Finis tantum principium est

"Where the beginning is, there the end will be. Happy is he who stands at the beginning: he will know the end and will not taste death."

Quodam tempore

Extract from Seán Manchester's autobiography Stray Ghosts:

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Sightings of people who are mistaken for stray ghosts are probably few and far between because the circumstances that make such apparent hauntings possible seem to require precision not easily comprehensible to us. This does not rule out the genuinely supernatural manifestation of either angelic or demonic origin, as my late colleague Professor Devendra Prasad Varma would have been quick to point out ― and as I would have been equally quick to agree. Yet all along I have wondered about time. That is not to say that much of what we sometimes mistake as shades should always be viewed as figures from the past or future passing through our present. However, it is quite possible that we are experiencing a glimpse of the same space in a different time frame. Albert Einstein showed us that time and space are linked. Einstein’s relativity theory, some might argue, was superseded in 1984 by string theory, ie the concept that everything is connected by tiny vibrating strings, smaller than atoms, across eleven dimensions ― leading to the M theory. Yet nobody seems to know what “M” stands for in this latest theory.

Dr Mallett, who is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Connecticut, is in the process of constructing a time machine that he claims will enable him to send sub-atomic particles into the past. To do this he proposes to create a time warp where light slows down to a crawl and is contained in two opposing beams using a ring laser. Mallett calculates that at high enough intensities, space and time could be twisted in the circle within. His time machine might resemble a long light cylinder. “Once it can be done, even in the simplest situation, in the most primitive way, the engineering obstacles will be overcome,” says the professor, adding: “I honestly believe this will be the century for time travel.” There is one inescapable drawback. The machine being designed by Professor Ronald Mallett will only be able to travel as far back as the moment it is switched on.

Mark 9: 23 tells us: “All things are possible to him who believes.” However, the possibility of time travel poses ethical and theological quandaries. Stephen Hawking has proposed a “chronology protection conjecture” ― an as-yet-unknown law of physics that would preserve causality and safeguard history from meddlers. I would not be able to return to that fateful afternoon in August 1970, for example, and execute, instead of the spoken exorcism rite inside the vault, a more effective, albeit illicit, remedy to expel the demonic presence with the possible direct consequence of victims after 1970 still remaining alive. Moreover, an astrophysicist would quickly point out that most of the blueprints for a time machine stipulate that the traveller cannot journey back to an era before the device was first switched on. Yet it is claimed that a time machine able to take the traveller into the past, far beyond when it was constructed, was built in the 1950s. It is described as the Chronovisor.

Father Pellegrino Maria Ernetti (1925-1994) was a Benedictine monk, scientist and foremost authority on archaic music (2000 BC to AD 1200). Along with the help of scientists Enrico Fermi and Werner von Braun, Ernetti is said to have developed the Chronovisor, a time machine that could reach back into the past way beyond its own invented existence to reconstruct the sights and sounds of history. A world-class scholar of prepolyphonic music, he also held a degree in quantum and subatomic physics. His principal research was in the field of time travel. Father Père François Brune knew Ernetti well, and, based on his own experience, concludes that Ernetti was too upright, knowledgeable, intelligent and accomplished to have any need to fabricate a story, and wonders if the Chronovisor, or information pertaining to it, may lie somewhere in the Vatican where it remains hidden from the rest of the world.

My own immersion in music, the arcane and indeed ecclesiasticism led to impressions of an understanding of a form of time travel not so removed from those of Ernetti. Using his knowledge of the physics of chordal structures, and based on a new principle he had uncovered, involving musical frequencies, harmonic resonance and the relationship of these things with the astral plane, Ernetti constructed a time machine from which he claimed to have taken photographs of the past. Such images from across the millennia were gained by an approach and perspective significantly removed from Mallett’s dependance on s²=x²+y²+z²-ct² where s stands for space-time (based on Einstein’s revolutionary concept of space-time, ie time is distance and distance is time) and a Lorentz transformation invariant, ie the distance has the same value for all inertial observers. That notwithstanding, Einstein’s conclusion that space and time are aspects of the same thing, and that matter and energy are also two aspects of the same thing (E=mc²), is invaluable to all potential builders of time machines. Venice-based Father Ernetti, of course, incorporated rather more than theoretical physics into his calculations when inventing his camera that allegedly could focus into the past or future and take pictures of events.

