Weekly Record 35 - Food & Famine (28 August 2010)
27 Aug, 2010
FOOD & FAMINE
We had the deepest holiday recess this week and for one reason or another this meant that there was no one available to cook a lunch each day in Cathedral House. With only Monsignor Cookson and myself in for lunch during the week I was dreaming up where we could go each day for our vittles – the Piazza for scouse, Italian one day, Chinese the next and finish off the week at 60 Hope Street. Who said us fellas don’t know how to survive and enjoy ourselves when everyone is away or injured. Anyway the dreams amounted to nothing as so far; either Monsignor didn’t feel up to going out or there have been notes on my desk each day saying Sister asked me to put some chicken in the oven for you both or some similar dish. Even when we men think we have gained our freedom we are quickly brought back to the realisation that women are really in charge. Who knows you may spot us hiding in a corner of the Piazza but if you do, don’t ‘spill the beans’ on us !
The disastrous flooding in Pakistan has been slowly spreading across the country leaving millions homeless and susceptible to disease and infection. People have lost homes, crops and livestock and are most at risk from water borne diseases such as cholera. Cafod have written to all parishes to ask their help. There are a number of second collections in September and also the Harvest Fast Day in support of the overall aid work of Cafod but they have requested that we have a special collection for Pakistan this weekend due to the desperate situation there. They are working with other aid agencies to provide emergency kits (blankets, water tablets etc) and life saving medicines and emergency health care. We will have a retiring collection at all our masses today to support the ongoing relief work in the face of a tragedy that is still spreading day by day.
This Monday is a Bank Holiday and there will be just the one mass that day at 10am in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel. I remember last August Bank Holiday Monday getting drenched at the Matthew Street Festival – surely it can’t rain again this year ! On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings there will be a visiting choir from Addlestone singing at the 5.15pm masses.
One of the highlights of the visit of Pope Benedict in a few weeks time will be the mass in Birmingham at which he will beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman. This inevitably will throw a spotlight on the life and influence of Newman on both the Catholic and Anglican church in this country in the 19th Century - he lived a long, profound and complex life dying in 1890. Over the next few weeks we will try in the newsletter to provide some information regarding his life story, his writings and his ongoing relevance for us today. If you wanted to read more on Newman yourself, Darton, Longman and Todd have published ‘A Mind Alive’ written by Fr Rod Strange (available in St Paul's bookshop) – I found it a helpful and interesting read.
Canon Anthony O’Brien Dean