bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Form and Continuity: Lovell's latest problems
Authors: Wall Alan
Published: July 2007

Robert Lowell was born in Boston in 1917. He was descended from early New England colonists, and after a childhood on Beacon Hll, he went to St. Mark’s School and then on to Harvard, where he matriculated, but transferred after a year to Kenyon College. There he majored in classics and became a pupil of John Crowe Ransom. In 1940 he became a Catholic convert. Although Lowell attempted to enlist in the navy after the beginning of World War II he later protested against the Allied bombing of the civilian population of European cities and as a result of his failure to obey the Selective Service Act he was sentenced to a year and a day in a Federal prison. He was released after five months and in the following year, 1944, there appeared his first book of poems, Land of Unlikeness.

Since that time Lowell’s status as a poet and a public spokesman (the two became undistinguishable) has never ceased to grow. Lowell has acquired an extraordinary power as the private man made public, the tormented citizen whose personal struggles and griefs seem fatally enmeshed with the course of twentieth century history. When the poet turned down L. B. Johnson’s White House invitation as a protest against American policy in S.E. Asia it was not only the President who expressed concern. Lowell has made himself into an archetype, living through the contradictions inherent in his society, tom between the need for a domestic and artistic privacy, and the forces that impel him to a public commitment.
Rome Rule Okay?
Authors: McKay John
Published: July 2007

‘By virtue of its very purpose, while it cultivates the intellect with unremitting attention, the school ripens the capacity for right judgment, provides an introduction into the cultural heritage won by past generations, promotes a sense of values, and readies for professional life’.

THE DOCUMENTS OF VATICAN 11

Just before nine o’clock I dragged my tired frame in through the school doors and on towards the staff room.

‘Good morning’ . . . ‘Good morning’

Like that frustrated character Billy Liar I would like to machine-gun down that irritating cheerful face in the comer. I pour out my tea and sip it quietly, consulting my timetable. On the wall across the road a painted slogan reinforces the image of my first class, 4F.

BING BOOT BOYS ROOL

At the first piercing sound of the bell Mr. C. rises sharply and makes off in the direction of the Technical rooms. I would like to bomb that bell for ever but instead make my way wearily upstairs to room 5, open the door, and walk over to the desk. I am soon followed by a few lads who make towards the desks at the window.

‘D’ye catch that cunt last night, Joey’?

‘Aye an’ a kicked fuck oot the bastirt’.

‘Whit di dae’?

‘Try i get aff wi Mary Maloney’.

‘Yi bin gawn wi hur, eh’ ?

‘Aye a fancy hur—-yi shid see ‘ur tits, sur. A hivnae hud it aff fur ages—an a fancy mu chances wi yon burd’.

I pick up a book, Your Life of Our Lord, and try to think of 2c’s R.K. lesson while a few more boys come trickling in the door. I acknowledge them with a casual look and they join their mates. I have given up struggling with these lads. They resist all efforts to get them to read or to write.
Thoughts on Bartolomé de las Casas OP
Authors: Ruiz Ronald Cueto , Paul Pope
Published: July 2007

‘He this evening again recommended to me to perambulate Spain. I said it would amuse him to get a letter from me dated at Salamancha. Johnson. “I love the University of Salamancha; for when the Spaniards were in doubt as to the lawfulness of their conquering America, the University of Salamancha gave it as their opinion that it was not lawful”. He spoke with great emotion, and with the generous warmth which dictated the lines in his “London”, against Spanish encroachment’.

Boswell never got round to explaining precisely why it would have been so amusing for the Doctor to receive the letter from Salamanca, and Johnson never explained exactly what he meant by the University of Salamanca. Still, I suppose, not many Spaniards are very bothered about Boswell and Johnson, but they can still get mighty hot and bothered about the discovery and conquest of America; and they are not particularly happy about Wasps telling them where they went wrong. With all the logic of passionate indignation—which, of course, tends to brush aside the mere facts of history and geography—many is the irate Spaniard who has triumphantly produced in the form of a supposedly unanswerable question, what he thinks is to be the coup de grâce of any discussion on the relative merits of different brands of European imperialism, viz.: Where are the Indians in Protestant North America and why are they so numerous in Ibero-America? (And, by the way, that’s another thing you’ve got to be very careful about; none of your Latin America; our prickly, patriotic Spaniard, when aroused, admits of no contribution from the Italians and French in the Southern Hemisphere!)
Polygamy and Tyre Pressures: the Sacramentality of Customary Marriage
Authors: Singleton Michael
Published: July 2007

The average car-owner is usually unaware that he could safely put twice as much pressure in his tyres than that stipulated as ideal in the manufacturer’s manual, without having them explode in his face. What would happen where he to be appraised of this possibility? He would probably be less apprehensive of his tyres bursting when he sees a lackadaisical garage boy nonchalantly filling them. He would certainly not exceed the specified norm each time he had occasion to put some air in his tyres.

