We can still, I think, register disquiet that so little is done by collaboration among Catholics themselves in settings where there is taken for granted a Catholic liturgical and spiritual ambience, and a general consensus about the elements which should enter into a Catholic systematics – a suitable philosophical preamble, linked in some way to the ontological concerns that are central for Catholic thought; the Scriptures regarded as an inspired body of literature; the monuments of Tradition that Catholic theologians have customarily consulted in their scanning of Scripture; the rôle of the magisterium in the making of doctrine and the refraction of its teaching in the lives of the faithful.
There should be in England a Catholic faculty for theology and its ancillary and related disciplines, a faculty serving the mission of the entire Church (not least of the episcopate), contextualised in a setting of liturgical and spiritual effort (it would be ideal to have a contemplative monastery, whether of women or of men, using the paradigm Latin liturgy of the Western Church, at its heart), and articulating a theological doctrine which the Church herself would not disown.
Karl Rahner asked that the theology of the next century be at once missionary and mystagogical. To render what Catholic theologians and scholars have already achieved since the Second Vatican Council even more fruitful for the Church in England in the next century some setting more conducive to such mission and mystagogy-in a word, some more ecclesial setting should be provided. This will not of course guarantee that people will write great theology; but it will provide, insofar as human ingenuity under grace can, the conditions in which a more comprehensive Catholic theology could optimally be produced.
Aidan Nichols OP Catholic Theology in Britain: the Scene since Vatican II part I & part II
