Catholic sociology may perhaps best be described as the mind of the Church on social questions. It is the application to social life (man in society) of the universal concepts of the faith. This is the first thing to be grasped about Catholic sociology, that it is essentially an inference from Catholic theology, and such as could be made therefore by anyone having a perfect knowledge of the faith.

As a matter of fact, however, the social implications of Catholic theology have been worked out at a very high level, so that there is in existence today a code of social principles which may be correctly described as the authoritative teaching of the Church on social questions. The corpus or main body of such teaching is to be found in various Papal encyclicals from the time of Leo XIII.

The nature and scope of Catholic sociology are well indicated in the following passage from Quadragesimo Anno in which Pope Pius XI asserts the right of the Church to pontificate on social questions:

The Third Inter-American Conference of Catholic Social Action was opened at Rio de Janeiro on 22 August by His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop, Dom Jaime de Barros Camara, in the presence of delegates from twenty-one countries of the western hemisphere, including Canada and British Guiana. Representatives of several national and international organisations in Europe and North America attended the meetings in the quality of observers. Among these were the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, and the International Christian Social Association of Switzerland.

After referring briefly to the earlier meetings, held at Washington in 1942 and Havana in 1946, the leader of the American delegation, Bishop D. Karl Alter, of Toledo, Ohio, explained the objects of the present conference. These may be summed up as follows: ‘To study the social problems common to all countries of the American continent, and apply to them in a practical manner the principles of social justice, as set forth in the Encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII, Pius XI and Pius XII’.

The first day’s discussions were almost exclusively occupied with the situation in rural districts, where primitive conditions and a low standard of health call for action in the majority of Latin-American countries. Attention was directed especially to the asphyxiating effect of the big estates, relics of colonial times, which stifle initiative, restrict agricultural development and maintain the inhabitants of the countryside in poverty. The Brazilian Constitution of 1946 authorises the expropriation of private properties in the interests of the community, and the authorisation has been invoked in recent schemes for improving conditions in the interior.

Since wartime days South Africa has been faced, both at home and abroad, with a rising tide of feeling and opinion which demands a solution to its problems of population groups, European, African, Cape Coloured and Indian, on lines in accordance with justice and Christianity. It is no longer possible to look upon the Non-White peoples as perpetually or indefinitely condemned to be servants and labourers; and such views, common in the press ten years ago, are now rarely seen. All parties realise that only a policy that gives full justice and opportunity will have any hope of success. Hence the rival policies, which formerly tended to don the appearances of Liberal and Repressionist, now meet on grounds of fairness and practicability. Each claims to be the only policy which combines justice to all groups with practical feasibility; while all, in greater or lesser degree, claim to represent Christian principles.

Leaving aside, therefore, political policies of parties, which aim largely at political or commercial ends and which do not face the problem squarely, it will be useful to make a short survey of the theoretical policies at present being advocated in the Union. They may be classed as four in number: Apartheid or Separation, Parallelism, Trusteeship, and Assimilation.

The most important recommendation in the recently published report of the Royal Commission on the Press is the establishment of a General Council of the Press with the object, among other things, of encouraging ‘the sense of responsibility and public service among all engaged in the profession of journalism’. Apparently it is to do this by ‘censuring undesirable types of journalistic conduct and by all other possible means to build up a code in accordance with the highest professional standards’.

A considerable part of the report was devoted to censuring undesirable types of journalistic conduct, but by itself this is not, perhaps, likely to have very much effect upon the press. Those papers which find they can build up the largest weekly and daily circulations in the world by methods which may not, in the opinion of some, be in accord with the highest professional standards are likely to do so in spite of any General Council which may or may not be set up. If they find they can make good profits by ‘giving the public what it wants’ they are likely to do so in spite of the criticisms of the Commission and the doubts that are expressed from time to time by individuals.

In this connection it is interesting to note that three of the more responsible national newspapers, the Observer, the Manchester Guardian and the News Chronicle, are owned by trusts. These three more or less Liberal newspapers are not run by ordinary commercial companies for the profit of stockholders. They are run on a non-profit basis; that is to say they are run in the interests of their readers.

