This year sees the 50th birthday celebrations of a Roman Catholic church which, for four years, held its services in a nearby pub - that was until the community raised money for a new building.

Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light to all that are in the house" - Matthew 5:15.

It was World Communications Day in the Catholic church. No one told me. That I was at St Anne's RC church in Haughton-le-Skerne, Darlington was pure coincidence - and as almost always is the case, I'd asked, not been invited.

This isn't for a second to criticise St Anne's - friendly, progressive, dedicated, hard-working - nor, particularly, the Roman Catholics. The churches are as bad as one another, and for "bad" read "abominable".

The Church as a whole is helplessly, perhaps hopelessly, off-message. It regards journalists as first cousin to the Devil Incarnate and media communication as something to be essayed only with a 50 foot barge pole.

A little pew slip at the back of St Anne's quoted Pope Benedict XVI. "The media: a network for communication, communion and co-operation." He might have added "suspicion," as well.

St Anne's was dedicated 50 years ago this December, services for four years previously having been held at the Highland Laddie, a pub a few hundred yards away. Former landlady Nancy Deacon, 78, still attends Saturday evening vigil Mass at St Anne's.

The nearest church hitherto had been on Albert Hill, dedicated to St William and St Francis de Sales - the latter, coincidentally, the patron saint of journalists. Poor St Francis may from time to time be moved to ask what he'd done to deserve it, or if he might have a job-swap with the patron of pornographers.

Albert Hill was a mile or more away, no Sunday morning buses and few cars. The Highland Laddie became the base while Haughton folk raised funds for a church of their own.

"I remember Mr Monk from the West Auckland Brewery coming to ask us if it was all right," says Nancy. "We were all good Catholics, so of course it was."

At first there were 40 in an upper room. Soon 300 or more overflowed the lounge and buffet for 10am Mass each Sunday. They came in through the back door.

"In those days we closed at ten o'clock on a Saturday night, so we spent the next two or three hours washing and scrubbing the place to get it ready," recalls Nancy.

"Sister Andrea and Sister Bridget would come with the flowers, there'd be a makeshift altar and my mother-in-law had a bright red fireside rug which she'd place in front of the altar, like they do in the sacristy. "It was a proper Mass, holy communion and everything, and then we'd have about an hour to get it ready to be a pub again."

None, so far as she can remember, objected to Holy Mass in the best bar of the Highland Laddie - possibly because the Deacon family was so well known in the town.

Several had played football for Wolverhampton Wanderers. Dickie, Nancy's brother-in-law, had been Darlington FC's much loved trainer for donkeys' years - so much part of the Feethams fittings that it's said that he even knew the rats by their first names.

The church was consecrated by Bishop Joseph McCormack on Saturday, December 8, 1956, built (said the following Monday's Northern Echo) in "contemporary" style and "both prayed and waited for for many years".

That same pre-Christmas weekend, the last service was held on the site of St Peter's church in Middlesbrough dockland, bombed by the Germans, Catholics across the country held a day of prayer for Hungary - "the persecuted church in Europe" - West Hartlepool Corporation was in trouble over its "one television aerial per chimney pot" ruling and the youth of Durham County was said to find brass bands the answer to someone called Elvis the Pelvis.

"Times have changed an awful lot," said Nancy Deacon, "but I'm still tremendously fond of St Anne's."

Maybe 150 are present at last Sunday's 10.30am Mass, getting on for half of them arriving between 10.28 and 10.32, as is the Catholic way. Flags on several cars pay homage to St George; the World Cup is with us.

The red brick church is almost hidden in Welbeck Avenue, an entirely residential area behind the main road. It's reminiscent of mid-nineteenth century churches at the time of Catholic emancipation, which were almost deliberately low-profile.

We're welcomed by Sister Carmen, a lovely and much loved Irish nun - St Anne's could almost be Darlington Irish - who acts as parish administrator in the absence of a full-time parish priest. St Anne's is now part of what's called a "cluster".

Fr Greg Price devotes his homily to happiness, apparently based on something said earlier in the week by Mr David Cameron. "Seemingly we have never really been happy since the 1950s, which is when I was born," he says. "On that basis I may never have been happy at all."

Happiness, adds Fr Greg, isn't self-absorption or self-interest. "If you continue to look inwards, you won't find happiness, you'll find emptiness."

That day's Sunday Times, another coincidence, had carried a piece by Darlington MP Alan Milburn, who gave up a senior Cabinet position to spend more time with his family, on the same theme.

"Today home feels like home; then it felt like I was just passing through, a stranger in my own house," he wrote. "My quality of life is a million times better."

He even gets to watch Newcastle United ("though I'm not sure that that's a blessing"), to see a favourite television programme called House of the Tiny Tearaways and to make a weekly rhubarb crumble. The rest of the family isn't sure that that's a blessing, either.

Back at St Anne's, there are prayers for the work of journalists - "that they may respect honesty, decency and truth".

The church has a remarkably happy atmosphere and a wide range of ages. There's a good west gallery choir, a responsorial psalm sung superbly by Anne Gell. Bill Beresford's on the organ, Luciana Stewart on guitar. It's a good place.

Brendan Lear, the parish council chairman - "I don't know what I've done," he says - talks afterwards of plans to re-order and refurbish both church and adjoining hall, venue for everything from ballet to bingo, as part of the golden jubilee celebrations.

The Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle will also attend a concelebrated jubilee Mass on the evening of December 8.

"There's plenty going on here, a very good atmosphere," says Brendan. "We don't make a big issue of not having a parish priest because all the services are covered and Sister Carmen is wonderful.

"We're in good stead and in good heart and if people want to worship, they'll find us."

Many of the rest of the faithful may have left wondering, however, about the identity of the big feller with the notebook. On World Communications Day, it just isn't communicated at all.