bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Characterizing narrative feedback and predictors of feedback content on an entrustable professional activity (EPA) assessment tool
Authors: Murillo Alyssa D. , Gozali Aileen , Brian Riley , Highet Alex , Gomes Camilla , Cate Olle Ten , Alseidi Adnan , O’Sullivan Patricia S. , Vu Lan
Published: August 2024

Purpose

Although EPA assessment tools generally allow for narrative feedback, limited data exist defining characteristics and predictors of such feedback. We explored narrative feedback characteristics and their associations with entrustment, case-specific variables, and faculty/trainee characteristics.

Methods

Our general surgery residency piloted an intraoperative Entrustable Professional Activities (EPA) assessment tool in 2022. The tool included an entrustment score, four sub-scores, and narrative feedback. Given strong intercorrelations (r = 0.45–0.69) and high reliability (α = 0.84) between sub-scores, we summed the four sub-scores into a composite score. We coded narrative feedback for valence (reinforcing vs constructive), specificity (specific vs general), appreciation (recognizing or rewarding trainee), coaching (offering a better way to do something), and evaluation (assessing against set of standards). Multivariable regression analyzed associations between feedback characteristics and entrustment score, composite score, PGY level, case difficulty, trainee/faculty gender, gender matching, faculty years in practice, faculty case volume with trainees, faculty evaluation score, and trainees’ under-represented in medicine (URiM) status.

Results

Forty-six faculty completed 325 intraoperative EPA assessments for 44 trainees. Narrative feedback had high valence (82%) and specificity (80%). Comments frequently contained appreciation (89%); coaching (51%) and evaluation (38%) were less common. We found that faculty gender, trainee gender, and gender match predicted feedback characteristics. Generally, entrustment level, composite score, and PGY level correlated with feedback types (Table).

Conclusion

Entrustment and performance relate to the type of feedback received. Gender and gender match resulted in different types of feedback. Evaluative feedback was the least prevalent and warrants further exploration since evaluation is critical for learning.
Accountability, reasons-responsiveness, and narcos’ moral responsibility
Authors: Rudy-Hiller Fernando
Published: August 2024

A prominent position about moral responsibility claims that a necessary condition on accountability blame is that, at the time of action, the agent must be sufficiently reasons-responsive so as to be capable of acting differently by following the pertinent moral reasons and thus avoid wrongdoing. Call this the Accountability with Avoidability view (or AWA). In this paper I aim to show that AWA is false by doing three things. First, I argue that it badly contradicts moral commonsense concerning the moral responsibility of a particularly egregious kind of wrongdoer. Second, I show that AWA’s three most prominent rationales—based on the notions of desert, demands, and excuses—all fail to support a robust reasons-responsiveness requirement on accountability. Finally, I sketch an alternative conception of accountability—accountability without avoidability—that dispenses with robust reasons-responsiveness and appeals instead to the capacity of agents to convey moral meaning through their conduct as the key element in the moral psychology of responsible agency.
Male breast cancer and sexual aspects research and analysis (MASARA study): preliminary results
Authors: Mancino Matteo , Ferrara Francesca , Zanderigo Eloisa , Angelino Alessia , Iaccarino Ludovica , Belella Daniela , Orlandi Armando , Belli Paolo , Sala Evis , D’Angelo Anna
Published: August 2024

Purpose

To evaluate the impact of male breast cancer and its treatment on patient’s sexual function, including changes in sexual desire, performance, and satisfaction. To investigate changes in the body image experienced by male breast cancer patients and their perception in accessing healthcare in hospital facilities.

Methods

We administered three online questionnaires using Google Forms (Google LLC) to male breast cancer patients treated at our Institution from 2015 to 2023. The surveys were provided in Italian and distributed from March 1st to April 1st, 2024. A panel of one breast radiologist, one oncologist and one clinical psychologist designed a 22-item tailored survey to investigate imaging follow-up routine, sexual habits before and after treatment and perceived male breast cancer stigma. The International Index of Erectile Function and Italian version of the Body Image Scale were also administered. Replies to the three questionnaires were analyzed using descriptive statistical analysis.

Results

Almost half of the patients completed the three questionnaires (33/70, 47%). The median age was 62 (IR 56–72). Only 27.8% were aware of male breast cancer prior to diagnosis. 86.1% (31/36) underwent regular breast imaging follow-up, with sexual activity declining during treatment. Endocrine treatment was reported by 63.9%. Discomfort was experienced, notably during interactions and communication about their condition. Erectile dysfunction was prevalent, with 18.2% reporting severe dysfunction. The average body image score was 9.1.

