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.


Thursday 15 April 2010

Nun the wiser


A friend who has seen No Greater Love, the new film about a year in the life of the Carmelite convent in north Kensington asked me what I thought of nuns receiving the Host in the hand. I pointed him to Bl.Teresa of Calcutta's statement:

"Wherever I go in the whole world, the thing that makes me saddest is watching people receiving Communion in the hand."

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