The Batley Torchlight Procession

I'll begin again. I had a lovely summer and yesterday was the first day of term. In the evening a gang of us went in a minibus to the Batley Torchlight Procession. This dates from 1951 when the then parish priest decided to introduce a bit of the spirit of Lourdes into West Yorkshire. We gathered before the handsome frontage of Batley Town Hall and listened to a reading of the Annuncation and then a sermon by one of our own priests, Fr Paul Redmond, about the handsome frescos in the apse of the Catholic church in Batley, St Mary's. Then we were off, hundreds and hundreds of us, holding lighted candles, saying the rosary and singing "Immaculate Mary" as we processed through the streets of this handsome mill town behind the statue of Our Lady born aloft by parishioners - while children pressed their faces to upstairs windows in houses we passed and an Asian shopkeeper stood by his door to take a photograph of us - before gathering in the said church for Benediction, followed by a pie and pea supper and a pint of beer in the parish social club. The students, many of whom have just arrived at Leeds Trinity, looked like they enjoyed themselves. Here we are just before setting off.

A great start to our conference

Professor Tracey Rowland started our conference off in fine style this evening with a lecture entitled "Christ, Culture and the New Evangelization in the Vision of Benedict XVI" which she delivered to a packed auditorium. She analysed with forensic accuracy a post-conciliar tendency to accommodate Church teaching to modernity through a misunderstanding of Gaudium et Spes' affirmation of the automony of the temporal order. This has led to a downplaying of the need to be connected to Christ and had resulted in a profound crisis in terms of religious education. Dr Rowland, who is the Head of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne, Australia, noted that Pope Benedict has emphasised on several occasions that renewal in the Church can only happen through a growth of holiness in individuals. It was a wide-ranging and beautiful lecture in which she quoted with equal ease from Church Fathers and Papal encyclicals and it'll soon be available on YouTube. There is a real buzz about Leeds Trinity this evening. Cardinal George, the Archbishop of Chicago was present, as was Archbishop Roche. We learnt at 11am today that Bishop Roche, as he was this morning, had just been appointed by the Pope to be Secretary to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments in Rome, and has become an archbishop. He remains Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Leeds for the present. It's an extraordinary feeling: we are, in a sense, fatherless. He's been a great bishop and we'll miss him - but more of that on another occasion. I've got to get to bed to prepare for Archbishop Fisichella's lecture in the morning. Incidentally, there are a few no-shows so if you'd like to come to the conference (even though it's technically full) I'd just telephone and plead.

An outstanding Eucharistic sermon

We heard a breathtaking sermon at our annual diocesan Corpus Christi procession today, which took place in the grounds of Hinsley Hall in Leeds just before the Olympic torch passed by on the road outside. Fr Peter Kravos, who attended the recent Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, juxtaposed the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods in order to initiate human civilisation (the latter being that which the Games celebrate), and who was punished for his temerity, with Jesus present in the Eucharist, God giving himself to man, the host in the monstrance representing the white-hot centre of God's love and mercy. Standing only a couple of metres from the exposed Blessed Sacrament and Bishop Roche, Fr Kravos, who is chaplain of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan Universities, then tackled the child-abuse scandal in the Church. He quoted Pope Benedict as saying that the clerical perpetrators of the crimes against children had allowed their faith to degenerate into routine. The ultimate Victim is always Jesus, he said. This current moment in the history of the Church invites us to enter more deeply into the Eucharistic mystery. "As Catholics we are not afraid of mystery," he concluded. It was great: he did not side-step the awfulness of the great harm done but he skilfully placed it within the Paschal Mystery made present on the altar. He conveyed the sense that atonement does not consist in mere reparation: it involves a breaking open of our hardened hearts through fearless engagement with Christ in his victimhood and his Eucharistic glory. It was one of those moments when a sermon becomes an event. Fired with suitable enthusiasm, I set about gathering the names of young people in the assembled crowd for our forthcoming Faith Walk to Egton Bridge in the North York Moors for the annual Postgate Rally: I garnered three email addresses; two girls said they would bring their friends; and then a great layman about my age with a 15-year-old son said that the lad hoped to get some of his friends to come along too. One good homily and everybody wants to participate in the life of the Church. Well used words unerringly strike home.

Pope's men gather in Leeds to help Britain

We are making the final preparations for our international theological conference on the New Evangelisation here at Leeds Trinity next week: http://www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/news_events/VaticanIIconference/Pages/default.aspx . The numbers are looking good - we're inching up to 200 now. That's great because conferences like this usually attract a maximum of about 100 I'm told. However, it's a bit difficult to convey the importance of our deliberations in a press release and the media have been a little slow to respond to the press releases which our excellent PR department has produced. This evening I recalled something a religious affairs journalist once said: if you're not a bishop, we're not interested. The press are drawn by the ecclesiastical celebrity factor. Also, everybody loves a good crisis. Accordingly, I penned the following which I hope will go out in the next day or two. The process reminded me of my three years as a journalist on The Universe before I went to seminary. Happy days (mostly)!

Pope’s men gather in Leeds to discuss way out of religious crisis

The man charged by Pope Benedict XVI with the task of staunching the flow of Catholics from the pews is to speak at a conference at Leeds Trinity University College this week. Archbishop Salvatore Fisichella heads up the newly created Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation. Its brief is simple: make people interested in the Catholic faith once again. He will be joined at the conference, which runs from 26^th to 29^th June, by other Church leaders and top Christian academics.

