Counting down

This is not an interesting post, tbh, just one of those people write to fill in the gaps.

The countdown really has begun now: in a month's time, I'll be retired. Retired! It hardly seems possible, I hear you gasp. At last, I've started running down the workload, but there's going to be lots left over. I've got yet another complaint about what qualifies a child to be a Catholic. I am becoming an expert. So I'll tell the story of why Pope John Paul II was not a Catholic.

There's a Catholic boys' school in London that is very popular. So it gives preference to Catholic boys, and defines catholicism quite stricly according to canon law. This says that a child should take First Communion as soon as possible after they reach the Age of Reason, and that the Age of Reason is 7. So for a boy to be Catholic, he has to take First Communion before he's 8. But in Poland, they do things differently. Children don't take Communion until they are 9 or 10. The school turned down an application from a Polish boy because of this. I found out that Pope John Paul II, educated in Poland of course, had not taken Communion until he was 9 or 10. At this, the school changed its mind.

But they were right. Canon Law seems really clear on this, and it's universal: local Churches really shouldn't change it. So the Pope was not a Catholic. Most of Poland - which you'd assume to be the most Catholic country in Europe - isn't.

Second reason for celebration is Charlton's successful passage through the transfer window. No important players going and a little bit of back-up coming in. Since my last post, the winning streak has gone up to five games - Charlton's best ever start to a season. (Last season, they didn't record their fifth win until January!) And the next two games (home to Brentford and Southampton) look entirely winnable. It's utterly bizarre and intoxicating.