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.


Monday, 1 October 2012

Inaugurating the Year of Faith in Oxford


There will be a High Mass at SS Gregory and Augustine in Woodstock Road in Oxford  on the feast of the Motherhood of Our Lady, Thursday 11th October at 6 p.m., to celebrate the opening of the Year of Faith.  The preacher will be Fr Aidan Nichols OP.  Palestrina's Missa brevis in F will be sung by the Newman Consort.  There will be drinks and light refreshments afterwards in the parish hall.  The intention of the Mass will be for the Holy Father. 


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The Year of Faith is beginning on the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council in 1962. As Fr Hunwicke reminded his hearers in a sermon preached to the Oxford Ordinariate Group the other week in his opening address to the Council  Pope John XXIII stressed that it was being called to seek how to make the Catholic Faith clear to modern people and that the Faith should be presented in all its fullness and without any diminution of its content.


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Let us pray that this Year of Faith will help the Church and all its members to carry that intention forward in the circumstances of 2012.



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