There is no lack of scepticism about international institutions, and it is particularly widespread in Europe. It is a well-known fact that many Catholics subscribe to it. Europeans do not forget the failures of the League of Nations, and Catholics are distrustful of formulas which are often deduced from philosophical principles hostile, or at least indifferent, to Christianity. There are many, especially among the Catholics of the U.S.A., who do not easily overlook the historical links between modern internationalism and the liberal tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The present article does not seek to plead the cause of international institutions; its purpose is merely to provide information. There is no reason for Christians to be ignorant of the facts which explain the ever-increasing interest in international institutions which is taken by the Holy See, as well as the important place which relations with the United Nations and its Specialized Agencies take in the activities of the big Catholic international organizations.

First of all, it will be useful to set out what is original in the existing family of international institutions as contrasted with previous ones.

Whatever be the exact relation between English and Scottish Protestantism it is certainly true that an understanding of the Scottish religious mind cannot be gained from knowledge, however thorough, of conditions in England. Moreover, the understanding of Scottish Protestantism is more important than is suggested by the size of the population of Scotland, because of the key position which the Scottish theological schools have in the English-speaking, non-Anglican, Protestant world. The faculty of Divinity at Edinburgh University is a most important place of post-graduate study in Europe for students from the U.S.A., and that faculty—and the others at Glasgow, Aberdeen and St Andrews—are very much in touch with Basel and other centres of Protestant scholarship on the Continent. Edinburgh in particular is quite a bottleneck in the traffic of Protestant ideas.

For those whose work is in Scotland this key position of the Scottish faculties of Divinity will be secondary. Their main interest will be in the conversion of the people of Scotland. If we think only of this we are still considering a very important matter. The evolution of Protestantism in Scotland has come to a stage where great opportunity may be given to the Church to make itself known. There are signs that in Scotland earnest Protestants are fast approaching a point from which the next step will have to be either Humanism or the Truth. They are about to bring forth either religious disillusionment or Catholicism. It is imperative that the midwife be on the spot and well equipped.

On entering St Peter’s the eye of the visitor is almost immediately caught and held by the great canopy sheltering the papal altar which, according to an ancient tradition, stands over the burial place of St Peter. The arresting feature of the canopy is the shape of the columns which stand like gigantic old-fashioned sticks of barley sugar in the heart of Christendom. This canopy, executed in bronze and standing on the immense piers necessary to carry its great weight, was made in the sixteenth century by Bernini on the instructions of Pope Urban VIII, and it is, perhaps, one of the most remarkable features of a remarkable church.

The recent excavations under St Peter’s have thrown much light on the tradition that the papal altar marks the place where St Peter was buried, and they have illumined much that has hitherto been obscure. The archaeological evidence resulting from the excavations does not, it is true, provide conclusive proof of the authenticity of the tradition, but it is entirely consistent with it. It is certain, however, that from very early times it was the firm belief of the Church that the apostle was buried on the traditional site. This site was in a pagan cemetery adjoining the road which ran near the Circus of Gaius and Nero; it is this cemetery which has now been partly excavated. The early Christians erected a shrine there to mark the place and to honour the remains of the apostle. There can be little doubt that this shrine was the τροπαιον seen by the Roman priest, Gaius, on the Vatican Hill in the third century.

It is not easy for someone who is not a professional anthropologist to read a work of social anthropology. The difficulty is of a quite special kind: it is not merely the difficulty someone who is not a botanist may find in reading a study of plant morphology, or someone who is not a theologian in reading a discussion of the instrumental causality of the sacraments. The difficulty is the problem of human relevance. These people about whom the anthropologist is writing are human beings: the detail of their activities should be humanly intelligible; and yet, on the one hand these activities in their detail are often meaningless and sometimcs disgusting, and on the other, without a sympathetic grasp of the detail the whole work of interpretation and synthesis offered by the anthropologist would become meaningless in its turn. And the anthropologist has nothing to refer to but the information he himself gives us in his book: he has usually no imaginative literature, for instance, no common body of experience to which to appeal.