A sermon given by a London senior social worker on All Saints’ Day 1986, during the Spode House conference ‘The Catholic Church and Aids’.

It is a happy chance for me to preach the sermon at Mass on All Saints’ Day, because twenty years ago today I became a Catholic. It is a doubly happy chance that I should do this at a conference on the Catholic Church and Aids, for when we think about the saints and sanctity we will arrive at a clearer idea of what, Aids being in our midst, we can do about it.

For twenty years, each All Saints’ Day, I have heard homilies which have all had one theme in common—that today is the feast primarily of the unsung heroes of the Church—those countless men and women not singled out for special mention, through canonisation and special feast days, who are in heaven. As an antidote to the plaster statue school of piety which manages for me to make the whole idea of sanctity at once impossibly remote and unattractive, I can only applaud the general trend of All Saints’ homilies. (Who is really inspired by knowing that St. Aloysius, as a baby, refused his mother’s milk on Fridays?) Also it does us no harm to be reminded that we are all called to be saints, that our hallowing—so far from being some horrid obstacle course comprised solely of self-denial and martyrdom—is the great gift of life that God has in mind for all of us.

Membership of the mainstream denominations in the UK has gone down since 1980 by half-a-million to seven million, and is likely to drop by another half-a-million before 1990. And membership of sects and non- Christian religions in the UK is going up and up.

We would be fools if we ignored the message being given to us by those now well-publicised figures from the latest edition of MARC Europe's UK Christian Handbook. On 20 September Cardinal Hume, lecturing in Dublin, spoke of the Pope's call to the European Bishops’ Conferences to re-evangelise Europe. The Cardinal thinks that times are more auspicious for evangelising the old continent, for now in Europe there is a ‘dawning of a realisation that we are entering a new phase of history’. Europeans are discovering the limits of human reason: ‘the age of Enlightenment has evidently run its course’.

‘...It is absolutely right and just to state that the revolutionary movement must have a correct attitude towards the (religious) question, and avoid, at all costs, a doctrinal rhetoric which offends the religious sentiments of the people, including that of workers, peasants and the middle layers, and which would only serve to help the system of exploitation.’ Thus Fidel Castro, having offered an explanation as to why religion had been seen as the simple ideological ally of the forces of exploitation, answers Frei Betto’s suggestion that ‘one of the gravest errors of the Left in Latin America was to preach atheism in their work with the masses’.

This is just one of many points covered in a book which is the result of twenty-three hours of interview between the Commander-in-Chief of the Cuban Revolution and a Brazilian Dominican friar known already to readers of New Blackfriars .

Even had the contents been much less interesting than they are, their publication would already have been an historical occasion. Published in Havana in December 1985, the book sold 1,000,000 copies within four months (in an island of ten million people); it has been on the bestseller list in Brazil for a similar length of time, has gone through several editions in Mexico and other Latin American countries. It has been published in Spain, Italy and Poland. But for a few headlines such as ‘Convert Castro woos Church’ earlier this year, it has received scant attention in the British media. At the time of writing this—July—the only English-language edition is available in Australia and Oceania, but not in the U.S. or Great Britain.

I am here concerned with the paschal mystery; so, first of all, a few words about mystery.

Mystery is a depth of meaning. There are two things to notice here. Firstly, mystery belongs to what has meaning, to the signs and symbols and gestures through which we understand. (If we see event as mystery it is because we see it as word.) Secondly, mystery always refers to the not-so-obvious, deeper meaning that is perhaps hidden at first. So mystery concerns what shows itself but does not show itself easily. Mysteries are not for concealment but for revelation; it is because the revelation is so important and so profound that we have to work to understand it.

This is not meant to be a very difficult idea. Take, for example, a play like Macbeth. It is quite clear that you can appreciate the meaning of this play at many levels. In the first place it is a good thriller about murder and intrigue at court. At another, slightly deeper, level it is a piece of English political propaganda slandering the memory of a perfectly decent king who was, however, Scottish. At a deeper level still it is a tragedy about a man over-reaching himself; about the relationship of human life with nature and especially with time. It is about how we belong to the cosmos and to the time that is given to us and yet seek to transcend this and to belong to ourselves, and it is about the revenge that time and nature take upon us.

