bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Faith and Experience. IV: Epistemological Considerations
Authors: Tugwell Simon
Published: July 2007

Those who take their stand on their own, or others’, religious experience sometimes claim that unsympathetic critics can be dismissed simply with the plea that their lack of experience disqualifies them from offering any kind of useful critique. Ninian Smart, in his essay Understanding Religious Experience, shows that such a claim need not be regarded as compelling. It is possible for us to have a certain theoretical Understanding of situations of which we have no experience, no “existential understanding”, and this theoretical understanding, even if it is not adequate for all purposes (it will not make a man a mystic, for instance), may still be quite adequate for some kind of philosophical comment to be made. If the mystic then seeks refuge in the further claim that his experiences are so transcendent as to be utterly inexpressible and incomprehensible to the rational mind, even so we are still entitled to ask whether they are truly totally inexpressible and incomprehensible. If they were, then it is unclear that the mystic himself is in any better position than his critics, and, like Cratylus, he ought to confine himself to waggling his finger and give up the attempt to communicate anything to anybody, himself included. But if mystical experiences or their objects are not totally beyond reach of reason and language, then there is at least some common ground between the mystic and his critics, and at least some basis therefore for non-mystical comment on mystical experiences.
The Minster as Textbook
Authors: Nuttgens Patrick
Published: July 2007

York Minster has always provoked mixed feelings. When I first saw it as a schoolboy, and wandered around it with my father, looking at as much of the stained glass as we could see (not all of it having been put back after the Second World War) and making rough jokes about some of the classical oddities inserted by Sir Albert Richardson or his eighteenth century predecessors, I came away with a lasting impression of gloom. It now seems a false impression, though there are many people in York who regret the recent changes that have effaced that brooding presence. But what is also certain is that the Minster has undergone a spectacular piece of renewal and that the exploration of it is a new and exciting experience.

It is not just the structural transformation, devised and supervised by Bernard Feilden and his professional colleagues, fundamental and important in the development of the science of restoration as it is; it is not just the cleaning and restoration of the whole Minster so that it shines like new (even the crumbling west facade, probably the main victim of an enthusiastic facelift); it is not just the new role of the Minster in attracting a vast increase in the number of tourists to the city, so that the Minster now welcomes, as tourists and worshippers, more people in a year than ever before; it is also very much the fact that the nature of the investigation and restoration—and the presence in the chapter of some outstanding scholars as well as the founding of the new university of York whose outstanding department is history—has sparked off a massive investigation of both the Minster itself as a historical document and the mass of documentation available in York, in archives now carefully preserved.
Warnings from a Wife
Authors: Pepper Mary
Published: July 2007

As the wife of an Anglican priest, and an Anglican myself it was with particular personal interest that I read Fr Adrian Hastings’s article on celibacy (New Blackfriars March 1978), in which he described how he had come to the decision that he was free as a Catholic priest to marry. My understanding of the church and the priesthood coincides with that of most Roman Catholics, except that I have always had difficulty in understanding what it was about priesthood and marriage that made them incompatible. In spite of this, and in spite of my undoubted support for Fr Hastings’s position, I want to draw attention to the disadvantages of a married priesthood. For me the practical and social side-effects are not theoretical but constitute part of my everyday experience. From this experience, and from my reflection on it for ten or more years, I have come to the conclusion that the clergy family plays a part in the ‘domestication’ of the church. By this I mean the tendency of the church to be a tame and cosy club shoring up the status quo rather than a prophetic and critical institution within society. I do not believe that having a married clergy causes the ‘domestication’ of the church; rather it upholds it and reinforces it. Thus, the erastianism of the Church of England, with its married clergy, is well known, but in the past all denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, with its celibate clergy, have taken up a similar conservative stance, associating themselves with the powerful in a divided society.
Is Debate Over Development of Doctrine a Dead Duck?
Authors: Woodhouse H. F.
Published: July 2007

In this article I return to a theme on which I wrote almost a decade ago in an essay entitled ‘The Holy Spirit, Authority and Doctrinal Development’. Later on I shall refer to points in the essay to illustrate my two main points in this article, (i) that doctrinal development is less a controversial matter than it was, (ii) that we can, I believe, bypass it if we pay proper heed to the more basic issues of pneumatology and of authority.

So to my title. Those who like duck to eat are constantly disappointed for there is little meat on a duck. So it will be with this article but I hope the meat there is will be nourishing. I am rather concerned that the bones should be prominent.

