Third Class Pilgrims

A good deal of fuss has been made one way and another about the Catholic Association's Christmas pilgrimage to Rome; vivid pictures were drawn of the horrors of third-class continental trains, especially at night: the idea of staying in Rome at anything but an hotel was supposed to be particularly revolting : while even the Association itself thought it necessary to print in heavy type a warning extract from the Bull Indictio Universalis fubilaei urging pilgrims to accept discomforts in a spirit of penitence.Quite apart from the fact that, once a man has made up his mind to visit St. Peter, nothing will stop him, these vaticinators might have kept their breath for their prayers. There were no hardships; and of discomforts, no more than any healthy man or woman, to say nothing of a pilgrim, would regard as an amusing novelty. A pilgrimage is not necessarily and in se a penitential undertaking; contemporary English custom makes of it rather a comfortable conducted tour; the Catholic Association at Christmas hit the mean, so that their 380 representatives of Great Britain and Ireland, having the right spirit, found the right conditions and could call themselves pilgrims without an incredulous grin.There were no hardships-but there was heroism, for not all the travellers were young and strong. There were many old folk and some in bad health, to whom hard seats and full carriages and sleepless nights were far more than a mere passing irksomeness. Their patience and devotion are to be remembered with humility, rather than to be written about with fulsomeness

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