The end of the war left the whole educational system in Germany in chaos and its rebuilding has had to start from scratch. This is obvious as far as external conditions were concerned; buildings were ruined, teaching material destroyed, teachers dispersed and in part forbidden to follow their profession. The children themselves were involved in the maelstrom of evacuation and in the disorderly flight from the bombed west to the east, and from the Eussian invader in the east the return again to the west. All this is clearly appreciated by now. Equally one understands the loss of a sane religious background that followed the breakdown of Germany’s former educational system and the scepticism shown by both teachers and pupils against any alternative system (and even against the re-introduction of pre-war arrangements), whether it was inspired by German teachers themselves, by the Church, the German authorities or the inter-allied military government. These problems are appreciated, in paid at least, everywhere. Their solution is seen to lie only in a very gradual and by no means as yet wholly satisfactory rehabilitation. This is the natural result of the various factors involved in the present situation in Germany, but more recently two new and somewhat unexpected elements have emerged to influence post-war development in a disturbing manner.

The division of Germany into four zones has had an immense bearing on the political and social life of the country, but no less has it had its repercussions in the educational field. This is most marked of course in the division between east and west; but it is true also of the division of government within the west itself.

By the ‘Widows of God’ I mean those people whose marriages have gone wrong and who cannot marry again because of the validity of their first marriage and the fact that the partner of it is still living. If Newman could call his celibacy widowhood the state of these people, at least of those in good will, doubly deserves the name. It suggests the desolation of their state, both men and women, and it is by an act of God, by the eternal law of one man one woman, that they are condemned, or called, to celibacy.

As Catholics marry non-Catholics who see no wrong in divorce, and as Catholics themselves adopt the standards around them, and as wars and migration increasingly interfere with marital fidelity, there is a growing percentage of Catholics in this position. It would be interesting to get the statistics of parish priests on it. But whether it is ten per cent or twenty it represents a very great pastoral problem in the Church. And one must not forget the growing number of those outside who might become Catholics were it not for this impediment, that they have a broken marriage somewhere in their history and know they could not become Catholics and remain with the partner they now have. Most priests have at one time or another come across such cases where they would be hesitant to encourage a potential convert and think ‘non sunt inquietandi’.

A large number of people in this position were innocent of the family break-up that led to their present state, as far as human judgment can see.

It is obvious that Kafka is a ‘difficult’ writer; his work demands the closest attention before any kind of account of it is possible. Attention involves looking at, not looking for, and the inherent danger and temptation in Kafka criticism are to look for ‘clues’ and ‘keys’, or to fix all one’s attention on some particular subjective element in his work, and to offer an account of that as a substitute for a criticism of the artistic whole. Ideally, of course, the Kafka reader should be a philosopher, a psychologist, a student of comparative religion, and a literary critic, all rolled into one. In practice, however, such an ideal combination is rarely found, and in practice, too, it must be admitted that the critic or reader who does not possess any specialist qualifications is very limited in the range of his discussion of Kafka. The general reader does need help from the specialist, but the specialists who are not prepared to involve themselves in literary judgments must be prepared to offer their findings as footnotes to the study of Kafka, and not as in any way final judgments on his work.

Most primitive peoples are without anything which we should call a theology, and civilised people often know as little about their systematic theology as though they were without it. Such people live their religions, without regarding them also as subjects for investigation. If they do investigate, it is with the intention of showing the truth of their religion, or of being reassured in its truth, or of understanding more of that truth. Religious controversy has always been about other matters than the value of religion, and between people who practise some form of religion this is still so. It does not occur to them that religion has a ‘value’ or alternatively no ‘value’ for society; what can be evaluated are particular religious beliefs and practices. The study of religious beliefs and practices, however, has tended to fascinate those who do not practise any religion, and would claim to have none. Mr Dawson has quite naturally found it impossible to ignore such a public, and the literature on which it has been formed and fed.

