In a week’s brief and hurried visit to Cuba one can gather nothing more substantial than an impression of the current attitudes, problems and prospects of the Cuban Church. This is not, therefore, a full report, but only a note which attempts to portray the climate of opinion and experience among Cuban Catholics today.

To understand better the remarks that follow one should first sketch in the general Cuban background against which the Catholic mood develops. The most obtrusive fact about Cuban daily life today is that the economic situation is very difficult. Though no one actually goes hungry, for some food is always available, the diet is annoyingly unappetizing. Stores offer practically no choice; one simply eats what is available. For the poorest people, especially among the peasants, this is an improvement over the past, but for most Cubans this is a hardship to which they are unaccustomed. All things considered, however, it is rather well borne, an index of which is the lack of general patronage of black markets. Not only food but also clothing is in very short supply. All other ordinary goods are similarly scarce and often not to be found. The distribution system is erratic: today matches have suddenly disappeared from all tobacconists, but beer is available at any bar; tomorrow there is no beer, only cider; then one can get matches, but nothing to drink. Only luxury goods are plentiful. Art galleries exhibit a lavish variety of oils by Cuban artists, and along San Rafael Street one can find tempting bargains in Chinese jade. What the deeper economic situation might be and whether it inclines upwards or not is anyone’s guess—and contradictory estimates are as easily found among Cuban as among American and other experts.

On the strength of two volumes of short stories the American Catholic writer J. F. Powers seemed conspicuously free of characteristic qualities of our three Catholic novelists. Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh and Muriel Spark. Whatever the literary merit of the novels of these three writers their work contains in different kinds of degrees the same basic quality of nightmare; their atmospheres are heavy with the macabre, the ugly, the violent, the symbolic, their plots are full of decadence and despair, and their involvement with Catholicism has a great deal of the Gothic about it. Now Mr Powers has written a novel it is possible to judge him tackling the same problems in the novel form, and Morte D’Urban reveals the same quiet detailed observation of spiritual life in America, a life that simmers and then explodes with nightmare. As the titles of his short story volumes show, A Prince of Darkness and The Presence of Grace, Powers is as much concerned as, say Graham Greene, with the heroic life of the Christian, and equally concerned with what makes a hero. Morte D’ Urban with its immediate appeal to Malory seemed a puzzling but impressive novel in which the hero becomes heroic in spite of himself, and, one is tempted to say, in spite of the reader. The epigraph to the novel is a quotation from J. M. Barrie:

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another. . . .

Hence the story of Urban, citified man, seemed to me to finish with his salvation for reasons excluded from the explicit narration of the novel, only gradually realized in terms of qualities praised in that explicit narration; in short a very ironic, compassionate, literate novel on the spiritual life which I thought I had understood.

Equilibrium means maturity, a harmony and balance of tensions that comes from intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual maturity. Clearly the first essential is professional competence, the possession of those varied techniques and skills which can give a sense of adequacy. The social worker is often in a certain sense a lay spiritual adviser whose role, at its own level, is comparable to that of the confessor and spiritual director. For that reason a deepening knowledge of techniques and skills must be accompanied by a corresponding desire to appreciate the importance of moral and supernatural means. In this connection we may adapt the words of the famous physician and say that the social worker tends the wounds of the psyche but it is God who heals them. One can never leave out of account the working of God’s grace, and must remind oneself again and again that one’s role is secondary and subordinate. To do otherwise is to fall into the heresy of good works.

Intellectual maturity also implies a true humility. By this I mean a serene acceptance of one’s limitations with the corollary that one is not ashamed through vanity or human respect to seek from others the knowledge that one lacks. But at the same time humility also means a sense of security in one’s strengths. Humility in the face of the mystery of this person, my client, who confronts me here and now, is essential if I am not to be overbearing and patronising, and consequently insecure because I seek security in my attitude of superiority.

In a previous article it was assumed that the English segregated school school system based on selection at eleven years and the intellectual theories sustaining it were passing away and were being succeeded by various forms of comprehensive secondary education. If this be so, and the events of last summer on the political, social and academic scenes would seem to add confirmation, can the Church sit idly by without examining the meaning that this educational revolution may hold for Catholics and the general community? Understandably the Catholic administrator is concerned, at parish and diocesan level, with providing adequate places for the increasing numbers of children committed to his care; nevertheless the Church has a primary concern for the education of youth whether inside or outside the Church and he will surely wish to ascertain whether any assets of permanent value to Christian life may be obtained from a re-organization of our own sector paralleling the changeover to comprehensive systems in state schools.

Catholic authorities may be reassured that, from the known achievements of comprehensive schools, the adoption by them of the new pattern could have an extremely favourable outcome, if cast within the mould of Christian ideals, on the development and character of the English Catholic community. Initially it may be noted that at such schools a far greater proportion than normal remain on beyond the usual leaving age: for example, in some London comprehensive schools between 40% and 60% is quite common, compared to a national average of 20 % in Local authorities which operate a separate school system.