The Pensive Pilgrim

A few days ago I took a funeral service. Unlike several others recently, the death wasn't Covid-19 related. As the mourners gathered in the Crematorium, I  noticed that, despite the Funeral Director's best efforts,  many of them were taking no notice whatsoever of the social-distancing markers on the chairs. As a result, many rows were filled with people who clearly weren't all from one household or 'bubble'. To their credit, they were all wearing face masks, but as the service ended and they filed past me into the courtyard area, many of them huddled close together whilst others kissed and embraced. As several people were chatting, they either raised, lowered or removed their facemasks.  Grief, of couse, is difficult enough to cope with at the best of times, and it's hardly surprising that mourners at a funeral either forget what precautions they need to be taking or abandon them because they simply find them all too much to bear in such sad circumstances.  It...

 One day, a couple of years ago I had two appointments to keep in London. I was going to have a little time to spare, so I asked myself how I might best fill the time. Some people would probably say that I should have gone shopping; but my itinerary didn’t really allow long enough for a decent shopping spree, and anyway I’m a Yorkshireman, so I didn’t want to spend any money! It occurred to me that I was due to make a confession. What better place to do it than London? With so many famous Anglo-Catholic churches, there was bound to be somewhere with a set time for hearing confessions where I could slip in and out anonymously. Just for interest, I picked up my copy of ‘The Church Travellers Directory 1973’ – which some of my readers will doubtless remember with great affection. It listed the churches in which at that time there was a Daily Mass, indicated by a letter D, where the main Sunday Service was always a Mass indicated by an S, where Confessions were heard regularly at fixed...

In 1987 the British government launched a major public heath campaign warning of the dangers of what was then a new killer disease - AIDS. Every household in the country received a leaflet entitled ' AIDS - 'Don't die of ignorance' . This was accompanied by two nightmarish TV advertisements featuring  the violent eruption of a volcano, a crumbling iceberg and the four apocalyptic letters A-I-D-S being chiselled into a gravestone to the strains of  the latin hymn for the dead  'Dies Irae' ('Day of Wrath'). The chilling voice-over by John Hurt explained the dangers of this terrifying new phenomenon and gave a stark warning:  'If you ignore AIDS, it could be the death of you.'  This campaign was both a major success and a disastrous failure. It was a success because it did indeed strike terror into people's hearts. Everyone was aware of this new health threat and suddenly became fearful of 'catching AIDS' (sic). Ironically - and tra...

"Church of England weighs up cull of bishops "  screamed the headline in today's Sunday Times. The article went on to say " T he Church of England is to begin a rethink of its role which is expected to lead to a 'massive shrinkage' in the number of dioceses and parish churches that it runs - and could even mean that it had dozens fewer bishops."   This shouldn't come as any surprise. It has been blindingly obvious to many people for some time that the Church of England currently has far too many churches, many of them unsustainable, and that it would make sense to merge some dioceses, to slim down the administrative infra-structure and to move towards a majority of parochial clergy being self-supporting. The famous hymn parody says " Like a mighty tortoise moves the church of God"  and it is certainly true that the Church of England moves slowly on many things, especially those issues that are contentious. The economic fallout of the ...

The Bishop of London, The Rt Revd Sarah Mullally has been tasked with advising the Church of England on how best to respond to the potential easing of the Covid-19   ‘lockdown’, and has warned that it’s unlikely that things will be be back to normal by the end of the year. This statement should come as no surprise. The reality of Covid-19 is that it’s going to be with us for some considerable time and that it may be years before an effective vaccine is available.   In any event, as a result of the social and economic disruption that Covid-19 has caused - to say nothing of the need to be much more hygiene conscious and better prepared for any future pandemics - life is going to be very different for all of us. To quote that much overused phrase, ‘We shall have to adapt to a new normal’. Even if we were sufficiently naive to attempt to pick up where we left off, I suspect the church would inevitably look rather different. First, some of its members will have been l...

In the mid 1970s, although brought up as an Anglican, at the age of sixteen I was acting as organist of a Methodist Church in my hometown of Harrogate. There I met a group of young Christians - most of whom were in their early to mid-twenties - who called themselves ‘Charismatics’. I didn’t really know what this name meant, but I realised that they had something I didn’t have - a strong sense of living in relationship to Jesus Christ and knowing his love and presence in a special way in the power of the Holy Spirit. As I got to know these people better, they invited me to join a study group that was meeting on Sunday evenings in the Methodist manse. They were studying a book that was hugely popular at the time, ‘When the Spirit Comes’ by Colin Urquhart – an Anglican Priest who had had a profound experience of the Holy Spirit and then led his church into renewal.   If I’m honest, I was as fascinated by the book’s cover as I was by its contents. The first edition (published...

‘May you live in interesting times.’ So says the well-known ‘Chinese Curse’. In these days of ‘lockdown’ in response to the Covid-19 virus, we are indeed living in interesting times, and very much in the sense which the curse implies. In the Rectory household, the ‘interest’ started before the major Covid-19 crisis hit. At the beginning of February, I was due to attend the annual Priests’ and Deacons’ Pilgrimage and Retreat at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, as I have done for several years. I was looking forward to this, as it’s always an inspiring event that provides lots of opportunity for prayer and reflection. It feeds my Catholic spirituality and helps set me up for the rigours of Lent, Holy Week and Easter. Unfortunately, a few days before the retreat, our beloved dog, Nancy became seriously ill and died on Sunday 2 nd February, The Feast of the Presentation. Fellow pet owners will understand that this amounts to a family bereavement, with all the ...