Conclusions

Our findings emphasize the importance of comprehensive care that attends to the full spectrum of emotional and social well-being beyond medical requirements in male breast cancer patients.
People of Clay and Stone: Indexing Other-than-Human Animacy and Collective Identity in Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico
Authors: Brzezinski Jeffrey S.
Published: August 2024

This article analyzes the assemblages of humans and other-than-humans that animated the sacred landscape of Cerro de la Virgen, a hilltop site occupied during the Formative period (1800 BC–AD 250) in the lower Río Verde Valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. Commensalism in the region increased markedly in scope and complexity throughout the Formative period, culminating in the region's first polity at AD 100. Feasting practices became relatively standardized, but the placement of objects and bodies in public architecture—a set of collective practices associated with the vital forces that animated the cosmos—varied considerably from site to site during the late Terminal Formative period (150 BC–AD 250). Lower Verde scholars have argued that these idiosyncrasies reflect the myriad collective identities of the region's hinterland communities, a pattern rooted in local affiliations that may have conflicted with an expanding regional identity centered at the urban center of Río Viejo. I augment this discussion by highlighting the role that the materiality of the landscape, present before humans even occupied the region, played in the construction of collective identity. I develop an interpretive approach that pays special attention to Indigenous concepts of ontology, particularly those related to animacy and its transference, and uses the semiosis of American philosopher Charles Peirce to elucidate meaning from deposits of cached objects. The animate qualities assembled through fired clay and chiseled stone at Cerro de la Virgen afforded a ritual pattern that was unique in coastal Oaxaca at the end of the Formative period.
Criticism and Theology
Authors: Stein Walter
Published: August 2024

The special excitement that a layman like myself, untrained in the disciplines of theology, may find in the proposed seminar is inseparable from special difficulties and dangers. It is not merely that the task of thinking about such a course presses uncomfortably upon one's own equipment, but that there is here so little experience to draw on for nourishment or correction.
The Nature of Christian Worship
Authors: Milner Paulinus
Published: August 2024

Men of all ages and of every civilization have felt the need to offer worship to the being or beings on whom they acknowledge dependence. Their worship usually takes the form of animal sacrifices, the offering of food and drink and sacred meals, all of which are accompanied by dances, hymns and prayers, and regulated by the observance of sacred seasons and holidays. This is the pattern of what we call religion. It is the way in which man responds to the idea of the ‘sacred’, to the terrifying appeal of that aweful otherness of the being he believes to govern his existence. From the anthropologist's point of view Christian worship, in spite of all its distinctive traits, is one more manifestation of general religious behaviour. There is no need for believing Christians to run away from such a point of view. In spite of divine revelation and in spite of the institution of Christ, our habits of worship remain very human phenomena. In an age where the reasonableness of religious behaviour is widely challenged and rejected, it would be very foolish for Christians to forget this fact.
Dom John Chapman's Spiritual Letters
Authors: Walter Julian
Published: August 2024

In my first article I suggested that the reader of Dom John's spiritual letters lost much because they are not arranged chronologically, I suggested that he should begin with the first three letters to a Jesuit, in which Dom John developed his rounded theological theory of the world, and then attempted to outline this theory; its outstanding characteristics seemed to me to be the importance given to God's will, both as ‘permissive’ and as expressing his good pleasure, and the importance given to contingency. In this second article I propose to follow the development of Dom John's theory and practice of contemplative prayer. In a final article I hope to be able to show how Dom John's study of de Caussade's writings enabled him to coordinate his spiritual life with his theological theory.

Towards the end of the long letter written to his Jesuit friend expounding his theological theory, Dom John said: ‘I always tell people that our spiritual life must be managed like the War Office on business principles.
The Way, the Truth, and the Life
Authors: Catherine
Published: August 2024

Theology, bible and liturgy are coming together at last. The modern renewal is a glorious new manifestation of the risen Christ in and through his Church. Nevertheless, there is still much to be done in bringing about a really vital Christ-centred orientation in the lives of all. We need to find Christ not only at mass and in the sacraments but in every condition and circumstance of our daily living. We must learn to give every aspect of our lives a sacramental character, an act of worship in Christ to God. What is important is not so much that we say our prayers, but that we become ourselves a living prayer. ‘Present your bodies as a sacrifice, living, holy, pleasing to God—your spiritual service. And be not conformed to this world, but be transformed in the newness of your mind, that you may discern what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God’ (Rom. 12. 1-2).
Suffer the Little Children
Authors: Campbell Duncan
Published: August 2024

There is no mere mischievous intent in using for title part of the New Testament words about children, as amusingly translated; but a wish to deal helpfully, let's hope amusingly, and insist un-mischievously, with the problem of bringing children to their religion.

