When a Benedictine monastery reaches a point in its course where ‘renewal’ or re-orientating becomes important, what way will it take? There are two courses. Both ways have been tried in the last seventy years in this country, and comparison between them shows up some interesting features in more or less modern Christian life. I would like to discuss these two courses with a view to introducing the Worth Abbey Peru Foundation. To do so, however, I must summarize the features of Benedictine Christianity which are reckoned essential to it, and therefore at once beyond ‘renewal’, and also the guiding principles of any particular renewal.

A monastery is not Benedictine unless it is a charitable spiritual ‘family’ living more or less permanently together in one place under an Abbot, having common work and prayer as its main activities. The vows: obedience to the local abbot, stability in one Abbey and ‘conversio morum’ (monastic behaviour) underlie this arrangement. It is obvious that such principles lead to team work as against personal ventures or successes. The most obvious evidence of this is that you seldom hear of particular monks becoming great scientists or writers, but you often hear of particular monasteries, like Montserrat or Ampleforth. The democratic election of the Abbot (in this country for only the statutory period of eight years) and his physical proximity to the other monks also encourage corporate activity and unity. Although monasteries often have many different activities, it is of the essence that the effect is unitive, not diversifying.

This is an essay that I have wanted to write for a long time. Perhaps not exactly this essay but one like it. In fact, I once did so, about twenty years ago. That essay was all about the rights of conscience: how our consciences are formed; and how to be Catholic means to be free. But the article was turned down by the editor of the journal in question because my remarks on conscience were ‘meat being offered to babes who can only take milk’. If the Catholic ‘babes’ had been given such meat twenty years ago perhaps they would not have suffered such pains from the diet which recent events have provided for them. Yet what saddened me most about the episode was the editor’s assumption that anything written by a Catholic must in some sense be ‘definitive’.

This notion that an article has to be definitive leads to articles being mass-produced, all of the same form and, above all, identical in tone, very solemn, rather omniscient, final in their judgments, givng an air of finality even to their non-judgments, donning the judge’s black cap even when pronouncing the accused not guilty. This means to say that writers are encouraged to pretend that one of their half-thoughts is a thesis, and two of their half-thoughts a whole book (a publisher once asked me to turn an article of twelve pages that I had published into a book of 140 pages, saying ‘You needn’t add anything of substance to it’; he produced a series of such books).

In the light of what has been said in the first part of this article, it may be useful to examine briefly the text of Matt. 16, 17-19. It is remarkable that most of the interesting exegesis of this passage has been the work of Protestant scholars, notably O. Cullmann in his Peter: Apostle and Martyr, and also J. Ringger, ‘Das Felsenwort. Zur Sinndeutung von Matt. 16, 18, vor allem im Lichte der Symbol- geschichte’ in Roesle-Cullmann, Begegnung der Christen, 1959, together with numerous articles on key-concepts by J. Jeremias now available in English in the translation of Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. As to the propriety of looking at these verses in isolation, we may quote the remark of the Catholic exegete, W. Trilling (Das wahre Israel, 3rd ed., 1964): ‘This language, dense with imagery, of a kind also found in the Qumran writings, is in itself foreign to Matthew’ (p. 156). It may be that within the perspective of a modern jurisdictional theology of the primacy, the symbolic sense of the text was not easily accessible to Catholic scholars before Protestant exegetes opened the way to an understanding of it in some respects closer to patristic exegesis.

In summary, then, the whole passage is an instance of anticipated eschatology, in which the Messiah invests an individual with his own messianic powers over the messianic community.

v. 17. In response to his messianic confession, Simon is greeted with a ‘beatitude’ or ‘macarism’, for in him the eschatological event of the last times has been anticipated by ‘apocalypse’.

‘The true speaking absolutely is prior to the good, as appears from two reasons. First because the true is more closely related to being, which is prior to good.... Secondly,... knowledge naturally precedes appetite.’ (Summa, la Q. 16, Art 4, Eng. trans.)

