Getting to know you....

Today Bishop Philip Egan began his tour of the Pastoral Areas of Portsmouth diocese. He started in the far west, with Bournemouth and Avon/Stour. Very kindly, he is including priests of the Ordinariate, so today Fr Brian Copus and I were invited because our Group meets in Southbourne.

Bishop Philip with our Host Fr Bruce Barnes

We began with half an hour before the Blessed Sacrament, in the Church of the Sacred Heart, Bournemouth. Then into the palatial Presbytery, where Fr Bruce had laid on tea and coffee and cake.

Fr Brian Copus coffee cup in hand, among the brethren.

Bishop Philip started by removing some of the more extravagant press accounts of what he is like; he is not intent on putting the clock back to 1952. Rather he is intending the be like the householder commended in the Gospel for bringing out of his treasures "things new and old". He went on the say that his first concern was with his clergy, priests and deacons. This is why between now and Christmas he is intent on getting round the whole of the pastoral areas (and they stretch North as far as cis-Isis Oxford and as far South as the Channel Islands). Besides this he is making time for individual meetings with each of the clergy.

And it really was tea or coffee...

Then he gave us a parable, which certainly spoke to me. He had seen salmon leaping to clear great obstacles in a river, making their way up to the place where they originally came from. All of us know where we belong; our home is in heaven, and our life is a matter of making our way there - our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Him. But swimming against the current is not an easy matter, and increasingly the Church finds herself having to be counter-cultural.

Answering a tricky question

That picture I think will inform the prayers and thoughts of many who heard him, during this Year of Faith. After a time for questions and comments we said the Angelus together. On the way home in the car four of us were agreed that he had made a great beginning, and we look forward to being his co-workers in the years to come.

Bankers? Bonkers

I wasted two hours of my life today. My credit card statement included an interest payment of over £3 because the bank asserted I had not paid £20 off my bill last month. But I had set up a standing order to ensure this money was paid regularly. So I phoned.  Have you tried phoning your bank? After endless options (if you are enquiring about a mortgage, press one, if you are wanting a loan for less then three days, press two.... if you are tired of living, press seventeen ... and so on). They asked questions like what was my mother's sister's aunt's maiden name, the first name of our deceased pet dog, my inside leg measurement (in millimetres). After all that, I spoke to a human being; a very pleasant sounding Scots human being.  She wanted to know what was the credit card payment I had made on Thursday fortnight. Because I could not tell her, there was nothing more she could do for me.

So I got into the car and drove my still Vertiginous self into town. In the Bank the Information and Help desk was unmanned.  There were people waiting to see an advisor, but no-one was in the front office. So I joined the queue at the clerks' desks. The young lady was very solicitous; she called a colleague over. The matter could not be resolved there. I would need to speak to someone who could phone someone else to discover what the problem was. So I went to wait in the outer office. Eventually a more senior lady came out; she rang and waited and eventually, yes, a human being on the end of the phone, who was handed over to me and assured me that, yes, they had made a mistake, the twenty pounds should have been taken from my account to cover the Credit Card debt, and the charge would be waived.

Success! And after only two hours of phoning and waiting and driving, I have recovered a little over three pounds sterling which was mine all along. The bank concerned is Lloyds TSB, but I have no doubt the same might have been true elsewhere. I have banked with Lloyds since I was in the Air Force, during my National Service.... so it is a long while. Part of the bank is to be taken over by the Co-operative Bank; I did suggest that things might be better then, but the clerk told me that our branch is to remain Lloyds TSB and in any case the situation would be no better because the difficulty is shortage of staff.  That is why you have to go through the multiple choice exam of button-pressing rather than being able to phone your branch; because there are not enough people to answer the phone. You waste you time rather than theirs. Yet if you could ring to make an appointment everyone's time might be saved. Too simple, obviously.

This is an organisation whose bosses have, notoriously, been paid vast bonuses. Each year the profits of these organisations rise. Yet in a time of unemployment the banks save money by cutting staff in the branches, so infuriating their once loyal customers.  What a mad world we are in.

The Beauty of Holiness

“The Sacred Liturgy is at the centre of the new evangelization,” said the Bishop of Frejus-Toulon in announcing an international conference on the Sacred Liturgy next summer. So as this year of faith begins our little Ordinariate Group in Bournemouth is trying to do something about bringing with us into the Catholic Church an Anglican emphasis on the beauty of holiness. Almost the first thing we did on arrival at Our Lady Queen of Peace was to acquire (through good Church of England friends in Southampton) copies of English Hymnal.

