Day of Recollection

St Dominic's Priory, just up the road from Lymington, gave hospitality to twenty of our Ordinariate Group today (most of them above, in the Chapel). Our ages ran from the early teens to the late seventies, and everyone contributed. Thomas, our youngest member, helped out with difficult questions - such as, 'how many Popes have there been?' We began in the morning looking at some Geography; two of those present discovered they both came from within a few miles of one another, in Cheshire. Others had connexions in East Anglia, in the South West, and even in Dallas. It was all leading us to consider Paul (a citizen of Tarsus, no mean City) who told us that our homeland is in heaven, that here we have no abiding city, that we are strangers and pilgrims. We started looking at places on our Pilgrimage, and unsurprisingly Walsingham featured very large.

We joined the Sisters at their mid-day Office, and at Mass, and thought briefly about persecution; whatever we have to put up with is nothing compared with our brothers and sisters in the Middle East, or Northern Nigeria - or even compared with Polycarp Bishop of Smyrna commemorated in today's Mass, burned to death in the Arena around 155AD..

Despite the biting cold some had a little walk in the Forest after our picnic lunch, then we settled down to considering our History. Many of us had 'done' the Tudors and Stuarts (some three times in their school career) yet knew little about the coming of Christianity to these Islands. We were reminded of the Saints of the North, Cuthbert and Bede and Hilda, and considered Alfred's part in re-establishing monasticism after the depradations of the Vikings. We wondered why we heard nothing about the Recusants, and how whenever Catholics appeared it was always in the role of baddies; the wives of Stuart kings leading them into the ways of Popery, with the nation eventually saved by loveable William of Orange. Hurrah! Except that he was such a disastrous human being, redeemed only by employing Christopher Wren to modernise Hampton Court.

In all, we learned a bit of geography, a little history, but much more (and more interestingly) things about ourselves and one another.  Tomorrow we shall be confirming one of our number; another will be joining us in a fortnight's time. This is proving a happy and exciting Lent for our little Bournemouth Ordinariate Group..

Gaudy Night

John Betjeman's favourite Oxford College, Pembroke.

Once every ten years or so comes an invitation back to Oxford, to a College Reunion or 'Gaudy' for those who matriculated in certain years. This time it was for undergraduates of 1957 or earlier. Thinking there might be few of us left after another ten years, a group of us decided to attend.

Naturally the present Master of the College greeted us, and encouraged us as ever to open our cheque books. Sometimes he strikes lucky. With a massive building project currently underway, he is looking for the final £5million to complete it. A few years ago a Master who had no liking for the Christian faith went to America seeking cash - and was embarrassed to return with a very large sum earmarked for the restoration of the Chapel. Whether his atheism was the reason or not, the result was that the very handsomely restored 18th Century building was given the name "The Damon Wells Chapel". The group photograph below shows a few friends trying hard to obscure the much disliked nameplate.

[l-r A Professor of Microbiology,an Anglican Archdeaon now a priest of the Ordinariate, a Director of the RSCM, a Scots Episcopalian Priest, and Yrs Truly - all retired but all fairly active.]
All very well calling a building after Smithson (of the Smithsonian Institute, an early benefactor of Pembroke); or renaming the Old Master's House "The Dr Johnson Building" after the Grand Cham hismelf who spent a year or so as a servitor undergraduate, before penury forced him to leave without a degree*. But to attach an individual's name to the Chapel!

The ceiling after Kempe
The Chapel was transformed in the late 19th Century when another former member, the Stained Glass artist Charles Eamer Kempe, went to town on catholicising it. There are painted plaster statues of Saints and Old Testament Prophets, Windows with glass so thick that scarcely any light now penetrates, and a ceiling which seems to belong in a Venetian Palazzo. The window illustrated has James I (in whose reign the College was refounded) with the two earliest Benefactors, Thomas Teesdale and Richard Whitwick. Another window depicts Good Queen Anne. The copy of a "Noli me Tangere" - the original I think by Raphael - makes a reredos to the Altar, while at the other end of the Chapel is a fine Organ Case which was originally in Wren's Sheldonian Theatre.


The instrument itself is recent work by a Canadian firm of Organ Builders, and the Organ Scholar of our day, Dr Harry Bramma, had a great hand in seeing to its specification. Last evening he made it sound very good indeed.



So successful was Kempe with his 'restoration' that it is said a Papal Nuncio, later himself to become Supreme Pontiff, was shown the Chapel while on a visit to Oxford and said "Beautiful! Just like one of ours!".



The highpoint of the Gaudy is dinner in hall, just like old times (expect that they have replaced the benches with comfy chairs) - here two friends are paying rapt attention to a speech by one of our peers who actually IS a peer: Bob Carwell, aka Baron Carswell,PC, QC, retired Lord of Appeal in Ordinary.



* I am indebted to Dr Andrew Starkie for the following: 'It is very likely that Dr Johnson didn’t graduate because he would have had to then take the oath of allegiance to the (Hanoverian) sovereign. His honorary Doctorate didn’t require it. (Cambridge required the oath on matriculation, Oxford on graduation!'