bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Tragic Theodicy
Authors: McCabe William H.
Published: July 2007

Both to the poets who have created high tragedy and to the critics of all eras who have thought deeply about it, its proper matter has always been that involved in some aspect or other of the Problem of Evil. In the theorists this is clear, from Aristotle down through what faint consideration tragedy was given in the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance in all lands, through the Reformation in some, through Cartesianism and Rousseauism wherever they penetrated, through English and American thought, to the twentieth century. Among the writers of tragedy the same unanimity has prevailed, from Aeschylus to Eugene O’Neill, from The Suppliants to Days-Without End. All have recognized that to be human means to yearn for happiness; and implicitly at least that tragedy is the quest of poetic insight, in so far as insight may be gained, into the riddle of high interference with human happiness.

In any consideration of the Problem of Evil, and therefore in tragedy, there is involved a theodicy: an attempt to penetrate the ways of God with unhappy mankind; a poetic exploration of human disappointment overhung by an Omnipotence that yet must be friendly; a wistfulness to reconcile in mortal vision, if it be possible, distant Divine Goodness and its permission or direction of instant human mishap; an intense effort of poetry to fuse these two factors together into one heightened picture of satisfying colour, light and shade, proportion and perspective. There is no question here of a clear-cut solution of the riddle—if that were possible tragedy would be shorn of most of its fascination and beauty; its only use would be its brief, poetic refreshment of a known answer that conceivably might need occasional rehearsal by short human memory, clouded ever anew by the turmoil of sublunary things.
Nowhere Island
Authors: Prince J. F. T.
Published: July 2007

It is only of late years that Communism has come to excite an emotion rather than an opinion. . . . Until a decade or two ago, it distinguished itself from Socialism in that it dealt with distribution or consumption whereas Socialism concerned the mode of production: and whereas Socialism was a theory of economics the appeal of Communism was to sentiment, one might even say to religion. Their common ground lay solely in a recognition of the equality of Man. But it was Communism that associated itself with the now century-old hope of the perfectibility of Man.

Historically Communism was of course forborne by such as the Essenes, whose economy of life was however inspired by the urge to escape (rather than repair) social ills. They are described by Philo: “None had his own house but shared his dwelling with all. Living in colonies they threw upen their doors to all their sect that came their way. They had a common storehouse, common expenditure, common garments, common food (syssitia). They gave what they earned to a common fund for the support of the unfit.”

The Communist colonies of last century were ineffectual enough and are notable largely in that their origin was philanthropic and motived, if not by pessimism, at least by the urge to escape.

Communism, as we know it, was anticipated in literature only by a Saint—in the Utopia of Thomas More. Here was a state in many respects indistinguishable from the economy of the Soviet, comprising four million souls, superintended
St. Thomas More
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

Future ages when chronicling the canonization of Thomas More by Pope Pius XI, on the 19th May, 1935. may perhaps ask their contemporaries to account it a pivotal event in the history of mankind. First of all it is an event in the city of Rome, which some cartographers claim to be the geographical centre of the habitable earth. Moreover it is a solemn and irrevocable nomination to the Peerage of Mankind made by a spiritual sovereign whose native land and whose official metropolis are Italy and Rome. Lastly, it is the strange almost bewildering action of an Italian giving supreme ennoblement to an Englishman beheaded by an English king four hundred years ago.

To those of us who know that Rome is Rome and that Simon Bar-Jona is Peter, because Jesus, Son of Mary, is Son of God, the canonization of an English Lord Chancellor or of a French shepherd-lass or of a South American halfcaste is but the arrival of the expected. Rome either is or is prepared to be the nursing mother of all nations, i.e., of all groups of human beings welded into one by the seemingly opposite forces of authority and liberty. It is not a matter of surprise to us Catholics, therefore, that an Englishman of the English should be given world-wide honour and recognition by the same Italian-centred force which one day sent the Levantine, Augustine of Tarsus, to weld warring settlers into the religious, and incidentally into the political, unity called England.

If at times Alma Mater Ecclesia tried to meet her somewhat spendthrift outgoings by demands upon her children, no accountant would dare to show that she had demanded over-payment for her nursing and teaching cares.
Religious Adventurers
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

Our Western world is said to be looking for a religion: what is more certain is the pretty general feeling that life is an affair of surfaces, most of them monotonous, the others painful either for themselves or because their beauty is already flecked with decay; and following this feeling the desire for something to which our present experience is only penultimate. In this sense perhaps many would adopt the title of a recent book, God is my Adventure, an account in the best manner of religious journalism of some personalities outside the official religions who are supposed to have penetrated beyond the obvious into the background of life.

