Issued by: Archconfraternity of St Stephen
Registered Charity No. 803021
In the last issue (Spring, 2000), I expressed the hope that there would be plenty of Guild News to share in this millennium year. So far, and we are nearing the end of that year, there doesn't seem to be very much that Branches of the Guild want to say to each other! This is a pity and I hope that I am jogging people's memories to write just a few lines of news that you wish to share with other servers. It may be that because the Newsletter is only published twice a year things get put aside and forgotten. Don't let that put you off - I'm always pleased to receive news and will do my best to include articles as space allows.
On the other hand - a number of very kind and generous donations have been received and these are greatly appreciated by our Treasurer. Please keep those articles and/or donations coming in to the Editor: Mr C. E. A. Merritt, 8 Venetia Road, South Ealing, London W5 4JD.
All other Guild matters, including orders for Guild goods, are dealt with by:
The Hon. Secretary
Archconfraternity of St Stephen
c/o St Joseph's,
High Road,
Wembley,
Middx.
HA9 6AG.
NOTE: Our address at Wembley is for correspondence only.
There is no one there from the Guild to deal with telephone messages or personal callers.
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
This year's Annual General Meeting will be held on Monday, 4th
December 2000 at St Vincent's Convent, Carlisle Place, Westminster. The meeting
will be preceded by the Annual Mass for deceased members of the Guild. The Mass
will be celebrated by the National Director, in the meeting room, and will
commence at 6.15 p.m. The AGM will follow the Mass, after a short interval, at
7.30 p.m. This will allow time for members to meet one another and chat before
the meeting. Light refreshments will be provided and Guild Goods will be on
sale.
Full details of the Annual General Meeting are enclosed with this Newsletter for all those on our London Circulation List (basically those within the area bounded by the M.25 Motorway). Anyone outside this area who would like to receive details of the meeting should write to the Hon. Secretary at St Joseph's, High Road, Wembley, Middx, HA9 6AG.
ELECTIONS TO THE CENTRAL COUNCIL
The annual elections to the Central Council will take place during the A.G.M.
and, as always, the Council would welcome new members to take on some of the
work of running the Archconfraternity. Over the past couple of years a committee
of the Central Council has been looking into ways of improving the working of
the Council and a report of their findings and recommendations is enclosed with
the A.G.M. papers. If adopted, these changes will involve an increase in the
number of persons working for the Archconfraternity and some new recruits are
therefore urgently needed. The ideal candidate would be in their 20s/30s and
settled in their lifestyle, living within reach of London, and able to spare
some time for Guild work. If you feel that you could contribute to the work of
the Guild in any way please contact the Secretary at our Wembley address.
ANNUAL WESTMINSTER MASS FOR ALTAR SERVERS
We are pleased to announce that His Grace Archbishop Murphy-O'Connor has
confirmed that he will continue the tradition of celebrating the Altar Servers'
Mass at Westminster Cathedral on the second Saturday of February in each year.
Next year's Mass will, therefore, be on SATURDAY, 10 FEBRUARY, at 3.00 p.m. Full
details will be circulated in the usual manner.
GUILD GOODS
Prices of most Guild Goods have remained unaltered for four years or more. The
Council is pleased that it can maintain most of these prices at their current
levels. However, the cost of the standard red Medal Cord, when sold separately,
will be increased to 40 pence per metre (currently 30p) as from 1 December,
2000. This will not affect the price of Guild Medals sold with cord, which will
remain at £3.00 each.
You are reminded that orders for goods required for St Stephen's Day should be sent in early. Orders received after 1st December cannot be guaranteed.
ANNUAL GUILD DINNER
Next year's Annual Guild Dinner will be held on Wednesday, 9th May
2001. It will again be in the Parish Centre at Holy Trinity Church, Brook Green,
London W6. Further details will be circulated nearer to the date.
THE ARCHCONFRATERNITY ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB
Earlier this year the Central Council agreed that the Archonfraternity should
set up its own Website. The aim of the Website is to be a vehicle of
information, reaching out not only to its members in the UK but also to servers
worldwide and to non-servers alike.
The site will enable quicker communications, cut down some of the administration currently undertaken, cut down some of the postage and most important of all will contain information - past and present. The implementation of the Website will not produce instantaneous results and savings - this will build up in the years to come as more and more people go on-line. Instead this is to ensure that the Archconfraternity has a platform from which it can operate proactively, rather than to wait until there is a real need for it. Until that time we will work in tandem with current conventional communication methods.
Currently still in its development stage, we are aiming to have the basic site up and running to coincide with this years AGM. As material is gathered the site will be updated. Some of the pages planned are: About the Guild, Archive materials, Contacts, Frequently asked questions, Forthcoming events, Guest book, Guild goods, Links, Newsletter, Guild prayers, Regional events and Training guides.
