bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Tragedy of James Joyce
Authors: Birrell Anthony
Published: July 2007

Mr. Eliot’s criticism of Joyce has been of two kinds; moral and technical. Moral, in such phrases as ‘the most ethically orthodox of the more eminent men of my time ‘and ‘an extremely serious and improving writer,’ technical, as in the introductory note to the present selection, where the reader is told that ‘Stuart Gilbert’s Ulysses is the standard analysis of the structure of that work; and An Exagmination of ‘Work in Progress ... is a useful introduction to Finnegan’s Wake.’ In all cases a moral judgement in literary criticism is more valuable than a technical one because it is more inclusive. In criticism of Joyce a moral judgement is the only judgement because a technical judgement is not only irrelevant, it is misleading. It is misleading because it distracts from an attempt to reply to another, and a very different, moral judgement—D. H. Lawrence’s ‘My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is ! Nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness,—what old and hard-worked staleness, masquerading as the all-new! ‘It distracts from a firm realization that Finnegan’s Wake is gibberish.

Finnegan’s Wake fails even in Mr. Eliot’s own minimal requirement of literature—‘to communicate before it is understood.’ The fact is so obvious that it is rarely stated. The function of an ‘introducer ‘of Joyce should not be to refer the reader to An Exagmination of Work in Progress but should be to explain to him how the change from the earlier to the later prose took place’. Such an explanation is contained in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, in a passage which Mr. Eliot includes in his selection. Stephen is replying to Cranly, who has been questioning him why he left the Church : ‘Look here, Cranly, he said.
Thomism and Affective Knowledge (III)
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

We have seen, in very general terms, what St. Thomas understands by ‘knowledge.’ We must now try and discover something of what he means by ‘inclination,’ ‘connaturality’ ‘affect’ —with a view, at long last, to trying to understand what he means by knowledge ‘by connaturality,’ ‘by inclination’ or affectiva. It will be convenient to introduce the subject by a preliminary attempt to remove a common misapprehension.

‘Knowledge,’ we have seen, is that kind of being or reality which certain creatures are found to possess, whereby they transcend in various ways and degrees the limitations of their own identity and in a certain sense become another. But this identity they do not thereby lose; they becorpe the other, have the ‘being ‘of the other, without ceasing to be themselves. It is important to remember that such knowledge and its processes and products are but a means, an instrument. Thought is the means whereby a subject attains that which is not itself without losing its own selfhood; that whereby an J becomes a That without ceasing to be I. All our concepts, ideas, judgments, reasonings; all our organisation of these in sciences and philosophical systems, are quo and in quo, and not quod; they are that whereby, with which and in which we know, not that which we know. Words—terms and propositions and syllogisms and the books that contain them—are, in their turn, but further means and instruments whereby these means and instruments are communicated from one mind to another. They are signs of signs; and woe betide us if we fall into the academicism which mistakes the signs for the realities they signify.
Catholics and Protestants in Germany
Authors: Hennig John
Published: July 2007

According to statistics lately published and confirmed through investigations made among prisoners-of-war, ninety-three per cent, of the German people are still members of Christian denominations. Whilst it is hardly necessary to discuss the political aspects of this fact, I should like to make a few points regarding practical religious life in Germany which might contribute to an appreciation of that figure.

In justification of my venture, I may say that I am an off-spring of a family which for several generations past has played a prominant part in German Protestant church life and scholarship. I myself, through the study of Protestant theology, have become a Catholic. Educated in a purely Protestant part of Germany, I lived and worked for the last seven years previous to my emigration in one of the Catholic centres of the country. Living as I do at present in, I daresay, fairly close contact with Catholic life in these countries, I feel that perhaps the most important point in appreciating the religious situation in Germany is an understanding of the relations between Protestants and Catholics in that country. I must confine myself to some points which incoherent in themselves are all still up-to-date.

