"Would you like to light a candle?"

Setting the world on fire

There does not seem to be an abundance of good news (as opposed to Good News) in the Catholic Church at present and, at times, I find myself thanking the Lord for all the converts that He breathes the gift of Faith into.

Where would we be without our converts?

Who would chip in and correct us cradle Catholics when we make so many of our assumptive mistakes?

And God bless those converts who have made the double somersault.

The first somersault was when they were received into the Church; and the second....when they found their way to orthodoxy and the Old Rite Latin Mass.

I am especially impressed by those young men who converted to the Faith and then became priests. What a journey they have undertaken - and on our behalf.

So, when I read of young Catholics setting up an evening of evangelisation, my attention span suddenly bursts into life.

And when that evening of evangelisation takes place at my old parish church of St Patrick's, Soho Square, I tend to spill my evening glass of embalming fluid in my haste to read all about it.

Fr Alexander Sherbrook is the PP and an excellent man at that.

He would qualify for a five star excellent rating if he celebrated the Latin Mass but you can't have everything.

This account featured on Big Pulpit - always worth a daily read and the actual post is HERE.

Read it and rejoice.

The actress and the bishop!

Be honest, your thoughts raced down all sorts of corridors when you read that headline, and most of them were pretty murky - correct?

But it is an honest headline, so please let me explain (and many thanks to Liz for reminding me of this true story).

                                    The young Fulton Sheen - future saint!

It concerns the great priest, Bishop and, finally, Archbishop, Fulton Sheen - soon, Deo volente, to be canonised.

It was London in the late 1920s and Father Sheen, as he then was, had been seconded to teach at the seminary at St Edmond's Ware.
In addition to those duties he became an unofficial curate at St Patrick's Church, Soho Square.

 November in London in those days meant being immersed in a dense and foul fog (I don't remember that, by the way, but it was the same in the Fifties).

Fr Sheen went to open the church one foggy morning only to find a young woman of uncertain sobriety in the doorway.

To cut to the point, the good Father engaged her in conversation and made her a cup of strong coffee. It transpired that she was a Catholic and the star of a musical then on the London stage and that she was involved with three men and life had become unbearable for her.

Drink had become her refuge and her friend.

Fr Sheen then asked her to come back the following day when he would show her a painting by Rembrandt and talk with her further.

She agreed to return on one condition; that Father Sheen would not ask her to go to confession.

This he agreed to. but that was not enough. "Promise me that you will not ask me to go to confession" pleaded the actress.

"OK, I promise that I will not ask you to go to confession" said the priest.

That satisfied the woman and the next day, sure enough, she did return.

As they walked up the church towards the sanctuary they passed a confessional and without further ado, Father Sheen pushed her into it!

She made a full confession, the first for many years and, a short time later she entered the community of enclosed nuns at Tyburn and she was still there forty years later when the then Bishop Sheen related the story to his television audience.

As Archbishop Sheen said to his audience: "I didn't ask her to go to confession, I pushed her in"

Many years ago St Patrick's was my parish church and I have a great affection for it, most especially as it has been restored and renovated to a very high standard by the PP, Fr Sherbrooke.

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The anniversary of his death is 9th November.

May God have mercy on his soul and may Archbishop Fulton Sheen come to the aid of the Catholic Church today.

ARCHBISHOP FULTON JOHN SHEEN RIP

 8 MAY 1895 - 9 NOVEMBER 1979