be run by secular
clergy. Did I tell you how I got the land for my church here? That's
rather an interesting story. It belonged to Lord Evesham who, as perhaps
you may know, is very anti-Catholic, but a thorough good sportsman. We
always get on capitally together. Well, one day I said to his agent,
Captain Hart: 'What about this land, Hart? Don't you think you could get
it out of his lordship?' 'It's no good, Father Cripps,' said Hart--I
wasn't Monseigneur then of course--'It's no good,' he said, 'his
lordship absolutely declines to let his land be used for a Catholic
church.' 'Come along, Hart,' I said, 'let's have a round of golf.' Well,
when we got to the eighteenth hole we were all square, and we'd both of
us gone round three better than bogie and broken our own records. I was
on the green with my second shot, and holed out in three. 'My game,' I
shouted because Hart had foozled his drive and wasn't on the green. 'Not
at all,' he said. 'You shouldn't be in such a hurry. I may hole out in
one,' he laughed. 'If you do,' I said, 'you ought to get Lord Evesham to
give me that land.' 'That's a bargain,' he said, and he took his mashie.
Will you believe it? He did the hole in two, sir, won the game, and beat
the record for the course! And that's how I got the land to build my
church. I was delighted! I was delighted! I've told that story
everywhere to show what sportsmen are. I told it to the Bishop, but of
course he being an Irishman didn't see anything funny in it. If he could
have stopped my being made Monseigneur, he'd have done so. But he
couldn't."

"You seem to have as much trouble with your bishops as we do with ours
in the Anglican Church," said Mark.

"We shouldn't, if we made the right men bishops," said Monseigneur. "But
so long as they think at Westminster that we're going to convert England
with a tagrag and bobtail mob of Irish priests, we never shall make the
right men. You were looking round my church just now. Didn't it remind
you of an English church?"

Mark agreed that it did very much.

"That's my secret: that's why I've been the most successful mission
priest in this diocese. I realize as an Englishman that it is no use to
give the English Irish Catholicism. When I was in Rome the other day I
was disgusted, I really was. I was disgusted. I thoroughly sympathize
with Protestants who go there and are disgusted. You cannot expect a
decent English family to confess to an Irish peasant. It's not
reas