“It has added much,” confesses Dr. Hensley Henson, “to my too slight knowledge of the remarkable essays in spiritual exploration, which are certainly not the least impressive indication of the profound religious dislocation of our time.” Dislocation, the word is just; the figures in the book bear witness to it: emotion must disavow thought, or the other way round; the peaks of experience must spurn the lower ranges of life from which they rise; the individual is isolated from his social environment and historical antecedents: man is no longer catholic but peculiar; working in a tunnel not living in the universe.

Yet as sin is the choice of good out of place, so error is the pursuit of truth out of place, and Mr. Landau is alert to discover the value of the various messages. Sometimes he has to try hard, but never is he contemptuous; his criticism though keen is humble. Religious types are of many kinds, and not all his subjects are so intellectually impressive as Ouspensky or Steiner.
The “Milieu” of Catholic Action
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

The word “milieu” is one of those expressive French words which, to a large extent, defies translation into English. In the present connection it might be rendered, though inadequately, as the sphere of life, the atmosphere, the surroundings or the environment in which the individual Catholic habitually finds himself. If he is an apostle of Catholic Action it must be largely in this milieu, in these surroundings, that he exercises his apostolate. Hence the word “milieu” is of supreme importance to the proper understanding of Catholic Action, as the actual sphere of life is to the exercise of the apostolate.

For Catholic Action is essentially conditioned by the circumstances of our natural human lives. It is indeed precisely because the priest cannot enter into certain circles and so supernaturalize the lives of those who frequent them that the Pope appeals to the laity to take up this task and continue amongst their own friends and working companions the apostolate of the hierarchy. “In order to bring back to Christ these whole classes of men who have denied Him, we must gather and train from amongst their very ranks auxiliary soldiers of the Church . . . the first and immediate apostles of the working-men must themselves be workingmen, while the apostles of the industrial and commercial world should themselves be employers and merchants.” The apostolate must be exercised, according to the Pope, in the circles of our every-day life. It is only natural. Rightly or wrongly there are class-differences and the life and interests of one class are different from those of another. In our democratic country it is easier than elsewhere to move from one class to another and to find oneself accepted in a class higher than that into which one was born, but it is quite impossible to enter into one sphere of life and exert an influence there while remaining to a great extent in another.
Freedom to Surrender
Authors: Durkan John
Published: July 2007

“Now it appears to me that almost any man may, like the spider, spin from his own inwards, his own airy citadel. The points of leaves and twigs on which the spider begins her work are few, and she fills the air with a beautiful circuiting. Man should be content with as few points to tip with the fine web of his soul, and weave a tapestry empyrean—full of symbols for his spiritual eye, of softness for his spiritual touch, of space for his wanderings, of distinctness for his luxury.” These words of a nineteenth century poet are the doctrine of a decadent scholasticism in creative art. Objectivity is passivity to a world that is only a function of oneself—“the innocent eye,” or else it is creation by the self. But beauty is not a measurement of an eye that first blinds itself to the object measured. It has to be conquered and found, and conquest means pain. It requires the effort of a body and soul caught up in life, in the commerce of the wind and the rain. The philosopher approaches truth by several routes, to do justice to its diversity and without prejudice to its unity: similarly the writer must approach beauty actively otherwise his view will be remote and partial. The Pre-Raphaelite aesthetes selected beautiful words from a dictionary and so composed their poems. The Georgians abandoned the dictionary for the countryside, and the late Georgian, Mr. Auden, abandons the countryside for the town. But objectivity requires only one abandonment, and that abandonment neither the nineteenth century nor the twentieth century can countenance: and that is the abandonment of the self. The work of art is not the visual tension, the interplay of convex and concave. It is plastic action.
Catholicism and Protestantism in the Modern World
Authors: Bauhofer Oskar
Published: July 2007

In the course of history the relation of Catholicism and Protestantism undergoes, as it were, physiognomical transformations, which, while they do not affect the inmost dogmatic division, strike deep enough to impress on these two systems new and unforeseeable characteristics in different times and places. The essential division in belief, as a theological phenomenon, remains just what it is; and in view of this, it is impossible—even for men of good will—to explain it away or compromise on it. This undebatable and irreducible phenomenon can only be effaced by unity in the Faith. We do not wish prim, arily to treat of the relation of Catholicism and Protestantism from this purely theological aspect of dogmatic difference and reunion, although even our present consideration can only be read under this explicit proviso, and in view of this final and deepest problem. For if Catholicism and Protestantism are from one point of view and in modern history simply two great historical forces, we cannot on that account act as though the problem belonged only to the sphere of historical research into cultural spirituality. Beyond the scope of history there is an enquiry of theological import.

