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486 BENEDICT VADAKKEKARA To the impartial observer, the picture of the Bombay Catholic community appeared rather dismal. A quarter of a century later, with a university college in full swing, the Vicariate of Bombay felt buoyed up by the prospects of the edu– cation facilities it had within its reach: In 1876 the Catholics of Bombay once more met, this time in the spacious hall of the College. Dr Dallas, a highly esteemed member of the Bombay Bar, proud of his religion and of the Church of which he was a member, had this to say on that occasion: 'When I arrived in Bombay in the early fifties, I found the condition of the Catholics, especially as regards education, so miserable, and their social po– sition so low and contemptible, that I felt almost ashamed to profess my religion; compared with Protestant institutions, ours were the merest comer-schools, or rather, there were no institutions worthy of a school. But now we have surpassed them all, even [those of] Government; and today I feel proud to call myself a Catholic' 30 • By that token it was equally clear that no one seemed to have been par– ticularly enthusiastic about getting the Carmelite Fathers ousted from Bombay. Neither the Jesuits nor the Capuchins, the two Orders between which Bombay was ultimately divided, were presenting themselves on the scene as rival claim– ants for the Vicariate 31 • Even the later denial of the request to establish a transit house in Bombay for the Carmelites was not coloured by any antagonism to– wards them. It resulted merely from the preoccupation to have a clean set-up and to pre-empt as far as possible the arising of every bone of contention. It used to be customary for religious Orders to prefer to work in their own juris– dictional enclaves. At no stage was Mgr Hartmann under suspicion of pulling strings in order to get a slice of the cake for his Order. On the other hand, he advanced a series of proposals for maintaining the status qua with the Carme– lites at the helm, however without detriment to the execution of the project of the college. That the Carmelites were unable to take a common stand and present it jointly to the authorities in Rome was also a fact. Evidently this dissension in their ranks could not have helped their cause very much. In the ultimate analy– sis, what tipped the scale against the fulfilment of their wish to retain Bombay in their hands was their Order's inability to come up with the goods by ade- 30 Gense, The Church at the Gatewqy of India, 1. 31 Monumenta Anastasiana, I, 592, Mgr Hartmann to Cardinal Fransoni, Bombay 17 September 1850: "Si rr. Patres Iesuitae solius collegii ac eiusdem ecclesiae curam agent, et falcem in alienam mesem rnittere caveant, hie in Bombay immensum bonum facere possunt. Seminarium tamen, re melius considerata, patribus Carmelitanis comrnittere iuvaret".