This word is meant to imply that I cannot write here even a skeleton outline of the Saint’s life or of the history of the Society he founded; still, I must say something of the Saint if we are to judge whether his ‘Company’ has continued to live by his spirit.

The preface to the Saint’s life is medieval—a talented, versatile courtier-soldier, he fences, dances, writes and vividly illuminates love-lyrics but professes himself the devotee of some princesse lointaine . . . possibly as distant as an ideal in the skies? During the siege of Pamplona the garrison is for surrendering: Inigo remembers Aeneas—he was a dastard for abandoning Troy! They stay: but a cannon-ball dislodges a stone which injures Inigo’s left leg and, ricochetting, smashes the right. The courteous French send him home to Loyola: the bone is set, but badly. ‘Break it again!’ Inigo becomes delirious and is anointed, but a dream of St Peter cures him. Alas, a bit of bone still protrudes—how can he now wear silk stockings? ‘Saw it off!’ His brother, aghast, watches, and sees that Inigo must spend weeks racked on an iron frame. He asks for romances to distract him: but the grim castle has only some Lives of Saints. He thinks—‘What they could do, could not you?’ and forthwith dreams of what dress he shall wear when he meets his mistress; of the secret code in which they would correspond. But the Saints have won. Off he goes to Montserrat, makes a three days’ confession, and inspired (says he) by Amadis of Gaul, stands in night-long vigil before our Lady.

After four months’ tendance of the sick, the divine assault begins. He crawls into a cave four foot by nine at Manresa, and his soul is tom to shreds. ‘How shall I stand this life for forty years?... If I had to go to a dog’s whelp to cine me, I would do it.’ Violently tempted to suicide, he vows not to eat or drink till he has conquered: after a week his confessor refuses him absolution if he will not eat. He obeys; peace returns; then for another week he lies, to human eyes, unconscious.

There is a passage in Francis Thompson of which Chesterton remarked that it alone proved that Thompson was a great poet because, he said, it contained as many inner meanings as outer ones; that is to say, that not only did it contain meaning after meaning, as in a Chinese box one box opens into another inwards, but at the same time, as from a stone dropped into still water, it gave rise to ever-widening rings of thou ght spreading outwards to infinity. To read the life of St Joan is to be reminded very forcibly of Chesterton’s observation. For never was there life so fraught both with inner significance and with world-wide implications. For the wider sphere it is enough to say that she created a nation; or as Michelet puts it: ‘Elle aima tant la France! Et la France, touchée, se mit à s’aimer elle-même’ The outward-spreading consequences of that single decisive act are still perceptible today. The inner significance of her life is to be found in her unique relationship to God. Flere is a mystery indeed! Not as regards the facts. There is no mystery there. We know them all; from her earliest childhood until her death, no tiling is hidden. Moreover, what is even more remarkable, all this comes down to us in the form, not of hearsay and legend, but of attested statements, for, as one of her biographers has pointed out, hers is the only story of a human life which comes to us under oath. No, it is not the facts which are in question, but rather what lies behind the facts. We know that from the age of twelve she was accompanied by three Saints—St Michael, St Catherine of Alexandria and St Margaret of Antioch; but of the peculiar significance of those particular three we remain ignorant. She referred to them as her ‘Voices’, although in fact they were much more than mere voices. They were presences whom she had frequently seen and touched and to whom on at least one occasion she had made her confession.

At first sight it may seem strange to call some orders ‘active’ and others not. In one sense the contemplative orders are the most active of all: a Cistercian monk who rises at two in the morning, and spends many hours in prayer but as many in hard manual work, could scarcely be called idle. But in die technical sense those orders called ‘active’ are deliberately concerned with the works of active charity—whether spiritual (as in missionary work) or temporal (as in the care of the sick or in educating children). They, like all religious orders from the very beginning, are concerned with the following of the counsels of the Gospels in an organized life according to rule, but the monastic features of stability and a liturgical structure, as well as the characteristic organization of the frairs, are sacrificed in order that dieir particular active work can be more effectively pursued.

Strictly speaking these orders are not orders at all, since they do not take the solemn vows that are the mark of the monks and the friars. But this is a technicality of the canon law which scarcely concerns our present purpose in describing their work. For the active orders first came into being, as did the monks and the friars in their time, to meet a need of the Church and were constituted to meet that need. The Reformation was an immense challenge to the Church, and it was soon evident that new methods were needed to win back people lost to Catholic allegiance and to stimulate the spiritual life of the faithful. It was the Jesuits most of all who were to be the instrument of the reform within the Church that was to be the answer to the Reformation which had caused so great a breach in Christian unity.

Father Huddlestone has become a great centre of controversy, and it is most important to sort matters out carefully when considering his book. It describes his experiences, particularly in the ‘black spots’ of Johannesburg, and gives views in judgment on South Africa and race relations in South Africa.

Most of the book is in the form of incidents showing the effect of discriminating laws on the African. As regards narrative matter, it is factual; although selected, it is not exaggerated. What he says of the African’s hardships under the Pass Laws, the housing shortage and permit restrictions, the summary methods of the police and partial justice in magistrates’ courts, is all a matter of daily experience in South Africa. What he says of the tsotsis, gangsters who terrify the locations, is particularly good. In a system that stifles ambition, and provides no outlet for the animus of young men, they turn sour on society. Their crime list makes terrible reading, and seeing, if you are near it. But it is a social symptom rather than a moral matter. I have even known one who might be a sort of martyr for principle. He made one promise to his mother, never to use a knife. An argument at cards —and he was stabbed and killed outright, and curiously enough on the feast of his patron saint. Had he had a knife and practised with it he might be alive today. The descriptions of the broken careers and mental struggles of the more educated, their despair and frustration, are true. Father Huddlestone has put his finger on the chief problem for a priest: ‘God forgive me. I find myself giving advice that in those circumstances I could not follow ... it needs heroic virtue.’

The climax of the affair of the worker-priests in France came on January 19, 1954, when the Bishops sent to each of their worker-priests a circular letter communicating to them the decisions of the Hierarchy. The crucial sentences were the following: ‘You must, on receipt of this letter, and at the latest before March 1, withdraw from your present firm. . . . We ask you ... to resign from all temporal responsibilities to which the trust of your comrades may have called you. By the same token, you will be good enough, as from now, not to renew your membership of the trade union you belong to. . . . The sacrifice we ask of you will, in all truth, prove to be a spiritual liberation. It will at the same time be a source of graces for the labouring masses on whose behalf you offer it. We dare not even consider what would happen if you were to refuse to submit.’ In the event slightly less than half of the ninety priests so addressed did refuse to submit. At the end of February a meeting was held between the ‘submitted’ and the ‘unsubmitted’ and it was agreed to continue with these gatherings for purposes of information. At the first meeting after March 1 it was agreed to publish a book on the work that had been done and a commission was appointed to draw up a plan. When the plan was presented at the following meeting the forty-seven priests who had accepted the Bishops’ decision withdrew their support from the project. Nevertheless the others continued and the book was published in November of the same year. A translation of this has now been published in English.

It is not presented as ‘a book of history, of doctrine, of polemics, of propaganda or of edification’, but as ‘a collection of documents which furnish reliable information and checked material’.