Challoner Club has doubled membership

By ANDREW BOY LE
HE Challoner Club, the only national social centre for Catholics in the country, celebrated a double occasion on Sunday, the
Feast of the Epiphany. For on that day, two years ago, its secretary. Col. R. G. Triggs, first took over the day-to-day administration at a time when the club was still cautiously feeling its way.
The double celebration will be justified, for membership has jumped front some 2,000 to more than 4,000, and the club's amenities have more thaa kept pace with the big increase in town and country members.
Col. Triggs. a member of Viscount Mountbatten's planning staff in. Far East during the war, an an experienced hand at club organisation, admits that he has never known a job in which he has been so completely and happily immersed.
" I can say," he told me, " that there have been three capital C's which were the high-points of my life.
iA mission "The first was my capture by the Communists in Russia as a young soldier after the Great War, the second was my conversion to the Church in middle age. and the third is my present association with the Challoner.
"To me it is more than just a job. I regard it as a mission, and as a most rewarding form of apostolate.
" There are many Catholics. young and old, in a place as big as London who need and long for the company of their co-religionists. A fair number have already discovered the Challoner. But there are undoubtedly many more who have still to make that discovery." Renovation of the • premises at 59-61 Pont Street, Chelsea, has cost the club £6,000. and there is now refidential accommodation for 15 instead of six visitors or country members passing through town. The bedrooms, single and double. are neatly and tastefully furnished. " Financially, we're sound." said Col. Triggs. " I don't think there can be a club anywhere which has a voluntary committee of all talents to compare with ours."
From the derelict house I saw when it began life in 1949, the Challoner has developed into a young yet solidly based Catholic institution. Its dances, at homes, musical, dramatic and sporting activities and pilgrimages—it has already run three to Rome. Lourdes and Walsingham. and plans another this year to Barcelona for the International Eucharistic Congress there—hear witness to its many-sided vitality.