In this article I want to examine some of the obstacles which stand in the way of mutual understanding between white priests and black people in Southern Africa today. Initially I had intended to discuss the African and the Gospel preached to him in a more impersonal way, in terms of contrasted cultural backgrounds. As will appear, this has not proved possible, for, at least in the Republic of South Africa, the giving and receiving of Christian truth is complicated at every turn less by the cultural inheritance of the giver or the receiver than by the colour of his skin.

Perhaps the chief obstacle to the missionary’s fulfilling his task is his own ignorance. This ignorance may be of the customs and languages of his people: a deficiency which missionaries throughout the world learn to contend with by imaginative hard work. At the same time Southern Africa does present particular difficulties in this matter because the African people themselves, unlike, say, the Chinese in the time of Fr Ricci, do not have a clear cut idea of what their culture is. Under the influence of European civilization the old tribal customs are dissolving or else mixing uneasily with what Europe has brought to Africa, some of it good, some of it very bad. With the best will in the world the missionary will often be perplexed.

The sociological writing most relevant to the theme of a conference on ‘The Catholic Family and its Needs’, is that concerned with the position of minority groups and with social change. The minority group with which we are concerned is a social or cultural minority, that is to say, it is a minority distinguished from the majority by the fact that it holds, as a group, distinctive values, attitudes and ideals!

The social scientists who first studied minority groups of that kind concluded rather hastily that there were only two possibilities open to such a minority in the contemporary world—either existence as a segregated closed group, or complete absorption and assimilation to the majority. It has, however, been shown by subsequent research that this was a false dichotomy. As a matter of fact, valid dichotomies are rare in the social sphere, and one should adopt a sceptical attitude to those which are proposed. These dichotomies generally derive from over-emphasis on the determining impact of social forces and they are not usually in accord with a Catholic approach to empirical study of social life, which, when known, can be accepted or rejected, changed or controlled, through the use of the human understanding, and the power of the grace of God. The Catholic in a position of social responsibility should avoid adding to the classical danger of being impaled on the horns of a dilemma the new peril of being split by a false dichotomy. And so it is with regard to minorities—in addition to ‘segregation’ and ‘assimilation’ there is the further possibility of ‘limited integration’.

It may be useful to return to our initial picture of a primitive community of believers, each with his gaze steadfastly fixed upon ‘the Man on the other side of Easter Sunday morning’, the Man whom we can no longer see except through their eyes. How, the critics ask, can we be sure that they see him truly—that their account of his words and deeds is correct? It was an account formulated by naive and credulous minds, minds already pre-conditioned by the fever of Messianic excitement which marked the closing years of the pre-Christian era, minds that were exposed, consciously or unconsciously, to a whole range of external religious influences, among which those of the Old Testament and rabbinic Judaism would only have been the first.

Within the fold of Judaism itself not only the more orthodox traditions of Rabbinical interpretation have to be taken into account, but the possible influence of enthusiast movements such as Essenism (as attested by the Qumrân writings) and related baptist movements. The outstanding characteristic of these movements is an intense and eager expectation of a personal and apocalyptic advent of God in judgment in the near future, and an insistence on penance and purification in preparation for this event. ‘Do penance for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!’ is one of the key sayings recorded of Jesus. How far, the critics ask, was it influenced by these ideas? How far was the original message amplified and embellished in terms of them by his followers?

In his book, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, Professor R. C. Zaehner gives as an appendix Professor W. B. Henning’s critique of the work of E. E. Herzfeld and H. S. Nyberg, taken from Henning’s Zoroaster, Politician or Witch-doctor? (Oxford, 1951). It is much to be regretted that this appendix did not include the whole of that valuable short work by Professor Henning; rather than comprising only the part of it which is least tasteful and of least interest to any but those few who are arrayed in the ranks of quarrelling Zoroastrianists. Because it is to Henning’s lucid description of who Zoroaster was, where and when he lived and what he taught that the wearied and somewhat confused reader of this much larger work by Professor Zaehner wants gratefully to turn after the ordeal he has just undergone. However Professor Zaehner does satisfy the enquirer on the matter of when Zoroaster lived: he follows Henning and dates Zoroaster as Zoroastrians have traditionally done—‘258 years before Alexander’ ,i.e., Alexander’s defeat of the Achaemenids in Iran in 330 B.C., so that Zoroaster’s date may be taken as about 588 B.C. This is important because of theories which have been advanced, that Zoroaster lived much earlier; and that he lived at all has, also, I believe been put in doubt. Therefore it is refreshing to have a Henning and a Zaehner, who know the languages and the texts relative to Zoroastrianism and the prophet’s original teaching, to tell us when he lived—not so long ago after all— and also where.

