Mowgli and Doctor Doolittle were my friends when I gave up fairy stories. Years later, as an undergraduate I was enabled to unmask them, or rather to site them accurately in the zoo of fantasy, for, so we were taught, while ants and monkeys might live in societies, man alone could be characterized by language and culture. Mowgli as the boy living among wolves, and Doctor Doolittle speaking the language of animals, represented in different ways the craving of fantasy to break through the bonds of necessity, either by sloughing off the second skin of transmitted human knowledge, or by discovering in the animal kingdom the same arbitrary and artificial codes by which we communicate. Lately, Mowgli and Doctor Doolittle have returned to the boundary of my reflections on the cultural and ethical significance of the biological aspect of human personality, perhaps to suggest that their very anomalousness indicates the necessary inadequacy of all attempts to categorize absolutely. Yet they retain the essential innocence of uncommitment, whereas this article is loaded in that not only was its starting point consideration of Humanae Vitae, but also that it leans very heavily to the Pope’s point of view. I shall be concerned mainly with looking at underlying assumptions, rather than trying to synthesize. If the Pope or his critics are relying on principles which the development of the social sciences has shown to be inadequate, it does not automatically follow that the other side is right; but the terms of the debate must be recast.

Every Catholic knows that the Church is faced with a crisis and the name of that crisis is authority. Similarly in our society, the majority is aware that there is a challenge to authority as witnessed repeatedly on television which brings to millions of homes scenes of strife involving students, demonstrations, marches and clashes between employers, trade unions and workers. The majority of men and women sit and watch, leaving the few to march, sit down on the streets, barricade themselves in and from time to time explode in violence. At this point fingers are raised, critical editorials are written and sermons are preached about law and order. Indeed the desire for law and order is so great that human beings have to reach a very high degree of desperation before they threaten seriously the conditions which stabilize any society. Ideally everyone in authority should have as a primary concern the anticipation of legitimate needs. But this is an ideal and the enormous amount of human strife is a witness that this highly desirable objective is rarely achieved. Because of the known temptations likely to afflict those in authority who exercise power on behalf of others, the principles of democracy have been evolved to safeguard both the ruler and the ruled.

This collection of essays discusses the issues that are important for Catholics and others who find in neo-Marxism, at least in some of its varieties, something that speaks to their condition. The situation is slightly complicated in that some of the writers, notably Terry Eagleton and Raymond Williams, are also affected by a densely and peculiarly English background, that of the tradition constructed (if a tradition can be said to be constructed) by Raymond Williams and his circle out of their reading, in both senses of the word, of Cobbett, Arnold, George Eliot, Tawney, Lawrence, Leavis. I am not sure that I have ever wholly understood the theses advanced by these writers. In part this is because I find their style opaque. Certain terms seem to be terms of art, but one is left to pick up the sense as one goes along. ‘Totalization’ is one that is coming in; ‘structure’, of course, both as a substantive and a verb, but this is perhaps the influence of American sociological writing; losing and making connexions between ‘cultural meanings’ seem to be important but elusive processes; we have ‘praxis’, and so on.

One would wish to press for examples. One of the great lessons of Wittgenstein’s later writings is the need to measure formulations against examples. At any rate, we are given by Mr Williams himself and by Mr Eagleton one of the theses over the interpretation of which I remain confused. Summarily it is that if we want to have or to bring about or to realize more fully a common culture in England—and it is always taken for granted that there is a moral imperative to work for this end—then we must strive for revolution or socialism or both as the only way of bringing this end about.

The large number of conferences, books and articles that now centre on the nature of the priesthood seem proof of a general disquiet on the part of both priests and laymen. From the Netherlands comes the edition of the papers on this subject given at a congress in Lucerne in 1967 (News Bulletin of the Institute for Inter-European Sacerdotal Exchange at Maastricht, April, 1968, Vol. 2, Nos. 1/2); the March number of Concilium, also emanating from Holland, is devoted to the subject. It has even been suggested in certain quarters that a campaign of agitation is being organized by a small group of rebellious priests and theologians operating from the Netherlands, which is responsible for the open letter signed by 260 French priests last November and for the resignation en bloc of the twelve executive councillors and regional representatives of the Mission de France in March this year. Both events are concerned with the same problem and reflect ideas aired at the Lucerne Conference. The 260 priests state that they have come to believe that the clerical status imposed upon priests with the style of life and human relationships which it implies is one of the biggest obstacles to the revelation of Christ in the modern world. The worker-priests, for their part, have resigned because of the failure of the French bishops to recognize that the role of the Mission de France implies a third form of pastoral ministry different both from that of the religious orders and that of the secular ministry.

There are obviously two groups of structuralists. There are the original quiet ones, led by Lévi-Strauss and Lacan, and the new noisy ones, propagating ‘neo-structuralism’ with its political message.

Already last year this process of degeneration was apparent in France. Le Monde for the 30th November had a special section of comment and opinion called: ‘Was structuralism killed by the movement of May?’ Its general conclusion seems to be that it was.

With the publication of Qu'est-ce que le structuralisme?, a series of essays from various hands, published late last year, it is apparent that the work of the original structuralists cannot be brought together into any meaningful synthesis. Their key concepts are meanwhile being misapplied.

It may seem incredible that such a promising idea as the original concept of structuralism can have been side-tracked so soon, long before any adequate understanding of what it was has penetrated into our discussions in this country.

Yet it is the case. Qu'est-ce que le structuralisme? is only the last, and poorest, attempt to give a unity to something which defies unification. In the last two or three years we have seen appear Clefs pour le Structuralisme, by Jean-Marie Auzias (1967); Comprende le structuralisme, by J-B. Fages (1967); A Quoi sert la Notion de ‘Structure’ ? by Raymond Boudon (1968); Le Structuralisme (in the series Qtie sais-je?) by Jean Piaget (1968); and last and most formidable of all, Claude Lévi-Strauss ou la ‘Passion de I'Inceste'.