On Feb 10th...

...at 6.30pm at Precious Blood Church (22 Redcross Street London SEI - nearest tube: London Bridge) a meeting, sponsored by the Catholic Union, looking at issues relating to marriage, the family, and the education of children...info here.  Admission free. Do come!

Theology of the Body...

the 10th in a series of annual lectures honouring Bl John Paul's Theology of the Body, organised by the diocese of Westminster.

Tuesday March 4th 2014

Jonothan Doyle  "Beyond the Digital Prison".

"Jonathan Doyle offers hope to all who are concerned about the rising tide of internet pornography. Explaining the science and psychology of addiction, he argues that, in the midst of shame and despair, the human heart still longs for intimacy, love and deep connection. Applying insights from theology of the body, he reveals what we can do to create a counter-culture of life and love"


Contact Catherine MacGillivray
cathmacgillivray@rcdow.org.uk
020 7931 6064
£5 entry fee will be collected on the door

Registration essential
  

A Catholic heroine...

Anne Line: Shakespeare’s Tragic Muse

A new biography has just been written on St Anne Line, the English martyr,  by Martin Dodswell.  He will be giving a talk on his new book at 3.30pm in the Parish Hall of St Anne Line Parish, South Woodford this Sunday 2 February – followed by Benediction in the church at 4.30pm.

The Parish Hall is at the back of the Church - entrance via the car park.

 

St Anne Line Parish is in Grove Crescent, South Woodford, London, E18 2JR.

There is ample parking at the church. It is close to South Woodford Station (Central Line) and to both the MII and the A406.

Regular readers of this blog...

...will be familiar with the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, and with the Church of the Most Precious Blood at London Bridge. But they, and others, might be interested to get a flavour of the thing from this post..

...and to Bicester...

...where I was met at the station by the splendid Breff Kelly who with his wife Jill hosts a Catholic Reading Circle. Tables set out with books to borrow or buy...lots of Ignatius Press, Gracewing Books, CTS, and more...the smell of good coffee, a buzz of talk, a warm welcome. A packed room - not a spare seat anywhere - and it was a joy to give a talk to such an audience. Afterwards, a talkative lunch with Breff and Jill, and a visit to the beautiful local church...

A train back to London through rainy countryside: in the evening, the FAITH meeting at Warwick Street: Speaker, Father Chris Findlay-Wilson, speaking on God as man's natural environment. Excellent talk. Father Chris had travelled from Cornwall - his parish is the farthest west in England - and drew on images from nature, and the birds and plants of Cornwall and how each has its own developed form and needs...

Human beings are  part of all creation, but are unique in it,: we alone have spiritual souls. We find our environment in God: birds, fly, fish swim in water, humans pray.

To Brighton...

...to St Mary Magdalene Church, to speak about Mother Riccarda Hambrough,  a nun with a remarkable story, and a special link to Brighton. A local bus now carries her name!  (To find out more, read this book). A beautiful Mass and a warm welcome from the splendid parish priest Father Ray Blake. A packed hall, despite a rainy night. Delicious sandwiches and cakes, and freshly-brewed tea. A friendly  atmosphere with a sense of great good cheer - what a wonderful parish! Members of the Hambrough family had come along - it was wonderful to chat, and they are arranging for me to talk to a family gathering as they are all keen to learn more about their remarkable great-aunt!

Burns Night...

...and a wonderful party organised by the young people of SPES at St Patrick's, Soho Square. J. wore his kilt and sporran. All done splendidly: haggis-and-neeps, and whisky, and splendid reels. Jamie is a good dancer and led me off for the first reel, great fun.   In due course I got v.v. warm, and then the heel whizzed off my shoe, so I was glad to sit out some of the later reels and watch  from the side, clapping in time to the music, and enjoying the whole scene. We finished in grand style with Auld Lang Syne, sung properly and loudly in a great circle.

