It is at least twenty years too late to prevent most Catholic institutions of higher education in Europe and North America from establishing departments of religious studies. It is not, of course, too late to disestablish them or, short of that rather impractical possibility, reform them along lines extending from a quite different set of principles. I believe a particularly good reason for doing no less than the latter is that the present enterprise is a contradiction to genuine Catholic education; simply one more manifestation of the stale secularism which now permeates Catholic schools. And the proof of this claim, as I intend to argue, lies in the fact that it is impossible within the regnant discourse of religious studies to reclaim what St Thomas meant by “acts commanded by religion.” The very notion of religion operating within that enterprise precludes it. The “religion” of religious studies is both too extensive in its initial presumptions but, more importantly, much too narrow in its final application to encompass what St. Thomas spoke of when he wrote on religion.

Perhaps the best route, then, to what St Thomas meant by religion, and in particular by acts commanded by religion, is getting straight about what he was not speaking of. To this end we can look to the most recent Encyclopedia of Religion, published under the editorial leadership of Mircea Eliade. The contribution on “religion” by Winston L. King provides just the sort of definition that reflects, not only the current wisdom in the field of religious studies, but a perfect antithesis to the teaching of St. Thomas.

Eschatology has found new respect at the heart of theology in the course of the twentieth century. The cross of Christ as a source, subject and description of soteriological concentration has secured a central place in the work of theology in recent decades. More remarkable is the communion of soteriology and eschatology, yielding an emphasized eschatology of the cross, still fresh in contemporary theology. The development of this vision in theology is particularly instructive in the work of five renowned theologians: Moltmann, Kasper, Ratzinger, Küng and von Balthasar.

In 1960 Hans Urs von Balthasar wrote that eschatology is the “sign of the times” of contemporary theology. That significance has strengthened in the passing of over thirty years. The work of many theologians demonstrates the truth of this and one of those most active in the breaking of the eschatological silence is the German theologian, Jürgen Moltmann.

Many of us, if involved in pastoral or educational work, have witnessed a religious misunderstanding in the mind of someone in our care, and have tried to help untangle it For instance, an R.C.I.A. group leader uncovers simplistic fundamentalist contortions in an enquirer; or a primary teacher, preparing a class for their first experience of the sacrament of Reconciliation, is concerned about the children’s readiness to understand and experience God’s outpouring of forgiveness in the sacrament; or a secondary R.E. specialist is alarmed to discover that a child’s practice or concept of prayer has not changed since leaving primary school; or, finally, a parish priest or catechist, in charge of a first communion programme, is disheartened by the literalism and theological poverty of the parents. Sometimes the misunderstandings result in a good comic story to share with colleagues. Such stories can be simultaneously funny and depressing.

One recent encounter caused me to reflect on religious misunderstanding. It occurred when I attended a special-occasion Eucharist, celebrated in a retreat centre, at 5 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon. As we were queuing to go in, a woman in front of me (whom I did not know) turned round to ask: “Will this do us for tomorrow?”

I assumed that this woman, aware of her Sunday Mass obligation, was wondering whether a Mass at 5 o’clock on Saturday would count, or whether it was not a little too early. As she turned the question over in her mind, no doubt she thought that if there were some ruling on the matter, then she would know where she stood, and would also be aware of what she must do.

Guido di Pietro, known to posterity as Fra Angelico, was born of peasant stock in Mugello, probably around 1400. He and his brother trained as illuminators and miniaturists and, when Angelico was about 21, they joined the Observant Dominican community of San Domenico in Fiesole above Florence. Professed as Brother John, Angelico’s ‘pastoral work’ while studying for the priesthood was to paint for San Domenico, Sta Maria Novella, and elsewhere. These early commissions made him famous and funded his workshop. If he was still learning priestcraft he was also still learning to paint: for his skills as an illuminator were little preparation for altarpiece design, a duty laid on his shoulders along with his Dominican scapular. So he became acquainted with the works of his contemporaries such as Masaccio, Masolino, Gentile and Sassetta.

His most important contact, however, was Cosimo De Medici, a patron not only of the arts but of the religious orders, especially the more radical mendicants. On return to power in 1434, he set about installing the Observant Dominicans in Florence, renovating an abandoned monastery for them which was to represent “the best in Christian humanism”.

The late Sir William Golding, who died on 19 June 1993, was one of only four English writers to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was one of the greatest novelists in the years after the Second World War, for some the greatest. He was forty-two by the time his first and most famous novel Lord of Flies was published in 1954. He went on to write another ten novels culminating in Fire Down Below (1989), which was the final novel in the trilogy of a sea journey to Australia set in the early nineteenth century. The trilogy Rites of Passage, Close Quarters and Fire Down Below, was published in one volume in 1991 entitled To the Edge of the Earth and could be called the journey of modem man.

Golding’s second novel The Inheritors (1955) was his own favourite and the only one which he re-read. Critics regard it as his best novel, with some scholars regarding it as his most ‘perfect’ work. It complements Lord of the Flies, and the two novels together mark Golding’s ‘primitive period.’ “They deserve special reading as companion pieces.”

