Mulier Fortis and Fr Tim Finigan have both written excellent posts about Comic Relief (aka “Red Nose Day”), pointing out that it gives money to some morally objectionable causes such as promoting abortion in the third world.
I’m always suspicious of “Big Charity”, and of the idea that The State, or Oxfam, or Cafod, or Comic Relief, can be relied upon to spend our money in a wise and ethical way.
That being the case, I’d like to put in a plug for The Little Way Association. They fund missionaries and medical workers, mostly in the third world. They help establish and maintain convents.
They provide food, education and health-care for people in some of the most deprived parts of the planet.
They help the homeless build houses. They help communities build chapels, medical centers, etc. They’re steeped in the spirituality of St Thérèse of Lisieux, and they see themselves as perpetuating her charism and mission.
They don’t seem to have a website, but, if you write to them, they send a copiously illustrated quarterly magazine with loads of information about their wide range of appeals and projects.
The LWA doesn’t say to you (as Comic Relief does) "we know best how to spend your money". On the contrary, the LWA lets you choose on what project your money is to be spent and which priest/sister/brother is going to be responsible for spending it.
It’s all very personal. You really can specify which of the projects you want to give money to – to the extent that you can say “I want to make a donation to Sister Mariana in Bolivia to help with her project looking after street-children in La Paz”.
You can contact the LWA at
The Little Way Association
Sacred Heart House
119 Cedars Road
London
SW4 0PR
Tel: 02076227413
Registered charity number: 235703
2 comments:
Dear Mark, I was very glad to discover your blog and to find, so to speak, a fellow Garrigian; it’s true that we were left rather not very many, but perhaps times will change. To Fr. Garrigou and Marie-Michel Labourdette I add as an exponent of classical Thomism Fr. Cessario, the worthy defender of Cajetan. I appreciate much Lawrence Feingold. (And there are others in the NOVA ET VETERA group who promote a balanced reassessment of the classical Thomism—see the Benedictine Mansini, Harm Goris …). Then there’s of course Bonino and the so—called ‘Toulouse-Fribourg revival’. So perhaps after all the classical Thomist aren’t so few even today.
Best regards,
Cristian C.
Thanks. I like what you say about a "balanced reassessment of the classical Thomism" as promoted by the NOVA ET VETERA group. I've written in the English-language edition of N&V myself. I think these are exciting times for the best kind of classical Thomism.
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