Today Mass 12 (Saturday) Dunsop Bridge
Mass 5pm (Saturday) Clitheroe
Mass 9.30am Clitheroe
Mass 11am Sabden
Monday Mass 10am Clitheroe
Tuesday Mass 10am Clitheroe
Wednesday Mass 10am Clitheroe
Thursday Mass 10am Clitheroe
Friday Mass 10am Clitheroe
3rd/4th July
Sunday Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Mass 12 noon (Saturday) Dunsop Bridge
Mass 5pm (Saturday) Clitheroe
Mass 9.30am Clitheroe
Mass 11am Sabden
MASSES RECEIVED THIS WEEK
Rita & Frank Donbavand x 2, Ada Graham, Andrew Whitwell,
Marion Townsend, Margaret McGough, Special Intention, Safe Return,
Marie Storey
LATELY DEAD
Marion Townsend, Kathleen Johnson (nee Jones), Marie Storey,
ANNIVERSARIES
Ada Graham, Andrew Whitwell, Margaret McGough
Live simply thought of the week:
Check out Sainsbury’s recycling facilities. Sainsbury’s have extended their recycling to include plastic items: carrier bags, bread bags and cereal bags,
bags and wrapping for fruit, vegetables, salad and flowers, bottle and can multipack wrapping, biscuit and cake wrappers, toilet roll and kitchen roll wrapping, rice and dry food wrappers, cheese wrappers, frozen food bags, household item wrapping, clothes bags, magazine and newspaper wrappers, baby food pouches, microwaveable pouches, pet food pouches, crisp bags, plastic or foil coffee packaging, foil confectionery wrapping, film lids from meat, fish, poultry and fruit, vegetable trays
PARISH BUDDY SYSTEM
It has been hard for many people during the Covid restrictions to keep in touch with what is happening in the Parish and I’m sure that some people are feeling isolated. The Communications and Media Group has been discussing ways of reaching out to people and we came up with the idea of a Buddy System which we agreed at the last Parish Forum.
Please let us know of anybody (with their permission of course) who would welcome the odd ‘phone call to talk about Parish matters and have someone to contact for information.
We are also seeking names and contact details for people who would be prepared to act as the “Buddy”.
Please contact Anthony Brown on abrown.boggarts@googlemail.com or Janet Clegg on smsj@btinternet.com with your name and contact details if you would like to be part of this scheme and we will get back to you.
CCP – CLITHEROE CHRISTIANS IN PARTNERSHIP
RIBBLE VALLEY YOUTH
Below is an invitation from RVY to an event at
St James’ Church on 4th July 6PM-8PM:
We would love to invite you to JOIN US for our first LIVE RVY EVENT! Book in now to be part of the summer event, July 4th, 6-8pm, at St James’ Church, Clitheroe.
It’s just £1 for entry – book in advance on the RVY website or pay on the door for a great night, including live music, games, prizes, and the RVY shop where you can grab goodies from.
Come with your young people, join us on July 4th, 6-8pm for an incredible night.
Please Note: The RVY team has ensured the event will be fully compliant with Covid guidelines.
Please feel free to bring this to the attention of your congregations as you wish.
You can book tickets by heading to www.rvyouth.org/rvy-event or just turn up on the door, but spaces will be limited so best to book if you can. Youth leaders are welcome to accompany youth but please let us know if you are planning on doing so!
The CCP prayer theme has now been published on the Love Clitheroe Website. This month the focus is on homelessness..
Listen to God and let Him teach us how to love the most marginalised in society
All the different things I’ve done God has guided me. He is the only power that I’ve got.
Sally Trench said these words in an interview with the Tablet in 2018.
It’s a sad reflection on the modern world that homelessness is increasing. After the war it was our returning soldiers unable to adjust who finished up drinking themselves to death on meths, boot polish and gasoline. These men didn’t last long and homeless World War II veterans disappeared from the streets. Homelessness today is more the result of poverty, addiction and sometimes simply circumstance and misfortune.
