In pre-Reformation England religious orders undertook the main share of what is in modern parlance known as social or welfare work, that is, the care or relief of the sick, the fatherless, the needy and the aged. After the Reformation this kind of work was apt to be neglected, or undertaken in a somewhat inhuman spirit under the auspices of the Poor Law. By the eighteenth century, however, the country’s conscience began to be stirred by the sight of so much misery, and hospitals, orphanages and rescue homes were founded by public subscription or private philanthropy. This good work continued throughout the nineteenth century, inspired generally by religious principles and in the main sponsored by various religious organisations. By the end of the century, however, a more scientific approach to social work began to manifest itself. The Charity Organisation Society was founded to discourage indiscriminate almsgiving and substitute an organised system based on family case-work, and the Webbs, although they disapproved strongly of C.O.S. methods, were among the most vociferous champions of a more scientific approach to social problems.

This scientific attitude has in our century led to the transformation of the social worker from a well-meaning amateur, usually with a strong sense of vocation, into a trained professional. Most social service posts advertised today require of applicants a Diploma in Social Science such as is granted by universities on completion of a course both academic and practical. The academic part, includes study of such subjects as constitutional and economic history, economics, political theory, local government and psychology.

That Catholic social teaching has made but little impact on the public life of this country is a fact too well known to require emphasis here. We are now well accustomed to hear public speakers bewail Catholic apathy from cur platforms. Apathy is, however, but a partial explanation of the failure of the Church’s social teaching to make a deep impression even upon British Catholics and it is urgent that, instead of continuously bewailing this state of affairs, our writers and lecturers should make diligent inquiry as to the causes.

In so far as making an endeavour to shape the future social order of this country is concerned, it is, of course, quite true to assert that Catholics, as a whole, have shown little but indifference. But it is also true that this indifference is by no means confined to Catholics. Communist infiltration in Great Britain and, indeed, throughout the world (save where Communism has been imposed by armed force) has been made possible only by the neglect of the ordinary man to carry out his duty as a citizen in a democratic state.

This widespread indifference lies not so much in lack of interest (for the ordinary man of reasonable intelligence is keenly interested in discussion of at least those social problems which he thinks he can easily grasp) as in lack of energy—energy to acquire the necessary knowledge, energy to think out conclusions and energy to enter public life and act upon such conclusions. This lack of intellectual energy is, I think, a product of our industrial system, which, in the interests of increased production, has removed all pleasure from work, often leaving undiluted drudgery.

The Third Inter-American Conference of Catholic Social Action was opened at Rio de Janeiro on 22 August by His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop, Dom Jaime de Barros Camara, in the presence of delegates from twenty-one countries of the western hemisphere, including Canada and British Guiana. Representatives of several national and international organisations in Europe and North America attended the meetings in the quality of observers. Among these were the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, and the International Christian Social Association of Switzerland.

After referring briefly to the earlier meetings, held at Washington in 1942 and Havana in 1946, the leader of the American delegation, Bishop D. Karl Alter, of Toledo, Ohio, explained the objects of the present conference. These may be summed up as follows: ‘To study the social problems common to all countries of the American continent, and apply to them in a practical manner the principles of social justice, as set forth in the Encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII, Pius XI and Pius XII’.

The first day’s discussions were almost exclusively occupied with the situation in rural districts, where primitive conditions and a low standard of health call for action in the majority of Latin-American countries. Attention was directed especially to the asphyxiating effect of the big estates, relics of colonial times, which stifle initiative, restrict agricultural development and maintain the inhabitants of the countryside in poverty. The Brazilian Constitution of 1946 authorises the expropriation of private properties in the interests of the community, and the authorisation has been invoked in recent schemes for improving conditions in the interior.

There have not been wanting signs in recent years that Latin American culture is passing through a crisis. In many countries cultural tendencies have changed or been intensified—the Fall of France was an acute shock to Argentina, North American influence gives rise to disquiet in some Colombians, there is an increase in English influence in Brazil. Some outside critics have asked what the Latin American contribution to world culture is, now or in the past, and it is a difficult question to answer, more for lack of a definition of terms than for lack of material to adduce (for at once many things come to mind: the relics of pre-Columbian civilisations, the lovely colonial art, some contribution to science in the eighteenth century and to medical art in our own times, contemporary peasant arts and the interesting developments in serious painting, a solid contribution to the law of nations and international relations, and above all the formation of a way of life and a tradition). So much depends on how far a contribution to world culture is made to coincide with what the world wishes to receive or with a preconceived view as to what it ought to wish to receive. An ingrained habit of self-criticism and depreciation makes individual Latin Americans question very seriously whether they have in fact a culture of their own, while governments have taken to stressing the national traditions of each individual country. Some analysis of the root conditions of Latin American culture may help to clarify its present crisis for us.

In the introduction which he wrote to the proceedings of the Malvern Conference the late Dr Temple compared the works of Maritain and Niebuhr upon political subjects, and suggested that despite the skill and rigorous reasoning of the former his scholasticism prevented him from attacking the real, everyday difficulties of our present situation in the way which Niebuhr does. A similar complaint was made by Mr Lewis in a recent number of Philosophy where he spoke of the new scholasticism as having ‘missed the vital creative forces of our age’. If this deficiency is characteristic of the new scholasticism, if it be true that our modern schoolmen are really spinning webs of ratiocination in order to deceive, then the accusation is indeed a serious one; we hope to be able to show by a consideration of a somewhat, neglected aspect of St Thomas that the accusation, if proved, would convict modern schoolmen of treason towards their master.

Professor d’Entreves was expressing the conventional view, and the views which Dr Temple and Mr Lewis put into the dock, when he spoke of St Thomas’s theory of law as ‘the highest expression of an “intellectualist” as against a “voluntaristic” theory of law. It is the key to a proper understanding of that “rationalistic” bent which is one of the distinctive features of Thomistic philosophy’.