It was late summer or, perhaps better, early autumn. I remember there were flowers growing. In those days the station master grew flowers to brighten up the Junction platform. I have been on the same Junction since; there are no flowers now. There is, however, a great deal of graffiti. But when I set out on my journey to ‘become a priest’ the walls were clean.

It is vital, nevertheless, to point out that the absence of graffiti should not be understood, or interpreted, as an indication that there was nothing to protest against or nobody to hate or love. In fact I think there were vague efforts, even frightened attempts, to inform the world in pencil about life’s hopes and problems. And, of course, the more adventurous had attacked various wooden surfaces with pen-knives. The comparative cleanliness should be attributed more to the absence of aerosol sprays and felt pens than to the lack of desire, in various sectors of the public, to address their fellow citizens about their bitterness or enchantment with life. In fact there was a lot to be bitter about in that late summer or early autumn. We had, more or less, just come to the end of one of our periods of global killing. The time had come to number such periods. The one just finished would be known historically as World War II. And it had come to an end with an event, or an act, which had not totally sunk into our world consciousness—we had dropped an Atomic bomb on Japan. The world would never be the same again.

It is a commentary on the insouciance of English Catholicism that so far the material on the history of the 1930s has consisted of sundry memoirs, a brilliant essay by Adrian Hastings (in Bishops and Writers) and a novel by Bernard Bergonzi (The Roman Persuasion). With the aid of the Westminster Archives and the Public Records Office in Kew, Thomas Moloney has put the study of the period on a scientific basis. Even the dullish title of his book— Westminster, Whitehall and the Vatican. The Role of Cardinal Hinsley 1935-43 — gets it about right: there were subterranean links between Westminster and Whitehall that no one, least of all the Catholic press, suspected. The Southern Desk of the Foreign Office had a keen and abiding interest in Catholic and Vatican affairs.

It was particularly intrigued by the appointment in 1935 of Mgr. Arthur Hinsley as fifth Archbishop of Westminster. He was now sixty- nine. He had not lived in England since 1917, when he became Rector of the Venerabile in Rome. Further back lay the foundation and headmastership of St. Bede’s Grammar School in Leeds, and a quarrel with the local Bishop, the eccentric and irascible William Gordon. The young Fr. Hinsley fled Leeds and was incardinated in the diocese of Southwark. While a curate in South London (Sutton Park and Sydenham) from 1904—1917 he maintained his academic sharpness (according to our author, p. 21) by lecturing at Wonersh. A likely tale in the Modernist period, but that is not the sort of question that detains Moloney.

Given on 30 June 1987 in South-East London, at the Church of St Thomas More, Bexley Heath, in a service of healing held during a Dominican-led parish mission.

Here, tonight, we are going to perform one of the most ancient ceremonies of the Church. The Letter of St. James was written perhaps only twenty or thirty years after the death and resurrection of our Lord, and we shall be anointing and praying over the sick of this parish in an almost identical way to that described there:

Is there any among you that are sick?
Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.
(5:14)

Oil in the ancient world was a very precious commodity. It was used in cooking, as it still is today, but also for washing, as there was no soap in the ancient world. And it was used as medicine. It was rubbed into the body and it was drunk.

The liturgical use of anointing in the church has a long history and has varied a lot over the centuries. At some periods sick people or their friends went to the church to collect the blessed oil and they would anoint themselves or get others to do it for them if they were too ill. But for a long while and in fact until very recently this sacrament was thought of chiefly as the sacrament of the death bed—‘extreme unction’.

During the 1970s, there appeared in New Blackfriars a series of articles on the theme of the relationship between Christianity and Marxism. The inspiration for this debate lay partly with those who had been involved with the journal Slant, which was published by Sheed and Ward between 1964 and 1970, and notably Terry Eagleton and Brian Wicker.

Although not covering very many pages put together, the New Blackfriars debate covered an enormous range of issues. However, from Denys Turner’s first article (1973) onwards, the concept of ideology was among the most prominent. This concept also played a major part in the more systematic argument developed by Turner in his subsequent book, Marxism and Christianity (1983b). My aim in this article is critically to defend Turner’s account as one which is still useful and relevant.

I will avoid discussing the question as to whether the use made of this central concept by Turner was really Marxist or not. Turner deliberately eschewed the question of labelling in his contributions to the debate, and Herbert McCabe, the editor of New Blackfriars, decided not to publish an article whose main aim was to show that Turner was not a real Marxist. In so far as the question is of relevance to him, Turner views Marxism as a tradition to be lived out in the form of a revolutionary praxis. Hence, therefore, an intellectual synthesis of Christianity and Marxism, even if it could be achieved, would be inadequate; what matters is that there should be a form of life which enables one to live out both traditions.