Roughly speaking and from a merely statistical view-point, Germany can be subdivided into a Protestant North and a Catholic South and West. However, whole provinces of Southern Germany, such as Wiirttemberg and the Palatinat, are predominantly and most actively Protestant, whilst Miinsterland, Ermland and Silesia have been, especially during the last twenty years, leading centres of Catholic life in Germany.
On the Re‐Education of German Youth
Authors: Graef H. C.
Published: July 2007

Among the causes which have contributed to the tragedy of modern German history the decline of family life may safely be considered one of the most important factors. This decline has, indeed, affected almost all European countries, but, if Russia be excepted, none so deeply and powerfully as Germany. It may, perhaps, sound strange to non-Catholics that the condition of a healthy family life should be the esteem of virginity : for the Church has often been falsely accused of despising marriage, because she demands celibacy from her priests and religious. But even in the ancient Western world the family was nowhere stronger than in pagan Rome, where the Vestal virgins tended the sacred fire, the symbol of the home, from which springs all true civilization. It is, therefore, not surprising that the beginning of the disruption of German family life can be traced to Luther who, himself a monk who had broken his vow of chastity in order to marry a runaway nun, to the scandal even of many of his devoted followers, officially sanctioned the bigamous marriage of Philip of Hesse. The case of Luther may serve to illustrate the fact that, if virginity is not valued, there is no reason why continence should be esteemed in a wife or husband, except perhaps in the former to ascertain the parentage of the children.

But there is another side of the matter. St. Thomas links virginity closely to the contemplative life. ‘The end,’ he says, ‘which renders virginity praiseworthy, is that one may have leisure for Divine things.’ And moreover the integrity of the chaste mind is necessary for the loving perception of truths that are beyond reason. The Germans are a naturally contemplative race—the names of St. Hildegard, Master Eckhart, Tauler and Suso are ample evidence of that.
A Sermon for the Harvest
Authors: Goode Bernard
Published: July 2007

The Lord God formed man from the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul. . . . And the Lord God took man and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it and keep it.’—Book of Genesis, c. 1.

The Land ! The very word strikes a chord in the heart of every true Englishman. It brings to mind a vision of life healthy, in harmony with nature, happy. It makes the heart glow with wonder at the fertile goodness and the mysterious beauty of the earth. It leads the soul to faith in God whose perfect Holiness is reflected and made manifest in the harmony, goodness and beauty of nature.

The paradise of pleasure in which grew all manner of trees fair to behold and pleasant to eat; in the midst of which also grew the tree of life, is no legend. It was a Golden Age at the outset of human history when as God told Job : ‘The morning stars praised me together, and all the sons of God made a joyful melody.’ Deep down in the memory of mankind, and therefore in each one of us, is the sense of a holiness that was once our happiness, a holiness that was a harmony between man and the earth which God gave him and between man and the heaven God opened to him, a holiness that was a fulfilment of the Destiny God set us. And if this deep memory has left a glow from the past, surely it has also given a hope for the future, a yearning in us all to regain that health, to re-establish that harmony and to recover that holiness in which alone lies our happiness.
Is There a Christian Pacifism?
Authors: Woollen C. J.
Published: July 2007

The perusal of a copy of The Christian Pacifist which seems to have something of a Christian inspiration suggests the question ‘Is there a Christian Pacifism? ‘The issue for May, 1944, written before the Second Front was an actuality, contained this passage: ‘Through the deafening noise and blinding smoke let us try to see what is happening. What really are these brave events? Homes stricken desolate by grief! Children for ever rendered fatherless with all the thwarting and distorting consequences in character! The most precious creations of affection and long care smashed clumsily to formless fragments ! God’s noblest works defaced and fouled! The very life-blood of the family of nations poured out in mad and irremediable havoc? And a great heap of bitter hatred and lust for vengeance towering still higher than the material ruins ! Here is fear exalted over faith; evil worshipped in the place of good.’

Though this apostrophe may have a tinge of that ‘sentimental pacifism ‘which Pope Pius XI. warned us must not be confused with the ‘Peace of Christ,’ yet it has also some resemblance to papal exhortations themselves, especially those of our Holy Father Pope Pius XII. during the war. It even contains in brief his reasons for appealing for peace. But like all arguments that are not quite in tune with sound philosophy, it begs the question, and that in its concluding sentence.
The French Canadians
Authors: Eustace C. J.
Published: July 2007