We must be aware of prickling, hindering difficulties at once. A priest without any of the responsibilities and therefore any idea of the responsibilities of day-to-day handling of children isn't on first view the one qualified to write about it. Any excursions of his among them in family or school are, he must remember, always special occasions, often prepared-for events, with an excitement and a response at least different from normal. He will, however, be aware, if only dimly, of what underlies the orderliness and respectful attention he meets; the discipline (or threat of force, to you) that may keep family or school from bedlam, but certainly can make nonsense of what might be said, in mere sentiment and simplicity, about religion, as anything else.
What is the Church?—VII
Authors: McCabe Herbert
Published: August 2024

Some people think that what is called the First Epistle of St Peter is not a letter but an address given by the leader of the first Christian bishops to a group of men and women who had just been baptized. Certainly a good deal of it is devoted by St Peter to an explanation of what it means to have become a Christian:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were people but now you are God's people… (I Peter 2.9-10.)
Lay Spirituality
Authors: Alexander Alex
Published: August 2024

In these days when the part to be played by the laity in the revitalising of the life and apostolate of the Church is becoming increasingly emphasised, it may be of some value to examine lay spirituality in its present form, in order to analyse the extent to which the spiritual life of lay men and women is in fact being formed in the Church, to discover how far defects in this formation exist and how far they are remediable, and to make some suggestions for the leading of at least a section of this vast potential of men and women to a deeper personal contact with God, and consequently to a more fruitful service of their brethren.
Catholics and Friends
Authors: Campbell Helen
Published: August 2024

In Northern Ireland, where I have grown up and lived and worked the barriers separating Catholics and Protestants have made any kind of constructive encounter between them almost impossible. In the late 1950's there were some signs here and there that a few Protestants and Catholics were at least prepared to look at one another over the fences of deep-seated fear and distrust, but the winds of change had not then begun to blow. In the last brief year or two the God-given inspiration of Pope John has breathed its influence on a world of Christian people ready to listen, to try to understand and to accept a new attitude of mind and spirit.
What is the Church?—VIII
Authors: McCabe Herbert
Published: August 2024

In this series of articles I have been considering different aspects of the Church, in particular seeing how it is constituted by the sacraments. In this final article I shall look at the theology of death, judgement, and the life to come, in order to set out the end for which the Church exists. Christians and humanists are in agreement about so much—at any rate one kind of Christian and one kind of humanist are in agreement about so much, that it is worth while pointing to an issue which absolutely divides them. It seems to me that the opposition between the two views of man is most sharply brought out in their attitudes towards death. You may feel this is an unfair choice of battlefield because in tact humanists hardly have an attitude to death. They haven't thought much about it, whereas Christians have thought rather a lot about it. But this very fact is the first point of difference between us: Christians think that nothing in life matters more than death, whereas humanists don't attach any special significance to it.
The Conscience of the Church
Authors: Coulson John
Published: August 2024

It is a reasonably fair statement to say that much of the suspicion with which the laity are regarded by many of the clergy is a hangover from the Catholic suspicion of Protestantism with its emphasis upon lay participation and its origins in lay protest. The Catholic student who wishes to understand the place of the laity in the Roman Church is faced with no easy task; he finds himself on the frontiers of Catholic theology in which even theologians as eminent as Congar and Rahner are unable to provide him with a clear and unambiguous analysis.
Jewish Sabbath and Christian Sunday
Authors: Robinson Bernard P.
Published: August 2024

There is a great movement of rapprochement taking place in the world today, not only between Christian and Christian, but also between Christian and Jew. More has been written on ecumenical work among Christians than on the Christian-Jewish dialogue, which is yet in its infancy and is perhaps regarded with the same half-conscious suspicion and diffidence that the Christian unity movement at first aroused; but the most recent news from Vatican II shows that the relation of the Church to the Synagogue is at last receiving serious attention.
New Testament Studies
Authors: Houlden J. L.
Published: August 2024

It may be no accident that the examiners in the Honour School of Theology at Oxford commonly find that the worst performance in the examination is in the paper on the Four Gospels. If this is a symptom that candidates approach that paper with a certain diffidence, it is not too difficult to find an explanation. For among all the subjects which are usually included under the term ‘theology’, the study of the New Testament and in particular the study of the gospels is the one where the committed Christian is likely to find both his chief joys and his deepest sorrows. We hope to indicate the joys before we have finished, but we shall begin with the sorrows.
The History of Doctrine
Authors: de Waal Victor
Published: August 2024

Some of you may remember those morning inspections in the army which were so rigorous that the soldiers would on the night before have the bedclothes perfectly folded, their equipment perfectly laid out and then sleep on the floor. We are familiar with systems of dogmatic theology rather like this—perfectly arranged, logically coherent, and in the last resort separate from life and useless to men, indeed harmful to them in that men are deprived in their attempt to lead a Christian life of precisely that help which Christian doctrine ought to give: just as the purpose of inspection is efficiency, and efficiency is frustrated if inspection results in a soldier's missing a good night's sleep.
The Laity in the Life of the Parish
Authors: Innes Dom Benet
Published: August 2024

