Wed Oct 25th
The Houses of Parliament in the rain...a glowing chapel, and people singing "Faith of Our Fathers" after a beautiful Mass.....this has been a wonderful evening.

Edward Leigh MP and his staff (a nice chap called Alex Haydon, who is a great friend of ours) organised a Mass to honour St Edmund Campion. It was arranged partly through the Catholic Union, and a large crowd of Catholic Union members came....the chapel at the Houses of Parliament is reached by stairs leading down from the Great Hall, where Campion was tried.....Fr Julian Large of Brompton Oratory said the Mass and preached splendidly, calling us to challenge the culture of death, said that it is good we aren't persecuted any more but alas the reason is that people in Britain are indifferent to religious truth....he spoke about how we must oppose hideous attacks on human life such as abortion, embryo experimentation, euthanasia, quoted the noble Bishop von Galen who spoke up against euthanasia in Nazi Germany in WW11.....all this at a most lovely Mass with a beautiful atmosphere, a beautiful "Ave Verum" at Communion, several MPs and members of the House of Lords present, and a general sense of being drawing together to uphold a common Catholic Faith......rather notable because we have felt under pressure what with the Govt's plans for messing up Catholic schools and so on. The Mass was in the Tridentine Rite, which, as he noted, would have been a new rite in Campion's day, fresh from Trent,....other saints such as Bleessed John Houghton, the Carthusian martyr from the London Charterhouse, and SS John Fisher and Thomas More, would have known other rites.....the Carthusians had their own special rite and of course More and Fisher would have known the Sarum rite....

People enjoy singing the Latin responses, and I think that, if, as we are all hearing will happen, the Tridentine rite becomes something more widely allowed and used, then it will adapt a bit and people will simply join in more, as they do automatically with Latin in the current new Roman Rite.....I noticed today that we all wanted to sing the "Pater Noster" and there was a sort of muddled hush as we realised that, according to the ritual, we shouldn't.....I think a sung Tridentine rite will gradually begin to take over from the silent one that people used to know....which is surely what Vatican 11 really intended.

Afterwards J. and I walked together across Westminster bridge, feeling rather encouraged by being among so many good Catholics and in a spirit ot unity and faith: J. had also had a most useful meeting with Tory MP Ian Duncan Smith and discussed a number of important issues.....we were hungry so had some supper at one of the restaurants on the southern side of the river, near the old County Hall. It was nice to be sitting quietly together and talking after such a remarkable evening. Tomorrow I will be writing up an account of the Mass for the Catholic Herald newspaper....