The purpose and scope of this paper may be conveniently formulated in the following two questions: what are the obstacles which prevent our fellow countrymen, who are Christian believers, and men and women of good will, from recognizing the Catholic Church for what it is, the visible society in the world, which alone is Christ’s Mystical Body and which alone speaks his word with the fullness of his authority; and, how far are these obstacles in the minds of the non-Catholics in question, and how far are they to be looked for in our presentation to them of the Gospel?

You will observe that I am prescinding altogether from any discussion of the mystery of the bestowal or non-bestowal of the gift of faith, which, however else we differ about it, we all agree to be a sheerly gratuitous gift of God, given by him when and to whom he wills. I am treating faith, in the context of this discussion, as divine faith in the authority of the Catholic and Roman Church, which seems to me to be very often an extension of faith in those who already possess it on a narrower, but at the same time very real, field. I am proposing to deal only with obstacles in the mind, obstacles, that is, in the non-Catholic mind which, we must presume, make it incapable of having this gift of faith bestowed; or obstacles in our own minds, which lead to the presentation by us of that faith in a form which is in fact incapable, psychologically speaking, of penetrating the non-Catholic receiving mind, and preparing it for the bestowal of the gift.

When Father Joseph Jungmann, S.J., rose to speak at the great International Congress of Pastoral Liturgy at Assisi in September 1956 he was greeted by applause so loud and so long that even a cardinalatial chairman could scarcely bring it to an end. It was the spontaneous recognition, by two thousand delegates from all over the world, of the special place that Father Jungmann holds not only among liturgical scholars but among all who have worked for the liturgical revival of our time. His subject at Assisi was ‘Pastoral Care: The Key to Liturgical History’, and it summed up his own achievement, which has been to apply the resources of an exact and unflagging scholarship to liturgical history but always so as to preserve a lively sense of its true purpose. At Assisi he compared the Liturgy to a tree: ‘if it has developed in the changing climate of the world’s history, if it has known times of storm and times of fruitfulness, nevertheless its growth has come from within and from vital forces which it manifests. The Liturgy is the life of the Church in the sight of God, of the Church which is the community of all those who are incorporated in Christ by baptism and who, Sunday by Sunday, gather to celebrate, under the direction of the priestly ministry, the memorial of the Lord.’

August, 1957: the great horse-shoe amphitheatre of the Sala Santitham, Bangkok—the last word in international conference halls—looked like a herbaceous border, so brilliant were the silks and saris of the women from fifteen Asian nations who had come to attend the Seminar organized by U.N.O. on the Civic Responsibilities and Increased Participation of Asian Women in Public Life.

Burma, Cambodia, China (or rather, Formosa), Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaya, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sarawak, Singapore and Thailand had all sent participants, for in all these countries women now have the vote, and politics and the professions are open to them. Fifteen nongovernmental organizations sent observers; they included the Associated Countrywomen of the World, the Young Women’s Christian Association, the World Association of Girl Guides, the World Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the International Union of Business and Professional Women, and four Catholic bodies: Pax Romana, the World Federation of Catholic Young Women and Girls, the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organisations, and the Catholic International Union for Social Service at whose behest I was there. And I think I was the only European present.

When I looked over my programme, I realized that U.N.O. had indeed gathered together some of the most able women in the East. India had sent a member of Parliament and of the Constituent Assembly, a quick-witted person, never at a loss for a word; Cambodia, a Professor of Primary Education, distinguished by the quiet chic of her national costume and her sound commonsense.