My early career as a professional photographer, life-long involvement in music, and later embrace of ecclesiasticism made the Benedictine monk’s approach to time travel at once comprehensible and something I naturally felt empathetic toward. Whether it was, is, or ever could be a reality, is not something I feel qualified to conjecture ― for I have already experienced enough to know that all manner of things are possible. Yet it is patently the final frontier to tempt those who might seek a future in the past.

Compassion, courtesy, gentleness, integrity, honour and dignity might have all but departed this world. Yet there remains this one possibility of catching a glimpse of such lost innocence of truth and beauty ― rare qualities that still exist somewhere in time.

Sarah

*       *       *

My father introduced me to Edgar Allan Poe, and my mother introduced me to St Teresa of Avila and, later on, to St Thérèse of Lisieux. My mother’s death on the day following the feast of the latter was the most difficult moment of my life. Her last breath came at twenty minutes past five o’clock on that fateful Friday of 2 October 1992. All I can remember is my father’s distant voice proclaiming: “She’s gone.” Two little words that were devastating ― yet I knew in my heart she had not gone at all, but had passed into the Lord’s safekeeping where she would be for the rest of time as we know it. Emotionally, however, I would never recover from the loss. Folk found her special and unique. She was greatly loved by virtually everyone who met her.

My parents at my Hampstead Garden Suburb home ~ March 1984.

Two words uttered a few hours earlier that my mother repeated as I left the room: “… love you.” We smiled. But we were seeing each others smile for the final time. For these two words were the very last we exchanged. Within a matter of hours she breathed her last.

Like her favourite saints, my mother remained somehow fragrant in death, resisting decomposition until the last; even when I replaced the lid on her coffin in the stone chapel for the very last time. She became the “first person I would anoint and on whose behalf I would recite the prayers for the newly dead, since receiving the mitre.” (The Grail Church, Holy Grail, 1995, page 102).

My mother’s funeral was also the first I would conduct in my new office as bishop. It was held at Islington and St Pancras Cemetery on the feast day of St Teresa of Avila.

Funeral vestments.

I also conducted a funeral service in the same cemetery chapel some eight years later for my father. Whereas the voice of Mario Lanza singing Ave Maria accompanied the conclusion to my mother’s service, a jazz piece in gospel mode, titled A Love Divine, quickly followed by Lynn Howard’s beautiful rendition of Softly & Tenderly closed my father’s funeral. He, at least, had seen the opening of the new century and millennium. Yet ― in his own mind ― he felt he had little reason to remain much longer after the death my mother; he just lost the will to live in a world without her. It was all terribly sad, but understandable. Diana Brewester, my London secretary and dear friend, who was present at my father's funeral, would sadly pass away herself in December 2003.

Only three days separated Diana’s and my own birth. We had much in common, sharing an appreciation of the arts, music and literature. Her sudden death, after being diagnosed with cancer only a couple of month’s prior, came as a terrible shock. Father Hubert Condron of St Joseph's Catholic Church and I attended to her funeral at that same chapel where I had conducted my parent’s services. Diana had known both my parents and was especially close to my mother. I sprinkled her coffin with holy water, and spoke to those assembled about her life, and about her generosity of spirit and kindness. Colleagues of mine from the 1960s and 1970s, whom Diana had also come to know, assembled in the cemetery chapel. Now we were joined once again by her death. One later remarked that even in death Diana brought us together. And we were all grateful for that reunion.

When I wrote these reflections, it had to be dedicated to my parents from whom I inherited some of the qualities that set me apart. In early 2003, as I began to put pen to paper, I received an 1814 edition of Holy Dying (The Rule and Exercises of HOLY DYING in which are described the Means and Instruments of Preparing Ourselves and Others Respectively for A BLESSED DEATH, etc by Jer. Taylor, D.D., Chaplain in Ordinary to King Charles the First, Printed and Published by J. Keymer, 1814) from a total stranger who, in the previous month, had commented on an internet forum managed on my behalf:

“Reality is not limited to the extent of your own experience. Thankfully, I have never experienced a vampire, but I have experienced other things which suggest that vampires (as described by Bishop Manchester) are possible and probable. If one has faith in God in all His Glory, one must believe in Satan in all his abhorrence. You cannot disable one side of the scheme of things. Faith is only as strong as its foundations. How many of those who criticise Bishop Manchester have no faith in God? How can their criticism of his redemptive ministry be valid when it is extracted from the context of a more general criticism of Christian faith? Vampires, why not?”

