The Church exists among men, men of flesh and blood who are, for the most part, in what we shall call ‘the world’. It is not a simple thing. While men are free to change the world they live in, this same world exercises, now as in the past, a great influence on men, including those who make up the community of believers that is the Church. It is true that the Gospel must be numbered among the forces at work in the world, since the men who respond to the Gospel are also in the world. There is an interplay, a complex relation between the world and the Gospel, a relation that varies from time to time, and which cannot be solved by a simple affirmation of a common divine origin of both societies. St Paul, having commented rather sharply on aspects of the world in his time, says later on: ‘Be not conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and the acceptable, and the perfect will of God’.

Nevertheless, history has seen a considerable assimilation of elements from the world within the structures of the Christian community, even before Constantine. In the Eastern Churches, the conciliar procedure followed that of the Roman senate, and the division of ecclesiastical dioceses followed that of the civil dioceses. Byzantium was a place of little importance in the Church until Constantine established his capital there. Even in the realm of faith, the influence of Hellenism is undeniable. Contact with the Greek intellectual world raised questions, while at the same time it provided tools, for a theological reflection which is a permanent part of our Christian heritage. To admit a certain assimilation of elements from the world, a certain ‘conforming’ to structures which do not have their origin in the Gospel is not to say that these elements are always corrupting influences.

The attraction inherent in social work and the corresponding reluctance of Catholics to commit themselves wholeheartedly to it has always struck me as a curious paradox.

It is too obvious a fact to elaborate that to a Catholic conscious of his calling as a member of the Mystical Body and as a representative of Christ, the opportunities which social work provides for carrying out his obligations to his fellow men and for exercising charity to the fullest possible degree are exceptionally great. No discussion of social work with individuals is possible without reference to the casework relationship as its very foundation and I should like to clarify what I see as the reason for attaching such tremendous importance to the quality of this relationship, which the social worker succeeds in establishing with the client. It would seem to me that the high place allocated to this aspect of social work practice stems from our conviction that in and through this relationship we can offer to a fellow human being the most valuable gift which we possess; that part of ourselves which is most in keeping with our supernatural calling. It is only the intimacy of a relationship which provides an adequate means for a meaningful communication of our committal to the membership of mankind, to the fact that we are all members of one another, and to the implication of this truth. It is through this committal that we ourselves live more fully and enable others to do so. Herein is the golden opportunity which social work offers to Catholics. The recognition and acceptance of the unique importance which human relationships play in life must lead to the conclusion that there is no other occupation (parenthood excepted) which enables the same extent of valid concentration on this area.

A few months after the beginning of the second World War, Father Max Metzger, founder of the Una Sancta Brotherhood, wrote a letter from his prison cell pleading with Pius XII for the convocation of a council of peace and of reunion. This letter—the full English text appears for the first time in the new American quarterly, Continuum, Summer, 1963—has a bearing not only on the prehistory of Vatican II, but even more significantly on a recent dramatic production, Der Stellvertreter (The Representative or The Deputy), by a young German publisher’s assistant, Rolf Hochhuth. In the play as in the letter, the Pope was requested to speak forthrightly in the name of justice; in the play the request is openly ignored, while the fate of Max Metzger’s letter remains unknown. In both instances the question that seems to rise spontaneously concerns the failure of the Pope to fulfil his role as servant of the servants of God.

The play has been recognized in the European and American press as perhaps the most controversial drama of the post-war era. An English translation is about to appear; it will be produced in Stockholm by Ingmar Bergman; Georges de Beauregard is filming it in France; and it will open next season in London and New York. While there is no doubt that some of this immediate fame is due to the dramatic merits of the piece, an even larger part is probably the result of the ‘scandal’ on which it is based, on the alleged failure of Pius XII to speak out on the persecution of the Jews. It may be observed in passing that, aside from the religious issue, much German acclaim for the work probably derives from the national need for a catharsis of the Nazi past, and, on the West-Berlin theatrical scene, from the desire to achieve a local work comparable to Brecht’s social dramas.

After the millennial celebrations of the founding of the Polish state and the conversion of Poland to Christianity, the Poles may look back with some pride and with some horror. In modern times they have been perhaps the least favoured of European nations, with a recent past consisting of dismemberment, unsuccessful rebellion, two great wars, and the suffering of the worst imaginable crimes; under the Nazis there were about twelve extermination camps in Poland, of which Auschwitz was only the most well-known. This was followed by the poverty and oppression of the post-war and Stalinist period. Being poised between east and west has not been in Poland’s favour, however interesting the phenomenon; only in the last seven years has it turned strangely to their advantage. October 1956 was the great moment in the history of modem Poland; they look back on it now as ‘The Polish October’ and ‘The October Springtime’. The bitter but concealed intrigues in the back-streets of Warsaw, by which Wladyslav Gomulka came to power and bloodlessly achieved a change of régime that deserved the name of revolution, demonstrated the political genius, and reversed the destiny of Poland. So did the glowering crowds, assembled in imitation of the earlier Poznan rioters and with no clear idea of what action they were going to take; when, rather to everyone’s surprise, they accepted Gomulka’s assurances quietly. They stood in the background as a lever for Gomulka against the Russians, but without committing any indiscretion which might have incited Russian reaction. (The Polish adage has it that in 1956 the Poles behaved like Hungarians, the Hungarians like Poles, and the Czechs like pigs).