Mgr George Talbot thought, in the last century, that the role of the layman was to hunt, fish and shoot and leave the running of the Church to the ecclesiastics. For better or for worse the laity are no longer fully occupied with these agreeable pursuits on their way to heaven and they have had to turn to more worldly affairs, acquiring on the way a variety of skills much needed in the service of the Church. At the same time, the laity have been able to measure the competence of ecclesiastics to manage worldly affairs and they have not invariably been impressed.
The Synoptic Problem: Some Unorthodox Solutions
Authors: Meynell Hugo
Published: August 2024

The expression ‘synoptic orthodoxy’ will be used in what follows to designate the view, first, that the authors of the first and third gospels oth used the second gospel in a form very similar to that in which we have it; second, that they neither of them had access to the other's work, but both used a document consisting mainly of sayings of Christ (Q) as well as the second gospel; and third, that all the gospels were originally written in Greek, however much their language may have been coloured by the Semitic background of the authors or of the good news which they proclaimed. For the moment the first three gospels will be referred to respectively simply as ‘Matthew’, ‘Mark’ and ‘Luke’, without prejudice to the identity of their authors; a more complex terminology will have to be coined when the need arises.
Children at Confession
Authors: Julie Agnes
Published: August 2024

We all know that the essential element for a good confession is sorrow for sin, and it is a striking thought that ‘sorrow, in the Sacrament of Penance is as indispensible for the Sacrament as water is for Baptism, or as bread is for the Holy Eucharist'. We all connect baptism with water, but does the word ‘sorrow’ spring to our minds as easily when we speak of the sacrament of penance? It would seem not, for we speak of going to confession and of stressing the telling of the tale of our sins, yet without this interior attitude of sorrow and repentance there is no sacrament; the words of absolution are pronounced, but without sorrow they are not efficacious; no venial sin can be forgiven without repentance, no bishop, no pope can help. Even Christ himself cannot help us if we reject his offer. In this sacrament, therefore, it is the right attitude of repentance that is so important.
Congregation or Aggregation?
Authors: Lawlor Monica
Published: August 2024

In the collective worship of the Church we have the most profound expression of the life of the Christian community—it is easy to say this but much less easy to feel or observe it. It is widely acknowledged that there has been a drift away from any social significance in, for example, the mass. It is seen as an obligation, a slot machine service for the individual, a collective but hardly communal form of worship. Many people who are aware of this deplore such a state of affairs; others feel that this is the way it should be, it is efficient and suitably formal; still others feel that all is not well but dislike the proposed remedies more than the disease.
St Augustine on the Trinity—V
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

The three-penny Catechism of Christian Doctrine (1958 edition) has two questions, 29 and 30, on ‘the likeness to the Blessed Trinity in the soul’. They state that ‘there is this likeness to the Blessed Trinity in my soul; that as in one God there are three Persons, so in my one soul there are three powers. The three powers of my soul are my memory, niy understanding and my will’. This is an echo, but a seriously distorted one, of Augustine's teaching about the image in the De Trinitate, especially in books ix and x, which we will be examining in this article. The distortion is curiously ancient, not to say inveterate; it is to be found in the Sentences of Peter Lombard, the twelfth century work which was to remain the standard theological text-book of the schools of the sixteenth century and beyond, and although it was explicitly corrected by St Thomas, here it is, as brazen as ever, in the catechism of the twentieth century.
Prayer: Wisdom and Love
Authors: G.H.
Published: August 2024

Prayer in all its fullness is nothing else than making oneself open to God. This sounds very simple, but it is hardly an answer to the question ‘What is prayer?’ It is merely the start of the answer. What then is being open to God, and how does one make oneself open to God? Perhaps the best way for us to begin is by our considering the two most fundamental acts that man performs. Because he is man, and not animal, his most fundamental, most characteristic acts spring from his rational nature. Using a form of expression which is not fundamental, but which is nevertheless deep rooted, we say that these two most characteristic activities of man are those of his mind and his heart. With his mind he understands, and with his heart he loves. Being open to God, then, is having one's mind open to God and having one's heart open to God.
St Bridget of Sweden
Authors: Mummery Michael
Published: August 2024

Medieval saints are often difficult to understand. They flourished at a period when things were so very different from today that, however hard we try, we just cannot enter into their minds. We can't apply their lives to our own. Joan of Arc was inspiring but rather terrifying; some of the early monks did heroically saintly things which just amaze us. This is true, also, to a great extent of the mystics, but there is one big exception to the rule, and that is St Bridget of Sweden. She was, indeed, a mystic—she had more than her fair share of visions—and yet there was much in her life which can appeal to the modern Catholic. That she was an outstanding personality is attested by the great respect that the Swedes still bear for her even though the majority of them have abandoned the faith which was her guiding principle in life.
Saint Dominic
Authors: Watts Felix
Published: August 2024

Doth not wisdom cry aloud and prudence put forth her voice ? Standing in the top of the highest places, by the way, in the midst of the paths, beside the gates of the city, in the very doors she speaketh, saying, O men, to you / call, and my voice is to the sons of men! O little ones, understand subtlety, and ye unwise take notice! Hear, for I will speak of great things, and my lips shall be opened to preach right things. My mouth shall meditate truth and my lips shall hate wickedness. (Prov. viii, 1-7.)

