Second Spring

The activities organized in connection with Second Spring and the Centre for Faith & Culture in Oxford over the past fifteen years have been in fields as varied as liturgy, education, economics, painting, literature, metaphysics and history, but always in the belief that the keys to meaning are form, gestalt, beauty, interiority, relationship, radiance, and purpose. In the search for beauty and truth, the arts and sciences share in the common enterprise of civilization. “It is the religious impulse which supplies the cohesive force which unifies a society and a culture…. A society which has lost its religion becomes sooner or later a society which has lost its culture” (Christopher Dawson, Progress and Religion). However, scientific progress and religious pluralism make our present situation virtually unprecedented. As E.I. Watkin notes, “The abiding and immutable truth of metaphysics and revealed religion must be reclad in new garments woven by a scientific and historical knowledge incomparably vaster than was ever before possessed by man” (Catholic Art and Culture).