In 1938, the Catholic Herald invited young Catholics to give an account of their faith. This is an abridged version of what the young philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe wrote in response.
8 July, 1938
OXFORD is so full of people who know what is going to happen to population and trade, and whether war will break out, and whose fault it will be, and what will happen after that, that I feel it necessary to apologise for not issuing judgments on such things, when I set out to write in this series. I know nothing about them, and in my ignorance I must suppose that the gloomiest forecasts of the experts who surround me may be true – in which case it will not be very necessary to plan one’s future in detail – but here I can only make a guess at life supposing that things will go on much as they are. I am to consider how far it is possible for me to express my Catholic views, in religion, philosophy, sociology, and the like, in the kind of life I am likely to lead.
In looking at this question it is plain that one’s secular life might be quite untouched by Catholic activities. I suppose that my prospects are much the same as those of anyone up at Oxford or at any university… But it is obvious that one could work out one’s career without being at all affected by Catholic activity. It is much the same whether one is a Catholic or not, except that in a few spheres – teaching, for example – it slightly prejudices one’s chances to be one.
Nevertheless, being a Catholic is in a sense as much a worldly, social, political affair as it is a supernatural one. If one were living a full Catholic life in the world, one’s job, though purely secular, would fit into a Catholic social scheme. Society consists of a hierarchy of groups and smaller societies – each of these ought corporately to confess the Christian faith, so that religion is not merely one item of social life but the very framework of society. To use the words of a young Catholic in Oxford, one should not speak like a university preacher of “Religion in Life” but of “Life in Religion”.
But this is a prospect fairly remote from the position of most Catholics living in the world. Yet there is nothing much else worth ambition: to sum it up in the tritest and most obvious way, one chiefly wants all who are outside the Church to become Catholics, and all Catholics, saints…It is at the same time a secular ambition: for secular affairs can only find their fulfilment in this. And lay-people can work to effect these objects in two ways… first, we ought ourselves to realise the implications in corporate life of Christian faith and morals, and second, we ought to be taking part in a new attack on non-Catholics: for the time has surely come for a turning outwards, an aggression, a separation, a proclamation of the Church not as one of a row of candidates for the chooser’s approval, but as utterly distinct from all else: so that every man and woman in England should be conscious of the one significant choice: to be, or not to be, Catholic.
These two activities are connected because we can do less to convert people now than at any time by merely talking and writing. The great mass of the people have not heard of our religion…It is by seeing the Church in action and her social doctrine and its effects that the people will be converted. Both in order to be more fully Catholic and in order to convert the world we must set our secular house in order.
We must be the first to accept the natural moral law, to deal justly, suppress usury, underselling, unjust prices and wages, to respect and increase the human dignity of the poor by restoring to them greater control over their own lives. All this is taught, but is it enforced and practised? To quote Fr O’Hea SJ: “It wouldn’t occur to an employer to mention wages in the confessional – he’d talk of distraction in his prayers rather, for wages go by the market price of labour.”
A man who kept a harem would be excommunicated: what about a man who practises usury or sweating?… It is not enough to be told that it is a good idea to be just, we need particular pronouncements… what is justice in this thing or that? We are not merely told to be chaste, we are told that contraception is unchaste, and left in little doubt of what may and may not be done. And the world knows it, too. “He,” they say, “is a Roman Catholic, you know he wouldn’t approve.”
There is no such recognition of Catholic social doctrine, though there is just as much need of it. These articles are meant to be practical; what have we done and what are we to do? We have the Catholic Social Guild – it is our duty to use it…In this we must avoid two things: mere vaguely theorising benevolence, and the claim that some private theory is papal doctrine, and that the Church is committed to some particular political system. But once the truth is discovered it must be so loudly proclaimed and practised that the outside world is left in no doubt that there is a concrete Christian claim and practise of social justice.
That is the conclusion: that an ordinary secular life will not of itself involve Catholic activities but that ideally it ought itself to be inextricably one of a whole system of Catholic activities, and that to make it so, and to convert the English, we must first train ourselves, and then go out and seek battle, and in the course of life always be turning outwards so that no one is left in England who does not have to reckon with the Faith, for acceptance or rejection.
I have spoken of lay activities and the lives of lay-people, but must end by saying that in this we need the lead of the clergy and the hierarchy. If the people are not to think that general exhortations to justice are a mere sop to would-be Communists, we need as plain a voice in these matters as we have heard on euthanasia, state education, or contraception, and the findings of those who are trying to work out the implications of the encyclicals will be useless if they are not authoritatively sanctioned and enforced, or denied and corrected.
I have been sadly theoretical: it is the effect of being up at Oxford which is a mere talking-shop. Our experience here is only of trying to work things out among ourselves, and of arguing with our non-Catholic acquaintances, and of frequenting non-Catholic meetings and trying – not always cautiously – to maintain the Catholic view…I have little experience except of argument to report, and now long for something more decisive. I do not know how much scope there is, but at least there is enormous scope for activity in the future, and my chief ambition is to be doing something, or to be seeing something done, about it.
G. E. M. Anscombe went on to become one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. A student and friend of Ludwig Wittgenstein, she was present at his death when he asked for “a priest who was not a philosopher” before being given a Catholic burial. Her works are responsible for the revival of virtue ethics and Thomism in mainstream philosophical academia – a legacy which was continued and furthered by her devotee Alasdair MacIntyre.
This article was republished from our archives in the April 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our award-winning, thought-provoking magazine and have independent and high-calibre counter-cultural Catholic journalism delivered to your door anywhere in the world clickhere.
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