Fr Ray Blake, English priest-blogger, misrepresented by local journalist and others

St Mary Magdalen's Church, Brighton, England

Fr Ray Blake is parish priest of St Mary Magdalen's, Brighton, in the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton on the south coast of England. He is also a blogger with a wide readership. I have been a regular reader of his blog for some years and am struck by two aspects of his writing in particular: his faithfulness to the Church's teaching and his commitment to those on the fringes of society such as immigrants in difficulties, drug addicts, alcoholics, beggars. 

On 10 August this year he posted The Trouble with the Poor. It begins this way: The trouble with the poor is that they are messy.

There is a secluded area between the church and our hall, a passage, occasionally we find someone has got a few cardboard boxes together and has slept there and if it has been raining leaves a sodden blanket, cardboard there to be cleaned up, often it also smells of urine and there is often excrement there and sometimes a used needle or two.

There is a man who comes into the church, especially during the trad Mass and during the silence of the Canon will pray aloud, "Jesus, I want you to bless Fr Ray and ...., and God, can you persuade the good people here to give to the poor, I am poor", unchecked he will take his cap off and have a collection. It makes a mess of our prayers, it stops some coming to Mass here.

This post, along with many others he has written, has shown Father Ray to be a person who is very much involved with the poor.

The Charity of St Lawrence, 1815-20, Bernardo Strozzi [Web Gallery of Art]

On 5 September, The Argus, a Brighton-based paper published an 'exclusive' article about Father Ray's blogpost under the by-line of Bill Gardner, 'Lying and messy' poor sent by God to test us, says Brighton priest. The article begins, A complaining priest claims “lying” poor people have been sent by God to “test my holiness”.

Nobody reading Father Ray's article with an open mind or reading his blog regularly could describe him as 'a complaining priest'. Here in the Philippines I have been trying to deal with people looking for money all the years I have been in the country since 1971. I have been stopped on the street in Ireland and in England, sometimes in places such as railway stations. Even as a seminarian, when we wore a black suit and black tie when outside the seminary, I was a target of beggars as were other seminarians and priests.

Some asking for help are in real need. Some are con-artists. I have never really learned how to meet with grace persons who approach me for help or how to distinguish those in real need from those on the make. I prefer to direct whatever money comes my way to help those in need when I know this really responds to their needs, eg, a home run by religious sisters for girls many of whom have been abused, while respecting their dignity - and mine.

I have never had the experience of having what I wrote totally distorted, the experience Father Ray has had.

Laurence England, a parishioner and parish secretary at St Mary Magdalen's and a blogger, sent this letter to The Argus. Inter alia Mr England writes: Fr Blake also helps other poor and homeless people who come to his door. They are not all honest and some do indeed lie in order to get money. I know this is true because I am the secretary at the Church and often respond to callers and give from the poor fund established by the Church for their relief. Despite this, if you read his post, it was about how Christians should respond to the poor, not an attack on the poor themselves.

St Martin and the Beggar, c.1604, El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

Father Ray is wondering if he should continue blogging. Perhaps you might visit his blog and post a word of encouragement. Pope Benedict has spoken of our responsibility to use the internet to preach the Gospel to what he calls 'this digital continent'. Some will listen and accept, some will listen politely and walk away, some will malign those who preach the Gospel and some will deliberately refuse to see how persons such as Father Ray are powerfully living the Gospel.

'Feed my sheep' fine - but 'feed my cat'?

Tigresa and Whitey, two of my three cats

As a priest who loves cats I couldn't resist this story from the blog of Bishop-elect Thomas Dowd, soon to be auxiliary bishop of Montreal. I'm simply and shamelessly copying and pasting from his blog, Waiting in Joyful Hope. I don't know if he's distantly related to me. My maternal grandmother was Annie Dowd from County Meath, the 'Royal County'.

Post for July 25, 2011

Christopher Curtis, in his recent article on me in the Montreal Gazette, includes this quote: “The job can be a lot of things. When I worked for a hospital, I was on call and you would get everything from a multiple victim car accident to a guy who is sick and needs you to feed his cat.”

In case you were wondering about the reference to a cat, it is from an incident that took place on March 7, 2006. My older posts are still in archives for the moment, but I thought I’d fish this one out and repost it (with just a bit of editing to help it make sense). Enjoy!