That book has come as a revelation to some of the long-time Catholics who join us at Mass now and again. "But there are hymns by St Thomas Aquinas! And Blessed John Henry Newman! And G.K. Chesterton ... how wonderful!".

We also have the advantage of a first-class organist, and some parts of his Mass setting (the Dorset Mass) were sung at the Ordination of our two latest Ordinariate priests in Portsmouth diocese. We have cantors, and full-throated congregational singing. What we lack, though, is a worthy instrument for our organist to play; the parish's keyboard has been fine when all it had to do was accompany "Deep within my heart I know Jesus loves me" or "Colours of Day" but strangely those do not appear in English Hymnal.

So this Sunday we are having a newcomer in our midst; a three-manual electronic organ (picture above) on loan. This is the instrument which our little music committe has looked at and decided it would be the best answer to our needs, without being hugely extravagant. So far we have raised a couple of thousand pounds towards it - and this without undermining our giving to the Ordinariate. The Parish is very interested in finding ways of helping, and together we shall attempt to raise the money to enable us to have such an instrument installed in the gallery of Our Lady Queen of Peace, to be used by Parish and Ordinariate.

We believe firmly that music can be a part of our major task of evangelization. So if you, dear reader, know someone who has a few thousand pounds (or even a few pounds) burning a hole in his or her wallet, do put them in touch....

At least the Sun Shone

Our second priest was Ordained on Saturday 22nd; so on Monday 24th I was off on holiday with my wife to Dubrovnik. On the first full day there we went into the Old City and saw some of the sights; this is the Jesuit Church in the old City.

and that, alas, was that. Our second day was spent at the Hospital, where a local Doctor sent me since I could barely stand upright. They thought it was my heart - glad to say it wasn't. On returning home today after an expensive week staring mostly at the walls of the hotel bedroom I saw our GP. He assures me it is Virus Vertigo, and will gradually go away, though it might take a few weeks to disappear entirely.

Thought you might enjoy  a couple of views near our hotel - I managed to stagger as far as the beach last evening, and even fell (quite literally - but prepared for it) into the hotel pool.

 

I think Croatia could be a good place for a holiday.

Which Church? Which Rite?

They think they have located Richard III's mortal remains under a Leicester car-park. So here is what is proposed: 'The Dean of Leicester, the Very Revd Vivienne Faull, said that the cathedral had worked "very closely" with Leicester City Council and the University of Leicester on the search for Richard III's remains. (she said:) "If the identity of the remains is confirmed, Leicester Cathedral will continue to work with the royal household, and with the Richard III Society, to ensure that his remains are treated with dignity and respect, and are reburied with the appropriate rites and ceremonies of the Church."'
Now the only Rites and Ceremonies known to the last Plantaganet king were those of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. So are these the rites Dean Faull envisages? And is that the Church which she expects to conduct the re-interment? I only ask, seeking as ever to be helpful.

Our Lady of Sorrows

Mgr Keith Newton, our Ordinary, preached very movingly and simply on the Sorrows of Mary on the Ordinariate's pilgrimage day in Walsingham (r. the Slipper Chapel, part of the Catholic Shrine). For all that, the keynote seemed to be one of joy. Such a brilliant sunny day (compensation for last year's deluge); a great turnout of the faithful (some had to stand throughout the Mass for lack of room); some forty concelebrating ordinariate priests. We had a great deal to be thankful for.

Jane (rt) with Daloni and Michael Peel

So after our 450 mile two-day round trip, I thought I should post at least a few pictures for those of you unable to be present. It was only through the kindness of our old friends Dr Michael Peel and his wife Daloni (formerly i/c the College of St Barnabas) that we were able to break the journey with an overnight stop at their home in Suffolk.

Mgr Keith greeting members of the congregation after Mass.

