In a television interview on the religious position of the Church of England recently given, the new Archbishop of York, Dr Coggan, said that he was an Evangelical, but with a high doctrine of the Church. This is as if his predecessor, Dr Ramsey, now Primate of all England at Canterbury, had said in a similar interview, as he might well have done, that he was an Anglo-Catholic but with a marked infusion of Evangelicalism.

The very real fact that two such statements, actual or hypothetical, represent is of profound ecumenical significance. The Church of England, and indeed world-wide Anglicanism as a whole, is a microcosm of the Ecumenical movement, for it contains in an organism which is highly cohesive in outlook and spirit most of the widely differing elements which exist within the World Council of Churches. It follows that the process of evolution going on within Anglicanism is likely to be reproduced, and is in fact now being reproduced, within the wider context of the main allegiances of World Protestantism.

One aspect of this process, and a fundamental one, is the increasing unity of outlook which marks the approach of many sections of divided Christendom to the Scriptures. In this we Catholics have both a share and a deep interest. Nineteenth and early twentieth-century Liberalism in the non-Catholic world took a lead in the scientific criticism of the Scriptural documents.

I want to begin with a picture I do not accept, and I will try to explain why I do not accept it and what I want to put in its place. It goes like this—‘Sex is first of all a matter of fulfilment... it is an appetite which must be satisfied one way or another; sexual desire is something implanted in us by nature and nature’s purpose is the maintenance of the race. But nature with her usual lavish hand has given us far more sexual desire than is really necessary, just as she makes far more cod’s eggs than are really necessary to keep up the population of cod. Because our sexual desires are stronger and more frequent than is really necessary we are led into various kinds of competition and violence, disorder and war. In order to regulate this stimulation man has invented the institution of marriage. Marriage is rather like the institution of private property to which indeed it is closely related. Men have an appetite for possessions greater than is really necessary and to regulate this appetite we grow hedges round bits of land and say to a man “Go in there and own away to your heart’s content but don’t come over the hedge into my bit of land”. Private property means that a man may perhaps have less than he would like, but what he has is secure’. Marriage according to this picture is a fence around the sexual appetite just as the hedge is a fence around the appetite for possessions. Marriage is a limit set on sexual activity for the sake of other people.

The most serious and perceptive assault on Lady Chatterley's Lover, in the recent flurry of controversy, issued from Dr Leavis in his review of the Pelican Special which told the story of the trial. Apart from his judgment that it is a bad novel, and the persuasive rationale that he offers there to support this decision, which, though much sharpened and more circumstantial, is essentially the one he reached in his book on Lawrence in 1955, Dr Leavis makes an interesting sociological comment on the significance of the Defence’s success. The Prosecution, he observes, was defeated, ‘not by the presentment of any sound or compelling case, but by its realization that it was confronted by a new and confident orthodoxy of enlightenment’. The verdict, in fact, registered a change in the values of educated people—a change which owes a good deal, in ways that it would be instructive to examine, to the deep impact of Lawrence’s work on a whole generation, and of Dr Leavis’s own faithful interpretation of it (the terms in which the novel was, and is, generally defended, and even read, were originally put about by him). Now, if it is true, as it seems to be, that our moral environment has been sensibly modified, so that people brought up on admiration for Lawrence can now carry the day, it is important to insist, as Dr Leavis does in his review, and has always done, on how intimately and indissolubly the worst in Lawrence is related to the best.

The Second Council of the Vatican remains the most important single issue in what may be called religious public opinion in the German-speaking countries. Little of the unbounded optimism that followed the Pope's first announcement remains, but there is a great deal of sober interpretation of such information as is available, and numerous articles have been written on topics likely to be discussed by the Council.

The Herder-Korrespondenz, vol. 15, No. 7 (April 1961), pp. 312-323, contains statistics of the personnel concerned with the preparatory work for the Council, and an analysis of the statistics. The tables are detailed, showing such matters as position in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, nationality, membership of religious orders, membership of the Roman Congregations, special expertise, etc. It is deduced that the following matters are likely to be treated: the Episcopal Office, (it will be remembered that this was on the agenda for the first Vatican Council, but the item was not reached), the shortage of priests, the difficulties, particularly those of recruitment, of the religious orders, the reforms needed to adjust the orders of women to the present age, the administration of the Sacraments of Matrimony and Penance, the liturgy, the position of the laity. It is noted that the officials of the Curia form a high proportion of those concerned with the preparations, but it is pointed out that this is, for administrative reasons, inevitable. It is hoped that the Council will not get bogged down in details, but will deal with essentials, and there is a plea for more publicity and information.