bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Redeeming the White Man's God
Authors: van der Hart Rob
Published: July 2007

The violent interruption has subsided and Western imperialism has collapsed against the tenacious pliability of cultures that do not defend themselves by opposing, but by returning to their own perpetual shape, slowly but inevitably, absorbing any marks that have been left and cannot be forgotten.

Christians, too, are having to readjust themselves now that colonialism is officially dead. They are shaking off feelings of disillusion and embarrassment with their own role in this drama, and are finding a new courage and enthusiasm in a willingness to serve rather than to rule, to develop and display a sympathetic understanding of other ways of thinking.

But the basic question still remains: Why did they go out to invade these other minds in the first place? What really inspired the white man to leave his proper abode and to travel out to the four corners of the earth ? What gave to his soul that restless urge to preach his belief to all the nations? Was it only a burning love which no man can enjoy without sharing it with others, a fullness of grace that knows no rest so long as there are others who have no share in it?
Faith and Theology in the University
Authors: Strange Roderick
Published: July 2007

In a recent lecture, Fr Edward Yarnold discussed the place of the theologian in the university. He mentioned the salutary effect of contact with other disciplines on the university theologian, the value of the ecumenical setting which a university provides for theology, and, in particular, the view, proposed by the 1952 Faith and Order Conference at Lund, that theologians should make for the centre of the Christian faith where they are united, and, working from that centre, justify their divisions. On this last point, however, Fr Yarnold registered misgivings, for, he asserted, ‘Theology is not a study which can be pursued with detachment: it requires faith’. He argued the issue with care on the principle that a living theology can only arise from a living tradition, and he went on to discuss the consequences of this viewpoint and draw out its advantages.

At the same time, Fr Yarnold was aware that some theologians, while sympathetic to what he had to say about a living tradition in theology, would want to question the role he ascribed to faith: ‘Some theologians—I speak of my own country, but the cap may fit other heads—have thought that this need for commitment is incompatible with scholarly objectivity and freedom of conscience’. For them, in other words, commitment, or faith, threatens the integrity which academic theology requires. They feel that faith would prejudice the detached course which this theology has to take if it is to be true to itself as academic. They would make a distinction between academic and commitment theology.
Experiment in the Church
Authors: Hodgson Peter
Published: July 2007

Ever since the Second Vatican Council it is being increasingly realized that experiment and adaptation are continuing conditions of the life of the Church. But what precisely is an experiment in this context ? Karl Rahner has recently tried to answer this question and he concludes that since history as such is not really open to experimentation in the scientific sense, experiment must have a different meaning in the two contexts, and so the Church can learn nothing useful from a study of scientific experiments. In support of this view Rahner points out that an experiment in the Church is an event in the Church itself and so changes the Church, while no scientific experiment changes the physical world. Thus the meaning of experiment is quite different in the two cases.

In this he compares the subject of one activity with the object of another so the result is naturally misleading and unfruitful. The logical comparison shows a close similarity that deserves further study: just as a scientific experiment does not change nature, neither does an experiment in the Church change human nature; but just as a successful experiment in science is a stage in the growth of the understanding of the natural world by the scientific community, so a successful experiment in the Church is likewise an irrevocable stage in its onward spiritual pilgrimage.

In view of this close similarity it is not surprising that Rahner’s account of the place of experiment in the life of the Church is much closer to scientific experience than he recognizes and thus a further exploration of the analogy may prove useful.
The Gospel and Brazil
Authors: de Alencar Tito
Published: July 2007

‘For many Catholics in Brazil, the Dominican Order is synonymous with subversion and the destruction of genuine values.’

(Brazilian daily O Globo, 1969)

Tito de Alencar was one of the Dominicans imprisoned and tortured in Brazil; he was released in exchange for the kidnapped Swiss Ambassador. He is interviewed here by CLAUDIO ZANCHETTIN.

* * *

There are two sorts of revolutionaries; those of the drawing room and the real ones. The first talk about revolution, the others make it. Tito de Alencar, the young Dominican I went to interview in the convent of St Jacques in Paris is one of the real sort. His revolutionary struggles, imprisonment, torture and exile could have made a ‘hero’ of him. But Tito has nothing about him of the vain exhibitionist. For him revolution is a terribly serious matter.

His sufferings have marked him greatly. When he speaks he conceals his emotion with difficulty. With fixed eyes he tries to get to the bottom of things straight away. His young life is consumed by two great passions; revolution and the gospel.

At this time when the limelight of news is no longer directed at Brazil, I believe it to be a matter of urgency to contribute to breaking the wall of silence and complicity that surrounds the sufferings of the entire Brazilian people. It is so that this silence may be broken that Tito has agreed to answer my questions.

Claudio Zanchettin
Natural Theology and the Historicity of Faith
Authors: Harris P. F.
Published: July 2007

‘An existential system cannot be formulated. Does this mean that no such system exists ? By no means; nor is this implied in our assertion. Existence itself is a system—for God; but it cannot be a system for any existing spirit. System and finality correspond to one another, but existence is precisely the opposite of finality.’