What they (mis)take for the Maker’s absolute norm regarding Christian marriage, fascinates many Churchmen as fearfully as the tyre manufacturer’s presumed upper limit. The average pastor assumes that one cannot sacramentalise beyond monolithic monogamy without destroying dogma if not the natural ideal of the family itself. Yet too neat a notion of what the Natural Law allows, coupled with a naive understanding of Revealed Truth, can block an adequate and adapted pastoral approach to marriage in the same way that a literal reading of the maker’s instructions can prevent a suitably supple attitude towards tyre filling. In both instances a perspective is urgently needed which will liberate people’s minds. Both the pastor worried about polygamy and the car-owner concerned with his tyres would benefit from a point of view which would free them from false fears. But in neither case would these new horizons automatically entail practical excesses. The car-owner’s new-found knowledge would not lead him to put twice as much air in his tyres at the first opportunity. Likewise a priest’s new awareness that customary marriage is perhaps already really sacramental, and therefore sacramentalisable, would not normally lead him to impose his insight regardless of pastoral common sense.
Theology and Needs
Authors: Castle Tony
Published: July 2007

Evidence abounds of the continuing disenchantment of very many young people with institutional Christianity, while they retain an interest in religion and spirituality. Beyond the Vatican’s Secretariat for non-believers recently announced study, there is little evidence of the Church grasping this fact and examining it in any depth.

Two events in the space of one week recently caused me to dig out of my files material that I prepared some time ago on the religious psychology of mid and late adolescence. The first was a visit to a Christian contemplative community, only loosely connected to an established religious Order, in Sussex. There is nothing fixed or final about the numbers residing there, as they are free to come or go at will, but there are generally between nine and twelve in community. On the day of my visit and participation in their life together, there were ten young men in residence, all between 19 and 30 years of age. This community is under the direction of and revolves around the elderly Anglican priest who set it up some years ago.

The community atmosphere, very noticeable to a visitor, was impressive and seemed to be an ‘overflow’ from the morning and evening hour of movement and meditation together. Later conversation revealed that the majority of these young men, caught up in this contemplative way of life, had no interest in institutional Christianity and no desire to take part in a normal church service.

Two or three days later, as a stimulus for class-room discussion, I conducted a simple survey among the forty-nine fifth formers of the very ordinary County Secondary School in which I teach.
Homosexuality and the Church
Authors: Bexell Monica
Published: July 2007

Within a short space of time two books have appeared, both dealing with a matter of wide current interest but at the same time both treat the issue cautiously and with some timidity. I am referring to the short book edited by Eva Alexanderson, titled The Homosexual in the Parish (Verbum, Stockholm, 1973; Swedish title : De homosexuelle i forsamlingen), and to the subsequent report of a study commissioned by the bishops’ synod of the Church of Sweden, published under the editorship of Holsten Fagerberg under the title: The Homosexual and the Church (Verbum, Stockholm, 1974; Swedish title: De homosexuelle och kyrkan). Both of these books provide subject matter for considerable reflection and will hopefully have the effect of helping us abandon a more or less conscious notion that homosexuals are, in general, somehow more sinful or perverse than heterosexuals in general. Eva Alexanderson has brought together contributions of homosexuals, both anonymous and identified by name, all of whom experience themselves and intend to continue living as Christians. To the question whether or not they are justified in this, the Swedish Church’s report provides both an historic and current overview with regard to the situation of homosexuals—seen in terms of the medical, psychological, social, theological and ethical perspectives involved. In reading it one is amazed by the abysmal ignorance, prejudice and lack of charity which has so often passed as Christian. At the same time one is delighted to find that everything in the report is taken up objectively and with a genuine desire to show that concern is felt for the right of human beings to respect, love and—in short—to a complete and full life. I don’t believe I am exaggerating when I understand the report in this way.
Marxists and Christians: Questions for Denys Turner
Authors: Wicker Brian
Published: July 2007

Denys Turner’s attractive argument for the compatibility, nay the virtual identity, of Marxism and Christianity (New Blackfriars, June 1975) is excellent as far as it goes, and I have little to quarrel with in it. But this is because it doesn’t go very far. So I’d like to press him to go on to the next step.

