Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum!

Today (Friday), Philip Cunnah (21, right) and Ryan Day (22, left) were both accepted into seminary by the Diocese of Middlesbrough! What fantastic news!

Phil will start this summer. It is yet to be OFFICIALLY confirmed as to where he'll go but you'll hear confirmation first on this blog. Ryan hopes he will start next year.

Both are from the beautiful city of Kingston-upon-Hull (though not originally, Phil was born in Sheffield and Ryan in Manchester). They were educated (same year as me) at St Mary's College, Hull. Phil is currently coming to the conclusion of his Maths degree in Newcastle whilst Ryan is due to complete his History degree at Cambridge next year.

Here they both are pictured outside a cafe during World Youth Day in Cologne.

Please pray earnestly for them and their vocation.

Well done lads!

(p.s. I usually hate using exclamation marks, but today is an exception)

Weekend down south

Had a great weekend in London apart from the nightmare journey home.

On Friday, I happened to notice the flag of Vatican City flying proudly above Archbishop's House.

It was a glorious sight. Everyone walking past were taking a look up and pointing at it. It's the first time I've seen it flying from there. Maybe the nuncio was visiting?

The trip included a reunion with three of my former housemates in Windsor on Saturday night. On Sunday morning, I managed to take some great pictures of the town and the castle before returning to London.

It was then back to London. Managed to catch quite a bit of the fun runners at the Marathon. A fascinating spectacle.

It was absolute chaos in Central London. Tube stations were rammed and there was restricted access to quite a few routes. However, managed to get to the Oratory for 4:30pm Mass. A Sunday afternoon Mass was new territory for me. Really have never heard of them before this weekend. Maybe it's just a southern thing...

Increasing amount of doctors refuse to perform abortions

There was some great news today on the pro-life front.

The Independent, followed up by several other media and press organisations, reported that “an unprecedented” number of doctors are refusing to be involved in carrying out procedures. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) has warned that the situation threatens to plunge the abortion service into chaos.

The pro-choice lobby has tried to come up with every excuse in the book to account for the RCOG’s findings. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) says the new generation of doctors have no understanding or experience of the so-called situation with back-street abortions prior to 1967. She said many doctors failed to appreciate that contraception sometimes failed or people did not use it properly.

Hopefully, the reason for this shift is simple. The medical profession can no longer deal with the horror of the abortion procedure, with the deliberate destruction of innocent human life and with the distinct contradiction abortion involves, against their caring and life-preserving role.

This story has provided a clear indication of how overwhelmingly biased most of the mainstream media is in favour of the pro-abortion lobby. Notice the complete lack of representation from the pro-life side in many reports. The Guardian goes with “ ‘Intolerant’ doctors blamed for looming abortion crisis”, completely dominating their story with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service’s position. Many young doctors are unwilling to provide terminations because they believe there is no good excuse for unwanted pregnancies, according to Ann Furedi. The BBC’s Today programme was unsurprisingly, many may say, worse. They questioned both Ann Furedi and spokesperson for RCOG Dr Kate Guthrie, of Hull Royal Infirmary, and gave both an easy ride. Here is the link. The most sickening of Ms Furedi’s comments was: “It [abortion] can be a very rewarding area for doctors to work in.”

Today’s headlines might a rare welcome piece of good news for the pro-life lobby in Britain, but it mustn’t be complacent. We need to be on guard to protect contentious objection and resist attempts for abortion procedures to become a mandatory part of the medical curriculum. Even medics who do contentiously object are under great pressure to refer patients on to doctors who will perform and give permission for terminations. This effectively amounts to collaboration with the evil of abortion.

Petty thieves

It's not often I have a rant, but tonight it's justified.

This evening I went to the pub on my bike to meet some good friends of mine who I haven't seen for ages. It was an good evening. We had a pub meal and then went onto another pub to watch the Liverpool match.

However, on my way out of the second pub, I discovered something intensely annoying. Some idiot (to put it very mildly) during the course of the evening had decided to nick the saddle from by bike. This meant that I ended up walking home but, more importantly, that I will have to buy a new saddle.

