THE
P RTAL
September 2011
Page 15
Review
Faith Matters: Fundamentals of Faith
by Richard Finn, John Edwards, John Fr Hemer and Dominic Fr Robinson
St Pauls Publications £6. 95
Reviewed by Fr Aidan Nichols OP
This
collection of essays – a series of talks given at Westminster Cathedral – is heavily weighted towards
moral doctrine. Three out of five essays are about ethics. Since Catholic doctrine consists of faith and morals,
it is fortunate that a good deal of the doctrine of faith enters in, as of course it also does in the remaining
chapters which are devoted to the Bible, and to prayer. Otherwise we might feel tempted, given the title of
this modest (76 page) book, to ask for our money back (£6. 95).
The essay which opens the
collection makes the moral life
sound delicious. The author is
constantly ‘relishing’ and ‘delighting
in’ what is good in human living
while at the same time being
thoroughly theocentric and full-
bloodedly supernatural. This is
the best contribution, and worth
by itself the price of the book as a
whole.
The talk on prayer must
have been more loosely
structured than the rest. But
its backbone consists of an
excellent idea. And this is
prayer as response to divine
presence, which itself takes
a number of different albeit
related forms. God’s presence
in nature is not the same sort
of thing as his presence in the
message of the biblical word,
The second morals essay has a
and that again differs from his
distinct focus all its own: ‘levels’
presence to the baptized in the
of happiness, with ‘all-round
inner fountain of sanctifying
fulfillment’ as a sort of layer-
grace, or the Eucharistic
cake. The deeper, supernatural
presence, or a presence via
strata of the happy life, so we
icons and sacramentals. Yet
hear, correspond in some way to
all these rightly call forth
ordinary human ‘intuitions’ at the
prayer – and when such
natural level. This is encouraging
prayer is stuttering, rather
– and orthodox so long as one doesn’t go so far as to than moved along smoothly by divine grace, that is
say that elevating grace – deification, as the Christian an opportunity for human freedom to do its part in
East calls it – is simply the final perfecting of our own ‘holding on’.
human powers.
The last essay I must comment on concerns
What the essay on social teaching has to say about ‘Catholics and the Bible’. The writer makes two chief
the deterioration/fragmentation of communal points. Firstly, the New Testament needs the Old. No
cohesion in Western society has become spectacularly one should talk about our Lord without mentioning
relevant thanks to the recent riots and looting-sprees. the Bible of the Jews. It is like discussing Shakespeare
In a liberal society, can there be real ‘community’ as or Churchill without mentioning England? Secondly,
distinct from simple civility? Yet even civility would Bible and Church belong together in a ‘dance’ where
be something.
the partners are inseparable.
This essay on Catholic social teaching ends with
somewhat bloodless abstractions about the common
good. Here such Anglican social commentators as T.
S. Eliot and William Temple score, and I wish Catholic
social theorists knew them better.
All in all this is a useful collection, but I have one
grumble. I am sorry that St Paul’s Publications gave us
only the authors’ names. A little information about
what they do with the rest of their time would have
helped.