My dear brothers and sisters in St Dominic: I think that the Dominican vocation is the hardest of all, because it is the vocation of an apostle. It is true that all of us suffer from the results of Adam's sin. We can cry with the apostle of the Gentiles, ‘Who is weak, and I am not weak?’ We are all engaged in the struggle with our adversary, who goes about, like a roaring lion, to devour us.
A Note on Conversion
Authors: Congar Yves
Published: August 2024

CONVERSION means by and large changing the main principle which governs the shape and direction of a human life. As such it may be for better or for worse; a man may commit himself to evil, he may decide against God, he can adopt Marxism, if he is a Catholic he may turn to Greek Orthodoxy or to Protestantism, if he is a Christian he may become a Jew or join a religion alien to our tradition. In short, what a psychologist may call a conversion, a moralist or canonist may call an apostasy.

Moreover, a distinction can be drawn between a religious conversion and a moral conversion. The first is a matter of our ideas concerning God and the economy of salvation, a change of mind and an intellectual conviction which usually leads to the acceptance of the teaching of a religious body, and agreement with its practices.
The Catholic Evidence Guild in the Potteries
Authors: Salt Dennis
Published: August 2024

It is 1936—or could be ‘39, or ‘29, or any of the pre-war years. The Catholic Evidence Guild speaker, in the market square, is surrounded by a motley crowd; some noisy, and angrily putting their point of view; others genuinely interested, ftod asking a carefully-thought-out question; some frankly bored, but hoping for blood to enliven the proceedings.

How many of us were familiar with the scene—and few of us realized the full significance of what we saw.

A speaker? Yes, we saw the speaker—heard him too—and were impressed with his lively answer, and obvious desire to impart his own love for his faith, to those who would listen to him. We rather wished that we had his courage, or his gifts, or both. But we didn't see the point of his speaking in the market square; it wasn't quite respectable, not the sort of thing that a real Catholic would drag his faith to.
The Origins and Tendencies of Contemporary Religious Sensibility
Authors: Schillebeeckx H.
Published: August 2024

The survey that follows is translated from the French. It appeared in the Supplément de La Vie Spirituelle, No. 48, for the first quarter of 1959, and has also appeared in our Dutch Dominican contemporary Tijdschrift voor Geestelijk Leven. Fr Schillebeeckx is a Flemish Dominican, a distinguished theologian, and we hope that his assessment of certain continental developments will be of interest to our English readers, though it may appear strange, and not perhaps be found wholly congenial, to those only familiar with our island scene.

TO understand the religious sensibility of our time, we have to return to the forms of Christian life which characterized the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The modern way of living the faith is very largely a reaction against these older forms.
Music and Worship
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

It has been said more than once that ‘Music hath charms'. But it can hardly be said that this charm is encountered as often as it ought to be at Mass or Benediction in our parish churches up and down the country. There is a considerable lack of charm in much of the music connected with the worship of God amongst us. On the other hand, we have to remind ourselves that God has no car for music. He is not disturbed by the secondrate music or the flat notes of the parish choir or the congregational hymns, though he would be disturbed, if we could talk of God in such a way, by any lack of harmony to be found in their hearts. The harmonies most acceptable to God are those of heart and mind running through the congregation of worshippers; and it is hkely that beneath the lack of good music there will lie some very beautiful harmonies indeed.
The Greek Response to the Council
Authors: J-M. d'A.
Published: August 2024

HISTORY has a sphere and the world a place where Athens and Rome seem for ever linked together: civilization and Jerusalem! The civilization of the ancient world owed its spirit to Athens, and its law and order to Rome: both played a part, under the providence of God, in forming that world in which, in the fulness of time, the Word was made flesh. But it was from Jerusalem that both Rome and Athens received the faith of Christ—the faith which is now their life, and in which both were reborn. Since the time of the apostles, these two cities have looked to Jerusalem as the eartlily shadow of their heavenly capital and the cradle of their common hope.

But if that common hope of theirs, in the person of our Saviour, were to return today to the holy city where he prayed and preached and suffered and died for love of us, in order to establish his kingdom in our midst, he would fmd there, alas, no greater unity than he found before.
The Forthcoming Council of the Roman Church
Authors: Florovsky George
Published: August 2024

Fr George Florovsky is a Russian Orthodox theologian of repute, at present teaching at Harvard in the United States. We are happy to print here a translation of an article which first appeared in Russian in the Messenger of the Russian Christian Students Movement, and then in a French translation in Vers L'Unité Chrétienne./rom which this translation is made. We thank the editors of both journals for permission to publish an article so remarkable for its calm objectivity and its understanding and appreciation of the Roman Catholic position.

