The 32nd Scrra Inter-. national Convention held in London recently must have been a spetacular of grand proportions. The financial outlay on it (£250,000?) must have been even more spectacular.
How could it be otherwise? Three days of hearty junketing in the five-star Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane; dazzling speeches from visiting dignitaries, blaming the shortage of vocations (a still untested assertion?) on the usual "isms"; simplistic cant about "defections" and "abandonment of vocations"; platitudes about "zealous priests" and "religious habits" etc.
To priests, religious and Christians involved in the every
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day hard slog of life at the grassroots level of parishes, schools, hospitals and factories, where "gambling on the Providence of God" is an occupational necessity. the high-flown do quence of the Serra Convention emanating from five-star "guaranteed security" rings hollow.
For me, the Catholic Herald's leader, "Flexible approach to the Ministry" (July 19) said, in three minutes, more that was to the point than the star-studded Serra Convention apparently said in three days.
Fr Laurence J. Mayne St Elizabeth's Presbytery, Webster Street, Lithcrland,
1.iverpool,
.