The Inheritors is a difficult novel and interest in Golding somewhat waned after its publication. By the time of his fourth novel Free Fall (1959) interest was reviving, and with Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors it forms a possible trilogy in which Golding explores the loss of human innocence and the consequent darkness of the human mind i.e. the emergence of evil, violence and cruelty.

The debate about the morality of using military force in the post-coldwar period has shifted decisively away from theories of ‘just wars’ between states, towards the concept of ‘humanitarian intervention’. The Bosnian and Somalian crises have been widely discussed in this context The reason for the shift is that aggression by one sovereign state against another is no longer the principal focus of attention. Most of the conflicts now going on, or likely to take place in the future, are within the borders of states, not across them. (The Kuwait case was anomalous rather than typical of the period since 1989.) Yet such conflicts can easily turn into threats to peace and security, rightly attracting the attention of the international community under the terms of the UN Charter.

Humanitarian intervention (henceforth, simply ‘intervention’) has been proposed for such purposes as the following:

The morality of intervention in pursuit of such causes such is commonly discussed by applying the traditional criteria for a just war. These criteria are directly relevant, in so far as they apply constraints to the use of organized force, or violence.

The two paths led Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), the Belgian priest who became a founding father of modem cosmology, to the farthest reaches of the universe. The centenary of his birth fell on 17 July; his face, accompanied by the “primeval atom”, is currently featured on Belgium’s stamps.

Born in Charleroi, in the heart of French-speaking Belgium, he planned to become an engineer. But service in the First World War turned his thoughts to the priesthood, and he was ordained by Cardinal Mercier in 1923. After further mathematical studies in Cambridge and in the USA he returned to Louvain in 1927 as Professor of Astronomy, and remained there (apart from frequent travels) for the rest of his career.

The 1920’s were exciting years in astronomy. In 1919, the team led by Arthur (later Sir Arthur) Eddington, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge, to the island of Principe had observed the bending of light near the sun that provided the first proof of Einstein’s general theory of relativity. In 1925, Hubble’s observations yielded the first evidence that the distant nebulae are separate galaxies, and that they are receding from us.

Lemaitre's achievement in those years was to show, in a famous paper of 1927, that the Einstein model of the universe could not be static: it must either expand or contract.

The thirteenth century saw the rejuvenation of the Italian Church by the order of St. Francis. The Franciscans contributed to the new humanism that is identified with the Renaissance and expressed in the Tuscan painters of Florence (Cimabue and Giotto di Bondone) and of Siena (Duccio, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers). In the Upper Church of San Francesco, in Assisi where Cimabue and Torriti worked in fresco, the new humanism appears in the “Legend of the St. Francis Cycle.” In this work, life-sized human figures, conveying human emotions, made their first appearance in European painting. In the frescoes of the Scrovegni chapel at Padua and in Santa Croce in Florence, Giotto evoked a whole new range of feeling and expression. His immediate followers at Florence, Bernardo Daddi, Taddeo Gaddi, and Maso di Banco, for all their narrative invention and human intimacy, were dwarfed by his genius. But at Siena the school of Duccio di Buoninsegna developed its own more lyrical and illustrative style, with jewel-like colouring and linear grace. If Giotto gave painted figures humanity, Duccio established them in recognizable settings, Simone Martini invested them with poetry, while Ambrogio Lorenzetti set them in their complete physical environment. It was at this time that Florence and Siena produced the tentative beginnings of portraiture and of landscape in painting. The Tuscan painters reflect the Franciscan joy and delight in the goodness and beauty of the world, the Franciscan appreciation of nature as the resplendent reflection of its Creator, and the Franciscan esteem and affection for the poor and ordinary people.

Philip’s parents had gone out for the evening, and I had been given the job of keeping him amused. About twenty past eight he evidently had a better idea about how to amuse himself than homework, and said he was going out to see a video at a neighbour’s house. I wouldn’t have been dubious about this—if he hadn’t looked so shifty. ‘How long will you be?’ I asked. ‘Hour and a half,’ he replied. ‘So you’d be back ten minutes before your parents?’ ‘Er, yes,’ he grinned. ‘Would your parents let you go?’ Philip looked even shiftier.

He who claims to have read all the works of Augustine, says Isidore of Seville, is a liar. Yet of all the works of the Augustinian corpus, few have received as much attention as the Confessions. One is tempted, thus, to paraphrase Isidore and say, He who claims to say something new about the Confessions is a liar. I have no desire to be called a liar, I have not read all the works of Augustine, nor do I claim to have absolutely new insights into Augustine’s great work. I do, however, wish to offer some provisional thoughts on a topic little discussed: Memory and Imagination in Augustine’s Confessions.

Augustine’s theoretical treatment of memory, which has of course received extended treatment, occurs in book X of the Confessions. We cannot engage the vexing debate regarding the relationship between the first nine and final four books of the Confessions here. Suffice it to say that in writing the 13 books of the Confessions Augustine saw them as an integrated whole. It is not surprising, then, that after nine books of confessional remembrance of his life’s events and their meanings Augustine should turn to reflect on the faculty of memory itself.