The object of the intellect (i.e. Truth) ‘is more simple and more absolute than the object of the will’ (i.e. goodness). Therefore the intellect in itself and absolutely is higher and nobler than the will— yet ‘the love of God is better than the knowledge of God; but on the contrary, the knowledge of corporeal things is better than the love thereof. Absolutely, however, the intellect is better than the will.’ (Ibid., Q,. 82, Part 3.)

These two texts from the Summa of the Blackfriar St Thomas Aquinas must outline the attitude of Blackfriars towards truth.

At the risk of failing to express what is in our mind, let us say that we fully accept the consequences of St Thomas’s principle: ‘Truth is more simple and absolute than goodness, therefore the intellect is higher and nobler than the will.’ In our aim of finding and telling the truth we will not primarily concern ourselves with what is good; or only with that highest good, the Truth. This is but to realize that transcendentals, such as truth, must be sought for their own sake or they will not be found in their fullness. Truth-seeking and truthtelling must not be blended and weakened with enquiries into the economic, political, ethical or theological value of the truth.

Mowgli and Doctor Doolittle were my friends when I gave up fairy stories. Years later, as an undergraduate I was enabled to unmask them, or rather to site them accurately in the zoo of fantasy, for, so we were taught, while ants and monkeys might live in societies, man alone could be characterized by language and culture. Mowgli as the boy living among wolves, and Doctor Doolittle speaking the language of animals, represented in different ways the craving of fantasy to break through the bonds of necessity, either by sloughing off the second skin of transmitted human knowledge, or by discovering in the animal kingdom the same arbitrary and artificial codes by which we communicate. Lately, Mowgli and Doctor Doolittle have returned to the boundary of my reflections on the cultural and ethical significance of the biological aspect of human personality, perhaps to suggest that their very anomalousness indicates the necessary inadequacy of all attempts to categorize absolutely. Yet they retain the essential innocence of uncommitment, whereas this article is loaded in that not only was its starting point consideration of Humanae Vitae, but also that it leans very heavily to the Pope’s point of view. I shall be concerned mainly with looking at underlying assumptions, rather than trying to synthesize. If the Pope or his critics are relying on principles which the development of the social sciences has shown to be inadequate, it does not automatically follow that the other side is right; but the terms of the debate must be recast.

There are many points of view from which one might enjoy pondering the intelligible and the absurd. I am going to tackle absurdity in three ways: as (a) the residue left in reality after intelligibility has been exhausted; (b) the complement of intelligibility; and (c) as a mode of intelligibility (which is one of the absurdest words in the language, when you come to look at it).

Although no doubt it raises all sorts of problems to talk like this, it does seem that one can meaningfully say that there is a certain intelligibility built into reality. This would appear to be involved in any doctrine of creation, whether Platonist or otherwise.

To start with ‘otherwise’: in English we more naturally talk of people understanding one another, than of understanding nonpersonal objects, trees for instance; as against Platonist thought, where the object of intellection is generally non-personal.

Understanding each other means, let us say, being on each other’s wavelength, speaking the same language, and so on. It has something to do with the old definition of friendship as idem sentire and so on. I see what you mean’ does not merely indicate that I, with my inner eye, perceive your meaning; it also suggests that with my outer eye I see things from your point of view, with your perspective: we share for a while a common vision.

In spite of the greater ease with which dispensations to marry are being granted to laicized priests, it is becoming increasingly evident that the subject of celibacy is being approached from very different angles by the Holy See, and by those seeking a change in the law and many of those seeking dispensations. And the procedure being used, the delays and the secrecy are tending towards a loss of confidence in authority similar to that precipitated by the encyclical Humanae Vitae. There is a tendency to a stalemate on the subject of celibacy, between very large numbers of priests and laity on the one hand, and the Holy See and the majority of bishops on the other, which could have widely damaging effects unless true dialogue can be reopened.

In the encyclical of 1967 On Priestly Celibacy Pope Paul VI indicates the point of view of the Holy See. If a priest is ‘unfortunately unfaithful to the obligations accepted’ it is due either to a mistake, ‘a judgement on the fitness of the candidate for the priesthood which was not always adequate or prudent at the proper time’, or to a moral failure in the ‘way in which sacred ministers live their life of total consecration’ (ibid., 83).