On behalf of the Central Council, we would like to thank Stephen Chapman, of St Laurence's, Cambridge for his very professional guidance and his time in setting up the Website. If there is anyone else who is able to assist with this work please e-mail: tonyogunseitan@aol.com. Alternatively if you have any comments/suggestions about the Website please let us know.
Finally, for those of you who have access to the web, the address of the Archconfraternity site is:
http://www.guildofststephen.org although the site will not be up and running until December 2000.
Mathew D'Souza, Stamford Hill
Chairman, Website Development Committee.
Editor's Note:
It seems quite possible that before long this Newsletter will be available for downloading from our new website!
GUILD VISIT TO ROME & ASSISI - July, 2001
Plans for next year's visit to Rome and Assisi are now well advanced. We will be
travelling by a scheduled airline from an airport near London to Fiumicino
Airport, Rome and vice/versa and will be staying in high standard hostels
(private facilities in all rooms). Five nights will be spent in Rome followed by
two nights in Assisi. All coach transfers and excursions are included in the
cost of the visit. The all in cost of £475.00 is very competitive and the
organisers expect to be able to maintain this price. The dates - SATURDAY, 21
JULY to SATURDAY 28 JULY, 2001.
Bookings are coming in steadily from around the country but there are still plenty of places available if you would like to join the visit. This is a good opportunity to meet servers from other parishes and other parts of the country. Further information and application forms are available from
THE ROME COMMITTEE
8 Hoodcote Gardens,
Winchmore Hill,
London, N21 2NE.
THANKS AND FAREWELL TO A GOOD FRIEND OF THE GUILD
On a Saturday in late September the Secretary and John Ahern (a member of the
Central Council) travelled to Nottingham for the annual Servers Mass for the
Diocese of Nottingham. This was celebrated by Bishop James McGuinness and it was
one of his last engagements before his retirement at the end of September.
Bishop McGuiness has been a great supporter of the Guild both in his own diocese
and on a national basis and the Secretary was pleased to have an opportunity of
expressing publicly the Archconfraternity's appreciation of this support. We
wish the Bishop a very long and happy retirement.
HOLY MEN OF LINCOLNSHIRE
Another (almost Saint) Stephen
Many people living in the East Midlands, will at some time have passed along the
A158 road, en-route to Skegness or one of the other Lincolnshire coastal
resorts. The road is quite straight for the first ten miles or so after Lincoln
but then after passing through the village of Wragby, for a couple of miles or
so, there is a series of quite sharp bends. If we are doing the job properly,
concentrating on our driving, it is most likely that as we are negotiating the
tightest sequence of bends we will not notice that we are passing through
Langton-by-Wragby, just a few nondescript buildings on the right. One day, if
you have time, take a right turn and go behind these buildings. It is nothing
more than a metalled track really, passing through a farmyard. You will see a
small Georgian house on the left, surrounded by what looks like the remains of a
moat. After passing through that farmyard you will see a smallish typical
English country church, dedicated to S't Giles. A board outside this church has
on it 'The birthplace of Stephen Langton'. The church is usually unlocked and if
you go inside there is nothing particularly striking about it. Just inside the
door there is a small modern stained-glass window depicting Stephen Langton in
red bishop's vestments with the palium. No doubt the red chasuble, stole and
maniple relate to the name Stephen. Apart from this window, there is no mention
of this major figure in the sacred and secular history of our country.
In 1155 the site of the current Georgian house was no doubt occupied by a substantial medieval manor house, certainly the vestiges of the moat suggest a substantial building, and it was in this house that Stephen would have been born. Nothing much is known of his early life, except that his early education was at Bullington Priory, one of the many monasteries that then existed in the area. It is known that subsequently he continued his education in Paris, becoming 'Doctor' at three schools. There, he befriended Cardinal de' Conti who went on to become Pope Innocent III. In 1206, Innocent made Stephen a Cardinal and the following year Stephen was elected Archbishop of Canterbury. King John, who had a habit of falling out with the Church, resisted the election and it was not until John was finally reconciled with the Holy See in 1213 that Stephen was admitted to the office.
It is well known that poor old King John not only fell out with the Church, particularly S't Hugh when Bishop of Lincoln, from time to time but was rather inclined to come to odds with all and sundry. He is probably best known for upsetting the Barons, the real power in the land. The Barons soon came to recognise Stephen as their champion. When the Pope, now in favour with John, excommunicated the Barons, Stephen refused to publish the ban and, in 1215, was suspended from his office He was not reinstated until the accession of Henry III in 1218.
The outcome of the conflict with the Barons was of course Magna Carta and Stephen's signature appeared as a witness to the original draft of that monumental document. It is believed that Stephen was responsible for much of the drafting of the original historic document.