A lot of the young people also go to the FAITH talks - currently at Warwick St - and some also take part in the John Paul Walk to Walsingham in the summer...

Home v. late, having had a grand time.

from time to time...

...and as an affirmation of religious freedom and human dignity, I post on my Blog a section of the Catechism of the Catholic Church relating to a specific topic which is causing controversy at the present time. So here it is again, an item have posted  before and will probably post again:

from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,¹⁴¹ tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered."¹⁴² They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God's will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition. 2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

Pope Francis...

...sent a message to America's March for Life, saying that he was joining the March with his prayers.
As always, large crowds, mostly young people...I took part in the March a couple of years ago, and was impressed by the numbers. The weather is always bitterly cold (Washington in January), and the scenes of the marchers battling snow or icy rain are splendid...

FAITH Movement...

...new series of talks in London. Fr Dominic Rolls with an excellent presentation of God's salvific plan through the Jewish people...a superb lecture, delivered extremely well.

We'll be expanding the talks, as it's all been so successful, and - possibly after a brief gap when this winter series ends - the programme will run through the Spring, as we have a number of other speakers worth hearing.

The Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham has been v. supportive, and it is good to be meeting in this historic church, just off Piccadilly Circus...

Marriage and the Govt's daft plans...

...it's a most depressing subject, and the future is going to be horrid.

The government has imposed a ludicrous and cruel new law which insists that a man can marry another man.

Bureaucrats are now having to work out ways in which this will be imposed on, among much else, the Army and its housing for our soldiers. Imagine: a senior officer decides he is in love with a young soldier, divorces his wife, marries the young now ex-soldier and moves him into the comfortable married quarters (which you and I are subsidising)...do you think it couldn't happen?

Think about a teenage girl, unhappy because her parents' marriage broke up and she doesn't like her mother's latest boyfriend, and confused and cutting herself and so on...and a lesbian teacher decides to take her up, and in due course they announce that they are getting married...when it breaks up, the young girl is told that the baby she dutifully had by artificial means is not hers, as the older woman has custody as she had stayed home to do the babycare sending the young girl out to work...

Meanwhile, a Catholic school has quietly hidden its religious education materials when an official from the education authority calls, because the book on the Sacraments emphasises male/female marriage, and the Catechism is quoted, and so on...

Do you think this couldn't happen?

On Popes, and Pope Francis, and more...

...this is a useful read.

The Schools Bible Project...

...an ecumenical venture which helps pupils at schools across Britain to study the New Testament, is 25 years old this year. Meeting to plan a celebration. This year's Project looks set to be exceptionally good. Some fine teachers, plus loyal volunteers who help with the organising etc, make this whole venture a real gift to Britain's school pupils...pray for its continued flourishing.

A large toad...

...greeted me on the doorstep this morning. Hardly surprising - many  suburban roads have small rivers gushing down the sides, and along the main road near us there are tide-marks where great puddles that result from each night's giant downpour ha slowly drained away to await the next...

To Mass at Westminster Cathedral...the 9am, packed, adorned with the cries of many small children, (and the irritating whispered chitchat of  elderly ladies behind me: if what they want is a pious gossip, can't it at least wait until after Mass?). Then on to Paddington, and a train to the West Country - the countryside, washed by rain, offering scenes of occasionally heart-breaking beauty -  for a family gathering to mark a nephew/godson's birthday. Great fun, again numbers of small children, plus lots of 20-somethings, plus some teens, plus oldies like Auntie, plus party food, fizz,  cake, hearty singing of "For he's a jolly good fellow"...

Home late, but the whole journey enlivened by the latest Standpoint magazine, a good read, bought at Paddington to enjoy over some coffee, and  I was still reading it on the late train after the party...definitely value for money. But will magazines like this survive? Do people read any more? Few on trains or Tubes are reading: they play with mobile phones, listen to (? music one assumes) with plug-in things to their ears. Some have kindles, but disproportionately few...it used to be normal for people to be deep in newspapers, magazines, books...

