Science fiction, the literature about the future, is a genre of considerable age and distinguished lineage—or so say its practitioners and afficionados, who have inducted Plato, Thomas More, Campanella, and Poe posthumously into their ranks. This can be seen as a charming historical corrective, but it is more: an invocation of great minds of the past to draw attention to serious discussion of the future and make it worthy of our consideration.

Practically everyone who writes about St. Thomas tells the story, but G. K. Chesterton tells it best. When Aquinas broke his habit of solitude to attend a royal banquet at the invitation of Louis XI of France (later St. Louis), he did not break his habit of thinking. “Somehow they steered that reluctant bulk of reflection to a seat in the royal banquet hall, and all we know of Thomas tells us that he was perfectly courteous to those who spoke to him, but spoke little, and was soon forgotten in the most brilliant and noisy clatter in the world: the noise of French talking.”

John Chancellor did it again last night. On NBC's “Nightly News” he referred to the presidency of the United States as “the most powerful political office in the world.” The key word there is ”political.” I recall that until a couple of years ago secular commentators routinely referred to the presidency as the most power ful office in the world, period. Until John Paul II came along. If with Hannah Arendt we distinguish power from force, asserting that power is force combined with moral authority, then it seems reasonable to view John Paul II as the most powerful person in the world today. Reagan and, presumably, Brezhnev can unleash more lethal force. But no leader can compare with the pope's power to direct the loyalties of hundreds of millions of people around the globe.

Once upon a time all theatrical performances in Western Europe were religious in impetus and expression. Professional directors and stage managers of the Middle Ages traveled to such towns as Mons and Valenciennes to stage elaborate productions upon specially constructed platforms equipped with trapdoors and other devices to achieve the most spectacular effects. An English king journeyed to York and posted himself and his retinue on a street in order to witness a segment of that city's famous cycle of plays—from Creation to Christ s passion —performed upon a wagon.

In recent years much has been said and written about the economics of small units and the virtues of individual or cooperative self-help. This trend has been spurred by several factors. The soaring cost of oil underscored the need to conserve energy and eliminate waste by every conceivable srneans. The spiraling cost of food, even in America; has made kitchen gardening more rewarding. The outbreak of double-digit inflation has forced many families to undertake more do-it-yourself jobs. The persistence of economic stagnation in industrial societies with stubbornly high rates of unemployment has impelled more people to create work for themselves. And there is the appalling case of poor nations, burdened with burgeoning populations, where the search for food and jobs has become a matter of life and death.