HOW TO CONTACT US

Letters for publication must be accompanied by a full postal address, and a telephone number where the writer may be contacted. The full address will not be used on publication, but we will NOT publish letters where we are asked to withhold names entirely. Letters may be edited.

Lourdes 2005.
The dates for the Pilgrimage are July 22nd to the 29th Friday to Friday. As in previous years, Mancunia Travel Limited will be handling the travel and hotel accommodation, there are two flights planned. Times of flights will not be
known until nearer the time, for booking foms you can contact Mancunia direct on telephone 0161" 834- 4030. or John Baldwin on 01772 682553. There is also a coach planned for the Blackpool, Fylde Coast and Preston area, there will be no overnight travel by Coach details once again from John. Any problems contact me on 01253 892029.
Cath Morgan.
Pilgrimage Director.

Listening Day
I know four members of the Commission for Marriage and Family Life, two of them intimately, and I can vouch for their honesty and integrity. They have worked long and hard over many years for the cause in which they believe so fervently. I consider the attack on them by The Blackpool Life Group (December Letters) suggesting duplicity and deviousness to be repugnant and a slur on their characters. It is ironic that the Life Group describes others as “having a personal axe to grind” while themselves grinding away at full throttle. Mrs Hetherington may have managed to air the views of the Blackpool Life group in the Catholic Press, but she will not have won many friends for her group.
Deacon Tom Butler,
Preston

Change of Name
Over 40 years ago a friend and I used visit a little church we knew as Our Lady of Fernyhalgh. It was in a quiet tranquil place, surrounded by fields. We were told of a priest fleeing during the reign of Elizabeth I, who was later martyred. Reading your excellent journal made me wonder if the above title has been replaced by “Ladyewell”. Occasionally we would walk towards a building, which had previously housed the sisters of the Holy Child order. There among the scrub we would locate the well. Happy memories!
Jessica Wilcock (Mrs)
Dorchester

Reservations
I thought the December editorial was very good but I have two reservations. 1. I do not go along with the suggestion that the church building should cease to be a place for private devotion. The church was built for the honour and glory of God. In that building we have the Tabernacle, where dwells Our Blessed Lord (Blessed be Jesus in the most Holy Sacrament of The Altar). Many people get great joy and peace from making their own private visits to church in praise and adoration, that is their way of talking to Almighty God. 2. In many cases looking round for a Mass of convenience is necessary because of work and other commitments.
Denis Horan
Barrow in Furness

Discipleship
It appears to me that for many years now, our approach to Vocations, Education, and indeed Catholic life in general has been one that seeks what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called, “Cheap Grace”. “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without Confession, Absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate”. (The Cost of Discipleship) Let’s repent and then we will desire to start again.
P.G.O’Dea (Mgr)
Ambleside

Good Wishes
Coming to the end of the year I would just like to say how much I have enjoyed reading The Voice each month. Along with the spiritual side there is the human side of being a Christian in this changing world where there is sometimes no thought of God. Let’s hope that in the year ahead more people will return to God and their faith.
Hilda Martin
Blackpool

Writing Letters
Many years ago I hit on the idea of obtaining friends all over the world. Being in contact by letter with people from all sorts of different cultures and lifestyles. What better hobby can there be for any Christian, young or old? So I went to the main reference library and looked up the names and addresses of newspapers around the world in the media directories. Many list their newspapers by country then by town. It is best to choose a town newspaper where the publication figure is less than 100,000. I then took the list home, wrote to the various-editors and sat back and awaited replies. It is important to keep your letter to the editor brief, providing basic details of gender, languages spoken, job, school and hobbies.
As expected the editors, not used to getting a letter from England, published my request for pen pals in their "Letters" column. Then the readers wrote back to me to see if I would choose them. The number of replies varied from none to 800+ and it did not matter that I had chosen foreign named newspapers to write off to. Most newspapers are staffed by someone who can speak English so even ones with names like Finnmark Dagblad pose no problem whatsoever. It is important to stress that if a youngster is asking for pen pals then the replies are first screened by a parent or guardian.
Now I have over 70 pen pals. The diversity of cultures include tribesmen in Papua New Guinea, a Maasai woman in Kenya, an Inuit Eskimo in northern Greenland and a sherpa who lives in a village 6000 feet up Everest (a mountain they Sargamatha. Yet another is the daughter of a witch doctor in Ivory Coast, and one of my favourites is the son of a Tuareg warrior (the Blue Men) in the deserts of Algeria. It is a cheap hobby too as the maximum cost of 10 gram letter to the other side of the world is only 47p. It is great to come home at night and know that only some of the mail is bills. The rest is made up largely of letters from far off lands, written by people whose cultures are little understood by the majority of Britons.
John Wilson,
Sacred Heart Parish, Preston.

WHAT'S IN A CLUSTER?
Michael Caine
The Catholic Church in this country is short of ordained priests. A solution much touted is to "cluster" parishes. All that is pretty old hat. Our Deanery Pastoral Council is discussing the future of the Church in our Deanery. There are those who might say that the Deanery Pastoral Council is a toothless tiger since it has no legal standing, but it is our "Toothless Tiger." If we don't like the way it is working, we should get in there and change it. At its last meeting the Council received a presentation from Mgr. Peter Verity. Father Ted Gannon's precis for his parish at St. Gregory's Workington does not mention a crisis, but it does mention the essentials, Collaboration, Evangelisation, and a willingness to change.
There is to be a presentation to which all parish members and all priests will be invited. It is being organised by Fr. Peter Sayer from Egremont, Willie Slavin, (Chair of the Pastoral Council) and Shirelle Cooper from St. Gregory's Westfield. Let us hope it is well attended. At stake is the future of our local Church Community. There is much planning and much heart searching to come.

BREAKING NEWS SERVICE
Interesting items of news from the Universal, National and Diocesan Church reach the Voice throughout the course of the Month. Many of these are never published through sheer lack of space and in any case, who wants to wait a whole month? As service to our readers with Email, The Voice will forward these items of News if you would like us to do so. Just make sure we have your email address. Email us at voicechain@aol.com and say simply – “Breaking News Please”