The fate of the Encyclical Letter “In the Utmost Anxiety,” addressed to the German hierarchy, is in itself sufficient to show the state of affairs in the Third Reich. It was not allowed to be published either in any secular newspaper or in any purely religious paper. The printers who dared to print the Encyclical for the bishops’ official publication were closed down by the police for the time being and the official papers confiscated. All that was publicly known of the Encyclical was a short notice of a severe protest to the Vatican in respect of it. Following this, the letter was rejected by the Nazi leaders, notably by Adolf Hitler himself who on May 1st made some biting references to critics of the Nazis and allusions to the Pope's Encyclical. In reference to the Churches he said: “So long as they attend to their own affairs the State will not intervene. But if they go against us with sermons and encyclicals and encroach on the business of the State, we shall call them to order and we shall force them back into their proper work of caring for the religious needs of the people.”

The very attempt to suppress the Encyclical proves how right the Holy Father was to condemn therein the eluding and violation of the “Reichskonkordat,” for the later, established in 1933, distinctly maintained the right of free publication of pastoral letters and encyclicals.

English theology is notoriously ‘lop-sided’. In the historical disciplines, it has an excellent record of intelligent and discriminating scholarship. But, when attention shifts from what was once said and done in the name of Christianity to what might be said or done today, matters are either handed over to the philosopher (whose admirable and indispensable preoccupation with formal and linguistic considerations is no guarantee of competence to perform this task) or else are tackled at a level which, according to the standards operative in cognate ‘secular’ disciplines—from aesthetics and literary criticism to social and political theory—is so strikingly amateurish as to render it hardly surprising that theology plays little part in the conversation of the culture. In this naughty world, Professor Sykes has performed an excellent deed. The Identity of Christianity is a learned, vigorous and original reconstruction of some perennial problems: problems which found particular focus, in the nineteenth century, in discussion of the ‘essence’ of Christianity.

Sykes has shifted the theme from ‘essence’ to ‘identity’ partly to counter the widespread but unwarranted suspicion that an ‘enquiry into what makes Christianity Christianity’ (p.3) is likely to be reductionist in character, and partly because his discovery of the importance of Newman’s work for the ‘elucidation of what was at stake’ helped him to see how mistaken was the equally widespread view that the issues under consideration are of central moment only to Protestant Christians.

Then don’t let him engage a decorative artist of the second, third or any subsequent rank to apply fiddling little bits of art to a structure which will probably at least have the humble merit of plainness. Again and again as one turns these pages one is struck by the pity of it ‣ messy ceramic plaques, vacuous mural reliefs, busy semi-abstract stained glass windows of overblown cosmological significance, facile streamlined statues of sacred personages appliqué to fine blank walls with about as much relevance as if one were to stick a Valentine card on a Mondriaan abstract … if only they’d refrained! So unless you can afford the prices payable to the Chagalls, Rouaults or Légers of this world, let the architecture do the talking: it has a far better chance of avoiding the arbitrary, the personal, and therefore the distracting.

This paper purports to deal with a non-existent subject in holding that there was no Dominican hagiography before the canonization of St. Dominic nor for some time afterwards.

Dominic Guzman died and his obsequies were presided over by his friend and patron Cardinal Ugolino on 6th August 1221. The same Ugolino, having ascended the papal throne as Gregory IX, issued a bull on 3rd July 1234 ordering annual celebration of the feast of St Dominic and likening the Order of Preachers he founded to those of St Benedict and Citeaux as an historic achievement for the faith. The first life of St. Dominic written by a Dominican (or by anyone) is the Legenda S. Dominici of Peter of Ferrand composed between 1235 and 1239 for liturgical use in the new office of St. Dominic which was established throughout the Order in the latter year.

It is at first sight astonishing that no earlier Dominican life exists and that none was produced specifically for submission in the canonization proceedings as had become standard practise at this time: these facts this paper seeks to explain. To do so will involve answering two questions: 1. What was the procedure which had become established for the canonization of saints by 1234 and what factors affected its operation in the case of St. Dominic? 2. What material had in fact been produced from Dominican sources about Dominic up until his canonization and why did this not include a life of the saint?

The cruelties committed in the war in former Yugoslavia profoundly shock us. Villages are completely destroyed, children, women and men, even their cattle, are killed. Women are raped and forced to give birth to the children of their rapists. The perpetrators are ordinary citizens, pleasant people, good neighbours. We do not have to look for violence that far away. Bombs go off in the city of London, children are killed in Warrington, and in revenge innocent young men are massacred in Belfast. Violence exists outside war situations as well. Domestic violence is probably the most common form of violence: incest, beating, or simply bullying. It is often hidden; in spite of everything, loyalty to parents and other members of the family overrules the urge to confide in someone, to complain and to accuse in public. Though violent novels and films may be very popular, articles and books on violence are generally not. The Bible is full of violent events, but there is relatively little literature on violence in Scripture.