Coronation Street...

...and "assisted suicide". Read some thoughts about it here  (scroll down)...

Planning a visit...

...to St Anselm's Pembury ... discussed travel plans, normally an uninteresting and trivial matter for a trip into Kent, but current situation dominated by floods.  Pembury is fine, but the railway line from London has been under water for part of the way...it will doubtless be all cleared up by the time of our planned trip, but meanwhile thoughts turn to the people whose homes have been wrecked, commuters stranded for long hours trying to get home, etc...

And as I write it is still raining.

EWTN's Rome correspondent...

Joan Lewis, over at Joan's Rome  has some wonderful descriptions, and pictures, of the concert given in honour of Papa Benedict's brother, Mgr Georg Ratzinger.  Some  good pix of dear Papa Benedict. He looks elderly, but is happily greeting people. The (soon-to be-created Cardinal) Archbishop Muller is in the front row for the concert. (I am a fan) and it all looks rather delightful...

Joan has not been well - had an eye operation - but her blog has continued without a break and she is a continuing fund of news and comment from Rome, an absolute professional.

Confirmation group...

...and we are using the excellent ANCHOR programme, produced by the Dominican Sisters of St Joseph. It works really well: everyone has a folder and the leader has the same material, plus more, in a v. easy-to-use handbook. There is much use of magnificent art, and as we explore the images, and use the Scriptural references, and the links to the liturgy, the whole thing sort of unfolds and it is very enjoyable to be discovering the story of God's working out of his plan for the human race...

25th anniversary of...

...the Association of Catholic Women comes up later this year. We will be having a special Mass and a party to celebrate, and also launching a new project for young Catholics (18-30)...details announced in due course. It was fun planning all this today, and also working on our more routine tasks, including the big nationwide Schools RE Project which involves all the Catholic primary schools in Britain  and this year will be on the theme of "Saints",  with children invited to write and do projects on the patron saint of their parish...

...and in a rainy London...

...tea and an afternoon of sewing and chat with a relative in Islington, and then a bus ride through the City and across the river - looking magnificent with lights glittering in the rain and dark, and Tower Bridge making a spectacular landmark - to Evensong and Mass at Precious Blood Church, London Bridge.  A new series of evenings with the excellent Catholicism DVD has begun - tonight Fr  Robert Barron taught about the Eucharist.I was particularly struck by what he said about words. God creates through his Word: it creates, it brings all creation into being. And Christ is the living Word...and his words create...

If your parish hasn't yet done a big presentation of Catholicism    then hurry, HURRY, and get one started. It is a superb teaching tool, and a visual feast...

an excellent evening...

...with the FAITH Movement. Speaker: Fr Stephen Dingley, professor of theology at St John's Seminary, Wonersh.  He tackled the subject of whether humans are different from animals. Who are we, as human beings?  What is our relationship to the rest of  creation, to God, to one another? You can find out a lot more about all this by consulting the FAITH website...

The hall was packed...we were at the Ordinariate Church, the historic Church of the Assumption in Warwick St, just off Piccadilly Circus. This church originated as a chapel to the Portugese Embassy, and as such was a place where London Catholics could get to Mass in penal times. It has a crypt which functions as a parish hall, and is approached by steps that go down below the Rectory in Golden Square, at the back of the church. So we were - literally - deep in history.

The FAITH Movement is for anyone and everyone, but the overwhelming majority of those involved are young, and this evening the hall was packed with young people: students from London University, some VI-formers from the suburbs, 20-somethings from across London...

Anger at Pope Francis...

...from a lady writing from a mainstream newspaper who fizzes and fumes because he has dared to lament the killing of babies by abortion. Her anger sends her into twirling fury, round and round like a hamster in a wheel. For good measure, she adds fuming bitterness against Pope Benedict too...even though he, like Papa Francis, rarely spoke out on this subject, and, like Francis, always with compassion and restraint...

