It is with equal solicitude, with equal interest, that We receive in audience both workers and industrialists as they come to Us in turn and, with a confidence which touches Us deeply, explain to Us their respective difficulties. In bidding you welcome with all Our heart, very dear sons, We also gladly seize the opportunity that you offer to Us to express Our paternal goodwill and to praise your zeal in bringing Christian social teaching into the world of economics.

We have referred to the difficulties of those who take part in industrial production. Erroneous and baneful in its consequences is the misconception, unfortunately very widespread, which sees in them an irreducible opposition of divergent interests. The opposition is only apparent. In the economic domain there is common activity and interest between the employers and the workers. Not to perceive this reciprocal bond, to attempt to break it, cannot but be the result of blind and unreasonable despotism. Employers and workers are not irreconcilable antagonists. They are collaborators in a common task. They eat, so to speak, at the same table, since they live, in the last resort, from the net global profit of the national economy.

Each one draws his pay, and from this point of view their mutual relationship should not put either of them at the service of the other. To draw one’s pay is a tribute to one’s personal dignity in one form or another, the proprietor and the worker each making his own production contribute to the yield of the national economy.

The discussion between Father Aelred Graham and Mr Douglas Woodruff—with Father John Fitzsimons intervening—seems to me to be typical of the sort of controversy that arises in almost any Catholic gathering of today when the subject of politics is introduced, though to be sure it is on a much higher dialectical plane than most. There is a great temptation to join in and develop the many fascinating but well-worn themes that have been raised in ever-widening circles round the original splash; but it would be unprofitable, if only because it has been done so often and much better before. What I am going to attempt is something much more presumptuous, that is to break out of the circle, which however wide is still a constriction of both Catholic thought and action.

First, may I offer a definition of politics? It is, I suggest, the art of the organisation of society for the common good. And the problem that does, or should, face the politician is how to preserve the liberty of the individual while securing the common good of all.

It is surely clear that the successful organisation of society for the common good must depend on the members of this or that society having a fairly unanimous idea of what is the common good for which they strive, and on their living and carrying out this organisation within a common structure or framework as to the essentials of which they are all more or less agreed. As Christopher Hollis has said, quoting and supporting Cecil Chesterton, ‘party government is only tolerable when the two parties agree in their political opinions’. Furthermore, as Fr Graham rightly enjoins, they must ‘see things steadily and see them whole’.

Catholic sociology may perhaps best be described as the mind of the Church on social questions. It is the application to social life (man in society) of the universal concepts of the faith. This is the first thing to be grasped about Catholic sociology, that it is essentially an inference from Catholic theology, and such as could be made therefore by anyone having a perfect knowledge of the faith.

As a matter of fact, however, the social implications of Catholic theology have been worked out at a very high level, so that there is in existence today a code of social principles which may be correctly described as the authoritative teaching of the Church on social questions. The corpus or main body of such teaching is to be found in various Papal encyclicals from the time of Leo XIII.

The nature and scope of Catholic sociology are well indicated in the following passage from Quadragesimo Anno in which Pope Pius XI asserts the right of the Church to pontificate on social questions:

Father MacLaren in his Aquinas Paper, Private Property and the Natural Law, builds his thesis around the question of the interpretation of such statements from the papal encyclicals on the social question as: ‘The right to own private property has been given to man by Nature, or rather by the Creator himself’. What do such statements mean? he asks. ‘Do they mean that the right to private property belongs to the nature of man in the same way, let us say, as the right to life itself? Do they mean that private property is the only legitimate way in which a man can own material possessions? In other words, is private property an absolute right completely excluding any other way of possessing material things?’ I should agree with Father MacLaren in answering the first two questions in the negative but I should hesitate about the third, because it seems to contain a certain confusion of thought that flaws the whole argument in his paper and which makes a yes or no answer impossible. In other words, the question implies that unless a right is ‘exclusive’ it is not ‘absolute’.

Primary Natural rights, of course, are both absolute and exclusive. They flow from the very nature of man. Each is essential if man is to exist as man. Each covers its own field entirely. Thus, for example, the right to life itself. Secondary Natural rights are drawn from primary natural rights as conclusion from premiss.

The realisation of the honour and devotion that are due to our Lady in Mediaeval and early Renaissance times, engendered a corresponding increase in pictorial representation of scenes from her life and the childhood of our Lord. It is not infrequent that the source of the inspiration and the materials are to be traced to the Apocryphal legends. The heretical trends they contain and the dubious authenticity of many of the accounts have long rendered them suspect in the eyes of the Church. Notwithstanding this, the mind of the mediaeval artist was particularly susceptible to the graphic and imaginative nature of some of the stories, besides they served to satisfy the desire for a greater knowledge of the small intimacies of the life of the Holy Family.

The arrival in London of the collection from the Munich Alte Pinakothek affords a unique opportunity to see the treasures for many people in this country; they will remain on view until August the 7th. The collection contains, among other things, part of a fifteenth century German altarpiece by an anonymous artist called ‘The Master of the Life of the Virgin’, this series being his greatest known work. It consists of eight panels representing ‘Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate’, ‘The Birth of the Virgin’, ‘Her Presentation in the Temple’ and the ‘Marriage of the Virgin’ in the upper row; ‘The Annunciation’, ‘The Visitation’, ‘The Presentation in the Temple’ and ‘The Assumption of Our Lady’ in the lower row. The unity of the series is now lost because of its dispersal—part permanently remains in England.