A good deal of thinking about the priest and modern society has been about the priest rather than about modern society: by this I mean that we’ve tended to begin from the theological end, with an enquiry into what difference a renewed theology makes to our conception of the priest, and then to go on from here to the sociological implications : how does this new priest with his new functions fit into modern society, and what kind of society will be created around him? But I think we need to work the other way round as well: we need to try to get some idea of the reality of our society and then see what our theological talk amounts to, in that context. The point I’ll try to make in this paper is that there are some cases in which there is a serious tension between what seems theologically sound and desirable, and the results of this in terms of a whole society. This is why theological enquiry which is basically about society – the role of the priest, for instance – can’t afford to work on vague or superficial social ideas, on social caricatures. This isn’t just an abstract warning, because caricatures of our society are frighteningly easy, and it propably isn’t a caricature to say that this is one of the significant things about our society – that it makes stock judgements and category responses easy, and offers these as convincing descriptions of our experience.

Hans Urs von Balthasar is correctly perceived within the contemporary Catholic Church as an exponent of an orthodox, even conservative, understanding of the faith. His nomination to the rank of cardinal just before his death is evidence of this, as was his friendship with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. Nonetheless, one aspect of his theology, that dealing with the possibility of the salvation of all souls, drew upon him ‘fire from the right.’ He was taken to task by, among others, Gerhard Hermes and Heribert Schauf. In reaction to such criticism, Balthasar wrote a book entitled Was dürfen wir hoffen? (‘What may we hope for?’), recently published in translation by Ignatius Press under the title, Dare we hope ‘That all men be saved’? One of the purposes of this article is to examine this answer by Balthasar to his critics. I believe that certain aspects of his argument are, indeed, inadequate and have been justly criticised. Nonetheless, the major question raised in the book (and, indeed, by the entire controversy) is a legitimate one—and precisely in the sense that Balthasar asks it. A second purpose of the present essay, therefore, is to suggest the parameters within which we might hope ‘that all men be saved.’

My First point is one of agreement with Balthasar. Balthasar rejects those criticisms of his own work that suggest that, in so far as we know that at least some souls are damned to eternal perdition, we may not in any sense hope for the salvation of all souls.

Last year Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, addressed gatherings of eighty bishops and of the presidents of the doctrinal commissions of the bishops’ conferences of Latin America, on the subject of Relativism as the central problem for the Faith today. In religion, what he calls relativism is what most writers in this area today call pluralism. He says of the ‘so-called pluralist theology of religion’ that ‘only now has it come to the center of the Christian conscience’ (Origins: CNS documentary service, Vol. 26, No. 20, October 31, 1996, p. 311). On studying the text I find that Cardinal Ratzinger, speaking of contemporary religious pluralism, identifies me as ‘one of its founders and eminent representatives’ (p. 312).

If I were a Catholic, owing allegiance to the Pope, I would probably not feel able to question Cardinal Ratzinger’s pronouncements. But as what he calls an American Presbyterian (I am not in fact an American, although I taught for a number of years very happily in the United States), I feel entitled to respond to the Cardinal as a fellow theologian—a much more eminent one than myself, but nevertheless subject to the same canons of accuracy when expounding views which one intends to criticise. The tone of the Cardinal’s address is courteous throughout and I can appreciate the concerns which he expresses from his own very conservative point of view. My regret, however, is that internal evidence reveals that he has relied on a secondary source which has provided him with a misleading version of what I have written.

When he reviewed my book Marxism and Christianity (Oxford 1983) in New Blackfriars last December, Professor Nicholas Lash said he would be grateful for comments on his own very different attempt to confront some of the same issues as I had dealt with. He was referring to his book A Matter of Hope, published in 1981 by Darton, Longman and Todd. Here I am complying with his request. After Lash on Turner, readers of New Blackfriars can now try Turner on Lash!

