It cannot be said that English Catholicism has entered with mind and heart into the stream of doctrinal development which is so noticeable a feature of the Marian movement in the Church today. Any attempt to dismiss this movement and the doctrinal development within it as a Continental exaggeration runs the risk of so emphasizing the Englishness of our Catholicism as to compromise its Catholicism. The needs of apologetics in England are sometimes urged in favour of a minimalistic approach to Marian doctrine. There is one decisive answer to this suggestion : the only truth which we as Catholics must proclaim is the whole truth. Our duty as Catholics is not to minimize Marian doctrine but to present it as an integral part of the totality of saving truth which it is the Church’s office to preach to the world.

It is in view of this unsatisfactory situation in England that, so it seems clear to me, the central problem to be examined is the point of departure of the development of Marian doctrine. What I feel is most needed is not a more or less academic study of explicit Mariological structures, the technical elaborations of doctrine, but a disclosure of the motive force and impetus of the development, so that by renewing our living contact in faith and love with our Lady we may be able actively to contribute to the development, this active engagement being the essential precondition of any more objective theological assessment of the sense of that development.

At a superficial glance there seems to be little in common either between Rilke and the Christian mystics or between Rilke and so-called ‘religious’ poets. The majority of the latter, if they have not been orthodox Christians, have usually employed many of the Christian symbols even though they have sometimes wrenched them into odd and surprising shapes. Such writers have often expressed their personal visions in terms of Christian symbolism and at the same time have formulated or re-interpreted those symbols for their own ends.

Rilke, however, does not fit into this category; indeed, he does not fit into any category at all. He stands quite alone. There are many reasons for this isolation but one overriding one. It is this: Rilke’s poetry was for him a way of life. It was visionary, philosophical, emotional, sensuous and abstract, all at the same time. His poetry was his life, not simply in the sense that he was a supremely dedicated artist, but also because it was the only medium in which reality, for him, existed. Words did not formulate a previously articulated philosophy or vision of life; on the contrary, the vision, the ideas, only had existence in the medium of words. Desperate and painful as Rilke’s poetic struggles often were, he never for a moment doubted the power of poetry. In his view, nothing was inexpressible. If reality was not to be found in words and images, then reality was at fault, not language.

The gables of Saint-Séverin stand sentinel beside the Rue St Jacques as that historic artery of ancient France gains the Seine and the Ile de la Cité. Pilgrims passed by as they left for Campostella; the broad boulevard and the twisting streets of the old quartier are still the home of cosmopolitan youth flocking to the schools of Paris. Here in fact is a special welcome for them, for besides its native parish Saint-Séverin is charged especially with a mission to the university world of displaced youth struggling to keep body and soul together in a world of perpetual motion. A church with a history adapts itself more easily to broad and generous demands. And from the days of Séverin, a sixth-century south bank solitary, this church has a long history. Fulk preached the Fourth Crusade there; Dante prayed there in the thirteen hundreds; and if subsequently its fame declined somewhat, at least Huysmans at the end of the nineteenth century found the church ravishing and its Masses exquisite.

In 1947 something of a renaissance befell when Cardinal Suhard appointed the Abbé Connan to the parish of Saint-Séverin with a special mandate to revive and transform it into a church and community capable of ‘welcoming’ the students of the Latin Quarter. About the same time the Cardinal entrusted L’Hay-les-Roses to a Benedictine to establish a community capable of welcoming converts from the Mission de Paris. In each case the parish was to be given a chance to prove itself as a competent missionary instrument in the modern world.