A party!

...to celebrate the launch of English Catholic Heroines, published by Gracewing Books.

Drinks and speeches and tasty snacks and talk and hugs and congratulations, all at St Wilfrid's Hall at Brompton Oratory. This is a place which is a sort of home-from-home for the Bogles, because we held our Silver Wedding party there, and I have spoken there at all sorts of meetings and conferences and taken part in all sorts of social events. It was lovely to be celebrating with some of the various contributors to this book, and it was a happy evening. Tom Longford, my splendid publisher, presided with much good cheer, and John Jolliffe, who got the whole project off the ground and produced English Catholic Heroes last year was among the guests.

Readers of this Blog can join in the fun by buying the book! Ideal Christmas gift, packed with highly readable stories. Find out about England's great Catholic women, from St Etheldreda to Maria Fitzherbert, from heroic martyrs like Margaret Clithreoe and Anne Line to writers, nurses, teachers, and founders of religious orders...

Are you coming....

...to the Catholic History Walk tomorrow, Thursday Nov 19th? Just turn up. We meet at 6.30pm on the steps of Westminster Cathedral, after the 5.30pm Mass. Our walk will take us across St James' Park, and we'll be looking at the links between the Church and the English monarchy.

Come in comfortable shoes, and be prepared to walk whatever the weather. The walk will take approx one aand a half hours. Afterwards, people tend to drift off to local pubs, of which thgere are several nice ones.

Lots and lots of people...

... hurrying into Westminster Cathedral Hall through ferocious rain for the Towards Advent Festival....we had a magnificent array of Catholic groups and organisations, ranging from the Knights of St Columba to publishers like Fisher Press, Gracewing, and the CTS, we had the Catenians and we had Aid to the Church in Need, we had the Tyburn Nuns and we had pro-life groups and we had the Catholic National Library...and more...and more...

The Schola from the Cardinal Vaughan School sang gloriously - Byrd's Ave Verum was simply superb. Archbishop Vincent Nichols spoke about the beauty and significance of Advent and set just the right tone for the day. There were talks and a tour of the Cathedral, there were delicious refreshments, there was a terrific buzz of conversation and what I suppose one could grandly call "networking", there were stalls selling DVDs of beautiful music, and cards and statues and devotional items and monastic produce and books, lots and lots of books...

Talks during the day included one on Christianity in Iraq - fascinating, sobering - and one on the Crusades with Prof. Jonathan Riley-Smith, whose books on the subject are warmly recommended.

I met Benedictine monks (young, enthusiastic) and friends from EWTN and from the Catholic press. The hall got rather hot and crowded, and there was a sudden glorious rush of cold air as one hurried out to reach Vaughan House, where the talks were being held. There was a fine display of art produced by pupils at Catholic schools. There were people to meet, and ideas to exchange, and things finished with my leading a tour of the Cathedral as dusk fell and the Festival slowly drew to a close...

No praise too high for the Catenian Association which took on much of the workload in getting the day organised, and the Knights of St Columba who loyally distributed handbills in the Cathedral piazza directing people to the Festival, and the Association of Catholic Women which produced wonderful home-made sandwiches and cakes and more...

Every year I worry that the Festival won't be a success, and every year I am shown that I needn't have worried...

A happy evening...

...at Our Lady's Convent School in Loughborough, where I was invited to present the prizes on Speech Day. I was made most welcome, and it was good to be in a friendly atmosphere where one sensed shared values. It was a warm-hearted, traditional Speech Day - we began with "God Save the Queen", in which everyone joined enthusiastically, and there was a splendid array of trophies and shields to present along with prizes (book tokens) and certificates, and there were talks and songs from the pupils, and a speech from me...on the train going home, I settled cosily with hot chocolate and a copy of a book of reminiscences produced by a former pupil. All enjoyable...

Wow...

...extraordinary evening as a crowd gathered in Kensington to hear about a miracle at first-hand!

At Brompton Oratory - where Cardinal John Henry Newman once preached - a man who was healed of a grave spinal illness stood in the sanctuary and told us that the healing had come as a result of prayer through the intercession of Newman, and that this has been accepted as a miracle by the Church.

