It is just fifty years since the inception of the liturgical movement associated with the great Benedictine abbey of Maria Laach in the Rhineland. What has come to be known as the theologia lacensis, the theology of Laach, is only the doctrinal side of a multiple appeal to the Catholic world to foster its truest insights, an appeal which goes out just as much in the way the monks worship in the ancient basilica and in the works of religious art that come from the ateliers. But whatever the place and importance of other aspects of this manifold undertaking, the theological ideas which derive from Maria Laach have proved by far its most decisive influence on the general life of the Church. The most characteristic of these ideas are those of Dom Odo Casel. Born at Coblenz in 1886, he entered the monastery in 1905 and was soon caught up in the liturgical and patristic research which was to form his life's work.

In the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and subdue i t … .

And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. (Gen. i. 27-8; 2. 23-5).

This was what daily life was to be for man, unfallen and unredeemed. Then man rebelled, trying to make himself independent of God, and succeeded only in making himself subject to his own weakness and dependent on the rest of creation.

By the end of bk vii Augustine has completed his original programme of first establishing the starting-point of faith—that is to say examining the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity in scripture—and then going on to justify it or account for it, against Arians and others, in the language of metaphysics and logic. His work is finished then, apparently, and yet he is still not halfway through. He gives us the key to his intentions in the short prologue to bk viii; he is going to go over the same ground all over again, but in ‘a more inward manner’, a characteristically Augustinian design. So far we have been considering the mystery of the Trinity objectively, as something ‘out there’, seen from the outside. But this can hardly satisfy us unless our interests are merely academic. We must find our way inside the mystery, and the way into God is into ourselves.

The publication of both volumes of Miss Trevor's Life of Newman together with the first two volumes of the definitive edition of his diaries and letters edited by Fr Stephen Dessain has brought much thinking about Newman out into the open. Reviewing Miss Trevor’s book, the Observer found Newman ‘somewhat unappealing’, ‘ambiguous’, ‘hard to pin down’, and ‘self-pitying’; but the most startling judgment was made at the conclusion of the Times’ review: Newman, we were told, ‘was not a lasting force like Fox or Wesley … It was his deepest convictions that were most antipathetic to what may broadly be called the English genius’. Miss Trevor has herself been criticized for bringing in too much everyday detail about, for example, Newman’s troubles with Faber and Dalgairns, for avoiding much of that treatment of Newman's ideas which is the special feature of the previous and still invaluable Life by Ward, and for making it plain that she believes Newman to have been right and Wiseman, Manning, Faber and Co., wrong.

You are a cosmopolitan citizen of the Mediterranean world (winter apartment in Alexandria) during the middle of the first century B.C. Your interests go as far as religion—scientifically considered, of course—and philosophy. Last year, in partial fulfillment of your curiosity's requirement, you walked down Crocodile Street to the Temple Beth-El bazaar and bought a handsome copy of The Wisdom of Solomon. It is there on your shelf now, but you haven't read it. Only the reviews. You had to confess that they left you—uncorseted, shall we say. For one thing, you didn't understand what Riphath ben Gomer meant by ‘midrash’ (though you had been reading midrashic pieces all through your Hebrew Great Books course). Secondly, the last thing you needed was a kosher potpourri.

In the collective worship of the Church we have the most profound expression of the life of the Christian community—it is easy to say this but much less easy to feel or observe it. It is widely acknowledged that there has been a drift away from any social significance in, for example, the mass. It is seen as an obligation, a slot machine service for the individual, a collective but hardly communal form of worship. Many people who are aware of this deplore such a state of affairs; others feel that this is the way it should be, it is efficient and suitably formal; still others feel that all is not well but dislike the proposed remedies more than the disease.

‘Relationship is the soul of casework’ says Fr Biestek at the beginning of his book on the Casework Relationship. The forming of relationships between persons is one of the basic necessities of life, for man was made a social being. Relationship comes into every sort of personal and social situation. Nevertheless, the use of relationship in a particular way and for a particular purpose is the essential and basic factor in social work. It is, as Fr Biestek says, the ‘soul’ of casework and without it social work would be lifeless and meaningless. The theory of relationship in social work has been analysed by some of the ablest thinkers in the social work field. My aim in this paper is not to recapitulate what is in the text books or to attempt to summarise the literature about relationship. To do this would be both boring and ineffective.