The first reason I would suggest that the development of doctrine is becoming, if it has not already become, a dead duck is that the debate is not being carried forward much. After I had written the article to which I have referred I did a good bit of research on the situation and I found it was almost impossible to continue writing in any profitable way upon the topic. (I have seen little fresh or additional up to the present.) If I had written further over the last few years I would be repeating myself. Secondly, the most essential factor in development of doctrine, namely, the operation of the Holy Spirit, seems very difficult to discern. Criteria about development and how we could know that it was the Spirit who was acting and also for deciding on satisfactory tests of right and lawful development were varied. There was extreme difficulty in getting areas of agreement. This point has been brought out in my earlier essay and in some of Rahner’s essays to which I referred there.
To Suffer or to Reign?
Authors: Cyprian Terry
Published: July 2007

Because of the prominent role of individual Christians in South Africa who have opposed apartheid and exposed its brutalities, we are accustomed today to think of the South African Church as one of the most unrelenting opponents of racial oppression in that country. From the gadfly missionary Dr. John Philip of the 1820’s to Dr. Beyers Naude of our own time, there stretches a tradition of bold prophetic speaking. However, a closer look at the role of the Church, especially from the viewpoint of some Latin American theologians, raises some disturbing questions about the South African Church’s past history and present situation, the more so when the comments of those who are speaking prophetically today are taken into account.

There are interesting parallels between the development in society of the Churches of Latin America and South Africa. Argentinian theologian Jose Miguez Bonino writes that regarding his subcontinent:

“. . . there is no doubt that the Christian faith, co-opted into the total Spanish national-religious project, played the role of legitimizing and sacralizing the social and economic structure implanted in America. It served as an ideology to cover and justify existing conditions. God in his heaven, the king of Spain on his throne, the landlord in his residence: this was ‘the order of things’, God’s eternal and sacred order.”

Protestantism was a late arrival in Latin America, entering between 1870-1890. Its arrival helped undermine the overwhelming predominance of Roman Catholicism, but in a way that far from liberating the poor, instead subtly imprisoned them further.
The ‘Subject’ and the ‘Self’: A Note on Barker's Cartesianism
Authors: Turner Denys
Published: July 2007

The argument / have with Barker is by now played out, at any rate over “Can a Christian be a Marxist?” (New Blackfriars, June 1975). From the start I knew that that article had its shortcomings. But it is, essentially, corrigible. I think I know what I wanted to say in it, though I acknowledge that what I wrote did not always say it. Barker, however, has a habit of regarding what I write as just a very extended parapraxis, all the surface deficiencies being but symptoms of the fact that what I want to say is, literally, unspeakable. The very fact that I should want to put down these deficiencies of formulation to subjective conditions of production would itself be symptomatic of the degree to which I am held in thrall by the ideology which is the true author of what I wrote— the ideology according to which “subjects” (e.g. Denys Turner) are the authors of, among other things, texts. All this would be by the way were it not that, in Barker’s view, it is its captivation by the ideology of “the subject” which is the chief ideological element in Christianity and the chief reason why Marxist science cannot debate Christianity. For the ideological nature of Christianity makes it the (potential) object of Marxist science, not a discourse it can debate with on equal but different terms.

I have no objection in principle to this apparently high-handed procedure, analogous as it is to the Freudian habit of giving Freudian explanations of the critics of Freudian theory. After all I myself argued (“Marxism, Christianity and Morality”, New Blackfriars, April 1977, p. 191), that the mark of any science is its capacity not merely to explain what ideology fails to explain but also to explain why ideology cannot explain what it fails to explain.
Sense and Word in Liturgical Language
Authors: Birch David
Published: July 2007

When E. Gordon Craig in 1922 wrote,

“To man words come easiest and earliest to lie with. So that now in this twentieth century nearly all speech is a lie. I would not go so far as to laughingly admit that speech of that kind was an art. I should rather call it a mess.”

he was making the distinction between the role of language as a vehicle for communicating essentials, and the role of language as an art-form. As a theatrical designer who was to revolutionise traditional concepts of theatre, he was keenly aware of the difficulty in using language to represent exactly those things we wish to communicate to others. One word may have a variety of meanings, or because of constant use in a multitude of ways, have lost much of its original meaning. Reliance on the word itself is therefore not always the best or most effective guide to meaning. He continues:

“Once a merely natural thing—it became an art; but when it exceeded its natural term of life, having talked itself hoarse-black in the face—the silver of speech rubbed off and we came to the lead underneath, and inside the lead . . . lies.”
‘God’ and Ideology
Authors: Wicker Brian
Published: July 2007

Francis Barker’s argument to prove that Christianity is always ideological, and never scientific, won’t do. Since the reason for this is of some general theoretical importance, it is perhaps worth pointing out what is wrong with it.