S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript

* * *

Philosophy of religion and theology

We are by now too well acquainted with much that goes on under the heading of ‘philosophy of religion’ which seems to provide sport for some professional philosophers but has little to do with religious belief. The tactics are well known. A typical statement of a theological kind is set up for examination and is then put through the logical hoops without, apparently, any further need for reference to the theological context. The strategy often presumes that there is basically only one type of theological statement and that this can be dealt with adequately without looking at the complex structure of thought which surrounds it in its theological setting. Faith may indeed be simple, but its systematic exploration and articulation inevitably demands a complex and sophisticated exposition without which it becomes not only unreasonable, but even unintelligible. The discussions of some of the philosophers of religion have as a result only too often a rather tired and well-worn air, and frequently theologians find little resemblance between what they themselves are doing and what philosophers presume that they are about.
Disestablishment: Christianity in Wales
Authors: Brown J. P.
Published: July 2007

For the older generation of Catholics, ‘Welsh Disestablishment’ recalls Chesterton’s Ode with its climax, ‘Chuck it, Smith!’ and with its implication that the religious affairs of Wales are not of much interest to the rest of Europe. It often seems that they are of little concern even to those Europeans who have settled in Wales. I have been asked to re-present for New Blackfriars readers the nature and origins of our complex denominational situation. I would suggest that ‘disestablishment’, i.e. separation of Church and secular power (especially the power of the State) is a unifying theme and that this may have the interest of novelty for most of Europe.

The political background

In an earlier article ‘By Law Established’, I argued that from the beginning Wales has been a nation without a sovereign state, i.e. the highest political power in Wales has usually had its seat outside Wales, in England, in fact. While Welsh nationhood has been based chiefly on the Welsh language, it has generally been reinforced by a type of Christianity distinct from that of England. Since the English State has, of course, been hostile to Welsh nationhood, it follows that Church and State here have often been on opposite sides.
Graham Greene: The Writer
Authors: Strange Roderick
Published: July 2007

In September 1971 Graham Greene published his autobiography, A Sort of Life. The Times Literary Supplement took the opportunity to feature a leading article on his work in which it stated that the autobiography ‘reinforces Greene’s theories about the relations between art and life’, and at once added, ‘that is to say, between his art and his life’. The debate about the relationship between an author’s work and his life recurs constantly, but in Greene’s case the questions which are raised are particularly acute, his view of the matter being in marked contrast to that expressed by most of his critics.

The critics frequently affirm that his books are principally about himself. Marie-Béatrice Mesnet, for example, hints at this when she compares his travel book, The Lawless Roads, with his novel, The Power and the Glory, both of which are set in Mexico. ‘His only addition to reality in the novel’, she writes, ‘lies in the characterization of his human material, in his power to conjure up life and the interior history of a man. The entire background is as close to actual fact as possible.’ Still more explicitly, Victor de Pange has claimed: ‘L’oeuvre de Greene peut se lire comme une autobiographic à peine transposee’.

No doubt it is this trend in the criticism of Greene’s work that explains the reaction of the critics to his autobiography, for while they admire the quality of his writing, they confess to a sense of disappointment. They had hoped to learn his secret. Peter Lewis complained outright in the Daily Mail that ‘Many of Graham Greene’s admirers will be disappointed by A Sort of Life, the autobiography which might have thrown light on his secret’.
Fragment of an Autobiography
Authors: Evans‐Pritchard E. E.
Published: July 2007

One has often been asked by incredulous, though well-meaning, people—and almost apologetically—‘Why did you become a Catholic?’ The suggestion being that there must be some explanation to account for such a strange, even a remarkable, lapse from rational behaviour on the part of one supposed to be some sort of scientist. The question is not well put. I suppose that none of us can say truthfully and certainly why we do anything. It would be better to ask not why, but how, did a man become a Catholic; and this is the question I shall attempt to answer, so that next time I am asked why I became a Catholic I can just hand over this number of New Blackfriars. Perhaps even more alarming and difficult to give a direct answer to is the question: ‘When were you converted?’ Perhaps I had better deal with that one first.

Some people, it would seem, have peculiar notions about what is called ‘conversion’, as though it were some sudden and dazzling experience (it may be with some people; I do not know). So, we are led to suppose, this is what happened on the road to Damascus, but if that dramatic incidence, that traumatic vision, occurred as described, we might recollect that Paul was a highly religious Jew, and so was Jesus, a Jew preaching unto Jews in the tradition of Jewish thought and expression. And we might also bear in mind that when we read that Augustine was converted by Ambrose that Augustine was a Neo-Platonist and was already, so to speak, half-way there. So, if we may compare little things with big things, we come to me, which is embarrassing, but obviously I cannot talk about myself without some ‘I’s and ‘me’s.
God's Flesh
Authors: Tugwell Simon
Published: July 2007

Two years ago, under the pretext of reviewing a motley collection of books, I offered some reflections on the play dimension of life and spirituality. Now, two years later, a little sadder perhaps if no wiser, I want to take up my cudgels again, on a similar pretext. In 1970 I suggested that one of the crucial issues, often veiled by the more popular conservative-progressive polarity, is that of Tradition—a glance at the behaviour of children revealing a close relationship between tradition and play. In various ways Tradition is again the issue raised by the books under consideration this time.

