Dr. Don Briel, the director of the Catholic Studies program at the University of St. Thomas, began his lectures on Cardinal Newman's theological works to us yesterday, and he has continued them today. We've been learning about some of his more important works and seeing how we can apply them to our present age.
During our lunch break today, a few of us went to the Dominican house of studies near Oxford for midday prayer with the black friars. As we were heading out of the chapel, an elderly friar came over and offered to give us a tour of their friary. This community of friars is doing extremely well in producing young vocations, and they are doing great work on many college campuses around England and Scotland.
Brother Matthew, a young Dominican in studies at Oxford, gave us a really cool tidbit of literary trivia. The stations of the cross statues are unique in that they portray the Roman soldiers and Pontius Pilate as demons. Well, J.R.R. Tolkien would attend Mass with the Dominicans on a regular basis, so he would see these particular stations of the cross statues quite a bit. So when he was writing The Lord of the Rings, he created the Orcs based upon these statues. So that's pretty neat.
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