With all his involvement in politics, it is amazing that he found time for much else but he was in fact a most prolific and erudite scholar. Not only did he write extensive commentaries to both the Old and New Testaments, but he was also responsible for the division of the Bible into the chapters that are still in use today.
Cardinal Langton was instrumental in instituting the cause for the canonisation of S't Hugh of Lincoln, co-patron of the Nottingham Diocese. The cause for his own canonisation was put forward but not pursued.
Stephen Cardinal Langton died in 1228 and is buried in Canterbury Cathedral.
Next time you see a sign depicting the birthplace of someone or the other, look them up - you may be amazed to find out who they were.
Raymond (Dickie) Bird
Hon Secretary,
Nottingham Diocesan Servers' Council
News from the Branches
Diocese of Arundel & Brighton
St Richard's, Chichester
On Tuesday 30 May, 35 altar servers from the Chichester branch of the Guild of
St Stephen made a pilgrimage to London to mark this Holy Year.
It began in St Richard's Church (at the unearthly hour of 7.50am!) with prayers at the font, reminding us that we all begin our Christian Pilgrimage through life in the waters of Baptism. We then all bundled on to the coach and left for London.
Tyburn
Two hours later we trooped drowsily off the coach (after catching up on any lost
sleep) and entered Tyburn Convent, the national shrine of the English Martyrs.
This is only 150 yards from the site of "The Tyburn Tree", the gallows on which
many Catholics were hanged, drawn and quartered in the 16th and 17th centuries
because of their faith. We saw the many relics of these saints which are kept in
the convent. After a very interesting talk from one of the nuns, Fr Jonathan
Martin celebrated Mass on the Martyrs' Altar (built beneath a replica of the
gallows). He was joined by Fr Richard Biggerstaff with a group of altar servers
from his own parishes of Bagshot and Camberley North.
The Tower of London
The coach then took us to the Tower of London where ëBeefeaters' took us to the
cell of St Thomas More (one of the Patrons of the Guild) and the Beauchamp
Tower, in which St Philip Howard was imprisoned. We saw his signature and his
famous prayer scratched into the wall of his cell. "The more suffering in this
world for Christ's sake, the more glory with Christ in the next."
Westminster Cathedral
After a not-so-brief wander around the Tower of London gift shop, we returned to
the coach and were whisked off to Westminster Cathedral. Here, in true pilgrim
style, we prayed the Jubilee Prayers for the Pope and entered through the Holy
Door to the sound of Vespers. Once inside, we prayed at the grave of Cardinal
Hume and the Shrine of St John Southworth, and said our own prayers in the
beautiful Blessed Sacrament Chapel. As the evening Mass began, the Archbishop's
secretary showed us into the very grand "Throne Room" of Archbishop's House,
where we met Archbishop Cormac. He chatted with us (and seemed impressed that
we'd spent a holy day!), posed for some photographs and gave us his blessing.
Our day ended across the Piazza in McDonald's where Fr Jonathan bought us
milkshakes The coach then picked us up and we returned to Chichester, much
holier and even more tired than we'd been at 7.50 in the morning!
Many thanks to Fr Jonathan and Fr Richard for organising the day, and to Sylvia, Julia, Sally and Dave who Fr Jonathan brought along for "crowd control" Also, many thanks to Mike Beal, who gave up his day to drive us to, from and all around London.
Chris Aldred (16)
(The above account is reprinted from the A&B News by kind permission of it's Editor)
Archdiocese of Westminster
Sts Peter & Paul, Northfields
Sunday 18th June was a special day for seven of our servers. Breaking with our tradition of only holding enrolments on St Stephen's Day, Fr Tom Quinn, our Parish Priest enrolled the following into the Guild, using, for the first time, the new Enrolment Ceremony leaflet:
I am very grateful to John McCarthy who is a great help to me with the servers' practices, and who looks after the servers' albs and other things around the sacristy. Dominic Bradley also helps with practices whenever he can and the assistance of both these more senior servers is much appreciated.
C. Merritt, MC
Diocese of Plymouth
St Mary's Abbey, Bodmin, Cornwall
One of our teenage servers, Richard Tutton, was presented with his Silver Medal during the St Stephen's Day Mass for 10 years service in the Guild.
On 9 April our most senior server, Tony Stalley, was awarded his Gold Medal, for over 63 years service in the Guild. He began serving and was enrolled into the Guild in Rugby, Warwickshire in 1936. The Mass was celebrated by Fr Michael Lock, Diocesan Director of the Guild. Also present with us were Mr Anthony Hawes, the Hon. Secretary, and Mr Anthony Ogunseitan, lay President, who presented Tony with his Medal.
G. M. de Prager
DEADLINE
Reports and articles may be sent to the Editor at any time: he is always pleased to receive copy, but please bear in mind that the next (Spring, 2001) edition will go to press next March. Articles for publication should be submitted before the end of February.