The presupposition of the argument of this paper is that all Catholic theology occurs in the first place within the context of some Church-mediated experience of God. This does not mean reducing theology to spirituality or to the conceptual elaboration of personal piety. It is simply saying that theology requires a starting-point, a source of intelligibility, which is encounter with God himself: for without some prior relationship to its ‘object’ theology can never be anything more fundamental than the philological investigation of more or less ancient documents. What we are therefore taking to be theological understanding (hermeneutic), even of classical texts in theological tradition, depends radically on some personal or anyway epochal (in a sense to be explained) experience of what theology is about in the first place: that is, on somehow being addressed by God himself. Doing theology at all depends on hearing the word of God: God must be allowed to speak to us before we can begin to speak about him. It was on the basis of this presupposition, and in the context of collective reflexion on the challenge to theological renewal facing one of the older religious orders at the present time, that the following observations were originally adumbrated.

‘The Church must enter into dialogue with the modern world’: this is a phrase and a programme with which we are familiar today. It is not always noticed, however, that all the terms of it are very obscure. We are not at present very clear about the nature of the Church nor about the nature of the modern world, and any dialogue between the two is consequently very difficult to visualize. It may be said that we are at least aware that we are not very clear about the nature of the Church; the real difficulty is that we tend to suppose there is no problem about the nature of the modern world.

By the time these words are in print the Vatican Council will be about to enter on its fourth, and presumably last, session. Undoubtedly this session will be an important one, its decisions are likely to make or mar the full realization of all its previous work. Pope John had two principal aims in calling together Vatican II. The first was the renewal of the inner life of the Church. A striking manifestation of such renewal would reveal its native truth and splendour to the world, not in pomp and pageantry, but in humble service of mankind. That native truth and splendour have been too often obscured by the slow unrecognized pressures of history, and by human limitation and failings. Their remedy, by sincere self examination, would enable the Church's eternal message to penetrate the world it lives in more acceptably. The progressively widening divorce of world from church might then, in some measure at least, be narrowed and bridged.

The second aim, equally important, but subsidiary to the first, was to promote by a change of heart and mind the unity of all Christians in the one Church, as Christ the Lord wills it and designs it to be. These two aims were of course intimately connected in Pope John's mind, though no doubt he himself learned much, during his short pontificate, of what this first step, so clearly indicated to him, would ultimately involve.

In his recent book Mr Hales has done much to clarify these two aims of the late Pope and how they formed themselves in his mind.

Perhaps it is worth while beginning by taking a look at the traditional Catholic teaching on the just war. to see how and why it developed. It is significant that, in approaching the question of war. Aquinas asks whether it is always sinful to wage war. His discussion of this topic concludes with the formulation of three conditions for a war to be just. His doctrine has been elaborated by later theologians and perhaps the most comprehensive brief statement is to be found in the following passage from Father Henry Davis, S.J.:

How the valley awakes. At two fifteen in the morning there are no sounds except in the monastery: the bells ring, the office begins. Outside, nothing, except perhaps the bullfrog saying ‘Om’ in the creek or in the guest house pond. Some nights he is in Samadhi, there is not even ‘Om'. The mysterious and uninterrupted whooping of the whippoorwill begins about three, on spring mornings. He is not always near. Sometimes there are two whooping together, perhaps a mile away to the woods in the east.

The first chirps of the waking day-birds mark the point vierge of the dawn under a sky as yet without real light, a moment of awe and inexpressible innocence, when the Father in perfect silence opens their eyes. They begin to speak to him not with fluent song but with an awakening question that is their dawn state, their state at the point vierge. Their condition asks if it is time for them to ‘be'. He answers ‘yes’. Then, they one by one wake up, and become birds. They manifest themselves as birds, beginning to sing. Presently they will be fully themselves, and will even fly.

Meanwhile, the most wonderful moment of the day is that when creation in its innocence asks permission to ‘be’ once again, as it did on the first morning that ever was.

All wisdom seeks to collect and manifest itself at that blind sweet point. Man's wisdom does not succeed, for we are fallen into self-mastery and cannot ask permission of anyone.

My fair virgins, nothing can so help a person towards virtue as chastity. For chastity alone causes the soul to be guided in the noblest and best possible way and to be washed clean of the stains and impurities of the world. Indeed, ever since Christ taught us to practise it and revealed to us its unsurpassable beauty, the reign of the evil one has been destroyed, whereas before he had continually been capturing and enslaving mankind ; so that none of the men of old were fully pleasing to the Lord, but all were overwhelmed by error, forthe Lawwas not at all adequatetofree mankind from corruption, until virginity, succeeding the Law, held man in thrall to the commands of Christ. (St Methodius. The Symposium. Logos 10).