POSITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ENGLAND.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 32, 6 December 1873, Page 12

POSITION AND PROSPECTS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN ENGLAND.

_ , Auckland, 23rd Oct. I was much interested in tbe Tery Rev. W. J. Downes' account of the progress of Catholicism in England. Will you allow mo to give a, ohort supplement to that statement? In the London ' Duly Telegraph'— a popular Protestant paper, as most of your readers know it to be— there lately appeared a long article under the heading of " The Church of Kome." From that article I will select a few passages. "In no other land," says the writer, "has the Catholic Church been subject to so many and so great visissitudes as in England. It has baun twice swept away, and it has been twice restored. Subsequent to the Reformation, it was fie at least two generations without churches or bishops. A handful of priests ministered to a remnant of Catholics the number of whom, at the cad of the last century, was supposed to amount to 30,000. Nine-tenths of its flock in England are am on" the purest oj the land. For the last 40 years its churches have "been upon to the English pecple. They have habitually frequented them - th.y have been present at its worship ; they have heard its instructions ; Uiey lnivo become familiar with its members. The fears aud the terrors of ignorance and prejudice, and hostile misrepresentation, have given way, not before the refutations of controversy, but before the plain dictates ol honost common sense founded on what they have seen and hcurd for themselves. The Catholic Church at this day has oneoinoie entered fully into this public and private life of England. It fekes its place among the public institutions of the land. It bears its part in all public works, of education, charity, and utility. Its benenc»st action is acknowledged even by those who have least sympathy with it. Its statistics are us follows:—! archbishop 12 bishops, Ib2l clergy; public churches and ohapols, 1016; greater colleges, 6; lesser do, 10 j schools for the middle class and poor of

London, 200 ; in tho rest of England, about 800. The number of th» Catholics ia England and Wales by erery test afc our command of baptiams, &c, may be put down at one million and a half The nnm ber of Catholics in Scotland has been rapidly increased by communi cation with the north of Ireland, and by the immigration which th« great industries of Scotland have drawn to Greenock, Glasgow Dundee, and other parts of the country. The nu/nber of Catholics ir» Scotland, so far as can be ascertained, may be put down as between four and five hundred thousand. :The Venerable Chief Bishop of the Catholic Church Pius IX has suffered many things at the hands of his open enemies or false and hollow friends ; and may yet very possibly, in the providence of God be called on to suffer still more. But it must afford him no smali consolation and happiness amid all his heavy trials now to witness the return of so many good Christians in all countries— in England and America more especially— to the Catholic fold, from which in an evil hour their forefathers were tempted to sttay. The English race have ever been peculiarly dear to the Popes, from the days of tho Great Gregory, who first sent to England missionaries to reclaim them from paganism. Pius IX is now sending his missionaries to reclaim, them, not from paganism, but from heresy of a most pernicious kind, and like his great predecessors be sees that God is blessing the pious work with an abundant measure of success, in spite of many difficulties and obstacles of the most formidable, and to human apprehension, insurmountable kind . His faithful children in this distant island of tbe ocean ought to share in his griefs and iv his joys, and to mingle their prayers with his not only for the conversion of heretics or infidel?, but still more ot those stupid Catholics, who abound here at every wher» else, and who are every day bringing scandal upon their religion by their irreligious or vicious lives. ° "To give an adequate account of the Cathol'c Church in Ireland afc the end of such an article as this is impossible, it would be to write the history cf a nation. By the census of 1 871, it appears that the number of Catholics in Ireland was 4,141,933. Our only remark may be added : the great act of justice whereby the BritishParliament and public opinion of these kingdoms made reparation to the Catholic people of Ireland by the disestablishment of the Protestant Church was brought about by two distinct causes — the one a just and generous repudiation by the non-Catholic population of these kingdoms of the religious injustice and oppression of past centuries j and the other the moral power of the Catholic race of Ireland. No people have a higher appreciation of justice in their rulers, as Sir Johii Davis declared in the midst of their sufferings in the 17ih century, and no people are more loyal when justly dealt with, for no people mor« truly Christian than Irish Catholics are to be found " * * f # It will be considered a strange sign of the times that such as article as the above should be permitted to appear in the columns of one of the most widely circulated Protestant papers in England. Ignorance, prejudice, and hostile misrepresentation in regard to Catholic affuirs may indeed be said to be fast disappearing from English society. To this we must ascribe the present comparatively rapid piogress of the Catholic religion in the United Kingdom.