‘The true speaking absolutely is prior to the good, as appears from two reasons. First because the true is more closely related to being, which is prior to good.... Secondly,... knowledge naturally precedes appetite.’ (Summa, la Q. 16, Art 4, Eng. trans.)

The object of the intellect (i.e. Truth) ‘is more simple and more absolute than the object of the will’ (i.e. goodness). Therefore the intellect in itself and absolutely is higher and nobler than the will— yet ‘the love of God is better than the knowledge of God; but on the contrary, the knowledge of corporeal things is better than the love thereof. Absolutely, however, the intellect is better than the will.’ (Ibid., Q,. 82, Part 3.)

These two texts from the Summa of the Blackfriar St Thomas Aquinas must outline the attitude of Blackfriars towards truth.

At the risk of failing to express what is in our mind, let us say that we fully accept the consequences of St Thomas’s principle: ‘Truth is more simple and absolute than goodness, therefore the intellect is higher and nobler than the will.’ In our aim of finding and telling the truth we will not primarily concern ourselves with what is good; or only with that highest good, the Truth. This is but to realize that transcendentals, such as truth, must be sought for their own sake or they will not be found in their fullness. Truth-seeking and truthtelling must not be blended and weakened with enquiries into the economic, political, ethical or theological value of the truth.

The process of secularization which began towards the end of the Middle Ages seems to have reached its peak. Not only has a way of life developed which no longer even pays lip-service to religion, so that large sections of the population live completely outside any direct religious influence, secular values have invaded the City of God itself. They have all but succeeded in eliminating an entire dimension of experience which, by the grace of God, is open to man. In other words, man is slowly and systematically robbed of his ideals. His vision is narrowed down to the here and now. If it is true, as George Herbert wrote: ‘Who aimeth at the sky shoots higher much than he that means a tree’, we are in danger of missing even the tree, unless we stop and take our bearings afresh. It is one thing to say that monogamous marriage, celibacy and the non-use of contraceptives are far beyond the powers of the average man. It is quite another to demand their abolition on these grounds—not only because there have been people—they still exist—who are actually able to live on this level, but chiefly because this would mean ignoring one human possibility. No one would dream of abrogating the law of charity, because most of us sin against charity regularly, often grievously. But the lives of the saints are there to show us that the ideal is patient of realization, even if we ourselves are too weak to approach it more closely.

Since the Vatican Declaration Nostra Aetate, concerning the relations between the Catholic Church and non-Christian religions, was promulgated on 28th October, 1965, a slow, but sound and effective change has been taking place in the Church. Obviously, the painful misunderstandings of centuries cannot be removed in a single year, but there is no doubt that the Church, during the Vatican Council, sincerely sought a new and better understanding of itself. Praying, discussing, listening, struggling, it discovered many new insights into its very being. One of the points most discussed was the relation between the Church and the Jewish people. Israel is either a stumbling block for the Church or else points out a deep mystery of divine revelation, in which both the Church and Judaism participate. It is not necessary to digress here on the history of relations between the Church and Judaism for the past twenty centuries, because there have been many dark patches. Nor do I need to speak about the difficult and painful struggle of the Vatican Council to reach a positive statement. The final result was neither very good, nor very bad: it was a compromise addressed to Catholics; a pastoral document in a positive spirit, and as such a revolutionary declaration compared with statements of former Councils.

Just over a year ago, a sample copy of an English course textbook, New Junior Crown (for third graders) by William C. Clark, was submitted to the Mombusho (Ministry of Education) in Tokyo for approval. To obtain teachers’ reactions to the course, the Ministry sent out a hundred copies of New Junior Crown and asked for their views. A group of left-wing teachers, the New English Research Association, found a number of things in the book tendentious and inaccurate, not from the point of view of English idiom or grammar, but from what was purveyed to the pupil as ‘the Japanese way of life’. Each lesson showed an American family, the Browns, on a tour of Japan, and in Lesson Eleven they were taken to ‘The Grand Shrine at Ise’. The New English Research Association had already pointed out that Mr Clark seemed intent, in other lessons, on glorifying the Emperor-system and over-simplifying religious issues; but in Lesson Eleven he had really gone beyond the mark. After tipping a Shinto priest two thousand yen, the Browns were invited into the shrine, where some dances were performed for their benefit. ‘Now let’s go to the Inner Shrine’, the lesson went on, ‘it’s the most sacred place in Japan. I want it remembered as the high point of your trip. ... A thick white curtain was in the entrance. The Browns stood reverently before the curtain. How peaceful everything was. They prayed for peace in the world.

Psychologists working in the field of human development are understandably reluctant to make predictions. They prefer to work backwards, attempting to explain later behaviour in the light of earlier experience, but always aware of the multiple factors involved in the human situation and of the unreliability and inaccuracy of what has been recorded, often in retrospect. Reliable studies on a large enough scale are few and far between, especially in this country, while the increasing social and geographical mobility of the general population makes any longitudinal study over the years increasingly difficult to carry through.

Meanwhile, theories of child-rearing abound, varying not only from generation to generation but also according to the school of thought involved; more important, large sections of the population remain more or less untouched by such professional advice, even at the level of the popular women’s journals, so that the mores of regional subcultures persist, despite the attempts of teachers and social workers with what are now recognized as essentially middle-class professional goals and expectations.

Nevertheless, one factor on which there is increasing agreement is the importance of the earliest years, of the pre-school period spent largely within the family setting. What evidence there is suggests real differences at work within the range of social class, which will facilitate or hamper the work of formal education during the next ten or more years the children will spend in school. What these differences really are, and how they can be met without distorting or destroying what is valuable at each level, still remains a matter of conjecture.

The decree Prece eucharistica of 23rd May ushers in what will be the most striking and the most effective of all the changes in the Mass. The recital out loud and in the vernacular of the canon of the Mass has made many aware of the defects and poverty of this ancient Roman prayer. The latest reform makes good some of these defects of the Roman formula by adding eight new prefaces to the existing collection in the missal: two of these are for Advent, one for the Sundays in Lent, two for Sundays throughout the year to avoid the repetition of the special preface for the feast of the Trinity, a new preface of the Blessed Sacrament and two new common prefaces. All these will help to add variety and to restore the element of thanksgiving for God’s wonderful works, which should be the essence of every eucharistic prayer, but which is so lacking at present.

A more radical remedy, however, is the promulgation of three completely new eucharistic prayers which may entirely replace the Roman canon except on certain occasions. Two of these new prayers may be combined with the variable prefaces according to the season and thus the central prayer of the Mass will once again take on some of the variety it had in the early centuries of the Church and which is still maintained to a certain extent by the Eastern Churches.