Mauss’ General Theory of Magic, already quite a classic, but now for the first time translated into English, and Furst’s collection, Flesh of the Gods, demonstrate how far experience is socially determined—to such an extent, it appears, that sorcerers in some societies, even though they are aware of the sleight of hand and other tricks involved in their own practice, nevertheless remain convinced of the validity of the whole magical system within which they operate.

Flesh of the Gods is a collection of essays by American ‘ethno- botanists’ on the ritual use of drugs in tribal societies. There are some signs that ethnobotany is a bit of a tribal religion itself (there is a kind of credo by R. Gordon Wasson), but all the same much of the material presented here is quite interesting. One thing that emerges over and over again is that members of a drug-using culture spontaneously all have the same, and the expected, experiences, often with no prompting from the shamanistic leader; outsiders, however, taking identical doses of the drug in an identical setting, experience nothing of the sort.

One consequence of this is, of course, the possibility of building up utterly self-contained and invulnerable systems of self-delusion. Such seems to be Mauss’ verdict on magic, though he recognizes its social significance. Although there may be much talk about experiences, in fact there is a tendency towards ritualization and formalism, the emphasis being on form rather than content.
The Myth of the Bagre
Authors: Edwards Adrian
Published: July 2007

Dr Jack Goody has over a period of twenty years done extensive fieldwork in northern Ghana, mainly among the LoDagaa (more commonly known as the Dagarti) and the Gonja. In both areas, he has exercised very satisfactorily the normal skills of the anthropologist dutifully recording the size of farming groups, and the ways inheritances are divided. However, farms are cultivated, and inheritances shared by human beings, who use language and live in time; and Goody’s awareness of this has made him responsible for three books which related the history and literature (both written and oral) of northern Ghana to a wider world. In Technology, Tradition and the State in Africa Dr Goody argued that Ghanian history is significantly influenced not only by the means of production, but also by the means of destruction, the horse, associated with Islam and the savannas, and guns, associated with Christendom and the forests. In a contribution to Literacy in Traditional Societies Dr Goody showed in the West African context, but with obviously much wider relevance, that the break-through to literacy may lead not towards secularization, but rather to mythifying and mystifying to a much greater degree than before. In The Myth of the Bagre Goody has not only increased the available corpus of African oral literature by giving us the original texts and annotated translations of the two long Bagre poems, but has also indicated its place in the religion and world-view of the LoDagaa and its relevance to contemporary discussions of myth.

The LoDagaa are not, strictly speaking, a ‘tribe’ in the colonialist sense of an obviously distinctive group, sharply distinguished from their neighbouring tribes. As happens in a number of areas in Africa, this particular area of northern Ghana is marked by a lack of coincidence between cultural and linguistic boundaries, and by the gradual way cultural differences appear with gradually increasing distance. Even the term has been selected for use to cover a given area by Dr Goody, albeit with some justification in local usage.
Some Eighteenth—century Remarks on Clerical Celibacy
Authors: Holmes J. Derek
Published: July 2007

Of course, a serious question deserves a serious answer, but is importance necessarily associated with solemnity, especially if the problem is unlikely to be solved in the immediate future? Might it not be possible or even desirable in such a situation to relax, if only for the moment, and treat the problem neither indifferently nor lugubriously, but with a certain degree of panache or even irresponsibility—for our own sakes, if nobody else’s? Such thoughts were prompted by reading through one particular controversy among English-speaking Catholics during the eighteenth century. At the time, many Catholics were dissatisfied with the attitudes and laws of the Church, not least on the issue of celibacy. Furthermore, these critics, no doubt largely influenced by the temper of the time, regarded themselves as liberal and enlightened in their own religious approach. How then were they to regard the clerical ‘vert’?