No man would attempt to write upon the legal system or economic transactions of another society, still less of Society, without first taking stock of his knowledge of such matters in his own country, and without in some way systematising what he supposed to be law and economics at home. Religion, unfortunately, has been served like art, which everyone supposes himself to be versed in, without either the labour of study or the familiarity of practice.

On 11th July, 1948, exactly fifteen years after the dark day on which Hitler founded the ‘German Evangelical Church’, Dr Martin Niemoller was present at the founding of the ‘Evangelical Church in Germany’ (EKD) on the Wartburg near Eisenach, which had once been Luther’s stronghold; there he coined the shattering phrase, ‘the solidarity of the helpless’ on the same occasion as the aged Bishop Wurm described this new structure as a ‘temporary shelter’. These words were sign enough, even for the uninitiated, that this emergency organization was a long way removed from that source of grace, the upper room at Jerusalem. Rendered indispensable by the sheer stress of chaotic political conditions, the new ‘Church’ was attempting to reassert its legal continuity with the past and to affirm the ‘unity of Evangelical Christianity’ in all the occupation zones, especially to bind together the East and the West. Was its motive, therefore, political?

Whilst these lines were being written Wilhelm Niemoller, the pastor of Bielefeld issued an open letter to Germany which ends with the cry: ‘The crisis is upon us!’; and the Reformed Church in north-west Germany has resolved not to attend the EKD conferences any more until they are again animated by an evangelical spirit. What does this signify?

The downfall of the Nazis and their ‘Reichs-church’ means that, for the first time in 400 years, German Protestantism has been given the opportunity to free itself from the state and to give itself a constitution ‘in accordance with the New Testament’ as an earlier conference expressed it.

One of the most frightening happenings in the last few years, and one from which we should take the greatest warning, is the complete subjection of Albania to Communism. Communism is alien to all the spiritual and social traditions of this small mountain people, which in 1939 was one of the most honest and hospitable, if backward, of Europe.

Although Albania is almost 80 per cent Mohammedan, there exist in the wild mountain valleys of the north two tribes of Christians, the Miridits, who somehow had managed to survive the centuries of Turkish rule when the country was part of the Ottoman Empire, This they doubtless owed to their rugged mountain barriers, and we must hope that these same barriers will enable them to preserve their simple faith against the new onslaught. During the War they fought to the bitter end with our Commandos against the Communist partisans, who, although they accepted the arms and supplies, which we dropped to them in the belief that they were a democratic force solely desirous of expelling the Germans, lost no opportunity to insult and humiliate our men. In fact, towards the end, when the Germans were already in full retreat, they openly turned against us. That the few men we had left there escaped was due to the heroic efforts of the Christian tribes under their feudal chieftains; many of these paid for their faith and honour with their lives, while some managed to escape and follow their king into exile in Egypt.

Every nation worthy of the name produces its prophets, and by prophets I mean men who claim to speak to their fellow countrymen in the divine name and with divine authority. For that is the true essence of the prophetical character: not merely the ability to foretell future events, but the claim to speak as an ambassador of God. Miracles and predictions are chiefly the confirmatory signs of the validity of that claim. Of course there are prophets and prophets, false claimants and true, and there have been many who claimed unjustifiably to speak in God’s name.

But if every nation has had its prophets, no nation has ever produced any that can compare even remotely with the prophets of Israel, of whom Dr Allen writes with so much understanding and sympathy in his Prophet and Nation, a book that deserves to be classed with W. R. Smith’s great Prophets of Israel, published half a century ago. He begins with a chapter on the distinction between those who have come down to us approved as genuine prophets and the now-forgotten throng of their fellow Israelites who belonged to the prophetical caste. Many of the latter were temple officials or hangers-on at the royal court, men who were venal and prepared, like the fortune-tellers of all ages, to adapt their utterances to their income’. The former were outstanding exceptions, few in number, always unpopular in their day, often in prison and generally dying a violent death.

