“A penny for the guy, please mister”. I never give small boys anything when they come out on the streets at the beginning of November every year, with the effigies of Guy Fawkes which they should be burning this evening. “Sorry”, I say, “but I am a Roman Catholic”. I like waiting for the look of pure astonishment that comes over their faces, as if that were a reason for not giving them a penny for the guy.

When the Chaplain invited me to address you this evening he suggested that I might take the opportunity to reflect on the obstacles that Roman Catholics in England see as still blocking the way to union with the Church of England. So much rapprochement has taken place, particularly since the Anglican/Roman Catholic International Commission which has since produced three remarkable “Agreed Statements” testifying to convergence, if not perhaps consensus, on traditionally controversial issues. These Agreements seem to warrant some movement towards full, visible, eucharistic communion between Rome and Canterbury. This growing together has been achieved in a variety of ways, at many different levels. The most significant movements have been in a phrase or gesture. On 25th October 1970, during his sermon at the canonization of forty Catholics of England and Wales who died for their faith during the penal days, Pope Paul referred to the Anglican Church as the “ever beloved Sister” of the Roman Catholic Church. Italian rhetoric, you may say; but I don’t think so. Such a change of idiom from previous references to the submission of a wayward daughter to her patiently waiting mother cannot be unconsidered. It marks a great change in Rome’s attitude to Canterbury.

If there is anything to be said for my suggestion (New Black-friars June 1978) that Jane Austen was unlikely to have been in sympathy with Fanny Price’s religious attitude, and in fact probably shared Mary Crawford’s cynical view of the Established Church and such overtly Christian institutions as matrimony, it may be wondered why she nevertheless gave Fanny Price and her clerical cousin, Edmund, such central roles in the novel. Obviously, there can be no definitive answer, but the problem becomes less intractable if we give sufficient weight to Jane Austen’s extremely lively sense of humour. There was nothing she enjoyed so much—especially of course in the affectionate intimacy of her correspondence with Cassandra—as laughing at her neighbours and the world, and it was above all this spirit of comedy that informed virtually all her writing prior to Persuasion. If Mansfield Park wears its humour with a difference then no doubt it was the more amusing to tease and confuse her admirers even when these also happened to be a favourite brother.

‘This book is a critical introduction to political theology, not an enthusiastic initiation into it’ (p 37). Such was the intention of Alfredo Fierro in making his own sizeable contribution to the subject. Drawing together a great variety of sources he tries to sketch the development of ‘political theology’, and suggests some directions for the future. This not without a sense of his own relative position: from the outset he states that ‘this book was written in Madrid, Spain, and finished in the summer of 1974 (xii). (The Militant Gospel, SCM Press 1977 xv + pp. 453 £4.50).

The book divides into three parts, Situation, Programme and Theory, eight chapters in all. In the first part, changes in the climate of thinking are described which have brought political theology into being; the second goes through the formulation of the new theology; while the third reflects on the significance of it and challenges the presuppositions of several authors.

First, though, some general comments about method. The term ‘political theology’ is used rather too frequently—I’ve already used it twice—and moreover as if one was always clear what is meant by it. Then, related to this, is Fierro’s tendency to put together several ideas about a concept without contrasting them very accurately or stating a clear view of his own. Often this makes no difference, and one appreciates the breadth of reference; but there are times when some distinctions have to be made (notably the discussion of ideology, pp 243-7), and a failure to do so is unhelpful.

Master, Fellows, Scholars and Friends of St Edmund’s House:

It is customary on this annual occasion to delve into the scantily recorded life of St Edmund of Abingdon—in order to discover anachronistic references to the work of Newman or Newton upon which the speaker may hang his threadbare argument. In my own case the exploration did not, at first sight, augur well at all: I was indeed christened Edmund, but after the East Anglian Edmund, the patron saint of failed governors rather than of successful scholars; and perhaps even more ominously, one of Edmund of Abingdon’s great quarrels was with my ancestor Maurice Fitzgerald, Justiciar of Ireland. However, as is so often so in such cases, my good wife came to my aid, for St Edmund’s great academic contribution to Oxford, or so Roger Bacon assures us—was the introduction of the New Logic based on the Toledo Translation: in other words, the rendering into Latin of the Arabic versions of the Greek masters made in Cordoba by scholars such as Averroes, while in Europe only the dim Hibernian candle flickered fitfully in the night.

However, although I shall return to St Edmund’s tenuous connexion with Islam at the end of this Address—for having hung one’s garment on a somewhat insecure peg one must presumably take it off before it brings the whole wall down with it—I think it would be more useful to pursue the main practical concern of St Edmund’s life: the relationship between Church, State and University. Specifically, I would like to draw some parallels between the role of Church and University in society in order to derive some implications for the future role of this College.