Assumpta est Maria in cælum!

Gaude, Maria Virgo, cunctas hæreses sola interemisti in universo mundo!

The Church proclaims the resurrection of the body, and there is no such thing as a "spiritual body". It is impossible to sustain out of Scripture the view according to which newly disembodied souls entered immediately into their final, but incorporeal, bliss or torment.

Serious Protestant theologians do not hold it, although that does leave them with only the original Protestant position that until the General Resurrection, souls were effectively as dead as their bodies. But Catholics cannot hold it, since the Assumption is the standing contradiction of it.

Concelebrating this morning were Fr Charles Ejieji, our newly returned priest from Nigeria, and Fr Alex D'Souza, an old friend of this parish who will soon be returning to his own enormous parish in Goa. Lanchester is quite the centre of the Church's catholicity. We once had a visiting Italian priest who, in one breath, called me "the perfect English gentleman" and then asked me whether I was an Italian. Fr D'Souza looks exactly like a Saint Helenian, and he even has some of their manners of speech. Truly, it was the East India Company.

Lanchester is also quite the centre of the Church's rising generation, with A-level results today for eight of the dedicatees of my most recent book. If we produced another big cohort of confirmands, then I may have to write another book. All Saints, indeed.

One of those dedicatees went on to serve as one of the Members of the Youth Parliament for County Durham. In February, he was succeeded, on a record turnout, by another of the better-dressed young men of this parish who regarded me as a sartorial icon. I dare to claim some small credit. If you want my clearly valuable endorsement, then asking for it is a good start. It also does no harm to go to Mass with me, or to be related to people with whom I went to school and to people who taught me. But saying how much you admired my suits, now that is the clincher. (The most comical piece of Kammism ever was the suggestion that I had somehow become estranged from All Saints, Lanchester. Honestly, whatever next?)

To return to the A-level results, I have a considerable readership in the right age group, so let me say this. You deserve it. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise. And if it was not what you were hoping for, then that is not the end of the world. I dropped a grade in everything, but four years later I was made a governor the same school. The same Head called me "Mr Lindsay" until I told him, "It's all right, you can call me David if you like, George."

Let me take you back 32 years, to the beginning of September 1992, three weeks short of my fifteenth birthday. The most inexplicable governor had been appointed to my school. To this day, no one will own up to having had any part in that appointment. I was not yet a member of any party, but I was becoming active politically, and in between more pressing matters, the local Labour operation was vaguely planning to bring me in. Entirely unknown to me, the decision was made that I would at some future time be an acceptable governor, in stark contrast to the one who had just assumed office. I repeat that I was not quite 15 and had no idea that any of this was happening.

Fast forward to the Golden Britpop Summer of 1995. School was at its wit's end, and by then what in those days could in these parts still call itself "the party" wanted to exercise the County Council's power of recall and instead install me with effect from 23 September, my eighteenth birthday. That would have made me a governor for almost the whole of my Upper Sixth, so school understandably put the kibosh on it, although on the clear understanding that it did want me as soon as was quite decent.

A year later, when the problem governor's term would have been up, then school and the party were aligned and allied in my favour, but the distant Diocese was unconvinced, since at that point I was still the only person who did not know that I was eventually going to go over to Rome. The day had yet to come when the late Bishop Kevin Dunn would promise to initiate my candidacy for what was then the largely Catholic parliamentary seat of North West Durham by publicly anointing me. When I suggested accompaniment by Zadok the Priest, then he replied, "Why not?" He was not joking. Requiescat in pace.

Therefore, I did not become a governor a fortnight after my A-level results, and three weeks shy of my nineteenth birthday. But four years later, I had already been a governor of a primary school for the first of eight years, and I had been safely aboard the Barque of Saint Peter for a year. When I had written to school to request prayers upon my reception, then it had offered a Mass of Thanksgiving. Yes, really. It was the usual weekly Mass, but it was said for that intention. I got a card. The funny governor's days were numbered, and no third term was awarded in 2000. Instead, I came into my inheritance at last.

I keep being told that I ought to be brought back, but my health is such that that would be unlikely to happen in the near future, although the Council no longer has any role in the matter, it is anyway no longer under Labour control, and the Diocese would no longer have any problem; the Fathers greeted me like family at one of their recent funerals, in one case even asking for the name of my tailor.

I am terribly flattered, of course, and I have never stopped knowing a lot of what went on at the school. Yes, I do mean never. The present Governing Body is perhaps a unique concentration of my parliamentary voters from 2019, who account for at least a large minority of it. A fairly recent reappointment, after a break of some years, had in the meantime signed my nomination papers at that General Election, and the Chair of Governors signed them this year. My health gave way and I had to pull out, but I was a validly nominated candidate again in 2024. More than one member of that Governing Body was a character witness at my sentencing. Like the clergy, and like everyone in the Diocesan and National Safeguarding Offices, none of them believes a word of anything that has ever been alleged against me. A semiretired London journalist, who has never met me, is the only person in the world who even pretends to believe any of that. So never say never. But not for quite a while yet.