A Romeward Movement

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 18, 30 April 1903, Page 2

A Romeward Movement

ii JT°^ Ot^ NeW Zealand secular contemporaries published the following paragraph in their issues of last Saturday :—

It is now stated that the actual secessions from the Anghcan congregation at St. Michael's, Shoreditch (London), to a local Roman Catholic Church were not so numerous as at first reported-forty at most-and nearly all the Sunday school children have returned to St. Michael's.'

The man with the diminishing glass is well known if not greatly beloved, in the newspaper world. A few years ago, for instance, the writer of a letter in a Napier paper, commenting on a lecture by Mr. Henry M Stanley, on Central Africa, coolly declared that the great explorer was really not ' well up in his subject ' ! And a sceptical confrere went to the trouble of writing to a London paper declaring that Lord Lister, Professor Huxley, and other great scientists were mistaken in sureposing that Louis Pasteur had discovered a cure for hydrophobia ! Tt is the familiar case of the zealot described In ' Hudibras ' :—: — ' For all men live and judge amiss Whose talents jump not just with his.' •

Like the philosopher of the Sandwich Islands, we like to ' smell of things before we swallow them ' For that reason we have, up to the present, made no reference to the movement of conversion at Shoreditch. We preferred to wait and watch the course of e\ents But the matter has taken such a definite turn, and is now so much of the domain of public property that it is too late to minimise either the number or the significance of the conversions that have taken place there. The regular communicants in St. Michael's Anglican Church (says the London ' Tablet ') were little more than a hundred. 'Putting aside inflated numbers on the one side,' says our London contemporary, ' and a ridiculous attempt to minimise the movement on the other, it may be repeated that the majority (of the regular communicants) have formally entered the Catholic Church, or are catechumens awaiting their early reception. The number actually received up to the present date (March 14) is s.'}. To this number must be added one of the late curates of St. Michael's, Mr. Hume Each week brings fresh additions to the ranks of the neophytes. Between 30 and 40 children with their parents, or with the parents' consent, are also attending instructions, and more than 20 have been transferred to the day school for secular instruction The services continue to be of the heartiest and most earnest character. Hymns, familiar in tunes and words, are sung at the evening services, especially on Sundays and Thursdays, the rosary is recited with inspiring enerjrv. and the instructions of the clergy n k re followed with obvious eagerness and interest. The old Catholics who are able to obtain admission feel their own devotion wanned in sympathy with the new fire of the neophytes, and bless them for it.'

The • Los Von Rom '

In curious contrast vuth the attempted minimising of the Romeward nio\e)m>nt in Shoreditch was the eager credulity with which the non-Catholic leligious press fastened upon and boomed the treasonable pro-German political conspiracy of a few years! ago in Austria,

known as the ' Los von Rom/ or • Away from Rome ' ™ ? ™- ~ * - - - ' *- the part of his wife, which has disclosed a series of the TL*?n dal rV aCtS re * ardi »c Wolf himself and othert of his fellow-leaders. S erious breaches of morality hare been revealed on the part of Wolf, f or which his only defence was drunkenness. Moreover. *• himself, wrltS on JL * «™»P*Per. alleges very serious intaeondSt ZrTt P T .°/ T hlS Wi ' e With tWO other Pwmtoent organnTrer ° a U he Stein° SS T V r " ** depUtieS S <*^ nerer and Stem The whole unsavory business is of such a pubhc and disgraceful nature as to most aeriJSS shake the confidence of the most ardent partisans '