The gospel-text chosen for today’s feast (John 17, 9—19) gives us the interpretative key we need in order to understand what it was that motivated the life of St Thomas at the deepest level. It discloses the point of departure from which that life began to take on shape and form. ‘Consecrate them in the truth,’ says our Lord on the evening before his death. By this prayer of his, he transformed the Old Testament liturgy of reconciliation into that ‘liturgy’ of the New Testament which consists in the Lord’s own living and dying.

‘Consecrate them in the truth’. The word ‘consecrate’ is founded on the term sacer, ‘sacred’, and ‘the Sacred’ is the characteristic being of God, the untouchableness of his majesty. ‘Consecrate’ signifies: make man, this poor and finite creature, able to enter into contact with God in his immense glory. How can man dare to approach God, with impure hands lay hold on the Untouchable One, the Pure One, the Infinite? The world religions have created ritual systems in order to qualify man for dealing with the sacred so as to resolve the tragic enigma whereby man needs contact with God in order to live, and yet is incapable of bearing that light inaccessible.

When, at the end of January, the Vatican Justice and Peace Commission advised debtor countries of the Third World that they were not always morally obliged to repay their international creditors, the announcement did not set off even a tiny ripple in the world’s money markets. But when Reagan blunders yet again or Thatcher slips back in the opinion polls the major stock markets react nervously. The Church is somehow excluded; it does not play any role in the making of economic decisions, though, today, these so deeply influence our personal lives. And Vatican II’s Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes accepts at least one of the basic presuppositions of modern economics as a good one: progress ought to be made—albeit it ought to be made within the moral order and oriented to serve mankind. We can read subsections 64 and 65 as a criticism of the modern economic and social process, but at the same time they seem to approve fundamentally of what they criticise.

What the preachers, theologians and synods of 400 years ago had to say about economic practices seems to have had relevance. This is not to say that people did what they were told, but, even when they neglected Church warnings and prohibitions, at least they knew that they did so. Today economics is thought to be a science, a field reserved for experts only, an autonomous process clearly separated from the contents of the Christian tradition.

‘Your culture, which shows the lasting genius and dignity of your people, must not be allowed to disappear.’ With these words Pope John Paul II greeted the aborigines gathered to meet him at Alice Springs during his tour of Australia in November 1986.

The stance which the Pope took in giving his strong support to a minority ethnic group was in line with views he had expressed in other parts of the world, notably in the case of the Indians in Colombia earlier in the year, and on his visit to New Zealand, prior to his arrival in Australia, where he praised the values of the Maori culture. Both the Maoris and the aborigines of Australia had welcomed him with a lively and colourful display of traditional dance and song. These occasions would truly have amazed the missionaries of the last century, most of whom worked so hard to wean the peoples of their allotted territory from their native rites and customs.

Has the Church, then, been inculturated in these places? Has it accepted local cultural forms as expressions of Christianity? A beginning has been made, but complex questions remain. The Maoris were disappointed that they were not given their first Maori bishop. The aborigines cannot even boast a Catholic priest of their own race. Besides the theological issues, the question of separate church structures for different ethnic groups is under debate, complicated by the large numbers of mixed race people, who are not sure where they belong.

India had been exercising more and more of an attraction on me for some years, and I did occasionally wonder why this was so. Then I came across a saying of André Malraux to the effect that there is a secret India in the heart of each one of us. I began to realise why I was in India: I was exploring my own heart, yet, like Jung in regard to Africa, I needed the India without to bring out the contours of the India within. And this is in fact how my experience of India has gradually evolved: the outer world that now swam into my ken has helped to disclose new potentialities within myself.

At the same time I am also a child and representative of the European culture in which I was brought up, so the potentialities that India was opening up in me could also be those of my culture as a whole. And this is the spirit in which I offer these reflections from India: immediately they represent one person’s experience of getting in touch with new possibilities, ideas and directions, but, in so far as others who share my heritage can recognise themselves in what I say, they can serve as pointers to the way in which we might together help our Western society as a whole to direct itself anew.

During the 1970s, there appeared in New Blackfriars a series of articles on the theme of the relationship between Christianity and Marxism. The inspiration for this debate lay partly with those who had been involved with the journal Slant, which was published by Sheed and Ward between 1964 and 1970, and notably Terry Eagleton and Brian Wicker.

Although not covering very many pages put together, the New Blackfriars debate covered an enormous range of issues. However, from Denys Turner’s first article (1973) onwards, the concept of ideology was among the most prominent. This concept also played a major part in the more systematic argument developed by Turner in his subsequent book, Marxism and Christianity (1983b). My aim in this article is critically to defend Turner’s account as one which is still useful and relevant.

I will avoid discussing the question as to whether the use made of this central concept by Turner was really Marxist or not. Turner deliberately eschewed the question of labelling in his contributions to the debate, and Herbert McCabe, the editor of New Blackfriars, decided not to publish an article whose main aim was to show that Turner was not a real Marxist. In so far as the question is of relevance to him, Turner views Marxism as a tradition to be lived out in the form of a revolutionary praxis. Hence, therefore, an intellectual synthesis of Christianity and Marxism, even if it could be achieved, would be inadequate; what matters is that there should be a form of life which enables one to live out both traditions.