Assistance with my research project!!!!

A way to combine blogging and my university work, of course, why did I not think of it before?

I'm doing my dissertation on the relationship between religion and public life in London and I need to find people to interview who have been motivated to join a protest on religious grounds. Ideally I'm looking for people who have protested in the last year or so and particularly interested in anyone who has participated in the protests against the Incitement to Racial and Religious Incitement Bill ( a topic of my earlier blogs) and also more recently the one against Lord Joffe's bill. So if you fit the bill (ha ha, sorry I couldn't help myself) or know someone that does then please let me know ASAP!!!

Also if you know of any forthcoming protests inform me also since ideally I was hoping to recruit people for interview that way and also make the protest itself a focus of study too.

Oh well, it's worth a try!

Assistance with blogging!

OK, I need help! Having vastly increased my blogging activity over the last couple of weeks I have begun to notice how ghastly inferior my blog template is to everyone elses. Everyone else being the web of Catholic blogs I have found myself falling into after attending Fr Tim Finigan's talk on the Da Vinci Code (see entry on his blog http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/2006/06/saturday-in-parish.html and also entry on Joe's blog http://catholiclondoner.blogspot.com/2006/06/last-week.html)

The talk itself was very informative but at the time I did question why I dragged myself halfway across one side of Dulwich to another in order to attend it when I keep resolving not to do too many things and complain that I'm behind with my univeristy work!! But if I hadn't have gone I would've been deprived of not only the talk but also this fascinating web of Catholic blogs. Arguably this might've been a good thing and I might not now be falling even further behind with my uni work as a result of all this distraction, but nevermind!

Getting back to the point of this blog - I need technical assistance! After a year of blogging I still don't know how to add links to other blogs onto my blog and I don't understand why my sidebar thing is all the way at the bottom of my page - it never used to do that!!

Anyone out there who can help?

The body of Christ versus football (25/06/2006)

I took part in my first ever Corpus Christi Procession today and it was both amazing and great fun. For those of you not in the know it has become part of Catholic tradition to publicly process with the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance with banners, pictures, a processional cross etc and the faithful singing songs through the streets as a form of adoration. The Blessed Sacrament being the name Catholics give to the host once consecrated by the priest which has then become the body of Christ (Corpus Christi). I hope to have some pictures of the actual procession I took part in, in due course, but in the meantime this link from wikipedia will have to do!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Procession_with_blessed_sacrament_1.jpg

I loved being part of the procession for several different reasons. On a completely secular level and just because I'm rather contrary I liked the fact that I wasn't watching football this afternoon unlike most other people in the country, I liked the fact that we held up the motorists while we walked at a snail's pace, and I like the bewildered faces of the people we passed on the streets. On a more religious level I was enjoying this very public display of religiousity in our predominantly secular London with, lets face it, a rather an unashamed statement of Catholicism! I enjoyed being with soooo many people (there were lots of us!), young, old, male, female, black, white etc united by common belief and purpose.

The Corpus Christi procession really exemplifies what is so weird and wonderful about Catholicism. Catholics believe that a wafer, albeit a consecrated one, gets transformed into the body of Christ - hey that's weird enough but they also go about eating it each time they go to Mass!! OK, I being rather crude with my choice of words, but think about it, it seems like utter nonsense, yet all these people were out there expressing their adoration of the Blessed sacrament, kneeling in front of it and the women covering their heads in the presence of Christ. Did these people look mad - no! Did I feel like a bit of a fraud? Yes!

I really enjoyed singing the songs yet I couldn't quite put my whole heart and soul into it because I don't yet believe the words that I was singing. I still remain to be convinced that Catholicism teaches the Truth as revealed by God. Yet there is just something so strong about the faith that keeps me going back to Mass each week and I sincerely hope that I walk my next Corpus Christi procession as a proud Catholic!!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- And here's one of the photos from the procession, courtesy of joe - see his blog for other pictures http://catholiclondoner.blogspot.com/2006/07/more-picture-stuff.html