THE 21 February 1976 The international Catholic weekly 25p
TABLET Communism changes course: Douglas Hyde Profile of a prelate: Douglas Woodruff Reviews: The story-shaped world: J. M. Cameron The immigrant Church in America: J. Moore The challenge o f Liverpool: a special correspondent
The new archbishops The appointment of Dorn Basil Hume, Abbot of Ampleforth, as Archbishop of Westminster should put heart and hope into the Catholic community of this country and to all who are well disposed towards that community. This is a sagacious and imaginative decision on the part of the Holy See and we welcome it unreservedly. When we wrote on the Westminster succession shortly after the death of Cardinal Heenan (The Tablet 21 November 1975), of set purpose we avoided all personalities and guess work. We listed qualities which we considered relevant to the job in hand. It was not an exhaustive list but it covered the essentials: "We are entitled to expect spirituality, leadership, pastoral experience, administrative ability, integrity and charisma, the whole informed by an ecumenical spirit.” It was a large order, we said, for any individual even though some qualities grew naturally together.
They seem to have come together in the person of Dom Basil Hume. He represents the Benedictine tradition of spirituality which goes back to the 5th century and has suffered and survived all the vicissitudes of Christian history. In this country it has played a vital role for the past fifteen hundred years since St Augustine, himself a Benedictine monk, landed here in 597 with 40 companions. The great abbeys like Canterbury, Winchester and York have passed to other hands, others lie in ruins. But eight modem foundations have sprung up each with well-known schools. The Benedictine spirit is perennial and its effects profound.
As Professor Knowles wrote in his magisterial work The Monastic Order in England: “The student of monasticism in this country, when he comes to pass his subject in a final review, has to beware of an attitude of mind to which the course taken by English history renders him peculiarly prone. The monastic life disappeared entirely from the purview of the English nation at the dissolution of the religious houses under Henry vm; it is therefore natural for an Englishman to regard it, in its religious as well as its social aspect, as something purely medieval, outliving by a century or more its due time, and passing with the changing world for ever.
“Such an attitude fails to separate the temporary, external, accidental shape taken by monasticism from the essential qualities which distinguish a life apart from the world based on the counsels o f the Gospel. As a great and formative influence on the civilisation of the west the monasteries of Europe are perhaps the most important factor in the spiritual and cultural life of the Church and society from the days of Gregory the Great to those of Bernard; though they had fallen from their paramount position before 1216 they continued as an important element in the social and economic life of nations until the Reformation in northern lands and until the Revolution in the countries which had remained Catholic. In the modern world they have become once more what they were in the beginning, a factor in the spiritual life of the Church working upon individuals and not upon society. But underneath the changes of the outward garment the monastic life, its aim and its ideal, have continued without change: ‘The Form remains, the Function never dies.’ That life is in its essence neither ancient, nor medieval, nor modern, but of every Christian age, and though the institutions in which it is embodied change and decay, one and the same spirit and power has manifested itself in an ever-recurring rhythm by which new life ap-