The infancy narrative of the third gospel, Luke I. 5—2. 52, is very different in character from that of the first gospel, longer, richer in allusions, written from a somewhat different angle, and using a different series of events. It goes without saying that the main explicit purpose of both is the same, to introduce the gospel narrative with an account of the origin of the Messiah: Jesus is the heir to the messianic kingdom, born miraculously of a virgin, and either by blood or by legal adoption a member of the royal line. But the divergences soon begin. In Matthew the principal actor is Joseph, in Luke, Mary. In Matthew, the story is one largely of danger and conflict, the infant Messiah is taken for refuge to a foreign land, gentiles acknowledge and protect him. In Luke the narrative is almost wholly joyous and he is acclaimed by representatives of his own people.

In spite of everything that has been achieved by the liturgical movement in this country, it still seems reasonable to ask whether it has in fact produced greater unity or greater disorder where public worship is concerned. Schools of thought have been formed within denominations, and across denominational barriers. While greater common understanding does exist, it may well confine itself to academic circles; to ordinary worshippers, the variety may appear as great as ever.

However that may be, all who are working in the liturgical field would probably at least agree that they are trying to make the public worship of their respective churches as full as possible an expression of the authentic Christian tradition. They would say also that the closer we approach to realizing that aim, the nearer we shall be to restoring the unity which we have lost.

It soon, emerges from any discussion about freedom of thought, with for example one's university colleagues, that the very idea of Catholics thinking freely still strikes many people as essentially funny. One quickly realises that many non-Christian intellectuals hold the view that Catholics are forbidden to think on pain of sin, heresy, excommunication and the whole apparatus of the Inquisition. But before discussing the peculiar difficulties of Catholics in this matter, I must say something in general about the meaning of freedom to think, asking the reader always to keep in mind its bearing on the particular problem of Catholic thought.

In order to consider whether we make the best use of the capacity for thought which we have (to which there are obvious limits set by native endowment both in the individual and in the species) it may be useful to establish the conditions in which thinking can occur at all.

The liturgy, or work, of the Church has two aspects under which, in the proper sense, we may regard it, and this because whilst Christ in physical body was incarnate as a single man, in his ecclesial body he some indwelling sense incarnate in many men, and these men, ‘the community of Christ's faithful’, perforce act sometimes individually and sometimes corporately. But whether acting corporately or individually, they must, as members of the Church, manifest the work of the Church. The solemnization of the liturgy, enacted corporately through the hallowed traditions and forms of public worship, is obverse of what is commonly called the private life of the individual Catholic.

'Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come’ (2 Cor. 5.17). ‘Neither circumcision or lack of circumcision means anything, but a new creation’ (Gal. 6. 15). Such is St Paul's clear teaching.

The life of a Christian is a new life, a new life in Christ and in the Spirit. We find this divine promise of a newness of life even in the Old Testament, in prophecies which can be said to have announced the mysteries of God's grace in a unique way. In Ezekiel God tells us about the last times, the days of Yahweh, the days in which he will manifest his glory, that is, his living presence among us in this world of ours, the days of the redemption in Christ. ‘Cast away from you all your transgressions, and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit’ (Ez. 18.31).

It is a curious fact that in the Codex Juris Canonici, the new canon law for the Latin Church promulgated in 1917, there is no mention whatever of hermits and recluses. In the official legislation for the ‘religious’ life today such persons are simply not considered or provided for. It is no reflection on the genius of the compiler of the Codex, Cardinal Gasparri, to consider this a regrettable omission. It merely reflects the existing state of affairs. Whereas in the Middle Ages hermits, anchorites, and anchoresses were a familiar part of the religious and social scenes, by the twentieth century (and much earner) they were barely a memory, best known perhaps from the romantic pages of the Gothic novelists, from Mrs Radcliffe to Sir Walter Scott.

