Et Crucifixus Est

From the East Window of Worcester Cathedral

‘I thirst’ from the setting by Sir James MacMillan (b. 1959) of the Seven Last Words from the Cross.  

An Ambush of Hope on Maundy Thursday

There was I preparing my usual Maundy Thursday jeremiad on the crises of our time, the evaporation of meaning from our language and culture, when, all of a sudden, from various different sources, I was ambushed by a fusillade of extraordinary statistics.  In London’s largest Catholic diocese of Westminster, there has been a twenty-five per cent increase in adult baptisms in a single year; taking neighbouring Southwark into account, nearly a thousand adult Londoners will be baptised.  Across all churches in Britain there has been a fifty-five per cent increase in numbers since 2018.  Moreover, the growth is among young people: whereas in 2018 4 per cent of 18–24-year-olds were regular church goers; this has now risen to 16 per cent, and of this number, 41 per cent are Catholic.  Meanwhile, in France, there has been a record number (17,800) of adult baptisms, a forty-five per cent increase in a single year.  Again, young people seem to be the driving force: an extraordinary 42 per cent of these are aged 18–25.

Living in London I have long had a sense of the vitality of the Church here, and it is remarkable to see this hard evidence of a revival, of a New Evangelisation under way.  It is my privilege to count several of these recent converts among my friends, and I can attest to their dedication and energy; also to their level-headedness and prudence.  From them I draw the same conclusion as the statistics suggest: this is is no fad or emotional spasm, but the sum total of many careful decisions made after long thought and prayer.  ‘Something is happening out there,’ as the American social commentator Mary Eberstadt has said, and it is as true on this side of the pond as it is on hers.

Screenshot from Catherine Pepinster’s article in the Telegraph, 13 April 2025: ‘The extraordinary resurgence of the Catholic faith in Britain’.

The situation has even piqued the interest of (largely secular) colleagues at (very secular) work, and I was briefly fielding questions in, it seemed, an impromptu press conference  They were intrigued enough to advance reasons, many of which I think are accurate: the crises of our time, both visible and invisible (in the first category, pandemic, war, climate change and the economy; in the second, of meaning, relationships and of the human body).  The degradation of our culture, the damage to our common home the chaos of the online continent, the philosophical challenges posed by political upheavals and by the smartphone and by artificial intelligence… these are the crises that we all know about.  And also playing their part are the crises that the Church has, however unfashionably,  long been predicting, and which now even the secular world must notice: the collapse of trust and happiness between the sexes, the unsustainably low numbers of births, the decline of marriage and the family.  (Another astonishing statistic from Versailles diocese was that 80% of catechumens in their twenties come from broken homes).

But the reason for the conversions is not necessarily, and certainly should not be entirely negative.  It is not solely out of fear and uncertainty that we ‘turn to religion’ as my colleagues put it.  The explanation might be far simpler: that our spirits crave more than the sugary junk of a moral and cultural code that secular progressivism has been serving up for the last six decades, and that we long for more — hunger for beauty, truth and goodness — that we seek the face of God.

What is also inspiring is that many of these converts have found their way to the faith from quite a remote position: raised without a connection to the Church, they have set out and found their way home, against all fashion, against all trends, and indeed, risking outright disapproval from all sorts of directions.  And in their search for meaning and clarity they have fallen for none of the insane ideologies waiting to scam their souls — or at least they have not fallen for them permanently.  They have come to the Church that so many wrote off, mocked, dismissed, attempted to smother.

But, this being Maundy Thursday, are we getting ahead of ourselves?  Statistics are only statistics: in the early 1960s the seminaries were full, after all, and few foresaw the decline that is still the general trend.  Professor Stephen Bullivant has said that the Catholic Church is only doing the least badly of the Christian Churches; in 2023 Mass attendance in England and Wales was only 555,000, compared to pre-pandemic figure of 702,000.  And if in bleaker years we have remembered rightly that the Church does not depend on numbers, that ‘Truth draws strength from itself, not from the number of votes in its favour’, or ‘Where two or three gather in my name, there am I among them’, then increased numbers now do not in themselves make the faith any more or less true.  The disciples, arrived in Jerusalem for Passover, might have reckoned they had done a decent job over the previous three years, but subsequent events were to render any performance appraisal utterly irrelevant, to leave in tatters any consideration of their performance against agreed objectives.

Likewise we in the Church, to be blessed at the Easter Vigil with so many new brothers and sisters, know that this remarkable gift is not just the measure of mission statements and strategies — true though it is that a great deal of hard work and courage lies behind this new growth.  It is again a sign that God’s ways are not our ways, that we are His instruments in the New Evangelisation, not He ours.  And certainly, seeing things in this way, there is never a dull moment: it is at times like these that we see how dramatic the results can be.  

And speaking of drama, now we follow the disciples into the Upper Room, as evening falls, and the lamps are lit, and the shadows play around the walls…

The setting by Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986) of the Tantum ergo, sung by the French ensemble La Cité de la Voix in the Basilica of Sainte-Madeleine de Vézelay, Yonne.  ‘Therefore, so great a Sacrament / Let us venerate with heads bowed, / And let the old practice / Give way to the new rite; / Let faith provide a supplement / For the failure of the senses.’