The above comments were made by Elisabeth Harrington, a post-graduate theology student at an Anglo-Catholic college within a university, whose gracious surprise of presents, including the rare and valuable Holy Dying, followed her remarks. I responded:

“What a delight to receive your kind gift of Holy Dying which shall doubtless provide much to ponder. Our gratitude also extends to the no less welcome English Sonnets [1882], and the Horæ Tennsonianæ [1832], where much pleasure will be derived. The etching from one of Cassell’s photographs of Highgate Cemetery is, of course, poignant in the extreme. A suitable frame has already been ordered. You are most generous and considerate in forwarding these wonderful items. Pax et benedictio.” (Correspondence, 30 March 2003).

The foot of my notepaper carried, as it frequently does, the words of Our Lord and Saviour from John 20: 29:

“Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed.”

Keith Maclean in Highgate Cemetery shortly after I met him.

Keith Maclean, who had joined our Order at its foundation, presented me, on the occasion of my birthday in 2003, with The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, comprising one hundred and sixty colour plates. When opening this book upon its receipt, the first plate to greet my eyes was Saint Michael Battling a Demon. A resplendent St Michael is locked in combat with a demon, who claws at his armour as he is pierced by the archangel-saint’s long cross-staff. Although both St Michael and the demon are winged, their struggle takes place on the ground. The patron saint of exorcists impales the demonic manifestation in order to remove it from our earthly plane. Such are the images from this most popular devotional book of the later Middle Ages.

My decision to withdraw from ever being interviewed again by television and radio was not linked to any one experience. However, by the time I retired from giving interviews, general standards had slipped considerably with attention to accuracy being of little or no concern to the programme makers. I nevertheless still continue to provide talks to select groups, organisations, colleges and churches.

Sarah accompanied me on a live television programme (“Pagans,” Central Weekend Television, 30 March 2001). It was to be a discussion about the advisability of witchcraft and paganism being taught in school classrooms. Sarah explained about the oath made by some witchcraft initiates to Set-an, which, in her case, was later revealed by the coven leaders to be Satan. She also told of how some members are lured into crime. I raised the spectre of Crowley and how many would not be witches were it not for this self-confessed drug fiend and diabolist.

Anthony ~ at the rear ~ waiting to receive the Blessed Sacrament during Mass.

Having worked part-time for me in the days of the portrait studio in the 1960s, Anthony, like many others, had long abandoned the fascination he held in his youth with Aleister Crowley and sundry occult mumbo jumbo, returning to his roots when he was a choirboy at Kilburn Grammar School. It begs the question: what roots will the children of today have when, if need be, they seek sanctuary? He and his wife attended church together where I was celebrating the Eucharist. Anthony received the Host (the Body of Christ) from me. It was a defining moment in our relationship along life’s journey. Anthony had known “Screaming Lord Sutch” at secondary school. Sutch went on to become a pop star, later notorious for standing as an independent candidate. Few people will remember that “Lord” Sutch tried to insinuate himself into the Highgate matter in the summer of 1970, and was pictured as a consequence on the front page of the Hampstead and Highgate Express, 7 August 1970. The report largely concerns the gruesome discovery of the body of a woman in the cemetery exactly one week earlier. The newspaper also recorded: “Pop singer Sutch was the victim of actress Carmen Du Sautoy. They are in a film about the daughter of Dracula and Jack the Ripper combined. ‘Horror intrigues me,’ said Sutch, ambling between tombstones in his pale lilac tunic and cape. … Mr Sutch is no novice at horror. For some time it has been part of his stage act. His speciality is leaping from a blazing coffin.” He was unwisely photographed in immediate proximity to the afflicted area of the subterranean vaults.

Sutch, who changed his name by deed poll to “Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow” in the 1960s, went on to fight more than forty elections as the candidate for the Monster Raving Loony Party, which he founded in 1963. When his mother died, he became extremely depressed. Two years later, he committed suicide by hanging himself at his South Harrow home on 16 June 1999. He was fifty-eight-years-old. The following day, Cardinal Basil Hume, who I had known personally for nine years, died of cancer at the age of seventy-six. The very tall, white-haired cardinal was greatly admired throughout the Catholic community and beyond. The following year witnessed the untimely death of the television personality Paula Yates whom I had worked alongside for a Channel Four programme in February 1990. Nothing like her image, I found her smaller, prettier and rather more troubled. She was quite moody. Yet there was a gentle and intelligent side to her that did not always translate via the television screen.

