'We are like ruinous old houses that are falling down on every side. If you prop them up on one side, they fall down on the other. They must be supported in all directions, and renovated from the very foundations, for the whole thing is going to rack and ruin. We are all the same, the perfect and the imperfect alike. History is full of souls that have been lost by the abundance of their graces … Lucifer found the occasion of his ruin in heaven'.

These few phrases, which end with something that sounds like a reminiscence of Gregory the Great, are nevertheless as characteristic of their own author as they are of their period. They form part of an address given by Pierre de Bérulle2 at the opening of his visitation of one of those Carmelite convents for whose existence in France he, more than anyone else, was responsible

I remember a secular priest, in the course of a retreat at Oxford a good many years ago, politely chiding us Dominicans for not making more of St Catherine of Siena. The rebuke was, and is, worth attending to. St Catherine is always rated among the greatest figures in Dominican history, and there are those who would place her among the greatest women of all time. Yet it is now eighty years since the first, and last, really solid work on her life and teaching by an English Dominican—a nun, as it happened—appeared: the massive biography by Augusta Theodosia Drane, a very good work for its time and one unduly neglected. Since then there have been four books in English worth mentioning here: the two ‘Lives’ by Edmund Gardner and Alice Curtayne, the translation of the Dialogue by Algar Thorold, and vida Scudder's version of a selection of the Letters.

If a reasonably well-instructed Catholic were asked to say what the New Testament meant to him, his answer might be somewhat as follows: The New Testament is a highly interpretative but historically true account first of what Jesus Christ was and said and did, secondly of the effect which this had and continues to have on his believers, on mankind in general and on the powers of heaven and earth, thirdly of the final consummation of Christ's work and Christ's words, in which this present age will one day be terminated. The divine meaning of what Jesus was and said and did explicitates itself through the human faculties of his own chosen teachers by the power of the Holy Spirit. The divine truth that is Jesus Christ projects itself beyond the spacetime dimension of his earthly life into the transcendent dimension of written words on a page.

It is generally admitted that the Catholic Church is distinguished by an insistence on the reality of the objects of her faith. For those who are in one way or another alienated from the Church this realism often appears unenlightened and superstitious, a kind of primitive surrender to the principalities and powers of a magical world which lies behind and yet permeates the world of everyday, and heightens its common-sense obviousness by charging it with a mana derived from supposed agencies like, but more powerful than, the agencies and objects of the tangible world. Within the Church this sense of the reality of the object of faith has; become incorporated in devotions of many kinds, and also in a metaphysical theology. It would be interesting to examine in some detail the various forms taken by this incorporation of a living and sensitive faith, stretching out to touch and handle its objects

In to my experience it is certainly the case that a lot of educationalists in this country become genuinely bewildered, distressed, shocked and even angry when they hear it suggested that we should take the scriptures and not the catechism as the source of our religious instruction. some people are willing to admit that some change in our catechism might not be a bad thing, but very few are prepared to listen to the argument that what we need is a new conception of the function of the catechism rather than a new catechism. Everybody seems to be assumging that those in favour of our present methods are loyally upholding such immunities as the Church's attitude, authority or tradition, and that those who suggest a change are propounding strange, dangerous theories culled from disreputable sources and dubious disciplines.

In two previous articles I have tried to explore that special conception of Yahweh's encounter with, and presence to Israel which Old Testament theologians call kabod theology. When the Jerusalem temple was destroyed in 586. B.C. the exiled priests finally committed to writing their own sacred tradition of how Yahweh had first encountered Israel in the desert, made himself present to her, and chosen from among her tribes a priestly race to minister to him in the immediate sphere of his holiness. At the roots of this tradition lies the conception of the kabod (glory), the manifestation of Yahweh's holy presence in the form of a radiant and fiery cloud, numinous and death-dealing to all that is profane. The kabod descends at intervals to meet the people at a sacred place chosen by Yahweh himself.

