» At Mass on Sunday (which in England was the transferred feast of the Epiphany) Fr Abbot enrolled our director of music, Dr John Rowntree, as a confrater of the monastic community at Douai. The rare privilege was in recongition of his quarter century of service to liturgical music at Douai Abbey. He directs our lay choir, the Douai Abbey Singers, which maintains a high standard and a wide repertoire and sings at the major feasts of the year in the abbey church as well as on other occasions.
Confraternity dates from the middle ages, and by it a lay person, or a cleric, who has maintained an especially fruitful relationship with a monastic community is affiliated to that community in a deep way that stops just short of actual membership of the monastery. The confrater receives the priviege of the monastic scapular and has the right to tbe buried in it. The tradition of confraternity is maintained today only by the English Benedictine Congregation.
» Fr Abbot is away giving a lecture on the Wintour Vestments at Auckland Castle, where the exhibition of those vestments is now being held.
» Please keep in your prayers Don Hood, the father of Fr Alban, who has been admitted to hospital with severe, and as yet undiagnosed, abdominal pains.