The Vatican Council (1869-70), by the reckoning of the Roman Church, was the last ‘ecumenical council'. This council has never been formally closed. Its labours were only temporarily interrupted by the pressure of outside events, the occupation of the Papal States and the city of Rome by the troops of nationalist Italy, which at the time appeared to threaten the freedom of the council's decisions and even the freedom of the Church itself.
Religious Poverty and Human Society
Authors: Charpentier René
Published: August 2024

DOES the religious life have anything to say about how men should live in society? People tend to think that anyone entering chooses a life that is, in human terms, a-social. Even religious orders which exist to be of direct use to society only perform their function from outside society, without getting intimately involved with the lives of the people they serve. And today, more than ever, religious are being reproached with this, even by Catholics. Religious life is too ‘other', and religious poverty, in particular, bears slight resemblance to the real poverty in which so many people spend their lives. In fact the religious orders have abandoned the poor and grown indifferent to human misery; it has even been suggested that they aggravate it by their insistent appeals for the means to maintain themselves in their vast establishments. As it stands religious life is not only a-social but quite possibly anti-social as well.
The Good Book
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: August 2024

It is undoubtedly one of the glories of our English language that normal usage, both in speech and in writing, is so frequently in debt to the text of the Bible. It is probably true that the speech of civilised man has for centuries everywhere been greatly influenced by the words of Scripture, but it may perhaps be claimed that this is particularly true of the speech of Englishmen. Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly quoting Scripture, or using phrases or metaphors coming directly from the Bible. Often enough we are unaware that we are quoting the Sermon on the Mount, when we describe someone as the ‘salt of the earth’ (Matt. 5, 13) or ‘a wolf in sheep's clothing’ (7, 15), when we speak of ‘blowing one's own trumpet’ (6, 2), not caring a ‘jot’ or ‘iota’ (5, 18), putting a light ‘under a bushel’ (5, 15), or serving ‘God and mammon’ (6, 24).
The Foundations of Education
Authors: Meath Gerard
Published: August 2024

We are sometimes asked, and we sometimes ask ourselves, ‘What is Dominican education?’ It sounds a foolish and perhaps an arrogant question, as if Dominicans were supposed to possess a secret which made their teaching substantially different from everyone else's. That is not the idea at all. It is simply the question asked by an intelligent parent who is thinking of sending his child to a Dominican school. He knows what is meant by education; the process of equipping children with the means to know, love and serve God, and of developing their power to use these means. Education should produce wise men, naturally and supernaturally. There are many right but different ways of achieving this purpose, and to a great extent these different ways are represented by the different religious orders who teach.
Class Distinction Among our Saints
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: August 2024

One does not need to be a snob to be interested in, or even to admit the existence of, people's different social background or family origins. Moreover, it is even customary to give special credit to the distinguished person who succeeded in spite of“a ‘bad start', to the field-marshal who began in the backstreet and not on the playing-fields of Eton, or to the business magnate who graduated in the cycle-shop and not at the university. Of course all this may have little or nothing to do with sanctity, but when we are considering Dominican Saints (and Beati), in an order where a certain level of education is required in its subjects, to carry out the order's aim, the matter of childhood opportunities does have a certain relevance. The same may be said to some extent of the priesthood in general.
The Spiritual Life of a Mission
Authors: Humphreys Nicholas
Published: August 2024

This article is concerned with the spiritual life of a mission, and. not with the spiritual life of a missionary. That is a different matter. A man may be a saint but yet unsuited to missionary work, as a good concert singer may be unsuited to opera. If the missionary can be both saint and missionary, well and good, but the essential thing is that he be a good missionary, understanding the technique of the work.

What is the root purpose of missionary work? The answer is simple: it is not merely to convert a number of people, to build a school, to teach the children to sing hymns—and wear European clothes?—but to plant the Church. The spiritual life of a mission means the spiritual life of the mystical body, lived by the people there. It means the Church as she is in herself, as the popes have written about her in encyclicals, as the great ages of the Church have known her, and as history has revealed her.
The Transfiguration in the Byzantine Liturgy
Authors: Marinoff Irene
Published: August 2024

The Feast of the Transfiguration on 6th August is one of the major feasts of the Byzantine rite. It is the feast of light and has a significant position in the cycle of the mysteries of Christ. Ontologically speaking it lies between the mystery of the Incarnation, celebrated at Christmas, and the redemptive suffering followed by the Resurrection of Easter Sunday. At Christmas the Eternal Light shone forth in human shape ‘from a virginal cloud'. At Easter he breaks the chains of death and reveals his risen glory. On Thabor he empowers his disciples to recognize him through the veils of flesh.

