The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
The Irish, on arriving in London, rapidly lose their previous Religious Habits.
The Irish immigrants have been generally accustomed, while in , to attend mass regularly, and to go to con- fession twice a-year. When they reach London, many of them continue this habit for a time, but they gradually become more and more remiss, and ordinarily, not being much looked after, they soon almost wholly discontinue attention to religious duties. Even for marriages and burials, although the former is held a sacrament, they resort, in the vast majority of cases, to Protestant churches, finding this to be legally of equal validity, disregarding the religious part of the ceremonies, and concerning them- selves simply with the secular part of the matter. An important attraction also is that it is generally cheaper to them to resort for such necessary purposes to the Protestant church than to the Romish chapel. For, miserably poor as are the Irish here, and even still more poor as they are in , they yet, even there, are ordinarily charged by their priests the perfectly exorbitant sum, to persons in their station, of from 20s. to 25s. for marriage, in addition to the voluntary offerings which are expected from all the friends who attend the wedding, among whom a plate is passed round during the ceremony, into which all are accustomed to drop something. Nor can any circumstance more clearly | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
309 | illustrate the unconcern of the Romish Church in the Irish poor, than the almost entire absence of effort on its part to prevent their resort to "stray folds" for such purposes, although, in , the priests are accustomed constantly to impress on their flocks that parties thus married are not married at all. There is, to the best of our know- ledge, scarcely a Romish burial-ground, accessible to the poor, in all London, for the 200,000 Irish pertaining to her communion. The visitation for religious purposes among these classes by the Romish Church is, as with the Pro- testant Church, chiefly lay. Sisters of mercy and persons of that description are much more frequently met with than priests, and the visits of the latter are very seldom from house to house, except for some special purpose, such as collecting money. And yet Romish priests in London are numerous. They are probably about 150. In the "Catholic Directory" for , in the so-called dioceses of and , there are stated to be-priests, 187; churches and chapels, 112; religious houses of men, viz., the Passion- ists, , , the , and , 5; convents for religious women, 23. Of these latter establishments, 19 are in the metropolis, although both the Romish dioceses of and have larger boundaries than London itself, and comprise, in fact, the entire counties of , , , , , , and . The religious women from the convents (who are parties most frequently met with in the houses of the poor) are of different Orders. The following are the names of the Orders to which they pertain :-, , , , , , | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
310 | , , , and . | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The following is a list of the principal Romish chapels in London and its environs in . Foreign chapels are included in the list, because, as the sermon is only an occa- sional matter, and the rest of the service is alike in Latin in all the chapels, the Irish Romanists can make use frequently of the one with equal profit as the other. Where the date of the erection of the chapel is known, it is added:- | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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There are also various subordinate chapels. There are | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
312 | also various convents, with chapels annexed, as at The recent date of the erection of so many of these mass-houses shows the supineness of the . Additional chapels are in course of erection at , , , , , and . | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||