Cowes Week

Lymington is full of Yachtsmen - and women - most of the summer; but especially just now as Cowes week begins. A couple of days ago we paid another visit to the Island (the Isle of Wight, that is) and the return journey through fleets of competing boats practising I guess for this week's competitions must have tested the Captain of the Ferry.



We have had many visitors this month, and they always give us an excuse for returning to favourite places. So we took an old school-friend of Jane's to Osborne, to be reminded of Victoria and Albert, and the impact they had on this little Island. Albert had a hand in designing their hide-away; some visiting crowned heads though the place far too modest. It set a fashion for neo-Italianate villas, just as Balmoral spawned many turreted baronial semi's and tartan wallpaper. It is still a treat to enjoy a meal at the restaurant on the terrace at Osborne, sitting where the Queen Empress might have sat.

It also created an opportunity for us to see friends on the Island. Fr Jonathan Redvers-Harris and his wife Wendy have moved from a spacious vicarage into a slightly smaller house. The plus side though is that this house, which the Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth is renting for them throughout the next year, has a large garden, with distant views of Portsmouth Harbour. It was good to catch up with them both, and elder son Jack - the only one of the five children at home the day we called. We heard about the way the Island's Ordinariate Group is beginning to take off thanks to the generosity of their local Catholic parish. In our own Bournemouth Group we are experiencing similar friendliness, and at this morning's mass some of the their regular congregation joined us, or simply called in to say "Hello" as we took refreshments just before their 11o'clock Mass began. Next Sunday afternoon we are experimenting with Evening Prayer and Benediction at 4pm, and Fr Graham, our Pastor, is issuing invitations to join us then.


Wendy, son Jack & Fr Jonathan

Another old friend who was with us earlier in the week is the sole begetter of EFFA, the Ecumenical Friends Of Fatima Association. It has becomed ecumenical in ways we could not have envisaged when we set it up a decade and more ago. Then it was an entirely Anglican body; now about a third of the membership are in the Catholic Church, and of these twenty or so are members of the Ordinariate. I am sure Our Lady of Fatima (and of Walsingham) had a hand in this. On this visit Fr Malcolm Gray was only with us in Lymington for a couple of nights, but we still managed to sample one local hostelry, as you see from the picture below.




FOR YOUR PRAYERS: We heard this week from Bishop Crispian (our local Catholic Bishop in Portsmouth) that he has to undergo major surgery later this summer - please pray for him at this difficult time. Then today I learned of the death of an old friend, Canon Roger Greenacre, well remembered for his work in establishing the link between the dioceses of Chichester and Chartres. Requiescat.

Summer Sunday

One of the benefits of the Ordinariate in Bournemouth is that Mass begins at 9.30 in the morning; which leaves a good part of Sunday free to be a real day of rest. For us today that rest took the form of a visit to a Food and Drink Festival at a local Country House. Oh, and I had celebrated and preached at the Vigil Mass in Lymington; but more of that later. Throughout Mass, and all weekend, Norway was on all our minds. Was it coincidence or some warped bit of extra wickedness that had such an outrage perpertated on the Feast of S Brigitta of Sweden, Patron of Europe? At least maybe we can now understand a little the outrage felt by Muslims when atrocities are committed using their name as a pretext.



Pylewell is an 18th Century House with considerable later additions. Its setting on the Solent Shore is wonderful, with views from the House across parkland to the water and the Isle of Wight.



Later this week there is the New Forest Show - which means that Lymington will be virtually inaccessible by road from the North. This was a smaller affair, but very enoyable. Music of every sort; the Champage and Seafood crowd were entertained by a couple of elegant young ladies on Violin and Cello - very South Hampshire. From there it was all downhill (literally) towards the water's edge, with tastings of local wines and many others, from S Africa and Uruguay and elsewhere. Cheeses, sausages, meat and fish and all manner of delicacies were on sale, along with plants and handicrafts. We ate our modest picnic while watching a food demonstration by a chef from the White Star in Southampton.



Last evening I doubted if I would even be at Mass, let alone a food fair; but a duty doctor at a local Health Centre saw me (at 9.45pm), diagnosed a serious infection (erisipelis, I think it is) and put me on a high dosage of antibiotics. I've since discovered that S John of the Cross died of it, so I am in good company. But he did not have antibiotics. Now the swelling is going down, and I look a little less bruised. It was someone in the congregation at the Vigil Mass in Lymington last evening who persuaded me that I must see the Doctor - and I am glad I did. We sometimes complain about our National Health Service, but it really does seem to do its best in emergencies. The Doctor on duty said I had made his evening worthwhile - apparently my symptoms were especially interesting. Good to be helpful.

