has ever laid great stress, and thus we find from the centre in Blomfield Street the priests have specially assigned to them Newgate Prison, Old Bailey; Debtors’ Prison, Lower Whitecross Street; St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, Metropolitan Free Hospital, Royal London Ophthalmic Hospital,—an amount of exertion incompatible with spiritual ease and worldly enjoyment. I mention this to show that you are not to judge by what you see; attendance at any particular time is no criterion as to the state of the Catholic community. You may depend upon it that it is always much stronger than it

seems. Those present are but a tithe of the Romanists in any particular locality, and the admirable organization of their priests peculiarly fits them for aggressive purposes. I believe they are most successful in the low neighbourhoods, in the guilt gardens, in which a great metropolis like ours abounds. Their charities in London are very extensive. There is a Catholic Poor School Committee, a Westminster Diocesan Education Fund, an Aged Poor Society, an Association for the Propagation of the Faith, a Society of St. Anselm, for the Diffusion of Good Books. The Associated Catholic Charities, for educating and apprenticing the children of poor Catholics, have six schools in London. The Immaculate Conception Charity assists the clergy in providing for children whose faith or morals are exposed to imminent danger through the death or helplessness of their parents. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, whose chief object is visiting poor families at their own homes, has sixteen branches in London, besides a large Orphanage, at this time containing eighty boys, and a Catholic Shoeblack Brigade. The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul have an establishment in Westminster. The oldest Roman Catholic charitable institution is the Benevolent Society for the Relief of the Aged and

Infirm Poor, founded in the year 1761. During the six winters the Providence Row Night Refuge for Homeless Women and Children has been in existence, 92,194 nights’ lodgings, with suppers and breakfasts, have been given gratuitously. The only condition requisite for admission is that the applicant be homeless and without food and money. Such are the charities in London of the Roman Church.

As regards the pulpit, the Romanists are not wise in their generation. In London, where oratory can do so much, they fail to provide themselves with a grand and effective preacher. They have no Father Hyacinthe in London. Surely Italy might have sent us a Roman Catholic Gavazzi. Ireland supplies us with orators in abundance, but where are her eloquent priests? Cardinal Wiseman was florid and heavy. Archbishop Manning is more than sixty years old; and oratory, unlike wine, does not improve with age. His position, his talents, his zeal, incline you to hear him with respect, nothing more. As I have listened in some of the fine old cathedrals of the Continent to fiery priests, thundering away to crowded and attentive audiences, it has often occurred to me that it is just as well we have no such preachers in London to bring the Roman Catholic

Church into fashion; to make it the sensation of the hour; to do for it what Irving did for Presbyterianism when he drew around him to the Scotch Church in Hatton Garden all the beauty, the fashion, the genius, the intellect of his day.

The ordinary public service of a Roman Catholic Church requires little description; nor do you see it here as you do, for instance, in the magnificent cathedral of Antwerp, where, in the dim dusk of an autumn eve, while a flood of music floats down from the choir, and the gorgeous priests, with tapers and incense and costly banners, are sweeping, dimly seen, along the fretted aisles, the writer has often felt there is a strange, weird effect produced, which, here you can never dream of. All is poor, something like a theatre by daylight, or a fancy ball when the delusions of gas have been dispelled by the too candid and impartial rays of the sun. There are the tapers and the usual processions, the vestments of various colours, and the music ever flowing, while at the altar end the priests are bowing and kneeling and scattering incense, and performing the service of the mass. If you have to listen to a sermon, it will not be a long one; and if you be a Protestant, it will strike you as verbose in style and un-English in tone.

Nearest to the altar will be the upper ten thousand, who come in broughams, and have fashionable aspirations. At the other end will be the very poor, such poor as you see nowhere else, scarcely educated enough to count, as they do on their knees, their beads, and certainly not competent to intelligent appreciation of the service. Of course the people kneel to the altar and cross themselves as they come in, and join in the worship with an appearance of piety (I mean the elder ones—young ladies who have eyes will use them, whether they be saints or sinners), which is pretty well for such an undemonstrative people as ourselves, but is nothing to that of the Moslem, who plumps on his knees, regardless of all, exclaiming Allah hû akbar! as the Muezzin calls to prayer.