You will remember that in the final stage of the trial of Sir Thomas More, when, according to William Roper, Sir Thomas had alleged that the law of God overrode the laws of England, and that, in addition, the indictment, which relied on the word ‘maliciously’ to bring More under the Statute, was faulty, the Chancellor, Audley, momentarily shaken by his predecessor’s eloquence and known legal wisdom, turned to his colleague the Chief Justice, Sir John Fitzjames, and asked him what he thought of the indictment. Fitzjames was not to be caught. ‘My lords all, by St Julian’, he replied, ‘I must needs confess that if the acte of parliament be not unlawful, then is not the indictment in my conscience insufficient.’ Thus saying, he threw the case back upon the Act of Supremacy, with the implication that a Statute was beyond the reach of criticism.

As it happens, the latest of all Tudor historians, in a remarkable survey that appeared only a few months ago, gave it as his opinion that in the years 1530-3 a great revolution in legal and political theory and practice was achieved in England: that Parliament—that is, of course, the king in Parliament—became then both in theory and practice what it has ever since remained, the self-sufficient, omnicompetent legislative body. That this was so in foro externo was proclaimed and understood at the time. The legislative competition of the Church, whether in the form of ancient canon law or new decretals, or in the form of conciliar decrees in England, had been for the future eliminated by Henry VIII.

Christianity is without doubt the most disputatious of all religions. The Church was bom arguing, and Judaism was the first opponent which it wrestled with, like the infant Hercules, in its cradle. In modem times this venerable controversy has been pushed into the background by the more urgent battle against a rationalism, that in its many different guises has threatened orthodox Judaism no less than Christianity. But the old volcano, though not very active at the moment, is by no means extinct. Thanks to the labours over the last fifty years or more of Dr J. Klausner, an eminent professor of the Hebrew University at Jerusalem, it has been steadily building up pressure which has recently issued in a premonitory puff or rumble. This literary activity did indeed take place more than thirty years ago, and has been through a second and third edition since, but all that happened in modem Hebrew, which rendered it practically unavailable to the Christian reader, and therefore non-explosive as regards the Christian-Jewish controversy. It is only this year that it has appeared in this country in English—well, to be quite frank, in a quaint patois which is recognizable as a variant of the current language. According to a preface by the translator, the rendering of modem Hebrew presents special problems. We can well believe it; but they can scarcely be responsible for such unidiomatic, and at times incorrect, English as Dr Stinespring manages to achieve here. He would have served his author better if, besides submitting his translation to him and another Jewish scholar for correction, he had also taken the trouble to consult some suitable person who has English and not German for his mother tongue. Incidentally, we are curious to know what Hebrew words may lie behind such contraptions as ‘ethico-political’, ‘religio-spiritual’, ‘politico-material’, which creak at us from every other page.

Objector, with Fr Illtud Evans, O.P., as Moderator

moderator: I think it may be useful to begin our proceedings by saying a word or two about the form they are going to take. Tonight’s discussion is described as a ‘Medieval Disputation’, which may seem to suggest that its interest is only historical: the subject, I think you will agree, could hardly be more up-to-date. It is true that the Disputation was the normal method of formal argument in medieval universities—for that matter it still takes place every week as an ordinary academic exercise in every theological college of the Order of Preachers, to which Order, tonight’s disputants belong. The procedure is that a thesis is proposed, its terms of reference explained and an argument in defence of it is indicated. This is the work of the defender. The objector attacks the thesis in strict logical form, and so the argument proceeds—the defender conceding what he must and denying what he can. And all this is done with a strict regard for the rules of logical argument. At a later stage informal objections are put forward, and once more the defender’s business is to inspect them in terms of his thesis.

It is important to remember that a Disputation is not a debate. This is not a matter of two people arguing in defence of personal opinions: you must not suppose, for instance, that Fr Ian Hislop thinks that atomic war is justifiable and is prepared to go to any lengths in saying so. Nor is a Disputation a dispute: the courtesies that traditionally govern it are genuine and are a reminder that the passions are not meant to be engaged in objective reasoning.

