In the West Country...

...to speak at the Exeter University CathSoc, a delightful group of young people. A lively talkative pasta supper - much reminiscing about World Youth Day, which several attended in the Quo Vadis group to which I was also attached - then a time of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in the chapel. It was lovely to be there in the peace and silence: it was Thursday so I said the Luminous Mysteries, realising again how perfectly these fit in the presence of the Bl. Sacrament...

My talk was on "The Catholic Church and Women". It is interesting that with Catholic groups in universities there is a lack of any assumption that the Church should have women priests: on the contrary, a recognition that there is something profound here in the male/female bridegroom/bride relationship between Christ and his Church. The young women are confident and cheerful in leadership roles and have no time whatever for any hint of misogyny. They are mildly aghast, and perhaps amused, at attitudes of the recent past which blocked women from attending university or gaining degrees, and they like Bl. John Paul's Mulieris Dignitatem and related Church documents of recent times. Their attitude to the priesthood is one which recognises its theological reality: they don't see a male priesthood as something which denigrates women.

Above all, this group at Exeter is enthusiastically Catholic: comitted to prayer and to Mass, loyal to the Church. They like a dignified liturgy (yup, Latin and all) , they like silence in prayer, they talk about these things together, they are at ease with being strongly identified as Catholic...

We talked until very late.