Sunday 24th October - Bishop's Visitation

On Saturday 23rd and yesterday Bishop Regan was staying in St. Joseph's, making his official visitation to the parish.

On Saturday evening he visited some of the sick and housebound parishioners, at home and in nursing homes. On Sunday he was main celebrant at the two Sunday Masses.

At both Masses we sang all the parts of the Mass, having been practicing for about three weeks, while at the 4.30pm Mass three new members were admitted to the Knights of St Columba (Province No. 37), an occasion we had deliberately timed to coincide with Bishop Regan's visit.

We managed to get some photographs and even filmed some sections. Here are a few of the still shots. The "movie" might take a bit longer to upload!

10.00am Mass and after:

4.30pm Mass and after:

The three new Knights with Bishop Regan, Provincial Grand Knight Paul Braid and me:

And a photograph of some of the members of the local province, who came to welcome the new recruits:

Sunday 17th October - Mission Appeal

Yesterday Fr John Collins SSC, an Irish missionary priest from the Society of St Columban, came to St. Joseph's to make an appeal on behalf of his society. Fr John had actually visited St Joseph's before, to see Fr Brendan Fahey, the parish priest for ten years before I arrived, who is a fellow-Columban.

I had intended concelebrating the two Sunday Masses here with Fr John but as things turned out I got called away at short notice to another parish, because the priest who was due to supply Masses there on Saturday evening and Sunday morning had come down with a stinking cold and had to pull out.

Unfortunately with all the extra running about involved I didn't manage to get any photographs of Fr John during his stay: I've had to pilfer the one not very clear photo I found on the Columbans' website, where he is pictured with the rest of the British Mission Awareness Team (he's at the back, fifth from left).


But I did join Fr John for the 4.30pm Mass here, during which he told us about the origins of the Society of St Columban, the early missionary work in China (until the Communist revolution in 1949, when they were expelled) and the Society's more recent endeavours in "cross-cultural mission" and in the field of inter-faith dialogue, especially between Christians and Muslims, in places like Pakistan, the Philippines and elsewhere.

The Columbans' website gives the following description of their work:

"Cross-cultural mission is a way of life that involves leaving your own culture and entering with respect and humility into another. It means learning a new language, living alongside the poor and marginalised, sharing your experience of God, and searching with them for a greater fullness of Life.

"Columbans work in many diverse ways, trying to witness to the God of Love, to understand and embrace the hopes and aspirations of the communities where they live, and to follow where the Spirit leads.

Columbans are involved in women’s groups, with refugees, in protecting the environment, with small Christian communities, with disabled people, in inter-faith dialogue, with Tribal people."

These were the subjects - some of them, anyway - that Fr John addressed in his sermon during Mass. We took up a second collection, many people seemed interested in subscribing to the Columban magazine Far East, and in the late afternoon Fr John headed off back to his headquarters in Solihull.

Here are some Columban links:

Columban Fathers (general)

Columban Sisters

Columban Missionaries Ireland and Britain

Far East magazine.

Thanks for making the day such a success!

We would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to Fr. Ian Dalgleish, to all who helped out behind the scenes and everyone who came along for making Saturday such a big success! Cheers to you all!

The Catechism of the Catholic Church follows Acts 2:42 in its understanding of the Christian life as having 4 dimensions. These include what we believe, how we worship, how we live this out in morality/prayer and how we share our life together as a community of believers. In this way we are called to keep in balance our communion with God and with one another. Creed, Code, Cult expresses these four elements by the inclusion of Celebration - thanks to Fr. Ian's hospitality, Catherine's culinary skills and the generosity of the parish!

The day began with the reverent celebration of Holy Mass, progressed through the presentations on some of the rich content of the Faith and ended with us all sharing good food, wine, conversation and laughter.

We will be back on Saturday 13th November when our theme will be The Gospel of Life and The Culture of Death.

And again on Saturday 11th December for Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body: Human Sexuality and the Call to Holiness.

We look forward to seeing you then! Or if you would like to book us for similar events at your parish/prayer group/retreat centre please e-mail info@torchofthefaith.com

In Christ,

Alan and Angeline Houghton.

Saturday 9th October - Summary of the Talks

It was great for us here at Torch of the Faith to be back in St. Joseph's on Saturday to launch the new series of Creed, Code and Cult with the theme of Back to Virtue: Christian Values in an Age of Chaos.

Is this an age of chaos?

In our first presentation we acknowledged that we do live in an age of unprecedented opportunities in terms of communications, diet, healthcare, technology and travel.

Nevertheless, our present era gives much evidence of grave moral collapse including the widespread loss of the Christian faith, the rise of the Culture of Death and the growing acceptance of the Occult.

Various ethical commentators acknowledge that the crisis is becoming so grave that it could even pass over into the total collapse of democracy or even of civilization itself. The philosopher Peter Kreeft explained in his book Back to Virtue: Traditional Moral Wisdom for Modern Moral Confusion, that nothing short of a return to the acceptance of a universal moral code can prevent such a demise. Fr. Bernard Green SDS agrees; in his CTS booklet Rediscovering Virtue, he recalls that uncontrolled individualism harms the social order. Without moral sensitivity we descend into a state of being in which power, rather than goodness, makes things right. Whoever gains power can control society according to their own ideology. This results in the paradoxical destruction of freedom and democracy.

