[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR] SIR,—Mr. Athelstan Riley in
last week's Spectator says that " it is beyond question to anyone who keeps his eyes and ears open that, for the last century, the Roman Church has developed steadily in numbers and influence in this country." In the face of facts that one would have thought could not be mistaken, this is an interesting and instructive declaration. At one period the current of converts, it is true, was pretty considerable, but it ceased rather unexpectedly and now Roman Catholicism is numerically losing ground steadily in this country. The leakage is so serious as to cause grave concern to the leaders of the Church. In a recent pastoral, Dr. Amigo, the R.C. Bishop of Southwark, lamented the fact that " in all ranks of society souls have cut themselves off or have idly drifted away from the Catholic Church. No one knows the full extent of our losses."
So many and frequent are the losses that even the R.C. Who's Who cannot keep pace with them. If Mr. Athelstan Riley would wish to know about the leakages from the R.C. Church, he should read the pamphlet published by The Catholic Truth Society entitled A Way to End the Leakage.
All over North America the losses of the R.C. Church in our generation have been enormous and they are unceasingly going on. The following significant record may interest and enlighten Mr. Athelstan Riley. At one service in 1933, the Bishop of Montreal received 42o Roman Catholics into the Church of England, at another 107 and at another too. And the movement in the same direction continues.—Yours, &c.,
VIATOR.
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