The local Dominican Family turned out in force to welcome fr Timothy, to the amusement of one droll friar who called us a claque. Well, really! We Lay Dominicans were heavily outnumbered by friars from nearby Blackfriars and and sisters from St Catherine's Convent up the road. Our Anglican brethren were represented by the recently retired Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, now Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Fr Timothy began a very positive and hope-filled talk with a couple of self-deprecating snippets about his early career as a teacher of Holy Scripture which, he said, he had found something of a trial, not being, at least when he started out, much of an expert.
The Lattey Lecture being something of a Jesuit institution, he reminisced amusingly about the SJs and the OPs founding rival institutes of Bible study. And, talking of Jesuits, he quoted the late, lamented theologian, philosopher and wit, Herbert McCabe OP, who had been his own teacher, thus:
'Jesuits? Fine fellows, but I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one.'Getting to the heart of the topic, he cited Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Dei Verbum and Benedict XVI's observation, in his Apostolic Exhortation Verbum Domini, that
It is the Word itself which impels us towards our brothers and sisters: it is the word which illuminates, purifies, converts; we are only its servants. (Para 93)In considering, in the light of that, how recent popes have governed the Church, and how they have wanted it to be governed, fr Timothy saw an unbroken thread from Pope Paul VI through all his successors up to and including Pope Francis, observing continuity and development without rupture in their successive teachings on church governance. He concluded with the personal observation that he expects that Pope Francis will reform the central structures and in particular the Vatican Curia to make them more Trinitarian and less monarchical.
Speaking of the courage every Christian may need in witnessing to the Word of God, fr Timothy alluded to the heart-stopping film, Of Gods and Men, about the Cistercian monks martyred in the Atlas mountains during the Algerian civil war of the 1990s. (If you have not seen it, do! - but you may need a stiff drink afterwards.)
Very memorably, he ended by saying that a Christian may be called to give his or her life for the Word of God - but if it isn't worth dying for, it isn't worth anything.
Listen to the audio recording of the talk here.
The transcript will be available soon at the website of the Von Hugel Institute.
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