Some people think that what is called the First Epistle of St Peter is not a letter but an address given by the leader of the first Christian bishops to a group of men and women who had just been baptized. Certainly a good deal of it is devoted by St Peter to an explanation of what it means to have become a Christian:

It is a reasonably fair statement to say that much of the suspicion with which the laity are regarded by many of the clergy is a hangover from the Catholic suspicion of Protestantism with its emphasis upon lay participation and its origins in lay protest. The Catholic student who wishes to understand the place of the laity in the Roman Church is faced with no easy task; he finds himself on the frontiers of Catholic theology in which even theologians as eminent as Congar and Rahner are unable to provide him with a clear and unambiguous analysis.

Perhaps the most attractive quality of Hopkins’ poetry is the total commitment to the seriousness of man in the world of God. Hopkins is never content to accept things as they seem, he is always seeing then1 anew as they are. In the working out of his Christian vocation as priest and Jesuit he found the deep-down truth of things in their enjoyment of Christ:

A similar Ignatian response with the fulness of man, in every sense, to the oneness of Christ, is manifest in the work of Professor Karl Rahner. Rahner too has the feel of all things working together for good, even when we and they appear most eunuch-like. This is evident in the group of papers issued in English as Mission and Grace.

We can only rejoice that after the turn taken by the second Vatican Council during its first phase we may justifiably hope for greater freedom for what is, somewhat erroneously, called the ‘new theology’. In an earlier article I have already commented on that aspect of the Council. Since then I have given some thought to related aspects of the Council.

When we examine more closely the speeches of the council fathers in St Peter's we have to admit that some of the utterances of the socalled ‘open wing’ strike us as less felicitous, and such as might evoke, during the second phase of the Council, reactions of a kind that could easily cause confusion in the ranks of this ‘open wing’.

In this series of articles I have been considering different aspects of the Church, in particular seeing how it is constituted by the sacraments. In this final article I shall look at the theology of death, judgement, and the life to come, in order to set out the end for which the Church exists. Christians and humanists are in agreement about so much—at any rate one kind of Christian and one kind of humanist are in agreement about so much, that it is worth while pointing to an issue which absolutely divides them. It seems to me that the opposition between the two views of man is most sharply brought out in their attitudes towards death. You may feel this is an unfair choice of battlefield because in tact humanists hardly have an attitude to death. They haven't thought much about it, whereas Christians have thought rather a lot about it. But this very fact is the first point of difference between us: Christians think that nothing in life matters more than death, whereas humanists don't attach any special significance to it.

Whenever we talk of the missions we must begin with the mission of Christ: As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And we must recognise at the start that the missionary is not a public relations officer for any system, or government, or way of life, but a man sent by God, a man who is to be himself a true imitation of Christ. Writing to the Philippians, Paul described the nature of the mission of Christ, what it meant for Christ:

Anyone who undertakes seriously to interpret the scriptures must be constantly aware that behind the words confronting him on the Bible page lie three distinct, though closely inter-connected realities: first, the historical objects and events about which the biblical authors are speaking, second the biblical authors themselves, and the communities which they may be supposed to have been addressing in all the complexities of their historical environment, third the actual concepts and words in which the biblical authors formulate the divine meaning which they have perceived.

In the preamble to its Constitution on the Liturgy, the second Vatican Council has clearly established the place of liturgical reform within that framework of the Church's inner renewal which is the Council's primary concern. ‘The sacred Council has for its aims the daily reinvigoration of the Christian life of the faithful, the better adaptation to the needs of our own time of those institutions that are subject to change, the fostering of everything that can contribute to the union of those who belief in Christ, and the strengthening of all that can call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church. For those reasons the Council considers it has a special obligation to undertake the reform and promotion of the liturgy.’

In the introduction to Theology and the University John Coulson writes ‘… we ask for a laity better educated in their religion.’ The Old Testament is the soil from which that religion sprang: it will not be necessary to have to justify its inclusion in any syllabus for lay religious education. Anyone who honestly tries to penetrate into a field of study quickly realises how vast it is and how little he knows about it; this is particularly true of the Old Testament, but before I say why I think this is so I want to tell you why I am speaking to you about it. It is not because I claim any particular knowledge of the Old Testament but because I am a student of it and have tried to teach others about it, from eleven-year olds to theological students and ordinary lay people.

As s Priest, with the small authority of a priest that can be humbly accepted by higher authority, or quietly ignored, I should like to submit proposals for the form our celebrating mass might now take. To suggest changes at all, without offence, is difficult. All likely readers of this page will know the mass as an important, cherished and familiar ceremony in its present form, with roots deep in feelings and imagination, the sense of history and art, one's Catholic upbringing and loyalty. A whole tissue of potent, unrealised emotion attaches to the tiniest details and circumstances, making us shudder to think of change for the sake of change, or of any 'Playing about'. Brother Choleric's tense, aristocratic, is intellectual nun, hands up in revulsion at the mention of dialogue mass, is so funny because so true—of us all.

The headway of reform in English-speaking Cathohcism owes a great deal to the intrepidity of Fr Hans Küng's publishers. The spectacular popularity of The Council and Reunion, the paperback which made his name, demonstrated his charismatic audacity in bringing out into the open what a vast number of reflective Catholics had long been nervously and fumblingly trying to articulate for themselves. Of course extravagant claims have been made for him: he is not the long-awaited new Aquinas nor the anti-Christ. He is a hardworking theologian with some good ideas, as the only two major studies he has so far written bear witness. The first of these is Rechtfertigung (1957), a confrontation of Karl Barth's doctrine of justification with Catholic teaching; and the second is Strukturen der Kirche (1962), an attempt to situate the papacy with regard to the episcopal college and the general Council inside the mystery of the Church. Neither of these books is yet available in English.