Statements in physics are statements in physics. They are not statements connecting physical data with nonphysical conclusions.

Statements in physics are usually either true or false. Statements connecting physical entities with non-physical ones are usually neither true nor false but senseless.

Simple examples of such arguments can be taken from a field more limited and less involved than physics: elementary arithmetic.

Here, the statement 2 + 1 = 3 is true; the statement 2 + 1 = 4 is false; the statements 2+1 are green, or virtuous, or a solid body, are senseless.

This distinction is sometimes less obvious if the statement is given in the form of a conclusion. For example: if 1 + 2 = 3, then 2 + 4 = 6 is a true statement; if 1 + 2 = 3, then 2 + 4=7 is a false statement; if 1 + 2 = 3, then space has three dimensions, is a senseless statement, and it is senseless quite independent of the question whether space really has three dimensions or not.

Senseless statements of this type have been made regularly during the last half-century with reference to physical entities; and it is just these statements which have usually made the greatest impression on non-scientists, and even on occasions on scientists themselves. Thirty or forty years ago, when the phenomena of radioactivity were first investigated, it was found that it was not possible to predict whether a single defined particle of a radioactive material would decay within a given period, and that only statistical judgments could be made with precision.

This word is meant to imply that I cannot write here even a skeleton outline of the Saint’s life or of the history of the Society he founded; still, I must say something of the Saint if we are to judge whether his ‘Company’ has continued to live by his spirit.

The preface to the Saint’s life is medieval—a talented, versatile courtier-soldier, he fences, dances, writes and vividly illuminates love-lyrics but professes himself the devotee of some princesse lointaine . . . possibly as distant as an ideal in the skies? During the siege of Pamplona the garrison is for surrendering: Inigo remembers Aeneas—he was a dastard for abandoning Troy! They stay: but a cannon-ball dislodges a stone which injures Inigo’s left leg and, ricochetting, smashes the right. The courteous French send him home to Loyola: the bone is set, but badly. ‘Break it again!’ Inigo becomes delirious and is anointed, but a dream of St Peter cures him. Alas, a bit of bone still protrudes—how can he now wear silk stockings? ‘Saw it off!’ His brother, aghast, watches, and sees that Inigo must spend weeks racked on an iron frame. He asks for romances to distract him: but the grim castle has only some Lives of Saints. He thinks—‘What they could do, could not you?’ and forthwith dreams of what dress he shall wear when he meets his mistress; of the secret code in which they would correspond. But the Saints have won. Off he goes to Montserrat, makes a three days’ confession, and inspired (says he) by Amadis of Gaul, stands in night-long vigil before our Lady.

After four months’ tendance of the sick, the divine assault begins. He crawls into a cave four foot by nine at Manresa, and his soul is tom to shreds. ‘How shall I stand this life for forty years?... If I had to go to a dog’s whelp to cine me, I would do it.’ Violently tempted to suicide, he vows not to eat or drink till he has conquered: after a week his confessor refuses him absolution if he will not eat. He obeys; peace returns; then for another week he lies, to human eyes, unconscious.

The most recent pronouncement of the Holy See on the Ecumenical Movement is the Instruction of the Holy Office to Local Ordinaries of December 20, 1949. By its provisions Catholic ecumenical work, described in it as ‘reunion’ work, is safeguarded by cautionary measures and put under the direct supervision of the bishops, who are urged to give it prudent encouragement and direction, as a work which ‘should daily assume a more significant place within the Church’s pastoral care’. They are to appoint suitable priests, in each diocese, to make a special study of the movement and everything connected with it.

