THE GREAT RETURN...

...to church this mornng, as the Church of the Precious Blood at London Bridge opened its doors wide  to reveal its gleaming new marble floor and sanctuary and the congregation poured in.  Candles glowed and incense wafted up. The children's choir sang from the gallery, the  September sunshine streamed in through the windows, and Father C. blessed the new font and we renewed our baptismal promises with great vigour and were splashed with the newly blessed water. It was glorious and solemn and joyful and a new chapter of the Church's long and splendid mission in London.  I hadn't expected to find it so moving...

Tomorrow members of LOGS, the ladies group based at Precious Blood, will  set off on pilgrimage to Walsingham, where we will place our plans and our hopes - and our concerns and worries and personal prayers and more - into the hands of Christ's mother at the shrine where people have been doing the same for a thousand years.

The Catholic Women's League...

...in the diocese of Southwark invited me to speak at their conference, held today at St Joseph's, Roehampton,  and I was given a warm welcome. I spoke about the recent  ADOREMUS Eucharistic Congress, and it was great to share memories of this splendid history-making event, and especially of that grand Eucharistic procession, the crowds, the atmosphere...

Today was a golden September day, and simply travelling by bus along by the Common was glorious.

My only regret about speaking at the conference was that I missed the annual "Two Cathedrals" Blessed Sacrament Procession, held each September to mark the anniversary of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain...but I looked up the pics afterwards and it went well, as always...beginning at Westminster Cathedral, crossing the Thames  to Southwark and finishing with Benediction at St George's Cathedral...

Mass in a nightclub....

...has been (sort of ) fun for the past few weeks...but it will be good to be back in church again.

The parish of the Most Precious Blood moved across the street to The Sidings, a nightclub created in, well, the sidings of the great railway network that  is gathered at London Bridge where lines meet from across Kent and South East London. Beneath the great solid railway arches there are cavernous rooms that are now packed with people and  talk and laughter and drink and food in the evenings...and packed even more tightly by Catholics on Sunday mornings as the parishioners seek to squeeze into every corner as Father C celebrates Mass at a makeshift altar.

Meanwhile, in our fine Victorian church, workmen have been labouring to create the new marble floor which will welcome us back again this Sunday.

We've all been peering in to see how things have been going. It now looks superb. A line of red marble leads up the aisle from the font (brand-new, an exact relica of the original design, and due to be blessed and consecrated shortly, with all of us renewing our baptismal vows)  to the sanctuary, where a pattern of further red mingles with  shining silver-grey and creamy white.

Choir stalls have been installed for the children's choir in the choir-loft. For the main part of the church, all pews have been removed for cleaning - at present the church looks like a great Roman basilica - and they will be back once the floor is ready for them. The new altar-rails won't be in place for a while, and work on the Lady Altar and the Newman shrine will wait for a while, too....first comes a massive cleaning operation because of all the dust created by the creation of the marble floor.

It's going to be superb, and the project has been/is being a sort of shared adventure with a feeling that we are all seeing the writing of a new chapter of local history. Watch this Blog for news of further developments, celebratory  events etc.

The forthcoming Synod on Youth...

...looks set to be ghastly, with the initial paperwork a groaning wodge of cliches. Poor Papa Francis seems unable ever to admit that any of his projects might be wrong-headed, so the thing will grind miserably on...

At Vatican II the Bishops courageously ditched some of the initial documentation and verbiage and opted for real debates. Could not something similar happen now?

To THE KEYS...

...which is the name of the Catholic Writers Guild of England and Wales, meeting in London. It was a hassle to get there - tube strike on the Piccadilly Line etc - but so good to arrive and be immediately among friends and colleagues. It really is a Guild - something more than a fellowship, more than a meeting of friends, more than gathering of like-minded people engagedin common endeavours...we are friendly, useful, and helpful to one another in the way that members of a Guild should be, but there's a lot more...this evening's chat included discussion of illustrations for a new book, exchange of ideas on recent projects, plus discussion of the splendid recent Liverpool Eucharistic Congress...