Barker’s thesis is that being tautological is a mark of the ideological. (‘all ideological discourse is ... strictly speaking tautological’ p. 476). But he also wants to argue that not every utterance within an ideological discourse has to be tautological: some of them may be just false. Fair enough so far. So ‘God exists’ is not tautological after all, but just false. But this, he says, doesn’t stop Christian discourse in general from being tautological—i.e. from being set within a framework of tautology. Barker’s reason for saying this is that in Christian discourse, words like ‘because’ and ‘therefore’ are not used (as in science) in a diachronic way, but merely to ‘conjugate’ or ‘spatialise’ the optative paradigm. This dark saying is then illustrated by an argument that purports to show that ‘God made the world’ certainly is tautological. The reason for choosing this example is presumably that it is the fundamental case of a Christian discourse in which the use of ‘because’ is crucial. For ‘God made the world’ can be construed as equivalent to ‘the world exists because God made it’; and presumably in this sentence, according to Barker, the ‘because’ is simply ‘paradigmatic’. Now I think it is a fairly simple matter to show that this is quite wrong: pace Barker, ‘because’ in this sentence is used in just the same way as it is commonly used in ‘science’.
A Nigerian Theologian at Work
Authors: Edwards Adrian
Published: July 2007

My justification for writing about an unpublished thesis is simply that people ought to know about the work of the Reverend Dr L. A. Adeolu Adegbola, and that publishing being what it is, the thesis is most unlikely to be published as a whole. Hence, an article like this could help in the circulation of ideas.

Dr Adeolu Adegbola is a Methodist pastor from the great Yor-uba people of western Nigeria. After considerable pastoral experience, he completed his thesis, “Ifa and Christianity among the Yoruba”, at Bristol in 1976, and is, at present, Director of the Institute of Church and Society at Ibadan, western Nigeria, which aims both at keeping Christians thinking, and thoughtful people, who either never were Christians or who have drifted away from the churches, aware that there is at least the possibility of a Christian response to the pressing cultural and social questions of contemporary Nigeria. In this article, I shall outline and comment on his thesis, and indicate some of the new ground it seems to open up. One further word of explanation, as to what “ifa” is. Ifa is the Yoruba system of divination. Unlike many other African systems of divination, there is in Ifa no element of spirit possession, nor does the client have to tell the diviner what his problem is. The diviner (in Yoruba babalawo, father of secrets) may throw down a rope or chain, on which are eight similar objects, capable of giving a heads-and tails arrangement, or he may hold sixteen palm-nuts in his left hand. He then tries to take them with his right hand, noting how many remain in his right hand, but has to do this eight times, whereas one throw of the divining chain will give him a sufficient number of signs to select the appropriate figure, or odu, which is then marked on the divining board.
Obstacles to Christian Unity
Authors: Kerr Fergus
Published: July 2007

“A penny for the guy, please mister”. I never give small boys anything when they come out on the streets at the beginning of November every year, with the effigies of Guy Fawkes which they should be burning this evening. “Sorry”, I say, “but I am a Roman Catholic”. I like waiting for the look of pure astonishment that comes over their faces, as if that were a reason for not giving them a penny for the guy.

When the Chaplain invited me to address you this evening he suggested that I might take the opportunity to reflect on the obstacles that Roman Catholics in England see as still blocking the way to union with the Church of England. So much rapprochement has taken place, particularly since the Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission which has since produced three remarkable “Agreed Statements” testifying to convergence, if not perhaps consensus, on traditionally controversial issues. These Agreements seem to warrant some movement towards full, visible, eucharistic communion between Rome and Canterbury. This growing together has been achieved in a variety of ways, at many different levels. The most significant movements have been in a phrase or gesture. On 25th October 1970, during his sermon at the canonization of forty Catholics of England and Wales who died for their faith during the penal days, Pope Paul referred to the Anglican Church as the “ever beloved Sister” of the Roman Catholic Church. Italian rhetoric, you may say; but I don’t think so. Such a change of idiom from previous references to the submission of a wayward daughter to her patiently waiting mother cannot be unconsidered. It marks a great change in Rome’s attitude to Canterbury.
Professor Wiles on Historical Christology
Authors: Walker Ian
Published: July 2007

I would like to enter a debate which is centuries old and seems, for the most part, to admit of no satisfactory conclusion. The debate is between what is nowadays sometimes called ‘theological relativism’ and ‘(minimal) orthodoxy’. I am not at all happy about these terms (which, in this instance, are John J. Shepherd’s) because the issue being debated is, in some degree, to determine what ‘orthodoxy’ is; and hence, calling oneself ‘minimally orthodox’ seems to be a method of scoring points before the contest has started (that is, if orthodoxy is thought to be desirable). On the other hand, ‘theological relativism’ seems, if one looks at the work of exponents of this school, to admit of degrees of relativity. So we have a relative relativism. All this means that just who is being denominated by such labels might prove elusive of description or, at least, amenable to misrepresentation. For these reasons I shall not use these terms henceforth.