We take as our starting point the fact that Catholicism and Protestantism appear on the stage of history as two forces, each of which presents a whole system of human cultural values, and so an entire totality of life. Ultimately, in the theological field, Catholicism and Protestantism are incommensurable—though even here some qualification is required. But as formative powers of history, as complete forms and formulas of historical existence, Catholicism and Protestantism are fundamentally commensurable. On this plane, then, we find a series of problems which is common to both. Even their very opposition continually creates a common point of contact for their opposing principles. We find, on this plane, a relation between Catholicism and Protestantism which has proved historically to be manageable and valuable, and which at the present time is well defined—a relation sometimes of enmity, sometimes of cold indifference, sometimes of an inner human nearness and readiness to understand.
After Four Hundred Years
Authors: Tindal‐Atkinson Aelwin
Published: July 2007

It is a characteristic feature of this time of transition in which we are living that the subject of Christian Unity is being discussed almost universally. Catholic and nonCatholic can write of it and proffer suggestions without arousing too serious an outburst of protest. For Methodists and Presbyterians the matter has passed from the stage of discussion to the goal of accomplished fact. Anglicanism with an eye to the future rather than the past is entering a new phase of comprehensiveness by proclaiming itself as a bridge providentially built to span the gulf between Catholicism and Protestantism. Of necessity Catholics remain materially unaffected by the movement, conscious as they are of the complete Unity of the Church in which they are visibly incorporate; nevertheless there remains a wide margin where we can express our views and opinions with regard to Christian Unity and the means of attaining it. Many of us take our views ready-made upon this subject from the Catholic Press, and save ourselves the trouble of thinking any further about it. It is so splendid to be told that we Catholics, standing secure behind the battlements, can look down with happy serenity upon the struggling disorder of warring sects below. If the warring sects cease to struggle, and achieve a formula of unity, what is our reaction? The ‘battlement feeling’ makes us perhaps uneasy because the non-Catholic bodies are not quite playing the game: they should be continuing the struggle, so that we could happily continue to draw the moral!
Liturgy and Sociology
Authors: Timmins Antony
Published: July 2007

It has been Mr. Dawson’s sound contention, time and again, in his various writings, that a civilization, a sociology, not founded on religion is bound to fail. His concern is ‘for the recovery of a vital contact between the spiritual life of the individual and the social and economic orgnization of modem culture.’ This concern is bom of a conviction that a culture, and hence a sociology, must have its roots firmly planted and established in theology and philosophy, otherwise the life-giving sap of religion will cease to flow. Then will the members lose their circulation, the tree will wither, and the social structure will disintegrate and decay. ‘If our civilization is to recover its vitality, or even to survive, it must cease to neglect its spiritual roots and must realize that religion is not a matter of personal sentiment which has nothing to do with the objective realities of society, but is, on the contrary, the very heart of social life and the root of every living culture. The desecularization of modem civilization is no easy matter; at first sight it may seem a hopeless task.’ But the Church has second sight; and the Church has her Liturgy.

The task before us, then, is the desecularization of modem civilization; and the means are ready to hand. Our Holy Father has given the lead: ‘Mindful, then, of our condition, that we are essentially limited and absolutely dependent on the Supreme Being, before everything else let us have recourse to prayer.’ Society, and every individual member of society, is called to a renewal of baptismal vows, and to yield its members to serve justice, unto sanctification.
On Capability and Responsibility
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

By capability is meant the physical or psychological power of performing an act.

By responsibility is meant the moral (as distinct from the physical) necessity of performing an act.

Physical or bodily powers incapable of moral necessity are incapable of responsibility.

A power that is incapable of an act may be responsible for an act, if it has (i) physical, (2) psychological, or (3) moral power over another power which is capable of the act.

(1) Physical? The human will is not capable of cutting a human throat. A knife is capable of cutting a human throat. But a human will using a knife is responsible for cutting a human throat. In other words a human will has not the capability but has the responsibility of cutting or not cutting a human throat. .

(2) Psychological. The feet have the capability of walking but not of hearing or of seeing. The ears have the capability of hearing but not of seeing or of walking. The eyes have the capability of seeing but not of walking or of hearing. The human will has the capability neither of walking nor hearing nor seeing.

Now the feet which have the capability of walking are not responsible for walking. The ears which have the capability of hearing are not responsible for hearing. The eyes which have the capability of seeing are not responsible for seeing.

But the human will which cannot walk nor hear nor see can move (or not move) the feet to walk, the ear to hear, the eye to see.