Marxism and Christianity are at one—indeed, are one—because each affirms that it is only by means of revolutionary socialist praxis that a community of human love can be attained, through the overturning of the capitalist system of human exploitation which for us in the present era is the incarnation of everything which is opposed to such love. All right: but then I have to ask myself am I a practising Marxist or only a sham Marxist? A practising Christian or only a sham Christian? Until some objective criteria have been established by which I can judge my own praxis, nothing has been done to help me except to juggle with words. Now it is at just this point, it seems to me, that Marxism fails because, unlike Christianity, it refuses to take the metaphysical basis of ethics seriously. Or, to put the point the other way round, it is at this point that Christianity, in going beyond Marxism, ceases to be wholly compatible with it.
Racism and Sexism: a False Analogy
Authors: Dummett Ann
Published: July 2007

Anyone who cares about getting rid of racism in Britain is accustomed to massive difficulties. The disastrous immigration policies of governments of both parties since 1962, the institutionalised racial discrimination built into public and private organisations, the tragedy of human potential lost and destroyed in our educational system, the insensitivity and ignorance of many people in the news industry, racism in entertainment and cartoons, public indifference and private malice, are all too bitterly familiar. But the anti-racist, as if he had not trouble enough with enemies, needs more and more protection from his friends. Government money for ‘community relations’ has recently become more plentiful, but practised hands are holding the purse-strings and know just how and when to draw them tight. Job opportunities brighten a little for specialised social workers, charged with containing the discontents of the young and black : their job opportunities are less than ever. Various groups on the Left are eager to help in the racial struggle, but usually on their own terms. And now we have Women’s Lib as well.

‘Women’s Lib’ is a vague and disputed term; it is more usual to hear of ‘the women’s movement’ now in this country. This includes some formal organisations, some informal groups and some individuals, all in some way or another concerned with women’s rights. These groups and individuals vary in beliefs and in action. Some are old-established reforming organisations, some new community action groups, and so on; their work often overlaps, but there is a marked difference, all the same, between the new ideology of liberation and the old ideology of equal rights for women. The difference is in mood and style rather than in a set programme; the new mood and style can conveniently be called ‘anti-sexism’.
The Catholic Homosexual
Authors: Poole Lee
Published: July 2007

In his recent article ‘Where are the Simple Faithful’? Fr Anthony Archer wrote recently (May 1975) for New Blackfriars : ‘Opening the Church has allowed all sorts of groups to find their inspiration within the Church, for the gospel is a very potent source of new ideas’ (p. 203).

Anyone sufficiently in touch with the actual range of such post- Vatican II Catholic pluralism is aware of the fact that a growing Catholic gay movement is finding its place too on the scene. Impulses of the past few years have been particularly strong in Holland but perhaps even more so in America and Australia, where dignity and acceptance movements have recently joined hands to form an international fellowship of self-accepting gay women and men who profess openly their homosexuality and their Catholicism.

These groups are not so much interested in debate with what they refer to as straight-society. Primarily they are interested in reaching other Catholic homosexuals with their message of self-acceptance and their positive evaluation of responsible sexual relations between gay persons. The very label ‘gay’ is preferred to ‘homosexual’ since it implies explicit awareness of and positive willingness to accept oneself thankfully for what one is, rather than to go on bemoaning one’s fate as second-class citizens in a world of straight values and oppression.
Christian Relationships
Authors: Woodhouse H F
Published: July 2007

This article is an attempt to sketch some salient features of the relationship between Christians. The Christian church is not a crowd, not even a crowd made up of devotees of a particular football club to take an example. It is a community and yet the persons who compose it are persons, because of their interrelationship, and individuals, because often their particular qualities or gifts are intensified.

They are a community ‘in Christ’, the body of Christ and this fellowship is not so much horizontal between the different members as vertical because they are ‘in Christ’ or alternatively we could say they share a common life, that imparted by the Holy Spirit the Life Giver. This viewpoint, while not provable from the New Testament, receives support from it.

The members who share this common life remain persons, indeed their individuality is developed and enhanced. In relationship lies the differentia of being person; this has vertical and horizontal links, with the Holy Spirit and with other people, especially often Christians. Personality, growth to mature persons, is realised in response to Him, and in fellowship with life in all its varied aspects. Aspirations can be met, self-realisation achieved, self-expression maintained. For the Christian, becoming a person is the practice of divine sonship.
The Road to Psmith
Authors: Edwards Owen Dudley
Published: July 2007

The literary career of Wodehouse almost exactly covered the first three quarters of the present century. Eighty of his titles are in print in these islands today in hard covers published by Barrie & Jenkins, and Penguins usually have about twenty of them in paperback at any given time. ‘It is a striking example of the patience and loyalty of the British public’, as his great master, Conan Doyle, observed of the unflagging popularity of Sherlock Holmes.