I'm not putting a link to this lady's furious newspaper feature - why add to her readership? But when I looked up the speech by the H. Father, and saw this brief  and poignant mention of abortion, I really did wonder at this lady's wild and furious anger...he was simply giving voice to what we all know is true: that there is something ghastly about a throwaway society, which even throws away precious human lives...

When Pope John Paul first wrote about Divine Mercy, I didn't really attach much importance to it...I remember thinking "Well, of  course  God is merciful... why the need to devote a whole encyclical to it?"  But then when I came to learn about Sister Faustina and so on, it became clear that this was a message urgently needed for our times. People do not know what to do with their anger and their hurt and their sense of being caught up in something that they know is wrong but from which they cannot seem to extricate themselves. In the face of the horrible events of the 20th century, mercy, mercy/....in the face of the horrible things of the 21st, mercy, again and again...

Do come to this!! All Welcome!

The Music Makers are delighted to announce the Liturgical Première of the 

Westminster Mass for Boys’ Voices

Music by Jeremy de Satgé

to be performed by the

Choristers of Westminster Cathedral Choir

Directed by Martin Baker

at the 5.30pm Mass on Tuesday, 14th January 2014

at Westminster Cathedral

You are warmly invited to attend this premiere

If you know of others who might wish to attend, we should be most grateful if you would forward this email accordingly.

For more information regarding the music please click HERE

The Catholic Women of the Year event...

not only honours Catholic women who serve God, the Church and the community is all sorts of ways, but also raises funds for good projects. There is a joyful "Thankyou!" from one of the projects we supported in 2103...see here.


You'll be invited soon to nominate women for the 2014 CWOY...news will be on this website...

Sheets of shining water...

...as the train trundled through the West Country, taking Auntie to visit a relative in hospital. At Weston-Super-Mare there was an extra amount of inland mare...rather magnificent to see, with wintry trees standing starkly up from the water, and odd stretches of hedge, no long fulfilling their task as boundaries of fields, emerging over lapping wavelets...

We spent Christmas in Somerset, on the edge of Exmoor...Midnight Mass in a well-filled church and with lovely carols, feasting and jollity with family and friends... and this return trip was in a different mood, rather bleaker...but the hospital is giving excellent care, and the visit went well.

Back in London today, a Confirmation class in a busy parish. We are using the excellent ANCHOR programme, much recommended. It uses glorious art to ponder with Scripture references, and it tackles the Catholic faith systematically. Today, we looked at Christ's Baptism, the Trinity, making the Sign of the Cross...then sin, forgiveness, pic. of Christ's betrayal by Judas, discussion of repentance (Peter's denial contrasted w. Judas' action), mercy, confession...

More on Papa Francis...

..excellent article in The Spectator about him... my feeling is that media won't  drop its love affair with him, but will continue to misinterpret him, and deliberately tell us that he is saying something that he isn't saying...this will be the way to save face, and also there is a quite genuine inability among some of them to get any understanding of reality... eg on marriage, family... also on  population and  how and why the West is dying...

But there will be a turning against him in the Church...especially among ageing Germans and Austrians intent on promoting contraception and divorce/remarriage. The wannabe-Lefebvrist types also seem to hate him, and that  will continue. 

The Speccy piece is by Luke Coppen, of the Catholic Herald. It's good, but don't just click on the link. Go and buy a copy of the magazine - it has lots of other good stuff in it -  and enjoy it, as I have been doing today, on the Tube, the train, at a bus stop, hospital waiting area, and finally in a pub with a gin-and-tonic...You don't need a laptop to enjoy a good read. just a paper and enough light to read by...

Meeting...

...at the CTS to discuss a project on which Auntie is working, for the canonisation of John XXIII and John Paul II. More on this in due course...

Corpus Christi....

