I have a very simple point to make in what follows. For all I want to say is that God does nothing. I do not wish to deny that God brings or brought things about (e.g. that the universe continues to exist or that St Paul was converted). So my “God does nothing” has a special sense (it does not deny that action can be ascribed to God). But what I intend in saying it is, I think, something of great importance when it comes to thinking about God in a sensible way. To grasp the point I want to make will save one from following all sorts of false trails when it comes to reflection on divinity.

Let’s start with what is going on when you or I act. Examples of human actions could include opening a door, wiping one’s nose, making a telephone call, baking a cake, and waving goodbye to a friend. But what is common to these examples, and to others which might be mentioned?

There is at least one thing common. For they all involve people going through a process. I open a door by reaching for the door handle and exerting a continued pressure on it. I wipe my nose by transporting with my hand an object to my nose and moving it about. I bake a cake by walking around a kitchen and following a recipe. I wave good-bye to a friend by lifting my arm and going through a waving motion.

The Editor has responded to my criticism of what has often seemed to me the almost automatically pro-Palestinian “line” followed by this and other journals when treating of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, by agreeing to publish this article in which I set out to redress the balance by supplying some of the crucial facts of Israeli and Jewish history which are ignored by partisan accounts. To omit more recent examples of this kind of bias, the reviewer of Lucas Grollenberg’s book Palestine Comes First in “New Blackfriars” of May 1980, after giving a tendentious resume of the “true facts” of the history of the conflict which glossed over a number of salient facts, ended with the revealing assertion that since Grollenberg’s facts are “right”, any other account is “wrong” and therefore should not be published — an attitude which should speak for itself. Fair-minded people — as one assumes the great majority of the readers of New Blackfriars strive to be — will wish to weigh all relevant facts. This account aims not to deny legitimate Palestinian claims but to supply some facts which are the context of those claims and to invite readers to enter into the minds of the other side in the historical conflict, the Israelis and the wider Jewish community. It will already be clear, I hope, that for me “fair-minded” does not necessarily equal fashionable liberal bien-pensant.

The developing teaching of the Catholic Church on economic justice in recent years has increasingly emphasized the rights of people to active participation in the economy. Although the exact term is not to be found in official documents, some observers find in the Church’s teachings not only the advocacy of increased participation but also a case for some form of “economic democracy”. This paper examines the Church’s teaching on participation in the economic realm and the possibilities of developing a more democratically controlled economy. Specifically it examines the feasibility of and prospects for implementation of economic democracy, with eastern Europe as a special focus of attention.

Over the last one hundred years the hierarchy of the Catholic Church has produced a variety of official documents which reflect upon a range of social, economic and political issues. Collectively these documents have come to be known as the tradition of Catholic Social Thought. Increasingly there has been an emphasis in these documents on both the rights and obligations of all people to active participation in the various realms of human life. These rights and obligations are conceptualized around a three-faceted concept of justice which encompasses procedure, distribution and participation. Procedural justice refers to what is commonly called the “rule of law”. Concerns which fall under procedural justice include the establishment of laws for regulating fair competition in the economic, political and sociocultural realms, as well as laws which guarantee fair and equal protection of civil rights and fair and equal procedure in the courts.

Philip’s parents had gone out for the evening, and I had been given the job of keeping him amused. About twenty past eight he evidently had a better idea about how to amuse himself than homework, and said he was going out to see a video at a neighbour’s house. I wouldn’t have been dubious about this—if he hadn’t looked so shifty. ‘How long will you be?’ I asked. ‘Hour and a half,’ he replied. ‘So you’d be back ten minutes before your parents?’ ‘Er, yes,’ he grinned. ‘Would your parents let you go?’ Philip looked even shiftier.

The doctrine that lying is always wrong (often, of course, only venially wrong) has been defended at length by many authors who ought to be taken seriously: in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, and in the writings of the Doctors of the Church, e.g. Augustine, Aquinas, and Alphonsus de Liguori. Mr. Chappell, maintaining the contrary thesis, presents to his readers none of this literature, not even by allusion; the nearest he comes to that is a reference to what is ‘associated with the Jesuits’. The voice we hear against lying is that of an imaginary nasty boy called Philip.

Mr. Chappell also alludes to my book The Virtues. The views and arguments of ‘Philip’ are not ascribable to me; anybody curious about what I say should read my bode; if someone does that and still cannot see any significant difference between ‘Philip’s’ view of the matter and mine, nothing I could say now is likely to do him any good.

‘Philip’ and his creator both reason in a recognisably ‘consequentialist’ style: we get drearily familiar arguments and examples. But nobody has a right to treat consequentialist moral thinking as unanswerably sound, thus ignoring the anti-consequentialist writing not only of Catholics but of non-Christians such as Philippa Foot, Arthur Prior, and Bernard Williams. Mr. Chappell likewise fails to mention the refutation of consequentialist thought in the chapter of my book (‘Prudence’) devoted to that.