Of course others have faced this problem, and found their answer. It would be wanton, spiritual arrogance for the author in his academic seclusion to suggest otherwise. Yet sometimes, as he lays aside one or other of the various handbooks of Christian reconstruction with which the market is flooded in these days, a horrid doubt crosses his mind which passes into a nightmarish sense of unreality. We draught our charters, we hold our luncheons, we address our public meetings. We go to the world outside the conference-hall door with a smile, with a handbook, nearly always with a sense of assurance Again, we search the Scriptures not that we may have life, but that we may find a slogan for a Christian mass-movement, in which the demands ot the platform will blunt the sharpness of our truly Christian perception. Our attitude seems sometimes a curiously sorry compact of assurance and desperation. We are assured because we think we have a solution for the frightful torments of the present; we are afraid because we see the dreadful possibility that men will not listen to us, may in fact opt finally for other gods.

Is this altogether unfair? The picture is not intentionally spiteful. But there are moments when it seems hard to escape the conviction that some contemporary forms of Christian social activity are little less than highly subtle forms of escapism. They are ‘idealist’ in the sense assigned to that term by Marxist writers, for they rest on unconscious desire to escape the pressing demand to wrestle with social actualities in the here and now by passing into a world that analysis points out to be one of ideas only.

There is a form of truth known as calumny.’ This howler appeared in the first Editorial of Blackfriars. The Editor, Father Bernard Delany, followed up by Father Vincent McNabb in the first article, was expounding ‘Our Aim of Truth’. The slip was quite out of keeping with Father Bernard’s character and its like never recurred while he was Editor. If he had a fault it was excessive caution born of selfdistrust. It used to be said of him that when he came to be beatified the Breviary would have to admit ‘Nimis demisse reputabat de se’. To us, his contemporaries, this initial slip seemed a cruel misfortune, a quite unnecessary manoeuvre by his heavenly patrons to safeguard his modesty. We feared it might discourage him and intensify his habitual shyness of publicity. The way his lapse was brought home to him made that the more likely.

Six of us, at least, were given his leader to revise. It must have been over-confidence in his diffidence that blinded us, for we saw nothing wrong. Nor, as far as we knew, did anyone else, until James Britten opened his copy of the Review. Britten, then a peppery old gentleman and a militant convert of many years standing, was joint founder of the Catholic Truth Society, which at that date was in the early stages of a post-war ‘Forward Movement’. He was learned, and zealous for the exaltation of Holy Church and the overthrow of her enemies. He was also incapable of silence or of keeping out of print when anything called for contradiction or correction.

Eschatology has found new respect at the heart of theology in the course of the twentieth century. The cross of Christ as a source, subject and description of soteriological concentration has secured a central place in the work of theology in recent decades. More remarkable is the communion of soteriology and eschatology, yielding an emphasized eschatology of the cross, still fresh in contemporary theology. The development of this vision in theology is particularly instructive in the work of five renowned theologians: Moltmann, Kasper, Ratzinger, Küng and von Balthasar.

In 1960 Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote that eschatology is the “sign of the times” of contemporary theology. That significance has strengthened in the passing of over thirty years. The work of many theologians demonstrates the truth of this and one of those most active in the breaking of the eschatological silence is the German theologian, Jürgen Moltmann.

This article reviews the church and culture relationship developed in Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium and proposes a Catholic account of modernity as a way in which the contemporary mission of the church in today's culture can be creatively and faithfully carried forward. After an initial outlining of the definitions of church and culture proposed by the Vatican documents, I then go on to position my proposal of a Catholic modernity in relation to some important current accounts of the church and culture relationship that tend towards a rejection of secular culture. I argue that Protestant accounts of modernity have dominated in philosophical and sociological theories and draw on my previous work on Max Weber to illustrate the significance of this for developing a Catholic account of modernity. I conclude by sketching some of the important issues which would need to be addressed in formulating a systematic account of a Catholic modernity.