The celebration of the eighty-fifth birthday last October in Oberst- dorff, Bavaria, of Gertrud von le Fort passed off practically without comment in this country. Whilst the name of this Catholic authoress may not be unknown to the English public (the best known of her works, Die Letzte am Schafott, was the source of an opera by Poulenc performed at Covent Garden in 1958, and also of a Georges Bemanos scripted film produced in 1960), it would be true to say that much of her work remains literally a closed book—an unfortunate state of affairs, since her writings are concerned with many of the themes of more internationally celebrated literary figures such as Mauriac or our own Graham Greene.

Of Huguenot descent, Gertrud von le Fort was born in 1876 in Minden, Westphalia, and can trace a rich family history back to the times of the Reformation (three Le Forts fought as officers of Louis XVI in the Tuilleries, whilst the most famous of her ancestors, Francois le Fort had been admiral and companion to Peter the Great). From her father, a Prussian army officer, comes her love of history, plus a knowledge of military life, which stands her in good stead, for example, in her Die Magdeburgische Hochzeit, whilst her interest in religion stems from her mother, a devout Protestant believer. It was these subjects, History and Religion, that she proceeded to study at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin, coming at the former under the guidance of the learned philosopher, Ernst Troeltsch; to him she is indebted for showing her the place of history as a basis for her work.

Simone Weil was still a school-girl when she discovered Marx, and in a way through Marx the crisis-stricken Europe of the late twenties and the early thirties. While deeply influenced by Marx in her earlier writings, his doctrine was never a revelation or a religion for her. Her syndicalist experience showed her the inability of orthodox marxism to cope with twentieth century problems. Her enormous knowledge of the history of philosophy prevented her from being satisfied by a relatively poor and fragmentary philosophical system. Her moral and metaphysical aspirations were not met by Marx’s answers to eternal human problems. She threw off his influence quickly, long before her religious experiences. She still retained a strong interest in several marxist problems and especially in that of ‘estranged labour’. Her early writings describe and question. The works of her maturity answer. No one else has created so rich a synthesis of the problems which might have been raised while attempting to analyse labour. Although Plato and Marx are the most important contributors to this synthesis, its answers are of purely Christian inspiration.

One may say without hesitation that the most original, if not the only original, idea of Marx in the field of philosophy proper was that of the alienation of labour. The whole pathetic richness of his early writings culminates in his description of ‘estranged labour’. How the worker is alienated from the product of the work which will be not his own. How he is alienated from his work since it does not serve him, and how he comes to hate it as causing pain and suffering. The worker is no more the subject but the object of the work.

The recent publication of his Collected Essays has renewed interest in Orwell’s position as a writer, and especially in his attitude to the artist’s commitments in the world. The writer’s problem, in a time of conflict, according to Orwell, was that ‘one half of him, which in a sense is the whole of him, can act as resolutely, even as violently if need be, as anyone else. But his writings, in so far as they have any value, will always be the product of the saner self that stands aside, records the things that are done and admits their necessity, but refuses to be deceived as to their true nature’. For Raymond Williams (e.g. in The Observer, May 21 1961) this separation, while understandable, is not necessary: ‘it is part of the dissociation between the individual and society which is our deepest crisis’. Elsewhere he points out that any defence of liberty by an exile, as Orwell chose to be, standing apart from society, is bound to be ambiguous because ‘while the rights in question may be called individual, the condition of their guarantee is inevitably social... to belong to a community is to be part of a whole, and, necessarily, to accept, while helping to define its disciplines’. While I agree with this view, I want to argue in this article that the source of Orwell’s dilemma, and indeed of the dissociation in general, has an important but hitherto undiscussed, philosophical aspect—to put it crudely, Cartesian dualism—which manifests itself in Orwell’s treatment of two related problems: the problem of language and the problem of orthodoxy.

A first visit to the quarter of a million odd, landlocked square miles of Afghanistan should act on any but a finished, finite clod rather in the same way as Samuel Johnson’s tour of the Hebrides did on him. The analogy is not entirely inapposite for, like the Hebrides, Afghanistan is a land of rock; and where one is lashed by the cleansing sea, the other is bathed in the cleansing light of brilliant sunshine out of clear skies, so that both (and one has St Patrick’s Breastplate in mind) may be considered similarly to uplift the susceptible spirit.

Afghanistan’s rocks, however, are threaded through the valleys down which, in sharp contrast to mauve and grey stone and biscuit-coloured sand, stretch strips of green (from the air, black) cultivation, the fields of corn and millet turning yellow, lush vineyards, apple trees and screens of poplar and willow, the more lacey and delicate for the harsh contrast of the major portions of a country clustered round the southwestern spurs of the majestic Hindu Kush.

