“I can think of few suggestions more childishly perverse,” opines the astute Fr. Hunwicke.

But, he adds:

I am afraid that we are going to get more of this: as we approach the canonisation, Begoglians, illiterates, and other life-forms will crawl out of the woodwork, claiming to instruct us on the teaching, and the significance, of this great Saint. How irritating. I suggest that readers who have not already done so should educate themselves by reading Dr [Ian] Ker’s biography of JHN in the ‘Oxford Lives’ series.

Which I intend for myself, being already caught up in Newman’s An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, with foreward by the same Dr. Ker, compliments of the Chicago Public Library.