Once I was a clever boy learning the arts of Oxford... is a quotation from the verses written by Bishop Richard Fleming (c.1385-1431) for his tomb in Lincoln Cathedral. Fleming, the founder of Lincoln College in Oxford, is the subject of my research for a D. Phil., and, like me, a son of the West Riding. I have remarked in the past that I have a deeply meaningful on-going relationship with a dead fifteenth century bishop... it was Fleming who, in effect, enabled me to come to Oxford and to learn its arts, and for that I am immensely grateful.


Tuesday 27 May 2014

Fr Blake on the Franciscans of the Immaculate


Fr Blake in Brighton has a post, written after meeting some Sisters of the Order, about the continuing controversy around the visitation of the Franciscans of the Immaculate. It can be read at I'm praying for the Sisters of the Immaculate, and the comments on it are also worth perusing. The link from Fr Blake's post does not open properly on the computer I am using, but readers doubtless have better hardware than I do.

This is a story which has lain low for a while, but the questions and deeper issues underlying this enquiry remain unresolved and unexplained. The longer the matter drags on the more harm it does to the Franciscans of the Immaculate and to the wider Church, for whom it raises a real sense of worry about the way some officials act in the name of the whole.




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