Therefore the human will which has not the capability of walking, hearing seeing, has the responsibility of walking, hearing, seeing.
Three Florentines of the Renaissance
Authors: Sturzo Luigi
Published: July 2007

Marsilio Ficino—Savonarola—Machiavelli

Marsilio Ficino was the greatest of the fifteenth century Platonists. His love for Plato was at least equal to his erudition. His influence both as an individual and as head of the Platonic Academy of Florence, extended over the whole of Europe. In an early period of his life he was a humanist and a philosopher of more or less pagan tendency. In maturity of thought and years, he was deeply conscious of the Christian values that many of the learned were too ready to overlook. His ideal was the conciliation of Platonism and Christianity, pagan classicism and Christian thought, the ethics of antiquity and Catholic morals. He was fascinated by St. Augustine, but it seemed to him that the Augustinian synthesis could not appeal to the world of his time. The problems of nature, of ethics, of history were set in other terms. What he sought was to christianize Plato and to platonize the Gospel. This two-fold tendency is to be found in the Theologia platonica, in which he saw a new Summa Theologica, under the aegis of Plato instead of that of Aristotle.

Three elements in the work of Marsilio Ficino render it representative of the period—the sovereignty or autonomy of philosophy as the instrument of reason, as against the criterion that made of it the handmaid of theology; secondly, a concrete realism in respect of the object of knowledge, in nature and history, as against the universalizing abstractionism of the Schools; thirdly, a natural animism, the result of the principle of Third Essences, and which formed the substructure of the astrology of the time, as against the Aristotelian conception of Forms.
Archbishop Davidson
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

Some few weeks before Archbishop Davidson died the present writer met him by his own gracious arrangement at the house of the late Lord Lovat in Bryanston Square. It was a wild rain-stormy afternoon sufficient to make younger men than the Archbishop find excuses for keeping indoors. Knowing his four score and two years, I awaited a telephone message telling me that the Archbishop dare not venture to leave home. But punctually almost to the minute of our prearranged time the old man arrived—with no complaints about the weather! His biographer was to let me into the secret of the old man’s contempt for our national weather at its worst. I was to learn that an old man’s fortitude which had instantly impressed me had been taught by a sport-loving father on the moors and hills of south-east Scotland.

I could not help feeling, and perhaps manifesting, that I was in the presence of one of the most noteworthy men of the day. Again his biographer by a sober presentation of the facts was to justify my feelings. Yet the prelate who had crowned an English king and had strengthened, as few of his predecessors had strengthened, the Church of England, became at once my fellow-wayfarer into the hill-country of the soul. Many a man of less note and position than he would have felt the need of condescending to a simple friar. Their condescending would have been of the nature of humility. But there was no condescension in the man whose words and attitude were all humility, yet whose humility was not an attitude but a quality of soul.
Liturgical Action
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

Occasionally, but without sufficient insistence, attention has been drawn to the danger of the present wave of enthusiasm for action among Catholic layfolk. It easily loses its efficacy in a hectic type of activism typical of this century. If we are to direct this precious seed within the boundaries of the good soil and to prevent its falling on the rock where its first vigorous shoot comes to a premature and fruitless end, we must keep constantly before our eyes the ultimate purpose of it all. We must purify our intention and seek first the contemplation of God. Consequently we should look for a type of action, within the reach of every member of the Church, which will tend constantly and directly Godwards, an action unperturbed by the turmoil of all the pressing modern human problems. In this way the urge to do something can be given a twist towards God and contemplation, so that all the other forms of activity may spring from a single and solid base, like the varied but permanent vitality of a Gothic cathedral on its foundation of rock. Such a type of action is to be found, of course, in the active share in the liturgy and particularly in the Mass. In the liturgy all action is intended to lead directly to the worship of God. as contrasted with social action which deals directly with charity and justice towards our neighbour.
G.K.C.—Distributist
Authors: Pepler Hilary
Published: July 2007

“IF I had not fallen for G.K. in 1900 I should have been caught by the Webbs in 1910.” I quote this sentence from a letter recently received because it may remind many of a fate they also escaped. The Fabian, as we now know, did not offer an alternative to Capitalism, he offered fetters of security and sufficiency; a better ordered world of which, even before the war, there seemed a need. The slums were awful and the rich corrupt, we did not question the qualities of the Fabian remedy. The young were to be nourished in clinics and educated in schools, the unfit exterminated, the old fed and clothed like the lilies of the field, the dead collected by a municipal Carter Paterson. The people were to control the means of production and distribution, text books on economics were to replace the Bible and everything was to be efficient. Fabian tracts, black with statistics and documented to the nth degree, were found upon the bookstalls, experts became as eloquent as the blue books from which they preached. Sanitation was exalted into a religion and hygiene accepted among the gods. The whole was spiced, for those reaching the more active areas of propaganda, by a certain laxity in morals, an evidence of escape from Victorianism. This looseness was to be discouraged among the poor, who were to be kept sober if not righteous; though not godly they were to be maintained at least in health.

