To be a Christian is to believe in Christ; and this in its fullness is to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnate Word of God: to accept Christ as God made man, who through his Passion takes away the sins of men, and through his Resurrection restores to them a life of communion with the godhead. This life of communion with God—in which lies the possibility and reality of man's perfection—is in and with and through Christ, through faith in him. And the proper place of this life is visibly in the Church on earth, which he founded, with her sacraments through which her members meet with him whose body she is, together with and in just relation to her ministers and saints, who play their necessary and leading rôles within her life. All this, and one's relation to it in faith, is relevant to one's life as a Christian. If those who Profess Christ are wrong about these points, they are at least endangering the solidarity of their life in Christ. The more firmly the Christian believes these things, and the more he appreciates their significance, the deeper is the possibility of his spiritual life in Christ.

In spite of everything that has been achieved by the liturgical movement in this country, it still seems reasonable to ask whether it has in fact produced greater unity or greater disorder where public worship is concerned. Schools of thought have been formed within denominations, and across denominational barriers. While greater common understanding does exist, it may well confine itself to academic circles; to ordinary worshippers, the variety may appear as great as ever.

However that may be, all who are working in the liturgical field would probably at least agree that they are trying to make the public worship of their respective churches as full as possible an expression of the authentic Christian tradition. They would say also that the closer we approach to realizing that aim, the nearer we shall be to restoring the unity which we have lost.

I am writing this article about the duty, as it is considered, of the pnest to visit in his parish. I take the title from what an excitable little girl exclaimed once at my entry. Her pert young mother's laughter, when she ran out to see who ‘on earth’ it was, and sat collapsed on the stairs, still jars in memory in my ear. I know I am not God, I mean. I don't know that it is quite so funny.

The subject of visiting does interest us all. It is part of ideal Catholic life: Father at home in the Catholic family, intimate with everyone, not only available in need as a close friend, but influencing all the time by his contact, towards good relations, better life, finer manners, more careful choice of career, deeper judgement in marriage; his very presence reminding of faith, restoring hope, inspiring love; counteracting the whole battery of trivial and stultifying fantasies current as so much of today's politics, literature and entertainment. One can hardly imagine full Catholic life without it.

The tenth century was a time of change in the common attitude of Christians towards war; a change in fact so great as to be best understood as a swing from one extreme to another, and we should therefore have in mind from the outset two diametrically opposed points of view.

On the one hand, there is the uncompromising rejection of war and of military service by the early Christians. In the first two centuries after Christ, there was virtually no possibility of Christian participation in worldly conflicts between states. The militia Christi, the soldiers of Christ, were always contrasted with the militia saecularis, the soldiers of the world. The soldiers of Christ were to fight a spiritual battle with spiritual weapons, and the final victory was the victory of the martyr; the soldiers of the world fought with carnal weapons for base material ends, and were subject to the lusts of the flesh; there was nothing m common between the camp of light and the camp of darkness.

Dear Lord, I turn to you after hearing many arguments about war, peace, nuclear weapons, non-violence, pacifism, and the duty of Christian persons to take an active interest in governmental policy, or drift, or incapacity to resist events.

Of course it concerns me deeply whether your creation, human and non-human, is destroyed or not; and though to die might be swift as the rending of a curtain that hangs between here and hereafter, I don't want to die with most of the world, my world at any rate, making a funeral pyre.

I can accept it if it is part of your plan, something you mean to allow because out of it you can bring greater good. Must I accept also the ghastly possibility of living while others die, m a barren world, the Material expression of spiritual bankruptcy? Yes. I am sure your answer is ‘Yes'.