Early last summer, when he was in Peru, Cardinal Ratzinger disclosed that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was preparing a document on the ‘central issues of the Modernist crisis’. He enumerated these as the nature of doctrine, principles in the interpreting of the Bible, and the role of philosophy in theology.

If we want to get those thorny ‘central issues’ into historical perspective, how should we go about it? If one belongs to the Englishspeaking world, there is, arguably, no better way than to explore the thought of the Modernist George Tyrrell, who was born 125 years ago this year. However severe may be our final assessment of him, it is a fact that the questions Tyrrell raised were those of a theological genius, and we cannot ignore them or brush them away. To understand his thought we must trace its history—his ideas of what theology should be developed dramatically in the course of his life. And if we want to get to grips with what was really distinctive about his thought—where he was addressing himself to the ‘central issues’ which Cardinal Ratzinger has recently listed—then we must consider especially what he had to say about the notion of doctrinal development. His ideas of what theology should be formed, so to speak, a series of photographic lenses through which he peered at his favourite subject: the continuity and discontinuity of Christian tradition.

I think the best way to begin is to ask why Christ died on the cross. That we can give some kind of answer to this question in terms of the meaning and purpose of the life of Jesus is presupposed by the Christian activity of ‘preaching Christ crucified’ two thousand years after the event. For our purposes, then, we can rule out the idea that it was all a tragic misunderstanding which need never have happened ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’, said Jesus of his executioners; but even if this means that they misunderstood him, the misunderstanding was not fortuitous. It was a misunderstanding that was in some way to be expected. In the gospels Jesus is presented not, indeed, as seeking his death or courting it but as realising that it was unavoidable. It is this unavoidability that we shall be looking at here, in Part Two of this ‘long sermon’.

Scholars dispute about the circumstances of the death of Jesus but two facts seem fairly well established: Jesus was executed by the Romans because they found him a threat to the precarious stability of their colony; and they were encouraged to do this because Jesus was rejected by the leaders of his own people. I think that, in the end, the reason why he was thus rejected was that he claimed to ‘speak with authority’; that is, he regarded attachment to his own person as more significant even than belonging in the ordinary way to the People of God in accordance with the Law.

Based on a paper presented at the International Symposium on Sociology and Theology, Oxford, January 1986.

What relationship, if any, is there between contemporary apocalyptic and the contemporary Peace Movement?

Whatever it was in its original form, in its current form apocalyptic is the belief that God is moving in history to a violent climax in which he will defeat his enemies, both human and supernatural. The appearance of Christ will mark the end of this age and the beginning of a thousand- year reign of peace for the elect. We are now living in the End Times and it is possible to detect the signs of the End in natural disasters and political/military events. These signs are a warning to human beings. For those who have eyes to see, they have been clearly prophesied in the Scriptures. Repentence and belief in Christ is required for a person to be saved from the great tribulation which is about to come.

Such beliefs are shared by a range of contemporary Christian groups, though these differ in important ways amongst themselves, especially over the interpretation of historical events and the nature of the final war: for instance, whether or not it will be a nuclear war. Such beliefs appear to be on the increase in the United States and perhaps also in Britain, even among members of the main-stream churches. It is not difficult to see the increased fear of nuclear holocaust as a major factor in the new popularity of apocalyptic beliefs.

Based on a talk given during a Catholic People’s Week

“‘All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful’ (v. 12). The Corinthians have a sexual ethic which starts from the question, ‘What is allowed? What may I do?’. And doubtless they could quote Paul back to himself to show that since they were free from the law, they could do anything; ‘For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5:1). It follows, then, that there can be no restrictions upon what is permitted to the Christian. We are allowed to perform any sexual acts that we wish.

