Start of Term

All back now to the seminary to begin the new term. I have to confess to being a little scared because it's an especially important time for two of us because the fifth year are currently being assessed as to whether or not we should be ordained as deacons in the summer. Please do pray for us!

We've already started our course on the more practical side of what it means to be a deacon. The course includes thinking about the nature of the promises the candidate makes at Ordination (which includes 1. respect and obedience to the Bishop, 2. celibacy, 3. to pray the Divine Office and develop a suitable life of prayer). Today we focused on the deacon being configured, through the Sacrament of Orders, to the person of Christ the Servant.

Operation: Placement!

A belated Happy New Year to all. I had a nice time at the Youth 2000 retreat, having recharged my spiritual batteries for the year ahead! We seminarians are now on a three week placement before we go back to Oscott. I'm in a little town in Suffolk called Haverhill, where the parish is situated in a large and rather labyrinthine housing estate. It is a very different parish from my last placement in Peterborough, being much smaller for a start. The community seems very friendly and close-knit. I'll be doing a bit of work in the parish primary school, but the main thing will be visits to the local prison, which is one of the parish priest's main ministries. Also, at the moment there's a big push to build a new church, because the present one is too small and is little more than a makeshift hut. Still, I find it easy to pray there, and I'm drawn to the large, beautiful wooden crucifix that hangs over the tabernacle. It makes me think of the crucifix in the Don Camillo books/ movies (which Fr Tim Finnegan posted about some time back on his blog)... Unlike Don Camillo though, who secretly takes the hefty crucifix with him when he leaves the village, I don't think I'll be carrying this one back to Bury St Edmunds!

Happy Christmas

I hope everyone is having a blessed Christmas season and that your resolutions for the New Year bring great graces! Three of the us are going to the FAITH conference at Stonyhurst, and one to the Youth 2000 New Year's retreat in London, so between us all we're covering some ground... At home I'm trying to make a crib set with my family, which can be added to year by year and which will be based in our town, so it will include some of those people who are known to the town or to our family, as well as all the biblical personages. It should be great fun! However, we've already had a schism, as different family members seem to be working from different scales, and so the crib sets are beginning to rival one another...

Vespers by Hazard Light

Well, term's finished, exams are over, and one more seminarian is ordained - please keep Fr Dominic Coslett of Birmingham diocese in your prayers. After going to the ordination on Saturday afternoon, some of us made our way back to East Anglia, only to get a flat tire on the way back, caused by a pothole! We tried to get the tire off oursleves, but it was stuck, so we had to wait for the RAC man to come. In the meantime we said evening prayer by the light of Michael's hazard lights - 'vespers by hazard light,' as he remarked. One of the challenges of being a diocesan seminarian or priest, it seems to me, is finding time and space to say the Divine Office during the day (less so for a seminarian, as we have a communal life to a large degree). But it's also quite fun that any mundane situation can become a launchpad for the consecration of one's day to God - on the bus, at home, in a park, in a waiting room... (note: I do wish Harper and Collins would make alternative smaller breviaries that can be fitted into pockets!)


Incidentally, has everyone read Pope Benedict's words on the 'ecology' of mankind from the other day, which have been taken up by the BBC? He talks brilliantly of a need to restore the understanding of human nature as male and female, and says that ignoring these distinctions in the moral sphere only leads to self-delusion and self-harm:

'That which has come to be expressed and understood with the term 'gender' [understood wrongly] effectively results in man's self-emancipation from Creation and from the Creator. Man wants to do everything by himself and to decide always and exclusively about anything that concerns him personally. But this is to live against truth, to live against the Spirit Creator.'


On the flip side, the significance of the Incarnation is that Christ chose to carry out His saving work not by himself, but with and among men; he did not have a monopoly on everything concerning Himself, but obeyed the will of the Father out of love; he did not 'liberate' himself from Creation, but chose to share in it. So Pope Bendict's remarks are quite seasonal!

