Order of St Lazarus new members

 The fine neo-classical Church of All Saints at Hassop.

Members and guests of the Military and Hospitaller Order of St Lazarus of Jerusalem met in Derbyshire just recently for a Vigil Service followed by Dinner and for the Investiture of new members and a lunch.

As you can see from the photos we have a very pleasant time of it, as our fraternity is most convivial.  While all that is, of course, enormous fun, it is the opportunity to live out some part of our Christian lives in a way that is both joyful and enables us to act in charity to those in need. So far this year the Grand Priory of Great Britain has given £21,000 to Cardinal Ranjith's charity in Sri Lanka to assist those affected by leprosy. SUROL aims to help those affected by leprosy to re-integrate into their communities and life a self-sustaining life once again.

 The beautiful warm weather called for a hat to suit the occasion!

Pictured here with my great friend,  Jennifer Brave, author of such diverse publications as "Law for Retailers" and a biography of Venerable Margaret Sinclair.

 The Vigil Service was followed by a delightful Reception in the garden of Hassop Hall, just next door to the church.  Here, members Cons. Anne Sterland and Col. Julian Tyson Woodcock.

 With our Treasurer, Chev. Nigel Sterland and Grand Secretary to the International Council, Chev. Matthew Jackson in the gardens of Hassop Hall.

 At a rather good  Dinner in Hassop Hall, the Chancellor, Fr Mark Lawler with one of our new members Chev. Jonathan Battye, a teacher of History at Chavagnes International College.

We don't go in for too many speeches - toasts follow dinner but the Grand Prior did welcome our guests, including the Mayor of Erewash, His Worship Kewal Singh Athwal and his wife.

The Investiture took place at Bakewell Parish Church.

 In the background you can see the Octavius Chamber Choir, who are based in Blackburn, Lancashire. They travelled down and provided excellent music at the Service.  The music was conducted by Mr David Scott-­Thomas, the Choir's Musical Director and the Organist was Mr Sam Hudson, the Organist and Director of Music at Blackburn Cathedral.

 I was surprised to become a Grand Officer of Merit. A secret that had been well kept in preparation by fellow members.

 We had a splendid lunch afterwards in Hassop Hall. Here with one of our guests, Coun. Mrs Carol Walker, Chairman of Derbyshire Dales District Council.

                         

 As I said - a splendid lunch at Hassop Hall.

It was the Manor and principal residence of the FOLJAMBES who remained until the reign of Richard II (1377-1399).  The infant heiress to Hassop became a ward of the King. He sold her for 50 marks to Sir John Leake, who speedily made one hundred percent profit by re-selling her at a price of 100 marks to Sir William Plumpton, who wished to secure her as a wife for his son. The matrix for England was still that increasing power struggle between the Barons and the only real power was the possession of land.

The Foljambe heiress was eleven months old when her covenant of marriage was made, and her considerable dowry of Hassop with a dozen other Lordships and moieties in twenty townships passed to the PLUMPTON family.

At the close of the 15th century, they sold Hassop to Catherine, widow of Stephen Eyre. From 1498 at the time of the purchase, the Eyre family who were Roman Catholic and staunch Jacobeans moved into that testing period of religious persecution. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth I they suffered a great deal in consequence, emerging steadfast. They were among those few Catholic families of the nobility who did not switch sides as a temporary expedient.  The Civil War in 1643 was another time of trial for the family, and Rowland Eyre turned his home into a Royalist garrison. It was the scene of several skirmishes and after the Parliamentary victory, the captured property was only redeemed at a cost of £21,000. Rowland's father had dismantled much of the old Hall and replaced it with the present one.

In 1814 Francis Eyre, a direct descendant of Stephen, succeeded to the title of Earl of Newburgh.

