Last September Spode House sponsored yet another of the Catholic gatherings for which it is rapidly gaining a reputation. This time it was the philosophers who met. As Fr Columba Ryan remarked, in introducing the conference, the philosophers had an advantage over the artists, writers and musicians who had held weekends already: they could not only discuss their calling, but practise it at the same time. And practise it they did. During the weekend there were two lectures, two symposia and three open discussions; and in addition the debate could be heard continuing in every available moment, at the tea-tables and floating across the park during the afternoons.

The conference was called as a first move towards meeting what is a grave danger at the moment for the Church: the growing gap between the language of the traditional philosophy in the Church and that of contemporary thinkers. It was intended to provide an opportunity for discussion between philosophers of both kinds, so that they might learn a little of each other’s languages; and in this it was extraordinarily successful. The weekend started, one might say, in the shadow of the controversy that had for weeks been filling the correspondence columns of The Tablet. The opposite sides in that monumental discussion might be expected to be at each other’s throats from the beginning. And indeed at the beginning it seemed that this would continue. But it is a measure of the success of the conference that the philosophers quickly shed their official ‘isms’ as they got down to the business of arguing particular questions.

Some twenty-five years ago, the fifteenth centenary of the death of St Augustine (August 28th, 430) occasioned a considerable output of articles, mélanges, and full-length studies. The sixteenth centenary of the birth of the great African doctor (November 13 th, 354) occurs this year, and the well- known Augustinian scholar Père F. Cayré, A.A., had the happy idea of organizing a congress to bring together theologians and historians, philosophers and patristic scholars, in order to see exactly how research on Augustine had developed in the past twenty-five years. This congress, which was held in Paris from September 21st-24th, was extremely successful. Some three hundred and fifty congressistes from within France and abroad, priests and laymen, religious and seculars, Catholic and nonCatholic, met in Paris at the Institut Catholique. Forty universities were officially represented. Among English-speaking scholars we noticed Professors Armstrong, Baxters, and Burnaby, H. Chadwick, O’Meara (from Dublin), Quasten (from Washington), Dr Cross and Fr Callus, and doubtless many more whose names escape us. One hundred and ten communications were sent which fill two large volumes of 1,160 pages. To avoid the wearisome reading of papers and prevent the congressistes being split up into small groups, the contributions were ranged around certain main themes, were presented by a reporter, and discussed at each session. One was thus able to hear and discuss the reports of Mile. Mohrman, on philosophical and literary questions, of Professors Mandouze on mysticism, Pincherle on Platonism, Marrou on the theology of history, etc. The discussions, often close, sometimes decidedly animated, were invariably of great interest.

Above the bedclothes, over the sheets, sometimes men awaking will stare at their hands in amazement—dead fish gleaming in the moonlight; and, if it is stormy outside and the wind is howling, sometimes those fish will seem to twitch as if a fin or flipper moved. But reach for the nearby lamp, flick it on and such ghostly imaginings vanish. Like the rest of the body, the hands become taken for granted: men forget the mystery of their flesh, and not for one instant when they look at it do they remember those seven mysterious layers of skin which protect them. Custom has dulled their eyes to the miracle of consciousness.

François Mauriac, I would submit, might be described as a novelist of the seventh skin. He is concerned not with outward appearances, but with the heart; not with neat artistic designs executed as an end in themselves, but with words as a means of testifying to the Word. Reality is the aim of his fiction—a reality whose drama is heightened because it is played against an eternal background. He has written a Life of Jesus (1937) and knows that only Jesus, had he so decided, could have written the perfect novel because, being perfect man, his vision was perfect. Others can only hope to report upon the world as they see it and, being fallen creatures, their vision may be faulty. It is the load that all artists who are Christians must accept and carry on their backs.

The publicists for television like to regard the medium as a threat to films, and though the film-makers—or, rather, the distributors—pretend that it is, the connection between the two forms of visual presentation is so close that it is impossible to separate them as completely as either of their advocates would, apparently, like.

For a long time to come television programmes are going to have to depend on some kind of film presentation. There are a large number of newly-formed companies whose sole purpose is to make films for television consumption. Those so far viewed by the critics do not inspire confidence that any significant advance in the art of cinema need be expected. They are patently made as time-fillers and reflect the current lack of policy and sense of ill-at-ease to be seen among the producers of television programmes in this country.

It should have dawned by now upon the minds of both sellers and buyers of television programmes, that whatever the actual merits or demerits of films or telecasts at the present moment, ultimately they will have to differ considerably from each other and also, ultimately, they will have to be good of their kind if the customers are to be expected to continue their patronage of either kind of diversion.

It is interesting to note that, despite the frantic efforts of the film-world to try out various forms of wide-screen and panoramic and three-dimensional films during the past year in order to provide a counter-attraction to television, the films so far shown nave not been highly rated by the critics.