The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1911-12-02
RELIGIOUS ORDERS IN ENGLAND
Stronger and Richer Today Than
When They Were Expelled by
Henry VIII.

To the average tourist who visits
London with his Baedeker, the words
Whitefriars, Blackfriars, Canonbury,
Bishopsgate, Abbey Mill, Monkswell,
Abbots Inn, and thousand other
names derived from monastic days,
are merely a memory recalling per-
haps dim page of ecclesiastical his
tory or perchance Carlyle's immortal
picture of Abbot Samson of Bury st.
Edmunds in the days of Occur de
Lion He would be surprised, writes
Curtis Brown, in the Springfield Re
publican, if he were told that there
was new St. Edmunds, new White
friars, a new Westminster Cathedral
and religious institutions he thought
suppressed and exterminated, have
returned more powerful in some ways
than ever, and that all over England
today are monks living exactly the
life of the monks in the days before
America was discovered.
Not only are there flourishing rep
resentatives of every suppressed
order, who have survived the centuries
of penal legislation, but by the addi-
tion Of newer bodies like the Jesuits
and the Christian Brothers, to say
nothing of the vast influx Of foreign
congregations expelled from France
by the associations law of 1901, they
are three times as rich, and far more
influential than at the moment when
The fact that the general public
has been SO little aware of this state
of affairs can be understood when the
words of Sir Godfrey Lushington, for
merly under secretary for home af-
fairs, are remembered. ''In practice"
he wrote, religious houses are
shrouded in secrecy. No one knows
anything about them. The home Office
does not Nor does the local govern
nfent board.--Nor does Dublin castle.
Nor does Somerset house. The CEN
sus gives no statistics showing the
total number of religious houses and
their locality, or the number of nuns,
or the number of penitents or the
number of inmates"
Christian Brothers Numerous; Jesuits
influential.
Roughly speaking, about $40 houses
were suppressed in 1886, scattering
about 10000 members. Today of con-
vents for women alone there are close
upon $50, including religious institu-
tions kept by nuns and orphanages in
England, to say nothing of Ireland,
where the proportion is generally
treble that of England. Of the orders
of men, probably the Christian Broth
ers (founded in 1902 are the most
powerful, having no less than ESQ
schools in Ireland; but by far the
most influential both socially and
politically are the English Jesuits,
with their seven large colleges and
over 1000 members in the English
empire, while next in Importance
come the English Benedictines with
their. seven stately abbeys, four large
colleges, 100 missions and 500 monks
and lay brothers. Next come the
Dominicans with 10 priories in Eng
land and double that number in Ire
land, the Franciscans with %, the
Capuchins,. 10; the Carmelites, nine;
and then follow about 40 or SO other
minor orders like the Servites, the
Oratorians, and the Passionists, bring
ing up the total to very near the TO-
600 suppressed at the Reformation.
! AS to wealth, it would be impossible
to gauge it; in France before the
passing of the associations law, the
government estimated the value of
the religious houses at $500, 900, 600.
Probably a tenth of the French esti-
mate would not be at all too much for
the English institutions, while $780,
900 would be a conservative estimate
of their annual revenue.
| The completeness of Henry Wits
reform may be gauged from the fact
that when Queen Mary in 1856 tried
to restore Westminster abbey to the
order of black monks, who had once
owned one-third of England, she could
only find little community of fifteen
monks to place under the last Abbot
of Westminster, Dom John Fecken-
ham. He must have been pathetic
figure, that aged Abbot, when, one
day few years later, while planting
4 elms in his garden, he received Eliza
beth's notice of the final suppression
of monasticism for his refusal to as
sent to the royal supremacy. He
continued planting his elms. Maybe
those who come after me-" he said
quietly, "will be as fond of peace and
study as we Were-will like the
shade" There was no peace for him,
however, and as year after year pass.
ed by in prison, he saw his order
gradually reduced to ten, then five.
then two, then one himself monk
without cloister, brother without
brethren, hoping and dreaming the
i homes and dreams 0f dAsnair