What a formidable thing and an evocative word the Hindu Kush is! No wonder the Afghan people, ethnographically varied though they be, are all brave and bright eyed, tending to tallness and litheness of limb—men capable of leaping from rock to rock with the long muskets of independence in a land where everyone is his own Khan. Here might be recalled the answer to a question. In a garden of the Kabul Valley, a garden of gaily coloured flowers, high in the hills with a stream rushing down over the rocks, when some peasants appeared an Afghan host was asked: ‘Do they belong here?’—meaning ‘Are they the men who look after this garden?’ The reply was: ‘No. “Here” belongs to them’.

From the early Church back to Jesus! If one were to sum up in one phrase the scope and purpose of modern New Testament study, this one, of Joachim Jeremias, could hardly be improved upon. One starts with the primitive Christian community; for by the time the earliest of the New Testament writings was composed, numerous groups had emerged of those who believed the gospel and were already striving to live their new faith. The New Testament enshrines the traditions by which they lived. It was written in response to their needs, among them and for them. In that important sense the New Testament is their book, the ‘prayer-book of the primitive Church’. These early Christian communities, springing up first at Jerusalem, then at Antioch, and then throughout the Roman empire, were striving to respond to a single historical event. What Jesus was, what he did and what he taught, these first Christians had received from ‘eye-witnesses and ministers of the word ‘(Lk. i, 2). And we receive it from them. Under the Holy Ghost we depend upon them utterly for our knowledge of our Saviour. It can be said then that the reality with which the New Testament faces and challenges our world is a body of believers swiftly growing and spreading throughout the empire of Claudius, Nero, Vespasian and Titus, each single member of which has his gaze steadfastly fixed upon a human figure at a point slightly further back in history, a point not directly visible to us. The community as a whole is responding with all its life-force to what it sees of ‘the Man on the other side of Easter Sunday morning’.

To visit the Holy Land must be the dearest ambition of every Christian. To live in it as I have done for more than five years is a rare and wonderful privilege.

Even so my picture of the Holy Land is incomplete, for it has been tragically divided since the Jewish-Arab war of 1948 led to its partition between Israel and Jordan. The two countries are still at enmity, so the cleavage is absolute. Even the Holy City is rent in two, for the western suburbs have been developed to form Israel’s capital, while the eastern region, including the Old City, belongs to Jordan.

At an ordinary level there is no communication at all between the two countries, or even between the two halves of Jerusalem. Only diplomats and United Nations officials may move between the two with relative freedom, and by a special arrangement, tourists are allowed to pass—but not re-pass—from one to the other. For those like myself—and I am an Irish woman living in Jordan by reason of my husband’s employment—there are no such concessions. Never once in the years I have lived in Jerusalem have I set foot on the soil of Israel which lies only a few hundred yards west of our house.

To begin with I found this situation frustrating in the extreme, for from our windows we can clearly see people and cars moving about in the other Jerusalem which is so near—and yet so very far away. Gradually I have become resigned to the knowledge that I am never likely to see Galilee or Nazareth, which together with a great many places of purely historical interest, are ‘on the other side’.

In this article I wish to show first, how the laity is involved in the Council and secondly, how the entire life of the Church is marked by what is called her ‘collegiality’, the co-operation of all in the acts of a few.

In preparation for the Second Vatican Council a great number of theologians and other specialists are examining the problems of the Church’s life in the areas of doctrine and discipline. This work is not confined to the relatively few bishops and priests who have been appointed to the preparatory commissions at Rome. Theologians in general, in many parts of the world, are concentrating on matters dealing with the council and studying the problems that are likely to be discussed during the sessions.

This work is of utmost importance. It must not be forgotten, however, that the ecumenical council itself is the business of the apostolic hierarchy. Theologians may propose themes and elaborate plans for a council, but during the actual sessions responsibility lies entirely with the bishops acting as judges of faith and rulers of the Church.

A visitor from South Africa to England is naturally asked many questions, and is equally naturally interested in any comments or reports of African and South African matters in the British press. Two incidents connected with the name of Bishop Roseveare of Ghana last August appear to me very significant.

The first of these is that the Daily Mail front page comment, discussing the expulsion of Bishop Roseveare from Ghana, went on to suggest that it is a pity there were not Ghanaian clergy trained and in positions of sufficient responsibility to make the statement needed. In other words, while someone had to point out to the Ghanaians that some of them were giving quasi-religious cultus to a human being, Dr Nkrumah, it would be far easier for the Ghana administration to hear this from a Ghanaian Bishop. It might indeed be almost impossible for them to accept it from a white man, a member of the colonial power from whose unjust domination (as they see it), they have just been liberated. We ought to hear truth and justice from anybody, and to fail to do so is flatly wrong. But there is the more excuse for the sin or failure, or whatever one is to call it, if the person who tells us the truth appears in some way himself identified with injustice. Not so very long ago a Pan-African Congress in West Africa passed a resolution to the effect that the white-organized Churches had been identified with the powers of exploitation. To expect Africans wholly to dissociate an individual from his people, a truth from the man expressing it, is to expect much.