Theological Dictionaries are a valuable asset for any preacher. They can usually provide a helpful bibliography or perhaps the germ for preaching or lecturing on most theological topics. The Sacramentum Mundi article on Poverty is no exception; not however, because of its theological profundity, but because of the response evoked by the badness of parts of the section on the moral theology of poverty. Here are some of the offending passages:

I think the passages quoted are bad, firstly because of the factual errors they contain, but more seriously because they show a misunderstanding of what Christians understand by poverty and what underlies the Christian’s response. ‘In the Western world only isolated individuals lack the bare necessities of life. The understanding of poverty has largely disappeared from these countries.’ That may be a convenient myth reinforcing the mistaken belief that the Western world is on its great march of progress, but it muffles the truth about the real situation.

The details that Dante gives us of his meetings with the earthly Beatrice are so sketchy and the circumstances so ephemeral—they encounter each other as children once, she begins to greet him in the street some nine years later and then shortly after passes him by—that one can reasonably say that Dante never fully meets Beatrice until Canto XXX of the Purgatorio. And it is neither the style of meeting nor the woman that Dante quite expected. He had gazed at a distance on the earthly Beatrice in the Streets of Florence and at Mass and at banquets—though she had rarely looked at him; he had gazed on the heavenly Beatrice, too, in his mind’s eye. But the actual encounter, the real meeting, with the heavenly Beatrice (and the heavenly is the revelation of the earthly, a manifestation of the truth) is a rude awakening. He has trembled through the reeking horrors of the Inferno, encouraged by Virgil’s indomitable trust that it is by descent into the deepest cavern that they will reach the redeeming light and come to Beatrice; he has toiled up the mountain of the Purgatorio, lightened by the hope of meeting Beatrice; he has cast himself into the wall of fire that divides the last purgatorial terrace from the Earthly Paradise, urged on by Virgil: ‘ “Look now, my son, between Beatrice and thee is this wall” . . . and my sweet Father, to comfort me, kept talking of Beatrice as he went, saying: “I seem to see her eyes already” ‘ (XXVII 35f and 52ff.).

Iran is a large and important country which is too little known in Britain, and which is even the subject of grave misunderstandings—such as the idea that it is an ‘Arab’ country and that therefore its religion is the same as that of its Arab neighbours. I went there simply as a visitor, bent on listening and learning through personal contacts. My reading of Iranian history had informed me that Iran has produced many important religious movements, though none of them has survived as a major world religion, unless you count the Baha’i. The birthplace of several powerful religious personalities — Zoroaster and Mani for example—it has tended to influence rather than dominate. In some strange way it has always subtly altered, sometimes even confused the great religions of mankind. Lacking the intellectual rigour of the Greek tradition, and without the intensity of the Semitic outlook, the Iranians have evaded the clutches of these two powerful alien influences. They are a humane and moderate people, much attracted to the good things of life, with a liking for speculation, often expressed in vast and woolly ideas. In this they betray their affinity to the people of the Indian subcontinent.

The title that I have chosen for this article is far from being a gimmick designed to lure anyone with an eye for the unusual. Some years ago I tried to put together a paper entitled Theology of Leisure. I should like to think that the present title is a more precise attempt to tackle the same question that still lies at the back and bottom of my mind.

Leisure, of course, defies definition. A glance at The Concise Oxford Dictionary will verify the fact. What I call leisure other people receive good salaries for doing, and consequently they call it work. I have long nourished, for instance, a secret ambition to be an inspector for Diners Club or a member of the British Board of Film Censors.

Moreover, when one does attempt a clear definition of leisure, one is inevitably caught up in sociological technicalities which simply describe leisure activities as they exist in today’s society, without going on to probe the creative human values inherent in leisure as such. For this one has to turn not to the sociologist but to the poet, the philosopher and the theologian.