The lugubrious procession of economists, welfare workers, mother Grundies and busy bodies was held up by a circus.
The Morality of Saving
Authors: Drinkwater F. H.
Published: July 2007

“Protection of savings! ‘’ seems to be the guiding slogan of new financial regulations lately introduced in Belgium; according to the new C.S.G. Year-book. In the United States, also, the New Deal legislation in regard of banking and Stock Exchange professes to aim at “protecting the investor,” which sounds much the same thing. This is well enough as far as it goes, but a truly Catholic sociology must needs point out that there are other objectives, even more urgent, to which Governments should direct their monetary policy. If we need protection of savings, we also need protection from savings. It is right that people who save money should be protected from their own over-eager avarice and from the financial sharks who take advantage of it; and it is equally necessary that the community in general should be protected from accumulations of money, large or small, which are used in ways injurious to the common good.

Nineteenth century philosophy took for granted that thrift and saving was always a good and meritorious habit. Nowadays we are not so sure. We can see that this business of saving is at the bottom of the whole money muddle. If there had been no savings there would have been no banks to look after them, no lending of them at interest, no invention of credit-creation, no national debts. The old Christian and Catholic teaching, of course, condemned saving (in effect) as sinful. Everybody was supposed to give away his surplus income to those who hadn’t enough; money saved was money that ought to have been spent on the poor.
The Perversion of Economic History
Authors: Lamb Richard
Published: July 2007

In 1829 William Cobbett published the History of the Protestant Reformation. Cobbett was a remarkable controversialist, and his views were always highly coloured, but in this work he disclosed one of the most significant truths of English economic history. He pointed out to an incredulous nation that the social conditions of the English peasantry had seriously and progressively deteriorated since the beginning of the sixteenth century. He attributed this phenomenon to the dissolution of the religious houses at the time of the Reformation, and to the alienation of property which formerly was held for the relief of poverty, and which now passed into selfish and unscrupulous hands.

The pioneer of modern critical economic history was Thorold Rogers. Without acknowledgment and without intention his detailed and laborious researches substantiate Cobbett’s assertions. Thorold Rogers considered that the impoverishment and progressive deterioration of the peasantry between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries was due to a concerted effort on the part of landlords to lower wages in order that each estate’s rent roll might be increased as much as possible. In many instances in his works Thorold Rogers made assertions and generalizations which could not be justified. It appears that later historians have used these errors as a ground for denying the main truth that lies in Thorold Rogers’ theory of social development, and lately Catholic writers have been emphasizing that the accepted economic histories of to-day ignore the established thesis that the condition of the peasantry between 1500 and 1850 was consistently made worse by the individualistic attitude of the landowning class.
Saints and Serpents
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

Art both religious and profane has remembered the curse of the serpent: ‘I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed; she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (Gen. iii, 15). In pagan art we see the agony of man in Laocoon, in Christian art we see the triumph of the Blessed Mother of God. Amongst many strange cults we see man appeasing the serpent in idolatrous worship, but Christianity has crushed its power for evil. It is in this light, however summarily we may dismiss the legends of hagiography, that we can read their origin, which is in casting out devils and the powers of darkness. Most critics, we presume, would consider the many stories of saints driving away snakes as allegories of their triumph over sin, but there are still no snakes in Ireland whereas Great Britain retains the unpleasant viper. This driving out of serpents occurs in the biographies of more than a score of saints, of whom fourteen are of France, Britain, or Ireland.
Communist Self-Witness About Spain
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

(a) The brief account of events in Spain since 1931, given on earlier pages, shows the vivid contrast between the weakness of the Republican-Socialist Government of 1931-1933 and the strength of the Republican Government of 1936.

(b) It would be incredible blindness for anyone in the working class or on the side of democracy and liberty, not to see what made this change possible.

(c) It was the developing strength of the working class as a whole; and this, in turn, was made possible by the developing strength of the Communist Party, and the triumph of its policy of unity and resolute class-struggle.

(d) As in other countries, the leadership of the Socialist Party was hostile to the Communist Party, hostile to a policy of class-struggle, filled with illusions of a peaceful, democratic constitutionalism.

