Every genetic moment is a mystery. It is dawn, discovery, spring, new birth, coming to the light, awakening, transcendence, liberation, ecstasy, bridal consent, gift, forgiveness, reconciliation, revolution, faith, hope, love. It could be said that Christianity is the consecration of the genetic moment, the living centre from which it reviews and renews the indefinitely various and shifting perspectives of human experience in history. That, at least, is or ought to be its claim: that it is the power to transform and renew all things: ‘Behold, I make all things new’ (Rev. 21,5).

But, it will be said, even supposing your interpretation of Christianity is just, that at its centre is the genetic moment, the holiness of the new, could not the same claim be made for other traditions, for which, say, the experience of enlightenment is the heart? Either Christianity is merely an instance of a universal type of the humane, whether communicated by religious tradition or not, or your version of Christianity is merely parasitic on some generally available truth about human experience, which historical Christianity as a matter of fact has successfully smothered for centuries of institutionalized timidity, boredom and repression.

I want of course to argue that the Christian experience of the genetic moment is the critical instance, the touchstone of the new. But this is not to say that Christian self-understanding in theology does not allow of exploration of its crucial sense of the genetic moment in terms of other insights into genesis, birth from above and anew.

When a Benedictine monastery reaches a point in its course where ‘renewal’ or re-orientating becomes important, what way will it take? There are two courses. Both ways have been tried in the last seventy years in this country, and comparison between them shows up some interesting features in more or less modern Christian life. I would like to discuss these two courses with a view to introducing the Worth Abbey Peru Foundation. To do so, however, I must summarize the features of Benedictine Christianity which are reckoned essential to it, and therefore at once beyond ‘renewal’, and also the guiding principles of any particular renewal.

A monastery is not Benedictine unless it is a charitable spiritual ‘family’ living more or less permanently together in one place under an Abbot, having common work and prayer as its main activities. The vows: obedience to the local abbot, stability in one Abbey and ‘conversio morum’ (monastic behaviour) underlie this arrangement. It is obvious that such principles lead to team work as against personal ventures or successes. The most obvious evidence of this is that you seldom hear of particular monks becoming great scientists or writers, but you often hear of particular monasteries, like Montserrat or Ampleforth. The democratic election of the Abbot (in this country for only the statutory period of eight years) and his physical proximity to the other monks also encourage corporate activity and unity. Although monasteries often have many different activities, it is of the essence that the effect is unitive, not diversifying.

When Ortega y Gasset was writing his Notes on the Novel in the nineteen-twenties he could still take it for granted that the fundamental purpose of the novel was the presentation of character:

Indeed, Ortega assumed that this interest was being intensified in the work of Proust, which offered opportunities for the ever greater and more leisurely contemplation of character, even if at the expense of dramatically interesting action. And in so far as Proust— like Joyce—represented the culmination of the realistic novel as well as its destruction, Ortega was not wholly wrong. Nevertheless, I presume that no intelligent modern reader could read his remarks without some slight incredulity. The notion that character can be considered as an absolute, without necessary reference to a given literary context, is a quintessential nineteenth-century concept; it underlies, for instance, Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy, a celebrated work in which the influence of the nineteenth-century novel is everywhere apparent; it has been pilloried in such a statement of twentieth-century critical orthodoxy as L. C. Knights’ How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?

In a previous article in this Journal (December, 1968) I presented a description of some elements in the contemporary revival of the Penance Service. This description made it plain that there is not one novel element in such services and that their procedures derive from the traditional practice of the Church. I based this description on my experience of the contemporary celebration of the sacrament in a variety of community contexts, and certainly these services are going on all over the place. This is evidenced in several recent books. Penance: Virtue and Sacrament, edited by John Fitzsimons (Bums and Oates, Compass Books, 90 pp., 18s., 1969), gives the papers and some idea of the excitements of the 1968 Spode Conference of Practical Liturgy. These papers and the essays collected in Making Sense of Confession edited by Otto Betz (Chapman, 25s., 1968), show us what is entailed in the appreciation of penance as a sign of the renewing love of Christ in the eucharistic congregation. These two books are decisively adult in tone, expressive of an awareness that, as Cardinal Rampolla once remarked, ‘of necessity the Church should be democratic, not demagogic, but simply the plebs sancta', and alive to the urgent demands of penance if we are to come into that holiness. Fr F. J. Heggen’s Children and Confession (Sheed and Ward, Stag Books, 118 pp., 9s., 1969) is a more particularized effort which is concerned with one area in which most successful celebrations have been developing in many parts of the world.

Since the advent of Vatican Council II initiated by the late Pope John XXIII, indeed of blessed memory, there has been a great transformation within the Roman Catholic Church in its attempt to renew itself. Traditional Catholic patterns of thought and attitudes of mind have been under severe criticism, challenge and analysis. Indeed, a reformation from within has taken place. As a consequence there has been theological development, a revaluation in biblical exegesis and an attempt to show how the Church in its mission is relevant to the problems and the needs of contemporary society.

It was during this process of self-examination and aggorniamento that the Encyclical Humanae Vitae, ‘On Human Life’, appeared, in July 1968. The impact of the encyclical was enormous upon the Catholic world and the world at large and so began the debate, discussion and division of opinion within the Church.

Countless numbers of Catholics who were looking forward to a modification in the traditional teaching on birth control were deeply disappointed. The Holy Father had spoken and it was forbidden.

As a Jew with a profound regard for the Kerygma of Christ, I attended many lectures and ‘Teach Ins’ within the Catholic community on Humanae Vitae and it was strange to observe that not on any single occasion did I hear a Catholic speaker or member of an audience ask the basic question; what does Jewish religion that is Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism teach on birth control? In view of the fact that the Church claims to be the new Israel, the completion of the old Israel, I was puzzled as to why this vital question was never asked.