The debate centres on the issue of what (if anything) is essential to the Christian faith. Shepherd argues that ‘behind the bewildering diversity of forms of faith there is an essential continuing substance of Christian teaching which can, by and large, be traced back to Jesus’. This ‘enduring gospel’ consists of propositions about God’s nature and his actions, and about Jesus’ words and deeds. Professor Wiles, on the other hand, argues ‘that there is nothing intrinsically more secure in a knowledge of God which claims to rest on ‘certain historical events’ whose historicity is regarded as essential [than in] a knowledge of God which claims to rest on a more general historical experience (including that to which Scripture bears witness) but which does not treat any particular events within that broad spectrum as essential.’ (CHR, p. 12).
Ethics and Nature
Authors: Edwards Adrian
Published: July 2007

I am writing this in a rural area of the Rivers State, Nigeria. This is relevant to the rest of what I have to say, because it means that I have very few reference books available, and so I must ask the reader’s patience for my failure to give accurate references. However, as I do not expect to be within reach of appropriate library facilities for quite some time, I feel I should write what I have to say without the appropriate backing of footnotes.

Long-time readers of New Blackfriars will no doubt groan on finding that I want to revive in some measure the controversy over artificial methods of birth control which filled so many pages in the late sixties. My intention is not to go over the whole ground, Papal authority, rights of conscience, and so on, but to argue that the “conservative” position is intelligible, given a certain number of presuppositions, which, admittedly, are far from being generally made explicit by those who in this matter are conservatives; and, moreover, if these presuppositions, which are not tied to specifically Catholic dogmatic positions, are denied, then those who deny them seem to be faced with problems of ethical philosophy much wider than the single question of contraception. To put it rather differently, the dispute over contraception seems to be a’ a very close analogue of the process outlined by T. S. Kuhn in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn’s argument is that scientific research is advanced neither by great minds making great discoveries nor by a multitude of small discoveries opening the way for major innovations; rather, once a scientific discipline is established, it possesses a “paradigm”, a set of mutually consistent accepted ideas within which research is conducted and discoveries made.
Faith and Experience VII: Religion and Childhood
Authors: Tugwell Simon
Published: July 2007

In his Foreword to Edward Robinson’s The Original Vision, Sir Alister Hardy quotes a verse from Thomas Hood which expresses what is, I suppose, a fairly common feeling:

I remember, I remember The fir trees dark and high;

I used to think their slender tops Were close against the sky;

It was a childish ignorance.

But now ‘tis little joy To know I’m farther off from Heaven Than when I was a boy.

(OV p. 6)

At least since the time of Wordsworth it has been possible for many people simply to take it for granted that it is this sense of the loss involved in growing up which provides the key to Christ’s saying, “Unless you turn and become like little children you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 18:3). Christ’s conditions for entry into the kingdom seem to fall easily into the same pattern as that which we accept readily enough, for instance, in Elizabeth Goudge’s delightful tale, The Valley of Song, in which a variety of respectable ladies and gentlemen shed their years and their cares to find new life in the enchanted Valley. No eyebrows are raised when Peter and Susan are informed that they can never return to Narnia because they are “getting too old” (Prince Caspian, p. 194).
On Teaching The Catholic Faith In School
Authors: Shackle Emma
Published: July 2007

Five years ago, (February 1973) I wrote an article for this journal entitled ‘On Teaching Religion in School’ in which I argued for a style of teaching religion in Catholic schools which had greater respect for the child’s own understanding of his religious identity. The fact that the majority of children in Catholic schools enter them with a Catholic label tied, as it were, round their necks, does tend to make those professionally concerned with the future of the Catholic faith in this country forget that, while for some children this label may be a pathway to great joy, for others it may be an albatross.

In the same article I pointed to a dilemma which lies at the heart of religious education in schools. This analysis still seems valid. It runs as follows:

1 Religious education (knowledge of religious reality) is usually acquired through participation in the life of a religious group.

2 Participant education in religion (i.e. taking part in prayers, religious rites etc.) in a classroom context is indoctrinatory where there is no personal commitment within the tradition that is inculcated.

3 The problem of identity is a paramount of adolescence. The adolescent experiments with a variety of identities and this process of experimentation is necessary if he is to achieve maturity.

4 It follows that the majority (or at least some proportion) of adolescent students will be subject to indoctrination in the negative sense if the aim of the teacher is ‘to teach the Catholic faith’.

5 But participant education in religion is a condition of acquiring genuine religious knowledge.

6 Hence either the teacher teaches religion adequately and indoctrinates (in the bad sense of that word) some of his pupils or he teaches religion inadequately and does not indoctrinate.
Heads in the Clouds: Thomas Aquinas and Professor John Hick on Faith
Authors: Davies Brian
Published: July 2007

Having got over the shock of being dead, Professor Hick began to settle down to enjoying life again. Naturally, he soon sought out some philosophers.

‘Which one,’ he asked a passing angel, ‘is Thomas Aquinas? Or has he, perhaps, gone to the other place?’

The angel looked scornful and flapped its wings in a rather frightening manner. ‘You are talking about my namesake,’ he retorted. ‘And, for your information, not only is he here, but he is also quite respected in the highest quarters. Perhaps you would like an interview?’

