How must those who preach the Gospel speak if they arc to be listened to? For the sociology of religion this is the sixty-four thousand dollar question. Here in Wales audibility seems to have varied over the years right up and down the scale. Two hundred years ago the chapels were unbuilt, the cathedral of the Archbishop of Wales was in ruins, and the Gospel message was heard hardly above a whisper. But come forward a century, to around 1850 or 1880, and the same message is heard so loudly as to drown everything else. The Church of England, presently to be the Church in Wales, is back on its feet. ‘These eminent propagandists of the Faith, the Irish’, as a contemporary priest at Maesteg called them, begin to pour in even before the Famine. Above all, the chapels are being built, literally in their hundreds. ‘Sin and savagery’ is how one historian describes the Glamorgan and Monmouth valleys in the early Industrial Revolution. Yet this chaotic, rootless proletariat was converted in a couple of generations into Christian communities, centred round the chapels, one of the greatest triumphs of evangelism in modem times. But come on yet another century, to the present day, and the picture changes again. The proportion of regular church- or chapel-goers to the population has in many places been halved, though still remaining far higher than in England. The influence of Christianity in work or leisure or politics is a mere shadow of what it was. The Free Churches can still stop the Cardiff Students’ Union from having a bar. But they cannot stop the Sunday shifts which—-with, admittedly, other things—have led two-thirds of Port Talbot people, in a recent questionnaire, to put down Sunday as ‘just like any other day’. Whatever the conditions for hearing the message of Christianity may be, it is clear that they were not satisfied two hundred years ago, came to be satisfied in the nineteenth century, and have ceased to be so well satisfied now. The problem of course is whether they can ever be satisfied again.

The religious problems discussed most frequently in French intellectual circles are, in all probability, the suffering of the innocent, hell, the story of human origins and original sin, the salvation of non-Catholics, the value to be attached to other religions. All of these, it will be observed, represent points at which the positive economy of salvation comes into apparent conflict with the aspirations of modern man and his compulsion to give an account of human history and of human destiny in purely rational terms. Such circumstances cannot but guarantee a sympathetic public for a book of some four hundred pages bearing the promising title of The Salvation of the Unbeliever, especially when it comes from so distinguished an author as Father Riccardo Lombardi.

Profoundly aware of the distress caused by the fact that thousands of men and women have never come, and indeed never have had the chance of coming, to an explicit knowledge of Jesus Christ and his Church, Fr Lombardi approaches his subject with the avowed intention of trying to establish as wide and as optimistic a solution as possible. Such a solution appears to him to be justified, demanded even, by what St Paul says in i Timothy: ‘It is (God’s) will that all men should be saved, and be led to recognize the truth.’

It is not yet four years since Mr Belloc died. He left a vast and varied opus; a collection of friends almost as diverse as his books; a legend; and an enormous quantity of diaries and papers. It is astonishing that in so short a time Mr Speaight should have been able to work through so many sources of information, assess their relevance, extract what was of value, bring the legend into focus in the man, and write this admirable study, objective, affectionate, detailed and just. He has handled his great and complex task with detachment, and has succeeded in doing something which must have been very difficult indeed; that is, in describing the multifarious events and labours and interests and adventures of Belloc’s torrential, centrifugal life, without ever obscuring his unity of character, centripetal in religious loyalty. He is seen, first and last, as a single human being; not as a volcano in ceaseless highly unpredictable eruption. This means, of course, that some of his personal impact is diminished; but many vivid impressions or that impact are available, with J. B. Morton’s memoir as the most intensely vital of them all. The present biography is the first to give the facts, the documents, the time sequences, which form the bony structure of that long and vigorous life. For the most part Mr Speaight stands well away from his subject matter, and records without comment both the attractive and the unsympathetic aspects of Belloc. His childlike goodness and generosity and loyalty emerge, his overwhelming vitality, ‘the spouting well of joy within’, his capacity for friendship and singing and laughter; and so do his anti-semitism (neither soft-pedalled nor excused, but traced to French influences in his youth, especially that of the Collège Stanislaus where he spent some formative months) and his lack of imaginative sympathy.

