Catholic higher education in Britain has reached a critical juncture. Heythrop College in the University of London, universally renowned as a centre of academic excellence in philosophy and theology, is facing closure. Enormous energy and goodwill has gone into attempts to rescue it, to no avail. Not all those involved, however, have made survival of Heythrop in some form their one non-negotiable priority, which it ought to be. Other interests are in play.

What Heythrop has provided over the last few decades is a place where lay people seriously interested in religion can study it to the highest standard. That is for the immense good of the Church, and undoubtedly for the good of society. Such standards include, as Blessed John Henry Newman recognised in his Idea of a University, the intellectual stimulus provided by a plurality of academic disciplines. Philosophy and theology are of course not isolated subjects but embrace a range of specialisms, that can be immensely fertile to each other.