It is also a striking example of the power and endurance of Wodehouse’s rapport with his readers. The achievement is in its way more remarkable than that of his master. When Conan Doyle wrote those words at the end of the 1920s, over half of his own literary output had vanished from the bookshops, and Holmes has carried on his lean shoulders anything to have survived in addition to his own cycle. Wodehouse, on the other hand, has never had to depend on Jeeves to sell his other titles. Jeeves and Bertie have been the favourites, but Lord Emsworth, Mr Mulliner, the Oldest Member, Ukridge, the Drones Club, and Psmith—and the vast range of characters limited to one or two novels—have consistently retained their public. There is a story that Evelyn Waugh once asked Graham Greene what he proposed to write next, The End of the Affair having recently appeared. ‘Something about God, I suppose, Greene’?
Professions
Authors: Williams Michael E
Published: July 2007

The news that in France not only have prostitutes occupied churches as part of their campaign for a better treatment under the law, but that priests have taken their part against the police, could be interpreted as one of the more bizarre aspects of life in the common market. Yet this incident can provide food for thought about the style of life of the clergy themselves. When society is stable, vocations to the priesthood can be fostered by drawing attention to the status of the priest in society and the points of likeness between him and the schoolmaster, doctor, and other professional classes. It is only in these days of uncertainty and change that we can begin to entertain the thought that there might be a parallel with the oldest profession of all.

Religion like sex cuts right across society and class. It stands for basic forces in mankind that neither cold logic nor social pressures can adequately control or express. No wonder then that anyone whose way of life calls attention to the inadequacies of society in these matters will be regarded with suspicion and hostility. One has to proceed with prudence and caution. Quite apart from whether it infringes the citizen’s right to be unmolested, door to door evangelism can be counter productive. Soliciting is a crime. The customer has to make the first move. Part of the skill of the game is to elicit that initial request and to do this all manner of artistry is needed. The wares one is hawking have to be desirable, one has to create curiosity and interest, to dress up, to know human nature so as to play on natural instincts, to practise a few mincing liturgical steps, to give an ecumenical glad-eye.
The Papacy and the Historian
Authors: John Eric
Published: July 2007

It is easy for a historian to write about the papacy indifferently but very difficult to write about it very well. It is even more difficult to write well about individual popes. If we console ourselves for the inadequacy of the current biographers of Pius xii or John xxiii with the thought that the passage of time will mend matters our optimism is misplaced. There is no outstanding biography of any pope. The first known original literary composition by an Englishman was a Life of Gregory the Great: in the thirteen hundred years since he wrote it he has been surpassed but not by very much. Gregory VII is a household name in every ecclesiastical history seminar but there is no modem scholarly biography in any language that I know of. The standard work, Martens’ Gregor VII, is a collection of foot-notes of incredible pedantry to which the author never provided a text. Even the basic facts of the life of Peter had to wait until 1952 before they were established on a scholarly basis. There is, however, a basic scholarly consensus about the papacy as an institution, a consensus expressed in a brilliant and compelling book, Professor Walter Ullmann’s Growth of Papal Government. There are, of course, dissenting voices, and distinguished ones, over this or that issue, but most of what is written and taught about Church history still does not stray far from the guide-lines laid down by Dr Ullmann.
Lonergan's Awake: A Reply to Fergus Kerr
Authors: Mathews William
Published: July 2007

Reading Fergus Kerr’s article “Lonergan’s Wake’ (New Blackfriars, July 1975) as well as the book which inspired it leaves one with a whole new insight into the plight of Jairus. Containing as it does many misleading comments about Lonergan’s thought (for instance on p. 308 Kerr identifies the very common and ordinary occurrence of having an insight with the quite distinct and extremely rare event of self-appropriation) as well as totally destructive criticism it requires a reply. The criticisms given in Looking at Lonergan’s Method are held to be irreparably damaging, mark a watershed, and make Lonergan’s work seem ramshackle. Method, Kerr concludes, is a gross error. However, Kerr’s own uncritical acceptance of the accuracy of the interpretations of Lonergan by the contributors, of the soundness and significance of their arguments and comments, as well as the severity of his own conclusions are not themselves beyond criticism.

It is claimed (p. 307) that firstly Lonergan has never engaged in even the most elementary analysis of the central concepts of his method, understanding and knowing; secondly, that he systematically misunderstands these concepts and makes all the mistakes that Wittgenstein warned us to avoid in his Philosophical Investigations. The first of these claims is preposterous. Lonergan has both written and lectured on Aristotelian, Medieval, Rationalist, Empiricist, and Idealist theories of concepts of knowledge and has worked out a highly sophisticated dialectical technique for choosing between conflicting theories. Granted that his starting point is not the analysis of concepts of understanding but of the more basic human performance of understanding itself. To simply study concepts of understanding without relating them to the experience of understanding, theological or otherwise, is to build castles in the air.
The God and the Machine
Authors: Edwards Owen Dudley
Published: July 2007

Once Wodehouse transported Mike to Sedleigh from Wrykin and Mike hated it on sight, the god appeared. And from the very first the god began to send up not only Sedleigh but public schools and the public school story:

‘Hullo’, he said

He spoke in a tired voice.

‘Hullo’, said Mike.

‘Take a seat’, said the immaculate one. ‘If you don’t mind dirtying your bags, that’s to say. Personally, I don’t see any prospect of ever sitting down in this place. It looks to me as if they meant to use these chairs as mustard-and-cress beds. A Nursery Garden in the Home. That sort of idea. My name’, he added pensively, ‘is Smith. What’s yours ?’