Perhaps the most crucial single utterance of the Second Vatican Council, at least in terms of impact on our shared experience as Catholics, occurs at paragraph 14 of the Council’s constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. This was the first of the conciliar documents to be promulgated, and in many ways its most bloodily contested production. The paragraph in question runs like this:

“Full, conscious and active participation”, pastoral energy and liturgical pedagogy: these were momentous notions, laden with an agenda whose implications were sketched out in the rest of the document, and which were embodied in the reforms which followed. The summons to “active participation”, indeed, a phrase which occurs sixteen times in all, was singled out subsequently as the main refrain of the document.

In order to understand what St. Thomas means by affective knowledge ‘or knowledge by ‘inclination ‘or ‘connaturality,’ something must first be said of what he understands by ‘knowledge,’ and what by ‘affect,’ ‘inclination,’ or ‘connaturality.’ Readers will not expect in this short article a full and detailed account, let alone a justification, of St. Thomas’s theory of knowledge and of appetite. A brief survey of some salient points such as is required for our present purposes is all we shall attempt; and to obviate the necessity of explaining St. Thomas’s medieval terminology we shall frankly paraphrase his thought in less unfamiliar language. Those readers who wish to study the matter further in St. Thomas’s own words will find at the end of the article a selection of ‘readings ‘in which they may investigate the various points raised.

St. Thomas’s account of the nature of knowledge is much more ‘phenomenological ‘than is often supposed by those who have not studied him closely. Nothing could be further from the truth than that St. Thomas’s epistemology is based on an a priori ‘ faculty psychology,’ or that he short-circuits the ‘critical problem ‘of knowledge by unwarranted assumptions based on illegitimate abstractions. It is a first principle with St. Thomas (as it had been with Aristotle) that potencies can be affirmed only as inferences from actualities; and” the whole structure of his ‘faculty psychology ‘(if such it can indeed be called) is based on a thoroughgoing empiricist scrutiny of the ‘given ‘fact of knowledge.

How the valley awakes. At two fifteen in the morning there are no sounds except in the monastery: the bells ring, the office begins. Outside, nothing, except perhaps the bullfrog saying ‘Om’ in the creek or in the guest house pond. Some nights he is in Samadhi, there is not even ‘Om'. The mysterious and uninterrupted whooping of the whippoorwill begins about three, on spring mornings. He is not always near. Sometimes there are two whooping together, perhaps a mile away to the woods in the east.

The first chirps of the waking day-birds mark the point vierge of the dawn under a sky as yet without real light, a moment of awe and inexpressible innocence, when the Father in perfect silence opens their eyes. They begin to speak to him not with fluent song but with an awakening question that is their dawn state, their state at the point vierge. Their condition asks if it is time for them to ‘be'. He answers ‘yes’. Then, they one by one wake up, and become birds. They manifest themselves as birds, beginning to sing. Presently they will be fully themselves, and will even fly.

Meanwhile, the most wonderful moment of the day is that when creation in its innocence asks permission to ‘be’ once again, as it did on the first morning that ever was.

All wisdom seeks to collect and manifest itself at that blind sweet point. Man's wisdom does not succeed, for we are fallen into self-mastery and cannot ask permission of anyone.

‘Being as communion’ is a phrase that evokes the name of only one person, that of Bishop John D. Zizioulas. It is first and foremost within the context of the Trinity that Zizioulas elaborates his understanding of this concept. Moreover, from his trinitarian understanding of ‘being as communion’ Zizioulas has also elucidated a distinctive understanding of creation, Christology, Christian anthropology, ecclesiology, the Eucharist and eschatology. In so doing Zizioulas has made significant and insightful contributions to Christian theology. I cannot comment on the whole of Zizioulas’ thought in so short an essay, but I would like to examine briefly the topic that interests me the most — the Trinity. I want to highlight the strengths of Zizioulas’ conception of the Trinity as well as to note those aspects that I believe demand greater clarity. In attempting to clarify the ambiguities I will also offer a few suggestions as to how Zizioulas’ trinitarian thought might be further enriched. In the light of all of the above I will conclude by offering some thoughts on advancing ecumenical relations among Eastern and Western theologians.