French Canada is a decided asset to Canada, and the existence of the French Canadians of great political and cultural significance to America. French-speaking Canadians overflow the boundaries of the Province of Quebec, spill down into the New England States, down into the Provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island, and are increasing in ever growing numbers across the broad top of Ontario, and along the vast flat spaces of the Prairie Provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. They are amongst the few peoples in the world who have assimilated western culture and have an increasing birth-rate. From the comparatively small group of French emigrants who established themselves in Lower Canada three hundred years ago, the French Canadians today number over three and a half millions. This phenomenal increase is so extraordinary that it is worth pointing out that at one time the French Canadians had the highest birth-rate in the world. It has fallen much lower in recent years although it is still relatively much higher than that of its English-speaking neighbour Province of Ontario.
On Poetic Knowledge
Authors: Maritain Jacques
Published: July 2007

The history of the word ‘poetry’ seems to me most instructive. Only quite recently has it begun to mean poetry, in our sense; formerly it meant art, the activity of the productive reason, and in this sense it was discussed by Aristotle and Antiquity and by our own classical period. One might say that the word had gradually threaded its way through the body, so to say, of poetry and reached at last into its soul, to the point where it touches the spirit; so that from the metaphysician’s point of view the perspectives have altered with time. This is the natural outcome of the fact that poetry has only recently, in the poets at least, begun to reflect on itself explicitly and deliberately. The reflection, once begun, is endless.

An increasing consciousness of the self is one of the main laws governing human history, and it arises directly from the nature of spiritual activity. According to traditional philosophy the mind is characterised by its ability to make a complete return to itself; the essential thing being not the return, but the grasp or penetration of self by self which accompanies it. Reflexion is of the essence of the spirit; it grasps itself by itself and passes right through itself. Hence, in culture, the general importance of the phenomenon of becoming conscious.
Victorinus and the Imago Dei
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

The doctrine of man as the Imago Dei has been brought out into the forefront of theological speculation in recent years, especially by Emil Brunner and Karl Barth; and Catholic theologians fully admit that Christian tradition needs to be re-explored before an adequate theological statement can be made in the face of the existentialist writers. The great problem, of course, is how can the two apparently irreconcilable trends in Christian tradition be synthesised without prejudice to the truth which each enunciates. How, in short, can the classic theory of St. Augustine be reconciled with the far too little known Imago Christi stress of Tertullian and St. Irenaeus? The latter school taught that man was made to the image of God in the sense that he was made after the pattern of the Christ coming in the flesh to redeem mankind : this school therefore strongly stresses the corporal likeness as a basic element in the Image doctrine. St. Augustine on the other hand, basing himself on a subtle analysis of the nature of the ‘mens,’ contends that man is made to the image of the Trinity itself, and carries in his soul a reflection of the divine life. This theory is then concerned to emphasise man’s spiritual nature as the most important element in the Imago doctrine.
The Unity of Europe
Authors: Leibholz G.
Published: July 2007

Total war has clearly shown the interdependence of all European countries. It has taught us that a European country cannot save itself by geography, valour, or neutrality. If a few isolated European countries have been able during the war to maintain their existence by declaring themselves neutral it is solely due to the fact that Nazism and Fascism have lost the war before they had succeeded in accomplishing their final aims.

Great Britain, with her Empire and possessions scattered throughout the world, is closely bound up with the interests and aims of the non-European continents. But this does not alter the fact that this country and the Empire can no longer dissociate themselves from the fate of Europe and that an isolation policy—such as was advocated before the war by certain responsible political circles—has now become an inner impossibility. If any extra proof is needed it can be seen in the invasion of the Continent by the allied nations and in the use of the newly-invented technical weapons. These have proved how vital it is for Great Britain to prevent any potentially hostile power from using the ports of the Lower countries and France for an attack on her. Beyond that, we must reckon with the perfection of these weapons in future. Nobody can predict whether one day it will not be possible to send flying bombs from Central or even East Europe.
‘The Form of the Church’
Authors: Brocklehurst Mark
Published: July 2007

It is significant of the better relations existing between bodies of Christians that theological differences can be discussed without the bitterness that was one time so prevalent. This Anglican book is a model of the way in which such discussions should be conducted. We must recognise and acknowledge the sympathy and humility with which he puts forward his views. The points of difference we develop can contribute to the discussion only in so far as we make that recognition, and acknowledge ourselves to be as individuals poor vehicles of the Divine Truth.

