Considering a title for this essay, I rather facetiously suggested to my friend, Father Edward Tomlinson, who assisted me with many of the facts for the piece, that I should call it either “Newman’s bums” or “Sacred bottoms.” Father Tomlinson, a priest of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, as am I, is the Pastor of Saint Anselm’s Church in Pembury, Kent, the county always known as the “Garden of England.”
Saint Anselm’s is a curious place. If one were being completely truthful (which is expected of a Christian), it is a rather ugly building—a hall which has been made into a church. Yet it is a church. Over the last few years, Father Edward, his eccentric and able curate, Father Nicholas, who is also a practicing lawyer, and the devout congregation have transformed the meeting hall into a Catholic church, and it actually looks like a church when you enter the building. …
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