The Henson Journals

[345]

Saturday, June 12th,1926.

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Houtin's account of his visit to England in 1897 is most illuminating. He happened to come in for the celebration of the 1300th anniversary of S. Augustine's Arrival in Britain, and attended the function at Ebbsfleet, which, he thought, was very ill–managed. "Ce fut moins une commémoration de piété qu'une orgueilleuse manifestation destinée à humilier les protestants". He was startled by the contrast between the description of the religious situation in England which he had heard in the seminary, and the facts which confronted him. He took clerical duty in Canning Town and Wapping, and found that his flock was composed of Irishfolk, and that most of them had practically abandoned their religion. "Les apostasies sacerdotales n'étaient pas rares." The Anglican clergy impressed him favourably, and the prosperous state of the people raised doubts in his mind, for which his co–religionists could offer no satisfying solution. He was taken to the House of the Coarley Fathers, & was delighted with everything that he saw. The service in their church especially pleased him. The English language seemed to him particularly well adapted to the Gregorian music. Father Congreve impressed him as an ideal monk. "Pour la première fois de ma vie, je sentis que la sainteté existait en dehors de mon Église…"

[346] [symbol]

Great as our difficulties in the Church of England, they are petty indeed by comparison with those which confront the priest in the Church of Rome. We have nothing, so far as I know, corresponding to the astonishing & inevitably scandalous practice to taking nuns as "spiritual mothers." It seems to reproduce the monstrosities of the "subintroductae" of the primitive church. Celibacy is maintained in the Roman Church at a heavy cost, the full extent of which is probably hardly realized outside the Roman Authorities themselves. The helplessness of the Roman priest, who has become restive under the yoke, is terrible. He is completely in the hands of his Bishop, whose one desire is to prevent any public scandal. A priest, from whom the Bishop has withdrawn his right to celebrate Mass, is es facto besmirched in character, and has little chance of getting employment outside his profession. The result is that the Roman Church is full of sceptical and even atheistic priests, who are kept in the priesthood by this inability to discover an alternative way of life. Houtin's abandonment of Christianity was hastened by his discovery of this fact. The grovelling superstitions which flourish within the Roman Church almost excel belief. Hysterical nuns, often sex–mad, are treated as inspired mystics, & their diseased ravings taken seriously. It is amazing that, notwithstanding all this, so many English clergy should find an almost irresistible attraction in the Roman Church.

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