Many years ago, when I was unsettled about the Anglican position, I read Salmon’s Infallibility with great care. It had been recommended to me as ‘a devastatingly unanswerable criticism of the validity of the Roman claims’.

Though I did not realise it then, this book was a determining factor in my decision to become a Catholic. I had read at the same time Wilfrid Ward’s Life of Cardinal Newman and Newman’s own Essay on Development, the classical exposition in English of the doctrine of tradition. I saw at once that the infallibility which Salmon was attacking was not the infallibility which the Catholic Church claims and which had been defined with greater precision by the Vatican Council. I realised, too, that when Salmon wrote of tradition he meant something different from the tradition so clearly analysed and cogently expounded by Newman.

I knew that according to Catholic theology reason can go so far as to show the consonance of revealed truth with knowledge acquired by reason, and even to infer that what is revealed is true and should be believed. The assent of faith however is supernatural and cannot be produced by such knowledge, but is wholly dependent on the word of God in revelation. It was plain that Salmon had no clear conception of this distinction and was in constant confusion about the respective functions of faith and reason.

Even before his accession King James is said to have given a verbal promise to Thomas Percy, the future conspirator, that the Catholics would be granted some degree of liberty. There is, in the very nature of things, no written evidence of this promise, and the King later denied having given it, but the Catholics firmly believed that some assurance of toleration had been given. But by the beginning of 1604 all hope of toleration for papists was gone. On 19 February, James I protested ‘his utter detestation of their superstitious religion, and that he was so far from favouring it, as if he thought his son and heir after him would give any toleration thereunto, he would wish him fairly buried before his eyes’. And fairly buried he was in 1612.

On 22 February, 1604, a proclamation was issued ordering all Jesuits and seminary priests to depart the kingdom before 19 March. On the same day the fine of £20 a month for recusancy was again put in force, and was made to include the whole period since the King’s coming, thus negativing what little relief had been granted.

On 24 April, a bill was introduced in the lower house, classing Catholics with forgers, perjurers and outlaws, and disabling them from sitting in parliament, while an ‘Act for the due execution of the statutes against Jesuits, seminary priests and recusants’ made in this session, not only reenforced all the laws made in Elizabeth’s reign but even added to their severity. On the third reading of this bill Viscount Montague courageously denounced it, and the following day found himself in the Fleet for his ‘scandalous and offensive speech’. Further proclamations followed and on 16 July the bloody persecution broke out again when John Sugar, a priest, and Robert Grissold his servant, were executed at Warwick.

In a recent paper Professor John Macmurray has attacked illegitimate extensions of the use of the word ‘history’. He contends that strictly speaking the solar system cannot be said to have a history, though we can speak of a history of astronomy. This is so because history is concerned with what men have done, why they did it and their doing of it. He is not, I think, suggesting that one cannot carry on fruitful discussions in one sphere by making use of simple analogies drawn from another; as for instance, when the search for significant new resemblances leads us to speak of ‘x’ as if it were ‘y’, and in this way to talk about the unknown on the analogy of the known. Examples of this method are the ‘clock’ and ‘pump’ analogies of the seventeenth century, or the more recent use by biologists of ‘government offices’ and such like as concepts of illustration. All this is not denied, but the ‘as if’ is stressed, for the danger of this kind of thinking is that it tends to confuse the picture or model with that which it is intended to exemplify.

There is a further point to be made. It is helpful, though in some cases dangerous, to use ‘pictures’ which stimulate the formation of partial exploratory hypotheses. It is less helpful, and even more perilous, to commit oneself to a master ‘picture’, for in doing so we become impatient of distinctions and unscrupulous in our manipulation of evidence. For Professor Macmurray history is an enquiry into the past actions of human beings. This statement, which seems so straightforward at first sight, is in fact very difficult, as it raises the question of what it is that we study when we study history.

At the present time the problem of priest-workmen is once more to the fore. This is not due to any advertisement of their experiences which such priests have made, for they dread nothing so much as publicity. Their action can only develop in silence. Moreover, it is difficult to present their work to the public in its true light. Many of the superficial or impulsive judgments which one hears passed on the priest-workmen come from an insufficient knowledge of the milieu they are trying to reach and of the conditions of their apostolate. Today the silence is broken but the necessity of prudence remains, a requirement which is not always observed as it should be.

For practical purposes, the first publicity in the press dates from 1946, when several articles on the apostolic side of their activity were published in Témoignage Chrétien. The second phase dates from 1949. In March of that year an account of ‘The Paris Mission’ (which remains one of the best and most solid explanations of the task undertaken by the priest-workmen), appeared in Etudes. A little later, in July, articles of the ‘sensational’ type began to appear. Almost at the same time, Jean Balensi published an extensive inquiry in Paris-Presse under the title ‘'Shock-Christians’, and Jean-Loup Dariel published an article in France-Soir under the title ‘The Church’s Commandos’. It was just at this time that a decree of the Holy Office excommunicated all those adhering to the materialist and anti-Christian teaching of the Communists, and particularly those who defended or propagated it. M. Dariel’s account was afterwards reissued as Chez les prêtres ouvriers (Editions Chambriand). These inquiries and accounts were confined to the superficial aspects of the mission of the priest-workmen.