Rondel for Ash Wednesday

Reposted according to tradition… 

All friends of Christ, hold fast, hold fast;
Fear not these desert days of Lent. 
All grunged-up souls, all people pent 
In pleasure’s prison, bravely cast 
Your senseless sin aside at last: 
Believe the Gospel and repent. 
All friends of Christ, hold fast, hold fast;
Fear not these desert days of Lent.
The thirst and hunger will not last, 
For by God’s Son, who underwent 
The Cross, we know that we are meant 
For Heaven’s home when pain is past — 
All friends of Christ, hold fast, hold fast.

Brancaster Bay, north Norfolk, August 2024

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

‘Here is my stone-ribbed nest…’  St. David’s Cathedral, 6th March 2024.

Wishing a very happy feast of St. David to all who have reason to celebrate!

[…]  I am David.

I am the Dovebearer.

I speak of peace.

I counsel joy.

    In a fold of the furthest west,

    Here is my stone-ribbed nest.

I am David.  

Under my feet

The rock of Dyfed

Has raised me up

    To tower in time’s March gales.

    I am David.  I am Wales.

Raymond Garlick (1926–2011)

A Double Treat for Ruth Gipps’ Birthday

This year there is even more reason than usual to celebrate the birthday of the British composer Ruth Gipps (1921–1999).  Two new records — a third and fourth volume of her orchestral music — are coming out in quick succession, both issued by Chandos Records.  Volume III, which was released last month, includes her First Symphony, which remained unperformed and unrecorded from 1942 until a BBC Radio 3 broadcast on 22nd February last year.  There is also her delightfully optimistic Horn Concerto and a triple helping of orchestral pieces: the Coronation Procession, Ambervalia and Cringlemire Garden.  Volume IV, due for release on April 11th this year, will include her elusive Fifth Symphony, along with her Violin Concerto and Leviathan for double-bassoon.   In both cases we once again have conductor Rumon Gamba and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra to thank for their musicianship.

It is the prospect of the two symphonies that I find most exciting.  Of the five neglected symphonies of this hitherto-neglected composer, so little seemed to be said of Gipps’ First Symphony that I had imagined it would simply never be heard.  Symphony No. 5 I knew, but only from a scratchy recording of its 1982 première which, shockingly, had been its only performance until, in April 2023, Gipps Revival veterans Adam Stern and the Seattle Philharmonic Orchestra stepped up to the plate with the American première.  At the second British performance a month later, I marvelled, for the hundredth time, that such wonderful music could have been so completely sidelined.  I have been waiting for years for a recording.  Now, however, with these new discs, which I have every reason to believe will match the standard of their forerunners, the putting right of a great injustice in British music will, I dare say, be more or less accomplished.  There is now every reason to hope for continued and frequent appearances of Gipps’ music on the radio, which in turn will bring her music to new ears, and hopefully encourage the programming of her music in live concerts.

As I have said before, the Ruth Gipps saga shows us how entirely and visibly an artist holding to his or her integrity may be vindicated in the end — however unlikely it may have seemed, however implacable the prejudices of fashion may have been — and it ought to give heart to all artists, writers and poets who are tempted to despair in the face of disdain or indifference.

Ten years of ‘Some Definite Service’

The village of Deeping St. Nicholas, Lincolnshire, seen from the Peterborough–Lincoln train, 20th March, 2014.

‘We read to know that we are not alone,’ it turns out C. S. Lewis didn’t say — I have almost been the latest to misattribute to the man himself a line spoken by him only in a fictionalised form, in the 1993 biographical film Shadowlands.  Still, the words ring quite as true as if he really had said them.  It was to know that I was not alone, for instance, that I started following Catholic blogs in early 2010.  I read for some alternative to the media hostility against the forthcoming visit to Britain of Pope Benedict XVI; I read in search of ripostes to  the media mischaracterisation of Catholics and the Christian faith and the personal attacks on Benedict himself; I read, in that heyday of the New Atheists, for witty rejoinders to the mockery of believers that was then still fashionably edgy.  I read, and kept reading, for intelligent and thoughtful writing on what the Church actually believes and why, and on living out our faith in the present age.

And what a relief it was to find those blogs.  Many were pseudonymous, such as the ‘Countercultural Father’ and now-defunct ‘Reluctant Sinner’, but others were written under their authors’ real names: Joanna Bogle’s was a particular favourite, as well as the various contributors to the Catholic Voices blog.  Either way, they seldom overstepped the mark in tone or content, to my mind at least, and whether vigorous or sober in style, in substance they were generally well-informed and intellectual.  They always gave plenty to think about — though I never dared comment!  I also enjoyed other writers beyond the so-called ‘Catholic blogosphere’, such as Peter Hitchens’ lyrical long-form essays and Eleanor Parker’s insights into Anglo-Saxon culture in ‘A Clerk of Oxford’.

