Good long talk with Josephine Robinson of the Association of Catholic Women yesterday (have you visited their website yet? PLEASE do: every click they get moved the site up, as it were, on Google, and that means that sane Catholicism replaces loony/vicious feminist rants when the words 'Catholic women' are googled....) - the only problem with our chats are that they always generate more energetic work and ideas for ACW, though this is of course fun too...latest thought is more help for children with Downs. Josephine needed an address to pass on to a family with a new Downs baby- this generated a discussion about the Anna Fund (excellent initiative to raise funds, started by the family of a much-loved Downs child) and we found we were planning a fund-raiser......fortunately I was offered, a few weeks ago, the use of the lovely house of a friend in London for a coffee-morning or similar.

The Minutes have arrived from the latest meeting of the National Board of Catholic Women. Honestly, we do try very hard to work with this organisation, but it's rather difficult as it is run by a little group with such tired ideas. Suggestions for their annual weekend conference with something called the Joint Dialogue Group included "marginalisation of women in the Church". Of women? Give me a break: most church discussion groups, liturgy workshops, social gatherings, study evenings and so much else are absolutely dominated by women....it's the young men and boys who feel marginalised. Modern liturgy is often horribly feminised, prayer-groups (even good ones) lack masculine "grit"....one could go on. Another (much better!) suggestion for the conference was to look at care of the elderly: a practical need and one in which members of various Catholic women's movements could contribute knowledge and experience as most of us ast some stage will be involved in looking after older relatives....ACW has a special prayer-bulletin and network for housebound people and at our last couple of committee meetings we've been alerted to first-hand some of the (grave) problems associated with inadequate nursing of the frail elderly in hospitals. Is there not scope for some practical action here? Opportunities for volunteers (eg just to feed patients, and help with tasks like washing and doing hair etc) are now so restricted - everyone seems scared that they'll get sued. I did some Red Cross training a while back with the specific thought that practical skills would be useful.....is there scope for getting some home-nursing taught in schools/youth groups? Now that there has been a belated recognition that cookery is useful, perhaps there could be an awakening on other issues too....

I'm writing this at my own little desk in a freshly-painted room. It all looks super - after all the worry, the chap did it without hassle and it's a joy to have everything sound again.

The papers today list 101 annoyances of modern life. What about the modern Church? Apart from obvious things (self-important self-appointed campaigners censoring the Gospels and rewriting prayers to conform them to feminist ideology, nutty anti-semitic ranters sending emails announcing that the Pope is a heretic) my list would include: bogus visionaries, people who allow or even encourage their noisy children to run about and make a noise during Mass, and (I'm afraid) well-intentioned pro-life poetry filled with cliches.