When Hans Küng attacked infallibility as it has been understood in Roman theology until recently, he was accused by no less a theologian than Karl Rahner of being in effect a liberal Protestant. But the majority of friendly critics were more inclined to ask what all the fuss was about. Nobody took this theory of infallibility seriously any longer. There were undoubtedly situations where Church and Pope had to take a stand and, if the promises of the Church’s endurance were to mean anything, this must mean infallibility in teaching: the Holy Spirit would guarantee the Church’s freedom from error on such occasions. But they were rare enough and a ‘sensitive exegesis’ could always take care of out-dated definitions.

Charles Davis, a little earlier, had chosen to leave the Church because he could not accept the current explanation of papal claims, the present ‘structures’ which prevent even the most sympathetic bishops from treating their subjects with charity or even justice. But Gregory Baum and others were at hand to show that this brilliant young theologian was still too much entangled in nineteenth-century apologetics.

Some time ago I met here in England a missionary priest with whom I had worked while in Tanzania. I knew him for an excellent missionary, a man who had adapted himself well to Africa and had put himself entirely at the service of his people. Yet, when I met him, he stated his firm intention of never returning to Tanzania.

Why had he so radically altered the course of his life? Was it for personal reasons—failing health—or a compelling desire to marry? No. He had come back because he could not see why he should stay in Tanzania any longer. For one thing, the ‘new theology’ had considerably weakened the motives for which he had gone to the missions in the first place: if pagans already know God, why bother to cross sea and land in order to announce God? If men can be saved without being baptized into the Church, why go on instructing catechumens and making converts? Besides, after twenty years of experience, he had reached the conclusion that conversion to the Church did not appreciably affect people’s lives—Christians seemed no better than pagans. Then, thirdly, there are enough Tanzanian priests to cater for the flock, and in the sectors of education and health, the country is sufficiently developed to look after its own people. Better leave now than wait to be expelled in five years’ time . . . our time is limited, anyway.

A recent book by a Nobel prize-winner in biology, Jacques Monod, is proving a best-seller in France and Germany and is causing much discussion in Britain. Written as it is by an expert in the field of molecular biology with a flair for philosophical thought, it poses a serious challenge to Christian belief in the uniqueness of man and his need of redemption. Monod’s undisguised aim is to demolish what he calls the ‘anthropomorphic illusion’. Galileo in removing the earth from the centre of the cosmos failed to achieve it, advances in biology at the molecular level, he claims, give every promise of succeeding—in fact have succeeded. ‘We would like’, he says, ‘to think ourselves necessary, inevitable, ordained from all eternity. All religions, nearly all philosophers, and even part of science testify to the unwearying heroic effort of mankind desperately denying its own contingency.’ Armed with the latest advances in molecular biology he sets out with overweening confidence and in places superb skill to lay bare the evolutionary process from the level of simple molecules to the greatest mystery of all, human consciousness. Not content with that achievement he then offers a panacea for the modern spiritual malaise—a formidable undertaking.

‘In the past workmen have thought that if they could secure higher wages and better conditions they would be content. Employers have thought that if they granted these things the workers ought to be contented. Wages and conditions have improved, but the discontent and unrest have not disappeared. Many good people have come to the conclusion that working people are so unreasonable that it is useless to try to satisfy them. The fact is that the unrest is deeper than pounds, shillings and pence, necessary as they are. The root of the matter is the straining of the spirit of man to be free.’— William Straker (Northumberland miner), in evidence before the Sankey Commission, 1919.

Workers’ Control is about the struggle for a genuine system of industrial democracy. It is based on the premise, and contradiction, that while we live in a political democracy, however weak and limited that democracy may be, we certainly do not have any real economic democracy. And, furthermore, that without a swift development of democracy in industry we are not very likely to maintain much of our existing political democracy, which has already been seriously undermined by the rapid growth of huge economic empires accountable to no-one. On the other hand if we can create genuine democratic institutions in the industrial sphere we shall have a substantial base from which to attack the weaknesses of the present political framework and to make it much more responsive to human needs and aspirations.

Can the university—even a radically reformed university—really carry the burden of providing our society with ‘memory and mature purpose’, as Dr Leavis keeps hoping? Remembering some of his more recent essays while staying in fairly remote parts of Scotland this summer, I began once again to reflect on how much the schools fail to do and yet could so easily undertake (as a handful of rare teachers have always done)—if only we could unlearn the attitude to language that has prevailed from the beginning of public education a century or so ago. Gaelic steadily declines in the Hebrides, the vital remnant of the Scottish Gaidhealtachd, and the Buchan dialect in the north-east of Scotland is losing its vigour. In both cases the schools are where the native speech dies. If this is a matter of conscious political decision at all, it is only because we submit to the priorities of the commercial system and allow our conception of language and life to be dictated to us by that. Seeing a language die out doesn’t bother the man who regards language as simply a means for exchanging ideas: for him another language can easily be substituted. But if language is, as Dr Leavis says, what creates ‘the human world of values and significances and spiritual graces’, then it is surely clear that ‘exchanging ideas’ is much less than an adequate description of the place of language in human life.

When I was a youth in England, a favourite anti-Protestant argument ran: ‘We were here first.’ ‘We’ meant St Augustine of Canterbury. When I came to Wales, this would not do, for as Bede tells us, there were Christians here before St Augustine, and, when he met them, they rejected his authority. To the argument that these Christians were obviously not Roman Catholics, we used to reply: ‘Yes, they were, but cut off by barbarian Saxon invaders of England, they were unaware of Roman liturgical changes and were so attached to old Roman ways that they quarrelled with Augustine.’

I began to study the validity of this reply and hence, twenty years later, this article. My amateur thesis is based on the work of the late Rev. A. W. Wade-Evans, complemented by that of three Blackfriars contributors: Mr Donald Nicholl, Professor Finberg and, especially, Mr Eric John.

That barbarian Saxon invaders cut off Wales from the Continent rests entirely on the story of the Loss of Britain, which forms part of a work ascribed to the Welshman Gildas. Bede made important changes in this story and also wove into it independent traditions of a Saxon advent in Kent. He interpreted the whole in the light of his knowledge that the Saxons were of Germanic stock.

Thomas Merton wrote in the letter in which he accepted the invitation to speak at the Congress in Bangkok where he was to die: ‘... the great problem for monasticism today is not survival but prophecy’. There are good reasons for thinking he was right. In the last few years most religious orders and congregations have been busily working on new rules and constitutions which are usually heavily loaded with quotable quotes from conciliar and postconciliar documents, carefully worded résumés of current theological writing, and skilfully framed paragraphs of compromise intended to satisfy the demands of as many pressure groups as possible. In practice these new documents are often ignored, apart from a little tightening up here and loosening up there and the inevitable litter of commissions that will in due course produce more painfully contrived documents that will also be as much ignored as implemented! This may appear to be a cynical assessment of what is going on in religious life today. In fairness it must be pointed out that the Church ordered the search for new rules and constitutions, they are provisional and experimental, and the discussions that took place at every level prior to their formulation have initiated a long overdue rethinking of religious life. Nevertheless, there continue to be more departures and fewer arrivals to religious life. There is no shortage of new laws but an obvious dearth of true prophets. From his new book Thomas Merton emerges as one of the major prophets in contemporary religious life. It would be a pity if he goes unheard because of the din created by the staggering volume of second-rate writing on religious life.