It must be obvious that no theme of traditional theology requires a new airing in the atmosphere of aggiornamento more than that of the papacy and its place in the Church. Ultimately this is a task for the professional theologian but one who could, in Karl Barth’s words ‘… take history seriously as a force outside himself and which spoke to him with authority’. For this to be so, the historian, through whom history speaks if it speaks at all, must do some spade work. It is natural for theologians to suppose that since the data of their study are eternal verities or eternal falsehoods, then the theses they present are absolutely, once and for all, true or false. But it is becoming increasingly obvious that however absolute the central concerns of theologians are, there are very important areas of their study in which a radical relativism is called for.

Let us take for example the theology of the eucharist. In an important sense, it is the study of the relationship between bread and wine, disposed within a certain ritual, and the flesh and blood of Christ. What could be more direct and simple, more suitable for questions answerable with a flat yes or no than this study? But these questions must be asked in terms of human language, that is they must be made intelligible in a human activity peculiarly prone to changes of meaning and peculiarly liable to quite remarkable expansion. For centuries it seemed that questions about the eucharist could only be asked in the language of Aristotle’s metaphysics.

Whatever may have been the case at other epochs of the history of the Church, it is clear that today treatments of confined topics of theology which can afford to take for granted theology and Christianity as a whole are no longer possible. This is true in a special way of the topic which concerns us here, the theology of the priesthood and the ministry, since we have to examine an essential element in the structure or form of Christianity itself, and since we are making this examination not as detached observers but as people who are considering the fundamental sense of our own lives.

Consequently it seems suitable to make explicit two presuppositions of what is to be said later. Firstly, Christianity is real. That is to say, it is real not only with the kind of reality which will allow it to be included among other realities in accordance with a scale of reality already set up apart from Christianity itself. Christianity is real in the sense that its reality modifies the scale of reality itself. Whether we say that Christianity is a new reality in a world considered as being without it (say, as being prior to it, or posterior to it, hostile or neutral to it), or whether we say that Christianity has always been and still is ‘anonymously’ present in the world (as, say, prefigured in a total history of humanity within the eternal design of God), we must, in terms of Christianity itself, claim that Christianity is at the very least a dimension of reality which needs explicitly to be taken into account if the ontological scale which we use to assess it and indeed anything else is to function as a true criterion of the real.

As a result of an educational system no longer the prerogative of the clergy, a multiplication of fields of study, a great diffusion of culture, improved communications, and more rapid social transformations, we live in an age in which man is more ready to criticize and to challenge standards hitherto accepted. Individual persons, political institutions, schools of artistic style, humanist ethical movements, racial and national groups, women’s and youth organizations, economic blocs—all are more conscious of their differentiations within a highly complex society and demand that their freedom and autonomy be recognized, refusing to be dictated to by religious leaders or state authority. The accelerated pace of change in modern life, the movement of populations to the towns, their lack of social roots or stability, overt and subconscious advertising, heavy work, group pressure, mechanical and psychological noise, the shock to routine thinking consequent upon emigration deprive man of the solitude and peace needed for constructive thinking, while technological advance makes man seem less in need of God’s help for his daily bread, and so more ready to pick holes in traditional religion, amidst the heightened fascination and lure of the world.

The present religious choice is not simply between Catholicism and Protestantism, nor between Christianity and Natural Religion. It is a choice for or against God. Open, popular, organized and widespread, atheism is no longer hidden and exceptional, but, buttressed by polity and culture, constitutes the world’s most urgent problem.

As bishops of some of the peoples who are striving to develop, we endorse the anxious appeal of Pope Paul VI in his letter ‘Populorum progressio’, so as to define their duties for our priests and faithful, and to send words of encouragement to all our brothers in the Third World.

As they are in this Third World, our Churches are caught up in a confrontation no longer simply of East and West, but of three great groups: the western powers which grew rich in the last century, the two Communist countries that have also become great powers, and finally the Third World, still seeking an escape from the domination of the great powers, and the freedom to develop in their own way. Within even the developed countries there are still classes, races and peoples that have not yet received their rights to a full human life. An irresistible urge is working these poorer elements towards their betterment by liberating them from all oppressive forces. Although most countries may have gained their political freedom, economic freedom is still a rarity. Few also are countries where social equality prevails, an essential condition of true brotherhood, for peace cannot exist without justice. The peoples of the Third World are the proletariat of existing humanity, exploited by the great, their very survival threatened by ones who, because they are stronger, arrogate to themselves the sole right to judge and police peoples less rich in material terms. In fact our peoples are no less wise or just than the great powers.

It is no exaggeration to say that there is a revolution afoot in the field of social welfare. In recent decades there has been much radical re-thinking; principles which previously had been tacitly accepted, in some cases for a century or more, have become the subject of an increasingly severe and telling criticism. Experimental ventures are breaking new ground almost daily, and, though at present few have been running for a length of time or on a scale sufficient to yield more than marginal results, they are nonetheless proving that an urgent need exists for still further research and new endeavours.

Among the few which can claim a significant and definitive breakthrough, both in terms of success and in relation to other existing techniques and structures, is the Ladyeholme Association. This has been working in London for the past seventeen years and has achieved a 75 per cent success rate in re-integrating with society families and the remants of families which, for one reason or another, have dropped out of general society and into a twilight region of (semi-) destitution; for example, the unmarried mother and her children, the ex-prisoner and his family, the mentally ‘recovered’ in search of a home, the prostitute escaping the trade but needing shelter and moral support, the socially unstable of almost every sort. It is a mistake to believe, as so many of us do, that existing social services are doing enough in this deceptively simple field; for the most part, the problem has either been ignored or aggravated by inadequate ‘answers’.