Why I am a Catholic

I have not before referred to why I became a Catholic, but this Sunday's reading prompted me to go public. The reading was John 20:19-31

In the evening of that same day, the first day of the week, the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them. He said to them, 'Peace be with you,' and showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were filled with joy when they saw the Lord, and he said to them again, 'Peace be with you.' 'As the Father sent me, so am I sending you.' After saying this he breathed on them and said: 'Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven; for those whose sins you retain, they are retained.'

Thomas, called the Twin, who was one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. When the disciples said, 'We have seen the Lord,' he answered, 'Unless I see the holes that the nails made in his hands and can put my finger into the holes they made, and unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe.'

Eight days later the disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. The doors were closed, but Jesus came in and stood among them. 'Peace be with you' he said. Then he spoke to Thomas, 'Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand; put it into my side. Doubt no longer but believe.' Thomas replied, 'My Lord and my God!' Jesus said to him: 'You believe because you can see me. Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.'

There were many other signs that Jesus worked and the disciples saw, but they are not recorded in this book. These are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name.

One day in 1975 some colleagues asked me to take pictures for their wedding. I agreed and asked where it was being held. I was shocked when they told me that is was to be at the Italian Church in Clerkenwell (photograph). I thought they were too intelligent to go in for that sort of thing, as nearly all my other friends had got married in registry offices. But I needed to check out the venue beforehand. The only opportunity was to join them at a Sunday mass and in any case I was a bit curious to see what happened. I had not the foggiest idea of what was going on because the whole thing was in Latin and Italian.

He showed me His hands and His feet.

The world exploded. The words of the passage above came into my head. I know that I had actually met the risen Christ and like Thomas, been reassured that there was indeed a hole in His side. I sensed that the priest was not saying the Mass just for the people present but for me, too, and in fact for the entire world. I felt overwhelmed by an outpouring of generosity. And came away feeling, in a phrase that was around at the time, "that was a really nice thing to do".

There was more. From a very young age I had always had a sense of wanting something without knowing what that something was. A relationship, perhaps? An object? A satisfying job? I had always wished something nice would happen. Now it had. The Mass was the something. I had an intense feeling of light and love.

What then? I did not want to become a Catholic. It was a religion for poor stupid peasants and members of the IRA who would let off their bombs and then go to confession. And my family and friends would not like it. But after a short while the thing started to nag at me. So I mentioned it to my friend and he arranged for me to go to a Jesuit, a Father Richard Copeland +, for instruction. That went well until the time came to make a decision. People tried to talk me out of it but in the end I had to go through with it.

It proved to be the best decision I ever made. Only I didn't make it. The decision was made for me.

The dreadfulness of British governance

I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.

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How much more will the British tolerate?

The British are phlegmatic, tolerant and slow to rouse. Thus there was no great reaction after the terrorist attack in July 2005. The murder of Lee Rigby created a sense of outrage, but nothing more, since it appeared to be an isolated incident. Two serious incidents within a fortnight are another matter. Since the first major terrorist incident in 2001, authority has tried to persuade the public that Islam is a religion of peace, that these were isolated events, or the actions of deranged "lone wolves", having nothing to do with Islam, or to reassure that the chances of being killed in a terrorist attack were infinitesimally small. These assurances are are beginning to wear thin. They no longer convince. If government does not act effectively, people will take the law into their own hands. What, however, would effective action look like? What sort of effective action would not amount to rough justice for a lot of innocent people? Given the difficulties of keeping large n...

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Battery trains fool’s gold

A piece by the railway news video Green Signals recently reported the fast charging trials for battery operated electric trains on the West Ealing to Greenford branch, in west London. In a comment under the video, I described the project as technological overkill, bearing in mind that before dieselisation in the 1960s it was worked by the tiny steam locomotives of the Great Western 1400 class, a 1932 design based on an 1870s design. The money that has been spent on the experiment would have paid for a small fleet of the old things. Elsewhere in the comments, I was critical of the 800 series trains. This produced a response from the makers of the video, as follows. “I may be grasping at straws here but I am guessing you don't like 8xx series trains all that much and rather wish we still had Kings, Castles and (for the branches) 14xx's. Fair? ” My reply was as follows... Yes you are grasping at straws. The model for long distance stock is the class 180, which is a 23 metre veh...

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