A solemn...

...feel to things as I led a Catholic History Walk this evening. A mild April day, rain having given way to gentle sunshine, and a beautiful sunset as we stood on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral. Our city. "Domine dirige nos" is its motto. We had begun the walk at St Mary Moorfields (my own Guild Church - it's the home base of the Catholic Writers' Guild), and the Walk took us to various City churches, and the Guildhall, and Bl. John Henry Newman's birthplace, and more. And as we finished at St Paul's, we had the steps of that magnificent monument to ourselves,and the sunset glowed over Ludgate Hill and the sweep down to Fleet Street and an overview of one of the most famous cities in the world... and we pondered those who had stood there before us - thinking about things like Churchill's funeral in that vanished Britain of the 1960s, and that impressive but ill-fated Royal Wedding of 1981, and the happy Golden Jubilee ten years ago which we will echo again this summer at the Diamond Jubilee...and then, as with all our History Walks, we ended with prayers. These were for our poor country, now stuck in a miserable doomed groove from which only Christian vigour can remove it: there's something so dead-end and bleak about foisting same-sex "marriage" on a people who have been heirs to a great civilisation and must now be part of its decline. Latest news, incidentally, is that, if this new law goes through, Catholic schools may be told that they cannot teach about Christian marriage. Will they be allowed to stock and use books such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which states Christian doctrine on marriage and sexual integrity with particular clarity? I walked down Fleet Street and along the Strand and crossed the river to catch the train home from Waterloo. I remember my mother once describing how, when they had just got engaged and were talking and planning about their future, she and my father stood on that bridge and looked at London and he said "It's ours - they didn't get it", meaning the War and the city being saved from enemy invasion.They felt that Britain's freedom was secure. Bought a cup of coffee at Waterloo. Felt a bit bleak.