Something to darken the light of day...

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post was this. On leaving Charing Cross Road on my way back to the Station from a few bookshops, I walked past the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. What I saw there was quite untoward - well no, that is reticent, quite horrible actually. A man was standing there dressed in a purple cassock, with a pectoral cross and all, and had a dark brown wicker basket hanging from his shoulders upon a chain. The lid to the basket was open and supported two pictures, one of Our Lord and the other of Our Lady (I didn't get a good look, as I was walking fast and my eye-sight isn't that great). But above this was a white A4 size placard with bold black writing which said: Please Receive the Body of Christ; and walking closer (not too close) I noticed that the basket was filled with hosts!! I recoiled in horror and went by the speediest way to the Station. I had not the gumption to rebuke the man, or perhaps I was too shocked.

I once spoke to a man I consider to be a rather militant atheist about matters of this sort; and he said that equally he was not in the least ''impressed'' by such callous display of mockery. He said something like ''if you're going to believe fairy-tales, at least defend your cause and don't sell it out'' - or words to that effect. Indeed, anyone with any notion of early Church history (let alone the perilously marvellous knowledge of God in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar) would find such things highly offensive. Think of St Polycarp, or of St Stephen Protomartyr - any great Martyr or Confessor for the Faith - imagine what they would think if they saw that. It makes me so angry. The Church has ever defended the Blessed Sacrament, and put It in the prime place as Our Lord intended. Perhaps this man was just a clown and making a spectacle of himself - if so, he made a rather grotesque spectacle of my Faith along with it; the faith of St Margaret Clitherow who was crushed under a door for keeping it; the faith of the Apostolic martyrs in Rome when St Peter yet walked the earth. But even if he were just a clown, such a thing can only have been done out of plain contempt for the Faith. Perhaps a few Votive Masses for the Defence of the Church are in order?