The Professor agreed, and some time later he was ushered into a large study filled with shining copies of the Blackfriars Summa. In the middle of a pile of books sat Aquinas himself.

‘Hic est Hick,’ announced the angel.

‘Welcome’, said Aquinas, lapsing into English. ‘What can I do for you?’

I’m interested in talking to you about faith,’said the Professor.

‘I don’t see there’s much to be said,’ replied the Dominican. ‘Isn’t all that sort of thing behind us now? Haven’t you read what I wrote in the Secunda Secundae?’

‘Well, my point,’ replied the Professor, getting himself comfortable, is just that. You see, I am quite sure that what you sayabout faith is wrong. Indeed, I said so myself in my book Faith and Knowledge. You might also look up my lecture ‘Religious Faith as Experience-As’. Don’t you agree that my criticisms of your view of faith were correct and that I did a much better job on the topic than you did?’
A Note on the Poetry of G. F. Dutton
Authors: Wall Alan
Published: July 2007

The modernists, those innovators of epic ellipses, almost did their successors out of a job. Their formal developments seemed terminal, one-way progressions to be achieved, then discontinued. In the United States the new techniques were taken on with exhilaration, but in Britain existing positions were defended more strongly. Apart from simple imitators, who usually missed the point in any case, those who have actually taken modernism as a genuine beginning have been few and far between.

This is understandable. Ezra Pound developed metrical technique and allusion in a dazzling fashion, but overall formal organization and control did not keep pace. Eliot himself shifted from the early concentrations and cinematic cuts to a discursive style of philosophical meditation, and then to the social niceties and equivocations of the verse plays. Modernism appeared as an interlude, bracketed away from the mainstream. So it comes about that Philip Larkin’s poetry enacts a continuous,insistent closure against modernism, and is in that act seen to be fully aware of the experimentation it refuses. Similarly, Jon Silkin sees a wrong direction, and goes back to the work of Isaac Rosenberg to start again. Basil Bunting’s Briggflats is a rare reconciliation of England to modernism. Meanwhile Christopher Middleton, eager to set out from the most exciting starting-points on offer, ends up in the U.S.A. his reputation in Britain absurdly small.
Vatican I and the Papacy 7: Reception and Revision
Authors: Kerr Fergus
Published: July 2007

Theological revision is taking place all the time. Theology is revision, in the sense that the faith which was once delivered to the saints (Jude 3) is constantly re-appropriated by a new generation, and in new circumstances, so that every fresh appropriation is inevitably a revision. There is no way of telling in advance whether you arc seeing things in a new perspective seeing (and saying) things differently, but still seeing (and saying) the same things; or whether you are simply saying something completely different from what previous generations have believed. In this respect the problem of interpreting the decrees of Vatican I is no different from the problem of interpreting the Christological affirmations of the Council of Chaleedon. Some reinterpretations will prove sooner or later to be distortions: illusory or even dishonest attempts to say substantially the same thing but in necessarily different language; but often it will take time for this to become clear, and in the meantime we must not fear to look again at what we have inherited.

To re-examine the decrees of Vatican 1 on papal jurisdiction and infallibility may seem peculiarly difficult because the papacy as an institution has clearly done as much harm as good, and the dark history may suggest that the Vatican I decrees should simply be rejected and that nothing can be salvaged. While Catholics should certainly seek to recover some of the highly critical attitude to the papacy which their forefathers displayed, and be ready to admit that much of the doctrine and the exercise of the papal prerogatives requires to be condemned and corrected, none can remain in communion with the church of Rome without having some vision of the Petrine ministry and that must include some interpretation of the Vatican 1 decrees.
Past And Present
Authors: Lee Peter
Published: July 2007

Much recent theological writing has emphasised the changes in culture in different periods of history, and the way in which the expressions of the Christian faith which arose in different periods have been influenced by the surrounding culture. Particular emphasis has sometimes been laid on the changes in culture since the times when the books of the Bible were written and the Creeds and declarations of the ecumenical councils were drawn up. From this, different conclusions have been drawn.

One view would see the ancient formularies as needing to be repeated in different ages, and would stress the ecumenical nature of many of these formularies, particularly those drawn up before the final break between the Eastern and Western churches, though holders of this view would acknowledge with St Hilary that “We are compelled to attempt what is unattainable. ... to speak what we cannot utter. Instead of the bare adoration of faith, we are compelled to entrust the deep things of religion to the perils of human expression” (De Trim. II, 2.4). A second view would value and keep in use the ancient formularies, seeing them as having abiding significance (given a similar proviso) but would wish to lay alongside them other expressions of the faith which aim to express the same basic Christian gospel but in terms more easily understood in our own day. A third view would lay stress on the cultural relativity of all language expressing Christian beliefs and would see the earlier formularies (the Bible, Creeds and decisions of the ecumenical councils) as of historical interest but no longer suitable instruments with which to describe in the 20th century Cod and His relationship with the world and mankind. Writers taking this line emphasise the problems of using the past as a resource for contemporary life.
Before Manning: Some Aspects of British Social Concern Before 1865
Authors: Aspinwall Bernard
Published: July 2007

