THE C.Y.M.S.
ALL SORTS by Fr. Bernard Basset, S.J.
BY now Fr. Nevelt will be jumping for joy but not as high as I did when a cheque for El 50 fell out of an envelope yesterday. In the past ten days the Nevelt Fund has jumped from -CUM to E2.922.5s.9d. so we should be well past the three thousand mark by
Christmas.
After singing the praises of thc great Training Colleges, Digby Stuart. Mount Pleasant, Rnharn and Endslcigh, it was a joy to visit Southampton for the annual 'Training College retreat.
Two hundred students-Iirst and
second year eombined tilled nte with admiration hut I& little time for the inspection of the new buildings of which all are rightly proud.
The conferenees were given in the fine. new chapel. sparkling and modern, with the latest and best of amplifiers and with altar cards on wheels. Southampton is lucky to have a campus so near to the centre of the town. The training college with its four hundred students is flanked by two large schools. hard to distinguish, called "Convent High" and St. Annes. Guarding the entrance to this female city, within a city, is the parish church.
On Monday next at Buxton a hundred (7.Y.M.S. chaplains will meet for a three-day conference. They were to have heard Sir William Carron on Social Action bul the great man has had to call the engagement off. A lecture on the Focolari Movement will be given by Dom Maurus Green.
Most of the time at the conference is devoted to planning. that C. Y.1s1 .S. branches may ha v e the understanding and co-operation of the oriests. A movement which is able to bring a hundred chaplains to a three-day conference must be very much alive!
As with other bodies. a painful problem fiit,VS the C.Y.M.S. Loyal and skilled members move to parishes oheic no branch of the C.Y.Ntee eeisk. To keep In touch with such members. the C.Y.M.S. is proposing to affiliate them to a centtal office and to keep in touch ...Oh them by post. I here must be hundreds of &steed members from Lancashire, Scotland and other places. now living in the South.
As Lancashire hearts remain in Lancashire ;old Scottish hearts remain in Scotland, those whose bodies arc nosy in exile may like to mainialu tho postal lint.. As esdes, you cannot attend the regular meetings but you could remain members of the movement and preserve your conferee with friends up North.
he C.Y.M.S. cannot afford to lose its loyalist friends. Let this column serve ae a link. Drop me a line giving your name and address and I %%ill put you in touter with Central office, tying you with no commitments other than the commitments of the heart. Write to me care of the Cemoiec I Ii RAI D and you will hear from the officers of the Central Office. thus enjoying the best of both worlds.
After Southampton. I was in I:seter for a glorious Occasion. the :milted rally of the Desonshire Women's league. Some 2M) stalwarts gathered in the Ball Room of the Imperial flOtcl. For the brains trust after tea, the eloquent parish priest of Tiverton was in the chair.
On the panel were two teenavers from the sixth form of two Grammar schools. Wedged in between was Mrs, Eve Lewis, a child guidance expert. friend of Sister Marie leilda. S.N.D., and author of "Children and Their Religion". a recent Shoed and Ward publication which parents and teachers ought to read.
The first questions were very testing on the danger of mooning. the right use of imagination, the value of Sunday sermons, the moral value of 'The News of The World'. A key question was "Should parents ever switch off the T.V.?" Later. we passed smoothly to the Beatles and why it is that the disorderly ticket-gm:tiers are mostly 15-year-olds girls.
'1 he girls in the hall were in favour of the Beatles but not so harms that their contemporaries scream. It was all highly amusing: 1 myself. shaded by a spiritual aspitlidstra. thanked 'God that I 1.13S 54 and celibate.
It is at least ten years since I visited Exeter University and its Cotholic Society, Then there were ;time 20 Catholic undergraduates. now 150, but still with only a -part-time chaplain and no chaplaincy. The hunt for a site k on.
Argemetos about the Council of Church started in a lecture ball and ended in the bar. It sas art hilarious evening and for me most prolila hie. Among the debaters were veil Wimbledon alumnae. Iwo American students. a coniert from Haileyburs• and a Derbyshire student belonging to the C.Y.M.S. Questions ranged from transub.
stantiation to the Index. The Exeter students deserve a chaplaincy.
Ashley Place will lose a good deal of its sanctified sparkle now that Miss Fitegerald has left the C.T.S. shop after 14 eears. Her service of Catholic Truth covered, in fact. 41 sears. a record which few can equal. just as precious few in the history of the Westminster Cathedral Precincts, will have made more friends.
With the opening of the C.T.S. retail shop shc came into her own and her own particular blend of chains. piety and toughness made her the perfect custodian of such it repository. Jutsecret, and belejnd my spiritual ispiclistra. I weeer at her retirement. for Mies Fitzgerald with her blarney, her learning. her skill as a speaker and her unending devotion stands for the inspiration of me adolescent days.
()nee she had a letter from Africa tshiCh ran "Please forward me Fanelv Limitation . . 1 am a Catholic. father of 12 living and four deceased. and I understand the meaning of sclf-denial."