Sunday, and it's weather I rather enjoy. Mass, with lots of music, including Credo III (Missa de Angelis) which is the easiest to sing, and among the hymns, The king of love my shepherd is which was one of my father's favourites. On Friday I gave a talk to a Confirmation group at our parish - there are almost 40 of them, and they are having a full Confirmation course led by our energetic young curate with a team which includes a couple of volunteers from the local seminary. Last year's batch was also some 40-strong. En route to the church centre where they were gathered, I dropped into the church where people were kneeling in prayer - Adoration of the Bl. Sacrament. Next time some one tells you all is hopeless in the Catholic Church, don't believe them - come to this parish and see things to lift your heart...
J. away this w/e so I took myself to lunch in a local cafe and over cottage-pie and salad and some good coffee, read an excellent biography Ettie, a life of Lady Desborough...mother of Julian and Billy Grenfelll...WWI, heartbreaking... was taken beyond the cafe and the talk and the rain-soaked pavements of a 2010 South London suburb and the traffic and noise to a vanished England...
Cycled off through the rain. Walk with mother. Tea. Home to various tasks, resisting the lure of the book until these are done...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Sounds like a lovely weekend.
Very contemplative.
What, may I ask, is "cottage pie"...I'm interested.
Thanks!
Essentially minced beef with mashed potato on top, sometims with grated cheese.
Shepherd's Pie is the same, but made with minced lamb.
You regularly read in the newspapers that Catholic Mass attendance will have declined to zero by 2050, obtained by extrapolating trends.
What they forget is that as numbers decline, that changes the nature of the organisation. All of the marginally committed people leave, and you get a Church where everybody is highly committed, even if it is smaller. That's a very different animal to a larger Church of mainly marginally committed people.
And that Malcolm is precisely the point, as the RC Church becomes smaller in numbers it becomes smaller in influence, however vocal its remaining members may be. I suppose that 'traditionalists' would like this to some extent as their world-view would become the dominant one, but the victory would be hollow. As Auntie has discovered some of these 'traditionalists' are rather unpleasant people with an extreme-right wing agenda unconnected with the Church
Post a Comment