College Feast Day

Today is our college feast day: Our Lady Seat of Wisdom. The seminarians were busy all of yesterday preparing - that meant decorating the chapel, polishing the vessels for Mass, running through the liturgy and practising the music. We began this morning with sung morning prayer after meditation, and then at 11.30 Mass was celebrated by the Archbishop with over 40 guests in attendance, including many past Oscotian priests. The schola sang Elgar's beautiful setting of the Ave Maria. Then we had a splendid lunch. I must say I'm rather full now, as I'm still recovering from a Chinese buffet dinner to which four East Anglian priests treated us when they came up last night! So I worked it off by playing a gruelling match of badminton with one of my peers. A wonderful day to celebrate the life of the seminary, but also to turn to Mary as the one who leads us to her Son, who is Wisdom itself.

A priest and a pope

Last Tuesday we had a Vietnamese priest whose charity we are supporting this year come to talk to the Justice and Peace group. I will keep his name and charity anonymous, because although he is happy to promote his charity around England, I don't want to run the risk of getting him into trouble with the Vietnamese government (assuming they would care to read English seminarians' blogs). This priest goes every year to Vietnam with money he's raised in England over the months, in his parish and through generous benefactors, and he distributes the money to needy causes in his home country. These include orphanages, leper hospitals, convents, and schools in need of basic material and educational resources. In many cases he gives the money to the parish priests, who then spend it directly as it is needed, and give a written account of how the donation is used. This priest's reasons for doing what he does are partly personal - his family itself moved from an extremely poor village in the country, and he promised to himself and his father that one day he would try to help the people from that village. But also, this priest sees that if the Vietnamese people, particularly young people, are given access to good education, they will be equipped to speak out against the injustices that are taking place in the country. (Note: If anyone wishes to support the charity, they can give me their email and I will send the details.)


The priest said that in terms of charitable action and standing up to the government, the Catholic Church is by far the strongest voice in Vietnam. This statement reminded me of other times in modern history when the Chuch has taken the side of the suffering. Only today I saw in The Tablet that there is yet another article accusing Pope Pius XII of virtually abandoning the Jews to the Nazis in World War II. Yet this is irreconcilable with much scholarship since the end of the war, and the testimonies of many during the war itself, that saw the Pope as public in his condemnation of the Holocaust, and instrumental in saving Jewish lives. The Nazis themselves said, "His [the Pope's] speech is one long attack on everything we stand for… he is clearly speaking on behalf of the Jews… he is virtually accusing the German people of injustice toward the Jews, and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals." Journalists from New York to London hailed him at the time as a public voice standing up to Hitler. http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/facts/fm0020.html

Albert Einstein, a secular Jew, had this to say:

'Being a lover of freedom, when the revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks….

Only the Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.'

- Albert Einstein, Time magazine, 23rd December, 1940 p. 38


May we be able to provide such a witness to the truth in our own time!

Our Lady of Walsingham

Happy Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham - it's still got another twenty minutes to go! I had the privilege of making a pilgrimage to Walsingham today with my mum (a proper pilgrimage, with a set of Rosary mysteries on the way, during the time there, and on the way back, though as my mum pointed out, John Paul II rather threw a spanner in the works by introducing a fourth set of mysteries!). The Mass was of course a solemnity, and the Sisters of Walsingham, from Brentwood, processed the statue of Our Lady into the church to place next to the altar. There were priests from the diocese as well as from elsewhere, and the church was extremely packed. Bishop Michael gave an edifying homily about Mary's place in the work of our salvation, and held up her humility as an example to us. He also preached the same message I had heard from a different priest the last time I was in Walsingham - that is, a pilgrimage is never the end, but the beginning! Like the slipper chapel there, which is where pilgrims traditionally took off their shoes to walk the last mile to the old shrine barefoot, going on pilgrimage is an initial step which entails consequent conversion of life. Mary is not the goal, but the Mother who points us to our ultimate end, Her Son. Below is an excerpt from the litany to Our Lady of Walsingham (not the same excerpt I posted a year ago):


Woman who wondered, Remember us to God.
Woman who listened, Remember us to God.
Woman who followed Him, Remember us to God.
Woman who longed for Him, Remember us to God.
Woman who loves Him, Remember us to God.