There was a day when you could have heard it said that theologians knew nothing about the liturgy, and conversely, that liturgists knew very little theology. That misinformed attitude has disappeared, and it is now recognized that theological and liturgical studies enrich and complement one another. There cannot be two Gods—one for theologians, another for liturgists. The Church simultaneously instructs our minds through dogma and our hearts through symbol. The liturgy would be no more than exaggerated drama without roots deep in the truths theology defends and explains; and were it not for the living contact with Truth found in the liturgy, theology would be only an elaborate system of religious mathematics.

One consequence of this necessary and dynamic interaction between theology and the liturgy is that many of the problems encountered in the worship of God find their solution in theological principles.

The documents that represent Catholic Social Teaching are primarily papal and clerical. Following the approach of Herbert McCabe that CST is not a body of doctrine but is a response to concrete social circumstances, this paper notes the absence of serious engagement with the Bible in CST and particularly the teaching of Jesus. Using two parables as paradigms, we can see that Jesus was using the social and economic circumstances of his day to provoke debate and an imaginative response that might lead his listeners towards the kingdom of God. In developing the current state of CST, the Church must draw on the practical wisdom of already existing Church groups and must collaborate with groups outside the Church.

Three times in the last seventy years, a major encyclical has been devoted primarily to economic and social questions. Each has made its contribution to the social doctrine of the Church, setting forth the moral principles which should govern economic and social relationships, drawing attention to the chief social evils of the day, and suggesting the general lines of reform. The latest of these encyclicals, Mater et Magistra, makes important contributions to the social teaching of the Church in four areas. First, there is a clear and authoritative re-statement of the principle of subsidiary function at a time when the provision of social services has been and is being greatly extended in many countries, and when the proper role of the state in this field is a subject of considerable controversy. Secondly, in its discussion of wages, profits and the status of the worker, the new encyclical clarifies the Church’s teaching, and also shows that despite the reforms that have already come about, in some measure in response to the earlier encyclicals, much still remains to be done. Thirdly, it calls attention to the depressed state of agriculture relatively to industry, and sees in this an evil to be remedied. Finally, far greater attention is paid in this latest encyclical to international economic questions than in Rerum Novarum or even Quadragesimo Anno.

One Catholic M.P. appears to have found in the new encyclical support for the Welfare State as it exists in Britain to-day, whilst a correspondent writing to one of the Catholic papers has suggested that countries wishing to put the social encyclicals into practice would do well to copy our National Health Service.

The surrealist farce known as the Book of Jonah, surely the one consciously witty book in the Bible, is easily summarised. God commands Jonah to go and cry doom on Nineveh, a city whose viciousness has just come to his attention, but Jonah doesn’t reckon much to this mission and takes off instead for Tarshish. A divinely engineered storm threatens his ship, and he requests the crew with remarkable sang froid to pitch him overboard. God sends a fish to swallow Jonah up and spew him out again three days later, whereupon Jonah does manage to get himself to Nineveh and wanders the city proclaiming imminent catastrophe. Unusually enough, the inhabitants of the city, prodded a bit by their king, take Jonah’s prophecy to heart and repent, which infuriates Jonah so much that he goes and sulks outside the city hoping to die. God fools around with him briefly, sending a plant to shade him, then a worm to devour the plant, then a sultry wind to make him faint from heat, and finally treats him to a short homily about divine mercy.

Why was Jonah so reluctant to go to Nineveh in the first place? Perhaps because hectoring a seedy bunch of strangers about their vices isn’t the best guarantee of a long life. But in the storm scene Jonah shows scant regard for his own safety, and indeed by the end of the text is betraying a powerful death wish. The fact is that he refused to obey God because he thought there was no point, and tells God as much after he has spared Nineveh.