This week

The FAITH Movement, to which I owe a great deal, has its annual Summer Session this week. I hope to be able to look in at some stage, though only as a visitor. I attended Summer Sessions back in the 1970s - the whole thing has grown hugely since then - and remember the excellent talks, the long enjoyable afternoons spent with friends, evening prayer in the chapel (my first introduction to the Daily Office) and singing the "Salve Regina"...

A feature of the week was always a concert, with some really good things, including glorious music from Nicholas Walker, who went on become a concert pianist, and even then was winning all sorts of distinguished musical prizes. His playing was always a highlight, something to which we all looked forward, and it's only now I realise how extremely priviledged we were to be enjoying it as a part of our week.

There were also always some brilliant comedy sketches - one of the best was a spoof on TV's Blue Peter, showing how to make a clerical collar out of a plastic washing-up liquid bottle...and there was usually a grand finale involving a scratch orchestra, in which people who could really play various instruments were joined by people whistling through combs or beating out percussion on various household implements - there were practices during the week and the final rendition of "Old Macdonald had a farm" or similar was always tremendous...

But the thing I most gained from the Faith formation has lasted and lasted: a deep understanding that the Church's teachings are intellectually coherent, that there was nothing that couldn't be discussed, taught, explained, studied, with endless possibilities for learning more, nothing off-limits. Father Roger Nesbitt told us that a Christian should love God with his whole heart, soul, and mind, and without diminishing the other two, the Faith movement sought to show how important it was to love God with our minds. And that being a Catholic wasn't an add-on to life, something that only occasionally mattered, a sort of sentimental trimming: rather, it held the key to explaining why things existed, why we were here, what was the point of life, and of other people's lives.