OK, so thinking about blogging a novena is also really pointless if you're going to spend half the week out of the office at the appropriate moment! Happy feast day of St Albert for yesterday...

And happy feast day of St Margaret of Scotland today! Some favourite Margaretine anecdotes later, if I get round to digging them out.

Also, to clarify my earlier post about Prospect and, the media and religion - I have (I hope obviously) nothing against Tories being religious or Catholics being Tory or Tory-flavoured papers being friendly to the Church. The unfortunate part is if this association is exclusive: such that Catholicism, or religion in general, can in some people's eyes (particularly left-wing eyes) be seen as being part of a particular political programme, and/or a particular political grouping can see itself as having dibs on Christianity. In general this is surely dangerous, and it certainly cannot be healthy in today's Britain, where none of the political parties is without elements of policy which are seriously inimical to Catholic thought.