This is a fresh attempt to come to grips with the question of Christian involvement in politics. The object will be to decide if possible what involvement Christians ought to have with politics in virtue of their commitment to Christianity. I do not expect the conclusions to apply to all Christians, whatever their stage of life or position in society. I expect to come to general conclusions which will have to be separately applied by individuals to their own lives, as one would expect in an ethical enquiry of this sort, which intends to use the gospel as a source. The political context of this enquiry is that of Britain in the 1970s rather than say, Latin America or Southern Africa, though our very political relationships with those parts of the world will not be forgotten.

One of the difficulties of the discussion is the ambiguity of the notion of politics. In a general sense politics has to do with the distribution and use of power in society. So politics in one sense is simply a matter of engaging in the operation of the accepted institutions of society which are to do with the distribution and use of power. Here conflicts are institutionalised, as in the two-party system of British politics or the union/management structure of industry. The institutionalisation of conflict is typical of Western liberal democracies, which owe their continued existence to the successful achievement of it. It is politics in this sense that Catholic laymen of the recent past were urged to take part in, i.e. to play their part in the institutions of democracy such as the political party or the trades union.

“Perhaps the definition will limit the Pope’s power”: thus Newman wrote, less than a fortnight after the Vatican Council issued its decrees on papal jurisdiction and infallibility, to one of the many anxious Catholics who turned to him for explanation and comfort (Letters, XXV, 170). A few weeks later, answering the wife of the founder-editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, he pursued the same idea a little further: “As to this particular doctrine (Papal infallibility) I am not at all sure it will increase the Pope’s power— it may restrict it. Hitherto he has done what he would, because its limits were not defined—now he must act by rule” (p. 204). But he goes on to say that he cannot prophesy how it will be. With a century behind us since 1870, during which many Catholics have accepted, and allowed other people to believe, that the pope is infallible and that he has the right to do what he likes with the Church, it is surely evident that, if we return to the decrees and read them in peace, Newman’s hunch is verified that they mark an end, rather than an aggrandizement, of papal power. The attempt to secure fat more (because many Catholics at the time plainly were seeking to commit the Church to a form of permanent papal dictatorship) finished by securing far less than the practice of papal authority had often assumed in the past. Now that we can read the decrees without being intimidated by the ultramontanist interpretation so frequently put on them, almost from the outset, it is possible to appreciate, as Newman did at the time, how drastically the texts limit the pope’s prerogatives. Indeed, as he suggests, the miasma of triumphalist propaganda with which the decrees have been so successfully obscured must itself derive its animus from the frustration, on the part of Manning and his publicists (such as Ward and Herbert Vaughan), at their at least half recognizing that so little had been secured.

Scandalous news has a way of getting around the world at a speed which is truly mystifying. The news of what was described to me as Adrian Hastings’ latest eccentricity was no exception. “Fr. Hastings,” I was told some time in May right here in Ngara, “is this time proclaiming disobedience to his bishop as a virtue and trumpeting the announcement of his forthcoming wedding”.

In late September, I finally got hold of the offending piece (“On Celibacy”, New Blackfriars, March 1978. pp. 104-111). I soon felt less sorry for Fr. Hastings than for his detractors. In truth, I know of many priests who feel the way Fr Hastings says he does, with the difference that being better able to articulate the reasons for his feeling he can express it as a legitimate stand. Before I could quite make out the value of Fr Hastings’ arguments, I already felt sure that the most solid support for his position came from the saying of Jesus: “Go learn the meaning of the words: what I want is mercy, not sacrifice” (Mt. 9:13).

The fact, however, that so many members of the Church who cannot lightly be accused of hypocrisy still maintain that all priests must lead a celibate life prevents me from sharing Fr Hastings’ certainty in upholding the opposite view. Perhaps there are reasons beyond my understanding yet within theirs which make it wrong or at least inopportune to repeal the law of celibacy. Yet, one cannot be blamed for voicing an opinion and mine is that Fr Hastings, as a Catholic priest, is indeed free to marry, as are all Catholic priests who did not choose celibacy for its own sake but only agreed to it as to a conditio sine qua non to fulfil their vocation to the priesthood.