If we were to take a look at human society of some four and a half centuries ago, say, about the year 1500, we should see there a world that was still largely sacral. The whole of life was bound up with religion, the Church, the Sacerdotium, penetrating into every department of human life, and in the civil order the Imperium itself was regarded as sacred. The Sacerdotium may have been corrupt and the Imperium tottering but men still thought of the whole of society as sacred. Even the very processes of nature by which millions of men and women gained a painful livelihood were nearer to magic in their minds than we usually like to think they were. Nature was largely unpredictable, afflicted with mysterious calamities and marred from time to time by what were called ‘Acts of God’.

On the other hand, there was an immense surge of new life throughout Europe. Men had rediscovered the ancient literature of Greece and Rome and were luxuriating in it. For more than a hundred years Italy had flowered with a new art in paint and stone, whose products we still admire. Great new buildings were going up, but above all, men felt that they were new beings. They were throwing off’ the restrictions of the old sacral order and were finding themselves, discovering new powers to which they could see no limit. Nature itself was being freed from the bondage of magic and within a hundred years Galileo would demolish the old picture of the cosmos and take the music out of the spheres.

‘Has Rome been converted?’ is the question put by the title of Henri Fesquet’s book on Vatican II and its aftermath (Rome s’est-elle convertie? Paris, Grasset, 1966, 12.00 Frs.). Better placed than most to sound the reactions of the French bishops to events in Rome, Fesquet is Le Monde‘s correspondent on religious matters, and a very well-informed one he is. This makes the only slightly muted optimism of his book all the more surprising. He is convinced that the question must be answered in the affirmative, and he selects a number of themes to illustrate this — the new concept of the priest, the concern with the ecumenical spirit, with world poverty, with public opinion, and with the role of women in the Church.

‘Thanks to Vatican II,’ he writes in the preface, ‘Catholicism is giving the impression of taking the Gospel more seriously. The Council’s most essential task . . . was for the Church to look at herself in the light of the New Testament. What does the Gospel tell us, if not that all progress passes through death ? The Church will only renew herself by accepting immolation in the image of her Founder.’ Immolation of the old, to direct the development of the new. A renewed Christian eschatology, for example, which will present itself to twentieth century man as the accomplishment and metamorphosis of humanity. And a way has been shown of reducing the tragic opposition between Marxism and Christianity, which only developed in the first place because Christians had forgotten their most urgent duty.

We are entering a new period in man’s history. Some men have always been poorer than others; people’s skin colours have always been different. But for the first time there is developing a fusion between those who are poor and those who are ‘different’. The one supporting the other – they have come to rest with odd exceptions side by side. A line has been drawn across the world. On one side are approximately one third who are white and well fed and affluent, whether they be American capitalists or Soviet factory workers. On the other side are the two thirds who are brown, black or yellow, and are either starving, or at least facing the prospect of always being poor and deprived; certainly standing little chance in the forseeable future of being affluent.

In the poor part of the world, the so called underdeveloped countries, there is a population growth of 2 to 4%. As well as high birth rates they have some of the lowest death rates in the world because of their over proportioned youthful population. A decrease in their birth rate from even a large birth control campaign would according to the distinguished Swedish economist, Gunnar Myrdal, have no effect on the labour force for 15 years and only a very minor effect for three decades.

Again as Myrdal observes even if industrialization were pushed much more rapidly than has been possible in the underdeveloped nations so far, it will not create much employment.

When men stand out from great events they come of necessity under the glass of scrutiny, to be viewed from many angles. On some, a general judgment stands the test of time, on others it is later reversed or modified while others again elude a consensus of opinion and remain subjects of controversy. The great epoch of the reformation forced into the public view men who otherwise might have led lives of relative obscurity or be remembered today for quite different reasons. Because of the reformation, Thomas More and Martin Luther have, to the generality of succeeding generations, become identified with dramatic and irrevocable choice. Reginald Pole, on the other hand, is by no means so universally remembered. Historians have viewed him variously — as subtle and wily, as unworldly and indecisive, as upright and courageous. It can be fairly stated that his temperament bore an affinity with that of Erasmus, that he shared with Colet a clear-sighted desire for ecclesiastical reform and that at one time he came close to Luther’s thoughts on justification. In common with Erasmus, his considered theological opinions were regarded in some quarters with a suspicion which hardened into menace. Like More and Luther, Pole was presented with dilemmas and, not without agony, he came to decisions. His decisions were not followed by consequences of comparable drama. He did not divert the course of history and he died in his bed of a common fever. His writings are not often recalled, his career presents contradictions, his personality eludes.