In 1784, Charles Henry Wharton, one of the first American Jesuits, published A Letter to the Roman Catholics of the City of Worcester where he had previously served as chaplain, giving his reasons for joining the Anglican Church. This pamphlet, first published in Philadelphia and reprinted in London about three months later, was particularly successful because it was, to use the publisher’s phrase, written in ‘a spirit of moderation and liberality’. Wharton was answered by, among others, John Carroll, the first American Bishop, and William Pilling in A Caveat addressed to the Catholics of Worcester (London, 1785). Pilling in turn was answered by a former Benedictine, John Hawkins, in An Appeal to Scripture, Reason, & Tradition which supported Wharton’s Letter, while Joseph Berington replied in his Reflections addressed to The Rev. John Hawkins (Birmingham, 1785).
A Positive Approach to Taboo
Authors: Boivin Marcel
Published: July 2007

An article by Fr Kevin T. Kelly recently published in The Clergy Review under the title ‘A Positive Approach to Humanae Vitae’ is an attempt at making a dispassionate evaluation of the teaching of that Encyclical on birth regulation. The attempt is successful, in that the article correctly weighs up the teaching of the Encyclical against the other statements of the Magisterium which immediately preceded or followed that Encyclical.

The untasty dish served by Pope Paul in 1968 is at last being made palatable; the trouble is that, in the process, the ingredients adduced from more savoury sources are changing the nature of the dish. Contraception, admittedly, remains evil. It is no longer, however, intrinsically evil; that is to say, it is no longer a type of action whose evilness cannot be exorcised by circumstances and that admits of no case in which its performance could be squared with God’s Will and man’s good. Contraception is now evil ‘in the premoral sense’. Like killing, which remains evil even when the total action of which it is a part makes it legitimate to take another man’s life, so is contraception: the total action can be a moral good and so legitimate the inclusion of contraception, without for that reason denying its premoral evil character.

The pastoral guidance given by Fr Kelly is in keeping with his assessment of the morality of contraception: ‘If a couple accept Humanae Vitae in the sense suggested in this article, then if they are using some form of contraception they ought to admit that what they are doing is not fully in accord with the objective demands of God’s Will for them’.
What Sort of Bread did Jesus want us to Pray For?
Authors: Baker Aelred
Published: July 2007

Can you say a prayer prayerfully with words in it you don’t understand? Yes, because for centuries Greek Christians have done precisely that. Wilfully, day in day out, they have asked God to give them epiousion bread in the Our Father. Every attempt to understand this word is more or less guess-work, so that after nineteen centuries of saying the Lord’s Prayer, we are still at square one. Square one being the statement of Origen, early in the third century, that we don’t know what epiousion really means, because it was never used by Greek writers, nor does it exist in common speech, and seems to have been made up by the evangelists.

This is a very extraordinary state of affairs. Jesus expressly repudiated meaningless and repetitive phrases, and supplied his disciples instead with this simple and straightforward prayer that everyone can understand. And then somehow or other it first appears in Greek with one quite unintelligible word. And it is an important word. For we are asked to pray for bread; but what sort of bread?— plain brown bread, spiritual bread, eucharistic bread, or food in general, eschatological food and drink, or what? The only qualifying word is this epiousion and we don’t know exactly what it means.
The Ontological Argument and Theological Education
Authors: Haskin Dayton
Published: July 2007

Even as organized religion becomes less fashionable in many corners, and perhaps especially in the university, a centuries-old scholastic debate about the existence of God has been resurrected to be pursued by the Academy with a new vigour. The so-called Ontological Argument, which St Thomas and Kant each in his turn demolished, is alive and well and alleged to have been more energetically debated in the last decade than ever before in its history, That this phoenix has risen from its ashes is not necessarily best accounted for by seeing it as an event in the war between belief and unbelief. For in large measure, today’s philosophers have occupied themselves with the new modal arguments of men like Malcolm and Hartshorne because of the fascinating logical problems which they entail. Moreover, in the course of the history of the argument, the sides have not been chosen by a strict division between those of the faith and those outside. St Anselm thought he had come upon a worthy insight when he first proposed the argument. But just as surely St Thomas thought the argument inadmissible—without by any means intending to deny God’s existence. There is a lesson here, albeit an embryonic one, for those who are carrying on another current debate—the one about whether theology can or should be done with detachment or commitments

To be academically respectable, some would say, theology must be pursued with scholarly objectivity and freedom from ecclesiastical constraints. Its integrity as a discipline hinges on dispassionate examination of the data and the freedom to draw conclusions wholly in accord with the evidence. One’s faith-commitment as such should not influence his theology.
The Sentimental Clown: The Idea of the Self in T. S. Eliot
Authors: Smith Stan
Published: July 2007

One recurring premise in much criticism of T. S. Eliot’s poetry is the dissoluteness of his dramatis personae. I say ‘dissoluteness’, because there is usually assumed to be some correlation between the imputed psychological state and a moral dereliction. Thus, Bernard Bergonzi’s recent study, speaking of the ‘deluded’ or ‘corrupt’ narrator of Portrait of a Lady, argues that ‘his consciousness is at all times on the verge of dissolution’. His drawing-room conversation is said to be disrupted by the ‘grotesque musical sounds going on inside his head. . . . He makes an effort literally to compose himself but his impressions remain as fragmentary and disjunctive as the items in a daily paper.’ Yet the lines Bergonzi cites to substantiate this suggest the opposite. In face of a multitude of other lives assembled, but also abstracted, reduced, made safe for him by the newspaper, the narrator maintains a casual equanimity, only mildly stirred by the sense of a problematic otherness:

I take my hat: how can I make a cowardly amends For what she has said to me?

