The problem of the relations of Christianity to History has been very much complicated and, I think, obscured by the influence of nineteenth-century philosophy. Almost all the great idealist philosophers of that century, like Fichte and Schelhng and Hegel, constructed elaborate philosophies of history which had a very considerable influence on the historians, especially in Germany, and on the theologians also. All these systems were inspired or coloured by Christian ideas and they were consequently eagerly accepted by Christian theologians for apologetic purposes. And thus there arose an alliance between idealist philosophy and German theology which became characteristic of the Liberal Protestant movement and dominated religious thought both on the continent and in this country during the later nineteenth century.

Today the situation is entirely changed. Both philosophic idealism and liberal Protestantism have been widely discredited and have been replaced by logical positivism and by the dialectic theology of the Barthians. The result is that the idea of a Christian philosophy of history has also suffered from the reaction against philosophic idealism. It is difficult to distinguish the authentic and original element in the Christian view of history from the philosophic accretions and interpretations of the last century and a half, so that you will find modem representatives of orthodox Christianity like Mr C. S. Lewis questioning the possibility of a Christian interpretation of history, and declaring that the supposed connection between Christianity and Historicism is largely an illusion.

That fine and distressing drama of Gian-Carlo Mcnotti, The Consul, does more for us than underline the tragic fatuity of the modem political world: it underlines the fundamental unreality of that world. The baby dies, the husband and wife, unable to reach each other, die: because they and the world are smothered by paper, the ‘forms’ without which nobody can stir, and nothing can be done, and which are never completely obtainable. The hypnotice dance scenes, the dream-sequences, are far less unreal than this ‘real’ world which destroys life and love and all the deep human realities and leaves only an emptiness through which there shrills an unanswered telephone.

That is the pattern of our world, whether the precise regime we live under is expressing a deliberately cruel tyranny, or a benevolent stupidity, or a stupidity which is neither particularly benevolent nor particularly cruel but just subhuman. But when humanity is thus forced into an unreal mould, and debarred from all escape into reality, it will look for escape in further unreality: in drugs or neuroses, in fantasy-worlds of its own making which ape the world it has lost, in destruction—perhaps self-destruction —as a substitute for creation. So the night-club replaces the home; loveless sexuality replaces marriage; toys of one sort or another replace the children who should have played with them; hooliganism, savagery, murder and suicide become more and more common.

Obviously a world such as that cannot endure. It must either end in complete destruction, or it must undergo some radical change.

This article should be regarded, perhaps even more than others in this series, as the expression of a very personal point of view. Dons are individualistic people, liable to hold highly original and sharply divergent views on questions both of principle and policy within the university, and I am very conscious that I have no right whatever to speak as representing any considerable body of opinion among Catholic senior members of universities in this country; indeed it cannot be said at present that any such coherent body of opinion exists, though the sort of subjects about which I am going to write are certainly being increasingly seriously considered and discussed.

The appearance of a body of Catholics playing any noticeable part in the life of the universities of this country is a very recent phenomenon. It was the great movement of liberalism (in Newman’s sense of the word ‘liberal’) in the middle nineteenth century which opened the universities to Catholics; and they were permitted to take advantage of the new possibilities only after what must now seem to us an unnecessary and regrettable delay. It was regrettable, not only from the point of view of the standards of taste and intelligence of the Catholic body, but from the point of view of the university: for, though some sort of university reform was certainly urgently needed, the reform which actually took place broke the connection between religion and learning which still existed in the ancient universities ana effected a thorough-going secularisation of university life which has had very far-reaching consequences.

To understand the position, the accomplishments and the problems of Catholic higher education in the United States, one must first understand the circumstances under which it was set up. The Catholic immigrants coming to the country found there an educational system already established, and established with an atmosphere that was anything but Catholic. American school law was strict in that it required every child to go to school, and American public opinion was becoming constantly more interested in extending the period in which he should remain in school. But along with this legal and social insistence or schooling there went a universal recognition that a parent could choose the school that his child would attend. He was perfectly free, if he so wished and could afford it, to send the child to a private school. There was neither a state monopoly of education as found in France, nor state aid to private schools as has been the case in England.

The American hierarchy had a choice to make. Would they allow Catholic children to be educated in the state schools and run the risk of loss of faith, or would they construct a Catholic school system and raise the money for it themselves? They chose the latter course, and by herculean effort and great sacrifice they built an educational structure whose aim was to duplicate the public-school system, grade for grade, subject for subject, advantage for advantage. This work would have been impossible without the teaching Orders, especially the Orders of teaching sisters.

The foreign visitor is commonly warned that New York is not America, and the meaning of the statement is clear. But it is not very helpful. A more relevant observation surely is that New York is very American. To go from New York to Fort Wayne, Indiana, is not to go to another country, or even to meet something different: the difference is only in size and degree. Neither in New York nor Pittsburgh, Boston or San Francisco, Cincinnati or Seattle is the foreigner moved to make comparisons of americanism; in the ‘old’ South and New Mexico ‘regionalism’ is still very marked; but in only a few, a very few, places—Sante Fé, for example, or, I suppose, old New Orleans— does he ask rhetorically, ‘Am I really in the United States?’ It is one of the most astounding things about this astounding country —its unity and uniformity.

The area of the United States is three million square miles. New York is as far from the Californian Redwoods as London is from the Urals, the distance from Galveston to the Canadian border is about the distance from Athens to the North Cape. Some 140 million souls live in this area, originating in every nation of Europe (there were still thirteen million foreign-born American citizens in 1930), and with of course a big African clement. And yet they are ‘We, the people of the United States’ as much as the homogeneous two-and-a-half million of 1776. Neither differences of national origin nor geographical and climatic differences—and they are very great—have produced the deep diversities one would expect: the ‘melting-pot’ melted—and then remade.