Paula would later make the discovery that her real father was not the television presenter Jess Yates, but the Canadian game show host Hughie Green. Resemblance between her and Green was transparent. Someone telephoned Paula on the morning of 17 September 2000, and Tiger Lily, Paula’s young daughter, said her mother was asleep. Paula was later discovered naked, half in and half out of her bed, and a very strange colour. Coroner Dr Paul Knapman’s verdict was that she had died of non-dependent abuse of drugs, and was “an unsophisticated taker of heroin.” The 0.3mg of morphine found in her body would not have been enough to kill her had she been a heroin addict. That notwithstanding, she had apparently been taking illegal drugs, including cocaine, for nearly two years before the day she died. Illegal drugs have wrecked much of modern society. I noticed their availability when I was a professional photographer and musician throughout the 1960s. Heroin and cocaine were much less common then, but the abuse of almost any illegal substance was apparent and growing. Police and politicians nowadays admit that drug abuse is out of control, and responsible for much of the violent crime the majority of law-abiding citizens have to endure.

Greeted by Anastasia Cooke on behalf of London Weekend Television.

All those wonderful qualities that made Great Britain attractive to the rest of the world would now seem to have been sacrificed to meet what is invariably the lowest common denominator. This constant lowering of standards to appease liberal modernists leaves a radical traditionalist like myself in the wilderness. 

My calling to the priesthood and episcopacy alienated a small number of so-called “admirers” who reacted with hostility, even malice; but for me it was unavoidable in the morally bankrupt times I find myself. Degenerate behaviour and its attendant drug dependency, still in its infancy in the 1960s, has now become endemic throughout all strata of society. Absent is any political or even mainstream church leadership with the courage to address this continuing slide by returning to traditional spiritual values. Instead, they opt to "move with the times" and in doing so abandon doctrine central to the Christian faith. They, indeed, become heretical.

*       *       *

Christianity came to Britain in the first century and is the essence of our civilisation. Lose it and we lose everything. Tertullian of Carthage (circa 208) said that the Christian Church of his day “extended to all the boundaries of Gaul, and parts of Britain inaccessible to the Romans but subject to Christ.” Eusebius of Cæsaria (circa 260-340) in his Demonstratio Evangelica said: “The Apostles passed beyond the ocean to the Isles called the Brittanic Isles.” Sabellius (circa 250) revealed: “Christianity was privately confessed elsewhere, but the first nation that proclaimed it as their religion and called it Christian, after the name of Christ, was Britain.” Polydore Vergil, court antiquary to Henry VIII and a foremost scholar of his day, wrote: “Britain partly through Joseph of Arimathea, partly through Fugatus and Damianus, was of all kingdoms first to receive the Gospel.”

Gildas, the British historian, in the sixth century, wrote: “We certainly know that Christ, the True Son, afforded His Light, the knowledge of His precepts to our Island  in the last year of Tiberius Cæsar.” Elsewhere he affirmed that “Joseph introduced Christianity into Britain in the last year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar.” Tiberius died on 16 March AD 37, which supports the traditional date for St Joseph of Arimathea mission to Britain of AD 36. Britain was outside the Roman Empire, as the Claudian invasion did not occur until AD 43.

Martin of Louvain, in his Disputoilis Super Dignitatem Anglis it [sic] Gallioe in Councilio Constantiano (1517), recorded: “Three times the antiquity of the British Church was affirmed in Ecclesiatical Councilia. 1. The Council of Pisa, AD 1417. 2. The Council of Constance, AD 1419. 3. Council of Siena, AD 1423. It was stated that the British Church took precedence over all other churches, being founded by Joseph of Arimathea, immediately after the Passion of Christ.”

On page 87 of The Grail Church, I say: “To the native Celts the Grail Church became known as the British Church; so as to distinguish it from the Anglo-Saxon English Church. When the Anglo-Saxons adopted Roman Christianity the British Church receded until it eventually vanished. Yet the memory of the Holy Grail could not be eradicated; indeed, its symbolic potency only grew with the passing of time.”

