In the spring of 1972 the layman Dermot Fenlon wrote these moving and humble acknowledgements in the preface to his book HERESY AND OBEDIENCE IN TRIDENTINE ITALY:
“To have finished a book is to be aware of debts and a certain measure of defeat. The debts are easier to recount. (…) There are friends whom I can never adequately thank: my supervisor, whose encouragement and guidance, cautions, queries and corrections, combined with monumental patience and humour, supported me, against the odds, through an education in research, and much more than research; his wife, who generally took my side when it counted; my friends (...) who helped and sustained me, through good and bad times, more than they will ever realise (…)
One’s defeats, like one’s debts, are entirely personal. (…) … but as my mother remarked when I explained the problem, Pole was a man who encountered many disappointments in his own lifetime, and he is unlikely to be much bothered by anything that can happen now.” (Cambridge, 24 March 1972, Eve of the Annunciation, Dermot Fenlon)