I was sick, and you visited me fed my cat

Today I got a call on my pager, 15 minutes before I was going to leave the hospital to teach downtown. Calling the ward desk, I was told that a patient wanted to see me. Could it wait till tomorrow, I inquired? No, it was urgent, was the response. OK, then, I headed downstairs right away.

The nurse let me to the patient’s room. He was quite upset to be stuck in the hospital. I asked him what he wanted to talk about, and it turned out he didn’t want to talk about anything. He wanted me to feed his cat.

Excuse me?

It turns out that this unfortunate gentleman really has nobody here in the city to help him, and by now his cat was 4 or 5 days without food. He did not remember the number of the superintendent of his building, either, so he had nobody to call. Could I head over to his apartment and explain things to the super, and maybe be let in to feed that cat?

Well, this sure wasn’t part of the job description. Running through my head were the words of advice I had received time and time again: “Don’t try and rescue everybody out there! You have to distinguish between what is essential, and what is merely important! There is only one Saviour, and you are not him!”

But on the other hand, this situation involved a starving cat. And I’m a cat person, so I felt for the poor thing. So I said ok, with a rolling of my eyes towards the Lord, who by now (I am sure) was having another one of his divine belly laughs.

Things, it turned out, were not as simple as all that. The super is new there, just recently moved to Canada from Romania, and he could not find the proper key. So it was back to the hospital to get the key (and permission to use it, witnessed by a staff member), until I finally managed to get in the door and feed the poor cat. Boy, was he happy to see me!

It turns out that there is actually a deeper lesson in all of this. At one point, as I was heading back to the hospital, I asked the Lord what the point of all this was. And the Lord answered, in one of those moments of clarity that you just know is a divine response. “Tom,” He said, “if I had asked you to do something extravagently important for this man, something heroic, you would have done it without question. Yet now, when I ask you to merely show him a very simple kindness, you are full of doubts and questions and annoyance. Does that make sense?”

“He who is faithful in small things shows himself worthy to be trusted with greater things. It’s not the big things that count, but the little things, done with great love.”

So I fed his pet, and even pet it for awhile. I also took care of a couple of other things for the man (returned some rented DVDs, etc.) Tomorrow I will see him again, and I’ll talk with the doctor/social worker/whoever about the need to help him put some structure in his life. I know I can’t take all this on as some sort of long-term responsibility — but in the meantime, I can at least feed the cat.

Bishop-elect Thomas Dowd of Montreal, soon to be the youngest bishop in Canada and the second youngest in the world. The article in the Montreal Gazette referred to above, Montreal Blogfather Thomas Dowd ready to be bishop, shows clearly how a bishop or priest can use the internet in the service of the Gospel. It seems that Father Dowd was the first Canadian priest to blog.


Lifesite news sees hope in three recent episcopal appointments in Quebec.

Please pray for Bishop-elect Dowd and for a renewal of the faith in Quebec.

St Cadoc's: a parish-based blog

 St Cadoc's Church, Halfway

St Cadoc was a Welsh saint but finds himself in Scotland in a place with an intriguing name: Halfway, near Cambuslang and southeast of Glasgow, in the Diocese of Motherwell, Scotland. James Hannaway is a parishioner there and has initiated what he calls 'a fledgling blog' with the simple name of St Cadoc's.

St Cadoc

James is hoping that the parish will see the possibilities in having a blog or its own website. Pope Benedict has, on different occasions, challenged both young people and priests to use the internet to evangelise 'this digital continent'. I have no doubt whatever that St Paul, St Francis de Sales, the patron of journalists, and St Maximilian Kolbe would all be bloggers. St Maximilian is honoured by the Church primarily as a martyr but what is not so well known is that he used the press and radio, the latter still in its 'childhood', very effectively, both in his native Poland and in Japan in the 1930s to bring the Good News to as many as possible.

S

St Maximilian Kolbe

Sometimes I wonder if anyone reads this blog. I know there are regular readers and it is always encouraging to get feedback or a response. I firmly believe that those of us who have some ability in using the internet should harness its possibilities, not necessarily to be constantly 'preaching' but with the sense that all things can give glory to God. As St Paul says: Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him (Col 3:17).

While on home leave in Dublin in 1994 I took a short course in computers for missionaries. The missionary Sister who taught us wasn't great in terms of the 'how' but she truly inspired me with stories of how the then fledgling - I've never used that word even once in a post and here I've used it twice! - internet had helped save lives, as she saw in the African country where she had served. I have experienced that reality in my own use of the net.

Check out St Cadoc's and post a comment there.