Authority and Radicalism

Extract

This is not a statement of a political kind: a manifesto for yet another Catholic Guild; nor is it what Field Marshal Montgomery would call an excuse for belly-aching. It is rather an agenda for further study—a plea for a new attitude of mind. I say attitude of mind, because my own experience of Catholics has been that in this country they still tend to look at social questions differently from their fellow Christians—as aliens, not as members by birth of a society which ‘belongs’ to the members of the other denominations, in their capacity as citizens. This attitude is expressed in terms of keeping oneself to oneself, or the halfresentful assumption of a superiority which is not felt: ‘They have the society, but we have authority’.

But as far as social questions go, what does this authority amount to? A few half-remembered phrases from St Thomas, a couple of encyclicals? If so, this is not authority, but mere slogan-thinking.

I have also met Catholics who say that social problems do not really exist as such. The only problems are theological. It is all a question of applying the answers already available in the deposit (that is, I think the term) of the faith. Thus an exact study of social questions is unnecessary, especially as the Welfare State has eliminated poverty, starvation, bad housing, and all the normal objects of Christian charity.