Cardinal Pell, in a 2013 lecture about Vatican II, commented that “… 50 years after the beginning of the council, my strongly liberal and theologically radical seminarian friends … [would have been surprised to learn they] …would have almost no successors among the seminarians of today in the English-speaking world.” Are they still around, but compelled to use the language of medieval theology, to express basic truths about the Eucharist as symbol and act of union and love? This is prompted by Liam G. Walsh (“Food for the journey”, 12 April). What was he trying to tell us, with his references to “occult” and “public” sinners, and “spiritual communion”, which is “sacramental Communion received gracefully