THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN LONDON.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 32, 6 December 1873, Page 9

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN LONDON.

In a late Pastoral of Archbishop Manning, that eminent prelate says : — r The multiplication of schools and of churches, or places of Chriatian worship, throughout England in the last thirty years, is without example in our later history ; and without a parallel in any nation at this time— except in Ireland ; which has out of its poverty covered its whole surface, as with a new creation, of churches and schools. In this diocese alone during the last twenty years fifty-five churches have been either built or replaced by larger and more fitting structures. In the la*t eight years twenty -four churches, or new missions, have been added. At this time five new churches are either already hegun, 6r in preparation. In the Mission of the English Martyrs, on °Tower Hill, the building of the church lias already begun. In Wapping.a Sl * ll ?,r°. f mone - V haß been Nearly collected fora church. In the mission of Millwall the foundations of the church are already oomplete. In Hackneywick the first stone of school church hns been laid. In Drurv Lane, a site is already secured, and a large part of the cost of this church is already in hand. Of these five places four are new mission's, founded in the midst of the densest and poorest parts of our Catholic poor. We could, if the time permitted, give you such details of the spiritual state of these places as would effectually move you to deny yourselves for the building of these churches. The faith of our poor is even there vivid and strong. But scattered, and hid away in the great multitude of a population which is without Catholic faith, and to a great extent almost without Christian knowledge, our people become entangled in endless dangers, end in constant temptation to neglect the practice of their religian. The diligent search which we have made from street to street, house to house, room to room has shown how many have heard no Mass for years ; how many have never been to confession or communion since the first time • how many, now in middle life, and even in old age, never at all s how many, of all uges, have never been confirmed ; how many children sometimes whole families, now grcwa up, have never been baptized' and of all these evils, above nil, of the last, which is the most fatal' the chief cause w found to be " mixed marriages." To reclaim and to restore such a population to the practice of thoir religion, aad to support their perseverance when they are once restored, it is absolutely necessary that an altar where the Holy Mass may bo daily said, and our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament may be always present should he shut up in the midst of them. They will not go to a distance Strange to say, the very people who in Ireland will walk ten miles before daybreak rather than lose the Holy Mass, will not persevere in walkih* a distance of ten minutes through the cold and hostile atmosphere of London. r Years ago we told you, dear children in Jesus Christ, that you could do no nobler work of Catholic charity and piety than br helping 'to' place small churches in the midst of our poor in London. Those 'who h-ivo seen with their eyes what has already been accomplished in thefive new missions above named, where the High Mass has beeu offered under every disadvantage in school-rooms or temporary buildin'cs know how many souls, both of adults and of cHldreu, have already been brought bade to God. J