The Transfiguration comprises all the mysteries of the divine economy, and is an inexhaustible treasure of spiritual wisdom. Already in the first vespers of the ante-feast on 5th August we find the following prayer:

Come let us mount with Jesus in his ascent to the holy mountain, and there hear the voice of the Eternal Father (lit.: who has no beginning), bearing witness by a light cloud and the Holy Ghost to the nature of his Eternal Sonship: illumined in the spirit we shall, in the light, behold the Light.
Sermon for Our Lady's Birthday—II
Authors: Bernard S. T.
Published: August 2024

‘How can that be', said Mary, ‘since I have no knowledge of man?'—and in these words showed herself holy in body and spirit, a virgin without stain and vowed to rem.ain so. The angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Don't question me about it', he said. ‘This plan is far beyond my reach, and no thought of mine can attain it. It is the Holy Spirit, not an angelic spirit, that will come upon you, and you will be overshadowed by the power of the Most High, not by any power of mine.'

Mary must not be content with a place among the angels; the parched earth cries out to her for relief that they could never and she will scarcely have left them behind when she will find what her soul longs for.
The Spirit of God in the Old Testament
Authors: Bourke Joseph
Published: August 2024

Treatises of old testament theology never fail to remind us that ruach, the Hebrew word for ‘spirit', also means ‘wind’ or ‘breath'. Of these three meanings, that of wind appears to have been the most primitive. One can see how natural it is to think of the wind as an act of God. Invisible, immensely powerful and sometimes catastrophic in its effects, it is also of mysterious origin, transcendant and quite uncircurnscribed in its activity. This ‘wind symbolism', primitive though it is, is of permanent theological value. It is to be found in the late and developed theology of Ecclesiastes. ‘Going southwards, turning about northwards, about and about goes the wind’ (i, 6) ‘ … you know not what the way of the wind is’ (xi, 5). In the new testament it is taken up in the teaching of our Lord himself.
The Trinity in the Bullring
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

There are four ways in which a preacher or guild speaker can treat any Christian doctrine: (a) proclaim it; (b) explain it; (c) defend it; (d) prove it. This last way is clearly ruled out where the doctrine of the Trinity or indeed any mystery of faith is concerned, though the temptation to try and prove anything and everything is one to which I suspect the C.E.G. mind, so commonly pre-occupied with apologetics, is peculiarly prone. I think it is very important for the C.E.G. speaker to remind himself constantly that there is a world of difference between an apologetic argument in defence or support of the faith and a proof. An apologetic argument, when addressed at least to the unbeliever, can never be more than persuasive, attractive, suggestive. There can never be any mathematical certainty about it, or an overwhelming weight of evidence, and that is what the word proof normally means to most of us.
The Trinity and the Fathers
Authors: Torbet Ronald
Published: August 2024

In a celebrated passage Gibbon justly remarks that ‘the profane of every age have derided the furious contests which the difference of a single diphthong excited between the Homoousions and the Homoiousions'. But this unfavourable impression of the preoccupations of the early Church has been shared by more than ‘the profane'. In somewhat less amiable terms than Gibbon the equally Olympian figure of Mgr Duchesne speaks with an oddly similar distaste of the dogmatic developments of the first five Christian centuries when he writes: Since the curiosity of men would investigate the mystery of Christ, since the indiscretion of theologians laid on the dissecting-table the Blessed Saviour, who came to be the object of our love and of our imitation rather than of our philosophical investigation, at least the investigation should have been made more peaceably by men of approved competence and prudence, far from the quarrelsome crowd'.
All Things work Together unto Good
Authors: Frederick B. M.
Published: August 2024

Prayer in its specialized sense means turning our hearts and minds to God. Prayer in its widest sense means directing our whole lives to God. Everything falls under this definition: work, play, joy, sorrow, health, sickness, our whole selves and the circumstances in which we live. But if we are to direct our lives to God we must see life as it really is—God's plan to enable us to know, love and serve him in this world and to be happy with him for ever in heaven. Any conflict in our minds here is fatal. “We need to see life as a whole, not divided into watertight compartments of ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ or ‘indifferent', but as God's will being worked out by us, here and now, in everything. It means co-ordinating the bits and pieces that make up everyday lite into one harmonious whole, knit together by the simple desire of pleasing God at all times and seeing his hand in all things.
The Liturgy and Contemplative Prayer
Authors: Sillem Aėlred
Published: August 2024

It is sometimes felt that the inward tendency and logic of liturgical prayer, and those of contemplative prayer, are conflicting, so that these two types of prayer will always attract different temperaments and define different vocations. And indeed, there is an evident divergence between the tendency of contemplative prayer towards simplicity, as the soul is drawn away from multiplicity of concepts and images towards a dry and wordless absorption in God, and the surface multiplicity of the liturgy with its complexities of ceremonial and chant, its elabore ate and absorbing symbolism, its richness of doctrinal content and conceptual teaching. Yet in such a field, personal attraction cannot be the deciding element; it is primarily from the life and living voice of the Church, and only secondarily from the writings of the saints and the masters of the spiritual life, that we must learn the laws of the interior life.
Social Justice
Authors: T.M.D.
Published: August 2024

