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 13 April 2023

Problematic leadership for both Catholics and Anglicans


My friend Dan Hitchens has a good and thoughtful article in The Spectator about the leadership - or rather the lack of it - from the top in both the Catholic and Anglican communions. If, and it is a fairly big one, if both Pope Francis and Archbishop Wellby were seen as figures of unity and inclusiveness a decade ago as they commenced their current roles, that is no longer the case. Their successors are likely to be from one side of the divide or divides which have developed further during their primacies. What that may portend is almost anyone’s guess.

The article can be read at The third great crisis in Christianity

There is nought, or precious little, for either communion’s current comfort in the picture that is painted, and that is without probing too deeply into the divisions. It does not take long to begin to take the measure of those by sampling the videos on YouTube and to realise that the bland nostrums of so much ecclesiastical officialdom are in effect fiddling whilst both Rome and Canterbury burn.

It does, I think, show the need for the faithful to pray not just for their present leaders but also for their future ones.


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