There is no lack of scepticism about international institutions, and it is particularly widespread in Europe. It is a well-known fact that many Catholics subscribe to it. Europeans do not forget the failures of the League of Nations, and Catholics are distrustful of formulas which are often deduced from philosophical principles hostile, or at least indifferent, to Christianity. There are many, especially among the Catholics of the U.S.A., who do not easily overlook the historical links between modern internationalism and the liberal tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The present article does not seek to plead the cause of international institutions; its purpose is merely to provide information. There is no reason for Christians to be ignorant of the facts which explain the ever-increasing interest in international institutions which is taken by the Holy See, as well as the important place which relations with the United Nations and its Specialized Agencies take in the activities of the big Catholic international organizations.

First of all, it will be useful to set out what is original in the existing family of international institutions as contrasted with previous ones.

There is no lack of scepticism about international institutions, and it is particularly widespread in Europe. It is a well-known fact that many Catholics subscribe to it. Europeans do not forget the failures of the League of Nations, and Catholics are distrustful of formulas which are often deduced from philosophical principles hostile, or at least indifferent, to Christianity. There are many, especially among the Catholics of the U.S.A., who do not easily overlook the historical links between modern internationalism and the liberal tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The present article does not seek to plead the cause of international institutions; its purpose is merely to provide information. There is no reason for Christians to be ignorant of the facts which explain the ever-increasing interest in international institutions which is taken by the Holy See, as well as the important place which relations with the United Nations and its Specialized Agencies take in the activities of the big Catholic international organizations.

First of all, it will be useful to set out what is original in the existing family of international institutions as contrasted with previous ones.

At the end of the last century people pretty generally believed that Christianity could not much longer survive the rapid progress of science; there was a battle on, and its conclusion was inevitable within a matter of years. Today the situation looks completely different. Scientists are more cautious in their speculations and Christianity has proved more resistant than could have been expected. The idea has grown up that perhaps collaboration rather than rivalry may be of more value to each: there are signs that the lion is prepared to lie down with the lamb.

The publication, a few months ago, of E. L. Mascall’s Christian Theology and Natural Science is an important step in this direction. Dr Mascall is a theologian who has maintained his interest in the science he studied in earlier life. In his new book he examines in detail a number of the points at which theological and scientific studies come into contact. As a result of this examination he insists that Christians should neither ignore nor repudiate scientific discoveries. There is not the slightest need for them to fear that science will make it necessary to abandon traditional Christian teaching, or that reconciliation can only be effected by desperate expedients such as turning Christian dogma into mere metaphor. Of course some apparent conflict must still remain, but the sensible procedure is then to examine each situation with care, and see whether valid conclusions have been drawn by theologian and scientist from the evidence available to them; if either has gone too far, we may have to suspend judgment until further evidence comes to light. Each is seeking truth, and the Christian especially must be fearless in accepting truth from whatever source it comes, since he believes that ultimately it comes from God and tells him something of its author.

Christians cannot look at Israel from a purely human point of view, for they must see Israel as an essential part of God’s plan for men. In a sense, of course, every nation is a part of God’s plan; human history is governed, or at least supervised, by God, and all the national groupings that arise in the course of history fall under his Providence. But Israel belongs to the plan in a unique way, not just as one people among others, but as the People of God. Israel has no significance as a nation except in a divine perspective. For Israel is the Chosen People, chosen as a people, loved by God as a people.

The life and destiny of Israel then is a mystery in the strict sense. This is a word which is often abused, but I am using it as the Fathers of the Church used it to mean ‘that which plays a part in the realization of God’s plan’. This is the sense in which the Fathers could call the events of the Old Testament mysteries; the episode of Jacob and Esau, David’s flight from Saul and later from his sons, the sufferings of the prophet Jeremias. All these were stages in the realization of God’s plan, types and figures of fulfilment to come, types and figures of Jesus Christ. Christian thinkers have always been aware that Israel was a mystery in this sense. But in the last two decades our attention has been increasingly directed to the fact. We have realized, for instance, that anti-semitism has a theological significance for us: it is an attack upon God, upon charity, upon the continuity of biblical revelation ; an attack in fact upon the roots of Christianity itself. Must we not also say then that the recent establishment of a free Jewish state, the re-emergence of a Jewish nation—and that in the Land promised to them by God—is theologically significant? an answer indeed to the innumerable prayers addressed to God by the Jews since the occupation of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 A.D.? There is no valid reason to think that such fervent and continuous prayers should remain forever unanswered.