These are the types of petty crimes which go unnoticed as there is absolutely no point in reporting them to the police. But they are the crimes that often inconvenience the victims the most.

My bike provides my main form of exercise and, at the moment, my main form of transport. The people who steel things like this from bikes fail to realise that they are inconveniencing and angering people. They just think it's a bit of fun or think it's justified to nab something just because they don't have one or they spot one that's better than theirs.

It's called greed, pettiness and ignorance.

Chrism Mass and pilgrimage to Osmotherley

On Tuesday morning I travelled with my good friends, Phil and Ryan, up to Middlesbrough from Hull for the Chrism Mass.

It’s one of the great sights of the year to see dozens of priests processing out of the Cathedral sacristy in twos. Unfortunately, we arrived too late to get a seat in the main Cathedral which was quite frustrating. Despite protestations that we were fine standing at the back, we were directed to the parish hall where there was a live video feed of the Mass onto a big screen. Luckily, however, we managed to position ourselves near the big window looking into the main body of the Cathedral and had quite a decent view. But it did feel at times that we were segregated a bit.

Because Bishop Crawley is on leave at the moment recovering from illness, Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Anthony Williams of the Archdiocese of Liverpool. It was announced that Bishop John was in Holy Island and was sad that he couldn’t be with us. No one seems sure when he’ll be back, but it’s expected to be sometime next month.

After the Mass, we stuck around and talked with a few of the priests, including my uncle, Father Michael Marsden (PP in Hessle). Then it was on to the bun fight and more chit chatting. I managed to grab a very swift pint with Fathers Stephen Maughan and David Grant or “Granty” before being called away. We were staying with Father John Paul Leonard and had to settle in before the evening’s events.

At 6:30 we arrived at the Italian restaurant and me our young friends from the Boro. Tuesday was Fr JP’s birthday and Fiona, the new Diocesan Youth Manager, arranged a surprise birthday cake which was carried in by a waiter with a sparkler on top. He then left us to go and say Mass for the Knights of St Columba around the corner. After a few drinks and settling the bill, we followed JP on to the Knights club for a few (or more than a few, in some cases) drinks, a game of snooker and to watch the footy.

In the morning, we had a cooked breakfast at JP’s and attended his morning Mass. Then it was on to the Cathedral to meet up again with our young friends to begin the 16-mile trek to Osmotherley. As well as youngsters from Hull and Middlesbrough, Fr Sebastian from Ampleforth came accompanied by one of the brothers.

It was a beautiful day. Walking is one of the best youth events you can do because the atmosphere requires people to talk to each other and, significantly, to those whom they don’t know that well. Discussions included the liturgy, WYD 2008 and surprise surprise, Catholic blogging.

We stopped off at Hutton Rudby for lunch.

Here we are in Swainby at the 2007 public toilets of the year. What better place to stop for a break!

This is the glorious view of Teeside (if there is such a thing!) after the most gruelling part of the walk - a significant climb up some steep steps.

Here's Fr JP striding along on the final push up to Mount Grace.

On arrival at the shrine, we said some prayers and then finished with the Salve Regina.

There was just enough time to pop down for a quick pint in the village before catching a minibus back.

After a few nibbles at St Clare’s, it was back to the Cathedral for the Service of Reconciliation which was excellent and well attended. We travelled back to Hull refreshed and upbeat about the youthfulness of the Church and suitably prepared for Holy Week.

Iain Duncan Smith on Abortion, Mental Capacity Act and SORs

Now that my report about the brief (exclusive) interview I did with Catholic MP and former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith at the Life Conference (two weekend's ago) has been published in The Universe, I can now reveal the full text of our four minute meeting. I only got to ask him four questions and then he was called away to do his excellent speech based on his work as founder of the Centre for Social Justice. My next couple of questions were about the SORs but I didn't get chance to ask them. However, luckily, he did comment on them in response to another question.

This year is the 40th Anniversary of the Abortion Act coming up in October. What do you think are the consequences of 40 years of legalised abortion in Britain?