....Church in Maiden Lane,  Covent Garden, is the Catholic church serving theatreland. A prayer group meets there regularly, dedicated to St Genesius, the patron saint of actors, and to Blessed John Paul. I went along this evening - a beautiful Mass, then  a time of silent Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament,  finishing with the Rosary, and finally Benediction...afterwards a talkative get-together over hot drinks and snacks at a café in The Strand...the group is led by Father John Hogan, who broadcasts regularly with EWTN, and  tonight's gathering included people involved with  the music industry and radio...topics ranged over Pope Francis(will the pack turn on him when he reaffirms Catholic teachings on marriage? We must pray for him and support him), Pope Emeritus Benedict (general view: he'll be a Doctor of the Church one day),  miracles, prayer, soap operas (discussion: could EWTN ever create a successful Catholic-based one? Probably not...) and more...

Home v. late, last Tube pulling out of London on the District Line. At the moment, I carry my cross-stitch work with me to do in odd moments, and have nearly finished another hassock for the church in Pembury...

Pope Francis...

...blessing a new statue of Our Lady. The statue has a vaguely baroque, as opposed to 19th century or high Medieval look. The  very traditional red-and-blue (royal) colours, and the large formal halo, give a formality and dignity, but there is also something "approachable" as Mary presents her Divine Son to us and he stretches out his arms, while she holds a rosary in her other hand...

Auntie will be in Rome...

...for the canonisation of John Paul the Great and the good John XXIII  at the end of April. 

Just been re-reading the book of an interview with Cardinal  Tarcisio Bertone about his meetings with Sister Lucia and the  Fatima visions. A fascinating read. To ponder the visions and message of Fatima and the life of Bl John Paul in 2014 is to ponder a deep thing. The canonisation of John Paul will place the whole matter ever more deeply into the tradition of the Church. This is also a relevant read...

Looking back, the 20th century was for so many people a terrible one. The Fatima visions spoke of war and tragedy and horrors to come, and these certainly came.  It was as if there was one great chastisement after another, with always the innocent suffering: the Holocaust and the murder of 6 million Jews, the famine forced on the Ukraine under Communism in which millions  starved to death, the 1960s similar Communist-created famine in China (people were reduced to  trying to eat leaves and tree-bark, and the trees in some cities were stripped bare until there was literally nothing at all), the Baltic deportations to slave labour under Stalin...all centuries have had their horrors, but the sheer numerical scale of the horrors of the 20th century places them in a category of their own.

John Paul saw the start of a new millennium as a time to repent, pray, and make, in a very profound and Christ-centred way, a fresh and humble beginning. I suppose we all instinctively want to "make a fresh start" with each New Year:  God puts that longing into our hearts. As a saintly (and heroic!) successor of St Peter, he led the Church across the gateway into the new millennium. The Church, at least, takes seriously the idea of peace, forgiveness, trust, and mercy (especially that last)  - all so necessary for attempting to live together. JPII  gave voice to this, and with his great sense of how God works in human history, he drew us into some understanding of the need to take things like the Fatima message very seriously...

A lovely pic of...

the Epiphany crib at Precious Blood Church in London, with an account of the Blessing of the Chalk etc...read here.

Glorious and rather exciting cloudbursts...

...great clattering, rattling, hard-to-talk-above-the-noise rain, driven initially by roaring gusts of wind. Not, somehow,  English rain, not the insistent drizzle that has shaped our culture and greened our land over centuries. This is weird and magnificent rain, and in London it is all rather enjoyable. No floods - at least, so far -  and plenty of places to shelter...but it has been fairly ghastly for people in various other parts of the country, and the rain shows no sign of stopping tonight.

Meeting of LOGS, the Ladies Ordinariate Group, yesterday evening. We tried, and failed, to get the DVD to work and so we didn't watch the film of Mother Teresa that had been planned. It sits forlornly on the table in the Rectory reproachfully.  We did, however, have a good discussion and have planned an excellent year of activities. Tackled a whole lot of envelopes for a big schools project. Arranged our forthcoming trip to Littlemore. Booked a Church Music workshop for the Autumn, and a talk on CS Lewis.