Why do we accept violence relatively easily as a part of life? Why do peaceful people resort to violence in certain situations? It seems to me that violence is closely linked with justice. Violence is used to redress wrongs or to prevent injuries. The source of much violence is the thirst for justice. People always try to justify their use of violence by appealing to their right to restore injustices done to them in the past or in the present.

lt is a great joy to be able to give some account, in the friendly columns of Blackfriars of La Vie Intellectuelle, the Dominican review which started to appear again last February after four-and- a-half years of silence. That joy is all the greater, because during the occupation we always envisaged our work after the war as united to that of Catholics throughout the world, but especially to that of our English brethren, linked to us as they are by the closest of ties. It was indeed because I had tried to get into touch with them, despite the German occupation, in order to prepare for this work for the Church, that I, with one of my brethren, Pète Dubarle, was arrested on the Swiss frontier in March, 1944. Only a few days after my liberation I was able to meet in France some of my friends from across the Channel, and now, less than a year later, on a visit to England, I can write, in an English review, something of what has happened and of our hopes for the future.

To begin with, let me recall what La Vie Intellectuelle stood for before the war. Begun in 1929, under the editorship of Père Bernadot, that indefatigable creator of reviews, who started La Vie Spirituelle, as well as many other publications, La Vie Intellectuelle was animated by a small group of Dominicans, with the active collaboration of many secular priests and lay people. Its aim was to contribute in France to that intellectual effort required in order to make the influence of the Church felt in the world. We know with what interest Pius XI, and after him, Pius XII, always encouraged such efforts.

The new Criminal Justice Bill which was introduced to the House of Commons towards the end of last year is now ploughing its way in some form or other towards the Statute Book.

Its provisions, which have provoked a good deal of discussion up and down the country, have at any rate served to draw the attention of people to the system under which our prisons are being administered.

With every effort at reform there is always the fear present that we may be in danger of taking the sting out of the punishment of imprisonment; there is always the fear that we may be turning our prisons into homes from home.

The history of English prison administration this century has been one of concession, amelioration and improvement to the point where people have begun to wonder whether the reforms have not been carried too far, having in mind the vicious nature of the crimes which our prisons are frequently called upon to handle.

Peru has a Left-wing daily paper called El Diario de Marka. On the day after Pope John Paul issued his encyclical Laborem Exercens the paper carried a cartoon covering most of its front page which summed up its view of the significance of the encyclical for the Peruvian situation. It showed a determined looking Pope John Paul carrying a banner which read: “Free Trade Unions, Right to Strike, Co-Ownership of the Means of Production and Just Remuneration, Social Justice”. He was bearing down on a rather smug President Belaunde who stood with a banner behind his back saying “Anti-Strike Decree” and thinking “Terrorist”.

The fact that such a cartoon would even appear in a Left-wing paper, let alone cover most of its front page, indicates the importance of the popular church for the Peruvian Left. This was further underlined by the amount of space and the sympathetic coverage the paper gave the encyclical in marked contrast to that given by the bourgeois press. Nor is this simply a recognition of the large number of Christians who are trade union and political militants. Perhaps more important is the new image this has given the church and the consequent expectation that a papal statement on social justice would be a broadly Left-wing document.

Occasions such as this serve to show just how significant is the popular church, both politically and ecclesiologically. Not only is it new to find large sectors of the church being the natural allies of political progressives but it is even more novel to find that this alliance has caused secular progressives to re-evaluate the meaning of Christianity itself and to come to expect that even some of its more conservative leaders must themselves be progressive if they choose to criticise society from a Christian standpoint.

The experience of human suffering presents an ongoing challenge to believers who seek to sustain their relationship with God in the face of the tragedies of human history. Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P. is a seminal Christian thinker who has made a conscious attempt to take into account the harsh reality of suffering in his systematic theology. Rejecting theoretical attempts to reconcile belief in a good, all‐powerful God with the reality of evil and suffering, Schillebeeckx employs the categories of narrative and memory in his articulation of a Christian response to evil and suffering. He tells the story of Jesus as the story of God. The God who is disclosed in the ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus is the God who is “pure positivity”– the source of life and the opponent of evil and suffering. God's action in and through Jesus provides clues to the way in which God is present and active in the lives of suffering human beings. This revelation summons Christians to become people of memory and of praxis.