The Virtue Tradition

The good news is that the Catholic Church is the guardian of an ancient virtue tradition which was formulated by Plato in ancient Greece. He is not the inventor of these virtues because they can be known by all human beings with sufficient reflection and support. Other ancient cultures including China, the Indies and the Hebrew worlds exhibit similar virtue traditions. We can thus think of Plato as formulating the laws of virtue in the same way as Newton formulated the laws of motion; they discovered rather than invented them.

Virtue means moral goodness or strength. Cardinal means hinge. The 4 Cardinal virtues of Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude are thus thought of as the virtues upon which all others hinge. They are good in themselves and help us to live virtuous lives in order to flourish as individuals and as a society. Prudence helps us to act with respect for truth in itself. Justice helps us to act with respect for the truth as applied to others - including our enemies. Temperance (which includes chastity) and Fortitude help us to act with respect for the truth as applied to ourselves. These virtues can be acquired by human effort to become stable dispositions. The more we practice virtue the more we grow in each of the virtues. Prudence is thought of as the 'charioteer' of the other natural virtues. By these we control our passions and govern our actions. We are always focused on the greater good.

However the natural virtues are insufficient. We have the problem of Original Sin and the tendency to fall into actual sin after Baptism. The 7 deadly sins of Covetousness, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, Lust, Anger and Pride - the root of the others - make the practice of virtue very difficult.

Also we are a unity of body and soul; we do not just have a natural destiny but a supernatural destiny. We long for supernatural truth, prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. We have an eternal end.

The Christian moral life cannot therefore be understood healthily apart from Grace. We need God to pour out upon us His Divine Life. Because of sin He is not obliged to do this for us even though we stand in total need of His love. Nevertheless, He chooses to lavish His Grace upon us and constantly works to prompt us to accept His Grace.

The Christian accepts the Priority of Grace and then responds by living the moral life as an act of love. We cannot be moral by our own efforts. To be a virtuous Christian then is to accept the life of virtue as primarily a gift. It does not leave us passive however. It is both a gift and a task.

The 3 Theological Virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity are thus infused into us at Baptism. Unlike the natural virtues we could not have known about them by natural reason. We needed Divine Revelation. They have God - the Blessed Trinity - as their origin, motive and object. We need them to be pleasing to God and for our eternal salvation. Grace builds on nature and so the Theological Virtues build on the foundation of natural virtues and raise them to new heights of perfection which they could not otherwise have reached.

Many young people - indeed many Catholics of all ages - are not being taught these basic aspects of the Faith. This is one of the reasons why so many of them leave the Church. Peter Kreeft quotes a survey which asked young people what was the main thing which they felt that the Church did not give them. The number one answer was: A high and heroic ideal! This demonstrates that these young people have been denied the full teaching of the Faith in their families, parishes and schools.

In truth, there is nothing higher or more heroic than Christ's call to discipleship. In our age we need to respond to this call so radically as to become saints. The Second Vatican Council reminds us that everybody is called to holiness. In order to do this we need to become people who depend upon Jesus Christ and His Grace through the Sacraments, prayer and sharing the pilgrim walk with our fellow Catholics. We need to teach virtue both by working with God to become virtuous and by teaching the full Faith. This includes its more demanding elements. As Jesus said in John 14:15, 'If you love me keep my commandments.' We owe our young people nothing less if we are to help them to discover the full meaning of life. This is the New Life in Jesus Christ. The future salvation of our souls - and of our society - depends on this.

Will we accept God's call to become saints? Hopefully we will!

God doesn't save us without us

My sermon for today, 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year 'C':
In today's first reading the prophet Elisha heals a Syrian man, Namaan, from the effects of leprosy. In the gospel Jesus does something similar. He heals ten lepers, and although all ten are presumably happy to be cleansed of the disease, only one comes back to actually thank Jesus.

The language of these passages shows that, as in many instances of miraculous healings in the Bible, the physical cure isn't the main point of the story. The main point is the spiritual impact and the spiritual change that takes place as a result of an encounter with God.

Creed, Code & Cult - Session One

Today was the first session of the Creed, Code & Cult talks which I hope will take place monthly between now and next June. Alan is going to write a post summarising his talks later. This is just my brief record of the event.

Between 8.30 and 9.30am I got two or three phone calls from people saying that, although they'd put their names down to attend, something had cropped up and they weren't able to come after all. I wondered: how many more will fail to show?

Thankfully I needn't have worried. In the ten minutes before Mass started the car park began to fill up.

Creed, Code & Cult

This coming Saturday, 9th October, St. Joseph's is hosting the first in a series of monthly talks about different aspects of the Catholic Faith by Alan Houghton, of Torch of the Faith. He and his wife Angeline (pictured above) will be arriving early that morning, ready to kick-off with 10.00am Mass, which I'll celebrate with any other brother priests who happen to come along.

Alan's first talk will start around 10.45am, there will be a break for tea and coffee at around 11.30am, then another short talk and a bit of discussion, if people feel chatty, and we'll finish off with a buffet lunch.

Genuine faith keeps to 'sound teaching'

My sermon for today, 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year 'C':

Five years ago there was an interesting survey made in America of the religious attitudes of teenagers who defined themselves as believers. The academic conducting the survey, a sociologist called Christian Smith, reached two broad conclusions.

One was that religion, for these young people, was primarily a matter of being a good person - being good and nice and fair, in their terms - and second, that they saw the main purpose of religious faith as therapeutic: something that's meant to make people feel happy, fulfilled, contented.