Religion: Apostles or Apostates?

Despite exhortations from press and pulpit, some 24,000 poverty-pressed young men and women emigrated last year from the Republic of Ireland to prosperous, Protestant Great Britain. In the past ten years the Roman Catholic population of Great Britain (now 3,000,000) has increased by more than 750,000, primarily because of the influx of Irish workers. Most of the Irish settle in the big cities of Britain, work hard and long, and live in drab and depressing slum tenements.

The young men often go wild, drink excessively and brawl frequently. Innocent young colleens are sometimes lured into prostitution. Observed a Roman Catholic priest in England: “They are unfitted in some ways for life outside Ireland. They know little of sin.”

Last week, from every Catholic pulpin in Ireland, priests read a letter from Ireland’s bishops warning of the “danger to faith and morals” that awaits Irish emigrants in England and of the “evil persons [who] are on the watch to meet them and to drag them down into the depths.” This was enough to make any Irishman squirm, but there was worse to come. A pool of Irish missionaries would be sent to England, said the bishops, not to convert the English but to win back the Irish who have gone astray.

The Irish hierarchy will work with Bernard Cardinal Griffin, Archbishop of Westminster, in carrying out their plan. Recently Cardinal Griffin issued a pastoral letter warning young Irish to arrange for a job, lodging and contact with their countrymen before going to England. He also authorized a pool of missionaries from all the principal religious orders in Ireland, plans to spread them through the big cities beginning this fall to conduct missions among expatriates. By winning back many of the Irish and reimposing a few of the old rules from back home, the missionaries hope to have more apostles, fewer apostates.