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,

The opening address at the 18th World Conference of the Society for International Development (S.I.D.), Rome, 1 July 1985

Together with the Catholic Bishops of the United States (in their first draft of the pastoral letter on the economy) I would like to affirm:

This World Conference is at the same time an opportunity and a responsibility. It is an opportunity to take up again one of the most difficult of world debates: the relation between the North and the South. And it is a responsibility because even though this Conference is one of analysis and dialogue we must take steps so that its influence goes beyond this level. We have reached a point in history where debate and dialogue without international action have become an offence and an insult to those who are suffering in North and South because of international economic policies. This morning I would like to speak of the meaning and the validity of the topic that was given to me. We all, rich nations and poor, want poverty to be the centre of world concern. But, in my view, the reasons for our concern are fundamentally different. And it is this that I would like to develop in the first part of my presentation.

It is now nearly a decade since Edward Norman’s controversial Reith lectures, subsequently published as Christianity and World Order, helped to generate a great deal of debate about the appropriate sphere of Christian moral concern.

...the teachings of the Saviour clearly describe a personal rather than a social morality.

Any attempt to outline a Christian social morality—to ‘involve the Church in politics’—means compromising the proper concern of Christians with what is transcendent. It entails sanctifying whatever prevailing political world-view is current at the time. Among Western nations, Norman argues, this means supporting what he calls a ‘Human Rights Ideology’. The Human Rights movement ‘has elevated Western liberalism to the apparent authority of eternal truth’. As a consequence, ‘... the Churches now see Human Rights as the essence of the Christian message’. Christians in politics are engaged, then, in a process of absolutising a relative (Human Rights), identifying the essence of Christianity, which must be changeless, with a prevailing political ideology which represents only the view of a liberal twentieth century establishment in the West. In doing so, they obscure the truly changeless essence of Christianity, which lies in eternal values, values which by definition cannot be political.

Criticisms of Norman’s thesis have been numerous, and the arguments on both sides are now well-rehearsed. Any attempt to outline a Christian personal morality, no less than a Christian social morality, involves the apparent compromise of associating with current secular ideologies, it has been pointed out.

Reading Simon Tugwell’s book The Way of the Preacher led me to consider what St Francis of Assisi had to say about preaching and what is the place of preaching in the life of the Franciscan.

Given that both the Dominicans and the Franciscans are essentially mendicant, it is not surprising that over the centuries they have been heavily involved in both preaching and teaching. As Fr. Tugwell ably demonstrates, the Order of Preachers came into being as the practical response of St Dominic to the most urgent need of the Church in southern France, namely, the need for competent and devout preachers. St Dominic realized that to reverse the serious decline of the Church in southern France (and elsewhere too) there was a need for preachers who could be relied upon to expound and if necessary defend the authentic catholic tradition. Such preachers were not easily to be found and when they were to be found they were not easily retained. St Dominic did the obvious and eminently practical thing, he began what was soon to become the Order of Preachers. Preaching, for Dominicans, is very much a matter of self-definition. For Franciscans it is not quite so straightforward.

Many studies have sought to isolate the distinctive characteristics of the Franciscan charism but few, if any, would list preaching as being among its most noteworthy. Having said this, it would be hard to trace the growth of the Franciscan movement without encountering such notable preachers as would compare with the great preachers of old.