(e) This led to the policy of holding back and even repressing the militant struggle of the rank and file in 1933.

(Spain, by Emile Bums, published by the Communist Party of Great Britain, page 11.)

The italics are those of the pamphlet. I am writing this not as a politician, nor in the interest of politics, but solely in the interests of the poor and of peace.

1. I need not point out that this honest self-witness of the Communist Party dispenses us from the almost impossible task of finding out the truth about the alleged terrorism on one side or the other. For the moment the only available evidence is of one side about the other; in other words, it is admittedly the weakest of all evidence.
Definition of Psychology
Authors: Elrington Aidan
Published: July 2007

To say of psychology that it is the science of the soul, whilst this is in accordance with the literal meaning of the word, is not to take us very far. We need to know at the outset something of what the soul is in itself and how its investigation may best be undertaken. In truth an account of the definition of psychology is to a large extent an epitome of its history. The conflict of opinion already alluded to in our previous articles is by no means a contemporary development, as some of our readers may have been led to suppose, though it has undoubtedly assumed, in some respects, a new form. It is our purpose here, therefore, to trace to their sources in a summary manner these conflicting ideas as to the nature and scope of psychology.

The main issues turn in the first place upon the origin and meaning of the word “soul” and the relation of that which is so called to the body, as well as upon the standpoint from which the study of soul has proceeded. It will be remarked, secondly, however, that a new standpoint was adopted round about the seventeenth century when the earlier accepted notion of soul came to be replaced by that of mind and consciousness, which thus became the primary concern of the psychologist. In a very general way, the earlier standpoint may be described as “objective,” the later as “subjective.” A third phase came to pass when psychology began to be defined as the science of immediate or individual experience; the word “psyche” or soul being used for the totality of individual human experience.
Our Aim of Truth
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

“The true speaking absolutely is prior to the good, as appears from two reasons. First because the true is more closely related to being, which is prior to good. . . Secondly . . . knowledge naturally precedes appetite.” (Summa, 1a, q. 16, art. 4, English trans.)

The object of the intellect (i.e. Truth) “is more simple and more absolute than the object of the will” (i.e. goodness). Therefore the intellect in itself and absolutely is higher and nobler than the will—yet “the love of God is better than the knowledge of God; but on the contrary, the knowledge of corporeal things is better than the love thereof. Absolutely, however, the intellect is better than the will.” (Ibid., q. 82, part 3.)

These two texts from the Summa of the Blackfriar St. Thomas Aquinas must outline the attitude of Blackfriars towards Truth.

At the risk of failing to express what is in our mind, let us say that we fully accept the consequences of St. Thomas’s principle: “Truth is more simple and absolute than goodness, therefore the intellect is higher and nobler than the will.” In our aim of finding and telling the truth we will not primarily concern ourselves with what is good; or only with that highest good, the Truth. This is but to realize that transcendentals, such as truth, must be sought for their own sake or they will not be found in their fullness. Truth-seeking and truth-telling must not be blended and weakened with enquiries into the economic, political, ethical or theological value of the truth.
… We Have Always With Us
Authors: D.-G.
Published: July 2007

There are some books whose line of approach sets up a train of thought in the reader’s mind. Quite apart from their intrinsic value, their very existence calls attention to some great problem, and only the more urgently when the problem is as obvious and the method of approach as honest as the day. In I Took Off My Tie Mr. Massingham has written a book of singular integrity and clarity of purpose; a book which has some of the clumsiness arising from profound honesty. Few writers succeed in attaining to such perfect unselfconsciousness as this author. The subject described is the life of a group of tenants in two or three houses in a side street in the East End. The book, as was almost inevitable from its subject, has suffered extensively at the hands of reviewers and has received a good deal of rather treacly praise. By some papers it has been regarded as a document or a sign and as other tiresome things. Mr. Massingham’s treatment of his subject is non-sentimental rather than unsentimental, and a writer of less integrity would have suppressed the character of little Annie Morgan knowing how the childhood of the poor throws the British Public off its balance. I Took Off My Tie is a record of actual experience and the author shared, in so far as he was permitted, the lives of the people he describes.
The Organization of Peace
Authors: Alexander Bernard
Published: July 2007