Fr Aquilina from Sevenoaks with Mgr Broadhurst
Settling down for a picnic - some of our Bournemouth Group in the forefront

A merry post-prandial trio of priests

a South London seminar sur l'herbe.







and a pair of Ellises comparing notes

Bishop Lindsay Urwin welcomes us to the Anglican Shrine where he is the Administrator

There's none so deaf as those who won't hear

We are getting ready for the Ordination of two new priests in twelve days' time, so no opportunity for new blog thoughts. Instead, you might like to argue with this, Sunday's sermon -

'He even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak'

It was because of the Paralympics that the Sunday programme was discussing the Bible’s attitude to disability. Once again, the BBC was parading its so-called liberal attitude; which less kindly we might call its unfailing Political Correctness. So we had a blind theologian complaining that the image the Bible gives of disability is often very negative. It uses ‘blindness’ as the equivalent of stupidity, because Jesus tells the Pharisees that they are blind fools. Much better, said the unsighted theologian, to have called them stupid fools. So just imagine the outcry from the community of the congenitally stupid. The blind professor said his blindness was none of his fault; but then neither is stupidity or foolishness. There was even a suggestion in the programme that by healing the blind or the leper Jesus was altering people’s situation for the worse. Much as you will be told that Christian Missionaries in the 19th Century should not have preached the gospel to head-hunters or cannibals because that was their culture.

Well it’s a great deal of nonsense, of course. Blindness is a dreadful affliction, and if we can cure it we should; but so often Jesus contrasts the physical disability of a person with its far worse spiritual equivalent. When he healed the man born blind, the Pharisees wanted to pretend it had not happened; they wanted to shut their eyes (I suppose that is not an offensive image) they wanted to shut their eyes to the truth. They did not want to acknowledge what was plain for all to see; that a man born blind had been cured.

So in today’s Gospel it is deafness, the inability to hear, which is Jesus’ concern. He does not blame the deaf man for his disability; but if he wants to be cured, then he can be. A far greater concern for us should be why some people are cured as a result of prayer, and some are not. A great friend of mine, a loyal trusting Christian, had a cancer which the doctors told him was terminal. He was sure he would be cured; and he was not. So why did God make this, or let this, happen? Come to that, why does he not cure everyone? And why in his own lifetime did Jesus not cure all who came to him? “Because of their unbelief” says one of the gospel writers – and certainly Jesus values a person’s faith, and often tells them that is their faith which has made them whole.

It is a very mysterious business, sickness, and disability, and healing. A young disabled boy in a class my wife taught said “If Jesus was here I would not be like this”. That boy died long ago. But if we believe the Gospels at all, then we must know that the Lord was concerned about him then, and still is. Surely that sort of faith is not ignored by God. On the contrary, when to his surprise the boy, after his death, found himself in the presence of Jesus, he will surely have been told that it was his faith which had brought him there.

He has done all things well, they said: he has made the deaf hear and the dumb speak. But far more importantly, he has given sight to the spiritually blind, and hearing to the morally deaf. These are the things that really concern the Lord about us, and they should concern us too. If only the Pharisees had admitted their own blindness; but they did not, and so they were condemned.
That same discussion on the Sunday programme tried to link disability with sin. Jesus said to the paralytic “Your sins are forgiven you”. This caused anger – ‘who can forgive sin but God only?’ they asked. So Jesus said, ‘Which is easier, to say your sins are forgiven, or to say take up your bed and walk; but that you may know that the Son of man has power on earth to forgive sin (he said to the sick man) get up, take up your bed, and walk’.

Now despite so-called theologians on the BBC, that is NOT, most definitely is NOT, saying that the man was sick because of sin. In fact when they asked about the man born blind “who sinned, this man or his parents” Jesus told them they were wrong in looking for a connection between sin and disability; and he says much the same in other places .. when people are killed by a falling tower, was it sin that brought this on them? Not at all. They are no worse sinners than anyone else.

The truth is, if we are to use language at all we are bound to use similes and metaphors. Spiritual blindness is like being incapable of sight. It is not saying that those who are physically blind are also morally bad. Any more than if I talk of the blackness of despair I am thinking that all Africans are despairing, if I say that a Government policy is just limping along I am saying to be crippled is to be a politician. Of course we must not use language to hurt others, and in this time of great sensitivity we must try to think how others might feel. But to forbid words like “black coffee” or “blind rage” would be to require us to use some language other than English.
And what language should we use? There are doubtless parallels in French and Italian, and probably in Chinese and Swahili. All that’s left to us is to say “I’m feeling a little blue” – and even that might offend some Tories – and as for “in the pink”!

So, just be a little careful about assuming that the BBC is impartial and truly liberal. It is infected with the diseases of the present day - and I hope no one with a cold will take this simile amiss – they need our generous criticism to help them realise that they are every bit as prejudiced as everyone else. Except that unlike us poor sinners, the Media think they are always right.