Tuesday Sept 19th
To the London office of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children - they've just had a successful annual conference with a good number of younger people attending, and the office is busy with all sorts of things ranging from sales of Christmas cards to preparations for the next Parliamentary battle against legalising euthanasia.

Discussion with Liverpool branch of the Assn of Catholic Women about our taking a stall at the Northern Festival of Catholic Culture on Sat Dec 2nd in Liverpool: I definitely think we should and have offerred to go there and help run it. There'll be a chance to sell our books, including Engaged to be Married, produced jointly with Gracewing Publishing, which I edited and which has proved popular with a number of parishes which use it as a gift-book to present to couples who come to discuss wedding arrangements. It gives the Church's teaching and looks at many aspects of marriage, including Natural Family Planning, and has prayers for couples to use, emphasises the importance of establishing a family tradition of praying together, etc.

Trawling the Internet produces some very good material re the Holy Father's recent lecture on Islam....also some comically bad stuff such as the sneering by the (woefully ignorant!) opinionated Madeline Bunting in the Guardian, and some amusing show-off stuff by some intellectual-poseur in Rome who disagrees with the Pope's spelling of one of the Islamic names. I am getting tired of people telling us that the H. Father "needs to acquire diplomatic skills" and giving their advice on what he should do/write/decide....watch for the modernists who will be announcing to anyone who will listen that the "real problem" is the Pope's "refusal to listen", etc etc...zzzz...zzzz...condoms....zzzzz...contraception......