Fr Laurence Bright, 01', the teacher, jouranlist, editor and publisher died last weekend, aged 58. Fr Bright was a native of Market Harborough, Leicestershire. After extensive studies at Oxford which gained him a doctorate he was converted to Catholicism.
He joined the Dominican order In 1947 and was ordained six years later. He spent five years teaching at the Dominican schools at Hawkesyard, Stafford shire, and Laxton, Northamptonshire, and then moved to editing the "Life of the Spirit" magazine.
For the last 15 years he was actively involved in C'hristian book publishing and was a respected editor on the staff of Sheed and Ward.
CTF bid for more power
The Catholic Teachers' Federation is to meet tomorrow to decide whether to change its constitution in an attempt to give it more influence with local education authorities.
It is holding a special conference at Newman College, Birmingham, to consider enabling schools as a whole to become members.
At the moment the national policy is that only individual teachers can belong. However, schools membership has been tried as an experiment in Liverpool over the last three years and has been extremely successful, according to Mr W. Igoe, the Federation's secretary.
"There they have succeeded in getting up to 500 people at meetings and the increased membership has enabled them to have much more influence with the local authority," he said.
The Federation's current membership is about 5,000 but Mr Igoe said that this could increase rapidly to nearer 30,000 if schools membership is approved,