‘Jackson’, said Mike.

‘Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or the Boy who is Led Astray and takes to Drink in Chapter Sixteen ?’

‘The last, for choice’, said Mike, ‘but I’ve only just arrived, so I don’t know’.

‘The boy—what will he become? Are you new here, too, then?’

‘Yes! Why, are you new?’

‘Do I look as if I belonged here? I’m the latest import. Sit down on yonder settee, and I will tell you the painful story of my life. By the way, before I start, there’s just one thing. If you ever have occasion to write to me, would you mind sticking a P at the beginning of my name? P-s-m-i-t-h. See? There are too many Smiths, and I don’t care for Smythe. My father’s content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but I’ve decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty. The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning. I jotted it down on the back of an envelope. In conversation you may address me as Rupert (though I hope you won’t), or simply Smith, the P not being sounded. Cp. the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar miss-in-baulk. See?’
A New Life of St Thomas Aquinas
Authors: Foster Kenelm
Published: July 2007

Perhaps Fr Weisheipl rather labours the point that it isn’t enough to see St Thomas in a ‘speculative perspective’, that he should be studied with ‘historical method’ as well as ‘philosophical acumen’. Surely, that can be presumed. Can it, on the other hand, be presumed right from the start that to us readers as well as to the author St Thomas’s doctrine seems ‘sublime’ and his insights ‘transcendental’ (pp. 1-2)? Such encomiums would surely come better further on in the book. Fortunately there is, in fact, far more sense than rhetoric in this work, and far more history than exercise of philosophical or theological ‘acumen’; neither of which is really Fr Weisheipl’s forte. And as a historian—or better, as a biographer—he has done a very good job. Indeed I would say that he has written the best biography in English, and probably in any language, of our greatest theologian.

His aim was the large one of presenting ‘a rather full picture of the life, thought, and works of Thomas’, but his special achievement is to give the most complete and reliable account so far available of Thomas’s external existence, including in this of course the chronology and circumstances of his writings. And this is a great achievement. The subject bristles with problems and difficulties. To be sure, the background and setting of Thomas’s life are fairly well documented, intertwining as this does with the history of three great institutions whose official records are preserved: the Dominican Order, the University of Paris, and the Papacy. But such records do not, of course, interpret themselves except to the scholar’s eye, and it is often a very delicate matter to assess the exact meaning of this or that technical term (studium, for example, in its various official or semi-official connotations) or the relative importance—relative to St Thomas—of this or that contemporary movement or event or series of events.
The Papacy and the Historian II: Peter et al
Authors: John Eric
Published: July 2007

The historical study of the papacy begins with Peter and the study of Peter can only be undertaken in a scriptural context. I use the word ‘scriptural’ advisedly. Only if one gives the New Testament a special status as part of ‘Scripture’ does it make sense to sift its texts relating to Peter in the way traditionally done. Now one cannot accord the New Testament documents the status of Scripture on scholarly criteria alone. Scholarship has a very important part to play but it is necessarily subsidiary and incomplete.

It is conceivable, though after the last few generations of international scrutiny improbable, that evidence might come to light, or some great scholar notice something previously missed, that would make it intellectually impossible to accord the texts we have scriptural status. It is conceivable that a scholar might demonstrate that the thought of the New Testament and the language that went with the thought were impossible for the first century AD, as Lorenzo Valla did with the Constitutum Constantini. But after a century of scholarship trying to demonstrate just this, we are left with texts, all almost certainly originally written in the first century and therefore much nearer the autographs than any Latin or Greek classical texts, that so far as scholarship can tell are ‘authentic’. But this has only negative value. It means it is not intellectually disreputable to take them as texts of the time and place they purport to come from. It means that arguments of the kind one still meets that there is no evidence that Jesus ever lived can only be accepted if the same criteria be applied generally and it be freely admitted that there is no evidence that Julius Ceasar ever lived, or that Cicero wrote a line in his life—if he ever had one— or that there ever was a people called the Germans.
Beyond Lonergan's Method: A Response to William Mathews
Authors: Kerr Fergus
Published: July 2007

As I wrote in my review of the book (New Blackfriars, July 1975), all but one or two of the thirteen symposiasts in Looking at Lonergan’s Method initiate what seem like quite damaging lines of criticism, and in the space of an article Bill Mathews could no more refute them all (New Blackfriars, January 1976) than I could fairly present them all —and, like me, he has incorporated theological reflections of his own, which makes the debate so multilateral that it threatens to exasperate readers without access to the symposium or perhaps even to Lonergan’s own books. It seems to me, then, that extended argument about the soundness or otherwise of this phalanx of objections to Lonergan, and about the wisdom of my general endorsement of these objections, with all the grit of detailed claim and contradiction and the paraphernalia of criss-crossing page references and citations, would weary all but a tiny minority of our readers. These I am content to leave to judge for themselves between my reception of the symposium’s objections to Lonergan and the totally different assessment proposed by Bill Mathews (and by Hugo Meynell, forthcoming in The Month). For the rest, as regards readers without access to Lonergan’s books, I must of course emphasise—and after Bill Mathews’s article they will surely realise—that it would be unfair for them to take either the symposium itself or my review of it as the last word on Lonergan, enabling them in good conscience to defer for good the labour of reading Lonergan’s Method and allied works.

