2009 PROGRAMME
 
FIRST HOLY COMMUNION &
CONFIRMATION

 
Our Catechetical programme for First Holy Communion will start with a Parents meeting on 2nd October at 6.30 pm in the Presbytery.

The date for the inaugural meeting for parents of Confirmation candidates will be announced shortly.

If there are any more Candidates for First Holy Communion -Rising Sevens (year 3) and for Confirmation Rising Fourteens (Year 10), please collect an application form for either of these programmes from the children's bookcase in the Church Vestibule and return to the Presbytery as soon as possible.

MOTHER &
TODDLER GROUP
 
New term starts this Thursday,
11th September
In our Parish Hall
Contact: Ruth Hall
(07981 982 413)

OPUS SECTILE
(Broken Work)

In our church the stained glass windows by Paul Woodruffe are very beautiful in the daylight, but when evening comes, and the lights go on, the beauty of the reredos with the row of eight saints is revealed. But what is it made of? Surprisingly, it is also made of glass but in a way that, as a decorative art form, has recently been consistently overlooked and undervalued. In the middle of the 19th century there was a breakthrough when it was found at Powell's Whitefriars glassworks that this impure coloured waste glass could be used. If it was ground into granules, coloured and heated again, it could then be pressed thinly into cast iron moulds and made into small sheets in much the same way as stained glass. Figures in this new 'Opus Sectile' were first mentioned in 1864 in connection with an exhibition at South Kensington.

In the next 70 years Powel's went on to make about a thousand reredoses, pictorial panels and memorial tablets in this material before demand petered out in the 1930s. The main reredos of eight saints in the Church of Our Lady and St Peter was designed by Miller and made in October 1923; the other reredos in the Sacred Heart Chapel was designed by Read and made in January 1928.

(Extracted from an article by Peter Batts BSMPG NADFAS)

PARISH COUNCIL MEETING
Tomorrow, 8th September,
at 7.30 pm
in the Presbytery.

Our beautiful church will be open on Saturday, 13th September from 11.30 am - 6.00 pm. How well do you know the heritage of our Parish Church? Why not pay us a visit and bring a friend?

Also we would like volunteers to greet visitors on that day. If you can spare an hour of your time, please sign up on the list in the Church vestibule. Thank you.

MASS INTENTIONS
We have no Mass intentions for the coming months.

BISHOP OF LANCASTER

If you didn't manage to get a copy of the Catholic Herald last week (all sold) to read the critique of the state of the Church in England & Wales, you can read the Bishop's booklet -free! - on the web:

www.lancasterrcdiocese.org.uk

Collections and Mass Attendance

The collection on Sunday, 31st August amounted to £890.91 Mass attendance was 302.

Today there is a retiring collection for the Seminary Fund. Gift Aid envelopes may be used.