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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 August 2024
English Catholics today are facing a serious balance-of-payments crisis, Publishers’ lists carry a large number of translations of theological books from the continent, and it is hard to think of more than a handful of English theological works, except, of course, Newman's, which have been exported. Honest to God has just appeared in the German book-shops, and of course one can always buy the novels of Muriel Spark, Graham Greene, and Bruce Marshall. It will take some time before our imports stimulate a spirit of renewal strong enough to produce a comparable movement that can make its own export contribution. But the recent interest in imported books is a welcome sign of the breakdown of English isolationism.
1 The Art Of Teaching Christian Doctrine, by J. Hofinger; Sands and Co Ltd. 18s. Fr Hofinger, it will be remembered, was the editor of the addresses made at the Eichstätt Conference which appeared here as Teaching All Nations: a Symposium on Modern Catechetics. (Herder 1961). An extensive review of this important book appeared in Life Of The Spirit, Jan., 1962. In it I raised most of the problems which I am dealing with here in a different form.
2 We had to wait till 1961 for a translation of this important work. It appeared as The Good News and its Proclamation (New York, Sadlier).
3 The fact that some Catholic writers have complained that Pope John XXIII's encyclical Mater et Magistra lays too great weight on the importance of society to the detriment of family tends to indicate that a considerable shift in emphasis has been made. In his commentary on this encyclical (Die Sozialenzyklika Papst Johannes’ XXIII) (Herder) Fr Eberhard Welty OP admits the shift and rejects the complaint.
4 Cf a new book by Friedrich Hahn—Modern Literatur im kirchlichen Unterricht. Religious instruction must have a firm biblical centre which is related to the real life of our times. This life finds its shape particularly in contemporary literature’. It goes on in this spirit to analyse works by Camus, Brecht, Sartre, Graham Greene and Kafka.
5 The recent collection of reactions to Hochhuth's Representative in the Rowohlt paperback—Summa Iniuria oder Durfte der Papst schweigen?—indicates that German Catholics have understood this point in a much more authentic fashion than Catholics in other lands in which the play has been presented.
6 A recent article in the magazine Stern publishes some pretty depressing figures about the percentage of German Catholics that take advantage of higher education. It goes on to suggest that Catholics in Germany have still to over-come a suspicion that higher education is ‘socialist’, ‘liberal’, ‘scientific’, ‘progressive’ and therefore unbecoming for Catholics.
7 A Short Bible arranged by Austin Farrer (Fontana Books 2s. 6d.). makes just this sort of intelligent theological selection from the Bible. The admirable introduction discusses the problem of selection and would be particularly helpful to teachers who are trying to work out this problem.
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