Just over ten years ago, as now, there were debates about the freedom of television; but they had a very different emphasis. Then, the argument of a commercial pressure group was that the bbc represented ‘state’ broadcasting, too official, too unfree. To counteract this, Independent Television was introduced. Now, the argument of a puritan-christian pressure group is that the bbc is too free and should have the measure of control stepped up to the level already prevailing in Independent Television. How and why has this happened, and for what party is the aid of all good men required ? These are the questions which this article tries to answer.

The Clean-up Television Campaign (CUTV) began in January 1964, when Mrs Mary Whitehouse, schoolmistress-wife of a company director, and Mrs Norah Buckland, wife of an Anglican vicar, jointly issued a five point manifesto:

‘ ... and one of them, a lawyer, put a question to try him: Master, which commandment in the law is the greatest? Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and thy whole soul and thy whole mind. This is the greatest of the commandments and the first. And the second, its like, is this: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments, all the law and the prophets depend.’ (Matt. 22, 35-41)

With these words Jesus pointed out the Way for man to come to God and the essence of that Way is a continuing love affair between each man and God, each man with himself for the love of God, and each with his neighbour whom he is commanded to love as he loves himself. Christianity is not only an intensely personal religion, binding each human person man and woman, directly to God in the love of friendship which we call charity, it is also an intensely social religion, because it commands that we love all of our neighbours as we love ourselves. As Christ clearly states, all of the commandments of the Law may be reduced to these two, because all of the commandments pertain to the ordering of self-love and love of neighbour to the love of God.

The love of God is both the means to the end and the end itself of human life, insofar as we must continually be in love with God in this life, and ultimately be personally united with Him in life eternal.

The Dominicans of the English province have now been working in South Africa for over forty years and the work we are doing is varied and colourful. At Stellenbosch in the Cape we have a priory which is primarily a training house for (white) South Africans with a novitiate for both choir and laybrothers and a study house of philosopy and theology. At Hammanskraal in the northern Transvaal we staff (with the help of the Dutch Dominicans) a major seminary for the training of African priests. We have two university chaplaincies, Stellenbosch and Cape Town, and are responsible for the running of nine parishes, white, brown and black, one at Stellenbosch, the others on the East Rand.

The period since the promulgation of the Constitution on the Liturgy has seen, in this country as in every other, a considerable number of alterations in the ceremonies of the mass, the most obvious of which has been the introduction of English. These changes have been received with a mixture of enthusiastic approval, quiet acceptance and strongly expressed antipathy. But the time is overdue when we should have stopped asking: ‘Are the changes going well?’ and should have begun to ask: ‘Are we reforming the liturgy?’.

It is the purpose of this essay to suggest that, whereas the nature of liturgical reform and the radical principles that must be kept in mind in working towards the goal have been clearly stated in various documents promulgated by the Vatican Council, they have not yet been sufficiently received into the general consciousness, with the result that there is still a danger that we shall fail to achieve the task set us by the Council. This failure would not consist simply in nonachievement. Now that the whole question of reforming the liturgy has been explicitly raised in the minds of all church-going catholics, misconceptions concerning the goal and the radical principles of reform will, in turn, give rise to false ideas about the nature of the liturgy and, indeed, of the church herself. Once fundamental mistakes are made, it is too late to say: ‘Let’s start again; we will forget the past two years’. History moves one way, and takes an inexorable toll of wrong decisions.