Born into an age when it was fashionable for Noblemen and their sons to follow the Byronic grand tour of Europe, Francis left his mark on the rapidly changing face of Britain with the unusual Catholic church built 1816-1818 in the severest Classical Revival style, its front resembling an Etruscan temple, the interior with a coved coffered ceiling - it has an underground passage to the Hall. Improvements to modernise the Hall and some alterations in the Neo-Classical mould were carried out a few years later. The estate passed to Dorothy, sister of Francis, in 1852, and a year afterwards to her widower, Colonel Charles LESLIE. The Hall bought from the Leslies in 1919 by Colonel H. K. STEPHENSON (later Sir Henry Stephenson Bt) eventually became the home of his son Sir Francis Bt and it was purchased by the present owners, the Chapman family, in 1975.

Hassop Hall is linked to only five families since the inventory of Domesday Book, there are remarkably intact records with specific dating of days and years.

A good death and good nuns

Some nuns rejoice at the unusual sighting of some positive publicity.

In preaching last week about the "Assisted Suicide" Bill going through Parliament, I lamented the fact that so little government money was spent on hospices, where people are enabled to make a "good" death. This happens now mostly in a secular setting, though linked to our traditional theological understanding of what that means - being prepared not just to leave this world but to enter the next.  Not surprising considering that so many Hospices were founded by Catholics and other Christians. Our own local Hospice (named after St Catherine of Sienna and opened on her feast day in 1981) was founded by a good Catholic lady from Preston with her parish priest as one of the founding trustees.  How much more truly good and human it is to help people live whatever remains of their lives to the very best of their ability, rather than spend money on helping them to commit suicide?

The Telegraph today carries an article on hospices written by Lord Howard that highlights the good work hospices do and, incidentally, praises the role of "gentle nuns" who gave great care in his father's last months alive.  So easy for the general public to forget all the positive things the Church (and Her nuns) do, in the climate of hatred so often whipped up against the Faith.

Lord Howard recalled the death of his father at the family home in South Wales. He said: "I was a fledgling barrister at the time. He [my father] was told he would die in six months time and that's indeed what happened. I was there at the end.  "Before he died he was looked after by an extraordinarily dedicated group of nuns, and the devotion and care which they lavished on him as always stayed with me. The word I would use is gentleness. Gentle, loving care."

How to really assist the dying

I posted about signing the on-line petition against assisted suicide the other day. Matthew Schellhorn has written an article that speaks very plainly about how such a law might affect everyday lives in reality and how a more wholesome understanding of the precious gift of life can enhance even very painful experiences. (He more usually writes about matters musical, as he's a rising star in that world.) I first met Matthew last year when he organised the music for a Mass for the Order of St Lazarus in London.  He is to be congratulated on speaking so personally. 

As mum’s health declined and the opportunities for ‘normal life’ decreased, the possibilities expanded. We lived the paradox that when there are limits to life the freedom is greater. Mum knew that positive experiences would sustain the bereaved left behind: that further altruism gave her life some meaning...

Perhaps such personal testimonies are more powerful than all our theological and political arguments - although its a lack of theological and philosophical understanding, even at the most basic level, that lies behind so much of the malaise that our emaciated culture is experiencing in these days. When everything is subjective, we are on shifting sands and that's a difficult place too build anything.

Lord Lloyd Webber also speaks very personally in the Telegraph today of how easy it is to be led down a path that we might not live to regret should this practice come into force in our country.

I notice as well that from the earlier phrase of "assisted suicide" we have no moved over to "assisted dying" - so much less uncomfortable to speak plainly in these matters!

The vote takes place in the House of Lords today - which by Divine Providence is the Feast of St Camillus in the older calendar - founder of the Congregation sometimes called "The Fathers of a Good Death", the Camililans or Clerks Regular Ministers to the Sick.

Interestingly, he was ordained in Rome by Thomas Goldwell, the last Catholic Bishop to hold out against the English Reformation - just as the Church today needs to hold out against the destruction of all that was once held sacred, including life itself.

St Camillus - Pray for us.

Summer Fete

This week we are in the midst of preparing for the annual Parish Summer Fete.  Needless to say that much of the preparation falls to Father - along with Latin, another skill the seminary rather neglected to impart!

