ABSTRACT
The concept of the 'place' of the Church was helpfully and systematically developed by Bonhoeffer, in his 1932 lecture on the nature of the Church, which echoed themes from his Sanctorum Communio. The past of Europe, the present identity of Europe and the European future are all tied up with the centrality of the Catholic Faith. There is also in Belloc an extraordinary ecclesiastical triumphalism. The Church is without spot or wrinkle. The Crusades, and even the Inquisition, are to be boasted of: 'Catholicism is never more alive than when it is in arms'. Barth's repute as an immensely influential and formative theologian and as a courageous antagonist of Hitlerism was soundly established in the 1930s. If the culture-Christianity of the nineteenth century had been a colossal distortion of the Faith, it was now more vital then ever that Christian theology must not tie itself to this problematic culture and social order.
