I have been asked to write some account of the place of theology in the new universities, not simply as an academic discipline but as an interpreter of the whole academic process. This is a matter which I have long considered of the highest importance, not only for the Church but for the maintenance of integrated learning in the secular universities. Newman’s writings on this very matter, both in The Idea ofa University and elsewhrre, are too well known to need recapitulation. Indeed his prophetic gifts are only beginning to be realized in this as in so many other matters. The age of the Second Vatican Council is in many ways a Newmanic age and the principles for which he stood, no less than the ethos of true learning which he breathed, interpret, almost magically, the needs of our age.

The whole problem which forms the scope of this article has been admirably delineated this year in a book already reviewed in these columns, Theology and the University, ‘an ecumenical investigation,’ edited by John Coulson. It is a documentary of the first order, and I may be forgiven if I begin by a recapitulation of some of the things which it has to say. The editor himself, sums up the discussions in one sentence : ‘Theology can choose; it can remain dead and neglected, or take the pressure of the times and live; but if it chooses life it has need of three things: a university setting, lay participation, and the ecumenical dialogue’.

The Romans can, with some justification, claim the credit for having introduced the most important legal and religious concept of war into the history of human thought. Thereby they made a very notable contribution to the historical development of international law. To the Romans we owe the idea of the ‘just and pious’ war which has for centuries characterized and influenced the thinking of Western Christendom about the place and practice of war. The idea is still with us today. Like the conception of natural law, the story of the ‘just and pious’ war is that of successive contents flowing though an ancient concept.

In the Rome of the kings it was the function of a special college of priests, the fetiales, to carry out the somewhat elaborate religious and legal procedures, the Jus fetiale, determining the declarations of war and peace between the Roman people and their enemies. The jus fetiale formed part of the Roman jus sacrum, and thereby imported a moral and legal element, over and above that of religion, into the formal procedures of establishing peaceful and hostile relations between Rome and other political communities. The task of the fetiales was to determine whether the duties owed to Rome by her neighbours had been violated, i.e., whether or not Rome had been wronged. These wrongs were well established and defined in Roman religiolegal thinking and formed part of the substantive content of the jus fetiale. These wrongs constituted the causes of ‘just and pious’ wars, to the Roman mind.

It is the common teaching of the Church, reaffirmed by successive popes and to be found in all reputable textbooks of moral theology, that the use of mechanical contraceptives which interfere with intercourse is always wrong. Whether this common teaching amounts to the ordinary magisterium in the technical sense and is therefore infallible is another matter, but short of such assurance it would be hard to find a clearer guide for the Christian who wants to know what he should do or not do. It should be emphasized that even those theologians who think there are legitimate uses for the pill nearly always distinguish between this and mechanical contraceptives. It is indeed clear that these are two quite different matters; contraceptives interfere directly with the act of intercourse whereas the pill does not.

It is a mistake to suppose that we do not know anything until we know it infallibly. There are a great many topics about which a Catholic ought to have sure and definite views just because he is a Catholic, even though the infallible magisterium of the Church has not yet pronounced upon them. He should know, for example, without waiting for the pope to tell him, that it is wicked to propose to drop a nuclear bomb on a city under any circumstances. Similarly if a Catholic wants to know whether he should use mechanical contraceptives or not he does not need to wait for an infallible papal pronouncement to get the answer.

When these lines appear in print the third session of Vatican II will be in full swing and some crucial declarations of the Church's mind, which must have a vital bearing on the problems of Christian unity, will be in the making. Not least in importance among these is the revised Schema de Oecumenismo. It will perhaps be useful to examine the attitude of the World Council of Churches to what is happening in the view of representatives well qualified to speak for it.

This attitude may, I think, be summed up by saying that while there is generous recognition of progress there is also considerable doubt among a number of responsible non-Catholic ecumenists whether, in view of its well known presuppositions, the Catholic Church can, as such, engage in ecumenical dialogue on the terms now common to all the member-Churches of the World Council of Churches, including the Eastern Orthodox. This doubt is fairly widespread. It is expressed, for instance, by Dr Lukas Vischer, one of the World Council observers at the Vatican Council. Speaking during the Unity Octave in Zurich in 1964, just after Pope Paul's pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he said: The non-Roman Catholic Churches do not question the fact that the Roman Catholic Church must claim to be the one and only Church. But if a permanent conversation is to be established between the divided Churches, then a form of fellowship must be found which does not compel the non-Roman Catholic Churches to accept the Roman Catholic concept of unity and of union.

Christ, who in his Gospel promises only crosses and afflictions, has plainly no need of rich men in his holy Church; their grandeur has nothing in common with his deep abasement, with God's humbling himself even to the cross. We may judge, therefore, that he does not seek the rich for their own sake. For to what use can he put them in his kingdom ? To build him grand temples, to enrich his altars with gold and precious stones ? Do not suppose that he takes pleasure in such adornments.