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, 30 July 2020

Down Argentine Way


LifeSiteNews today has a report about an
Argentine bishop who is closing his seminary because the seminarians refuse to accept mandatory communion in the hand.  The story can be read at Vatican backs bishop in closing down seminary over priests’ resistance to giving Communion on hand

This is clearly very disturbing and I can but wish the young men well. The closure of a seminary on such a slender pretext is deeply worrying, especially one that appears both thriving and orthodox. It does suggest a “clericalist” attitude on the part of the Bishop, the very sort of thing the present Pope so often inveighs against.

However I can see also signs of hope. Firstly that the Argentine Church has something like forty seminarians who do respect tradition, and secondly, that if the closure goes ahead and they are dispersed that they will either offer their vocations to such recognised groups as the article suggests, or, if unhindered, be a leaven in other seminaries.


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