At the meeting of the World Council of Churches at Evanston in 1954 it was reported in the newspapers that a movement, within its organization, was pressing for a motion against the Roman Catholic Church condemnatory of its alleged persecuting activities against Protestants in such countries as Spain and Colombia. The motion was successfully shelved by the skilled and tactful chairmanship of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Fisher. It is very generally admitted, and often publicly stated, by leaders of the Ecumenical movement, that any thought or action on its part which definitely excluded the Roman Catholic Church because of the difficulties involved, would damage its Ecumenical character and tend to render it pan-Protestant and anti-Roman. Nevertheless, even within the movement, there are Protestant pressure-groups which are anti-Catholic, especially because of the charges of persecuting intolerance made against the Church, and these would like to see it ousted from consideration in the work of the World Council for Christian Unity.

But even where alleged persecuting intolerance is not seen as a reason for the complete exclusion of Roman Catholicism from the ultimate concept of Christian unity, this charge undoubtedly causes concern even amongst those non-Catholic leaders who are otherwise well disposed towards the Church; there is always the lurking suspicion that if and when Rome gets the power it will of its very nature turn persecutor. This suspicion is strengthened by a prevalent belief that the only orthodox doctrine of religious freedom permissible to Catholics is that based upon the distinction between thesis and hypothesis.

It may be helpful to approach the subject of the place of symbols in Christianity from the consideration of two sets of difficulties or disabilities which seem to affect many Catholics nowadays in the western world.

First, Catholics are often accused of not reading the Old Testament. If this is true, and by and large it seems to be, it is important for us to discover why it is so; and the likely explanation seems to be that to a great extent we have lost the clue to the reading of the book, we have forgotten the ‘language’, the idiom, in which it is written. Again it seems undeniably true to say that the modern Catholic, however deep and vivid his belief in the efficacy of the sacraments, often finds little meaning if any in their ritual, the ritual for instance of the baptismal waters; whereas it is clear that in the days of primitive Christianity this same ritual had on the neophyte an immensely vivid impact.

Secondly, many Catholics nowadays seem to feel that the formulas, the propositions, in which the Christian faith is stated and propounded to them in creed or catechism have about them a certain unreality: they seem so dry, so technical, so remote from ordinary everyday speech and everyday reality, that they may easily come in the end to seem meaningless: the dogmatic formulas, the definitions of faith, so remote and so dry as to be unreal; the moral principles, so neat and tidy as to seem lacking in validity.

A Grammarians Funeral is possibly one of Browning’s best known poems, and one which provides a useful introduction to his work as a whole. To begin with, the subject is typical; the grammarian is a man of intense energy and determination who has devoted his life to the pursuit of an unattainable goal. As such he is a figure who affords Browning an opportunity for doing what he can do well. Time and again Browning chooses themes which allow him to exercise his skill in describing violent emotion and strenuous activity. Not that his range can be entirely restricted to any simple formula: one has only to recall Andrea del Sarto, ‘the weak-eyed bat’, and the deft strokes with which his mood of fatalistic apathy is evoked. Nevertheless, the fierce exultation of the Epilogue to ‘Asolando’ and Prospice, the grimly amusing pent- up fury of the Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, the searing jealousy of The Laboratory, the bitter hatred of The Confessional, the boisterous enthusiasm of Fra Lippo Lippi and the desperate exhilaration of How they brought the Good News are sufficient indication how well grounded is the common association of Browning with strong feelings and vigorous effort. The poem is rich, moreover, in examples of those technical devices which he employs to express themes of this kind. The distorted syntax, which wrenches words from their normal order, frequently with the aid of parenthesis, produces a broken, abrupt, breathless rhythm which is characteristic of his style;