Recently we have seen a number of destitute and homeless men in Clitheroe. These men aren’t anything like the men Sally Trench knew. We can help these men and by the grace of God that is what we are trying to do in Clitheroe.
But this month’s theme isn’t really about homelessness and it certainly isn’t about homelessness in Clitheroe. It’s about God reaching out to us via inspirational people, and learning that if we can’t emulate those people we can at least support them in some small way, perhaps a little hands-on help or donations and prayer.
In the 1960s Sally Trench was just a young girl mixing and caring for destitute people on the streets of London. Her first book Bury Me in My Boots was published in 1967. The book tells how Sally had spent the previous five years sleeping rough with some of the most marginalised people in the world. It is a tale of lived-out faith. “I was living in this world on the bomb-sites,” she recalls, “with the rats, and the dossers. That is what I was there for, to help them die when they needed to die, or to keep them alive when they needed to keep alive.” As one of them neared his end he said; “bury me in my boots, Sally”. Sometimes without sleep or without food for days she lived amongst those men, experienced what they experienced, and as someone who felt a failure and a reject too, she identified with them.
Sally was a difficult kid from an early age. She came from an upper middle class family and was sent off to a Roman Catholic boarding school at the age of five. She was expelled when she was fifteen. A year or so later, walking across London at about 11:30 pm she counted eighty-seven dirty, drunk, flea-ridden old men lying on the benches, under the benches, newspaper their mattress and newspaper their cover. Her initial reaction of disgust and evasion turned to something quite different – a recollection of her Christian roots and a realisation of what that meant. She turned back. In her pearls and evening dress she sat between two of the dirtiest men. Repelled by the smell of gasoline and urine and nausea but recognising these people were utterly homeless, utterly unwanted, uncared for, and nowhere to go, she went home and prayed. She thanked God for her parents and her home and made a pledge that she would do something about these people because God had made her aware of them.
She got a job and spent her income on food, coffee, cigarettes, clothing, and started a night vigil at two o’clock every morning. Climbing down the drainpipe she got on her bicycle and cycled six miles across London. She gave out the food, the coffee, the cigarettes, and the blankets and at three o’clock she returned home and went to bed again. She did this for a year. No one knew.
At the end of that year she walked out of her home after a row with her father and didn’t return and it was then that she spent five years sleeping rough with the men. She wrote Bury me in my Boots on toilet paper with pens provided by the station master at Waterloo Station and kept what she wrote in Left Luggage.
One day, she encountered a young woman who had used a knitting needle to try to abort her pregnancy and was bleeding to death. She summoned a local priest to give her the last rites. It was the start of a friendship with the Jesuit Hugh Thwaites that would inspire him to retrieve the diary from Left Luggage, type it up and send it to a publisher friend.
At the age of 22 she was interviewed by Studs Terkel. With her public school education and sophisticated voice, she doesn’t sound a failure or a reject; she sounds affected, naïve, and over confident. Was living with the Meths Men just a teenage rebellion and a short phase in her life? According to an article in The Tablet written in 2018, absolutely not. Sally prefers to be called Sparky and it is that spark that is the most obvious outward thread that connects the work she described in Bury Me in My Boots, and her subsequent missions. First, she ran a successful referral school for 700 “delinquent children” in London. Next, in the 1990s, she rescued children from the civil war in Bosnia and gave them a home in Britain. Until April 2017, she spent a decade living in the Western Cape in South Africa working with 7,000 children in squatter camps.
All these ventures came under the auspices of Project Spark, the charity she established with the royalties from her first book. Her remarkable life goes back to a pact with God on her seventh birthday when, troubled about the Catholic convent teaching on mortal sin, she describes a sort of revelation: “I just felt this sort of amazing feeling of a voice, saying, ‘Hey, you’re not in mortal sin, let’s make a pact.’ And so I made this pact with God. I said, ‘You died for me, so I will live for you,’ and God said, ‘That’s a stunning pact. I agree with that one.’ And that was it. I’ve stayed with Him forever. We are a team. I can do nothing without Him.”
There is a message here for all of us. Whenever we are reminded of how little will power we seem to have and reflect on the impossible things that remarkable people do, let’s think of those words of Sally Trench and pray that we will hear God’s personal message to us, whatever that might be.
