A full hall...

...at St Joseph's parish centre in New Malden last night for a superb talk from Fr Luiz Ruscillo, of the Lancaster diocese, on the Fit for Mission call to improve Catholic schools. He was on terrific form, amusing, challenging, informative, profound. I was with a governor of a major London school and we both found ourselves fascinated by Fr Ruscillo's choice of a description of the early Church community in the Acts of the Apostles as a blueprint for a modern Catholic school. He notes that this description - in which the members of the community are described as being faithful to the teachings, to the breaking of bread, to the fellowship, and to prayer - is the pattern for the new Catechism of the Catholic Church. I looked this up when I got home and sure enough, there it was: the Catechism starts with the teaching about God and so on, then the sacramental life, then the life of the Church, then the life of prayer...