Ever since its foundation the League has been suffering from the circumstances of its birth. It was the offspring of a union between a utopian ideal to establish world peace and a cynical determination to enforce a military victory. This two-sided ancestry, typified in the attitude of Wilson and Clemenceau, has shown itself throughout its history. At some periods it has appeared vainly idealistic, at others hopelessly time-serving. By some the League is considered too ambitious, by others not ambitious enough. Those who believe it to be the only possible means of avoiding a general world war have not always been its best friends, while those who have been more sceptical about its possibilities of preventing war have often been the servants of peace. The reason for this is that the former base their arguments upon the idea of the League as it was designed to be, while the latter interpret the League as it is. The former have nearly wrecked their instrument, by putting it to too great a test, while the latter must content themselves with an unsatisfactory “I told you so,” while the policies of the various nations seem to be leading more and more to an ultimate disaster, and the institution, designed to bring greater reason into international politics, stands helpless and discredited. What is the reason for this political impasse? Is there no way out? Perhaps a few reflections on its past history will be helpful in the formation of a new attitude towards the League—for a new attitude must be found.
Worship
Authors: Tindal-Atkinson Aelwin
Published: July 2007

“We went on up the narrow strait, thus anxiously. On this side lay Scylla . . . on that Charybdis.” In the Odyssey of every Christian there are times and places when the words of Homer strike home. Worship and personal prayer are essential to him as motive forces directing his journey “up the narrow strait”; and in his living experience both are beset by the two monsters that lie within bow-shot of his anxious passage, routine and pietism. The one springs from misapprehending the rôle of corporate worship, the other from over-absorption in individual devotion. As there is little steerage way there must always be sufficient impetus to keep the frail craft moving straight ahead, responsive to every touch of the helmsman. Individual temperament will give an inclination to one side or the other: the scrupulous towards self-absorption and the easy-going to mechanical routine.

The same difficulty holds good in some degree for group worship with its tendency to divagate towards high-and-dry formalism or towards an unstable revivalism. Each extreme marks the over-emphasis of one of the two essential coordinates of worship, a disciplined cultus and personal responsiveness. In the history of the Church the scales have moved successively up and down without irrevocably destroying the careful balance, though the individualist side has tended to be outweighed, since corporate devotion has a constant bias towards formalism, and the movements back have been sudden and violent in character.
Church and State in Europe
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

By his study of the contemporary relations between Church and State on the continent of Europe Dr. Adolf Keller has deserved well not only of his co-religionists but of all those who are vitally interested in the present phase of the perennial struggle between Christianity and the powers of this world. Naturally, his view of the solution of these problems does not coincide with the Catholic view, but it certainly shows a realization of the need for greater unity, on which Catholics insist, and his analysis of the actual situation and presentation of the facts are of the greatest value to those of our Faith who are endeavouring to understand the situation and contribute towards its improvement. It is therefore the object of the present article to make a rapid survey of the problem in the light mainly of Dr. Keller’s evidence and to give some indication of the probable outcome of contemporary events in this sphere.

The constitution of the Church is divine and remains fixed and permanent, that of the State is human and based on contingent needs which vary from age to age. It follows that the relation between Church and State will not change through any development of the former but only through the different attitude which the State takes up with regard to the Church’s claims. In the light of her long experience and aided by the guidance of the Holy Ghost, the Church will adopt different methods according to the changing needs of time and place in order to fulfil her age-old task of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth and to bring supernatural life to the members of States which fail to recognize a law higher than the natural and often even offend against the latter.
Psychology and Free-Will
Authors: Elrington Aidan
Published: July 2007

In the course of a long and interesting correspondence between William James and Shadworth H. Hodgson on the subject of free-will, the latter writes as follows: “Let us, as you say, have no more ‘gnashing of the teeth over the freewill business’; let us agree to differ. The best of it is that we both believe in the reality of free-will, only that I think it can be reconciled with determinism, while you think indeterminism is required to make it conceivable.”

Although some fifty years have passed since these words were written discussion concerning the freedom of the will and determinism continues varied only in its mode of presentation. The same difficulties which confronted the writers just mentioned confront the psychologist of to-day. These difficulties arise in fact from differences of opinion concerning the meaning of free-will on the one hand and determinism on the other. At bottom the problems involved are speculative rather than empiric, and the controversy to which we have alluded was conducted rather on the former than on the latter plane.
Thoughts on An Encyclical
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

“Pope Denounces Communism” screamed the headlines. And of course there were the usual impertinent attempts to exploit the fact in class-interests. But the text of Divini Redemptoris proved a dangerous weapon for those concerned to preserve the social-economic status quo and to hinder the logical development of the existing industrialcapitalist society into a socialistic one. As said La Libre Belgique:

If atheistic communism is condemned, so too are all those evil “Christians” who live on the miseries of others, the selfish or blind “conservatives” who have failed to foresee that the indignation of the proletariat would impel them to rebellion, the evil rich who have so long been the object of the Saviour’s curses. . . . The vigour of the Pope’s words to them has astounded and disconcerted the more timid. But there are very few who have understood the love that lies hidden in that anger. This Encyclical is a model of righteous indignation at the service of charity, truly befitting a Father who longs for the salvation of his children.
Thoughts on An Encyclical
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

