Little Tom is trying to watch the TV, but his even smaller sister Naomi, will not stop walking between him and the screen. Here is a conflict. How is it to be solved? Tom can slap Naomi, but it is very likely that a row will develop that will end up with both of them being packed off to bed. Or he may call in the strong arm of one of his parents, but—though Tom may not realize it—this could be a dangerous course too: his parents may disagree with each other and the conflict could spread. Even end in divorce! Or Tom could find himself having to accept a compromise for which he will have to pay either now or later. In fact he does not hesitate a moment: he knows what to do. He gets up and starts playing with his sister’s doll. Naomi, seeing this, runs to her doll, and Tom can go back to the TV to watch his favourite programme in peace.

All of us, children and adults, often make use of the same strategem, especially in our love affairs. We all know how hard it can be to resist desiring what somebody else, or some other group, much desires, and to resist wanting what others have. The Falklands became important for the British people immediately the Argentinians commandeered them; and, because they were British-occupied, the Argentinians had for many decades desired them. In that case the conflict got out of hand and exploded into violence.

The English Dominican Father Romuald Horn, who here, on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination, reflects on what the priesthood means for him, spent many years of his life as a priest in the once famous parish of St Dominic’s, Newcastle upon Tyne (which in his early days contained some of the most deprived parts of Tyneside.) He is now a confessor at the Basilica of St Mary Major, Rome.

A golden jubilee is not an occasion for argument. If fifty years are not reason enough, it would seem useless to look further. For one can speak with the tongue, and one can say a word with one’s whole life. Even to change one’s mind after so long a time, impressive as it may be, doesn’t get rid of fifty years easily. In particular the golden jubilee of a priest contains a whole life, and a long one, because ordination comes at the beginning of maturity. Argument is still more out of place, because the priest is a minister, a servant. It is for his Lord to judge, not for himself. This is the true judgment, which the Lord will deliver at his own chosen time, a judgement which may not be anticipated. It remains for the minister to pass judgment on his ministry from his own point of view, as servants may compare one master with another, and one condition of service with alternative employment. This is what I am endeavouring to do now in this year of my golden jubilee, 1985.

Peter Hebblethwaite New Blackfriars December 1984 p. 499

Perhaps one of the most rewarding things to remember when one is playing with ideas is that nothing remains as it is for very long, and, what is rather more awkward, just as ideas are soon outmoded and superseded, so too the nature of the problems with which we are engaged changes before our very eyes. It is as if the entire process is taking place on a cinema screen where the credits continuously merge into new lines.

Even the apparently successful outcome of some process of study or legislation can be seen in the long run to have produced not so much a final answer as a formidable tariff of new problems. Medical science’s ability to reduce infant mortality and prolong the average expectation of life has created a situation in which—were it to be taken seriously—the Church’s traditional pastoral and moral teaching, with its primitive emphasis on fertility, would be a serious threat to the future. Recent matrimonial legislation to improve the position of women has been so successful that further legislation is now urgently required to protect not only husbands, but the unfortunate wives of second alliances. In the early years of this century it would have been impossible for pioneers in the Labour Movement to foresee that within a man’s lifetime the power of the unions mobilised for sectional self-interest under the laissez-faire banner of ‘free collective bargaining’ would play a decisive role in destroying a Labour government.

One of the characteristics of western middle class men and women in the latter half of the twentieth century is a form of quiet cynicism. We do not wish to give credence to anyone else any longer. We have shut the door to those who would give us dreams of a better world, and are usually quite happy, even at times quite determined, to dig our own back gardens. We have, in fact, seen the rise and fall of too many heavenly cities for us to wish to build any more. Fanaticism of any kind is definitely a non-starter. One might have thought that this insularity was a particularly English disease brought about by loss of empire and the apparent failure of post-war social optimism, but it is also a disease of each western nation. It is often codified into political form by the new right or into religious form by the moral majority, but it derives, essentially, from a form of quiet, despairing selfprotectionism, resignation; a belief, if it can be adorned with that word, that nothing very much more can be done. All that can be done now, it is felt, is that people should cultivate their own situation. Religion is therefore understood as that which reinforces the sense of the individual’s importance in the face of social and cosmic collapse. The church is the last refuge for those suffering from anomie, and faith gives the individual hope in the face of darkness. Church study groups, when asked what signs of hope there are in the world, answer that there are none, apart, perhaps, from the odd place like Iona or Taize which the middle classes treat like tourist attractions rather than a places for renewal.