Lash “aims to take Marxism seriously” (p.5) from the standpoint of Christian theology. He certainly does take Marxism seriously, at least in the sense that he gives Marx’s ideas a fair crack of the whip. The substance of his work consists in detailed, patient, lucid and by and large at least plausible reconstructions of some central themes in Marx’s thought. These include epistemological and/or ontological themes concerning “appearance and reality”, “ideology”, “truth”, “science and theory”, themes in social and anthropological theory such as “revolution”, “utopianism” and “alienation”, and above all the controverted question of the nature of Marx’s ‘historical materialism’ which,rightly, in my view, Lash sees as being the foundation of all that is distinctively Marxian about the rest. The strength of Lash’s book is, first, that he sees this distinctiveness and pervasiveness of Marx’s materialism and,secondly, that the intellectual and scholarly weight of the book is dedicated to its exploration. Indeed, as an essay by a theologian in the exploration of this and other central Marxist themes, I do not think Professor Lash’s book is seriously rivalled by anything much in the English language.

Poverty is not the real problem of the modern world. For we have the knowledge and resources which could enable us to overcome poverty. The real problem—the thing which creates misery, wars and hatred among men—is the division of mankind into rich and poor.

We can see this division at two levels. Within nation states there are a few individuals who have great wealth and whose wealth gives them great power; but the vast majority of people suffer from varying degrees of poverty and deprivation. Even in a country like the United States, this division can be seen. In countries like India, Portugal or Brazil, the contrast between the wealth of a few privileged individuals and the dire poverty of the masses is a crying scandal.

And looking at the world as a collection of nation states, we see the same pattern repeated. There are a few wealthy nations which dominate the whole world economically, and therefore politically; and a mass of smaller and poor nations whose destiny, it appears, is to be dominated.

The significance of this division between the rich and the poor is not simply that one man has more food than he can eat, more clothes than he can wear and more houses than he can live in, while others are hungry, unclad and homeless. The significant thing about the division between rich and poor nations is not simply that one has the resources to provide comfort for all its citizens, and the other cannot provide basic services. The reality and depth of the problem arises because the man who is rich has power over the lives of those who are poor, and the rich nation has power over the policies of those which are not rich. And even more important is that our social and economic system, nationally and internationally, supports these divisions and constantly increases them, so that the rich get ever richer and more powerful, while the poor get relatively poorer and less able to control their own future.

In the course of his article ‘The Encyclical Abstraction’ last month, Fr Thomas Gilby, O.P., touched on the distinction between the notions of conscience and ‘prudence’. He suggested that we should conduct our discussions of the moral issues raised by Humanae Vitae with greater precision and usefulness if we resorted to the suppler and ampler notion of ‘prudence’ rather than to that of conscience. ‘Prudence’ is something of a misnomer, carrying with it unfortunate associations for us today. Yet in much of our present discussion we seem to want to make ‘conscience’ do a great deal of the work that was formerly done by the finely analysed and thereby quasi-technical notion of ‘prudence’. It seems sensible, therefore, to take another look at this classical conception, and we do so by publishing here a translation of an extract from the extended Appendix to the French edition of the Summa of St Thomas Aquinas, dealing with Prudence. This piece thus takes its place as one of a series of contributions to a deeper consideration of the encyclical. We intend to publish further reflections in coming months from Mr Michael Dummett, Fellow of All Souls, and from Frs Timothy McDermott and Cornelius Ernst, O.P.

The important place occupied by ‘prudence’, in doctrine as in moral life, in the teaching of Aquinas can be seen clearly enough in his treatise on ‘Prudence’ in the Summa Theologica, 2a 2ae, 47-56. It is only too evident, however, that it has not subsequently kept pride of place in theology, for reasons which are not far to seek.

