On September 1 we welcomed  Fr. Ian Elliott Davies back to his Parish ministry at St. Thomas the Apostle.

Please contact the office to schedule a one-on-one meeting with Father.   The Clergy ROTA for September is published below.

On September 30, 2011 at 7:30pm we will have a Parish wide Service of Reconciliation with Fr. Davies Celebrating and Bishop Mary D. Glasspool preaching.

We thank you for your patience, love and support of Fr. Davies, your Vestry and Officers, your Bishop and your Parish during this time.

Charles Fuge Lowder (22 June 1820 - 9 September 1880) was a priest of the Church of England. He was the founder of the Society of the Holy Cross, a society for Anglo-Catholic priests.

Lowder was ordained a deacon on Michaelmas 1843 and became a curate at Walton near Glastonbury. He was ordained a priest in 1844 by Bishop Denison of Salisbury and became chaplain of the Axbridge workhouse.  From 1845 to 1851 he was curate of Tetbury, Gloucestershire. However, Lowder wished to move to a parish with a more Catholic pattern of worship and in 1851 he became assistant curate to James Skinner at St Barnabas' Church, Pimlico. St Barnabas', a chapel of ease to St Paul's Knightsbridge was at the time at the vanguard of the Ritualist movement. The church lay at the heart of an area of slums, having been built to serve the poor.

There was, however, controversy regarding St Barnabas' use of Catholic ritual. A Mr Westerton, an opponent of the High Church worship at St Barnabas', stood for the post of churchwarden in an attempt to bring them to a stop and hired a man to parade up and down the street wearing a sandwich-board canvassing for votes. In what he later called "a moment of madness" Lowder gave money to the choirboys to buy rotten eggs and encouraged them to pelt the board carrier. As a result Lowder was called in front of a magistrate and fined. He was also reprimanded by his bishop and suspended from duty for six weeks.

Keeping a low profile, Lowder travelled to France and stayed at Yvetot seminary. While there he read a life of St Vincent de Paul. The example of Vincent and the Lazarists had a great influence on him and he was convinced of the need for a secular order of priests in the Church of England to provide mutual spiritual support to one another and to extend the Catholic faith, particularly among the poor.

On 28 February 1855 in the chapel of the House of Charity in Soho, Lowder and five other priests founded the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC) and Lowder became the first Master. Lowder took up the austerest form of the society's rule of life and so committed himself to celibacy. The society grew quickly drawing other Anglo-Catholic priests from some of the poorest slum areas in London. Before long the society was at the forefront of the Catholic revival. The society was particularly influential in the second phase of Anglo-Catholicism following Newman's reception into the Roman Catholic Church.

Lowder wrote two books, Ten Years in St George's Mission (London, 1867) and Twenty-one Years in St George's Mission (1877), detailing his work at the mission.

Today, Lowder's influence lives on through the Society of the Holy Cross, St Peter's Church, St Peter's School and more generally through the Catholic tradition in the Church of England which he worked so hard to restore. 

Adapted from www.wikipedia.org

Mo. Mary Haddad

Sermon

Mo. Mary Haddad 

Deacon

The Rev. Walter S. Johnson

We are well underway with Phase II of the Acoustics Project.

Major construction is now behind schedule.  An additional week of construction is needed to address moisture prevention issues that were discovered during the process.  The finishing work of waterproofing, acoustic sealing and insulation will occur next week.

A Frequently Asked Question guide  (4 pages) has been put together that outlines the major construction project that will start shortly at St. Thomas to remedy the Acoustics issues at the Church.