‘The essential forms of the Church,’ says Fr. Hebert, ‘mark out its shape or structure, by mediating to us the Redemption on which the Church’s existence is based . . . Old Israel, the ecclesia of the old covenant, was based on the redemption by which God delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt . . . The Church of Christ is based on the Redemption effected by His death and resurrection, on the New Covenant inaugurated thereby, and on His establishment of it as the New Israel. Both the Old and the New look back to a Sacred History, a Heilsgeschichte, an epic story of God’s saving work. The Bible tells the story, the Creed sums it up, as a Gospel-message, the Sacraments set it forth, the Apostles proclaim it to men. There could be no such essential forms if Christianity consisted essentially of moral and religious ideals, nor yet if its essential proclamation were that there is an Inner Light. There must be such essential forms for a faith that rests on a Sacred . History ‘(p. 14).
On Poetic Knowledge (III)
Authors: Maritain Jacques
Published: July 2007

The experience of Rimbaud was too drastic to serve as an object-lesson. In spite of him and Une Saison en Enfer the same error went on—an error of aim or direction, a false deflection of energy; and this despite the fiercest and most vaunted efforts to see more deeply into poetic consciousness. But now there was to be no fullstop; now the journey, it was presumed, was to go on and on to the world’s end and beyond ; down a track that led nowhere, in a train that could not move. And this, in a way, can be done : in a sort of dream, thanks to a sort of magic.

Because it tries to make use of poetry to fulfil man’s desires and his search for knowledge and his hunger for the absolute, surrealism, has for us a special historical importance.

Remember the remark of Marcel Raymond—to which I have already referred—’ to declare the game not yet over, that all might still be saved from the wreck, was the essential message of surrealism.’ But in fact the surrealists too fell victims to poetic knowledge. At first they were above all concerned to rediscover what Raissa Maritain, in the first of the essays in this book, calls ‘That river in the mind underlying all our ordinary activities, that deep, authentic indefinable reality, perceived by the soul from time to time when she opens herself to the unknown and is revivified thereby.’ And I doubt not they did enjoy some moments of high ecstasy (in the natural order) when the soul ‘bathes once more in the spring of her being, is refreshed and strengthened,’ by the poetic experience. No need to refuse them this much good fortune.
Dr. Jalland's Book on the Papacy
Authors: Dvornik F.
Published: July 2007

We may now turn to some particular problems in which we feel more at home. In the fourth chapter we are given a lucid account of the events that led up to the Edict of Milan, but it raises one regret that Professor H. Grégoire of Brussels has not yet published his work on Constantine the Great, which was announced a few years ago. But there is a study published by the same author about 1930 in a Belgian review not widely known (information can be found in the Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique), where regarding Constantine’s policy he expresses views that alter in many ways the whole aspect of the problem and which Church historians would do well to study carefully.

The explanation of how the emperor came to the decision of convoking an Oecumenical Council makes plausible reading, but the author has evidently missed my study on the authority of the State in the Oecumenical Councils in the translation which apeared in 1934 in the ‘Christian East.’ There he would have found indications that would have facilitated his own researches and helped him to get a better understanding of the whole problem of Constantine, the Council of Nicea, the presidency of the Council and the squaring of historical facts with the theological conclusions on the papal primacy. Constantine simply borrowed the conciliar procedure from the proceedings of the senatorial sittings. Just as the Emperor presided in person or by deputy over the sessions of the Senate, led the debates and appointed their subjects, so he acted at the Councils, which were run like an ecclesiastical senate; but as the Emperor took ‘no part in the senatorial voting, so he abstained from voting with the bishops and he abode by their decisions.
A Man Without A Mask
Authors: Cleeves Janet
Published: July 2007

This is Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark, for to write, as does Mr. Bronowski, about William Blake without reference to his religious and visionary experiences is to leave out almost Blake himself. This is a pity, for the book is freshly written and far more readable than the works of many would be interpreters of the writer of the Prophetic Books.

‘How many have fallen there!

They stumble all night over bones of the dead ....