Read about Auntie's...

...involvement with projects around the canonisation of the great John Paul

We're going to be hearing a lot from campaigning atheists...

... in 2014, as we did in 2013,  as they seem to be on a roll at present. I found this useful.

And you ought to read...

this  as it is alas more than possible that you will meet people who will have been taken in by the hoax and will be boring on about it...

Epiphany chalk...

...was blessed and distributed at Mass today. The Wise men had arrived at the Nativity scene, and the small basket of chalk sticks  was placed in front of it, the sticks then being blessed and distributed to us all, along with a prayer to use in blessing our homes.

J. and I first discovered this practice in the Tyrol, and loved it. We have for some years had the traditional blessing and chalked up the initials C+M+B  and the new date above the front door.  So  this evening J. read a psalm from Vespers and I did the New Testament reading - from today's Gospel about the Wise Men - and then we went out into the drizzle, and J. rubbed out the 13 from the date and replaced it with 14 above the door while I stood there with a candle-lamp because the hall light isn't working, and we said the Our Father and J. read the little prayer of blessing brought from church, and our home is now blessed for the year ahead.

While also commemorating the Wise Men- traditionally named as Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar -  the initials stand for Christus Mansionem Benedicat.

"God of Heaven and earth, you revealed your only-begotten One to every nation by the guidance of a star. Bless this house and all who live here. Fill us with the light of Christ, that our concern for others may reflect your love. We ask this through Christ our Saviour. Amen."

This could have been written for all Catholic bloggers and debaters:

"From all my lame defeats and oh! much more
From all the victories I seemed to score;
From cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh;
From all my proofs of Thy divinity
Thou, who would give no sign, deliver me.

Thoughts are but coins. Let me not trust, instead
Of Thee, their thin-word image of Thy head.
From all my thoughts, even from thoughts of Thee,
O thou fair Silence, fall, and set me free.
Lord of the narrow gate and the needle's eye,
Take from me all my trumpery lest I die."

CS Lewis

for some useful insights on Pope Francis...

I found this a good read...

A casual mention of CS Lewis...

...at a New Year gathering got me thinking about him and, as so often happens, I then found his name cropping up again and again, or seemed to notice books by him on every other shelf I passed.  So I am now, with great enjoyment, deep in a book with some wonderful extracts from his letters and essays..."CS Lewis - The authentic Voice" (Lion, paperback, 1986). Recommended.

Have also been reading a lot about Pope Francis - a spate of biographies, of varying quality, on sale this Christmas. But I am about to write some reviews for various publications so can't/won't write about them here...

Was deep in CS Lewis on a bus so got a bit worried when I realised we had crossed Battersea Bridge and passed Prince of Wales Drive and I probably needed the next stop for Clapham Junction and might miss it.  I turned to the  passenger next to me, who had also been deep in a book  - and to our mutual surprise it was a a friend, who just that day had been asked to contact me to invite me to a new John Paul II Prayer Group that meets in London...a piece of Providence!  So I hope to go along, and the leaflet with the information is tucked into the Lewis book as a bookmark.

We are getting daily and nightly massive downpours, the Thames Barrier has been lowered, and there is much news of flooding in different places. Darkening skies at midday give a strange atmosphere.

History Walks...

TUESDAY....Jan 14th, meet 1.30pm (after the 1.05pm  lunchtime Mass)  at the Church of the Most Precious Blood, London Bridge. The church is in O'Meara Street SEI.  Nearest tube: LONDON BRIDGE or Borough.

TUESDAY Feb 4th. 3pm,  An afternoon walk INSIDE Westminster Cathedral. Meet by the main door .

And an evening walk, also on Tuesday Feb 14th: meet 6.30pm - after the 5.30pm Mass - on the Cathedral steps. We will walk around Westminster, Whitehall, St James' Park, finish outside Buckingham Palace.

What books did auntie enjoy...

...during 2013? Read here...