Early in February, I was privileged to participate in a gathering of forty-five predominantly Catholic philosophers and theologians who met to discuss John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor. Most of the discussion at the conference focused on the second of the encyclical’s three chapters, which deals with “some trends of theological thinking and certain philosophical affirmations [that] are incompatible with revealed truth.”(§29) Conspicuously absent was any attention to either the first or especially the third chapters of the encyclical. The first chapter investigates the nature of Christian discipleship through the lens of St Matthew’s account of Jesus’ meeting with the rich young man. (Matt 19) The third chapter treats the issue of Christian martyrdom and other sources for Christian renewal. In the course of the discussion, the notion of discipleship was mentioned rarely, and the subject of martyrdom never came up. By concentrating almost exclusively on the second chapter, the conference failed to locate the encyclical’s critique of particular “trends of theological thinking and certain philosophical affirmations” within the context provided by Veritatis Splendor itself, namely that of Christian discipleship. In doing so this group mirrored much of the general response to Veritatis Splendor, which has centred almost exclusively on the second chapter. It is my goal to shift this focus, and to highlight the primacy of discipleship for a right understanding of Veritatis Splendor.

Veritatis Splendor has a message about a notion central to our lives: freedom. The Pope argues that the common conception of freedom as merely the absence of constraints is misguided. Christian freedom must be connected with the pursuit of truth.

In this article I wish to argue against a particular conception of nature as a tool for the understanding and appraisal of people’s sexual lives. That conception is one which sees people as having a determinate sexual nature as part of their biological inheritance, their physical constitution. This sexual nature is then used to determine sexual norms: what is in accord with nature is good, and what is against nature is bad. I believe that this approach to human sexuality is mistaken and misleading.

Human sexual behaviour is very various and, as far as we can tell, always has been. But human societies have rarely if ever been content to allow free range to the full variety of sexual desires and tastes. Human societies develop conventions governing sexual activities, encouraging some and restricting others, and limiting them to certain contexts. Modem anthropological, literary and historical scholarship has placed a great deal of emphasis on the fact that these conventions too are very various; the rules governing what kinds of sexual behaviour are acceptable and which are not have varied greatly from time to time and from place to place. And, whatever the rules, transgression has been constant. People have for one reason or another not wanted or have found themselves unable to behave themselves sexually as required by their society. They have not done what they were expected to do or, more often, they have done what they were expected not to do. In every society some transgressions are treated as more serious than others, and societies have varied in which transgressions they treat as serious.

It is important to realise just how different the norms governing sexual behaviour can be in different societies. I will briefly mention two examples to illustrate this. Much studied has been the case of ancient Greek paedophilia.

In his Summa Theologiae, Thomas Aquinas discusses the biblical account of Creation and deals at length with the production of the body and soul of the First Man and the First Woman. The soul of each, being immaterial, was created by God. But whereas the human body is normally produced by parents from the substance of their own bodies, God himself produced both the body of Adam and the body of Eve. He produced the body of Adam from earth, the body of Eve from the body of Adam. The matter used may have been different, but Adam and Eve were equally God’s own handiwork and Eve was not a child of (and hence not a dependent of) Adam.

He asks himself why God followed this (asexual) method of production and replies that it was to show that reproduction is a relatively peripheral activity in the life of the human being. The specific goal of human existence is to understand. He uses the word homo: the activities of mind are the central work of the human being qua human being, of woman therefore as of man.

In accordance with medieval practice, he states objections to his own position and seeks to refute them. Perhaps God should not have made woman at the beginning of the world? The suggestion by a theologian that God should not have done something he actually did is obviously academic. But Aquinas was an academic, and academics of all centuries find that the discussion of highly theoretical issues assists them to clarify their understanding of the real world.

The doctrine that lying is always wrong (often, of course, only venially wrong) has been defended at length by many authors who ought to be taken seriously: in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, and in the writings of the Doctors of the Church, e.g. Augustine, Aquinas, and Alphonsus de Liguori. Mr. Chappell, maintaining the contrary thesis, presents to his readers none of this literature, not even by allusion; the nearest he comes to that is a reference to what is ‘associated with the Jesuits’. The voice we hear against lying is that of an imaginary nasty boy called Philip.

Mr. Chappell also alludes to my book The Virtues. The views and arguments of ‘Philip’ are not ascribable to me; anybody curious about what I say should read my bode; if someone does that and still cannot see any significant difference between ‘Philip’s’ view of the matter and mine, nothing I could say now is likely to do him any good.

‘Philip’ and his creator both reason in a recognisably ‘consequentialist’ style: we get drearily familiar arguments and examples. But nobody has a right to treat consequentialist moral thinking as unanswerably sound, thus ignoring the anti-consequentialist writing not only of Catholics but of non-Christians such as Philippa Foot, Arthur Prior, and Bernard Williams. Mr. Chappell likewise fails to mention the refutation of consequentialist thought in the chapter of my book (‘Prudence’) devoted to that.