How is your Catholic memory? Can you remember as far back as the Sunday School? That hour or so on a Sunday afternoon when Father and Sister looked after the children of the parish while Father and Mother spent some quality Catholic time together.

Or not so taxing. The crying rooms. Those rooms at the back of churches where harassed parents would take noisy children to compete with other noisy children in screaming matches. All to ensure people without children of that age could have a peaceful distraction free mass. Those were the days. I often feel that it was a little bit tied up with the old dictum that children should be seen and not heard. Oh were it still so? I hear you say.

But things have changed. We now recognise that children are very much part of our church community. The introduction of the Children's Liturgy - though still seen as a crèche by some - was a real effort to make the Word of God not only audible to our younger parishioners but also more relevant and understandable.

The latest innovation here in West Hull is to provide an area in the body of the church for our children. We suddenly became aware that were an alien to walk into any of our churches it could come away with the impression that only elderly people with upturned eyes worshipped there. For an alien some of the people frozen in time high up on the walls would take some working out. Even for an adult they do. But as for children....

I suppose that we have only recently started to catch up so many other churches by providing our children with an area which is just their own. With statues and the pictures and the intentions which are just their own. At a level they can see and even touch. They obviously will need some help to start but hopefully in time they themselves will weed out what is authentically their own and what is the scaffolding erected by adults for them to build their own building.

There is the notice board where they can put their own news and the prayer board where they can ask other children to pray for the things which are important to them. 'Please pray for my Gran who just died' jostles for position with torn-out newspaper pictures of model thin children and whales too big for their own safety. Ecology and life and death, all part of the children's world jigsaw.

And there are their statues: St. Wilfrid, St. Joseph and, for Corpus Christi, Our Lady of Walsingham. Our hope is that an association with the patron of the community they belong to will help them to get a sense of identity. Of belonging to a particular group in a particular Church. Now.

And there is the candle with the statement in front of it.

Also because this area is especially for them and their peer group we hope it will help the young people appreciate that children their own age can pray for and be asked to pray for intentions which are both common to them all and personal to each. But more. Because this area is in the main body of the church we hope they will feel part of the whole all-age community and not just a minority group involved in kiddy things.

Frequent reference to their area and the contribution they themselves make to the whole community can only be good. An awareness that they are the adults of tomorrow while being the Church of today is something we would like our children to appreciate. That is our hope.