THE
P RTAL
February 2016
The fifth anniversary of the
Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham
was celebrated in style and
Joanna Bogle was there
I
Auntie Jo a n
Five Years
and Counting
Page 4
never knew what something called The Hop Exchange
na
wri tes
could be until I joined the Ordinariate. In fact I am not quite sure
now. But it’s a magnificent building along by the Thames – a palatial
frontage on to Southwark Street and a noble interior with galleries surrounding a vast atrium – the
centre of things happening when hops were brought up from the Kent hop-fields by railway, to be sold to
London’s breweries.
And it was here that we gathered, after a splendid
Mass at the nearby Church of the Most Precious Blood,
to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Ordinariate. A
day of history, as was noted by Fr Peter Geldard, who
preached in his usual splendid style and made us all
ponder the significance of the event.
small and unnoticed
He remarked that it is often small, unnoticed things
that, in the longer term, are important in history. One
example: a relatively obscure treaty signed in 1830
between Britain and Belgium, guaranteeing the latter’s
independence – long years later this would come to
the fore as events developed in the 20th century…
More happily, and unconnected with war or treaties,
something that happened on a wet October night in
Oxford in the mid-19th century has proved to be of
enormous significance in the story of Christianity in
our land. Fr Peter described the scene: Fr Dominic
Barberi receiving John Henry Newman into full
communion with the Catholic Church at Littlemore,
on a rain-lashed evening after a difficult journey
by stage-coach. And now, in the 21st century, the
Ordinariate Form of the Mass means that we are using
prayers known to Newman in his Anglican days, and
all in the fullness of unity with Rome. And Blessed
John Henry Newman is our Patron.
The anniversary Mass was celebrated by Mgr Keith
Newton, Cranmerian prose filling the 19th century
church: “Lord, we do not presume to come to this Thy
table...”. The choir of the John Fisher School, Purley,
sang beautiful settings by John Merbecke, and there
were rousing hymns. After Mass, there was a gift for Fr
Keith - because of course it was the anniversary of his
contents page
Catholic ordination - and a bouquet of flowers for Gill,
and photographs, and a mood of celebration...and we
all went to The Hop Exchange for drinks and nibbles
and talk.
Five years is not, of course, very long, and there will
be many years ahead, and we don’t know what they
will contain. God doesn’t tell us that. He asks us to be
faithful. Newman was, and it brought him sadness and
misunderstandings as well as deep joy and many great
achievements.
I’m writing this on my laptop in a cafe looking out at
the Hop Exchange in a London unimaginably different
from the one known to Londoners of the 19th century
when Britain had a worldwide empire and the Kentish
hops were picked by hand as they had been since beer
replaced ale as our national drink three hundred years
earlier. Everything is in God’s hands.