Catholics on BBC4: Children

Having watched the second  of the BBC4 series `Catholics` on three children from St Mary's Roman Catholic Primary School in Chipping, Lancashire preparing for their First Holy Communion I began to feel that my perception of the state of things in the Catholic Church in England may have been wrong. Here was an idyllic view of Catholic life. Fr Grimshaw (who I remember as director of the English College summer villa at Palazzola during my two years in Rome), was a caring pastor, a grandfather figure who read Winnie the Pooh stories to the school children and was wholly orthodox in his presentation of Catholic doctrine. I was somewhat alarmed by the low attendance at the Good Friday service but otherwise all looked good. OK so I would have liked to see the Extraordinary Form and a change from those modern vestments but compared to what often can happen today the parish appeared to be a model of sanity.

Non-Catholic viewers may have been worried that the only subject the children studied in school was RE but as this was a programme about preparing for their first Holy Communion it was reasonable to focus on their religious education. And I know one of the teachers spoke about receiving the bread and the wine but from what she said at other times it was clear she was not a heretic but had maybe fallen into that way of speaking which many use which can be confusing to the outsider who may well only think the Eucharist is only bread and wine.

Apparently the next in the series will be less idyllic but this programme was a joy to watch and can be found once again on the BBC iplayer for a few weeks.