Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Off to Poland...

...to work on a TV programme about soon-to-be-canonised Bl John Paul. Trawling the Internet, I came across a piece I wrote about him a couple of years ago  and I still stand by every word of it. But  I have come to appreciate more deeply the significance of his life and work.  I am indebted to various Lefebvre-leaning blogs and blurbs, all very anti-John Paul and some viciously so, for helping me to see him as the truly man and saint that he was.  His Marian theology  and his Eucharistic devotion are of great importance, although history will probably chiefly note his Theology of the Body and of course his world travels, missionary zeal, and central role in the collapse of atheistic communism. The Church of the next centuries will be studying his writings and following his spiritual path with zeal.

We will be in Krakow and Wadowice, and hope also to visit Kalwaria, Nowa Huta, and the Divine Mercy Shrine. Some of these are already very familiar to me. I am very much looking forward to the work on the programme.

Spent today having Tea with a beloved elderly relative on the occasion of her 90th birthday. Mildly frustrating morning  because the vacuum cleaner broke. It made weird loud whirring noises and smelt horrible. I unplugged, dismantled, cleaned...to no avail. Kaput.  Bought a new one this afternoon from the local supermarket.  We've got used to mass-production and inbuilt obsolescence and all that, but even so the price seemed odd: £18. It seems all wrong for any electrical equipment to be that cheap: am checking to see where such things are made...sounds like horribly low wages to get something produced for that price.

Yesterday: a meeting of LOGS, the thriving and enjoyable Ordinariate group for women. We have a good many projects on hand for the coming weeks and months, including carol-singing at a major London railway station,  and a big project for London schoolchildren...

1 comment:

Malcolm said...

The rad trads were never more ridiculous than when criticising JPII. There's even a Pope Michael in the USA who claims to be the legitimate occupant of the Holy See.

They did him a service in a way. He had to kick out some of the leftie liberation theologians. So the fact that Lefebvre was also excommunicated meant that the Pope could be seen as politically even-handed.