An avowed and open defence of Distributism is not often seen in the Catholic press, and yet there is in this country a larger number than ever before of convinced distributists, people convinced that our attempt to concentrate on the mass-production of secondary commodities in return for food from abroad, to remain the workshop—or at least one of the workshops—of the world, and to treat the world as our farm and garden is doomed to failure—and indeed to disaster. The time is ripe, then, for a re-examination of distributism as a Catholic thing; but beforehand it will be worth while to look at some recent developments in the non-Catholic sphere. For the situation is very different from the time, forty years ago, when distributists might have been confused with the more or less unpractical followers of William Morris, broadly labelled ‘arts and crafts’. The situation is even very different from that of ten years ago. The theory and application of distributism have not changed but the situation of this country has changed so as to reveal not only the practical nature of this social idea but the necessity of it.

There have not been wanting signs in recent years that Latin American culture is passing through a crisis. In many countries cultural tendencies have changed or been intensified—the Fall of France was an acute shock to Argentina, North American influence gives rise to disquiet in some Colombians, there is an increase in English influence in Brazil. Some outside critics have asked what the Latin American contribution to world culture is, now or in the past, and it is a difficult question to answer, more for lack of a definition of terms than for lack of material to adduce (for at once many things come to mind: the relics of pre-Columbian civilisations, the lovely colonial art, some contribution to science in the eighteenth century and to medical art in our own times, contemporary peasant arts and the interesting developments in serious painting, a solid contribution to the law of nations and international relations, and above all the formation of a way of life and a tradition). So much depends on how far a contribution to world culture is made to coincide with what the world wishes to receive or with a preconceived view as to what it ought to wish to receive. An ingrained habit of self-criticism and depreciation makes individual Latin Americans question very seriously whether they have in fact a culture of their own, while governments have taken to stressing the national traditions of each individual country. Some analysis of the root conditions of Latin American culture may help to clarify its present crisis for us.

The natural sciences, especially physical science, have made very great strides in this century. I refer especially to Einstein’s theory of relativity and the quantum theory. There can be no doubt that these theories are valid; that is to say, either they are true, or they are abstractions bearing such a relation to truth that they systematise observations and lead to correct predictions. Among scientists theories are no longer regarded as true but have come to be recognised as abstractions, as a result of the teachings of Mach, but even more so as a result of the impact of relativity and quantum theory. The naïve realism of Newtonian physics is dead. But at the same time nobody has succeeded in building up a system of natural philosophy showing exactly how theoretical science is related to reality. The effect of this has been, on the one hand, to move scientists towards scepticism or even a kind of Kantian idealism, as in the case of the late Sir Arthur Eddington, doubting or denying the validity of the concepts of reality and truth. On the other hand it has prevented the Thomist arguments for the existence of God from resting upon the conclusions of natural science through the mediation of natural philosophy. Instead they rest upon the nature of common-sense.

In a recent number of Blackfriars (July, 1949) Dr A. W. Gledhill has discussed very competently some aspects of the statistical method as used in modern physics. He has tried to show there ‘that modern physical theory does not contradict the principle of causality’. Having made a study of this subject over quite a number of years, the writer, while agreeing with some of Dr Gledhill’s conclusions, feels nevertheless that there are a few points which have not been covered as adequately as the importance of the subject for modern philosophy seems to warrant.

In order to understand the controversy about the validity or non-validity of the principle of causality, which has been initiated by Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it is necessary to realise, first of all, that when a physicist speaks about causality, he usually does not mean the same thing as a scholastic philosopher. In scholastic philosophy one distinguishes different kinds of causes, such as the material, the efficient, the final, as well as the formal and exemplary causes. The classical physicist, on the other hand, since the time of Galileo, admits only efficient causes. Let us therefore give a brief sketch of the development of this concept of scientific causality and show the reasons for this limitation.

The purpose of a scientific theory is the prediction of events among the natural objects which form the field of enquiry of the particular science concerned. Evidently, the more certain the prediction, the better the theory on which it is based.