A mine of information from the A to Z of what's on and where

THE CATHOL IC Director;`, without which io Presbytery
parlour or begging-letter consortium is complete, has issued its 1983 edition under the copyright of the Archbishop of Westminster.
There is good news for the traveller on the Continent in the shape of an innovatory list of Mass and Confession times in Eriglish. If you go to the convent of the Sisters of Mother Teresa (whom we would call the Missionaries of Charity) in Zagreb you might hope, the Directory says, to find Mass daily.
Not such good news for the Jesuits, though, whose official numbers in England and Wales, as supplied by the Society, have fallen from 287 priests to 277. But the PIME Fathers have held steady with one priest, while the Scheut Fathers make a new entry into the charts with another one.
The ranks of the Catholic peerage have, according to the Directory, been swollen by the ennoblement of Lords Forte and Gormley and the succession of Police Sergeant the Earl Nelson.
But the Directory printed too early to catch the Thatcher-Foot concordance creation of the Catholic Professor Lord Bauer, of the London School of Economics.
In the national statistics available in the Directory, the number of diocesan priests has fallen by 47 to 4,708, but the number of religious priests has mysteriously risen by 21 to 2,287, despite the universal decline in the individual figures given for major religious congregrat ions .
The total number of Catholics has risen by 11,260 to 4,269,019. Yet baptisms have fallen by 1,962 to 74,390 and receptions by 52 to 7,731, so Catholics must be living longer.
The 11,000 or so extra Catholics have another 36 churches and chapels open to the public to make use of.
The Archbishop of Birmingham, Maurice Couve de Murville, has his coat of arms depicted at the beginning of his entry, with the motto Spe Gaudentes. For the first time those of Bishop Alexander of Clifton are included. But unexplained spaces still appear under Hexham and Newcastle and Northampton, while Shrewsbury seems to have changed its blazoning.
It is to be hoped that no members of the College of Arms buy the Directory.
*Published by The Universe, Liverpool.