The study of the question of authority within religious institutions has been inadequate, from both theological and sociological perspectives. McKenzie has explained the inadequacy of theological studies as being due to ‘the emphasis placed on authority and the fervour in defending it’ and, according to Kokosalakis

Clearly, the Church like any other social institution, is in dialectical relation with the society in which it exists. If we are to establish the causes of a change in the attitudes towards religious authority we must begin by considering firstly the social changes which have taken place not only in the global society but also within the Roman Catholic community itself, and secondly, those changes which are the direct result of some immanent force within the institution itself.

Advances in science and technology have vastly expanded man’s knowledge and thereby his mastery over his physical and social environment. Additionally, developments in communications have provided him with an amount of information which greatly exceeds his own personal experience; in particular, the introduction of the television interview has exposed many authority figures to public scrutiny for the first time. Both factors have contributed to a de-sacralisation of authority whereby its origin has become de-mystified and its power is no longer considered to be-taboo. In addition there has been a process of democratisation in many institutions in society.

When I opened this series of Dominican conversations some months ago now, I suggested that angels were worth studying not only in their own right but for the light they throw on the human condition. I want now in this concluding paper to apply this suggestion to our final topic, evil in angels. This paper will, therefore, consist of two main parts: In the first part I want to indicate how St Thomas analyses evil in angels, while in the second part I want to show how this analysis clarifies the root of evil in ourselves.

Turning, then, to our first concern, I want to help you pick a way through the often dense wood of St Thomas’ thinking by as it were blazing those trees which serve as so many markers of the way through. These turn put on inspection and in reflection not to be as numerous as first appears. In fact St Thomas’ thinking on evil in the angels continues to be what we have already seen his thinking on other aspects of the angels to be: the sustained and rigorous pursuit of the implications of certain basic metaphysical principles or axioms. The sheer intellectual energy, brilliance and yet economy, therefore even the spare beauty of this argumentation is brought out by Fr Kenelm Foster’s summary in Appendix 2 on Satan, (in Volume 9 of the Gilby bi-lingual edition of the Summa). I cannot emulate that tour de force here, it would be out of place, and so I shall attempt to supply my own thread through the labyrinth.

When the dust from the present troubles settles, the debt to those who have consistently and courageously campaigned against injustice and violence will be clear. One of those campaigners is Fr Des Wilson, who has now written a book that covers the struggle for justice and peace (note that it is justice and peace, not peace and then justice) in N Ireland. It would be unfair to Des Wilson to attempt to review his book out of its context, so it is necessary to sketch out the background first.

In the eyes of “The Man From The Daily Mail,” to quote the song of that title,

“Ireland is a very funny place, sir,

It’s a strange and a troubled land”.

And there’s no disputing that superficial observation, though it’s one of the few comments from that particular source regarding the present situation in N Ireland that I could agree with. For the characteristics of the present era of troubles in the North have been horror (the violence of a bloody Monday, a bloody Tuesday, a bloody Wednesday, a bloody Thursday, a bloody Friday, a bloody Saturday, and bloody Sunday) terror (sectarian warfare, intimidation, internment, rubber and plastic bullets) anger and frustration (sit-ins, demos, barricades, riots) and the constapt unemployment (Billy-now Lord-Blease of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, said there was a “crisis in unemployment” in 1971 when the figure was 7% — it’s now 20% and climbing).

I get my copies of New Blackfriars in a rather unusual manner, once a year and all at once, a whole years’s worth at a time. So it was only in May 1982 that I came across Fergus Kerr’s article Rahner Retrospective III: Transcendence or Finitude in the September 1981 issue. It gives such a seriously misleading view of Karl Rahner’s understanding of human nature and offers such an inadequate substitute as the proper philosophical foundation for Christian theology that it requires to be countered without delay.

As the title of his article suggests, what Kerr objects to in Rahner’s view of human nature is his notion that we are transcendent beings. What he wants to put in its place is a certain understanding of our finitude.

Kerr describes his paper as “a preliminary exploration of the basic epistemological problems in Rahner’s philosophy of man, with the tentative proposal that a quite different starting-point needs to be accepted” (p 370).