St Catherine's Trust Summer School 2008

The St Catherine's Trust Summer School took place last week, from 27th July to 3rd August, attended by a number of regulars from the TCFA days at Ware, including members of the King, Onyanga, and di Falco families. I report, with pictures, on our trip to Arundel Castle, where we had Mass in the private chapel, in the New Liturgical Movement here; there's some more pictures and commentary here.

It was our biggest Summer School ever, with 53 students and 14 staff. During the week the students were given catechesis by the Chaplain, Fr Andrew Southwell, and were introduced to Catholic history, art, music, Gregorian Chant and Sacred Polyphony, Philosophy, Church Latin and even New Testament Greek. Each day began with the Rosary and ended with sung Latin Compline, and included a Traditional Sung Mass: the picture shows Fr Southwell celebrating Mass in Ardingly College's impressive chapel. Our visiting speakers were Fr Nicholas Schofield and Mr Philip Goddard. In the picture we are relaxing at tea-time; on the right you can see Sr Valery Walker OP and Mrs Daphne McLeod, who were both members of our volunteer teaching staff.

At the end of the week there was the usual high-spirited quiz on the things the students had learnt during the week, and a staged reading of part of Dorothy L. Sayer’s radio play ‘The Man Born to be King’ - the cast, in costumes produced at successive Summer Schools, are pictured below. The final Sung Mass, attended by many parents and other family members, included a Elgar’s Ave Verum Corpus, prepared by the students during the Summer School. Thanks to the dedication of the volunteer staff, the enthusiasm of the students and some providentially fine weather, the Summer School was enormously enjoyable and a unique opportunity for young people to develop their knowledge of the Faith.