Catholics and Politics

Extract

I wonder that the Editor of Blackfriars is not afraid that the formidable figure of St Thomas will appear to disturb his slumbers with reproof, for he set great store by accurate definition and precision of language. What accuracy or precision is there in the March editorial when the Editor writes: ‘French Catholics crossing the Channel are amazed to find that while the numerical majority of Catholics vote Labour and consider themselves as leaning towards the Left, the Catholic voice in journalism, etc., is almost without exception “true blue” Conservative, and, therefore still wholly immersed in the politics of a past age’. Really? ‘Wholly-immersed in the politics of a past age.’ While he was writing that, I and my colleagues were preoccupied with that most immediate contemporary question, whether and how Europe can be saved, and restored, were writing about the Brussels Conference and the Atlantic Pact.

We might even claim to have shown a little prescience. In domestic politics, which were presumably more in your mind, so far from being immersed in the past, we are preoccupied with the future, with the later developments implicit in the present changes. Whether people agree with us or not, they must admit that we are preoccupied with the future, with the direction social change is taking and the direction we hold it should take. It would be a more substantial criticism to say that we are too far ahead for the public to follow us, that we have got up very early and we have gone out before the milkman, not that we have stayed out too late and come home with the milk.