The year I began my personal quest for the Holy Grail ― 1977 ― is also believed by some scientists to be the pivotal point for mankind from which there is no turning back. The quest led to me eventually finding that gnarled piece of olive wood known as the Nanteos Cup. Like Wagner in 1855, whose discovery of the relic inspired his opera Parsifal, I sought the Nanteos Cup in the hope of resolving whether or not this was indeed that venerated vessel wherein the first Eucharist was celebrated. Yet the intervening two decades has taught me that such a spiritual journey is within oneself; that these riddles are seldom, if ever, resolved by viewing an artefact deemed sacred.

The last Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, entrusted the wooden Cup to his monks. They fled with the vessel to escape the appalling vandalism wrought by Henry VIII where it remained temporarily safe in the remote, now ruined, Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida in Wales. When the King’s men extended their search, the monks fled again with the Cup and took refuge in the isolated house of Nanteos, which was owned by farmers some seventeen miles from the Abbey. The final words on the breath of the last remaining monk as he died were that the resident Powell family should guard the Holy Cup “until the Church shall claim her own,” which, in a sense, now it has.

The Nanteos Cup, as it was now called, remained at the house for over four centuries. It remained in the house, as stipulated in the Powell family will, when the estate passed to Mrs Elizabeth Miryless, a daughter of the late Mr Powell’s cousin. The new owner became a devout believer in the healing properties of the Cup and, for a period, met with countless appeals for water that had been left to stand in the vessel. One week witnessed at least one and a half thousand pleas via correspondence from far and wide. The strain became too much, and in 1967 Elizabeth Mirylees sold Nanteos House and moved to a secret address in Herefordshire. The Cup, now pitted with teeth marks from over-zealous pilgrims, darkened with age, and reduced to one third of its original size would at one time have measured five inches in diameter at the top and about three inches in depth, tapering to a base about two and a half inches across.

Neither I, nor anyone else, can know whether this is the holy vessel of the Last Supper, but reports of amazing cures are real enough. And a foremost authority on Palestinian archaeology, Sir Charles Marston, who travelled to Nanteos in 1938, would not dismiss the possibility that it was the Holy Grail. Such a quest, in truth, has no end. Perhaps we must remain uncertain about matters of this kind? Faith must be sufficient; not faith in an ancient relic ― but faith in what it represents, ie union with God, in the certain knowledge that the only way to the Father is through the Son.

Three years before the end of the last century, the Nanteos Cup (and the healing ministry that has sprung from it) was revealed to the world in a British television programme, and an American documentary. The healing properties attributed to the Cup via cloths anointed with oil and water given to the afflicted persons were examined and discussed in both television films. The cures would ultimately be the effect of the Holy Spirit (Acts 19: 11-12), and the phenomenon of Divine Healing. The American documentary is regularly transmitted on a channel somewhere in the United States, or another part of the world. Every week requests are made for prayer cloths that have been anointed and blessed in the Nanteos Cup. Any healing that takes place is a gift of God’s grace made available to us through the atoning ministry of Jesus Christ who suffered and “Himself took away our infirmities, and carried away our diseases” (Matthew 8: 17); “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross … for His wounds you were healed” (1 Peter 2: 24)

The Holy Grail was considered to be a relic of inestimable value as the Cup of the Last Supper that was later used by St Joseph of Arimathea to collect a few drops of the Saviour’s blood. Apocryphal writings credit St Joseph with possession of the Cup. Cardinal Baronius, curator of the Vatican Library and certainly the most outstanding historian of the Roman Catholic Church, writes in his Ecclesiastical Annals in reference to the exodus of AD 36:“In that year the party mentioned was exposed to the sea in a vessel without sails or oars. The vessel drifted finally to Marseilles and they were saved. From Marseilles [St] Joseph [of Arimathea] and his company passed into Britain and after preaching the Gospel there, died’.” (The Grail Church, Holy Grail, 1995, page 30). Thus the Holy Grail came to the British Isles where, six centuries later, it went missing. In later legends, as a result of the Holy Grail being lost, the country was strangely afflicted with large areas becoming an uninhabitable wasteland. Those who ventured there died. And a sixth century monk named Gildas wrote a history (Gildæ sapientis de excidio et conquestu Britanniæ) which spoke of a great famine and disease that rendered the island of Britain virtually uninhabitable, resulting in mass migration to the Continent. He attributes the catastrophe to the Britons’ loss of faith. There are parallels with then and now. A steep decline in moral attitudes and social behaviour, plus, more significantly, the distortion and loss of faith, makes us ripe for a coming wasteland. But there is a difference. This time it might be on a global scale.