Divine Providence has always been rather kind to us in regard to the weather on these occasions, so I'm hoping the foretold thunder storms will keep away on Saturday. Our rather unruly grounds are looking a little smarter than usual due to a good turnout by parishioners last Sunday afternoon for a general tidy up - I'm sure the wine and beer promised at the end of the session had  nothing to do with it!  Thanks to those who cheerfully came along.

Anyway, for parishioners and locals, 

all are welcome this Saturday at 1pm.

You'll probably find me lurking at the barbecue!

Petition to David Cameron

Please consider signing this if you haven't already. Vulnerable and disabled people are at extreme risk if this new bill passes on Friday.

This petition will be delivered to: the Prime Minister, David Cameron

"Follow through on your declared support for the idea that Assisted Dying should not be legalised".

http://www.change.org/petitions/david-cameron-follow-through-on-your-declared-support-for-the-idea-that-assisted-dying-should-not-be-legalised?

Baroness Jane Campbell, Dr Phil Friend OBE, Dr Kevin Fitzpatrick OBE with the support of many other leading disabled people are organising this campaign to prevent a change in the law on assisted dying.

They are linking this campaign to the international movement opposing Assisted Suicide for Disabled People.

To read more about this campaign, please go to: http://www.notdeadyetuk.org/

Forty Hours Adoration

If you are anywhere near Manchester this coming weekend, 

you might be able to call in to 

Forty Hours Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament 

with the Oratorian Community at St Chad's Church, Cheetham Hill.

With commendable religious fervour, 

they are starting at 7am (!) on Friday 18th July 

and through the night until Saturday at 8.30pm.

Then continuing again on Sunday morning at 8.30am until 11.30am.

Solemn Mass at 11.30am.

The Church with no right to exist?

"Every notion which tends to bring down the supernatural order to the level of nature tends, by that very fact, to mistake the Church for the world, to conceive of her after the model of human societies, to expect her to change even in her essential structures and her faith to suit the world's changes - and this is indeed what is taking place among a number of our contemporaries... Today the secularist temptation has come to the fore very strongly.  Because the tendency of the times leads (to some extent) towards liberalism, some would like a representative, liberal and constitutional papacy; and because at the same time our society is evolving in a collectivist direction they tend to understand the collegial character of the Church in the form of a collective type of government.  These people overlook the divine laws of the Church because they no longer understand her primary mission.  The Church of Christ's primary, essential, irreplaceable mission is to remind us constantly, opportune, inopportune, of our divine supernatural vocation.

The role of the Church, especially in the person of her sacred ministers, cannot be reduced to [the temporal order which] is never more than a secondary end - even when the temporal order may have to be put first, here and there, so as to open up a path to the Gospel.  Otherwise the Church would be unfaithful to Christ, who did not preach the Kingdom of God "in order to provoke a general liberation of his people and to vanquish the Romans once for all.  She would succumb to that temporal heresy which consists in proposing that the temporal should end up by absorbing the eternal.  Thus losing her own soul, she would be reduced to a mere human organisation, and a totally ineffective one at that.  She would only be a parasite, duplicating, or trying to duplicate - without having either the qualified personnel or the necessary means - the institutions that men can freely create for themselves. At that stage, she should simply disappear.  And this is precisely what those whose minds are totally closed against the supernatural have been demanding for a long time.  This is also - what a paradox! - just what in practice some of her misguided children are clamouring for today, when they talk about wanting a "new" Church.  A Church secularised, naturalised, which would willingly give up her "cult" and replace it with "culture", seeking her lights not in the Gospels (even if lip service were still paid to them), but in the world; a Church which would pretend to be born today from some kind of radical "mutation", which would no longer concern herself, even with disinterested zeal, with anything but the organisation of life on this earth - such a church would have no right to exist any-more in the society of men, and would not be long in meeting dissolution."

Lest anyone think these words are my tipsy ramblings, far from it. These are not my words but the work of none less than Henri de Lubac.  

They were written (originally)  in a 1977 work, "Nature and Grace" (Ignatius Press, page 112ff).  He was was created a Cardinal by Pope St John Paul II in 1983.  

His words seems to pretty much describe where, for the most part, we have ended up today.  

Supplanting the supernatural with the ordinary and the secular.