H E is religious to whom something is holy’. The most basic experience of man is the impact upon his own .person of power from without. Towards the ultimate source (or sources) of this power he cannot be indifferent. He may react in one of two ways: he may regard it as something to be controlled and used, or as something to be served and propitiated. The first of these reactions is condemned by religion as such. It is the attitude defined as hybris, arrogance. Man attempts to place himself above the ‘Source of Power’ instead of acknowledging himself its lowly servant.

‘You said in your heart,
I will climb the heavens,
I will raise up my throne
Above the stars of God.’ (Isaias xiv, 13.)

The essence of religion consists in the second kind of reaction. Man feels himself confronted with an Other Being, one which wholly transcends himself and his own small circumstances, yet one from which constant impacts upon himself and his world are being experienced. The idea of holiness is in fact derived from these two elemental intuitions of Otherness and of Power. The holy is that which controls and transcends the profane, ‘a Being of Power, strange and of a different order, dangerous and lifegiving, terrifying and repelling and at the same time attractive, far away and near at hand, full of mystery’. The impact upon his awareness of such a ‘Being of Power’ summons man to acknowledge its sublimity on the one hand and his own lowly dependence on the other. Worship is man’s ‘Complete Responser to this summons, the response of religion to holiness.

There seems to be no doubt that the Church, as a visible society of baptized persons, was fully established and functioning in Wales by 200 a.d. Her influence is to be discerned in our earliest vocabulary, e.g. the word for ‘universe’ in Welsh is ‘bedyssawd’, the Latin ‘baptizati’, an assembly of baptized persons. By the sixth century Welsh epic poetry was being written in die context of a Christian culture. Taliesin, the poet, describing the court of Urien Prince of Rheged in Southern Scotland, which formed part of Roman Britain, describes a Catholic family life as lived in the court of his exalted patron. By 314, when the Council of Arles met, Bishops from the whole of Christendom attended and ‘lesser clergy’ from Spain, Italy, Gaul, and Britain. The three orders of Bishops, Presbyters and Deacons were present. We have every reason to deduce that the Catholic Church in Wales was well established, vigorous and in full cognizance of its sister assemblies on the Continent. We hear of British representatives at all the subsequent councils except that of Nicaea. When in 383 Magnus Maximus was proclaimed Emperor by the British Legions before he left for the Continent to defend the fortunes of Rome, he was baptized as an orthodox believer and won the approval of St Martin of Tours, St Ambrose of Milan, and Pope Siricius for his faithfulness in belief.

There is no need to stress this aspect of Welsh history to a Catholic audience. It was part of the general picture of the Europe of that day. What is perhaps not so generally realized amongst Catholics is that Wales in those days was part and parcel of the Roman Empire, under the direct rule of Roman Emperors, for all of three centuries. After an initial period of resistance to Roman arms our forbears seem to have attained a modus vivendi and to have co-operated with their rulers and actually to have enjoyed a long period of tranquillity.

The triumphal re-entry of the Emperor Haile Selassie I into his capital of Addis Ababa on May 5, 1941, marked the beginning of a new era for the Catholic Church in Ethiopia. As in many countries today in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, the Church in Ethiopia has to prove that it is truly a supranational and independent body, notwithstanding its spiritual allegiance to the Holy Sec. The Italian missionaries who followed in the wake of Mussolini’s armies in 1935 could not but help to identify the Catholic faith with the Italian religion in the eyes of the invaded Abyssinians, and not least because French Catholic missionaries who had laboured for years in this territory’ were politely but firmly shown the way out of the country during the Duce’s occupation. As could be predicted, the return of the Negus and the allied armies led to the expulsion of the Italian missionaries from Ethiopia. Not a single one was allowed to remain and the Apostolic Delegate, Mgr Castellani, himself an Italian Franciscan, was conducted out of the country by English officers. To this day, no Italian missionary is allowed inside the Emperor’s dominions.

A knowledge of the history of Christianity in Ethiopia, essential for an understanding of the situation today, can be briefly summarized. The Church was established in the fourth century by St Frumentius who was consecrated first Bishop of Aksum by the great Doctor of the Church, St Athanasius of Alexandria. The Church in Ethiopia unhappily fell away into the monophysite heresy, gradually cutting all links with Rome and Constantinople but maintaining important relations with what became the dissident Coptic Church of Alexandria. The national Church of Ethiopia, comprising about seven and a half million adherents, remains monophysite in doctrine to this day, although it can be reasonably argued that Ethiopian monophysitism is more nominal than real.

