Another Meme To Consider...

...although this one seems to have been started by my tagger himself, so it will be interesting to see how it progresses round the Catholic blogosphere...

Ok, rules! Five favourite places in Catholic England (on the basis that quite a bit of it got nicked by the Protestants at the Reformation, so there's not much left...)

Umm. Tricky. I wanted to put "Lourdes," but that's in France...

1. Tyburn Convent. I love the relics of the martyrs kept in the Crypt, the fact that there is Perpetual Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, and the fact that the nuns are proper nuns.








2. Aylesford Priory. I have gradually come to revise my opinion of the place through going there on parish retreats. The various chapels are a little on the spartan side, but they grow on you. If you go as a day visitor, it can be cold and damp. If you're actually staying there, the temperature of the bedrooms and sitting rooms is apparently near-tropical, which means that I am comfortable and only need to wear one jumper... The bookshop can be a little stressful, as there are quite a lot of books on feminine spirituality and enneagrams...

3. Brompton Oratory. Lots of marble, lots of gold leaf (or gold paint... can't tell), lots of statues and candles, very big and very trad. What more can a girl want?

4. The Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation of West Grinstead. This little-known shrine is really something else. There is the hidden chapel which is in the atttic, and the presbytery has priests' holes. The priest would disguise himself as (what else?) a shepherd, so the presbytery has been in constant occupation since before the Reformation. If you want to visit the hidden chapel, it is worth phoning to check if it is convenient (the chapel is upstairs in the presbytery, after all) but the church (which contains the picture of Our Lady of Consolation) is worth a visit too.

5. The Shrine of St. Jude in Faversham. I haven't been for a while, but this is one of those places which just blows your mind. On the Feast of St. Simon and St. Jude (not that St. Simon gets much of a look-in) they bless oil with a relic of St. Jude. The blessed oil is particularly popular with people who are sick. It is not, I wish to make clear, the Oil of the Sick used in the Sacrament of Anointing. It's just blessed oil. But St. Jude is one of my most favourite saints, by virtue of the fact that, before I got an operation brought forward by a year through his intercession, I didn't really believe in praying to the saints at all. I recognised that they existed (the Church said so, after all) but I preferred to go to the top. I prayed to Our Lady too, but that was because she was the Big Guy's mother...

And now, who to tag... I guess it wouldn't be fair to pick on any non-residents (though anyone who is resident elsewhere who feels confident that they know of five favourite Catholic locations in England not purloined by the Anglicans, feel free to add yourself to the list... just put a comment and link in the box so we know where to find you!)

...so I tag Fr. Tim (Hermeneutic of Continuity), Fr. Nicholas (Roman Miscellany), Fr. Ray (St Mary Magdalen) and Northern Cleric (Ubi Petrus, Ibi Ecclesia)