Page:Twelve Years in a Monastery (1897).djvu/68

 Gothic church. The foundation is an object of much pride to London Catholicism. Fifteen years ago there was no Catholic congregation in that locality. Then the friars from the Stratford monastery began to say Mass in a small outhouse of the Ursuline Convent to a dozen or so of Catholics; a school-chapel was built, and the congregation had reached about 300 when our party arrived twelve years ago. Section by section the church, monastery and schools, representing about 20,000l. worth of property, were rapidly erected, and the congregation soon numbered more than 3,000. Rival churches were alarmed; Roman Catholics dreamed extravagant dreams of the conversion of England.

But if one had made inquiries in neighbouring Catholic parishes the secret of the miraculous growth would quickly have been revealed. Nearly every priest in East London was exasperated against the friars for stealing his best parishioners. There were really few ‘converts’ to Rome in the new congregation, and those were merely the flotsam and jetsam of superficial religious controversy. The great bulk of the congregation were the better middle-class Catholics from all parts of East London who had migrated to the new and healthier district in which the friars had erected a church, mainly on borrowed funds.