Fisher-More College

I have not been in touch with this college since it moved out of the hands of its founders and changed its site and its name; and I have no first hand knowledge of the reasons behind the events of the last few days. I can only recall an extremely happy visit to St Thomas More College a few years ago, in company with a great friend of the College, Fr Allan Hawkins, then Rector of the Anglican Use parish of St Mary the Virgin in Arlington. It felt like a little piece of Oxbridge in Texas ... two people in MA gowns chatting in the car-park ... lunch with the Chancellor Dr James Patrick ... a young man sitting on my other side with whom I had a most civilised discussion about the ode of Horace he and his fellows had been studying that morning ... time with the Classics don, Mr Harry Lacey (a Yale man, if I remember rightly, and a fine Classicist) and other members of the Senior and Junior Common Rooms.

I hope and pray that something may be salvaged from an unhappy situation. I do not find it in the least easy to understand why, whatever may have gone wrong, a Bishop should pick upon the Vetus Ordo as the root of a malaise, or how banning that will remedy whatever it is he judges to be amiss; but I am not going to pontificate about circumstances with regard to which I am imperfectly informed.

I am simply going to pray for those who have been unjustly hurt or damaged, and I urge readers, of their charity, to do the same.