Fr Derek Lance, a priest of the Northampton Diocese, died recently at the age of 93. In his retirement he had taken up the life of a suburban hermit in Spinney Hill, becoming an expert on wolves and rescuing four dogs. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Lance’s books were widely used by teachers grappling with the seizure in religious education that had followed the Second Vatican Council. “Religion is irrelevant. This is the conviction of many today, and it is a view that is having an effect on our Catholic youth,” he wrote in Till Christ be Formed (1964). “To many Catholics, the Church’s message is not the Good News that will make sense of their lives … Rather, their faith, as they understand it, is a burden, a collection of dead doctrine, often couched in difficult, archaic language, which curbs and confines them.”

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