We currently meet at Farm Street church for our monthly Mass, going on afterwards to a nearby restaurant where a room is booked for supper, and then back to the  panelled Hall at Farm Street for the lecture. This evening's was about Hilaire Belloc - specifically, his love of Sussex, and finishing with that haunting poem -  and was excellent. A good discussion afterwards, tackling his horrid anti-semitism, his talents, his undoubted pariotism, his loathing of all things German including Nazism,  and the sorrows of his life (two sons killed, one in the First World War, one in the Second...) and more...

The new Master of the Guild is to be Kevin Turley, an excellent choice.  You can read some of his work here  and here...

On Saturday...

...there will be the annual "Two Cathedrals" procession in which the Blessed Sacrament is carried across the Thames.  The Orocession was started in 2009 to mark the first anniversary of the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Britain.  I am unable to attnd this year as I am speaking at a big gathering of the Catholic Women's League  in Roehampton.

The Procession starts at 1.30pm at WESTMINSTER CATHEDRAL and finishes with Benediction at St George's Cathedral, Southwark.

The government is to choose our next bishops...

....a very, very bad plan.

That's the plan for China, if the stupid and cruel arrangement that seems to have been agreed by the Chinese govt and the Vatican goes ahead.

It's contrary to wisdom and right justice: Christ did not seek that powerful worldly rulers shuld choose who would be the fathers for his flock. He didn't invite Peter to negotiate wth rulers in Rome or Palestine to choose colleagues.

We don't want government - not the Queen, not the Prime Minister, not President Trump, not the European Union rulers, not Vladmimir Putin, not the current head of the People's Republic of China, not any government - choosing Christ's bishops. It has been tried in the past and had mixed results - it's not a mistake that needs to be repeated.

On this blog, I placed a picture of the Pope when he was elected: the idea is to remind us all to pray for him. He needs wisdom, humility, and the courage to do what is right.  He is not popular and is at the core of much controversy: is he being wise and humble, and is he doing what is right? Are you praying?

To Portsmouth...

...for a beautiful Mass at the Cathedral, of which more in due course.

But there is something that is somehow sad about this great city - once a glorious name in the story of our Royal Navy. Deo gratias, we do still have some fine ships, and there is an instintive sense of pride that wells up when one thinks of all that the Royal Navy has meant in our country's story... but...

Somehow, so many things in Britain now have a strange, uncomfortable overlay of sloganising, that makes for a sense of things-aren't-what-they-should be. 

The last time I saw an official picture of anyone in naval uniform it was a lesbian lady on a poster in London emphasising that the Navy supported a homosexual and lesbian celebratory event.

Pray for our country.

And on the forthcoming Synod...

do read this...

DO READ....

...and enjoy, this excellent presentation made at the Eucharistic Congress, on how to prepare children for first Communion...

...and there are lots of other reports, and a good DVD of the Procession, here...

Been busy with...

...an Editorial Board meeting for FAITH magazine, in Scotland. Travelled by Caledonian sleeper - my favourite train journey. I had had a very full day in London, and it was a joy to eat supper at Euston and then sit doing some sewing (cross-stitch kneelers, since you ask) quietly and then to get on to the train when it was ready, and snuggle down cosily after a wash and some time to read...

A few days later another journey took me to Southend, where there is a thriving new branch of LOGS, meeting at this church...

Discussion on...

REGISTER RADIO in the USA this evening, about the Liverpool Congress and procession.

And the National Catholic Register has also published this feature about the Walk to Walsingham this summer.

...and don't take my word for it...

...the Eucharistic Congress really was a most remarkable event and even the BBC acknowledged it


.

So much happening...

...and I went off to Liverpool for what turned out to be a wonderful couple of days....see my first posting about it here....and more follows.