Can God change his mind? If not, what is the sense in praying to him? If he is really immutable, does that not imply that he is inexorable, ruthless and uncaring like a blind cosmic force? And in that case, can we plausibly be expected to love him or to believe in his love for us? This is a perennial problem, expressed for instance in Morris West’s impressive novel, The Clowns of God, by the abdicated pope Gregory XVII: ‘Our Jesus who was of the seed of Abraham said that whatever we ask will be given us. We should knock at the door and clamour to be heard. But there’s no point in that if there’s no one inside—or if the one inside is a mad spirit whirling heedless with the galaxies!’

Here, on the face of it, there is a stark and hopeless conflict between devotional expectations and the postulates of classical theology. How can the eager Christian heart, yearning for a personal friendship with God, inspired by the biblical imagery of God’s love-affair with his people, cope with a God who is changeless, unresponsive, atemporal, impassible?

Problems like this can be felt very deeply, and indeed it seems that this particular problem has been so deeply and generally felt that it is now widely assumed that it is religiously impossible to believe in the kind of God proposed to us by classical theology. It may therefore seem rather indelicate and perhaps impertinent to suggest that, after all, it is a false problem.

O sing to the Lord a new song, for he has done marvelous things!
His right hand and his holy arm have gotten him victory ...
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth;
Break forth into joyous song and sing praises!
Sing praises to the Lord with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody!
With trumpets and the sound of the horn Make a joyful noise before the King, the Lord!
Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it!
Let the floods clap their hands;
let the hills sing for joy together
before the Lord, for he comes to judge the earth.
He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.
Psalm 98

Whether it was the morning stars’ song at creation, Miriam’s song of the sea, Deborah’s voice of victory, Gideon’s trumpet, David’s harp, the voices of the heavenly hosts or the shout of the Lord Himself with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God, music has always played a vital part in ushering in the Kingdom of God.

Most often when we think of ‘religious’ music we tend to limit our vision either to these Biblical images or to traditional forms of liturgy, hymns, cantatas, oratorios, anthems or gospel song. But should we limit our vision to the status quo? Certainly not! A life of faith calls for a dynamic vision of newness of life.

As a non-Catholic I cannot judge whether Archer’s thesis is substantially sound or not. What I can say, however, is that I hear the authentic sounds of the North East Church in his very stimulating and thought-provoking book. In much of what he says he is speaking for the entire Christian community in that area as it struggles to fulfil its ministry in a depressed region where high unemployment affects the quality of life.

What I have to write here I base not only on my own experience— my own working-class upbringing, my seven years as Vicar of St Nicholas, Durham, and as Prison Chaplain at Durham, and my general knowledge of working-class culture in the North-East—but also on the results of a special questionnaire. I sent this to twenty Anglican incumbents in working-class parishes in Newcastle and Durham, asking them for observations on decline, liturgy and styles of ministry, and for their reflections on church growth.

Although Archer was not concerned with the decline of an Anglican working class the evidence is clearly there. Let us take the churches of Benwell, which cluster together on the north of the Tyne. Thirty or so years ago there were ten churches in existence in South Benwell of various denominations, including at least two Anglican parishes. Today, there are none in the same area apart from one very small evangelical independent church which cannot afford to pay its own minister’s salary. As well as the closure of churches, signalling their bleak failure to maintain a ministry among a solidly working-class populace, the service registers of churches in West Benwell indicate the same trend.

Introibo ad altare Dei—these words from Psalm 42 can induce a stiffening, even a shudder, among Catholics of traditional formation, and so I at once assure my audience that they begin my paper not, or not directly, because of their place at the beginning of one of the rites of Mass that we knew before the Council, but because of their appearance in the opening paragraph of James Joyce’s Ulysses:

This is liturgical parody, but the scene also has more disturbing overtones. The cliffs of Dun Laoghaire are soon likened to the cliff of Elsinore where Hamlet was set at enmity with his mother. Mulligan’s companion, Stephen Dedalus, joins him on the parapet wearing black in mourning for his mother and troubled by the memory of how he hurt her by his refusal to join in the prayers at her deathbed. Mulligan compares him to Hamlet and interprets his nickname, Kinch, as meaning ‘the knife-blade’.

Though much of what I have to say will reflect a perspective based on my own experiences and, to that extent, will take its colouration and emphasis from Catholicism in the U.S. setting and situation, I think the underlying essentials will apply as well to the British and European situations. After all, Catholic opponents of war, wherever they are, must come to terms with the tragic truth that the ‘universality’ of our Church has usually found expression in too ready a willingness to endorse and support participation in wars and (for the last 1500 years at least) a reluctance to challenge its faithful to give active witness instead to its Founder’s teachings of peace and nonviolence.

Something of a re-awakening began in the interval between the two World Wars. In great part due to the writings of the Dominican, Fr. Franziskus Stratmann, there developed what might be described as a ‘Thomist’ or ‘neo-Scholastic’ pacifism. While not yet accepting the ‘absolutism’ of the so-called ‘peace churches’ with their total rejection of all violence and war, this new theological interpretation recognized the impossibility of fitting the weapons and strategies of modern warfare into the traditional concept of the ‘just war’ and its conditions.