Then, some years later, I happened upon the blog of Maolsheachlann Ó Ceallaigh (the ‘Irish Papist’), with its poetry, its unpretentious musings and memoirs, the occasional spice of more polemic pieces, and the quiet courtesy with which he diligently responded to every single blog-comment short of, though occasionally even including, actual spam.  It was probably in corresponding with him that a creative idea already glowing like a small fierce flame within me gathered strength until I could resist it no longer, and published the first post on this blog, ten years ago today.

The title came from a meditation of the great — now Saint — John Henry Newman, from which Pope Benedict quoted in his address in London’s Hyde Park on 18th September 2010, and which seems as sound as ever:

God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.

He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work.  I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.  Therefore, I will trust Him, whatever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him.  If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.  He does nothing in vain.  He knows what He is about.  He may take away my friends.  He may throw me among strangers.  He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me.  Still, He knows what He is about.

Bl. John Henry Newman: Meditations on Christian Doctrine, Meditations and Devotions, March 7, 1848.

And here is the excerpt from Pope Benedict’s address in which he reflects on the above passage:

One of the Cardinal’s best-loved meditations includes the words, “God has created me to do him some definite service.  He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another.”  Here we see Newman’s fine Christian realism, the point at which faith and life inevitably intersect.  Faith is meant to bear fruit in the transformation of our world through the power of the Holy Spirit at work in the lives and activity of believers.  No one who looks realistically at our world today could think that Christians can afford to go on with business as usual, ignoring the profound crisis of faith which has overtaken our society, or simply trusting that the patrimony of values handed down by the Christian centuries will continue to inspire and shape the future of our society.  We know that in times of crisis and upheaval God has raised up great saints and prophets for the renewal of the Church and Christian society; we trust in his providence and we pray for his continued guidance.  But each of us, in accordance with his or her state of life, is called to work for the advancement of God’s Kingdom by imbuing temporal life with the values of the Gospel.  Each of us has a mission, each of us is called to change the world, to work for a culture of life, a culture forged by love and respect for the dignity of each human person.  As our Lord tells us in the Gospel we have just heard, our light must shine in the sight of all, so that, seeing our good works, they may give praise to our heavenly Father.

The heyday of the ‘Catholic blogosphere’ now seems some way past.  There are still plenty of good magazines and newsletters with engaging articles, but fewer individual blogs than there used to be, and those less lively.  (That said, there is a good deal of activity to be found via Malcolm Mann’s list of extant Catholic blogs at the British Catholic Blogs directory).  Perhaps it was mostly a ‘Benedict moment’, a phenomenon with a particular context, but like all such things it may have sown the seeds of a quiet harvest.

As for this particular blog, I wrote, and write, however sporadically, much as I have read — to know that I am not alone — and to try to convey similar reassurance to others of like mind.  I know how encouraged I was in my faith, temperament and conviction by these other writers, and I have always felt that in making my own contribution I might help to do for someone else what these others did for me.

For in today’s Britain it can, and often does, feel like a lonely business being a Catholic Christian, never mind an Englishman of homely and nostalgic temperament.  This sense of isolation may seem unlikely, given that I have millions of fellow believers around the world, to say nothing of the companionship we find in the canon of the saints and in the pages of old books.  And indeed, it has been my astonishing blessing over the last ten years to get to know more friends of like mind than I once could ever have hoped for.  Even so, it can feel lonely.  So much is no longer what it used to be: old traditions, cherished institutions, principles, morals and manners… none seem able to withstand the caustic solvent of liquid modernity, and only in certain niches like family homes, rare schools, or particularly vital parishes, does the old culture thrive.  In such moments I have found it helpful to seek the company, even the virtual company, of others who think and feel along the same lines.

Having said this, the blog is not just supposed to be a balm for gloom.  I try to write in both major and minor keys, hoping to produce as much a positive celebration of poetry, music, churches, landscapes and traditions, and other oddments, as a record of what has passed.  Indeed, one regret about the blog is that it doesn’t seem to leave me much room for humour.  Exposed to the windswept steppes of the Internet, which lack the context and shared experience which are so essential to a shared sense of humour and in which misunderstanding seems so easy, and perhaps amid the kind of virtual stage-fright that results, I find it much harder to crack jokes — no doubt to the benefit of all.

Thank you to everyone who has read, or commented on, or enjoyed, or been sent to sleep by this blog over the past decade.  I don’t know how much longer Some Definite Service will last, but as long as it seems worthwhile, I will try to offer, as far as I can manage, the kind of refuge that I myself seek in other blogs, and a candle of witness to the many good and gentle things I see in the world.  For, ultimately, those are the things that will endure, or, if not, the eternal verities they betoken.  Hope, that slow-burning thing, may have to wait ten, or a hundred, or two thousand years, but it will outlast all opposition — and even all blogs!  — until its final and wondrous vindication.

John Everett Millais’ portrait of John Henry Newman on display at Arundel Castle (W. Sussex), 13th September 2019.