This article maps a selection of Pope Francis’ social teaching, which supports respect for diversity. It undertakes this task with the aid of a green theo‐ecoethical lens. That hermeneutical lens is first introduced to the reader via an explanation of its constituent parts. It is then employed to help situate respect for diversity as a Christian ethical principle. With those foundations in place subsequent sections employ the lens to colligate Francis’ teachings which, dialogically, both inform and come into focus through a green theo‐ecoethical perspective concerned with respect for diversity. Here, three sections unfold the Pope’s treatment of themes relevant to respect for diversity in a green theo‐ecoethical light. Specifically, these sections focus on contributions emerging from (1) Francis’ public ministry in general, (2) his first substantive piece of Catholic Social Teaching, Evangelii Gaudium, and (3) perhaps the most anticipated papal encyclical of all time, Laudato Si’. The article's conclusion helps situate the contextual cogency of insights emerging from this multi‐dimensional mapping for what Francis names as our common home, a planet which encompasses an Earth community in a dire need of increased levels of socio‐ecological flourishing.

The Apostolate of Christ the Worker, what does it convey? . . . It is a call going out from our Lord’s sacred humanity to all men, asking them to heed the lesson of the thirty years he spent in the carpenter’s home at Nazareth, supposed to be ‘the son of Joseph.’

This call goes out to a world which takes its values mainly from material criteria, forgetful of the interior preparation of the life of the soul, which alone is the safeguard of worth and stability. We are so easily caught by pride, the self-complacency of the ‘practising Catholic,’ self-seeking, and self-pity, or we are downtrodden, worn out through drudgery, forgetful of the divine instinct, by which every man longs for God in his heart.

A great number of the faithful continue to practise their devotions, while taking a thoroughly materialist view on all practical issues and clinging openly to a materialist mode of life. One part of their lives is ‘devotionalised,’ the other part ‘materialised,’ whereas the whole of their lives should be ‘spiritualised.’ This is the great lesson of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, that he as Christ the Worker has reconciled matter and spirit in his daily working life. It is this reconciliation of which the world stands in need to-day, and towards which the Apostolate of Christ the Worker strives.

Drawing extensively upon anthropological and historical studies of primal and “canonical” religions (RR, 2, 232, 278, 318, 343), the philosophical theologian Keith Ward attempts in his recent book Religion and Revelation,’ to develop a comparative doctrine of revelations in order to situate Christian revelation within the plethora of revelations that are an undeniable aspect of human religiousness in its virtually infinite forms (RR, 57, 37, 23, 215-16). Yet because Ward believes that in Jesus Christ God has disclosed the true form of human redemption (RR, 280), he evaluates other revelations in light of this belief. Consequently, his theology of religions, despite its drawing upon the data of historical and comparative study of religions, is incapable of accommodating other revelations on their own terms. For example, Ward tries to read Sankara as a theist, and, thus, as an ally. In this essay, I will argue that this appeal to Sankara is misdirected since Sankara's position involves an ontological nondualism that ultimately annuls theism. I will also argue that such a misreading is an inevitable consequence of Ward’s exceptionalist theology of revelations, but is unconvincing to philosophical theologians of religions who cannot agree with Ward that the central claims of orthodox Christianity are “simply true” (RR, 279). Ward’s fideism forecloses arbitrarily upon the limits of revelation and encourages an exceptionalist parochialism This is harmless perhaps within the walls of liberal seats of theological learning, but it can foster fundamentalisms in other settings. Finally, I will argue that Ward’s fideism belies the apparently comparative character of his undertaking.

I remember a secular priest, in the course of a retreat at Oxford a good many years ago, politely chiding us Dominicans for not making more of St Catherine of Siena. The rebuke was, and is, worth attending to. St Catherine is always rated among the greatest figures in Dominican history, and there are those who would place her among the greatest women of all time. Yet it is now eighty years since the first, and last, really solid work on her life and teaching by an English Dominican—a nun, as it happened—appeared: the massive biography by Augusta Theodosia Drane, a very good work for its time and one unduly neglected. Since then there have been four books in English worth mentioning here: the two ‘Lives’ by Edmund Gardner and Alice Curtayne, the translation of the Dialogue by Algar Thorold, and vida Scudder's version of a selection of the Letters.

The doctrine of man as the Imago Dei has been brought out into the forefront of theological speculation in recent years, especially by Emil Brunner and Karl Barth; and Catholic theologians fully admit that Christian tradition needs to be re-explored before an adequate theological statement can be made in the face of the existentialist writers. The great problem, of course, is how can the two apparently irreconcilable trends in Christian tradition be synthesised without prejudice to the truth which each enunciates. How, in short, can the classic theory of St. Augustine be reconciled with the far too little known Imago Christi stress of Tertullian and St. Irenaeus? The latter school taught that man was made to the image of God in the sense that he was made after the pattern of the Christ coming in the flesh to redeem mankind : this school therefore strongly stresses the corporal likeness as a basic element in the Image doctrine. St. Augustine on the other hand, basing himself on a subtle analysis of the nature of the ‘mens,’ contends that man is made to the image of the Trinity itself, and carries in his soul a reflection of the divine life. This theory is then concerned to emphasise man’s spiritual nature as the most important element in the Imago doctrine.