This is a development on previous times. The Codex of Canon Law only provides for release from celibacy owing to ordination having been received under the compulsion of grave fear and a complicated legal process, analogous to that needed for release from a non-consummated Christian marriage, is required (Canons 1993-8).

Three witnesses of the same event hardly ever give exactly the same account of it, but there is usually a sufficient measure of agreement between them to ensure the general veracity of their testimony, even if many of the details remain irreconcilable. This seems to be true of the first three Gospels. The triple tradition at first sight gives reassurance. The differences between them appear to confirm the essential truth of the account, as they suggest that the tradition has been independently attested.

If this is the impression which first strikes the reader of the Synoptic Gospels, more careful study will soon shake his confidence. When the triple tradition is subjected to word-for-word comparison in the Greek, it soon becomes apparent that the similarities are too close to be explained in terms of independent testimony. The Synoptic Gospels are actually interdependent. One evangelist has used the work of another. This means that the differences between them are not due to independent tradition, but are deliberate divergences on the part of the evangelists. And if the two later ones have been so lacking in fidelity to their common source, how can we have any certainty that the original has not been equally unfaithful to the primitive tradition on which it is based ? And if that is so, how can we ever get back to the truth of the matter, and find out what Jesus really did say and do in his life on earth?

This is the essence of the Synoptic Problem, and it has been the central issue before New Testament scholars for the past 150 years.

One of the paradoxical side-effects of the shift of interest in New Testament studies from historicity to tradition-history (Redaktions- geschichte) has been an increased awareness of the historical character of revelation. In the process of distinguishing sources and noting literary techniques we become very conscious of the personality of the writers. We discover human minds grappling with the problems of their communities, minds operating within the problematic imposed upon them by their culture and interests, minds limited by their resources. This discovery has destroyed the concept of the New Testament as an ageless monument. In its place we have a library whose volumes reflect the varied personalities of their authors. The inspired character of their insights guarantees that they cannot be ignored, but recognition of the fact that they have been conditioned historically means that they cannot be accepted without critical examination.

This conclusion has implications for both dogmatic and moral theology. Attention has centred in the area of dogma, as is only natural given the traditional understanding of the relationship between the two, but unfortunately lack of adequate investigation into the relation of language to religious thought has rendered the discussion less fruitful than one might have hoped. This difficulty does not arise with regard to morals because here there certainly can be no question of simply modifying the verbal expression. The problem posed by moral precepts is not one of understanding but of relevance: to what extent are concrete specific directives given to first-century communities binding today?

It is intriguing to speculate where theological controversy would be without St Paul. From the very beginning he has been quoted on both sides of every argument. This has been facilitated by the proverbial obscurity of many of his statements, but indirectly it is evidence of the complexity of his thought. Paul is not easy to understand because he was not a simple man. His enthusiasm had nothing of the shallow lucidity that characterizes the fanatic. The Corinthians accused him of ambivalence, but it is probably truer to say that he was simply a very hard-headed pragmatist. He was certainly capable of letting his mind run free in a sweep that carried his thought into a cosmic dimension, but for all that he never lost his sharp awareness of the realities of any given situation. This latter facet of his character has been rather overlooked, because the interest of commentators has lain elsewhere. However, at precisely this juncture in the history of the Church it is important to recognize the pragmatic dimension of his thought, because its realism is very instructive. Fortunately this aspect appears most clearly when Paul has to concern himself with the relationship of the believer to the society in which he lived, since this problem is perhaps the most crucial confronting the Christian today.

The debate over Humanae Vitae reminds one strongly of the controversy—now much less pronounced than it was—over the nature of the ethic of Jesus. I want to suggest how an answer which emerged in that controversy may have a bearing on the present discussion among Catholics.