Paul’s reaction is not to revise his view that we are not under the Law but to suggest that asking what is permissible is not the right starting point. A proper sexual ethics is not, in the first place, about what is lawful, but about what is ‘helpful’. In this passage Paul subverts the Corinthians’ basic presuppositions in thinking about sexual ethics. Two thousand years later most Catholics need to submit to the same gentle subversion. The Church’s teaching on sexuality is normally seen in terms of what is allowed or forbidden; sexual ethics are classified as ‘permissive’ or ‘restrictive’, and the Church authorities are usually happy to oblige by stating the limits of acceptable behaviour. We all need to submit to the Pauline therapy, and this works, like any decent therapy, by means of a dialogue between the patient and the therapist.

The investigation that culminated last July in a letter from the Vatican to Professor Curran, criticising the distinction made by him and many others between ‘infallible’ and ‘non-infallible’ Church teaching and initiating his removal from his post at the Catholic University of America, has been one of the most hotly discussed events to have happened in the modern American Catholic Church, has been written about throughout the Catholic world, and has troubled many theologians. We are publishing this translation of an article by Bernhard Haring, ‘Moral zwischen gesetz und Lebensnot’ (which appeared in the German Church magazine Christ in der Gegenwart in August), because its author, who taught Curran in Rome and in March accompanied him to the Vatican for ‘informal dialogue’, has such a close knowledge of this theologian’s thinking, which in some places has been misrepresented. The text has been updated where essential.

Who is Charles Curran? And what was the ‘Curran affair’ about? Curran is a diocesan priest from the diocese of Rochester in the State of New York. He gained his Licentiate in Theology in Rome, at the Gregorian University, and took his Doctorate in Moral Theology in Rome, at the Academia Alfonsiana, where I taught for many years. I was one of his teachers but not his moderator. He wrote his doctoral thesis about Conscience and Intelligence according to Saint Alphonsus of Liguori (1696—1787). Like Alphonsus, but paying special attention to the human sciences, Curran set out to study conscience as challenged by the call to discipleship but as also influenced by clearly perceived values.

At the time of the full moon at the Spring Equinox the people of the Messiani extinguish all their hearth-fires and every lamp and lantern and source of light from amongst them. They gather then on the hillside at midnight and in the darkness a Holy Man strikes the new fire from the rock of flint and with this a great sacred fire is made to blaze. This new fire from darkness represents, for the Messiani, the rebirth of Messia, their dying god, and also the rebirth of the year and the coming of new life out of darkness and winter.

An image of the risen god in the form of a tall candle is then lighted from the fire to symbolise his return to life from the dead, and adorned with certain sacred signs by which past and future and all time is made to centre on this time and this place. Led by the flame of the image the whole throng then moves in procession from the fire to the place of assembly. As they go they take new flame from the image for their own torches and lanterns and they dance and shout the praises of Messia ‘the new light of the world’.

When the crowd is once more assembled Messia is erected amongst green boughs and flowers and other signs of fertility and a Holy Man addresses it in song, bringing this Holy Night to coincide with the mythic nights of creation and of the birth of the Messiani people,

‘This phrase (the option for the poor) burst upon the ecclesiastical scene only a few years ago. Since then it has become the most controversial religious term since the Reformers’ cry, “salvation by faith alone’’.’

These are the opening words of Donal Dorr’s recent book on the option for the poor and Vatican social teaching. He is not exaggerating. I should say that the challenge to the church, to almost all our churches, represented by this term ‘option for the poor’ goes far beyond anything envisaged by the Reformers. It challenges both Catholic and Protestant, and it challenges us in a very fundamental way.

Here, I should like to do little more than open up the debate about the option for the poor in South Africa. The question has been raised here and there in a variety of forms, mostly without the term ‘option for the poor’; but in South Africa there has been no systematic Christian practice based upon it and not much research and reflection around this controversial phrase. My intention, then, is to open up the specific approach implied in this new theological term for further research, reflection, debate and practice.

There is a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding about the meaning of the phrase itself, and even a measure of deliberate distortion of its meaning. Hence, in the first place, it will be necessary to state quite clearly what we are talking about and even more importantly what we are not talking about.