Like all these things, only after they have been done really we only begin to know for certain what the effects are. I think the staggering number of abortions in Britain is something that is necessary to be looked at. The abortion side of it doesn’t seem to have affected our levels of teenage pregnancy either because we are now topping the league of teenage pregnancies as well as I think we top the league of abortions which both go hand in glove. It suggests something deeper, there’s a deeper malaise I think in British society which I deal with in the report I made in December called breakdown Britain is something fundamentally difficult about what’s happening out there. I mean I’m one of those that has supported the idea that we should look again at the time scales on this and I think Nadine Dorries brought a bill forward the other day which I thought was worth supporting as a way of teasing out the debate and I think it is necessary for the debate to come about the time limits on abortion.

What are the dangers of further liberalisation of the law?

I’m not aware that there were any great pressures to liberalise it I think the real debate now is whether you curtail the time limits on abortion. And the area I’d very much like looked at is the area of those with mental incapacity where there are literally no time limits or physical disability, there are no time limits. So it seems to me that if you are disabled then you are a second class citizen in the eyes of the law and I don’t think that can be allowed to run for very much longer either.

Turning to the Mental Capacity Act which, of course, comes into force this year as well, obviously you were a strong opponent of that and particularly the euthanasia by ommission element. Do you think there's still a big loophole in this law?

Yes I do and I think it’s becoming to be found out too. I’ve heard a number of reports about issues and problems beginning to arise in hospitals. The doctors who warned about this were right. I think all of this is always driven by the euthanasia groups, those who want euthanasia and they disguise their position in all sorts of different ways and this whole drive is nothing to do with putting that which was a problem right. What it was all about was getting the first bit of the door open as it where to the next stage of the debate which keeps rolling and you always see that in Lord Joffe’s bill which is a desire for euthanasia. And I’m utterly opposed to that.

Do you think in that particular Act it was the government's intention to legalise euthanasia or do you just think it was a badly drafted piece of legislation?

This is a government which is obsessed with the idea of rights over the balance of rights. I mean one person’s rights cannot be rights to be taken away from somebody else. And I think what’s going on here is that we have a government which seems to have no compass when it arrives at these issues. You can see this from the sexual orientation bill the other day the way they’ve driven these regulations through without any care or consideration for what will happen to children when it comes to adoption, what will happen in education when it comes to sex education, and what happens to parents because throughout all these changes parents seem to be the last people in the world to be consulted or to be asked. So I think the present Government is a government which has no moral compass at all as far as I can see. It just seems obsessed on this competing rights issue.

Adorable baby

I'd like to refer readers to Lovingit.com (see Catholic blog list) to adorable pictures of James and Ella's beautiful newborn baby girl. I had the pleasure of seeing her last week at the Hull Faith Forum, where she slept all the way through our new Diocesan Youth Officer, Sarah Holmes', fresh and inspiring talk. Everyone was mesmerised so much so that we got to the pub much later than usual.

The last I heard, James and Ella were thinking of naming their daughter Leona, after the 13 popes named Leo.

Chrism Mass and Walk

So tomorrow it's up to the Chrism Mass at Middlesbrough Cathedral. I've been going to this for quite a few years now. I used to go with a small delegation from the parish (St. Francis of Assisi, East Hull) but I now go with my good friends Ryan, Phil and David.

For the past three years we've gone up for the Mass and stayed overnight in order to take an active part in the Young Person's Walk from the Cathedral to our Diocesan shrine to Our Lady at Osmotherley. It's a good 18 mile walk but it's a fantastic opportunity to meet with young Catholic friends old and new. It's acts as a World Youth Day reunion and reunion of attendees of Catholic youth events in the Diocese. The night before, we always have a good knees up at a Pizzaria and then onto the Knights of St Columba club for a few drinks.

We'll be staying with the popular Episcopal Vicar, Fr John-Paul Leonard, who has a reputation for sending the most ungrammatical emails on the face of the earth.

I'll take my camera with me and get some decent pictures.