Parish Mission

This week the wheels don't stop turning. On Wednesday we had a lovely lunch after Mass with the parishioners of St. Patrick's, some of whom have been coming for over twenty years (quite an achievement in a place where no one stays still long enough to bat an eyelid). There were a few relatively younger faces as well - people working or studying in London who come for Mass or for Morning and Evening prayer at the parish. Maybe our singing is getting better... Now we are in the process of visiting all the residents in the area, trying to find the Catholics and see if they are interested in information about the parish. It's actually quite hard to get access to a lot of the flats where residents live, and most of them are not at all interested. One man leaned out of the window when we rang and after listening to our introduction said, 'I'm in the bath and I'm an atheist.' But we did talk to some people who wanted to know more about the church and that made the visits worthwhile. Soho, and England in general, is a place that is not very open to the discussion of religion, particularly if it is a religion that in their view had its chance and blew it. I wonder what they would think of the evangelisation linebacker...