The Sermon on the Mount has been interpreted in three main ways—as an utterly transcendental ethic, as an interim-ethic, and as an ethic realizable in terms of this present world. Broadly speaking, the first and third of these alternatives received most support and they have their counterparts in the present debate. The transcendental view commanded great respect; the ethic of Jesus was absolute, it promulgated a new sort of law demanding a superhuman obedience. The opposite view argued that the ethic could not be attained, and we had much better wrest significance from such principles of justice, fair play, equality, etc., as we had and attempt a progressive improvement of humanity with these. In practice, this often corresponded with the third view about the nature of Christ’s teaching: Christian morality was about a human ideal, a vision of a better world after which we must all strive.

The most lucid critic of these positions was Reinhold Niebuhr, in a long line of books, notably Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932) and An Interpretation of Christian Ethics in 1936. Niebuhr holds that the great mistake of most of the usual interpretations of the ethic of Jesus is their failure to realize the ‘true dialectic of the spiritual life’.

The process of secularization which began towards the end of the Middle Ages seems to have reached its peak. Not only has a way of life developed which no longer even pays lip-service to religion, so that large sections of the population live completely outside any direct religious influence, secular values have invaded the City of God itself. They have all but succeeded in eliminating an entire dimension of experience which, by the grace of God, is open to man. In other words, man is slowly and systematically robbed of his ideals. His vision is narrowed down to the here and now. If it is true, as George Herbert wrote: ‘Who aimeth at the sky shoots higher much than he that means a tree’, we are in danger of missing even the tree, unless we stop and take our bearings afresh. It is one thing to say that monogamous marriage, celibacy and the non-use of contraceptives are far beyond the powers of the average man. It is quite another to demand their abolition on these grounds—not only because there have been people—they still exist—who are actually able to live on this level, but chiefly because this would mean ignoring one human possibility. No one would dream of abrogating the law of charity, because most of us sin against charity regularly, often grievously. But the lives of the saints are there to show us that the ideal is patient of realization, even if we ourselves are too weak to approach it more closely.

A similar concept of character to John Bayley’s was presented by Iris Murdoch, in an influential essay called ‘Against Dryness’, published in Encounter in 1961. Her approach is more overtly philosophical: she argues that in the face of the failure of traditional liberal philosophy to develop an adequate concept of man, the novel can give us a full sense of the uniqueness and mysteriousness of human personality. She finds these qualities exemplified in the great novelists of the nineteenth century, particularly the Russians, and contrasts their kind of novel with the typical fictional modes of the twentieth century: the ‘journalistic’ novel of accumulated fact and information, a degenerate descendant of literary naturalism, which is often a formless, inflated daydream; and the ‘crystalline’ novel of dry aesthetic concentration, which is more concerned with an ideal of form than with conveying the variousness of reality. A normative note emerges at the end of Miss Murdoch’s essay:

There is a clear consonance between Iris Murdoch’s ideas and John Bayley’s, and, again, the contrast between these ideas and the characteristic utterance of the Continental or American avant-garde is striking.

Even for those who are still willing to learn with St Thomas Aquinas, the image of him may be that of one whose achievement was, supremely, synthetic: starting from the first and ultimate principles, he descends steadily down from God to man, in the manner of those streams from the heavens down the mountains into the plains celebrated in the psalm (103, 13) which St Thomas chose as the text of his inaugural lecture as Master in the university of Paris:

This image has some measure of truth in it, but for reasons which will appear only slowly in the course of this article. Nevertheless, the plain—and to us more sympathetic—fact remains that this image is also false: St Thomas found men much as we find men: man is broken and lives in a broken society, a creature always liable to fall apart into his constituent pieces within a society riven by discord and distortions.

In my first article I offered some reasons for thinking that the concept of modelling modern liturgies on some pattern formed in the distant past is one which has begun to outlive its usefulness. However, if we turn from Rome and the documents produced by the Consilium there to the actual areas of concern or experiment, we find a potentially far more fruitful situation. Two groups of people seem to be most interested in the changing shape of liturgy: those who love the Roman rite and wish to see it preserved in more or less its present form and those who feel that a new creation is required if we are to have forms of worship apt for the needs of contemporary man. To be sure, the habit of accepting whatever comes from above is ingrained in the Catholic and a large number of the faithful will certainly make the best of whatever is offered liturgically, as they have done in the past, but the two groups I have mentioned are the only ones whose response to liturgical change is not basically passive; each can put up a good case and it is around their needs as worshipping members of the people of God that two types of liturgy will crystallize. Such a polarization is something which we shall have to accept; we must give up the desire to enforce upon all our fellow Catholics a type of worship which at a given moment happens to suit us personally. We must also realize that the two concepts of worship involved are not susceptible of the kind of superficial reconciliation provided by the ICEL translation of the Canon.