“Christian socialism is,” according to Karl Marx, “but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart burnings of the aristocrat”. As always Marx had an element of truth. In the generation before the appointment of Henry Manning to the See of Westminster, British Catholic social concern, if not aristocratic, was undoubtedly paternalist in character. The faults are obvious but alternative strategies in the grim reality of mid-nineteenth century Britain are less apparent. In the prevailing social and economic condition of British Catholics, any immediately effective alternative strategy would be hard to imagine. On these foundations, Cardinal Manning was to build his much publicised social concern and within the Catholic community, these limited, paternalistic ideas of reform were to persist long after the social and economic condition of the laity had changed beyond recognition. In both phases, the paternalist and the socialist, the peculiar condition of the Scottish Catholic community produced imaginative lay responses: Robert Monteith and John Wheatley were indicative.

The traditional interpretation of British Catholic social concern has invariably stressed the role of Cardinal Manning. His social interest is contrasted with the more severe intellectual approach of Newman: immediate pastoral considerations defeated longer term interests. Though Manning’s original contribution might be challenged, he remains of great stature. Even in Derek Holmes More Roman than Rome: English Catholicism in the Nineteenth Century. (1978), the relative position of the two men, Manning and Newman, is well portrayed and central. But whichever personality attracts our sympathy and wins our support, they are both clerics.
The Funeral as a Work of Art
Authors: Grainger Roger
Published: July 2007

in the attempt to give order to a diffuse and contradictory experience each individual is an artist, as he or she proposes an ideal solution for a particular difficulty and directs every effort towards achieving the closest practicable approximation to such a solution. Looked at in this way, it might be said that the action of the human mind is inevitably directly towards a synthesis of content and form. Society itself – the arrangements men make in order to live together in mutual security and provide for their well-being in organised interchange – could be considered to be a work of functional art, designed to solve problems and overcome difficulties encountered in living.

The greatest difficulty, the most intractable problem which faces mankind is the problem of death. To say that we are deeply pre-occupied with the fact of our own mortality is not to say, of course, that death occupies the forefront of our conscious awareness all the time. On the contrary, our awareness of the certainty of our eventual death and the accompanying knowledge of the vulnerability of our bodies, a vulnerability which may at any time prove fatal, forms a kind of unacknowledged background to all our thinking, a mental and emotional sitz-im-leben which has lost all precise definition because of its sheer familiarity as an idea. In fact, we might turn inside out the arguments of the common language philosophers, who hold that death cannot be thought about because it has never been experienced as a fact of life, by saying, with Heidegger that we cannot contemplate our own mortality because we are unable to distinguish the thought of death from all our other judgments and attitudes, which can only exist as humanly meaningful propositions in the context of finitude and limitation. Life exists in the context of death, human meaning in the presence of its own extinction.
Thinking about Jesus
Authors: Ernst Cornelius
Published: July 2007

Perhaps I’d better make two preliminary remarks. One is that, inevitably, I am speaking out of tradition which is quite clearly marked in a confessional sense, that is to say quite definitely in the Roman Catholic tradition, and so some of the problems which vex me may be peculiarly Roman Catholic problems. I mention that because certainly I shall not only be looking at thought that has been located in our Roman Catholic continuum, yet at the same time there is no doubt that for various reasons (in the way I have been philosophically brought up, and so on) this particular tradition will be exerting pressures, even of an unconscious kind, on me.

The second preliminary remark is of a rather different kind. I understand that I am supposed to open this discussion — that is to say to talk for twenty minutes or half an hour, but not more than that, so I think I can allow myself a certain amount of freedom. I would like to raise questions, rather than get answers.

So, two preliminary remarks. One to protect myself against seeming over-confessionally characterised, on the other hand I want to protect myself against being thought too questioning altogether.

