Yesterday I journeyed across country to Peterborough to attend the reception into the Church of two of my friends. Charles and Kate Miller are long-standing friends from Pusey House, and until last Sunday Charles was serving as the assistant curate at the Anglican parish church in Downham Market in Norfolk. However they have been preparing for a while to be received into the Catholic Church, and yesterday, accompanied by their three children, Joseph, Cecilia and Teresa, they were. It was a very happy, but also prayerful occasion, with two other former Puseyites acting as sponsors, and with two others of us in attendance. The Mass was celebrated by Mgr Philpot who had prepared them.
Afterwards we went on to the house they are leaving in Downham Market for a small celebration before I made my way back. There was a clear sense that for Charles and Kate this was both the end of a spiritual journey and also the beginning, but that at the same time it was all one journey.
Getting to the church in Peterborough demonstrated one thing I should have realised - to a Muslim taxi-driver one Christian church is indistinguishable from another if the passenger is not sure of the address, but rashly assumes that all taxi-drivers have "the knowledge." Now let's be fair - I would probably be the same with mosques. No, I wouldn't, actually, but you get my point. However with my second taxi driver I found the universal point of reference in our society - I told him which supermarket I was given to understand it was near. We were there in no time.
I will post some comments as a historian about Peterborough in the next few days.
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