PRAYER
Let us pray for love, that we can put base emotions out of our hearts and learn to love even those who are the most difficult to love.
Let us try and love as Jesus loves for whoever Jesus loves, we must, in the best way we can, learn to love them too.
Let us pray that, with love, God will also give us the strength to act.
And let us pray that little by little we can gain in strength to do more and eventually perhaps do what for the moment seems impossible.
FROM THE ARCHIVES:
Taken from the Minute Book of the Youth Committee June 22nd 1941
Meeting held in the Hall Sunday 22nd June 1941
Rev Fr Kopp SJ in Chair
Representatives of the following sodalities were present.
Mens Guild, Womens Guild, Children of Mary, St Agnes Guild, Knights of St Columba, Squires of St Columba, Catholic Social Guild and Boys Guild.
It was agreed that an executive and active committee be set up, consisting of one member from each of the under mentioned sodalities, to meet at definite times and dates and to have powers to act.
It was agreed that the Committee be composed as under
Mens Sodality |
Mr L.Bradley |
Womens Sodality |
Mrs W.Jackson |
Boys Sodality |
Mr W.Gould |
Children of Mary |
Miss M.Lofthouse |
St Agnes Guild |
Mrs Eccleston |
Knights of St Columba |
Mr C Chatburn |
Squires of St Columba |
Mr W Brown |
Catholic Social Guild |
Mr T Dobson |
Liaison Officer |
Mr C Chatburn |
Deputy Chairman |
Mr T Dobson |
Secretary |
Mr W Fehrenbach |
It was agreed that any member being unable to attend a meeting must send a deputy
It was agreed that the Committee meet at lease once every month, in the Presbytery Library, after the service of the Holy Hour.
It was agreed that the next meeting to be held on Thursday July 3rd, and that in the meantime all members do their utmost towards achieving a 100% Sodality membership.
Meeting held in the Presbytery Library Thursday July 3rd 1941.
Rev Fr Kopp in the Chair
After discussion, in which the indefinite state of present day youthful mentality was stressed, and the necessity for giving a lead to youth.
It was agreed that the members of the committee return to their sodalities and organise a canvas of the Youth of the parish, between the inclusive ages of 14 to 21 to attend a “SURPRISE NIGHT” to be held in The Hall on Wednesday August 6th from 7pm to 10pm.
It was agreed that a meeting be held in K.S.C. rooms on Monday July 7th at 8pm to arrange the method of canvas, or other means of approach to the youth of the parish.
It was agreed that the Secretary ask Miss Bramley to provide Two hundred and fifty tickets for the “SURPRISE NIGHT” and to distribute them to the committee members for further distribution.
Meeting held in the rooms of the Knights of St Columba on Monday July 7th 1941
Mr T Dobson in the Chair
It was agreed that the members of the committee should undertake a personal canvas of the members of their sodalities, and others to be invited, in their various districts.
Meeting held in the rooms of the Knights of St Columba on Friday July 19th 1941
Mr W Bush in the Chair
It was agreed that the Committee start a subscription list to engage music for the “SURPRISE NIGHT” on August 6th and the cost be divided amongst the members.
It was agreed that Mr Finlay Currie be given charge of the entertainment side of the “SURPRISE NIGHT”
It was agreed that Mr Robin Dobson be given authority to proceed with the installation of a Radio Gramophone for the same event.
It was agreed that the duration of the interval be limited to fifteen minutes from 8.30pm.
It was agreed that the next meeting be held on Sunday August 3rd (after the evening service) in the Hall.
Meeting held in the Hall on Sunday August 3rd
Mr T Dobson in the Chair
Reports were heard as below.
Mr L.Bradley (Mens Sodality) reported on a Special meeting held in the K.S.C. rooms on Wednesday July 29th under the chairmanship of Rev Fr Ferguson S.J. to which all men of the parish were invited to discuss with the Mens Sodality, the problems relating to Public representations and the Youth movement. Twelve attended, a further meeting arranged was for the Tuesday before the fourth Sunday in August i.e. Aug 19th and those present were asked to bring others. Rev Fr Ferguson gave some general remarks, stressing necessity for active interest in the Youth Movement.
