It is not quite forty years since I produced my first published writing concerned with Christian unity; it was a review article on the Report of the Malines Conversations, which the then editor of Blackfriars asked me to undertake, soon after I finished my studies for the priesthood. But my thought and ideas about ecumenism – the clumsy word had not then been invented – have deep roots in my Anglican background. I have always been profoundly grateful for the religion I was grounded in by the Church of England; and that I was able to take it with me into the Catholic Church whole and entire. With a minimum of detailed adjustment – but a complete re-orientation of mind – I was received, without conditional baptism, in 1917.

What I took with me was a religion essentially biblical and liturgical. From earliest childhood – in our daily family service at home, and in similar daily services at school and at Cambridge, I learned to recite the psalter and listen to the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Built into this biblical background was the training, more by atmosphere and surroundings than by explicit teaching, of a happy home life, in a large family, with parents at the heart of whose religious practice was the deep personal love of Christ characteristic of the sober Tractarianism of Keble and Newman.

The idea of kairos – the time of urgent and providential decision – is something characteristic of Christianity, a religion of decisions in time and in history. Can Christians recognize their kairos? Is it possible that when the majority of Christians become aware that ‘the time has come’ for a decisive and urgent commitment, the time has, in fact, already run out?

There can be no question now that the time for a certain kind of crucial Christian decision in America has come and gone. In 1962, and finally in 1963, there were ‘moments of truth’ which have now passed, and the scene is becoming one of darkness, anarchy and moral collapse. These, of course, still call for a Christian response, a Christian decision. But it might seem that the responses and decisions of Christians will necessarily be less clear and more tragic because it is now apparent that there is little left for Christians as such to do to shape the events – or forestall the tragedies – that are to come. At best they can pray, and patiently suffer the consequences of past indecision, blindness, and evasion. They cannot lead and guide the nation through this crisis, but they can still help others, if they choose, to understand and accept the sufferings involved in order to make a creative and constructive use of the situation for the future. Are they really likely to do this? Who can say?

When I was young a book with this sort of title and written by Catholics would have been intended as an answer; the Church would have been defended. One can plausibly imagine some of the contributors: Belloc and Chesterton, not yet, respectively, too old or dead; Fathers Martindale and McNabb; Mr Waugh speaking for youth and perhaps Eric Gill (a bit uneasy with some of the company) for art. Count de la Bedoyère's team are of a different kidney. All but two of them seem far more concerned to raise than to answer objections, and if the formula of our imaginary book might have been ‘Yes, but . . . ‘, that of the present one is rather ‘Yes, and...', followed by a strong recommendation that it is high time something was done about it. The common mood, in short, is one of protest, the common aim is reform. Hence it isn't surprising, given the Church's established structure, that the general tone may fairly, if loosely, be described as anticlerical. And it is perhaps here, rather than in the particular views and arguments put forward, that this book's chief interest and significance lies, – not, of course, simply in its being slanted towards anticlericalism, but in its being so in a new, contemporary way.

In the twenties and thirties there were currents of anticlerical feeling in English Catholicism, but they were small and scattered, and, more important, they neither claimed nor expected much support from theology.

Today the conflict in critical opinion over controversial films often seems more pronounced when it comes to the kind of film that is most likely to engage the interest of Catholics. Never has it been more important that the intelligent Catholic should make up his own mind over a difficult picture than in the present state of the cinema; and by and large there is not, in this country, a great deal that will help him enlarge his cinematic critical apparatus. In France, Belgium or Italy the highbrow Catholic is not ashamed to admit to enthusiasm for the cinema: in England one only too often finds him saying that he cannot be bothered with films. This puts us at a considerable disadvantage when it comes to international gatherings concerned with any form of mass media and, worse still, at a visible loss when it comes to discussion with alert non-Catholic cinema-goers in this country about any particular film on which we should certainly have clear views one way or another.

The eighth London Film Festival held last autumn provided a pertinent case in point. Owing to the massive rebuilding that is still taking place on the South Bank, the films this year were shown in the West End; in consequence a much larger proportion of the general public (as opposed to members of the British Film Institute) came to the performances. Three of the films shown were OCIC (Office Catholique Internationale du Cin?ma) prize winners – one of them the Grand Prix for 1964 – and several others were of lively interest to Catholic audiences.