‘For many Catholics in Brazil, the Dominican Order is synonymous with subversion and the destruction of genuine values.’

(Brazilian daily O Globo, 1969)

Tito de Alencar was one of the Dominicans imprisoned and tortured in Brazil; he was released in exchange for the kidnapped Swiss Ambassador. He is interviewed here by CLAUDIO ZANCHETTIN.

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There are two sorts of revolutionaries; those of the drawing room and the real ones. The first talk about revolution, the others make it. Tito de Alencar, the young Dominican I went to interview in the convent of St Jacques in Paris is one of the real sort. His revolutionary struggles, imprisonment, torture and exile could have made a ‘hero’ of him. But Tito has nothing about him of the vain exhibitionist. For him revolution is a terribly serious matter.

His sufferings have marked him greatly. When he speaks he conceals his emotion with difficulty. With fixed eyes he tries to get to the bottom of things straight away. His young life is consumed by two great passions; revolution and the gospel.

At this time when the limelight of news is no longer directed at Brazil, I believe it to be a matter of urgency to contribute to breaking the wall of silence and complicity that surrounds the sufferings of the entire Brazilian people. It is so that this silence may be broken that Tito has agreed to answer my questions.

Claudio Zanchettin

‘An existential system cannot be formulated. Does this mean that no such system exists ? By no means; nor is this implied in our assertion. Existence itself is a system—for God; but it cannot be a system for any existing spirit. System and finality correspond to one another, but existence is precisely the opposite of finality.’

S. Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript

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Philosophy of religion and theology

We are by now too well acquainted with much that goes on under the heading of ‘philosophy of religion’ which seems to provide sport for some professional philosophers but has little to do with religious belief. The tactics are well known. A typical statement of a theological kind is set up for examination and is then put through the logical hoops without, apparently, any further need for reference to the theological context. The strategy often presumes that there is basically only one type of theological statement and that this can be dealt with adequately without looking at the complex structure of thought which surrounds it in its theological setting. Faith may indeed be simple, but its systematic exploration and articulation inevitably demands a complex and sophisticated exposition without which it becomes not only unreasonable, but even unintelligible. The discussions of some of the philosophers of religion have as a result only too often a rather tired and well-worn air, and frequently theologians find little resemblance between what they themselves are doing and what philosophers presume that they are about.

For the older generation of Catholics, ‘Welsh Disestablishment’ recalls Chesterton’s Ode with its climax, ‘Chuck it, Smith!’ and with its implication that the religious affairs of Wales are not of much interest to the rest of Europe. It often seems that they are of little concern even to those Europeans who have settled in Wales. I have been asked to re-present for New Blackfriars readers the nature and origins of our complex denominational situation. I would suggest that ‘disestablishment’, i.e. separation of Church and secular power (especially the power of the State) is a unifying theme and that this may have the interest of novelty for most of Europe.

The political background

In an earlier article ‘By Law Established’, I argued that from the beginning Wales has been a nation without a sovereign state, i.e. the highest political power in Wales has usually had its seat outside Wales, in England, in fact. While Welsh nationhood has been based chiefly on the Welsh language, it has generally been reinforced by a type of Christianity distinct from that of England. Since the English State has, of course, been hostile to Welsh nationhood, it follows that Church and State here have often been on opposite sides.

In September 1971 Graham Greene published his autobiography, A Sort of Life. The Times Literary Supplement took the opportunity to feature a leading article on his work in which it stated that the autobiography ‘reinforces Greene’s theories about the relations between art and life’, and at once added, ‘that is to say, between his art and his life’. The debate about the relationship between an author’s work and his life recurs constantly, but in Greene’s case the questions which are raised are particularly acute, his view of the matter being in marked contrast to that expressed by most of his critics.

The critics frequently affirm that his books are principally about himself. Marie-Béatrice Mesnet, for example, hints at this when she compares his travel book, The Lawless Roads, with his novel, The Power and the Glory, both of which are set in Mexico. ‘His only addition to reality in the novel’, she writes, ‘lies in the characterization of his human material, in his power to conjure up life and the interior history of a man. The entire background is as close to actual fact as possible.’ Still more explicitly, Victor de Pange has claimed: ‘L’oeuvre de Greene peut se lire comme une autobiographic à peine transposee’.

No doubt it is this trend in the criticism of Greene’s work that explains the reaction of the critics to his autobiography, for while they admire the quality of his writing, they confess to a sense of disappointment. They had hoped to learn his secret. Peter Lewis complained outright in the Daily Mail that ‘Many of Graham Greene’s admirers will be disappointed by A Sort of Life, the autobiography which might have thrown light on his secret’.

One has often been asked by incredulous, though well-meaning, people—and almost apologetically—‘Why did you become a Catholic?’ The suggestion being that there must be some explanation to account for such a strange, even a remarkable, lapse from rational behaviour on the part of one supposed to be some sort of scientist. The question is not well put. I suppose that none of us can say truthfully and certainly why we do anything. It would be better to ask not why, but how, did a man become a Catholic; and this is the question I shall attempt to answer, so that next time I am asked why I became a Catholic I can just hand over this number of New Blackfriars. Perhaps even more alarming and difficult to give a direct answer to is the question: ‘When were you converted?’ Perhaps I had better deal with that one first.

Some people, it would seem, have peculiar notions about what is called ‘conversion’, as though it were some sudden and dazzling experience (it may be with some people; I do not know). So, we are led to suppose, this is what happened on the road to Damascus, but if that dramatic incidence, that traumatic vision, occurred as described, we might recollect that Paul was a highly religious Jew, and so was Jesus, a Jew preaching unto Jews in the tradition of Jewish thought and expression. And we might also bear in mind that when we read that Augustine was converted by Ambrose that Augustine was a Neo-Platonist and was already, so to speak, half-way there. So, if we may compare little things with big things, we come to me, which is embarrassing, but obviously I cannot talk about myself without some ‘I’s and ‘me’s.

Two years ago, under the pretext of reviewing a motley collection of books, I offered some reflections on the play dimension of life and spirituality. Now, two years later, a little sadder perhaps if no wiser, I want to take up my cudgels again, on a similar pretext. In 1970 I suggested that one of the crucial issues, often veiled by the more popular conservative-progressive polarity, is that of Tradition—a glance at the behaviour of children revealing a close relationship between tradition and play. In various ways Tradition is again the issue raised by the books under consideration this time.

Mauss’ General Theory of Magic, already quite a classic, but now for the first time translated into English, and Furst’s collection, Flesh of the Gods, demonstrate how far experience is socially determined—to such an extent, it appears, that sorcerers in some societies, even though they are aware of the sleight of hand and other tricks involved in their own practice, nevertheless remain convinced of the validity of the whole magical system within which they operate.

Flesh of the Gods is a collection of essays by American ‘ethno- botanists’ on the ritual use of drugs in tribal societies. There are some signs that ethnobotany is a bit of a tribal religion itself (there is a kind of credo by R. Gordon Wasson), but all the same much of the material presented here is quite interesting. One thing that emerges over and over again is that members of a drug-using culture spontaneously all have the same, and the expected, experiences, often with no prompting from the shamanistic leader; outsiders, however, taking identical doses of the drug in an identical setting, experience nothing of the sort.

One consequence of this is, of course, the possibility of building up utterly self-contained and invulnerable systems of self-delusion. Such seems to be Mauss’ verdict on magic, though he recognizes its social significance. Although there may be much talk about experiences, in fact there is a tendency towards ritualization and formalism, the emphasis being on form rather than content.