“Pope Denounces Communism.” But we must read his words carefully, and see just what it is he denounces and why he denounces it, however painful and humbling may be the process. And then we must ask ourselves Whether the monster against which he so insistently warns us is not London or Birmingham, or even Nazi Berlin or Fascist Milan, as well as Moscow or Barcelona, U.S.A. as well as U.S.S.R., whether the thing called Atheistic Communism is not to be found among avowed Catholics as well as professed Communists. We must ask ourselves not only whether our industrial-capitalist world is not guilty of having brought about the thing which the Pope calls Atheistic Communism, but further whether it is not guilty precisely of the very evils of Atheistic Communism itself in so far as these fall under the anathemas of the Church as they are expressed in the text of the Encyclical Divini Redemptoris.
The Hymns They Deserve
Authors: Tindal-Atkinson Aelwin
Published: July 2007

Hymns have been written by the thousand, and of the thousands written very few have stood the test of time, the vicissitudes of religious revolution, or the vagaries of human taste. Few of us can regret the disappearance of many hymns that would evoke upon discovery no response in our minds beyond a polite curiosity and mild amusement that we reserve for the more grotesque museum pieces. Modem hymns, however, may meet with a different reception, and the man who would open a public discussion about them must step out along a thorny path, where even his guardian angel may fear to tread. Some hymns which the stream of time has borne down to us may still be sung with pleasure, “rari nantes in gurgite vasto.” And their appeal need not rest solely upon their antiquity, but may possible be based upon their adequate expression of Truth, Goodness and Beauty.

We may like hymns or we may dislike them, whether on principle or from prejudice: we may sing them one and all with a joyous abandon, indifferent alike to their quality or their quantity: we may accept them with a Christian resignation as part of that bracing discipline, which makes a man upon other occasions take medicine with a nauseous taste hoping that thereby he may possibly reap some benefit. Whatever we may think or feel about them, hymns are here and we cannot avoid them: a careless turn of the knob on the Radio will bring us the most unexpected examples: on Sunday the very streets are not free of them, when every town has its contingent of the Salvation Army: even attendance at a Cup Final may involve us willy-nilly in a mass of rough men sobbing in chorus, “Abide with me, Fast falls the eventide! “
Mother Margaret Hallahan and the Clergy
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

A very pronounced factor in the success of Mother Margaret’s work was the high repute and admiration in which she was held by all ranks of the clergy. She came into contact with all the eminent churchmen of her day in England, and though her work was practically confined to the dioceses of Birmingham and Clifton—only in the last six years of her life did she extend her foundations to other dioceses—no fewer than ten of the thirteen diocesan bishops held themselves honoured to be her friends. The other ranks of the clergy showed her equal respect and affection, and many of them were accustomed to call her their “Mother,” as was done by the priest-disciples of Saint Catherine of Siena. Mother Margaret on her side accepted the relationship even to the extent of chiding them when she felt it would do them good. To one she wrote: “Let me tell you, my dear Reverend Father, that patience is the great thing you want. You know my real affection for you, and as you call me Mother, sometimes mothers may take liberties with great doctors, if they are their sons.”
Conrad Noel's Life of Christ
Authors: Kehoe Richard
Published: July 2007

The noble quality of the sentiments of this book will account for its having received on the whole a far more indulgent treatment by the reviewers—even by those writing on behalf of the Churches—than it properly deserves. There might be a strong temptation to follow this general lead, if it were any less easy than it is, while attacking the book, to maintain entire respect for the author. The doctrine is completely untrue to the principles of the Anglo-Catholic Creed which the author professes. It is in fact but a travesty of Christian doctrine. But this clearly is a mischance that has come about through an undisciplined cavalry charge by the Left wing of the author’s mind. A reviewer can take his stand comfortably between the author and his book.

Christ as portrayed in these pages shows Himself to be first and foremost a socio-political revolutionary. An order of social well-being, of justice and plenty achieved for all men, does not appear to Him as an effect that should naturally follow upon and be as the fulfilment and expression of the spiritual life He brings to men, but rather as an essential constitutive means for the formation of a state of “salvation.” That is to say, it is only by a successfully achieved reordering of social conditions that the salvation He offers can become a “saving” thing at all. If He is to be called our Saviour (in any sense that He Himself would approve) it can only be through a salvation which in fact delivers our bodies in this world from the evils of injustice and poverty and the rest.