You will see me any morning in the park Reading the comics and the sporting page.

Particularly I remark

An English countess goes upon the stage.

A Greek was murdered at a Polish dance,

Another bank defaulter has confessed.

I keep my countenance,

I remain self-possessed

Except when a street piano, mechanical and tired

Reiterates some worn out common song

With the smell of hyacinths across the garden

Recalling things that other people have desired.

Are these ideas right or wrong?
All Men are Intellectuals: A Disagreement between Friends
Authors: Edwards Adrian
Published: July 2007

My friend, Father Marcel Boivin, W.F., sent me a copy of his article ‘A Positive Approach to Taboo’ and asked for my comments. I wrote a somewhat sharp reply, which he received with his usual good nature, standing his ground, however, on the essential point of there being an essential difference between the scientific mentality and the taboo mentality. For me, this theory is, if not a taboo, at least a myth which is perhaps open to critical analysis; however, I feel I ought to sketch out my own way of seeing human thought in action. As Fr Boivin knows, I am neither a psychologist nor a philosopher nor a theologian, but a priest capable of, at any rate, preaching to peasants, children and seminarists, traditionally the three most taboo-ridden categories of mankind; I am also a social anthropologist, a profession whose initiates aspire to explain taboos scientifically, a claim which, if taboos and science are really of such utterly different orders, should mark us as sacred monsters of the quality of the pangolin of the Lele.

To understand human thought one needs to reflect on language. Dolphins, honey-bees and apes all transmit information to each other ; human language abstracts and generalizes, and can refer to what is absent, or past, or purely imaginary. It can therefore transmit far more than is transmitted through animal communication systems, and, for this purpose, language is structured by grammar and syntax. One can speak a language correctly without being able to explain the rules of grammar, but whenever a language is analysed it is found to have a set of rules which have a reasonable amount of consistency with each other.
More Thoughts on the Eucharistic Presence
Authors: Egner G.
Published: July 2007

I am indeed grateful to Professor Mascall and to Fr McCabe for their perceptive and kindly critiques of my article on the eucharistic presence. To answer them adequately would take more room than even the Editor’s generosity would tolerate, so I shall content myself with two things. I shall try to show what I think are the strengths and limitations of their views (in my opinion, although perhaps they will not agree with me, we are closer than might appear). And, in doing this, I shall refer to or cite passages from what I trust is my forthcoming book, In the Breaking of the Bread. In this way I shall at least show that the points they raise have not been neglected by me, whatever may be thought of the answers I offer. References to the articles in New Blackfriars will be by ‘E1, ‘E2’, ‘M’ and ‘H’, with page-numbers. References to the book will be by ‘BB’, followed by chapter and section.

Let me start by stressing that we are all agreed that no human language or philosophical system is capable of expressing the the eucharistic presence adequately. I make the point with some generality and at some length in BB iii, 1. The remarks about ‘amnesia’ and ‘confrontation’ in my article (E2, pp. 406-407) are based on later sections of that chapter, and are consequences of the general thesis that in theology ‘not only is our linguistic medium inadequate; it is inadequate to the task of drawing bounds to its inadequacy’ (BB iii, 1). The Aristotelian (or any other) vocabulary of change needs maltreatment of one sort or another for its eucharistic employment (see M, pp. 542-543; H, pp. 548-551). Where we differ is in our verdict on the particular ‘maltreatment’ that is in question.
Me and the Monks
Authors: Galbraith Joyce
Published: July 2007

My reactions to all priests and monks are based partly on my own early memories of my convent school and on my father’s healthy anti-clericalism. ‘Feudal barons . . . that’s what they are, nothing but feudal barons’, he used to roar about the Irish bishops of the thirties and I think he still would have said it had the rooms been bugged and the threat of the salt mines hanging over him. Still, he realized that you couldn’t, at that time (and possibly even now in Ireland), beat City Hall or rather the Archbishop’s House and so he sent me to the care of the nuns. I have written about my hatred of their mixture of hypocrisy, snobbery and sanctimonious smugness elsewhere. All I can say on the credit side of my attempted brainwashing is that its harshness was like Commando training in that nothing, I feel, will ever be quite as bad again. My school days left me with the shaky idea that the Almighty was a Furious Old Man for most of the time and that there just might be a hell, so I went to Mass on Sundays to pacify him and I gabbled daily prayers as if presenting a shopping list.