Practically from the very start of the Society of Jesus there has been a certain stern picture painted of Jesuits. We read about the ‘cunning, crafty’ Jesuits; the ‘intellectual, unemotional’ followers of St Ignatius, pascal calls them ‘people who do not keep their word, without faith, without honour, without truth, deceitful in heart, deceitful in speech', and then in one of the more recent common evaluations Time magazine (September 16, 1957) stylizes the Society as a calculating, and, in every sense, a cold military organization. These opinions on the spirit of the society of Jesus have one thread of common unity: the Jesuit is a stoic statue impervious to ordinary human emotions and feelings. He is calculating and reasoning; the intellect has smothered the heart. His two daily examinations of conscience, the varied ‘experiments’ to test his abilities and his control, the introspective, personal evaluations, all these have allowed him to gain mastery over his human nature; a mastery that somehow removes the human and leaves just the nature.

Since the Holy See is involved in liturgical reform, we naturally ought to assume that at least in the minds of the scholars and pastors who are engaged in it, the work is relevant. The details of this reform are obviously chosen for pastoral reasons. In other words the concern was definitely and decidedly one of the spiritual welfare of ordinary Catholics, not only of an elite of archaeologists, historians and those who use their missals with understanding and devotion. This pastoral concern is the one thing all liturgical reforms have in common. Damasus I was probably the pope who established the vernacular Latin, Gregory I remade the calendar and the music, Gregory VII stabilized the Franco-Roman form and Trent froze the best available text in its present form. Thus we must assume that the recent changes were supposed to be relevant to the spiritual growth of the average more or less instructed faithful.

Newman complains of Catholic preachers that they think it their duty to give a bird's-eye view of Christianity in every sermon, and never to expound one truth without bringing in every counterbalancing consideration and saving clause. To apply such a method to the subject of Newman's influence in the second half of the twentieth century would be fatal! He lived so long, he touched life at so many points, he anticipated so many of the best movements in the Church today, that there would be no ending. The biblical and patristic movement, the ecumencical movement, the Catholic intellectual and university movement, the concrete and real approach in philosophy, the lay movement—all these, and much else owe a debt to Newman. This article will limit itself to Newman's connection with the lay movement, and will outline his views as to place of the laity in the Church.

The term ‘mystical body’ is a curious one, curious, that is, in. the sense That very few ordinary Catholics make very much of it as an important Element in their lives. They are members of it, they know the name, But thinking of it as something real in the sense that our Lord or our Lady are real to them is very rare; this is Partly due, I think, to the debasernent of the word ‘mystical', and partly due to historical circumstances. For so long it has been fashionable to think of Christianity as an affair of regulating our own spiritual lives that we have hardly given The idea of the community of Christians a thought. Now that ‘mystical Body’ is a term heard on all sides, there is a consciousness that it is Somehow important, but little idea how it is to be integrated into our daily lives.

It is the word of God himself, declaring his merciful purpose to Moses and the people on Sinai, that tell us the principal elements in the concept of ‘redemption’ as significant for ancient Israel. ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you in to me. Now if you will heed my voice and keep my covenant you shall be my own special possession from among all the peoples…’ (Ex. 19.4f). The first element is God's entirely gratuitous act of intervening in history to liberate the Hebrews from Egypt. The second characteristic, just as unconditional, is shown by the words ‘and brought you in to me'. To set the enslaved people free, only to abandon them in the desert to starve or to be re-taken by their oppressors, would not be redemption. The notion is rather that of a slave redeemed and adopted as a son into the redeemer's household.

As it stands now, the infancy narrative of the first gospel is the work of the Greek writer who perhaps translated and certainly expanded the original Aramaic gospel of the apostle Matthew. But equally certainly he did not invent the episodes which he has used to construct it; they come to him, perhaps already somewhat moulded or schematized, from the traditions of the earliest communities. His narrative falls into two parts, conicident with our two chapters; the first traces and proves the Davidic descent of Jesus, the true king of Israel; the second narrates his danger from the actual usurping king, Herod. Within the narrative in its final form, there are secondary themes; in the first part, the defence of the purity of Jesus’ mother, in the second, the homage paid to him by the Gentile world and its co-operation in preserving him.