Spring warmth - and a dose of cool common sense - at last!

The first warm days of the Spring! The photo is of the olive trees in the Vicarage garden luxuriating in the sunshine. Time to put the citrus plants back on the terrace after their winter indoors.

The virtue of having a car radio is that, travelling around between parishes, you tend to listen to things you wouldn't naturally tune in to and, sometimes, even avoid like the plague. Woman's Hour yesterday morning, not up to this point a favourite of mine, contained an interview with Anne Widdecombe, the former Conservative government minister, who left the Church of England for the Catholic Church in response to the ordination of women in the 1990s, and who is, more's the pity, now retiring from the House of Commons at the coming general election. She gave, in answer to a question, perhaps the best verbal defence of the Church in the context of the child abuse scandal that I have heard. Her comments about the general and very naïve moral confusion of the 1970s were absolutely spot on, if somewhat embarrassing (I hope and pray) to those she named who were taken in by it all and are still in public life today.
If you can, try to listen to what she said; there's a link to Woman's Hour on this page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/womans-hour/
The link to Thursday's programme itself: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b00rqqyg
The full interview begins at about one minute twenty seconds, the remarks about the Church at ten minutes, fifteen seconds.
A national treasure indeed!

Miss Widdecombe herself. Photo - The Daily Mail

Victimae Paschali: Notre Dame de Paris:  organist: the great Pierre Cochereau

Happy Easter Octave!

Victimae paschali laudes

immolent Christiani.

Agnus redemit oves:

Christus innocens Patri

reconciliavit peccatores.

Mors et vita duello

conflixere mirando:

dux vitae mortuus,

regnat vivus.

Dic nobis Maria,

quid vidisti in via?

Sepulcrum Christi viventis,

et gloriam vidi resurgentis:

Angelicos testes,

sudarium, et vestes.

Surrexit Christus spes mea:

praecedet suos in Galilaeam.

Scimus Christum surrexisse

a mortuis vere:

tu nobis, victor Rex, miserere.

Amen.