The title has been quite definitely chosen as “Thinking about Jesus Christ”. I mean that title fairly strictly, because I wouldn’t like the title to be “Jesus Christ”. Obviously, thinking about Jesus Christ can’t ignore the object of the thinking! But I would like to stand back a bit from actually thinking about Jesus Christ, and think about thinking about Jesus Christ, because at the moment it seems to be a most difficult area.
Christian Responsibility And Industrial Relations: Reconciliation Or Revolution?
Authors: Langford Michael
Published: July 2007

During the 1979 General Election campaign, industrial relations featured as a prominent issue. Indeed, it might correctly be claimed that the general public in confidently voting in Margaret Thatcher, were voting against the alleged misuse of trade union power. Rising prices, falling standards of living and increasing violence have been popularly attributed to “big unions” striking against each other, against the housewife and against the general public. In a speech only days before the last government fell, Mrs Thatcher outlined the Conservative package to restore stability to Britain’s economic and social order: the statutory inhibiting of trade union activity, the enforcement of law and order, the creation of wealth and the reward of individual success. Such opinion was supported in the press and on television by editorial comment, by criticism of union power from the judiciary, and a former chief of police comparing union power with the Nazi control of Germany in the 1930s. The general election result and subsequent cabinet appointments indicate an important change in British politics. The electorate have voted for a radical change and they have voted for the politics and economics of the right. Characteristically, a society in crisis has opted for regression, the reassertion of old hierarchies, values and judgements, with the hope, in particular, of turning back the menace of union power, which, it is claimed, is a threat to the social order. Such perspectives have become the commonplace explanation of the world and of industrial relations in particular, and they have been clothed in the habit of St Francis of Assisi, setting them in the context of the Christian struggle for peace.
The Vatican and Communism from ‘Divini Redemptoris’ to Paul VI: Part 2
Authors: Higginson Paul
Published: July 2007

Pope Paul VI elected in the summer of 1963, after the first session of the Vatican Council, presided over a Church that was to continue and extend the new policies of detente and co-operation with the Communist world that were begun under the previous pontificate. Diplomatic agreements were reached with many Communist countries, notably Hungary in 1964 and Yugoslavia a year later. Meetings between the two sides were frequent: when the Pope visited the United Nations in 1965 (and incidentally seemed to favour the admission of China to the Assembly) he had a long talk with Gromyko afterwards. Paul met the President of the Soviet Union, Podgomy, in 1967 and 1968, and both the Rumanian Prime Minister and Tito in 1968 and later in the early 70’s. In 1971 Casaroli became the first Vatican representative to visit Moscow since the Revolution, and the Vatican has had frequent contact with Polish government officials throughout the period. The Soviet authorities also allowed an increase in the contact between the Roman Catholic Church and the Russian Orthodox Church which had previously been very limited.

The new Pope’s first encyclical, Ecclesiam Suam issued in November 1964 tentatively suggested that Paul was thinking on more reserved but similar lines to his predecessor. One section was completely devoted to dialogue with the modem world. “Speaking generally of the dialogue which the Church of today must take up with a great renewal of fervour, we would say that it must be readily conducted with all men of good will ...” (p. 93 CTS translation). Paul goes on to point out that although dialogue is difficult with communism “we have today no preconceived intentions of cutting ourselves off from the adherents of these systems and regimes” (p. 102). He even suggests that Communism could be a form of secularized Christianity and he holds out the hope that one day Communists may be led “back to the Christian sources” (p. 104), which lie behind many of their actions. Finally Paul, like John wanted a dialogue in order that the Vatican could fulfil its mission for peace in the world: “a disinterested, objective and sincere dialogue is a circumstance in favour of a free and honourable peace”(p. 106).
How Not To Undermine Theology
Authors: Attfield Robin
Published: July 2007

The doctrine of creation is theologically central. If God is not our Creator, we humans are not his creatures, much less made in his image: and still less can we fall short of the divine glory or be recreated in accordance with it. It is therefore vital for theists, and for those theologians who are committed to any of these doctrines, not to commit themselves to positions which entail or presuppose the denial of the creation doctrine.

So far, I should imagine, Brian Davies, O.P. who recently contributed to New Blackfriars a review of my recent book God and the Secular, would agree. The review was a generous one, which endorsed the need for natural theology, and indeed for maintaining the doctrine of creation. But Davies also contended that my own claim that God is an individual, and as such a member of a class, makes this doctrine collapse, and thus effectively undermines theology. My present purpose is to explain how, far from undermining theology, belief in God’s individuality and membership of a class is indispensable for upholders of the creation doctrine. At the same time I shall take the opportunity to expound the state of a discussion about these matters in philosophical books and journals which may have escaped attention.
Remembrance of Things Past
Authors: Wall Barbara
Published: July 2007

When I went on 23 September to a meeting of the Peace and Justice Commission called to discuss plans for next Peace Sunday, I had no idea that I was going to be presented with a Bene merenti medal. Bishop Mahon, who was presiding over the meeting, suddenly started talking about people who spend thier lives in obscurity beavering away for a cause, and I thought he was going to tell us about some little-known curé in Lyons or Marseilles, when suddenly I heard my own name mentioned as someone who had been beavering away for peace ever since 1936 when PAX was founded. I was too astonished and abashed to make a speech at the time, so I am going to make it now, among my friends at Spode, where it will be several times longer.