Nothing is more important than that Catholics should continually ask themselves: how bad a state is the Church in? We are all aware of the possibility that the Church may appear to be corrupt, and of the actualization of this possibility at various times in the past. But we tend, I think, to assume that such corruption will always be glaringly obvious, a matter of simony at the papal court, or pluralist bishops, or priests with concubines and children : we therefore conclude that, to the extent that things seem all right, so they must be all right. Whereas in fact, I suspect, corruption is seldom easily recognized at the time. Perhaps even the examples I have just mentioned, which seem to us so scandalous, were not felt at the time as symptoms of deep-seated disease: after all, we know that the Church is composed, not of angels, but of men, and that we have no right to expect perfection from Christians, bishops included; so probably these things were usually put down as instances of the kind of human weakness that we know that we have to reckon with. Thus we must be prepared, at any time, to find that the Church can be deeply corrupted, a corruption for which we shall be sternly judged but to which we have long been blind.

When we have recognized that the Church can be corrupt, we have to enquire what could make it possible for this corruption to take place: and this is the most serious theological enquiry that can be made, for it concerns our understanding of the nature of the Church.

Although Étienne Gilson did not change his position on Christian philosophy as defined in his 1931 Gifford Lectures, interesting modifications occur in his later formulations. Whereas Gilson's earlier formulations emphasized philosophy searching within the faith for what can become rational, his later formulations during the 1960s placed more emphasis on its Christian aspect, i.e., faith guiding reason. In the 1960s, Gilson emphasized faith and the Church as the guardians of Christian philosophy, expressed a relative indifference to the validity of rational proofs for the existence of God, and empathized with those accepting questionable philosophical approaches to understand the faith. Post-modernism with its rejection of a “pure” or “scientific” methodology in philosophy serves as an appropriate context in which to situate Gilson's later formulation of Christian philosophy.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, some Americans have claimed that U.S. governments have superseded their jurisdiction and violated individuals’ human rights in the use of government mandates. Many citizens and politicians have also claimed that governments are utilizing the pandemic as a smoke screen to take individual rights away from citizens to gain further power. In light of such claims, I provide a Thomistic response to argue that state and local political authorities’ use of public health mandates were other-regarding in seeking to protect the common good in an unprecedented health crisis. Further, I argue that the characterization of individual rights atomized from community has led to an improper understanding of political authorities, individual rights, and our duties to our communities. Rejecting the reductive, skeptical, individualistic, and atomistic views that many Americans have engendered, I provide a Thomistic political orientation that more adequately helps us think about political authorities’ and citizens’ responsibilities within our political communities.

Taking part in secular discussion is difficult for a Christian philosopher. An approach that has often been favoured by Catholic philosophers is to attempt to engage at a level of pure reason using natural law concepts. This paper argues that such an approach sells us short and represents a failure to engage in secular discussion on equal terms and a failure to give adequate witness to the teachings of Christ. The paper seeks to argue that while it is not true that reason has a wax nose, as former Cardial Ratzinger argued, there is a role for faith-derived concepts in secular discussion and for encouraging others to share their view whether faith based or not, and for subjecting those concepts to the scrutiny afforded by rational analysis in an effort to achieve an identified common ground of human goodness that both transcends individual culture and belief but has its individual origins within the disparate cultures and traditions.

According to John Polkinghorne, the Fall is the major Christian doctrine that is the most difficult to reconcile with contemporary science. Like him, however, I believe it is vitally important, even in this regard, to try to pinpoint the extent to which taking science seriously requires us to modify traditionally held beliefs. In this paper I focus on two problematic ideas associated with the Fall: (i) the idea of a primordial human couple (Adam and Eve), and (ii) the idea that this couple was subjected to bodily death as a result of their original misdeed. I argue that, contrary to appearances, it is possible to harmonize these beliefs with contemporary science – at least if one presupposes some kind of soul-body dualism. I also try to show that this dualism, although philosophically non-fashionable nowadays, is yet to be refuted or made redundant by current evolutionary theory or neurophysiology.