Years in England practising as a psychiatrist diluted whatever bits of bogus religion I had left. This worried me at first, so conditioned was I to the crackles of hellfire if you didn’t go to Mass. I was a reluctant unbeliever and so I tried to do something about it. I mentioned my doubts to a priest in Confession and he said ‘Its your age’ (I was 31 at the time!). I felt just as indignant as most women patients do when their doctor rakes this up when he doesn’t know really what’s the matter with them. Feeling that there ought to be a sort of spiritual clinic where people like myself could bring their symptoms of accidie and religious ennui I even went back to my old enemies, the nuns, because a friend told me that a day retreat might help me. It didn’t. I was put into a small room and given a boring little book written by an old Jesuit whose fertile output gracing the Irish church book-stands must make him the Harold Robbins of the holy book world.
Religion, Politics and the Catholic Working Class
Authors: Doyle Patrick J.
Published: July 2007

Most studies of the British electorate agree that Catholics tend to support Labour. Indeed, Robert McKenzie and Allan Silver argue that Roman Catholics are the group least likely to vote Conservative. However, with a few notable exceptions Catholics have not made a great contribution to Labour politics. This failure can be explained by a variety of factors, primarily the insistence by Church leaders in the past that, as a minority, Catholics ought to organize defensively to protect their own interests, particularly the schools. Hence the formation of the Catholic Federations as a response to the educational policies of the Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith Governments. Some Catholics in this period were also mesmerized by the chimera of a Catholic party similar to the German Centre Party, and it is highly significant that the Salford Diocesan Federation received overtures from the right-wing British Labour Party in 1911, which had been formed ‘to promote by constitutional methods the welfare of the working class, and to secure real Labour representation’. Ecclesiastics were suspicious of state socialism and ideological politics in general and hostile to the secularists and anarchists on the fringe of the Left. Bishop Vaughan declared in 1883 that the doctrines of socialism were the outcome of Satan’s teaching, and that ‘terrorism, incendiarism, violence, and murder are lawful weapons whenever it is judged that this will advance the cause of socialism’. Finally, most of the Catholic working class were Irish, or of Irish extraction, abjectly poor, and unlikely to possess the necessary property or residential franchise qualification, so consequently Catholics were under-registered until after the implementation of the 1918 Representation of the People Act.
‘Unless you become as little children …’
Authors: Haughton Rosemary
Published: July 2007

‘Unless you become as little children you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ It is possible that this is more literally true than we realize.

This article is an attempt to discover what kind of thing is going on in people who get into ecstatic states of one kind or another, whether they are a good thing or a bad thing, and whether they tell us anything about the more ‘normal’ requirements for spiritual ‘conversion’ and growth.

‘Ecstatic states’ covers a multitude of—let’s say experiences. The phrase includes the L.S.D. ‘trip’, the ‘speaking in tongues’ of the charismatic movement, the deep trance of the shaman and the dark ‘unknowing’ of the mystic. Can one lump all those together? They don’t seem to be a well-assorted party, especially if we include (and maybe we should) sexual ‘ecstasy’, and the experiences induced by voodoo rituals, or in ‘covens’ of latter-day witches, and possibly even the ‘pink elephants’ of the alcoholic. Imagine a T.V. programme in which the interviewer collected individuals each of whom had experienced one of those kinds of ‘ecstasy’. It seems likely that the discussion would be inconclusive, to say the least, though the affair would probably have some lively moments.’
Mythology and Marian Dogma
Authors: Turner Geoffrey
Published: July 2007

On the 1st of November, 1950, Pope Pius XII announced in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus, as an indispensable part of Christian belief, revealed by God, that ‘Mary, the immaculate and perpetually virgin Mother of God, after the completion of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into the glory of heaven’. It is difficult to know what sort of sense to give to this kind of dogmatic formulation, but it would seem that sense has to be made of it because it has been accepted by the general consensus of the Church and defined by the highest authority as being an integral part of Christian doctrine for all Roman Catholics. We have to make theological sense of it in order to be faithful to the transmission of the Marian traditions throughout the ages of the Church. This is not to suggest that we should relax our criticism of these tranditions, but I take it that we cannot be faithful to Christian tradition and at the same time adopt the liberal attitude of dispensing as irrelevant with those dogmatic traditions which do not meet our taste. Marian dogma cannot be shrugged off by Roman Catholics as being a Catholic aberration of Christian tradition; after the Papal definitions of the immaculate conception of Mary in 1854 and of her bodily assumption in 1950 the dogmas have to be taken with the utmost seriousness, and if it is found to be difficult to reconcile an easy understanding of these dogmas with more fundamental aspects of Christian doctrine then we must adopt a more broad-ranging interpretation of these beliefs. What is required in this instance is an exercise in dogmatic hermeneutics.
Humanism and Ideology
Authors: Wicker Brian
Published: July 2007

I would like to regard this review of Professor James R. Flynn’s book, Humanism and Ideology, as a kind of appendix to Denys Turner’s recent articles on ‘Morality is Marxism’. This is because of Flynn’s thesis that we need to return to classical conceptions of morality if we are to be able to justify the social and political activities of those today who are agitating for social justice. Though it is far from being a Marxist book, Flynn’s work is certainly in line with Turner’s view of what Marxists ought to say about morality.