Mgr Paul Grogan, Leeds Trinity Chaplain and one of the co-organisers of the conference, said: “Our aim is to consider how we can share the most precious treasure we have, our faith, with the people of our society. That means first and foremost, the people of West Yorkshire. Many people profess to be Christians but their faith has become ‘tired.’ Mass attendance in this country is declining. We want to stop that.”

Among the key themes the conference will examine are the following: Should Christians try and persuade Muslims to become Christians? Should Christians seek to bring about political changes in society? Should the Catholic Church become more democratic? Are women treated as second-class citizens in the Catholic Church?

Cardinal Fernando Filoni, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples, and Cardinal Francis George, the Archbishop of Chicago, will also be addressing the conferences, as will leading female academics, including Professor Tracey Rowland, Dean of the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne and Professor Susan Wood, one of the most respected US Catholic theologians.

The conference is entitled “Vatican II, Fifty Years On: The New Evangelisation.”

I love my celibacy

"I love being celibate," I told a class of 17-year-olds in our diocesan Sixth Form College, Notre Dame, today. It was in response to a suggestion that if we ditched celibacy then lots of young men would want to become priests. As soon as I had said it, I checked myself and quickly thought through whether what I had said corresponded to reality - I have a tendency to adorn some things that I say with hyperbole. It's because of my Celtic ethnicity. But no, in this instance, speech expressed what is actually the case. Also, the act of naming something had made it the more real. Earlier, Mrs Breda Theakston, the diocesan Coordinator of Family Life Ministry, explained to the class that Blessed John Paul II once said that every person has "a vocation to love." My vocation is to love others precisely through my celibacy. After eighteen years as a priest, my whole mode of relating to people has been shaped by my publicly professed singleness. I would feel bereft if I were not able to enter into relationships, pastoral and personal, with the ease which my celibacy makes possible. I enjoy hanging around with students and having nowhere better to be. I am keenly sensible of the privilege of being the recipient of multiple confidences, a privilege which is connected in part, I think, to my singleness. I don't mind bearing the burden of occasional loneliness, feeling the sacrifice in small part, but simultaneously - and this is the great thing - feeling (or knowing in my soul in a fresh way each time I experience this pain) the presence of God, sustaining me and using my singleness for his unfathomable purposes. The students listened with respect. It's hard to know how to reach out to them, and I don't think I'm good at it, but it's worth the effort. I spoke to six classes in two days and I was exhausted at the end of it. I don't know how teachers keep going. Congratulations to Peter Smith, the Head of the PTE Programme at the College, for inviting in a range of speakers to speak about different aspects of the mission of the Church in this week after the exams. Here are some of the students and staff who engaged in this process (I like the green hair).
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True daughter of the Church

Leeds Trinity theology graduand Lauren Jackson recently passed her driving test and her proud parents bought her a nippy little Fiat Uno so that she can zip up and down between her Leeds home and Kintbury where she has secured a job as a senior team member in the St Cassian's Youth Retreat Centre. Being a true daughter of the Church she asked me to bless the vehicle, which I duly did today. I read out the little preface in the Book of Blessings beforehand and we were struck by the theology underpinning the simple act of blessing. It speaks of how modern modes of transportation bring people together and hence contribute to social unity. The intercessions focused on Christ as the Way in whom all our journeying finds its purpose. I hope that Lauren has many happy hours discovering Britain behind the wheel.

Having coffee with Christ

I returned today from the annual, two-day conference for Catholic Chaplains in Higher Education. We met at Loyola Hall in Liverpool. (Katherina Muller, who gave presentations on interreligious dialogue and Fr Dominic White OP, the chaplain at Newcastle and Northumbria Universities, are pictured above). It was uniformally excellent. I learnt a number of important things. Firstly, our ministry is "on the edge." Half the time you're not sure what exactly you're doing as a chaplain. You have multiple conversations and most people you talk to don't seem especially changed through having encountered you. Canon John Udris, spiritual director from Oscott College, put our ministry into context beautifully with an extended meditation on the fact that in Chapter 17 of Luke Jesus travelled "along the border" of Samaria and Galilee and it was there that he healed the lepers. We are on the border, between secular society and the Church. Moreover, we meet the Lord on the borders of our weakness and vulnerability. So basically, when I feel useless and ineffective, when I feel I am boring rather than engaging my interlocutor, who gives every impression of being entirely happy with his/her religious indifference, I press on with the conversation. I find that paradoxically deeply encouraging.

The second thing I learnt dovetailed with this. The role of the chaplain is essentially one of "presence." Professor Bart McGetterick of Liverpool Hope University expounded a wide and complex vision of Catholic education which, he said, was manifested in good Spirit-filled relationships and, a corollary of that, justice. The chaplain is one who is charged with building up good relationships within the institution. It's a very adequate, all-encompassing job description.

There was lots more but those are the two things that I found especially helpful. It's great to have a theological rationale for what we do. It has reminded me of the high significance of each pastoral encounter. I once saw Daley Thompson's face before the starting gun in an important 100m race: moment by moment distraction drained away until he was completely focused on the race in hand. It would be good to be so attentive to Christ in the other, as we chat over coffee, the same Christ in, say, the fifth encounter of the day, demanding my attention, as the lepers demanded Jesus's. In the photo above are Margaret Holland (centre) our Chair, and Roberta Canning, our National Coordinator, with Ray Bayliss, the chaplain at Keele University. Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, our President, was with us for the whole of the conference.