‘Social Justice’ could hardly be bettered as a phrase: it has a nice, modern ring about it, and no discernible meaning. The modernity of the phrase must, I think, be traced to the word ‘social', because after all ‘justice’ is a very old word, and in any case the modern campaigners do not seem to be so intense about that part of the catch-phrase. We are all, it must be agreed, ‘socialists’ in some sense nowadays, whatever our views on justice may be. It is understandable therefore that in the phrase ‘social justice’ the emphasis will be on ‘social', and that the word ‘justice’ will be added merely for rhythmic reasons. The rather medieval-sounding question—but is not all justice social?—is thus irrelevant from the start; and any attempt to understand how the same groups of people can demand at one and the same time the abolition of the death-penalty and the introduction of birth-control, or can deplore the control of government by capital whilst enthusing about the control of capital by government, would do best not to start from the notion of ‘justice'.
Sheep Among Wolves
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

‘Behold, I send you as sheep among wolves; be you therefore as cunning as serpents and as simple as doves’ (Matt, x, 16).

Our Lord spoke these words to the apostles when he was sending them out for their first piece of apostolic work, and the Dominican order is quite explicitly and openly an apostolic order. It was founded by St Dominic to carry on the work of the apostles, the work of preaching the gospel. All the different branches of the order, the second and third orders as much as the first, are all caught up in this apostolic function, but of course in different ways and degrees. In the fullest way it is the priests and brothers of the first order who are given this apostolic function. Officially and authoritatively it is our business, not yours, to preach the gospel by the spoken and written word and by all our priestly activities.
Hermits and Canonical Status
Authors: Winandy Jacques
Published: August 2024

The present code of canon law makes no mention of hermits. However, it would be wrong to interpret this silence as a condemnation. At the time when the code was compiled, indeed practically since the French Revolution, the solitary life had all but disappeared from the western Church. Those few who followed it, if there were any at all, did not justify any particular legislation. The Church had no intention of making laws for a manner of religious life that no longer existed and, from all appearances, no one had any intention of reviving.

But contrary to all one would have thought, since the last war the eremetical life has again come into favour. In many places but especially in the monastic orders rather clear tendencies and desires have arisen for this ancient form of asceticism and for this way of giving oneself to God. And some of these aspirations have been realized with an admirable simplicity and seriousness.
Holiness and Perfection
Authors: Lewry Osmund
Published: August 2024

Israel's first call to holiness was full of the awe of Sinai, that dread meeting with God on the mountain:

I am the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that I might be your God.

You shall be holy, because I am holy. (Lev. xi, 45-46.)

So far from being ‘a serious call to a devout life', this shattering contact with the ‘wholly other’ is the very source of their life as a people. They live constantly in the memory of this encounter; they respond to its claims with a fanatical insistence on their separateness. The Red Sea divides them now from a profane world; they have been brought out of Egypt to be shattered and remoulded around this experience. God has spoken to them out of the thunders and lightnings of the holy mountain, and in that moment of history they have been set apart; still trembling in the grip of that fearful revelation Israel grows to nationhood as a chosen people.
Lives of Saints for Children
Authors: Haughton Rosemary
Published: August 2024

In talking about lives of saints for children, I have divided the subject up into three sections according to age. This is arbitrary, but I had to divide it somehow. The first section is about children under seven, the second from seven to twelve, and the third from thirteen to sixteen or seventeen, or perhaps for boys a bit later. There are of course enormous changes withio these age ranges, but the great upheaval caused by the dawn ot reason and conscience, and the still greater changes that take place at puberty are some justification for this. It is clear that a lot oj what I say applies to all the groups, and that all such general divisions are to some extent misleading and annoying, but could see no way of avoiding them without chaos.

The interest of a child in saints can be said to begin only when he first asks ‘What is a saint?’. Children between four and seven are of an age to enjoy stories about saints in the same way that they enjoy stories about witches, princesses and dragons.
The Making of an Image
Authors: Clark Michael
Published: August 2024

Christian art in its broad sense is generally taken to mean. any creative work done by an artist who is a ticul professing Christian. Today I wish to consider a particular aspect of Christian art, that is work carried out for, and applied to churches, chapels, or schools, with particular reference to images of the Saints.

In the first place let us consider the attitude of mind the artist should have in his approach to the problems of ecclesiastical art. It almost goes without saying that the Christian artist should have a sound knowledge of his Faith, and that he should be to some extent aware of contemporary Christian life and thought. In fact the visual arts must be part of this ever developing and active intellectual life of the Church, if they are to rise above the general level of the stagnant trade tawdriness of the work in many of our churches.