Perhaps we need to reflect on what he have allowed to be inflicted on our world, and are continuing to allow, on a legacy of two thousand years of civilisation under Christian influence. Perhaps we should examine the corruption which permeates everywhere; look long and hard into ourselves; and start to reclaim the lost ground, restore what has been taken, and return to Christ.

I was born in the closing months of a terrible world conflict, and have witnessed the world waging war on itself ever since. Man’s inhumanity to man leaves me convinced more than ever that our only salvation is in Him who shed His blood for the atonement of our sins. But it must be to the Christ of the Gospels, revealed through the Word of God, and not to a distorted image that we look.

The kiss of peace from the bishops ~ 4 October 1991.

When the precious mitre was placed upon my head on the feast of St Francis of Assisi in 1991, I already understood that a crown of thorns was contained within. I said as much in my last UK radio interview. And for those who make the choice to take up their cross and follow Him, there begins a journey where space and time is transcended ― a journey that will never taste death.

Mine has been a blessed life through amazing and certainly defining times for all of mankind. I am especially blessed to have found Sarah, an angel in many ways who makes every day a sheer joy. Her love of Creation ― particularly the injured wild animals she takes in to protect and care for before returning them back to nature healed ― is just one of a myriad of facets that make her so ideal. Her green eyes and glorious smiles fill my days with all that is delightful; her tenderness and affection keep me alive and inspired, reminding me constantly of God’s plan for us on Earth ― to love Him, love one another, and to rejoice in Creation.

This life is a dream from which death is merely an awakening. Be not afraid . . .

…

Man’s life is death. Yet Christ endured to live,

Preaching and teaching, toiling to and fro,

Few men accepting what He yearned to give,

Few men with eyes to know

His Face, that Face of Love He stooped to show.

Man’s death is life. For Christ endured to die

In slow unuttered weariness of pain,

A curse and an astonishment, passed by,

Pointed at, mocked again

By men for whom He shed His Blood – in vain?

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Vera ecclesiae

Extract from Seán Manchester's autobiographical works:

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Having not been baptised as an infant ― my parents wanted to leave such an important decision entirely up to me ― I was “first baptised at the age of eleven in the Anglican Church and given conditional baptism in the Catholic Church at the age of twenty-two.” (The Grail Church, Holy Grail, 1995, page 56). When I joined St Luke’s Church as a choirboy, it came as something of a shock to the vicar when he made discovery of the fact that I had not been Christened.

The Reverend W A F Lee was a very large and somewhat humourless man who rode around on a twenty-eight inch wheel, outsize bicycle. He duly baptised me, appointing himself my godfather, as I continued in the choir and also in the Boy’s Church, which had special outings and field trips, sometimes in the company of the Boys Scouts, to the Hertfordshire countryside and, on one occasion, to Dover Castle.

Along with a school chum, I attended the regular functions and evening scripture lessons at the Boy’s Church, but, following the vicar’s invitation, joined the choir alone and under my own steam. This was a happy time for me; especially when I succeeded David Stump as head choirboy. Stump and I had a falling out about something unrelated to my promotion. It erupted in the vestry one Sunday evening before the service, and could have easily turned into a scrap. I have no recollection of what it was over, the incident itself was quickly forgotten, and life went on as before.

After a couple of years, Edward Keating succeeded me as head choirboy. This decision was hastened by two factors, neither of them to do with my prowess as a boy soprano. Keating had joined with his younger brother ― whose name escapes me ― and usurped me. This perturbed me slightly for, as I grew to know him better, Keating’s distinctly dark side revealed itself. He smoked, despite his young age, introduced cigarettes to the choir vestry, and proved himself to be manipulative on some occasions. I came to quite dislike him after a while. In the interim, I had found some new friends, who invited me to attend their church service ― a Mass.

The Rev'd William Alexander Frederick Lee

Peter and Pauline were twins who were about the same age as me. Aware of my passion for visiting churches when services were not in progress and, irrespective of the denomination, enjoying the atmosphere, sacred surroundings, architecture and music if the organist was practicing, the twins invited me to their church, where I experienced my first Roman Catholic Mass. It was still then the Old Rite, known as the Tridentine Mass.

