The title of this paper would appear to suggest that it belongs to a fairly familiar area of discussion in the philosophy of religion – the discussion of ‘religious language’ – to which the late Bishop of Durham, Dr Ramsey, made many notable contributions. The appearance is somewhat misleading. Of come the present paper must clearly be concerned with religious language; but the centre of its concern is not religious language in general but in particular the language which it is the business of the Christian theologian to interpret, in the first place Biblical language, and in the second place the language of interpretation itself, theological language. Even this formulation – religious language in general, bibliqal and theological language in particular – might be misleading if it were taken to imply simple inclusion. It may turn out that the apparently broader, more fundamental discussion of religious language relies in fact on assumptions which are open to criticism deriving from the apparently narrower and secondary discussion of biblical and theological language.

“Christian socialism is,” according to Karl Marx, “but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart burnings of the aristocrat”. As always Marx had an element of truth. In the generation before the appointment of Henry Manning to the See of Westminster, British Catholic social concern, if not aristocratic, was undoubtedly paternalist in character. The faults are obvious but alternative strategies in the grim reality of mid-nineteenth century Britain are less apparent. In the prevailing social and economic condition of British Catholics, any immediately effective alternative strategy would be hard to imagine. On these foundations, Cardinal Manning was to build his much publicised social concern and within the Catholic community, these limited, paternalistic ideas of reform were to persist long after the social and economic condition of the laity had changed beyond recognition. In both phases, the paternalist and the socialist, the peculiar condition of the Scottish Catholic community produced imaginative lay responses: Robert Monteith and John Wheatley were indicative.

The traditional interpretation of British Catholic social concern has invariably stressed the role of Cardinal Manning. His social interest is contrasted with the more severe intellectual approach of Newman: immediate pastoral considerations defeated longer term interests. Though Manning’s original contribution might be challenged, he remains of great stature. Even in Derek Holmes More Roman than Rome: English Catholicism in the Nineteenth Century. (1978), the relative position of the two men, Manning and Newman, is well portrayed and central. But whichever personality attracts our sympathy and wins our support, they are both clerics.

Latin America in recent years has presented the world with a new development language and by the same token a new concept of Development. In an effort to disassociate themselves from the inadequacies of past development thinking, the term “development” itself has been dropped in favour of “liberation”. The proponents of such a change have been led as much by reflection on their own experience at grass roots level, as by the influence of such thinkers as Teilhard de Chardin, Fanon, Marcuse, Mao Tse Tung, Nyerere, Guevara and the Gospels as one would expect in the case of Bishop Camara and theologians such as Guttierez and Segundo. Even the works of one of the main exponents of this trend, Paolo Freire, although not making direct allusion to Gospel texts, uses a language steeped in Christian and evangelical culture.