The first thing to say, quite simply, is that not only is Flynn’s a good kind of book, but a good example of its kind. By a good kind of book—and I’m speaking of philosophical books primarily—I mean one which combines a passionate sense of its relevance to the urgent problems of life with scholarly fairness, precision of thought and a due recognition of the difficulties that stand in the way of proving its thesis. Flynn’s book has these qualities. But it also has clarity, economy, and a sense of occasion. And it reads like the best kind of philosophical discussion—i.e. like a serious conversation with an opponent in the civilized atmosphere of a good pub.

The task to be undertaken is to show that a sound philosophical case can be made for adopting the ethic of a ‘humane’ humanism rather than any other. Professor Flynn sees the most obvious alternative to such humanism today in some variety of the Nietzschean ethic—that is to say, an ethic which values outstanding personal achievement, the thrill of power and competitive success. He wants to prove that, over against the Nietzschean ethic, a humane humanism can be shown to be best for all mankind and is thus worthy of regard not only by those who already espouse it but also by those who don’t.
Eucharist: Meaning to Life
Authors: Mackrell Gerard
Published: July 2007

It is now some time since Christians tried to find a point of agreement on the Eucharist. The ‘Agreed Statement’ was the result of discussion between the Catholic Church and the Church of England. Catholics have always been rather cynical about the idea of the Church of England being able to speak as one body, but in this case it appears that there is some doubt as to whether the Catholic Church, in England—never mind the world, was speaking for the whole Catholic body. But that is not a point I wish to pursue. As I see it the terms of reference were too narrow, and the whole issue totally irrelevant in the context of the needs of the world of today. Both Catholics and non-Catholics could and should have used a broader front which would have led to some statement appealing to the needs of all men, Christian and non-Christian alike. For if the ‘Agreed Statement’ has a Barchester remoteness about it, the Eucharist has not. Today, more than ever, it can have a meaning and relevance; it can offer to man, if not a solution, then the symbol of a solution, to his problems and questionings. We may group these under three headings: (1) Human Dignity; (2) Love; (3) Hope.

Chapter 6 of St John’s Gospel begins by relating a miracle of the feeding of 5,000 people with five loaves and two fishes. It was an action of the kind that would appeal most to the Jews of Christ’s day, and the account of it least to men of today.
Black Racism in Burundi
Authors: Greenland Jeremy J.
Published: July 2007

Burundi is very small by African standards, almost the same size as Belgium, its former colonial master. Situated at the northern end of Lake Tanganyika, Burundi’s neighbours are Tanzania, Rwanda and Zaire. Hills like vast sandcastles rise from a narrow plain along the lake to heights of over 2000m on the Nile-Congo watershed. Burundi’s population is estimated at 3.7 million. Because the density of population is so high, and because there are no minerals or other natural resources worth exploiting commercially, all except the educated elite are poor subsistence farmers and herdsmen. The sale of coffee—nearly all of which is bought by the United States, supposedly for political reasons—accounts for some 80 per cent of all foreign exchange earnings, though attempts are now being made to diversify agricultural production with tea, cotton and rice as secondary cash-crops.

Three ethnic groups make up the population: the pygmoid Twa, only per cent of the total and politically of no account, the agriculturist Hutu, a Bantu tribe who make up 85 per cent, and the cattle-herding Tutsi (14 per cent). Legend and some facts assert that the Tutsi are of Nilotic-Hamitic origins, that they came late to Burundi and reduced the Hutu to client status by leasing them cows in return for personal service and food. ‘Tutsi’ is somewhat of a simplification : there appear to have been two separate invasions, first the Abanyaruguru clans, literally ‘those from the north’, and then later the Hima clans who entered and now occupy mainly the southeast part of the country.

Spokesmen for the present government claim that it is the colonialist who is to blame for the very existence of tribal conflict in Burundi
Irenaeus Leonard Alexander 1932–1972
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

It is trite to say that anniversaries stir the memory but it is true enough. As I write this down I am remembering a young Dominican who died a year ago this July. His death was not only a deeply felt personal loss, for it was something more in that it challenged us with the problem of his unfinished work and involved us directly and intimately in a conflict of which we had previously only been spectators. It was—and is—a whole situation we had not understood till he came to live our life with us.