Vicar Lee somehow learned of my clandestine attendance at a Roman Catholic Mass, and was less than pleased. The vicar and his no less gargantuan sister, who was installed in the vicarage as his housekeeper, had come over from Northern Ireland before the war. He did not approve of Roman Catholicism, and consequently the writing was on the wall as far as my future in St Luke’s choir was concerned. Coupled with the aforementioned factors were debates in the Boy’s Church every Tuesday evening at 6.00 pm, after hymns and study. One of my frequent debates was the just war theory. I found it incompatible with Christ’s teachings. It was only a decade after the war had ended, but I opined against Britain declaring war on Germany. This was a view I have held throughout my life. I have opposed all wars ― most vocally both Gulf Wars, actively campaigning and speaking against the actions of various UK governments have taken in this respect.

The vicar asked me where my ideas were coming from, and enquired whether my father was a Communist, which even now I find an extraordinary deduction to make. My ideas are found in the New Testament where it is explained that those chosen to follow Him “out of the world” are “not of the world” and will be hated; the commandment not to kill is upheld; moreover, expanded so that we are required to turn the other cheek. And, of course, in so far as we did it to the least among us, we did it to Christ.

On reflection, my replacement by Edward Keating, and subsequent expulsion from both the choir and Boy’s Church, was an important lesson. I learned how wrong it is to make favourites. Much later on, when someone I came to know socially joined the lifeguards, and failed miserably to carry his weight, expecting everyone else to absorb his duties, I sacked him. No favouritism would exist, or be seen to exist, whenever I was in charge. This person was astounded by my action, but, in the long term, it did not affect our friendship ― which remains to this day as strong as it did all those years ago. One or two of the lifeguards sometimes found me too disciplined, and told me so. They had received an easy time at other establishments. Now they were obliged to do their duty. Those who criticised me most were the very ones who years later made a point of telling me that I had been right. One in particular had learned a lot from my regimen, and went on to be in charge himself.

Eleven years after my baptism at St Luke’s, and much soul-searching, I was baptised again by Father Keane at the same Roman Catholic Church where I had experienced my first Tridentine Mass. He was often present at some of the dance hall venues where I was engaged to perform as a musician (tenor saxophone) for a showband called Amor Alcis. Showbands very often placed as much importance on performance as on the music itself. I would later be confirmed at London’s Westminster Cathedral.

Father Keane was not the obvious choice during my months of intensive study to become a Roman Catholic. His consumed copious amounts of alcohol, was sadly a Modernist, and had little time for what he described as “hearts and flowers” priests. He was also a prison chaplain, and no doubt did some very good work, but I sometimes wondered why he ever became a priest. He was not especially popular, despite his apparent holding of the record for celebrating Mass faster than any of the other priests at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Yet Modernists like Father Keane would multiply in the years ahead, as the older Traditionalist priests became an endangered species.

Father Keane

I found a sense of discipline and special devotion in the Roman Catholic Church at that time, which was not apparent in the Church of England. Yet, when finally received into the Church, the torrent of change ushered in by the Second Vatican Council had already begun. Father Keane welcomed “opening the shutters” to the outside world. I was less certain. Many of the landmarks were being swept away. The old ways were becoming obliterated for the sake of change ― the signposts blown down. The beautiful Old Mass was replaced with a liturgy, at best, uninspired and, at worst, banal. The New Mass left little time for meditation. It had transformed from a private devotion between the communicant and Christ into a communal service. I missed the atmosphere of solace for worldly pain so evident before. Disillusionment set in, as the Vatican appeared to throw the baby out with the bath water in its rush to catch up with the modern world. Its attraction for me had been the fact that when I first became acquainted with Catholicism it was to provide a much welcome escape from the corrosive effect of modernity in the latter half of the twentieth century.

My multifarious discussions with Father Keane over months of instruction for preparation to enter the Roman Catholic Church left entire areas unresolved. “Would God allow His Church to be misguided in this matter?” seemed to be the stock answer to virtually all my difficult, searching and challenging queries. The doctrine of papal infallibility was a hurdle I never surmounted. “Well it makes sense when you think about it,” is the response I was given. “If that’s all that you have a problem with, we’re not doing too badly, are we?” was another reaction from the priest. He asked for my trust. I gave it, and became a Catholic in the mid-1960s.