What I want to attempt now—because it forced itself on me as I read what Bill Mathews had to say—is to bring out the difference in expectations and presuppositions which (I suspect) leads him and me to read Lonergan so differently. Since it is a difference in perspective that (I believe) divides theologians today, and not only theologians, the issue has the wider implications with which the majority of our readers may be assumed to have some acquaintance and concern. It is the question of the preconditions of any future theology.
History as Revelation
Authors: Walker Briefne
Published: July 2007

Then, I don’t know how it was, but something seemed to break inside me, and I started yelling at the top of my voice. I hurled insults at him, I told him not to waste his rotten prayers on me; it was better to burn than to disappear. I’d taken him by the neckband of his cassock, and, in a sort of ecstasy of joy and rage, I poured out on him all the thoughts that had been simmering in my brain. He seemed so cocksure, you see. And yet none of his certainties was worth one strand of a woman’s hair.

This passage takes us into the prison cell where Albert Camus’ Outsider awaits his execution, watching the changing colours of the sky in the daytime, and looking out for the stars at night. The chaplain had come before but he had refused to see him. He did not believe in God, and now, with the little life that was left to him, the question whether God existed or not had no importance. So he released everything inside him, and shattered the priest’s hopes of doing anything for his ‘soul’.

During his life, Meursault had decided to do certain things and against doing other things, and all this time, he had been waiting for this moment, and the guillotine which was now very near. The priest with his talk about God and the after-life and divine justice, was merely an irksome interruption.

‘I’m sure you’ve often wished there was an after-life’, the priest in Camus’ story persists. Of course he had, but it was no more significant ‘han wishing he could swim faster or that he had a better-shaped mouth. The memory of Marie, and those fleeting hours on the beach when they swam out into the deep water, clambered onto the raft and lay down together under the scorching sun: these were the only things worth having now. As for a life after the grave—well, all he wanted was a life in which he could remember this one on earth. The priest continued on the subject of God.
The Papacy and the Historian III: The New Ekklesia
Authors: John Eric
Published: July 2007

The content of any notion of Catholicity must ultimately be referable to, and not incompatible with at the very least, Scripture. But the idea that it can be read out of Scripture as though such notions could be settled in scholarly footnotes to the text is quite mistaken. It is experiences of the development of the Church; discriminations about what went right and what went wrong, that illuminate what we read in Scripture. Now that experience and that development are continuous, so that Scriptural notions of Catholicity need to be scrutinised and refined, if not every generation, at least from time to time, but experience, both of the private and personal, and of the institutional is no more to be got easily than the truth of Scripture by a mere reading of the words on the page. The tendency is to be conservative, to interpret our experience as we have been taught to interpret it, and to accept the institutions of Christianity as we have known them. It is only occasionally, when things break down, when the fallacies we were brought up on, both in our personal experience and the nature of the institutions we have belonged to, are too manifest to be denied, that we are in a position to revalue the nature of Christian experience and particularly that experience of Catholicity that underlies our acceptance of some institutions and rejection of others. It seems to me that the age of the Fathers was very much not this kind of age.

Patristic authors have been scrutinised almost as meticulously as the text of Scripture itself for justifications or condemnations of the papal version of the Petrine succession. Many such scholars have found their papalism confirmed—or their anti-papalism or even their indifference—because what you get out of the Fathers on this topic is very much what you took in in the first place. Of course, the Fathers as the interpreters of Scripture in the first instance, as the setters of the style of such interpretations, have and deserve special authority.
Speaking in Tongues: A Philosophical Comment
Authors: Davies Brian A
Published: July 2007

Catholics with some biblical knowledge will clearly be familiar with the expression ‘speaking in tongues’. Those who have encountered what is known as ‘Catholic Pentecostalism’ or the ‘Charismatic renewal’ will be even more familiar with it. For within this, though not always considered essential, it certainly is regarded by many as a topic of considerable importance. Up to the present, however, there has been little of a philosophical nature said on the subject and the purpose of what follows is to go some way towards remedying the deficiency. My comments will be necessarily curtailed for the sake of space, but, hopefully, something of interest will emerge.