It might at first seem odd to select this one man’s history out of so much that has happened to the Province in the last few years. Disasters and desolation, unparalleled since the period of the French Revolution, that laid us waste with a real death of God: this has been met with courage and constancy by the old and in a spirit of dutiful endurance by many of the elderly. The turmoil of renewal and the tensions created by change conflicting with ancient customs has led to a new experience of the role—not always pleasant—of discussion, a development that has associated itself with or sprung from the generous energy of the young determined to recreate the common life and rediscover a style of worship suited to the needs of today. After a spasm of rejection, almost anarchic in character, there has been in the studium a return to the tradition, even the text of St Thomas, purged of the trivialities of the manualists. All in embryo, all signs of hope and all associated with men loyal to their vocation as preachers. Why, then, pick on this one man when there obviously are so many others? Why this particular one, when we live with all our dead, having them in constant and loving memory-some well known to the public, others known only to their brethren?
The Pope's New Clothes
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

I suppose that was the reason why a plenary indulgence was granted to people who gathered together before the basilicas on the great feast days while the Pope gave his blessing Urbi et Orbi. Fair enough. For, although such attendance was not precisely earth-shattering, it had important consequences: the large numbers made a great contribution to the honour of the Apostolic See and to the public profession of faith in the rock on which the firmness of the whole Church is built. This in fact was the object of granting the indulgence. The same reasoning could be applied to the indulgences proclaimed in Luther’s time by the people who collected alms for the building of St. Peter’s.

So now we know. Hans Küng’s massive criticism of the critics of his views on infallibility reached me with the newspapers announcing that the Pope was to proclaim a Holy Year. It was the same week in which sensational headlines about the Lambton case gave way to the reassuring news that the heart of the establishment was sound: fox-hunting, hard-riding Anne would really marry her stalwart and even more hard-riding Mark.

The juxtaposition is hardly fair. The announcement of Anne’s engagement may well have been timed without regard for less edifying events in high places. And Kiing’s worst enemies only find fault with him for his purely intellectual activities. Nor would the most narrow-minded curialist conceive the Holy Year as a counterblast to one theologian’s suspect views on infallibility. But institutions under attack have a way of seeking the support of the simple masses by providing them with an occasion for junketings: a marriage in England, a jubilee and indulgences in Rome.
Some Impressions of Iranian Islam
Authors: Hickley Denis
Published: July 2007

Iran is a large and important country which is too little known in Britain, and which is even the subject of grave misunderstandings—such as the idea that it is an ‘Arab’ country and that therefore its religion is the same as that of its Arab neighbours. I went there simply as a visitor, bent on listening and learning through personal contacts. My reading of Iranian history had informed me that Iran has produced many important religious movements, though none of them has survived as a major world religion, unless you count the Baha’i. The birthplace of several powerful religious personalities — Zoroaster and Mani for example—it has tended to influence rather than dominate. In some strange way it has always subtly altered, sometimes even confused the great religions of mankind. Lacking the intellectual rigour of the Greek tradition, and without the intensity of the Semitic outlook, the Iranians have evaded the clutches of these two powerful alien influences. They are a humane and moderate people, much attracted to the good things of life, with a liking for speculation, often expressed in vast and woolly ideas. In this they betray their affinity to the people of the Indian subcontinent.
Christian Laughter
Authors: Jones Peter W.
Published: July 2007

The title that I have chosen for this article is far from being a gimmick designed to lure anyone with an eye for the unusual. Some years ago I tried to put together a paper entitled Theology of Leisure. I should like to think that the present title is a more precise attempt to tackle the same question that still lies at the back and bottom of my mind.

Leisure, of course, defies definition. A glance at The Concise Oxford Dictionary will verify the fact. What I call leisure other people receive good salaries for doing, and consequently they call it work. I have long nourished, for instance, a secret ambition to be an inspector for Diners Club or a member of the British Board of Film Censors.

Moreover, when one does attempt a clear definition of leisure, one is inevitably caught up in sociological technicalities which simply describe leisure activities as they exist in today’s society, without going on to probe the creative human values inherent in leisure as such. For this one has to turn not to the sociologist but to the poet, the philosopher and the theologian.
Professor Geach and the future
Authors: McGrath Patrick
Published: July 2007

In his article on the future in the May issue of Blackfriars Professor Geach argues at some length against the thesis (which I will henceforth call fatalism) that the future is definite and determinate. I am just as firmly convinced as Professor Geach that fatalism is incorrect, but I am not at all sure that the reasons which he puts forward against this theory are sufficient to refute it. Geach’s main argument against fatalism appears to be contained in the following passages:

The simple fact to which I want to draw your attention is the fact that not everything that was going to happen eventually did happen. Human agency often averts impending disasters. . . . What is prevented was going to happen, but didn’t happen; the preventive action changes what is going to happen, changes the future . . . (Fatalism asserts) that if it is true at some later time that Johnny will die of polio, then nobody ever was able at some earlier time to bring it about Johnny was not going to die of polio. And this of course we do not believe : Johnny could have been preserved by a suitable injection, but his foolish parents neglected the precaution.’

'P. T. Geach ‘The Future’ in New Blackfriars, vol. 54, number 636 (May, 1973), pp. 209, 211.

However, the simple fact to which Geach draws our attention is not as simple as it looks. ‘Not everything that was going to happen eventually did happen’ may be interpreted in a number of different ways. It could mean: