The Catholic Church

There were road works today on Hills Road leading out of Cambridge.

Before the crossroad where Hills Road meets Lensfield Road there were road works blocking one side of the road for about fifty yards. And past the crossroads there were roadworks blocking the other side of the road for about thirty yards.

If you really wanted to bring Cambridge to a halt at rush hour, that’s the way to do it. I am being ironic of course, but a long traffic jam stretched in every direction.

I’ve mentioned before that Cambridge is a victim of its own success – narrow roads in what was really a large village.

And now lots of companies are based here. So the traffic is heavier than what you might expect of a place of this size,

En Route To The Botanic Garden

I was en route to meet a friend at the Botanic Garden – and maybe because I had some time or maybe because the road works slowed me down, I went into the church on the corner. I like churches, often well built and dark and rich,

Our Lady and the English Martyrs Church is a Catholic Church – unusual in itself in a Protestant country, and apparently the largest Catholic Church in England.

I wondered who the martyrs were, so I looked the building up in Wikipedia. The church is almost modern – built between 1885 and 1890 and I read this::

The construction of a new Roman Catholic church on such a prominent site, as well as its dedication to the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, caused controversy among local Anglicans and members of the University.

I googled for the martyrs and for martyrs in England generally. The list in Wikipedia is long.

And here’s the thing. Some of the martyrs were canonised and some were Beatified.

And it was pure coincidence that I knew what ‘Beatified’ meant. And the way that happened, is this.

The traffic jam I mentioned encouraged me to cut through one of the side streets and come to an entrance to the Botanic Garden that I don’t normally use. And on the way I came across a building on the front of which was carved INSTITUTUM BEATAE MARIAE VIRGINIS

I could translate it from Latin except for beatae..

So I looked it up as I walked along, and beatae means blessed – and that’s how I came to know the meaning of the word when I read about the martyrs just now.