Mgr George Talbot thought, in the last century, that the role of the layman was to hunt, fish and shoot and leave the running of the Church to the ecclesiastics. For better or for worse the laity are no longer fully occupied with these agreeable pursuits on their way to heaven and they have had to turn to more worldly affairs, acquiring on the way a variety of skills much needed in the service of the Church. At the same time, the laity have been able to measure the competence of ecclesiastics to manage worldly affairs and they have not invariably been impressed.

The three-penny Catechism of Christian Doctrine (1958 edition) has two questions, 29 and 30, on ‘the likeness to the Blessed Trinity in the soul’. They state that ‘there is this likeness to the Blessed Trinity in my soul; that as in one God there are three Persons, so in my one soul there are three powers. The three powers of my soul are my memory, niy understanding and my will’. This is an echo, but a seriously distorted one, of Augustine's teaching about the image in the De Trinitate, especially in books ix and x, which we will be examining in this article. The distortion is curiously ancient, not to say inveterate; it is to be found in the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the twelfth century work which was to remain the standard theological text-book of the schools of the sixteenth century and beyond, and although it was explicitly corrected by St Thomas, here it is, as brazen as ever, in the catechism of the twentieth century.

We all know that the essential element for a good confession is sorrow for sin, and it is a striking thought that ‘sorrow, in the Sacrament of Penance is as indispensible for the Sacrament as water is for Baptism, or as bread is for the Holy Eucharist'. We all connect baptism with water, but does the word ‘sorrow’ spring to our minds as easily when we speak of the sacrament of penance? It would seem not, for we speak of going to confession and of stressing the telling of the tale of our sins, yet without this interior attitude of sorrow and repentance there is no sacrament; the words of absolution are pronounced, but without sorrow they are not efficacious; no venial sin can be forgiven without repentance, no bishop, no pope can help. Even Christ himself cannot help us if we reject his offer. In this sacrament, therefore, it is the right attitude of repentance that is so important.

Reunion, is in the air today; in discussion in Church circles, in the press, on the radio and television, and even in the House of Lords. Among the non-Catholic Churches the last few years have seen schemes of reunion for South India, North India and Ceylon, and all these schemes show a readiness to examine established positions in the light of the present challenge to Christianity from atheism and materialism.

This drawing together of the non-Catholic Churches is comparatively recent, and is very largely the achievement of the Student Christian Movement and other inter-denominational societies that have made many of those who have worked with them impatient of the barriers that divide one denomination from another, particularly on the Mission Field. The result has been a growing awareness of the evils of division and of the damage done to the Christian cause in the eyes of the unbeliever.

The teaching profession has for a long time been recognized as a normal sphere of influence for women. But even among Catholics, teaching is too often considered as no more than a profession; in other words, simply a means of livelihood requiring a high degree of training or specialized knowledge. It is, in fact, very much more. At this time, when observations and educational theories are current subjects of interest and discussion, it is perhaps worth trying to make some assessment of the teaching vocation to which both lay women and teaching religious are called by God.

It is at last being recognized by both clergy and laity that in these days the term ‘vocation', for so long restricted to the meaning of a call to life in the cloister, has in fact a very much wider sense. Now it is understood, rather, as the call of God to the individual to follow a particular path that he reveals to them.

I am writing this article about the duty, as it is considered, of the pnest to visit in his parish. I take the title from what an excitable little girl exclaimed once at my entry. Her pert young mother's laughter, when she ran out to see who ‘on earth’ it was, and sat collapsed on the stairs, still jars in memory in my ear. I know I am not God, I mean. I don't know that it is quite so funny.

The subject of visiting does interest us all. It is part of ideal Catholic life: Father at home in the Catholic family, intimate with everyone, not only available in need as a close friend, but influencing all the time by his contact, towards good relations, better life, finer manners, more careful choice of career, deeper judgement in marriage; his very presence reminding of faith, restoring hope, inspiring love; counteracting the whole battery of trivial and stultifying fantasies current as so much of today's politics, literature and entertainment. One can hardly imagine full Catholic life without it.