Singing in the Rain (2)

"Come, ye thankful people, Come!" we sang this morning in St Anne's Brockenhurst. On hearing the tune I was a little perturbed. First, it is a very long hymn - but I need not have worried, this was a Catholic congregation so we only sang two verses (is long-winded hymn-singing part of the Anglican Patrimony?) Then, it is a harvest hymn and are there not yet two months and then the harvest? Certainly we saw them reaping some of the early barley in Norfolk on Friday, but all is not yet safely gathered in... I look forward to my figs and apples in a couple of weeks or months, even though the currants and berries are mostly in the freezer. But of course, it was tied to today's Gospel - "Wheat and tares together sown"; somehow "wheat and Darnel together sown" just not does not work, though I daresay Estell M White would have thought it scanned perfectly.

Enough of this. Sufficient to say we were in Norfolk on Friday and yesterday because of the Ordinariate pilgrimage to Walsingham. And though they could get the Combine Harvesters going on Friday, yesterday they certainly could not. Walsingham was wet, very wet; that did not daunt the three or four hundred of the Ordinariate who attended the Mass in the Catholic Shrine, or those who joined the prooession to the Village from the Slipper Chapel, as thousands upon thousands had done from the eleventh Century until the desecration of Holy Places under Henry VIII of unhappy memory in the mid sixteenth Century. Msgr Keith Newton, our Ordinary, had announced that he was to celebrate the Mass of Reconciliation in Walsingham this weekend, so we came together from all parts of his Ordinariate. I know there was a Yorkshire priest there, and so was a Devon priest with his nine progeny - a couple of them were leading the procession - in the photo at the top of this page.


If you want to know about the weather, you can read more about that in my other blog at the Anglo-Catholic. And if you want pictures of the Mass, then the place to go is the Sevenoaks Ordinariate site. Some of the participants turned up a little late; the pair on the left said they were stuck in traffic; I think behind a muck-spreader. No comment is necessary. Here I shall just add a few maundering thoughts, and some pictures from what was a most memorable and happy day.



There were happy meetings with old friends.


Here my wife and Fr Mark Elliott-Smith were catching up on the news. Forgive the sickly yellow cast; that is thanks to the sodium lighting in the Catholic Shrine Church. And here is part of our Hants and Dorest contingent waiting for Mass to begin (similarly jaundiced).



They look a little more healthy in the open air; this [below] is at the Anglican Shrine, where the pilgrimage ended with sprinkling from the holy well, and a joint blessing by Msgr Keith and the Shrine Administrator, Bishop Lindsay Urwin.



In all the Churches and Shrines there were flowers; it is the 950th anniversary of Richeldis' vision, and the 50th of the fire in the parish church. Here [below] is the seven sacraments font, duly enflamed with flowers.



So good, to get the Ordinariate together, in company with other Catholics. We must do this more often - but perhaps for Msgr Keith's sake not in the same week that he flies home from Texas.

Across the Pond

Isn't technology wonderful? We can watch our Ordinary addressing a conference in Texas as he is doing it, and we can listen to John Hunwicke's humour (not 'humor' surely) direct from that same Anglican Use/Ordinariate gathering. You can go there via the Ordinariate website, or directly at http://www.ustream.tv/channel/anglicanorum

There were one or two little glitches (I believe that is the technical term) - people asking questions without using a microphone, so that we could not hear them though plainly those in the hall could. Or my pressing the wrong button and hearing Msgr Newton and an organ recital at the same time. Still, it is worth persisting. Nor is it just present members of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham who should listen to John Hunwicke, or see what Texan locals such as Fr Chuck Hough have to say. Anyone remotely interested in relations between the Catholic Church and the Church of England should tune in. The Anglican Use has flourished in the States for a couple of decades now, and we in England can learn from them, whether we belong to the Ordinariate or to the Church of England. So some of our groups in England are small? They were small in Arlington or San Antonio at the outset; now their congregations are numbered in the hundreds, even the thousands.

Of course, our situation is different; we have left a Church by Law Established, and at present there is little chance that we shall have the use of any of our former church buildings - but that might not always be the case. There will come a time when the Church of England may have to share what it inherited from our common Catholic past. Today the papers report that General Synod has been debating how to check the decline in worshippers - some even predicted the total demise of the Anglican Church. This is not just a problem for the Church of England. In our secularised society, all faith groups have similar battles. We can learn a great deal from the Churches in the USA.

Our Ordinary was very well received in Arlington. He gave his hearers advice that we must all keep in touch with one another, not just with Ordinariate groups around the world, but also with our former colleagues at present remaining in the Anglican Church. The link with the Arlington Conference is one more way of doing just that.

