Up in London this afternoon, I took the opportunity to visit the Padre Pio bookshop in Vauxhall Bridge Road. These are good people who love the Catholic faith. Downstairs, there is an amazing chapel with a wide variety of devotional statues and pictures. Mass is regularly celebrated and there are public prayers every day.The shop has all sorts of books, especially relating to Catholic devotions that you can't always find elsewhere. I picked up half a dozen things there including the TAN collection of prayers to St Joseph. Another book that caught my eye (and my credit card) was Fr Jack Spaulding's "Holy Boldness" which is a book written specifically about the spiritual life of the secular priest. A video about the message of Fatima and a leaflet with St Pio's advice on how to behave in Church have also found their way to the presbytery.
A thing I really love doing is to go to these places where people give their lives for the faith and try to convey the message that I love what they are doing, I support it, and give them my blessing as a priest.
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About forty years ago our prayer group opened a small bookshop called the Holy Family Book Store. It was really an incredible amount of work setting it up and keeping it going.
Everyone who found their way to our place commented on what a great selection of books we had, how beautiful the store was.
The real difficulty and expense was in getting the word out that we existed and where we were. We simply could not afford the shop rents in the high traffic areas, so print advertising was very necessary, but expensive.
And because we were a commercial operation, we could not get even a mention in the local parish bulletins. While the shop existed it was a tremendous resource for the entire Catholic and Christian community round about, but in the end it foundered for lack of support from the clergy- at least in my opinion.
So it is nice to see that a pastor is doing what he can to get the word out. Nobody makes any significant money working in a Catholic book shop. It really is a ministry, despite its commercial aspects.
Shopping there rather than online, and not asking for discounts are other ways to ensure the survival of such enterprises-which are outposts of Catholic thought and culture boldly located "in the world.".
I went to the Padre Pio bookshop regularly when I first returned to the Church. I loved the fact that EVERYTHING stopped at 3pm for the recitation of the Rosary... and then 'normal' shop business would resume!
And they have the actual first class relic of St. Pio's bloodstained gloves.
Is this Fr. Jack Spaulding the same priest who assisted some 6(?) visionaries in Scottsdale Az?
The real difficulty and expense was in getting the word out that we existed and where we were. We simply could not afford the shop rents in the high traffic areas,About forty years ago our prayer group opened a small bookshop called the Holy Family Book Store.
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