I would like to begin by saying that I feel I was given the medal under false pretences, because for years I didn’t beaver away for peace at all and had nothing to do with PAX. I was in it at the beginning in 1936 and vividly remember Eric Gill arriving in his smock and biretta-type headgear at one of the early meetings in London; there was much discussion as to whether PAX should try to stop the impending war or try to help those who wanted conscientiously to object to fighting in it — the latter alternative was the one chosen by the more realistically minded. But then, owing to living abroad and the subsequent dispersions of the war, I lost touch with PAX. It wasn’t until the fifties — at the time when an improvement on the atom bomb was discovered by the scientists, namely the hydrogen bomb — that I wrote a letter to The Catholic Herald asking what on earth had become of that Catholic Peace Society of the thirties called PAX ... whereupon I was inundated with literature from Charles Thompson and John O’Connor, the organisation’s then Bulletin editor and secretary. So I immediately rejoined PAX, met those two gallant men, and not long after was asked to be a speaker at a PAX conference here at Spode — that would have been in 1959.
Abortion — A Christian Feminist Perspective
Authors: Campbell Liz
Published: July 2007

A major difficulty in any discussion of abortion is the immediate impulse that most people experience to label one another as either pro- or anti-abortion. The abortion debate has been stultified by this facile stereotyping and authentic dialogue rendered virtually impossible.

On the one hand, the anti-abortion camp is characterised as populated by conservative Catholics blindly following male-originated absolutist directives. While on the other side, the ground is depicted as thick with radical feminists driven by self interest while despising children, marriage and men.
About Being a Catholic
Authors: Smith David
Published: July 2007

I had better begin with some disclaimers. I am not confident of my ability to write adequately about the justification of being a Catholic now - this seems to have become far too complicated a problem: this issue, the sheer complexity of the problem, emerges again below, and I will have more to say about it there. Furthermore, I am certainly unable to say anything original about this or that disputed point in a theological or philosophical way. I hope then to proceed by working very carefully within my limits, at least as I conceive these to be, and to simply give here no ‘justification’ but an account: an account of some aspects of what ‘it feels like’ for one man to be a Catholic now. Naturally, this will engage me in questions that look like issues of justification, but in so far as they are these I hope to steer clear of anything that could be called ambitious and theological (in any really exacting sense), and stick with what I can cope with - perhaps best described as a more subjective (or perhaps better: privately held rather than publicly held) account of how I (rather than we) find Catholicism to be meaningful and true.
Political Theology 2: Social Justice
Authors: Ruston Roger
Published: July 2007

The gospel preached by Jesus promised the liberation of man and woman, both Jew and Gentile (see Matt. 11: 4-6; 12: 18-21; Luke 3: 4-6; 4: 18-21; 6: 20-23). Essential to this liberation — though not the whole of it — is liberation from injustice and oppression. Since this is what people do to one another, the gospel promises the rectification of human communal living. Salvation itself consists in belonging to the redeemed people of God, living according to his will. Human beings are not saved one by one, on their merits, but by their becoming members of a a new people raised from the dead in Jesus Christ. So belonging to this people is salvation for those who were oppressed and salvation too for those who were their oppressors, in so far as they have repented of their injustices and learned to live in a different way. But if men do learn to practise justice, it is not this which saves them, but their belonging to Christ. Justice as it is ordinarily understood — a respect for the rights of others — is not saving in itself. Nor would a society which faultlessly observed the demands of this justice be equivalent to the Kingdom of God. Jesus in his preaching demanded something greater than this justice (see Matt. 5: 17-48; Luke 6: 27-38; Matt. 25: 31-46). Matt. 25: 31-46). But it is not adequate to identify this “some-thing greater” as love, in the sense of virtue distinct from justice. We cannot, like some modem philosophers, make a sharp distinction between the virtue of justice, having to do with rights, and the virtue of love and benevolence, which is supererogatory. (The scriptural reasons for not making this sharp distinction in theology are discussed in my article, “A Christian View of Justice” in New Blackfriars, August 1978).
St Francis: In Perfect Imitation — A Textual Meditation on his Christocentric Vision
Authors: Harding John
Published: July 2007

St Francis of Assisi is perhaps one of those few men of whom it can be said fairly: He is a man for all times. Much has been said and will no doubt be said on the reasons for this wonderful popularity which somehow seems to transcend the bounds of time and conquer the hearts of men of all creeds and none. There are indeed many reasons why Francis of Assisi continues to hold such a magnetic sway over the lives of so many but it would seem that at the very core of all of these is the Christ-centredness of his life. For St Francis, Christ Jesus, Incarnate, Crucified and Risen, was all. He it is who was the-pattern to which Francis would conform himself totally. St Francis made no conditions but rather he made a total surrender. In a manner at once simple and direct and yet immensely profound do the writings of this most human of saints ring out with the clear affirmation: Deus Meus et Omnia! In this meditation an attempt will be made to illustrate from these writings the christocentric character of St Francis’ way of life and to show how such considerations can be sharply relevant to our times.