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Justice, Peace and Dominicans 1216–1999: VIII‐Slant, Marxism and the English Dominicans

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Brian Wicker
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Dialogue between European Catholics and Marxists became significant in the 1960s and the English Province of the Dominicans had a major hand in its promotion. My personal memories of that episode focus upon three members of the Province in particular: Conrad Pepler, Laurence Bright and Herbert McCabe. Each had a distinctive contribution to make to the dialogue. But all shared one particular gift. They were enablers. In other words, each of them helped to make things happen, by encouraging others more directly involved than themselves to have their say. Conrad Pepler’s contribution was as the Warden of Spode House, the Dominican conference centre where much of the dialogue took place. He gave house room to the variegated groups who wanted to take part; and by standing back from the in-fighting he made the dialogue ‘fizz’. Laurence Bright was the organiser at the centre of the network, and it was he who brought people into contact with each other at the beginning, and saw to it that what they said got into print, in various books as well as in the pages of Slant. In the later phases of the dialogue Herbert McCabe, as editor of New Blackfriars, opened the pages of the periodical to the participants in such a way that they were able to conduct their dialogue at leisure and at suitable (sometimes excessive!) length in between the conference gatherings at Spode. He also made lapidary observations of his own in editorial comments.

Conrad Pepler was a child of the Eric Gill ‘Ditchling’ circle. As such he was familiar with the early Catholic peace movement. The Catholic PAX society had been started on 8th May 1936 by a small group including a recent Catholic convert from Wales, J. Alban Evans, who had experienced difficulties over the concept of ‘just war’ in Catholic thought until he read a book by the German Dominican, Franziskus Stratmann (a leader of the anti-war movement in Germany) called The Church and War. By June of that year, Eric Gill himself had taken an interest in the new group—and he of course was a Dominican Tertiary, as was Conrad’s father Hilary. So the Dominican influence on Catholic thinking about peace, and conscientious objection, was profound from the beginning.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 80 , Issue 944 , October 1999 , pp. 436 - 443
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 A precursor of the 1960s dialogue may be found in the book by J.M. Cameron entitled Scrutiny of Marxism, published in 1948 by the SCM Press in their ‘Viewpoints’ series. Professor Cameron, who later became the first Catholic holder since the middle ages of a chair in philosophy in a British university (Leeds) was a pre‐war communist who had become a Catholic. His book was a dialogue in his own head between the two allegiances. It contains an extended discussion of Marxist ethics‐a topic which was to become central to the later dialogue.

2 Not surprisingly, J. Alban Evans eventually became Fr. Illtyd Evans OP.

3 See Cunningham, Adrian, ‘The December Group: Terry Eagleton and the New Left Church’, in The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, (Blackwell, Oxford, 1991). Vol. 1, pp. 210–215Google Scholar.

4 Humanae Vitae did not appear until 1968.

5 See Slant 9 (June/July 1966) pp. 16–17

6 For some details, see Garaudy, Roger, From Anathema to Dialogue (London, Collins, 1967) pp. 28–30Google Scholar. Slant published two substantial articles by George Vass SJ on Christian/Marxist dialogue in Europe in Nos. 18 (December 1967/January 1968) pp. 3–10 and 19 (February/March 1968) pp. 25–30.

7 See Laurence Bright OP, ‘Teilhard: a suitable case for dialogue?’ in Slant 24 (March 1969) pp. 13–16. It should also be mentioned that in Slant 12 Laurence Bright had contributed an article on ‘Priests and the university’, following up work done by a sister organisation, the ‘Downside Symposium’ under the leadership of John Coulson of Bristol university.

8 See Slant 11 (October/November 1966) p. 25 and Slant 12 (December 1966/January 1967) p. 24.

9 Man, Culture and Christianity, (London, Sheed and Ward, 1967)Google Scholar

10 Slant 13 (February/March 1967) and Slant 14 (April/May 1967).

11 Birth Regulation and Catholic Belief, (London, Sheed and Ward, 1967)Google Scholar.

12 Slant 29 (January 1970) p. 7. A useful account of Slant and its achievement, by Alan Wall, was published in New Blackfriars, Vol. 66 No. 666 (November 1975) pp. 506–516 under the title ‘Slant and the Language of Revolution’.

13 Terry Eagleton's final editorial in No. 30 mentions five, but there were several others which bore Laurence's trademark, as the Slant chronology indicates.

14 This debate in New Blackfriars lasted from February 1973 to April 1978. The items included were as follows: Denys Turner, ‘Morality is Marxism’ (February 1973 and March 1973) and ‘Can a Christian be a Marxist?’ (June 1975); Brian Wicker, ‘Marxists and Christians: Questions for Denys Turner’ (October 1975); Terry Eagleton, ‘Marxists and Christians: Answers for Brian Wicker’, also October 1975; Brian Wicker, ‘Sincerity, Authenticity and God’ (May 1976); Francis Barker, ‘The Morality of Knowledge and the Disappearance of God’ (September 1976); Terry Eagleton, ‘Marx, Freud and Morality’ (January 1977); Brian Wicker, ‘Marxist Science and Christian Theology’ (February 1977); Denys Turner, ‘Marxism, Christianity and Morality: Replies to Francis Barker and Brian Wicker’ (April 1977); Francis Barker, ‘Science and Ideology’ (October 1977); Dick Lobel, ‘Giving Away Power’, (January 1978); Denys Turner, ‘The “Subject” and the “Self: A Note on Barker's Cartesianism’ (March 1978); Brian Wicker, ‘God” and Ideology’ (April 1978).

15 Especially Law, Love and Language (London, Sheed and Ward, 1968)Google Scholar.

16 See John Lewis, in Dialogue of Christianity and Marxism (London, Lawrence and Wishart 1968) p. 5Google Scholar.