Last week I attended this year’s Society of Saint Gregory (SSG) Summer School along with two other representatives of our parish – Martin Wood and Valerie Strange from the parish Liturgy Ministry. Martin and Valerie’s course fees were kindly paid for with parish support for Liturgy and Worship.
The Society of Saint Gregory is the national society for liturgy and music in the Catholic Church in the UK. Founded in 1929, it has played an influential role promoting the study and understanding of the liturgy and resourcing and encouraging good pastoral practice in the public worship of the Catholic Church. OLSD is a parish member of SSG.
The Society’s interests and activities encompass music and composition, the ministry of readers, presiding at liturgy, liturgy with children and young people in schools and parishes, and Christian art and architecture.
This year’s Summer School took place from Wednesday 30 July to Saturday 2 August 2025. It was held on the campus of Liverpool Hope University – a university formed by the coming together of three Catholic and Anglican colleges to form an integrated, ecumenical, Christian foundation. The result is a beautiful campus made up of historic and new buildings, with some truly stunning architecture and decorated with thought-provoking and inspiring inscriptions throughout.
The Summer School took as its theme ‘Pilgrims of Hope’ from the Pope’s Jubilee year. A full programme of activities included three keynote sessions by brilliant speaker, David Wells, who addressed the theme of Hope in the context of scripture and our lived experiences in the church today. His talks were very relatable and thought-provoking as well as being laugh-out-loud funny. There were also workshops covering reading, psalms, plainchant, instrumental music and recent liturgical developments. Each day the delegates took part in a variety of liturgies including daily Mass, Morning and Evening Prayer as well as a final Mass at the end of the Summer School which was a real high point. These liturgies modelled creative liturgy and music ideas which we could all take back to our parishes. There were opportunities to lead and read during the liturgies as well as some wonderful new hymns and music arrangements to learn.
Delegates came from all over the country and it was a unique opportunity to network and learn from others’ experiences and we had plenty of chances to take advantage of this during breaks and over meals. Valerie, Martin and I were particularly pleased to meet and chat with a total of nine delegates from our own diocese of Portsmouth.
This was my first SSG Summer School and I found it spiritually enriching, inspiring, refreshing and relaxing. We all hope to share with the parish some of the things we learned and would encourage anyone who is interested to look at the SSG website, read their journal ‘Music & Liturgy’ (the parish receives three copies) or even to attend the next Summer School themselves!