Just over a hundred years ago, the case of Governor Eyre split English society into fiercely opposing factions: one led by Carlyle and Ruskin included Dickens and Tennyson; in the other J. S. Mill was supported by Darwin and Huxley.

The slave-based prosperity of Jamaica in the eighteenth-century had given place by the early 1860s to an economic decline, the white sugar-planters easily outdistanced by foreign competitors, the negroes now mostly working their own land, but discontented and seeking more. Droughts, disease and the American Civil War had brought the latter’s discontent to a head. The national Assembly was unrepresentative, venal and inefficient. In this delicate situation the task of ruling as Governor was one which called for very exceptional qualities. To this assignment Edward John Eyre was appointed in 1862; Eyre had been an emigrant and explorer in Australia, where he had done much to protect the aborigines. He had been seven years Lieutenant-Governor of New Zealand, six years Lieutenant- Governor of St Vincent, and then Governor of the Leeward Islands. Able and humane, Eyre was obstinate and tactless, and he soon became unpopular in Jamaica.

On 9th October, 1865, a rebellion broke out at Morant Bay, led by a negro demagogue called Bogle. His men killed the German custos and about twenty others, mostly Volunteers, wounding thirty-odd as well. In the next few days sporadic outbreaks took place in neighbouring parishes. Eyre promptly declared martial law in the troubled district, and sent troops there. They found the rebels dispersed or hidden, and there was no organized resistance.

Every Catholic knows that the Church is faced with a crisis and the name of that crisis is authority. Similarly in our society, the majority is aware that there is a challenge to authority as witnessed repeatedly on television which brings to millions of homes scenes of strife involving students, demonstrations, marches and clashes between employers, trade unions and workers. The majority of men and women sit and watch, leaving the few to march, sit down on the streets, barricade themselves in and from time to time explode in violence. At this point fingers are raised, critical editorials are written and sermons are preached about law and order. Indeed the desire for law and order is so great that human beings have to reach a very high degree of desperation before they threaten seriously the conditions which stabilize any society. Ideally everyone in authority should have as a primary concern the anticipation of legitimate needs. But this is an ideal and the enormous amount of human strife is a witness that this highly desirable objective is rarely achieved. Because of the known temptations likely to afflict those in authority who exercise power on behalf of others, the principles of democracy have been evolved to safeguard both the ruler and the ruled.

I

It is now clear enough that the disturbance in the Catholic world caused by the publication of Humanae Vitae was a symptom of much deeper stirrings in the Church than a difference of opinion about contraceptive methods of family limitation. We have to recognize that a profound shift of Catholic consciousness had already begun to take place, and that the publication of Paul VI’s encyclical served to precipitate this new consciousness and to make its protest against the old articulate.

The visible structure of the older Catholic consciousness is easily described: within the period between Pius IX and Pius XII, Catholics recognized their distinctive identity, especially in England, in terms of an explicit awareness of the Pope, Mary, eucharistic devotions as well as Mass, Friday abstinence and the unlawfulness of ‘unnatural’ methods of birth control. It is instructive to recall that the Pope who confirmed his predecessor’s withdrawal of the discussion of contraception from Vatican II and who could not accept the recommendations of his theological commission is also the Pope who insisted on giving Mary the title of Mater Ecclesiae in his allocution of 21st November, 1964, at the close of the third period of Vatican II, although the title was after consideration excluded from the chapter on Mary in the constitution Lumen Gentium on the Church; thus Paul VI continued the tradition of Pius IX and Pius XII in associating Pope and Mary in a special relationship to the Church. Paul VI is also the Pope of the encyclical Mysterium Fidei on the Eucharist.