Newman complains of Catholic preachers that they think it their duty to give a bird's-eye view of Christianity in every sermon, and never to expound one truth without bringing in every counterbalancing consideration and saving clause. To apply such a method to the subject of Newman's influence in the second half of the twentieth century would be fatal! He lived so long, he touched life at so many points, he anticipated so many of the best movements in the Church today, that there would be no ending. The biblical and patristic movement, the ecumencical movement, the Catholic intellectual and university movement, the concrete and real approach in philosophy, the lay movement—all these, and much else owe a debt to Newman. This article will limit itself to Newman's connection with the lay movement, and will outline his views as to place of the laity in the Church.

We are known as an organization holding an easily definable body of ideas as indisputable, ideas, which, on the whole, are unacceptable to many intelligent people. We are also seen as something like a series of pressure groups in trade union, political and social spheres; but it is felt our pressure is just to get something or other stopped. Where people are aware of the existence of educated and intelligent Catholics, their Catholicism is regarded as an aberration that can be discounted. If it is remarked upon at all, it is seen as a matter for surprise that X is a Catholic. This is such a universal state of affairs, that a consideration of why this should be the case is not utterly out of place. One does in fact often come across appeals to make some sort of self-examination, and having done it to go out and become a better Catholic cricketer.

In order to talk theologically about sex, we have to look at the place which sex has in the divine plan, in the revelation of God. It might be imagined that we could explain what God has revealed to us about sex so that we could compare or contrast it with what Freud or D. H. Lawrence or Dr Kinsey has to say about sex. But this would not be quite accurate: what we want to discover is not what God says about sex, but what sex as interpreted by the Old Testament, by Christ and by the sacraments, has to show us about God.

We may begin with a poem which has been inserted at the very beginning of the Bible. Its opening lines give us the theme of the poem ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ It is to be a poem about what creation means.

The traditions about the birth of St John the Baptist enshrined in St Luke's gospel would appear to have come from a Hebrew source, and they correspond to a literary type, we might almost say a theme, which recurs in the Old Testament. John, or ‘the Lord gives grace’ was a child of divine promise, born of aged parents against all expectation. The scriptures had already told how Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah, and told too of how an angel appeared to announce the birth of Samson. Whereupon Samuel was born in answer to prayer, to put an end to a would-be mother's anguish, and above all to be a prophet in the great designs of God. Jeremiah, we read, was sanctified from his mother's womb. All this, and more, in the scriptures prepared for, and pointed to, the precursor and herald of the saviour.

One of the recurrent objections to Christianity, from the time when, as St John records, many disciples forsook our Lord because he said he would give us his flesh to eat, is that it is materialist, and the objectors wish the materialistic lumps could be strained out of the soup, which would then be a pure nourishment, suited to the most delicate digestion. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Christianity is not a mass of facts from which we can pick what we like and reject the rest, but an organic whole, and that truth is bound to present some difficulties to human minds, it may be worth considering what revelation has to tell us about matter.

Obviously to material beings such as ourselves the subject is meaningful. he world confronts us as a reality: so does our own flesh.

There is a growing appreciation among the Catholic laity that their task in the world is the doing of God's work in and through the work of the world. In other words Christ's life must be actualised by the members of his body through a full participation in the life of the world. The constant narrowing of distance, wider horizons and the increasing independence of former dependant peoples are giving worldwide dimensions not only to problems of politics, economics and sociology, but also to the life of the Church.

Nearly thirty years ago the founders of Ad Lucem were already thinking along these lines. They saw the needs of the under-developed countries of the world, which includes two-thirds of its peoples, and they wanted desperately to help these areas in some way. This was long before current international thinking had begun; long before the idea of the United Nations Organization, and the world's consciousness of to the poverty of the under-developed countries.

Jesus, in the days of his earthly life, with a loud cry and tears, offered up prayers and supplications to him who was able to save him from death, and was heard because of his reverent submission'. (Heb. 5. 7). Thus writes St Paul of the prayer and agony of Christ in the garden.

Notice that St Paul does not say that Jesus prayed to be saved from death. but to ‘him who was able to save him from death'. For what, then, did he pray, if not to be saved from death; St Catherine of Siena gives an answer to this question which at first surprised her spiritual director, Blessed Raymond of Capua. But after hearing Catherine's further explanation, Raymond could say only: ‘I kept silent, and simply admired the grace and wisdom she had received from God'. (Raymond of Capua, St Catherine of Siena New York: p. 147).

St Irenaeus, with whom Hilary of Poitiers has much in common, says: ‘No doubt there are many tongues spoken throughout the world, but the strength of tradition is one and the same … for as one and the same sun, created by God, shines throughout the world, so the light of truth shines everywhere, enlightening all who wish to know it'. St Hilary is one of the first saints in the calendar on January 14th, perhaps because his very name is in keeping with the joy of that season of the year, reflected from the coming of Christ anew each Christmas.

He can be a model for Christians of whatever kind. He was a married Man, yet his life was as austere as a monk's. He was a bishop and champion of truth, an exile and refugee, a writer and theologian; active all his life, yet deeply contemplative.