One has often been asked by incredulous, though well-meaning, people—and almost apologetically—‘Why did you become a Catholic?’ The suggestion being that there must be some explanation to account for such a strange, even a remarkable, lapse from rational behaviour on the part of one supposed to be some sort of scientist. The question is not well put. I suppose that none of us can say truthfully and certainly why we do anything. It would be better to ask not why, but how, did a man become a Catholic; and this is the question I shall attempt to answer, so that next time I am asked why I became a Catholic I can just hand over this number of New Blackfriars. Perhaps even more alarming and difficult to give a direct answer to is the question: ‘When were you converted?’ Perhaps I had better deal with that one first.

Some people, it would seem, have peculiar notions about what is called ‘conversion’, as though it were some sudden and dazzling experience (it may be with some people; I do not know). So, we are led to suppose, this is what happened on the road to Damascus, but if that dramatic incidence, that traumatic vision, occurred as described, we might recollect that Paul was a highly religious Jew, and so was Jesus, a Jew preaching unto Jews in the tradition of Jewish thought and expression. And we might also bear in mind that when we read that Augustine was converted by Ambrose that Augustine was a Neo-Platonist and was already, so to speak, half-way there. So, if we may compare little things with big things, we come to me, which is embarrassing, but obviously I cannot talk about myself without some ‘I’s and ‘me’s.

Popular enthusiasm for spirituality has mushroomed in the past two decades. The analyses of the human sciences and the impact of secular self-help programs have challenged the religious basis of spiritual pursuit. The influence of gurus from the East has transformed the problematic. The need for a systematic spirituality that can sort out the issues and relate them insightfully grows more urgent. In different ways, the thought of Bernard Lonergan, summarized in Method in Theology, speaks to the present need. Here I shall suggest some of those ways.

Introduction: The Need for Theory

Spirituality is a broad field. It entails many practical issues. These include: prayer and how one does it, from vocal prayer and lectio divina to discursive meditation and contemplation and mysticism; the possible physiological correlates of religious experience: postures, breathing, fasting, sensory and sleep deprivation, sexual abstinence, anatomical and neuro-chemical bases, and even drug ingestion; spiritual direction and questions of discernment of spirits; the social dimensions of public prayer and liturgies, group prayer, and group psychic and religious experience; prescriptions for ‘holy’ living; and study of the various traditions, both Western and Eastern, and of modern psychology. These all have to do with practice, and they are not to be minimized. If spirituality has any real significance, it must be in the practice. This field can less tolerate mere thinking and talking about the subject than can other fields of theology as currently conceived.

Mr Gellner’s now celebrated little book is an attack on a philosophical school, centred in Oxford, called ‘linguistic philosophy’; in assessing it we have therefore to ask, ‘Is there such a school?’ The idea that there is, of course, is not original to Gellner. Professor Flew, for example, has long proclaimed the existence of such a school, membership of which apparently depends upon nomination by Professor Flew. Now it is certainly the case that there was before the war an identifiable and self-conscious group of révoltés among the professional philosophers at Oxford: men like Austin, Ayer and Ryle, who had been variously influenced by Moore, the Logical Positivists and Wittgenstein, and who formed a common front against Joseph and Prichard. Their cohesion derived from the contemporary Oxford situation: they could not even then be said by themselves to form a school against any wider background than that of Oxford. This group was so successful that after the war it captured almost all the philosophical posts in the University. Victory attained, its cohesion fell away; apart from certain publicists like Flew, philosophers at Oxford ceased to think of themselves as belonging to any definite group or party. This may, of course, be an illusion, or, as Gellner appears to think, a deliberate pretence: we have still to ask whether there are any tenets to which all the members of this ‘school’, and only they, subscribe.

Although Ayer was the only card-carrying member, the predominant influence on the group before the war was the Logical Positivist movement.

The total number of Catholic sociologists in Great Britain could fit comfortably at the back of the Clapham omnibus. Among the many exotic ideological species of sociologists, the feminists, the cat fanciers, and the vegetarians, it is reasonable to assume a believing Catholic could be found somewhere. Those found seem to occupy a peculiar ideological limbo, their religious and sociological gaze doomed to be misunderstood by Church and discipline alike. This tiny band of sociological hopers forms a dispersed breed, invisible in their own Church, and for some, best kept so; within their discipline, they seem as a holy huddle on a tiny rock discernable in a sea of analytical uncertainty, odd, but interesting. Doubtless every occupation carries a burden, a witness to a calling out of improbable circumstances.

Although some sociologists wear their ideological beliefs heavily in public, most carry their burdens privately. Few biographies of sociologists have been written, and even fewer about those who are also Catholic. Sociologists are a reticent breed, and theologically they are unlikely to be able to say much about why they believe in Catholicism. Doubtless coming back to Catholicism was a surprise for some: maybe reading Althusser by candlelight, or an account of the ceremonies of the Dinka in bed, or spotting the moral similarities between the plight of Goffman’s actor and Job in a pub, drove some unsteadily further along the road to Damascus. To be a Catholic and a sociologist is to occupy a place not necessarily of one’s own choosing.

The role of combat as a religious stimulant was widely observed and debated during both World Wars. Through a consideration of American opinion in World War II, especially in the light of British opinion a generation earlier, this paper illustrates that, however similar expressions of combatants’ faith may have been across time and space, their perceived value was very much dictated by their wider religious context, and particularly by the existing assumptions and priorities of religious observers and pundits. This meant that, in the American context of World War II, appraisals tended to be much more positive than in the British context of World War I, adding considerable substance and longevity to the claim that ‘there are no atheists in foxholes’.