A copy of the Millais portrait of Newman stood alongside, its vivid colours glowing in the soft light beneath that great dome. History seemed to merge into the present as Deacon Jack Sullivan told his story - how he had begged Newman's aid as he sat in pain, distraught at the thought that he would have to abandon his studies and would never be ordained, his inability to walk or move making service as a deacon impossible. The miracle - initially of relief of pain so that he could continue to attend college, and then of complete healing, with doctors baffled as Sullivan bounded up and downstairs and along corridors - was described to a rapt audience.

It was a very London occasion - Catholics gathered at this great church on an Autumn evening, lamplight highlighting the golden and russet Autumn leaves, traffic humming. "Saints are our older brothers and sisters" said Jack Sullivan "We say we believe in life after death, but do we really? A miracle like this teaches us in the reality of the Communion of Saints, in which we profess our belief when we say the Creed". Across the decades, beyond two world wars and a thousand massive social and political changes, a saint from Queen Victoria's London was being honoured and remembered...

Autumn is a time for history.The Queen at Westminster Abbey for a service at eleven o'clock and our house, like others, falling silent for two minutes, along with the workmen in the road outside and people in shops and schools and offices.

Yesterday, the day that...

...the Apostolic Constitution for Anglicans who wish to have their own "ordinariate" within the Church was published, I happened to be giving a talk in a Forward in Faith parish. Evidently quite a lively parish, though not large - one main service on Sunday mornings - with Brownies and a playgroup and youth activities etc. Big redbrick church, Stations of the Cross round the walls, Angelus said at noon. Do let's all pray...

Hurrying about...

...getting things ready for the Towards Advent Festival (this Sat, Nov 14th, Westminster Cathedral Hall - BE THERE!), interspersed with family activities. Much of last week was spent assisting an elderly relative to move - she is now happily settled...sorting through the various photographs, cleaning and re-arranging etc was in many ways an extraordinary experience, and one perhaps peculiarly suited to the days just before Remembrance Day. The photographs of my uncles in wartime uniform are a sudden window on to an utterly different era. Even the faces are not modern ones - thinner, somehow more sharply defined...

...And in the middle of all this, I was asked to join in a discussion on BBC radio, about a young man caught on YouTube using a War memorial as a lavatory. What did I think would be a suitable way for him to show remorse/be punished/learn how to behave better? He's 19. My suggestion: he should go to 19 war memorials across Britain, write down carefully and accurately the names on each (this information is needed, incidentally - many of the names, especially from WWI, are being eroded by time and weather), clean and tidy the whole memorial and its surroundings carefully, removing all litter etc, and leave a poppy wreath with a short note of apology for his earlier behaviour...

A chill wind...

...across Exmoor, with scudding clouds. A family welcome, much talk. The curious mix of shops in a modern village - delicatessen and coffee-shops for visitors, jostling with a mini-supermarket. Local cider-tasting and hot sausages on sale at a Saturday afternoon village gathering. Then Sunday morning and the scarlet wreaths of poppies as a small procession winds its way through the village to the War Memorial, preceded by processional cross, choir and surpliced clergy. It all has a timeless feel,but also a sense of vulneralbility - rural life has taken a terrible bashing in recent years and there is no longer that sense of "everything just going on from year to year" that was always part of the English countryside...

A man of courage and wisdom...

...speaks out. Read the speech by the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks in today's press His criticism of moral relativism is timely and trenchant. Wouldn't it be good if we had some Bishops who spoke out like this?

Defending the place of religion in public life, Lord Sacks said : "The place for religion is in civil society, where it achieves many things essential to liberal democratic freedom. It sanctifies marriage and the family and the obligations of parenthood, and it safeguards the non-relativist moral principles on which Western freedom is based.

“It may not be religion that is dying, it may be liberal democratic Europe that is in danger, demographically and in its ability to defend its own values.”

Lord Sacks asked: “Where today in European culture with its consumerism and instant gratification – 'because you’re worth it' – where will you find space for the concept of sacrifice for the sake of generations not yet born?"

"The Making...

...of Modern Britain" is a new TV series. In a review of the first part, looking at the Victorian and Edwardian era, Telegraph journalist Charles Moore takes presenter Andrew Marr to task for sneering at what was achieved during those years. Of course there have been many improvements in life for many people since the early 20th century but "As well as gaining much, we have also lost. Honour, manufacturing, oratory, worship, friendly societies, organised temperance, provincial pride, fair play, low taxes, reading and writing, public order, good trains and public clocks which kept the time – just a few of the things which our own age could improve if it bothered to admire the past rather more and itself rather less."