|
LATEST
Towards Advent
Women at work, and culture thriving!
Westminster Cathedral Hall was open and busy early on the morning of Saturday November 19th as members of the Association of Catholic Women arrived along with members of a great range of other Catholic groups and organisations to set up the annual Towards Advent Festival of Catholic Culture. The ACW contribution includes one of the most indispensable and popular aspects of the day – freshly-brewed tea, and home-made sandwiches and cakes, served in great style. We pride ourselves on getting the tea going in time for the first teams of people who are setting up tables and humping heavy things about – and the day never stops from that moment onwards.
This year’s Festival featured glorious singing from the Gallery Choir of the Cathedral Choir School, a warm welcoming speech from Archbishop Nichols, a powerful talk from Monsignor Keith Newton of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham – to an audience which packed out the Hinsley Room, cramming into every available bit of floor space and perching in window-ledges and around the doors – and a delightful presentation from a youth drama team from Oxford celebrating the life and message of Blessed John Paul.
Throughout the day, the crowds were large. People thronged the various stalls, meeting groups which ranged from well known Catholic organisations such as the Catenians and the Catholic Truth Society to newer ones such as the Amar Jyoti Trust which helps a team of religious sisters in India who run a home and school for blind and partially-sighted children. It is always moving and exciting to see the wide range of activities which make up our Catholic culture. Young women from the Community of Our Lady of Walsingham, in their blue and white denim habits, had a stall near the ACW, as did the Catholic Herald newspaper, and further along could be found Our Lady’s Books, Fisher Press, the St Barnabas Society, Devotium (which makes and sells beautiful statues) the Friends of the Venerabile (which exists to support the English College in Rome), and The Music Makers, to name just a few.
ACW has been involved with Towards Advent from its inception over a decade ago and plays a major role in its planning and organisation. We glad to see it flourishing year on year. It is now a major feature of London’s annual calendar of Catholic events. It reveals a Church that is teeming with good things, and joyful in its message.
-------------------------------------------------
Letter Sent to
Dear Mr Cameron,
We are surprised and dismayed by your proposal to permit religious services so that same sex couples can have a marriage ceremony.
Marriage is not primarily a Christian act, but it is a universal acr. It can be interpreted in various ways, but no-where has it ever been a ceremony for two people of the same sex. The reason for that is surely obvious. Marriage has always looked to the future of every society, because husband and wife are able to produce children and their commitment to each other provides the best conditions for children to thrive in as they grow up. Children are the future. If there were no children a society would die out.
Christians, Jews and Moslems all uphold this self-evident truth, which is evolutionary in understanding the equality of male and female in marriage and the joint care for growing offspring.
Keeping marriage as the union of a man and a woman is not discriminating against homosexuals. It is simply honouring a self-evident truth. Society without the new and growing generation would condemn itself to extinction.
Yours sincerely
Letter to Catholic Herald 28 October 2011
It was astounding to read Fr. Roland Rolheiser's (20.October) article on sex as a God-
given good which lacks a solitary mention of the baby. He fails to link the pleasure of sex with the means by which a new human being comes into the world, to the greater glory of God and the continuity of the human race. Everything created is ultimately contingent and everything of any importance has a purpose. Since the Creator ordained that the human race would not be limited to his first creation of mankind, they were, male and female, blessed by divine Providence, and told to `Be fruitful and multiply'. (Gen. 2:28)
The coming of the child is, at once, the most marvellous outcome of sex—and the most
ordinary. It stretches the love of the mother and father beyond the love they experience
for each other. Sex engenders something even greater than the greatest pleasure.
_________________________________________________
|
