I have chosen a strange subject to celebrate the centenary of Thomas Aquinas here, at Oxford. Is it not paradoxical, if not a little provocative, to speak of ‘St Thomas and the Spirit of Ecumenism’? For several reasons great caution is to be recommended.

First of all, there can only be ecumenism if one accepts the other as other, that he also has insights, that he has something to give. Now St Thomas lived in an epoch of a Christianity very sure of itself, and even, one can say, of a latin Catholicism loyal to the Pope as its head, absolutely assured of its legitimacy and its truth. England was certainly no exception. In these circumstances, what could possibly have been an ecumenical dialogue? Heretics were to be ‘exterminated’: that does not mean killed, but driven far away, chased from the land; though the process of ‘exclusion’ could culminate in physical destruction. One thinks of the cathars of Montségur. Listen to this account of an indicative incident. It happened at Cluny, at the beginning of the reign of St Louis, who recounted the episode to Joinville: ‘There was a great conference of clerics and Jews at the monastery of Cluny. There was a knight there . . . , who stood up and leaning on his crutch, asked that the greatest cleric and the greatest master of the Jews he brought to him. And so they were. . . . “Master”, said the knight, “I ask you if you believe that the Virgin Mary, who carried God in her womb and in her arms, gave birth while remaining a virgin and that she is the mother of God”. And the Jew replied that he did not believe a word of it. . . . “Truly”, said the knight, “You will pay for it”. And then he lifted up his crutch and struck the Jew near the ear and knocked him to the ground. And the Jews fled, carrying away their master, badly wounded, and thus ended the conference’.

The last assembly we held before the coup was impressive. It was a sequel to an assembly which the administration had called several days before to inform us that our stock of raw material was down to zero; that with the truck owners’ strike there was no way of bringing the stock of ingots reserved for us in Concepcion; that we’d have to consider seriously the prospect of a halt in production. The news was badly received.

The Production Committees met immediately, and obtained unanimity quickly: except for workers of this plant, nobody was going to stop production. We’d get the raw material to Santiago—cost what it may—and that was that.

The determination was made and it was firm; we communicated it to the administration who gave us the green light, though it took a while to put together the means to realise it. . . .

Once we had obtained the transport to fetch the raw material, we convoked an assembly to inform all the workers of our success and ask for volunteers to accompany the trucks. Everyone knew what was involved—a long journey and a perilous one, most of it on our own time, with no bonus. The truck owners and right-wing terrorist groups were sniping at anything that moved along the roads, dynamiting bridges and railway tracks. The response was tremendous —just about everyone volunteered; the selection proved difficult.

‘Any of the works of mercy’, ‘material services’, ‘works of social benefit’; how many Dominicans, how many other religious, will recognise their work in those descriptions? Is this the kind of choice between community life and work that they are offered? How does it come about that such a false choice is both approved and supported? How is it that the break-down situation, which is what the ‘choice’ between community life and work is, can be seen as offering relevance and a future to Dominican, and other, communities? (In what follows I shall write mainly from what I believe to be a Dominican point of view. I doubt if any one writer can cope with a topic as broad as ‘religious life’; I am even less convinced that a male is going to provide the solutions for either female congregations or joint ‘communes’).

I should like to question strongly the assertion made in Fergus Kerr’s article Priorities in Religious Life (October 1973), and repeated from the essay by Jerome Murphy O’Connor, that: ‘What is distinctive about religious life is that religious consent to live according to the evangelical counsels, but in community. That is the difference’.

I would maintain that what is distinctive about religious life is that religious undertake to live in consecrated celibacy, and I think that the writer of the article referred to implies this when he says, in his third section: ‘It is time, too, that there were religious communities to demonstrate that men and women can live together in consecrated celibacy,’ alluding to the fact that the cradle of the Dominican Order, Prouille, was by St Dominic’s legislation a double community (but there was a good deal more to that story!)’

If community, if living together, why celibacy? Surely this is contrary to the idea of community taken in its most radical and absolute form, which is the ideal the writer seems to be advocating. If celibacy is still to be maintained and consecrated even in the most ‘communitarian’ situation, this must surely be because it is prior to the ideal of community, and of the essence of religious life?

I freely admit that, historically, this has not always been considered so. There have been cases, such as that of the Order of Knights Templar, where the Church accepted as an authentic religious vocation a way of life combined with the married state, and I would not wish to suggest that the life of married clergy is not a religious vocation; I submit, however, that consecrated celibacy has come to be the defining characteristic of ‘religious life’ as we understand it in our era, and that participation in a formal ‘religious community’ is secondary to this.

An important theme of David Burrell’s thoughtful and thought- provoking book is that it is a mistake to elevate the discussion of analogous usage in language to a systematic theory. The difference between Aquinas and Duns Scotus, and even more Cajetan lies just here : Scotus turns analogy into a metaphysical theory, Cajetan turns it into formula for constructing the logical arguments. Aquinas, on the other hand, despite occasional gestures in that direction, is mainly concerned to avoid systematisation. If Burrell is right, then for Aquinas there is no such thing as a ‘theory of analogy’, only a need to examine and where necessary try to justify the way we actually use words analogically. Indeed, in a sense the burden of Aquinas’ treatment is that there cannot be a theory. And of course if there cannot be a theory of analogy, a fortiori there cannot be such a thing as a theory of analogy for theologians in particular.

I say all this because it is the presumption of Humphrey Palmer’s book that there is such a theory, that it is designed for specifically theological purposes, and that it is no good. It is also his presumption that Aquinas had such a theory and that therefore what he says is no good. So if Burrell is right, then Palmer’s critique, however valid against theorists and metaphysicians like Scotus or Cajetan, does not really touch Aquinas at all. Which is a pity, since there seems little point in attacking straw arguments when there are arguments of tougher metal to be dealt with.