If any priest is contemplating the task laid upon him as a result of this directive, he cannot do better than make A History of the Ecumenical Movement the basis and starting point of his studies; a massively conceived and well planned volume of some eight hundred pages, written by fifteen experts in their respective subjects. Hardly an idea, event or person of ecumenical importance lacks at least a reference in these pages, and the full bibliography will give sufficient aid in following out a more complete study.

The volume falls into two distinct parts. The first comprises a history, from the Reformation onwards, of efforts by ecumenically minded persons to bring about the healing of schisms within Christendom. The second deals with the Ecumenical Movement proper; an organized movement expressing itself in World Conferences and culminating in the formation of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam in 1948.

In a book called Vatican Assignment, which is shortly to be published, I give an account, from some years of experience in Rome, of the establishment in 1914 and subsequent development of diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the Holy See. I also deal with several other related topics, social and political, such as American diplomatic relations during the nineteenth century, where I show that the American Government—then aloof from European politics—did not have to contend with the difficulties and prejudices which affected Great Britain during that period. The present article will be limited to giving a brief account of the most interesting attempts that were made, after the Reformation and before 1914, to bring about diplomatic contact, official or not, between Great Britain and the Vatican. In the space available it can be no more than an outline, but there is a mass of fascinating material available, must of it unused, some of it known only to specialist researchers, and I hope to be able to fill in the details in the fairly near future.

Most British and American visitors to Rome will be familiar with the church of San Gregorio, from the steps of which the Pope sent St Augustine to England on his mission in 596 A.D. In the forecourt of this church is the memorial tablet to Sir Edward Came, last British diplomatic envoy to the Holy See before relations were severed in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Thereafter, until James If's unhappy experience, the laws prohibiting foreign jurisdiction in either Church or state and establishing the Royal Supremacy in religion made illegal any link between London and Rome.

When I was asked to read a paper to this Society on some aspect of the Eastern religions I was glad to accept, not because I have the kind of scholarship I think would be necessary to speak about so vast a field, but because I have been engaged in what may be called the border- problems, the problems connected with the approach of a Thomist to the truths expressed in, e.g. the Hindu or the Moslem traditions, for some considerable time, and am quite sure that it would be a benefit to myself to discuss these problems in such company as this Society affords.

The plan of this paper has therefore two ends in view: to ventilate the problems connected with our approach to Eastern religions, and to attempt that approach in the case of some essential aspect of an Eastern tradition so that the discussion of the approach problem should not be left floating in the air. That appears to be the requirement of the task and I beg you to be patient with me, for it is nothing if not difficult.

The choice of Hinduism and, in particular, of the approach in the Vedanta to God as the Self, was made because it seems to me that this represents a key difficulty without tackling which one gets nowhere. It has the advantage of being so well known that little or no time need be spent in searching out and imparting information. We can set to work straight away in trying to understand what is known to everybody. From my own point of view I must broach this problem if I am to defend at all die position I am just about to outline in the approach of a Christian to other traditions.

The Holy See, ten years ago, re-established the Catholic hierarchy in China, shortly after the creation of the first Chinese cardinal, His Eminence Cardinal Thomas Tien. Three of the nineteen archbishops, including those of the capital, Nanking, and the national cultural centre, Peking, were native Chinese. Twenty-nine of the hundred and forty-five ecclesiastical territories (dioceses and apostolic prefectures) were governed by native Chinese.

A long, exhausting war had just ended; a war from which the nation had emerged morally enhanced but materially handicapped. The native clergy were comparatively numerous (2,500 priests) and able to assume ever-increasing responsibility. The missionaries who had been interned by the Japanese resumed their work with fresh enthusiasm and missionary reinforcements began to arrive. It was easy to imagine that the evangelization of China, whose population represents a quarter of humanity, would continue to receive the fullest support from nearly all missionary congregations and societies. The members of these missionary groups come from all the European countries, except the Orthodox ones, from North America, and even from South America (Colombia). The chances for the increase of Christianity seemed good, in spite of the civil war and the Communist occupation of vast northern and central areas where religious activity was restricted.