Advocates of speaking in tongues undoubtedly have a biblical basis for introducing the topic. According to Acts, on the Day of Pentecost the apostles were ‘filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues’ (Acts 2.3, R.S.V. Cf. Acts 19.6-7; 10.66). In 1 Corinthians 14, although he has some harsh things to say on the subject, St Paul declares: ‘I thank God that I speak in tongues more than you all’, and he makes it clear that speaking in tongues is a gift from God. The New Testament witness is not, however, a great deal of help in deciding what exactly speaking in tongues amounts to. It is not even clear whether the biblical authors regard the phenomenon as speaking in unknown but genuine languages. St Paul’s contribution is meagre enough and could hardly be called a fully worked-out analysis. He alludes to speaking in tongues only to make the negative point that this should not detract from Christian edification. Only when stating what he considers to be edifying does he begin to expand.
In Defence of Lonergan's Critics
Authors: Lash Nicholas
Published: July 2007

Our editor has learned much about torture in recent years. Had he not done so, I doubt whether he would have had the ingenuity to think of inviting me to reply to Bill Mathews’s defence of Bernard Lonergan in the light of Fergus Kerr’s review of thirteen other people’s reflections on Lonergan’s Method!

When we mounted that symposium at Maynooth from which Looking at Lonergan’s Method emerged we had a quite specific purpose in view. On the one hand, we believed that Method in Theology was far too important to be ignored. On the other hand, we knew that it would receive plenty of adulatory attention from those who have been so profoundly influenced by Lonergan’s work that they seem incapable of doing more than uncritically restating Lonergan’s position in Lonergan’s categories. We felt that there was room for a collection of essays which did Lonergan the honour of taking him sufficiently seriously to attempt critically to come to grips with some of the fundamental issues raised by Method (a similar attempt, by a group of Texan theologians, can be found in the Spring 1975 number of the Perkins Journal). It is, I think, a measure both of the importance of the issues, and of the perceived power of Lonergan’s contribution, that scholars as internationally distinguished, and from such varied cultural, philosophical and confessional backgrounds, as Hesse, Jossua, Pannen-berg and Torrance, should have agreed to take part in this enterprise. One shows respect neither for the issues, nor for Lonergan’s contribution to their clarification, if one simply leaps to his defence, as Bill Mathews tends to do, without—apparently—attempting first to understand the standpoints from which other scholars offer a critical response to his achievement.
The Code of the Jeeveses
Authors: Edwards Owen Dudley
Published: July 2007

It is well-known that Jeeves’s first appearance was in a story called ‘Extricating Young Gussie’ in which he had two modest lines. Bertie is firmly, if crudely, established in it, although his name is fairly definitely Mannering-Phipps. Aunt Agatha makes her first appearance there. A little earlier in this, the second decade of the century, Wodehouse produced a scattered series of short stories for the Strand featuring an I/r-Bertic, Reggie Pepper. Some, though not all, of these were reprinted in the collection My Man Jeeves: the Pepper stories were still Pepper, although four Wooster stories set in America were added. These latter were reprinted in Carry On, Jeeves six years later and, as noted above, one Pepper story was Woosterised. Decades later more of the Pepper stories were reworked: ‘Doing Clarence a Bit of Good’ became ‘Jeeves Makes an Omelette’, one of the only two Jeeves short stories to appear after 1930, and ‘Rallying Round Old George’ was refashioned, to its disadvantage, as a very late Mulliner, ‘George and Alfred’. One point of interest in the latter reworking is that a Prince was changed to a movie mogul. What is not known is that an uncollected Reggie Pepper, ‘Disentangling Old Percy’, appeared in the Strand for August 1912 (Vol. XLIV, 219-29), bringing Florence Craye into the world. ‘Percy’ was not her father, but her brother.
Dr Karl Marx, your Lordship
Authors: Edwards Owen Dudley
Published: July 2007

In point of technique, the great triumph of the Wodehouse novels was in the use of first-person narrative. It is curious how little he in fact used the first person. As Usborne has noted, the novels consist of Laughing Gas (1936) which, involving a switch of personalities, really needs something like this, Love Among the Chickens (where Wodehouse was very nervous about it) and the Wooster-Jeeves cycle. The stories told by the Oldest Member, Mr Mulliner and the Drones Club Crumpet have very little action by the narrator: from time to time the Oldest Member plays a small part in one of his own stories (although on the only occasion when Mr Mulliner does so, to any degree, in ‘George and Alfred’, the result is poor). The Ukridge short stories give a good deal of action to Corky. The Reggie Pepper episodes brought out the weakness and strength of the technique. Wodehouse brooded on the problem when writing his first Jeeves novel:

By the way, it’s not all jam writing a story in the first person. The reader can know nothing except what Bertie tells him, and Bertie can know only a limited amount himself.