In my view to assert that God exists is to claim the right and need to carry on an activity, to be engaged in research, and I think this throws light on what we are doing if we try to prove the existence of God. To prove the existence of God is to prove that some questions still need asking, that the world poses these questions for us.

To prove the existence of God, then, would be rather like proving the validity of science — I don’t mean science as a body of established facts set out in textbooks or journals, but science as an intellectual activity, the activity of research currently going on; and not just routine research which consists in looking for the answers to clearly formulated questions by means of clearly established techniques, but the research which is the growing point of science, the venture into the unknown.

It is perfectly possible to deny the validity of this. It is perfectly possible to say we now have science; (we didn’t have it in the eighth century, let us say, but we have it now). It is just there; from now on it is all really just a matter of tidying up a few details. Now of course all the really great advances in science have come by questioning just that; by questioning, let us say, whether the Newtonian world is really the last word, by digging down and asking questions of what everybody has come to take for granted. But you could imagine quite easily a society which discouraged such radical questioning.

If I dare to imagine that these letters may have some significance for both of us, it is because I believe that Christianity is concerned with human crises, since Christians are called to manifest the mercy and truth of God in history.

Christianity is the victory of Christ in the world, that is to say in history. It is the salvation of man in and through history, through temporal decisions made for love of Christ the Redeemer and Lord of History. The mystery of Christ is at work in all human events, and our comprehension of secular events works itself out and expresses itself in that sacred history, the history of salvation, which the Holy Spirit teaches us to read between the lines. We have to admit that this meaning is often provisional and sometimes beyond our grasp. Yet as Christians we are committed to the attempt to see some meaning in temporal events that flow from human choices. To be specific, we are bound to search ‘history’, that is to say the intelligible actions of men, for some indications of their significance, and some relevance to our present choice as Christians.

‘History’, then, is for us that complex of meanings which we read into the interplay of civilization. And we are also (this is more urgent still) at a turning point in the history of that European and American society which has been shaped and dominated by Christian concepts, even where it has at times been unfaithful to its basically Christian vocation. We live in a culture which seems to have reached the point of extreme hazard at which it may plunge to its own ruin, unless there is some renewal of life, some new direction, some providential reorganization of its forces for survival.

The crucial role of the French Jesuit theologate in exile at Ore Place, Hastings (1906–26) in the development of la nouvelle théologie has been greatly overlooked in favour of Lyons and Fourvière. In fact, Ore Place played a key early role in the ressourcement of twentieth century French Catholic theology through constituting a unified and sympathetic scholarly community during an era of theological and political turmoil. One of the theologate's best-known students was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1908–12), while other teachers and students included Pierre Charles, Joseph Huby, Henri de Lubac, Ferdinand Prat, Pierre Rousselot, and Auguste Valensin. Within this congenial scholarly community, Teilhard developed some key theological foundations of his thought on topics including grace and nature (miracles, anthropology, and evolution) and christology, and was ordained. The full importance of theological formation at Ore Place for the thought of Teilhard and other French Jesuits of his generation has rarely been recognized.

Had I been asked back in the 1950’s about the origins of ministry in the church, I should (being, in theological terms, a rather precocious teenager) have had a ready answer. The Lord had appointed apostles, answerable to Peter, who in turn had transmitted their authority to bishops, presbyters and deacons, all subject to Peter’s successors, the bishops of Rome. (If pressed, I might have acknowledged that it was possible that presbyters and bishops were originally indistinguishable, and that the threefold ministry may have developed from an earlier twofold ministry.) Had not Clement of Rome shortly before the end of the first century spoken of the line of successors running from Christ to the apostles and then to those that they in turn appointed (1 Clement 42; 44)? The inspired author of Acts had testified that it was the practice of Paul and Barnabas to appoint presbyters in every city (Acts 14:23), and Paul in the Pastoral letters had indicated that the means of designation was the laying-on of hands (1 Tim. 4:14, 5:22; 2 Tim. 1:6). The primacy of Peter was evident from Matt. 16:13-20; the intervention in the 90’s by Clement bishop of Rome in the affairs of the Corinthian church reflected the fact that Rome was already then exercising the primacy bestowed on Peter. A decade ago, Fr Aidan Nichols gave an account of the origins of ministry which has much in common with this one, but most of us now think that the way in which things came about was much more complex than that. Let us review the evidence in chronological order.

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that due to the so-called “accusation of Christomonism” made especially by the Orthodox observers during the Vatican II sessions, the pneumatology of French theologian Yves Congar proceeded to develop in a way that would have never happened without such a reproach. We will go through the accusation itself, its theological consequences, and then we will study the direct and indirect responses of Congar. Was Congar even aware of the effects that this accusation had on his theology?

The work of Pierre Hadot can highlight understudied aspects of the work of Thomas Aquinas. Hadot offers two key concepts in his study of ancient philosophy: philosophy as a “way of life” and “spiritual exercises”, which help us to approach Thomas, especially given his regular use of the term “spiritual exercise” and the concept of “exercise.”

The concept of cultural identity is illustrated by the example of Latin America. At the same time Latin America is shown to be a true part of the Western world and understandable only as such, and the reasons for other cultural identifications of Latin America are examined. Then the cultural development and identity of the West as a whole is considered, with special reference to two competing accounts of Western cultural development, both of which focus chiefly on the econonmic development of Europe and North America, in contrast to its cultural or spiritual roots. Finally the special case of the United States is looked at, and it is asked how her peculiar self‐understanding affects her cultural identity as part of the Western world.