Situation in Vietnam

Recently we have learned from our brother seminarians from Vietnam training at Oscott of the ongoing events in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, where Catholics are holding prayerful vigils outside the old nunciature, which the Communist authorities have seized and are beginning to demolish. The Catholic community has long requested the return of the building to the Church in Hanoi, but the authorities have gone back on their promise to return it, and are doing so without any justification. In a letter to both the Vietnamese President and its Prime Minister, Archbishop Kiet of Hanoi has said, 'This act is a deed that smears the legitimate aspiration of the Hanoi Catholic community, ridicules the law, and disrespects the Catholic Church in Vietnam. It is also an act of trembling morality, and mocking society’s conscience.' The authorities, says the Archbishop, have even spread false information about the protest and used interviews with mock 'priests' supporting the demolition to dissuade Catholics from challenging the demolition. As many as 5,000 people have been praying outside the fenced-off sight, under close supervision, including the seminarians and religious of Hanoi. The seminary and nearby convent, as well as cathedral and the archbishop's residence, have been blocked off while the demolition is taking place. (At the same time a Redemptorist parish in the city is protesting against the seizure of its property, and some of the protesters are being detained by the police.) Please keep the whole situation in Hanoi, and in Vietnam in general, in your prayers.

Incidentally, according to one source the Church property is to be demolished to make way for a parking lot, which ironically reminds me of the Joni Mitchell song 'Big Yellow Taxi':

'Don't it always seem to go, that we don't know what we got til it's gone,
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot!'

Vigil for Vocations

The other night we had a Holy Hour for vocations to the diocesan priesthood, and for the conversion of England. It seems Michael had became fed up with the state of things ('Everyone's up and joining these religious orders, so we've got to be radical!'), so he advertised the Holy Hour for 2-3 am. However, most of the seminarians assumed it was meant to be 2-3 PM! Quite a few seminarians came nonetheless which was very encouraging. Please continue to pray for the diocesan priesthood in England and Wales, that young men will consider this call seriously, and that we will be true and courageous servants of the Gospel.

I have been reading Lumen Gentium for one of my courses, and it has a beautiful reference to the Church's ministries:

'[Christ] continually provides in his body, that is, in the Church, for gifts of ministries through which, by his power, we serve each other unto salvation so that, carrying out the truth in love, we may through all things grow unto him who is our head.' LG 1, 7

Facsimile of the Shroud

Happy Feast Day of Our Lady's birth! This marks the 4th day of our return to seminary. On Saturday we went to see one of four life-size facsimiles of the Shroud of Turin, which is on display in an Anglican church in Little Aston. It was bought for the vicar's wife by a friend off Ebay, of all places! I went along, fairly indifferently I must admit, as I had already seen the Shroud in Turin some years ago and was never incredibly struck by subsequent pictures I had seen of it.

But the afternoon was a very wothwhile experience, largely because of the way the presentation was laid out. On first walking in we were confronted with the negative of the Shroud, which shows up much more clearly the scars and blood stains than the actual shroud does, and accompanied with this was scientific evidence of the shroud's credibility, as well as quotes from the Scriptures that set the scene and turned the display into a meditation on the Passion. All the seminarians that came were visibly awed by what they saw and read. At the end of the display was the facsimile itself. I thought particularly poignant a piece of artwork which depicted the Cross, composed of the words of Psalm 22 ('All who see me mock at me,/ They make mouths at me, they wag their heads').

This visit grounded my own visit to Baddesley Clinton the day before, a Catholic manor in Warwickshire where Jesuit priests hid during the Reformation. On at least one occassion they were forced to use its priest holes to escape the spontaneous search of Queen Elizabeth's priest hunters. I guess the priestly vocation, lived well, will always be open to public humiliation and even persecution. It is well for us to remember that while living relatively comfortably in seminary!