Yves M.-J. Congar (1904-1995) was the foremost French theologian of the twentieth century. The severe trials to which he was subjected by Roman Catholic Church authorities, notwithstanding, Congar loved the Church. As he explained to Jean Puyo in 1975: I am of the Church. I love the Church.’ This love is based on a simple yet profound truth that he recognised the Church as the Mother, the hearth and the homeland of his spiritual being. Congar’s love for the Church, motivated by his love for Christ, is situated in the wider setting of his love for humankind. It is difficult to avoid an admiration for his shrewd insistence on the need to locate the maternal and fraternal dimensions of the Church’s nature, seen as perfectly compatible, in a communion ecclesiology. A communitarian, ecclesial milieu is correctly identified as essential for the formation of Christians:

The transformation of the liturgy of the Catholic Church in the wake of the Second Vatican Council was, by any standard, a landmark event. It represented the unfreezing of a liturgical tradition which had seemed to many to be sacrosanct and immemorial, beyond question or change. Almost a century ago the greatest of all English liturgists, Edmund Bishop, could write without a hint of irony that “With the Missal and Breviary of St Pius V ...the history of the Roman liturgy may be said to be closed”.

Bishop himself was too good an historian to harbour romantic illusions about the timelessness or changelessness of liturgy. He had a highly developed sense of the historical evolution of worship and in fact he was a strong sympathiser and fellow-traveller with the Modernist movement, and its attempt to demythologise the doctrinaire nonhistorical orthodoxy of post-Tridentine Catholicism. But neither Bishop nor the two generations of liturgists who laboured after him to reclaim for the present the forgotten riches of the Latin liturgical tradition could have dreamed of the cultural and theological revolution which would come upon the Church in the late 1960s and 1970s, a revolution which swept away not only many of the accretions of medieval and baroque liturgical and para-liturgical practice which they so deplored, but many of their own most treasured convictions about the nature of liturgy and liturgical theology. They hoped that the liturgy, duly cleansed of accretion and distortion, would become, in Joseph Jungmann’s words, “a school of faith”. In the ancient prayers and ceremonies of the Church, Jungmann believed, would be found an endless resource, a great well of wisdom and truth.

Hans Urs von Balthasar was very clear that he owed his most distinctive theological insights to Adrienne von Speyr. ‘On the whole I received far more from her, theologically, than she from me, though, of course, the exact proportion can never be calculated’; she often gave him suggestions for sermons ‘but only rarely ... did she read my books’; ‘following her advice’ he took the extremely painful decision to leave the Society of Jesus; he ‘strove to bring [his] way of looking at Christian revelation into conformity with hers’; and although she has no part in the writing, without her ‘the basic perspective of Herrlichkeit would never have existed’ (First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr, 1981, page 13). ‘Today, after her death, her work appears far more important to me than mine, and the publication of her still-unpublished writings takes precedence over all personal work of my own’. He predicted, scornfully, that theologians would try to disentangle his insights from hers. Those who read the volumes of Herrlichkeit as they came out in 1961-67 (I was impelled towards them by the enthusiasm of Cornelius Ernst and Donald MacKinnon), of course, knew little or nothing about his indebtedness to von Speyr. Indisputably, some of his most characteristic themes draw heavily on her mystical experiences; other motifs, however, that are central and of great interest, seem independent of his meeting her.

There is as yet no proper biography. Born in 1902, in the Swiss Jura, in a comfortably-off family of doctors, clergymen and merchants, settled in Basel for centuries, Adrienne von Speyr was brought up as a Protestant.

‘Synod’ and ‘synodality’ have become synonymous with Pope Francis. Since Pope Paul VI instituted the Synod of Bishops as a permanent office in 1965, there hasn't been any pontificate that has given these matters as much profile and attention as his has. Why is this the case, and what is Pope Francis’ vision for a synodal Church? More fundamentally, what is synodality, according to tradition of the Church, and Pope Francis? Several years into both local and global synodal-type processes and formation gatherings, it seems many people, even prominent Church leaders, readily admit that they still do not fully understand it. For this reason, this article sets out to provide a general overview and introduction.