(The picture at the top of this blog is of Fr Allan Hawkins, Convenor and Host of the Arlington Conference, at his lectern during a visit I made there earlier this year)

Day One

Yesterday, three priests were ordained for the Ordinariate in Portsmouth Cathedral. You will find some pictures on flickr taken by the Diocesan Photographer, Barry Hudd, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/80797397@N00/sets/72157626924521195/ and some from the reception on the Anglo Catholic site http://www.theanglocatholic.com/2011/06/last-round-up/ That was yesterday.



Today, all three began their new ministry. In Southbourne, Fr Graham Smith celebrated and preached; and with him were Fr Gerry, the Nigerian missionary priest who runs the church of Our Lady Queen of Peace & Blessed Margaret Pole - and me. It was a very happy occasion for members of the Ordinariate based in the southwestern corner of Portsmouth Diocese.



We processed with the Blessed Sacrament at the end of Mass, and I was privileged to give Benediction - for of course today we celebrated Corpus & Sanguis Christi, the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ.



Afterwards, we enjoyed one another's company in the Church Hall, and some of the regular members of the congregation came to join us.



A great day. These few pictures from the bunfight may give a flavour of it.

Plymouth Ordinations

What will replace these Ordinariate ordinations once they are concluded in a week or so? They have been terrific social occasions as well as hugely important ecclesiastical ones - great for catching up with old friends and meeting new ones. It is a 300mile plus round trip from here to Plymouth - yet even people in London seem to suppose that Plymouth and Portsmouth are next door to one another, and both equally far from London. When eventually we persuade them to make the journey to Lymington they are amazed to get here in about 90 minutes. To Plymouth by road from Lymington is over 3 hours - or it was in the downpours yesterday, and back again today.




Waiting for the Kick-Off

Vaut le voyage, though, as the Michelin guides say. Particularly since about a third of the Catholic clergy of the diocese seem to be former Anglicans - including the Administrator of the Cathedral. Now they have a further seven who, while belonging to the Ordinariate, will also be available to lend a hand in the diocese. With them, too, was one genuine Plymouth candidate.


Seeing the congregation out

It was good, too, so see a number of Anglican priests from the dioceses of Exeter and Truro in the Congregation, and to hear their plans for being in second or subsequent waves. Good, also, to catch up with other old friends. Robbie Low (heading for Ordination at last, by the 'ordinary' route) and Sara his wife were there, as were others I've known even longer. Peter Glazebrook and Robin Ellis read Law at Pembroke, Oxford more than half a century ago - I was an exact contemporary of Peter's, reading theology. Now Peter is retired, though still keeping a finger in the pie at Jesus College Cambridge where he was Law fellow for many years, and last night Robin (formerly Archdeacon of Plymouth) was ordained a Catholic Priest. His son Simon is among the candidates in Nottingham this evening.


Two Lawyers and a Theologian from Pembroke in the 1950s


Msgr Keith was in good form - though he is facing even longer journeys, with an Ordination this evening in Nottingham. Next week he will be back down here in Portsmouth for three more priestly ordinations. It was very good of Keith Haydon and his wife Kathy to put me up overnight in Plymouth. We have been good friends from way back when he was Vicar of Cowley and I was down the road at St Stephen's House. Now he is running a Plymouth parish with four churches while being, in theory, a retired house-for-duty priest. Very sadly his Vicar died shortly before Easter, and Keith has been shouldering the burden ever since.

I hope others will publish photographs from the actual Ordination. As a concelebrant I was only able to get a few before and after the event ... (and apologies for the blurry picture of my overnight host)

Deepest Hertfordshire

The A Team

This morning we were in Hemel Hempstead, where I'd been asked to celebrate Mass for the Ordinariate group. It was a very happy occasion - as of course it should be, for it is the Ascension!
Good to catch up with old friends from former Anglican parishes in the Richborough patch - people from Luton and Marsh Farm as well as the core group from Hammerfield.


The Group meets at St Mark's Church, part of a large Secondary School complex, and the Catholic parish has two other churches. Besides the Parish Priest there is a Polish Assistant Priest, and a very cheery Deacon who come to introduce himself before the Ordinariate Mass.

Fatima Friends may recognise some faces here

Next Friday, after the Ordinations in Westminster, there will be two more priests in that parish, the current Deacons Fr Tim Bugby and Fr Gordon Adam. It was the latter who looked after me today, and who (a real treat, this, not to have to do it myself) preached - a fine Ascension Sermon.



After meeting people over parish refreshments, Jane and I decided to call in at Wisley. We had a snack lunch there, and enjoyed seeing how things have developed in the area around the Millenium Glasshouse.


We expected a Douanier Rousseau Tiger

Then it was a pleasant bowl down the A3, while the lanes in the other direction were choked with Londoners returning after a half-term break.

A worm's Eye View of Alliums