A Catholic always finds a papal audience a thrilling experience and we know how men and women of every race, colour, creed and social station have been moved by the charm, graciousness and penetrating holiness of the present Holy Father. But it was a unique event in the life of a young priest, whose professional studies had synchronized with the first half of the reign of Pope Pius X, to see and hear and kiss the hand of that holy Pontiff as I did in 1912. Even then he was commonly regarded as a saint, as we now know that he was; and to have been in such close contact with a beatified or canonized saint is in itself something to remember for a lifetime.

I can see him now as he entered the large hall where he greeted many hundreds of people. He gave an impression of great age, but still more of extreme weariness. The years of responsibility and of constant strife had taken their toll. No longer was there the splendid physique and optimistic outlook which we recognize in the portrait of the Bishop of Mantua of thirty years earlier. I remember most vividly the tone of his voice and the rather sad and appraising eyes with which he gazed on each of us in turn; his very slow progress round the room; and, as a final impression, his quite different appearance as one glanced into a smaller audience chamber where a very small boy was almost romping about him and tugging at his cassock.

Since Newman’s death in 1890 there have always been those who have pictured him as being in some way cut off from his age, so that, although his life traversed the nineteenth century, they think it would be difficult to gather evidence from his writings of the precise period to which he belonged. Now this opinion has been held not only by those out of sympathy with Newman, who have held it as a kind of reproach against him that contemporary secular affairs seemed to interest him so little, but has often been held also by many who were so convinced of the sanctity and otherworldhness of the great Oratorian, that they thought it quite too much to suppose that mundane matters, like a war in the Crimea or a Trust Bill in Parliament, could succeed in gaining his attention. The limit in this direction has been reached, now that a recent writer has portrayed, in a brilliant and informative book, a Newman, saintly indeed, but quite oblivious of the political world about him, or beyond his shores; a man, in fact, who would best be represented, at the time this author was writing, by a churchman of eminence who did not seem aware of the war in Korea. With this judgment what before was a matter of over-emphasis, or misconception, becomes a definite mistake, which as long as it lasts makes an adequate understanding of Newman impossible.

Now in trying to arrive at the truth about Newman’s attitude to contemporary events, it is not necessary to take into account the social and political philosophy which can be found in his works, though the value of this would be lessened if it were decided that Newman had simply no interest in social or political matters; but what is essential to bear in mind is the peculiar standpoint from which Newman viewed the social and political world.

Against the general background, which we attempted to outline in a previous article, it is now possible to fill in with greater detail the main elements of the Catholic approach to truth in contrast with the Anglican appeal to sound learning; and this with no controversial intention, but with the eirenic aim, not indeed of resolving the contrast, but at least of showing it less in caricature, and in truer proportions and balance. The true following of Christ, in whatever Christian allegiance it is found, is the result of a union, intimate and ineffable, between two persons; a human person and the Person of Jesus Christ, God made man.

This union begins in the supernatural life of grace received in Baptism. It cannot spring from any power innate in human nature; it is wholly given. There comes a time to all who receive this gift when its purpose, the love of God in Christ, is consciously apprehended. The inmost self-hood is confronted by Christ, who is either rejected, or accepted in the obedience and love of divinely given faith. Where explicit knowledge of his person is absent the encounter would seem to be implicit in what conscience presents as good. The union so completed varies in intensity in each person. In some for a whole lifetime obedience is fitful and love lukewarm; the gift does not grow beyond an inchoate stage. In others it fructifies in a union of deep and perfect friendship. Once embraced it is never wholly lost except by an act of deliberate rebellion which theologians call mortal sin.

Recent protests against the publication of ‘obnoxious matter’ in the pages of certain newspapers have done little more than echo what the General Council of the Press had already said on this subject. At one of its earliest meetings— last October—the Council declared itself to be ‘deeply concerned by the unwholesome exploitation of sex by certain newspapers and periodicals’, and placed on record its view that ‘such treatment is calculated to injure public morals’ and is contrary, to the standards of journalism which the Council is duty-bound to maintain.

Strong words! But verbal condemnation by itself is insufficient. The Press Council is a voluntary body representing newspaper proprietors, editors and working journalists. It has no statutory powers. Its apparent inability to do anything effective to improve matters raises anew, for the individual pressman, the whole question of journalistic responsibility.

Strangely enough, the Royal Commission on the Press (1947-49) had little to say on this subject of the unwholesome exploitation of sex, being concerned rather with cases of alleged political bias and of inaccurate reporting. What it did say, however, was often sound, and should be recalled. Sensationalism, for instance, it described as ‘partly an extreme manifestation of the peculiar values reflected in the popular newspapers, partly a desire to provide the excitement which the reader is believed, and has beat taught, to expect’. And this, as one witness expressed it, is done by publishing prominent and detailed reports of crime, of lie relations between the sexes, and of extraordinary or scandalous behaviour, which ‘minister... to the imaginative gratification of the reader’.