Leslie Dewart’s book, just published in England, is the most far-reaching philosophical reappraisal of Catholic belief that has appeared in this country in recent years. It is symptomatic of a shift of emphasis that has begun to appear in Catholic thinking generally — away from ‘progressive’ preoccupations with the modernisation of the church, the liturgy, the parish, the ‘community’ and towards a new way of thinking and feeling about God. The modernisation programme — at least in terms of books — is wearing thin. Its slogans no longer seem much more relevant than the ones they replaced. They do not offer a satisfactory answer to the question ‘What the hell does it all mean?’ As Sebastian Moore rightly says, in his new book God is a New Language (which is another symptom of the same shift in emphasis), ‘what is within the circle (i.e. of progressive theologians) a revolution appears to the wider world to be a purely domestic battle, offering no more than the journalistic interest of a palace revolution’. Whereas — the implication is — what is needed is a real revolution. Dewart’s work is largely subversive: helping to prepare for that revolution and suggesting the outlines of a strategy.

I have some reservations about Dewart’s thesis. In one sense I think he goes too far, and almost loses touch with the church as a community at all — and thus what is being hinted at is liable to become only an intellectual revolution, not one that overturns the world.