Christian Materialism Reconsidered: An Exchange

Extract

We have become used since the Renewal began to seeing the Church slashed at by those who belong to it and might easily take the remark at the end of Father Hibbert’s article, ‘Christian Materialism’ (New Blackfriars, May, 1969), to be only a further, though notable, instance. There is something Christians will be hindered from doing, the article ends by saying, ‘until the Christian Church has put its house into better order and made it look less like what Christ himself referred to as “a den of thieves” What is it that cannot be effectively done at present? Christianity has just been stated to be ‘radically a materialist humanism’ and also ‘something more’. ‘For Christians it is essential to nurture, cultivate and explore their “more”, so that they may be able to offer something in their own right to the world’ (p. 431). It is this nurturing, cultivating and exploration that cannot be effectively done while the Church is like a den of thieves. It might reasonably be taken to be part of what Father Hibbert is implying, that the propagation of some such version of Christianity as his is hindered while the Church is like this.

At the risk of appearing as one of the wicked, I am drawing attention to the meaning of Father Hibbert’s materialism. I shall also mention again, but not ambitiously explore, his something more. The following passage shows us plainly the meaning of the materialism but the other thing darkly.