The Henson Journals

[145]

Thursday, November 15th, 1906.

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This afternoon there called on me a man, dressed as a layman, spectacled, and tending to be squalid, who introduced himself by the following note:–

Rev. Sir.

I am a priest of the Capuchin Order of the Irish province, and left my monastery at Rochestoon [sic] Co Cork last January under a brief of Secularization. The enclosed letter from Father Vincent Magrath, Assistant Secretary to the Archbishop of Westminster will help to explain my case.

I do not want to be taken for a cadging priest, but God knows I would not take the liberty of appealing to you, only I am very fatigued and faint.

Yours very respectfully.

P. Benignus Brennan

He said that he was 30 years old, had been ordained in 1897, and in the priesthood for five years. He conceived a disgust of the Roman system when its un–real & mechanical character had been borne in on him by experience. As many as 800 confessions would be heard by a single priest in one day. He had regretted his Ordination at the time, but had feared to shock [146] his parents, who were devout Roman Catholics. Now he had wholly lost faith in the Roman dogmas, and desired admission into the Church of England. I told him it was not so easy to pass from one ministry to another. Certainly the man touched me. He had a plain, simple manner of telling his story which seemed sincere, and his story itself was calculated to move my sympathy. At the age of 16 he had been carried off his feet by the eloquence of a Mission Preacher, and had abandoned the career of a solicitor for which he had been designed, and had joined the Capuchins. Finally I bade him get from the Provincial his Letter of Orders, and bring them to me, bestowing on him five shillings to keep him at the Rowton Lodging House (7d per night).

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