Mrs Eccleston (St Agnes Guild) reported on distribution of tickets for the “Surprise Night” to the effect that so far as could be ascertained, all eligible youths of both sexes in her district had been invited.
Miss Lofthouse (C.O.M) reported that all members of the Children of Mary and other eligible persons had had invitations to the “Surprise Night”.
Mr R Dobson (Boys Guild) reported that all available tickets had been distributed and that all arrangements were generally in order.
Mrs Wrigley (Womens Guild) deputising for Mrs W Jackson reported that through the members of the Womens Sodality tickets for the “Surprise Night” had been well distributed.
Mr Finlay Currie reported on the progress of the arrangements he had made for the entertainment side of the “Surprise Night”, the services of a Pianist, an Accordianist and an Entertainer having been secured.
The loan of a suitable Gramophone records was asked for.
The purchase of tins of Floor polish for use on the Dance floor was arranged.
Messrs L Bradley and F Cawley were appointed to act as door keepers. Mr Bush was asked to undertake the preparation of the Stage, Lighting and Props generally.
The Secretary was instructed to attend to the provision of “Ideas” papers, for use during the “Surprise Night”, to accompany the Deputy Chairman to interview.
Rev Fr Donlevy S.J. with respect to his attendance, and the attendance of Rev Fr Ferguson
It was agreed that the next meeting be held on Sunday August 10th at 7.30pm
Meeting held in the Presbytery Library on Sunday August 10th.
Rev Fr Ferguson S.J present
Rev Fr Kopp S.J. in the Chair
A report of the “SURPRISE NIGHT”, and the matters arising from it, was given by the Secretary and discussed very thoroughly; as a result of which the Rev Chairman gave his permission for the use of the Hall (subject to his being satisfied with regard to the efficiency of the blackout, provision for the prevention of any rowdyism or other unseemly conduct on or around the Hall and School premises generally; the presence of responsible adult persons to supervise whatever functions were held, and the submission to himself of all requests for the use of the Hall; and it being further understood, that whilst Dances at which the age limit would be approx twenty five, could be held by the Youths of the parish, through the medium of the Youths Sodalities, Adult dances without an age limit would not be permitted, though other forms of social gatherings and entertainments were permissible). At this point the Rev Chairman after being thanked for his attendance and co-operation, left the meeting, and Rev Fr Ferguson deputised for the remainder of the meeting.
After further discussion it was agreed that a “Black Out Committee” be appointed as follows. Messrs W Bush, W.Brown, F.Livesey, J.Marsland and that this Committee attend to the provision of an efficient Black Out of the Hall.
It was agreed that the Sodalities and other organisations in the parish be asked to subscribe a minimum of Ten Shillings, for the provision of the necessary funds with which to purchase Black Out materials.
It was agreed that the date and time of the next meeting be fixed for August 22nd (Friday) at 8pm to be held in the K.S.C. rooms.
Meeting held in the Rooms of the Knights of St Columba on Friday August 22nd
Rev Fr Ferguson S.J. in the Chair, deputising for Rev Fr Kopp S.J.
A report of the “Black Out” Committee was given by Mr W.Bush of the measuring up for the necessary materials for the blacking out of the Hall and of the interview this Committee had with Rev Fr Kopp S.J. who agreed to loan the initial expenses, to be repair at a leter date.
It was agreed that the Black Out Committee create a set of regulations to be observed by those using the Hall and submit them for the approval of the Rev Fr Kopp S.J.
It was agreed that the subject of a Stage Properties Committee be deferred.
It was agreed that Mr R Dobson be co-opted to serve ofn the Black Out Committee.
It was agreed that the next meeting be held in the K.S.C. rooms on Wednesday August 27th at 8pm for the purpose of setting up a Junior Committee from those Young people who gave their names as being willing to serve on such a Committee, on the occasion of the “SURPRISE NIGHT”