What he came to do was to capitalise on this, turning the novels into a series of shock discoveries, part thriller, part increase of psychological perceptions. Usborne very properly notes the great debt to Conan Doyle at this point (ibid., 152-3). The model is clearly The Hound of the Baskervilles, Doyle’s one unflawed Holmes novel. If Wodehouse learned from Moriarty that an absent Aunt Agatha could be far more effective than her presence, he also drew the lessons on how to keep the Holmes figure off-stage for much of the action, especially when the mysteries loomed darkest.
Sincerity, Authenticity and God
Authors: Wicker Brian
Published: July 2007

I regard this article as part of a continuing debate in New Blackfriars concerning the relations of Christianity and Marxism. But it is also an attempt, within that context, to ask and answer the question why we should continue to believe in God. I raise the question here because, it seems to me, that most of the effort expended by earlier contributors, particularly Denys Turner has been towards showing that it is possible, and even necessary for a Christian to be a Marxist. Obviously, if a Christian must be a Marxist, as Denys Turner argues, then the question whether he can, or should, continue to believe in God is raised at once. For it is a pretty widely accepted opinion among Marxists that belief in God is incompatible with their own view of things, and that anyone who is a Marxist and believes in God is something of an oddity, a man with a private religious hang-up, and quite probably an unreliable ally. Denys Turner rightly affirms that, in holding to this view of religious belief, Marxists are themselves merely hanging on to a private opinion that has nothing to do with their Marxism as such. But a Christian cannot be content with remaining there. What the Christian needs to be able to show is that, if he ought to be a Marxist just in order to be a complete Christian, it is equally the case that the Marxist ought to be a Christian just in order to be a complete Marxist. Nothing short of this will do, from a Christian standpoint: to pretend otherwise is to connive at a sell-out. I believe that at the present stage of the game there is a real danger of just such a sell-out. For example, to say, as the editorial committee responsible for Crossleft do, that ‘there can be no question today ... of Christian modification of Marxist praxis’ (which, if it means anything, means that being a Christian Marxist makes no difference at all to what, as a Marxist you are prepared to do): or that ‘the Church is basically on the side of the oppressor’ (what else, strictly speaking, can ‘basically’ mean here but ‘from the very foundation’?)—to say things like this suggests to me a readiness for just such a sell-out as I have indicated.
Poet of Communications
Authors: Edwards Owen Dudley
Published: July 2007

The branch of Wodehouse’s work which compels the attention of the historian more than any other, is his treatment of the communications media. Whatever criticism can be made of his choice of themes of which he had little experience and less contemporary knowledge, it must be acknowledged that he surveyed the media men, women and fashions with a perpetual eye to their nature and changes, their strengths and their phoniness. He also remained as vigorous in his power of parody and satire as he had ever been; and his increasing sophistication lent additional bite to his analyses with the advancing years. Naturally the problem of his place as a historical witness increases with the improvement in his writing. We can go to old Blumenfeld in The Inimitable Jeeves for a naturalistic presentation of the New York theatre manager of 1920, specifically because it is almost a line-by-line portrait of Erlanger. On the other hand, what is to be said of his much more professional and much more savage Barmy in Wonderland, written thirty years later? Certainly Wodehouse, in attacking the exploitation and commercialism of the theatre, was drawing on a lifetime’s knowledge, and some of the material presented might have more to do with 1938 than 1948. One could not have the confident reliance on detail with which one turns to the road show passages in Jill the Reckless. But as an insight on tendencies, attitudes, practices, responses, in the world of the New York theatre in his lifetime, it deserves the higher accolade we give to the artist whose eye sees deeper into an epoch than a mere reporter can hope to do.
The Papacy and the Historian VI: Kith and Kingship
Authors: John Eric
Published: July 2007

I want to take as my next vantage point from which to survey the traditions of papalism the achievement of the policy Gregory the Great had started—though it had acquired some accretions he might not have cared for very much—the confiding of the rule of the Church to a specially marked-off status group of ordained persons. This is usually called the Gregorian Reformation, after its most famous protagonist Gregory VII. This is very misleading, especially as it leads scholars to see Gregory VII’s pontificate as the beginning of something when it is just as much a dead end. Gregory is supposed to have been an original and creative pontiff who saw the truth that the Church was subject to the Babylonish captivity of the lay princes of the day, notably the German Emperor (or potential Emperor to be strictly correct). He surveyed the great traditions of the Catholic religion, starting with St Paul, and by wielding his remarkable gifts of iron logic he laid the foundations of a recovery of Christian liberty. This meant in practice an hierarchical Church much more tightly governed than ever before but by clerics. At times Gregory’s letters suggest he thought of the Church as one huge parish with himself as parish priest, the bishops, etc., as curates and the lay princes as a sort of churchwarden or leader of Catholic action. It is not true to say that Gregory simply wanted the Church to be free of lay intervention or rule—it was in fact so in his day to as large a degree as it ever was in the Middle Ages and far more so than it was in the post-Reformation world, in either Catholic or Protestant kingdoms. What Gregory wanted was the subordination of lay rulers to his moral dictatorship, he wanted them to intervene but on his say-so. What the boundaries of the moral were, Gregory would define.