The rise of Christian Democracy is, as Professor Fogarty rightly says, ‘one of the major social movements of modern times’, yet it is surprising how little has been written about the subject up to now. The ‘People and Freedom Group’, the only Christian Democratic society ever to exist in this country, of which Professor Fogarty was a distinguished member, did a great deal before and during the war to make known the aims and ideals of Christian Democracy, then very much discredited. Apart, however from the excellent study of Christian Democracy in France and Italy, by Francois Goguel and Mario Enaudi, published in 1951 by the University of NotreDame, Indiana, nothing further has appeared in English on the subject, and Professor Fogarty’s scholarly and exhaustive study is therefore particularly timely and welcome. It should do a great deal to dispel the astonishing—and indeed disgraceful—ignorance of both Catholics and non-Catholics in this country regarding the political history and beliefs of Catholics in Western Europe.

Those who consider Christian Democrats to be ‘right-wing clerical reactionaries’ as well as those who are honestly if naively convinced that Catholicism flourishes best under an authoritarian regime, have a great deal to learn from Professor Fogarty, and his book should not only find a place on the library shelves of every educated English Catholic, but should also be made compulsory reading in every Catholic Secondary and Public School.

Professor Fogarty’s definition of Christian Democracy is very wide and far-reaching. He emphasizes in his introduction that his book is not particularly a study of the political parties or even of current political and trade union tactics. The Catholic social movements and the movements of Catholic Action are in his view the weightier part of the Christian Democratic iceberg.

The people who write in English about the liturgy have mostly read about it in French or German. The great movement of reform in the Church which has as its centre the revival of the liturgy is arriving in England rather late and with a noticeable foreign accent. There are important studies in the liturgy by English writers but none of them are by Catholics. The Catholic who is dissatisfied, as any educated and normally critical man must be, with what was taught him as Religious Instruction at school gets in touch with the new life in the Church usually through translations of continental books or else through second-hand works based on continental originals.

Readers of Blackfriars will presumably not need a detailed account of the manifestations of this new life. Like every other movement of reform within the Church, it has been essentially a return to sacred Scripture. There have been a good many other motives and movements, some good and some not so good, connected with the change: there has been a concern for the reverent and meaningful performance of the ceremonies of the Church; there has been a certain nostalgia for the past—whether the thirteenth or the fifth century—there has been a weariness with a certain kind of seminary textbook theology in which the great rivers of the Fathers and the Scholastics have been reduced to so much damp sand; there has been a characteristically twentieth century emphasis upon the social and communal as against the private. But in the first place it has been a matter of the Scriptures.

To some, no doubt, the two terms that constitute the title of this paper will seem to make strange bedfellows. Teleology, one might think, is a curious speculative anachronism, a remnant of a long outworn system of metaphysics, the discipline that it has been the fashion, at least until recently, in philosophical circles in this country to decry as meaningless vapourings on an unknown and in essence unknowable theme. In complete contrast to this speculative science of abstraction, anatomy, one might think, is essentially of the earth, earthy. It is unhappily true that many otherwise intelligent and well-informed members of academic circles still look upon anatomical science as one that of set purpose limits and confines itself to studies in the mortuary, describing in ever more bewildering detail the relationships one to another of the myriad structures that comprise the embalmed human corpse. Such descriptive study is not, of course, without its own intrinsic interest and value —‘know thyself’ has from time immemorial been the maxim that points the way to the beginning of wisdom, and no one can deny his body a significant place in the constitution of whatever it is one calls ‘oneself’. But if pure description of the details of the inner recesses of the human body were all that constituted anatomy, as some of those not engaged in it still seem to suppose, then such a study, exercising the essentially sub-human faculties of visual perception and memory-storing, would lead inevitably to intellectual stagnation; being devoid of theoretical and experimental content it would not indeed even warrant the dignity of the name of science.

The book of this name by Professor Norman Sykes is a learned exposition, as impartial in the circumstances as it could well be, of the mind of the Church of England upon the problem of the Church’s ministry. It examines the way the originating formularies of Anglicanism concerning the nature and necessity of episcopal rule have been understood and acted upon during the course of Anglican history. Professor Sykes’s conclusion, after reviewing the relevant evidence, may be summed up in his own words: