‘I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream. I see an American nightmare.’—Malcolm X.

‘And the white Lt.-Colonel from the civilized USA jumped back, snorted and said: “My good man, where I come from we don’t eat people when we kill them. We’re civilized.” And the chief said, “Well baby, why you kill them?” ‘—Stokely Carmichael.

By Summer the American public will be as accustomed to the idea of racial riots as to a well-advertised eclipse of the sun. The actuality of events, sifted through the mass media into print, polls, radio and television, stays comfortably once removed from the affluent. Most Americans watch the auguries of doom on the TV with the numbing disbelief of a rabbit caught in a truck’s headlights; erudite predictions of urban chaos substitute for immediate reform; election charades are played out with unusually large audience participation, and the administration plead for unity and patriotism. It all seems unreal.

In March while President Johnson played golf in Puerto Rico, conspicuously absent from the communal confiteor of churches and liberal establishment, the public glanced at the findings of his commission on civil disorders. The report, a literary genre popularized by the 1966 McCone Commission report on the Los Angeles riots, told them that there was a racial crisis. In New York it was the time of the interregnum; priests were working feverishly on a policy statement while the laity passively awaited a seventh Irish-American Archbishop to ascend the throne of 451 Madison Avenue.

Apart from a certain number of discreet and limited meetings between Christians and Marxists, it was not until comparatively recently that these discussions came to the public notice. There was a Catholic participation at the Semaines de la Pensee Marxiste in early 1964 and then a reciprocal Marxist presence at the Semaines des Intellectuels Calholiques at the beginning of the following year. From France, the lead in this field has now passed to Germany, and more precisely to Austria, where in the spring of 1965, the Paulusgesellschaft, an association of German-speaking Catholic university teachers, organized a meeting specifically devoted to a dialogue between Christians and Marxists from both West and East Europe. There have since been two more meetings of this nature; the most recent, in 1967, was held at Marienbad in Czechoslovakia.

Of course, the idea of a meeting between Catholics and atheist movements (of which Marxism is presently the most important) was mentioned quite clearly in 1963 by Pope John XXIII in his encyclical Pacem in Terris. He there made a distinction, since become familiar, between static theories condemned by the Church and the movements inspired by these theories, but which evolve in time. He said: ‘In as far as these movements are in accord with sound principles of reason and are a response to the just aspirations of the human person, who would refuse to recognize in them elements that are positive and merit our approval? It could happen that certain meetings with a view to practical co-operation that had up till now appeared inopportune or sterile, could now produce real advantages or at least contain the promise of such for the future.’

During recent years, a great deal has been written about Newman as an historian, but, somewhat surprisingly, comparatively little on his deeper understanding of history. This, of course, is a vast subject with many different aspects. In spite of an essential scepticism about the possibility of a philosophy of history, Newman himself did indulge in occasional excursions into this dangerous field, but because he was basically a religious thinker, he ultimately saw history in the light of his belief in a divine revelation. Faith enabled the Christian to see the reality beyond the shadows, the works of divine providence and the manifestations of the sacramental principle. This is the theological background to the apologetic contrast which he made between the nature or permanence of the Church on the one hand, and shifting or temporary human organizations on the other. It is also significant that his historical realism in the context of the nineteenth-century belief in progress, was the result of a theological, in fact an eschatological, position.

There are, however, two particular lines of thought which are of more than specialized interest; the situation of the Church in the world and the role of the individual. The more accurately the history of the world was investigated and put into shape, the more it evidently appeared to advance according to fixed laws both as regards time and place, but this did not interfere with individual responsibility (Sermons Preached on Various Occasions (O.S.), p. 189). Throughout his life, Newman was convinced of the fundamental significance of the individual like the Liberal Anglicans whose philosophy of history was firmly grounded on that ultimate historical reality, the individual will.

The Church today is engaged in a great crisis of self-examination. It is looking at its claims, its traditional role, its theology. It is revising its rituals. This reforming effort is intended to bring Christian worship fully into the twentieth century. But, alas, the zeal for coming up to date proceeds without recourse to one of the most relevant critical techniques which this century has produced, I mean sociological comparison. Hence some naivété in the religious reformer about his own role. He seems not to suspect how much his views are the product of his secular environment. Nor does he consider whether the faithful are free to follow his proposals, though they also must be constrained by their own social environment. More important, he does not seem to foresee any difficulty in abolishing some forms of worship and retaining others. Whereas, if the sociological dimension has as much power as I think it has, King Canute had more chance of saying which pebbles should remain dry.

Dr Jenson rightly noted at the beginning of his review that the book was not a survey of contemporary theology in general. But I do not think he should have gone on assuming, against all the evidence provided by the book itself, that it was intended to be such. Perhaps the original title I suggested to the publisher, Problems in Modern Theology, would have been less misleading to him. He observed that I had hardly said anything about contemporary Roman Catholic theologians, and that I had left out a great many important Protestants; he might further have observed that a large part of the book (Chapters 2, 3 and 9), deal very little with ‘theologians’ in the usual sense of the world.

He might also have adverted to my own clear statement on page 9 as to what the book was about. I recognized that the chapters did not represent a single sustained argument; but I claimed that they were united by a single purpose: ‘to point out a number of fundamental and mutually related mistakes—philosophical, historical and practical—by which it seems to me that much contemporary theology is vitiated’ (italics restricted to the present context). Two claims are involved in this: (a) that there is a cluster of related propositions and arguments propounded by some influential modern theologians; (b) that these are erroneous. The first claim laid on me the task of accurate exposition of some of the work of some of the theologians influential at the present time.