However, the Second Vatican Council reforms took away the discipline and devotion that distinguished Roman Catholicism from the Anglican Communion I had just quit, but, as I pursued my religious studies over the years, I became increasingly aware that the foundation of my new spiritual home was not so much Jesus Christ as Imperial Rome ― the very imperialism emulated by men who were very much "of the world." The Roman Catholic Church owed its existence to the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century who perverted Christianity when he included it in the empire’s extant pantheon of pagan cults. It was Constantine, not the Bishop of Rome, who ruled the “Christian” Roman Empire from the year 312. In the introduction to my published work on Christian history, I observe:

“When Constantine made Christianity a tolerated religion inside the barbaric Roman Empire, the Faith of the early Christians became seriously distorted. They ceased being pacifists and beat their ploughshares into swords. Previously Christians would neither be allowed, nor want to be, in the army. In 416, however, by an edict of Theodosius, only Christians were allowed to enlist. Tertullian had written two centuries earlier: ‘The world may need its Caesars, but the Emperor can never be a Christian, nor a Christian ever be Emperor.’ The emperor’s title, Pontifex Maximus, would later be assumed by every pope, but for now it was the emperor, not the pope, who was the head of the Church. The Bishop of Rome was obliged to prostrate himself and pledge his loyalty to Constantine who delayed his own baptism until he was on the point of death and, even then, was not baptised by a Catholic bishop or priest, but by the heretical Arian Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia.” (The Grail Church, Holy Grail, 1995, pages 11-12).

I qualify my disenchantment on the same page by noting that the Roman Catholic Church has still produced the likes of St Francis of Assisi, and other mystics. However, St Francis “observed the incompatibility of the Church with the life of Christ and His apostles.” Furthermore, I remark: “No saint would provide greater inspiration for the work ahead. Like the Celtic Christians, St Francis appreciated the beauty and wonder of Creation and he was certainly no stranger to supernatural experience. It is therefore not too surprising to learn that in his youth St Francis sought the Grail itself.” (The Grail Church, Holy Grail, 1995, page 91).

It became clear, as I would publicly state in 1988: “Simply calling oneself ‘Christian’ and subscribing to what can only described as ‘Churchianity’ is to no avail. The Church in the past was far too eager to make ‘Christians’ of everyone and not followers of Christ as perhaps exemplified by Francis of Assisi who founded his Order outside of the Church.” I also observe in the same book: “The emergence of a satanic revival, stronger than anything seen since the Renaissance, is taking place worldwide.” (From Satan To Christ, Holy Grail, 1988, pages 5-6). Subsequent events have more than served to confirm what I wrote back in 1988.

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Though we should strive for perfection, I am well aware that we are all sinners and imperfect, aspiring to achieve something higher by facing the right direction in life. We tend to forget that St Francis was exquisitely dressed as a young man, spending such large sums on fashionable costume that his Perugian captors took him for the son of a gentleman rather than a merchant. He also had the ability to ignore unpleasantness. Physical ugliness repelled him to the degree that he really had to force himself to kiss a leper. The conflict with his father was never resolved, and he came to despise materialism so much that money made him feel sick. He acted with panache, even after conversion, and was never less than dramatic in all he did; being prepared to cast himself into a fire before the Sultan al-Kamil on one occasion. Visions and mystical experience were commonplace to him. It is not difficult to see how many in the 1960s, who felt themselves to be on a mystical path, could easily identify with this medieval aesthete who eschewed all the trappings of glamour and wealth for his Lord.

My own mystical experiences commenced when I came into contact with the Light. When barely five years old, my bedroom one night filled with a dazzling light. I lay very still, sensing all that was happening around me. Then I heard the name “Jesus” ― as if someone was whispering it directly in my ear ― but nobody was in the room apart from myself. I told my mother the next morning about the incident, and she just smiled. Years later she shared some of her own unexplained experiences. The most striking was her hearing shots and seeing flashes, like gunfire, on the night before the assassination of President John F Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963, just before she fell asleep. She rarely talked about such experiences. In later life she never spoke about them.

I find that I am most sensitive where an affinity with a person or place becomes apparent. Then I pick up all sorts of intelligence whether I want to or not. This is not especially uncommon for people of the requisite sensitivity. It is nothing to do with the supernatural, and certainly nothing to do with being in touch with spirits etc. It is extra “sensitivity” ― not “power” of any sort — and many people harbour it wittingly and probably also unwittingly. It happens most when relaxed and in a spontaneous frame of mind. Such sensitivity belonged to St Francis of Assisi, plus the mystical experience of stigmata which, of course, is supernatural.

St Francis of Assisi in the grotto of our retreat.