And wish to lead others when they should be lead. ‘

Of late years a host of writers have arisen who are, as Mr. Bronowski states, more interested in the mysticism than in the mystic, Blake. He himself goes to the other extreme, and while having a real feeling for the man, Blake, attempts to explain away his visionary writings by stating that these were written in cypher to avoid censorship. The prophetic Books are accounts of things seen in vision. They are concerned with the nature and destiny of the human soul. They mark a sharp departure, an entirely different set of problems, from , those of the unfinished French Revolution of which Mr. Bronowski regards them as a continuation. By 1797 Blake had finished with Pitt and politics. He saw the evils of his day as symptoms of spiritual dry-rot and not as economic problems. Had they been written in the most straightforward language he would have had nothing to fear from the keenest censorship. Incidentally, we consider that in view of the shortness of the book, undue space and importance is given to the abortive trial for sedition of 1804.
The Master Mariner
Authors: Knox Ronald
Published: July 2007

Quam sine fictione didici, et sine invidia communico, et honestatem illius non abscondo; infinitus enim thesaurus est hominibus.—’ The lessons she taught me are lessons honestly won, shared without stint, openly proclaimed; a treasure men will find inexhaustible ‘(Wis. vii).

At any time during the early years of this century, if you consulted Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and turned up the reference under ‘Angelic Doctor,’ you would read this : ‘Angelic Doctor, The, Thomas of Aquino, so called because he discussed how many angels could dance on the point of a pin.’ Whether, in fact, any schoolmen did devote attention to this rather specialised subject, I have often tried to discover, but have never managed to trace the legend further back than Tristram Shandy, where I strongly suspect that it originated. I only use that quotation here to draw your attention to a singular fact; namely that in the last twenty-five years or so the great saint whom we commemorate to-day has, in a way, come into his own—even in these days of loose thought, and of unlaborious reading. To-day, even Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable has been, corrected, and wherever you meet a man who professes interest in things of the mind, you will find that St. Thomas means something to him. Possibly he will use the name ‘Aquinas,’ to indicate that this is not an author with whom he is on friendly terms; almost certainly he will admit that he has never tried to read ‘Aquinas.’ But there will be respect in his voice; he will know that he is referring, not to a medieval quibbler, but to an author whose works are one of the milestones in the history of human thought.
The Experimental Method in the Middle Ages
Authors: Taylor F. Sherwood
Published: July 2007

It is probable that since the beginning of civilisation there has never been a high culture without some kind of systematic study of matter. The Egyptians and Babylonians were metallurgists, architects, physicians, astronomers and mathematicians. The Greeks inherited some part of their tradition and transformed it from technique to philosophy. A scientific world-view emerged; theoretical systems of the sciences and natural histories, good and bad, expressed this view and the facts which it attempted to explain; and the corpus of Greek scientific writings remained as the chief inspiration and fountain of science until the seventeenth century, nor is its influence extinct to-day. Between 150 b.c. and 450 a.d. Greek science gradually died, but the record of it, preserved in Greek manuscripts, remained known to those who spoke that tongue. Thus in the sixth and seventh centuries there was considerable philosophical and scientific activity in Byzantium, Syria and Persia, and this later inspired the culture of Islam; but since very little had been translated into Latin, the knowledge of science in the Western world sunk to a low ebb.
The Religious Situation in ‘Eastern Poland’
Authors: Attwater Donald
Published: July 2007

The annexation by Soviet Russia of certain territory which after 1920 had again been part of the Polish State is now a thing not only accomplished in fact but recognised by those powers strong enough to have a say in the matter. We have heard a great deal about it (and doubtless shall hear more) from the several sides and from various aspects. The only people whose views we have not been able to hear are those most affected, the inhabitants of ‘Eastern Poland ’; the great powers have not asked them to express their choice.

It is not easy to estimate what would have been the result of a free plebiscite (a really free plebiscite would probably have been un attainable in the circumstances). The people east of the Curzon Line are mixed, and accurate statistics of the ethnic elements are not easy to come by. A Polish estimate (quoted by Konovalov in Russo-Polish Relations, Cresset Press), based on the 1931 Polish census, gives a total population of 10¾ millions, of whom 36.4 per cent, were Poles, 40.6 per cent. Ukrainians, 11.8 per cent. Byelorussians, 8.4 per cent. Jews and 2.8 per cent, others. These groups are largely, but not entirely, localised : Byelorussians in the north, Ukrainians in the south, Poles in both; in the provinces of Stanislawow, Volhynia and Polesia, Poles are a minority of under 25 per cent.
A ‘Communitarian’ State
Authors: Polimeni E.
Published: July 2007

During 1942 a treatise, written, printed and edited in a French prisoners of war camp in Germany was then circulated in France through the agency of repatriated compatriots. It was the first of a series to be known as Les Cahiers des Captifs composed by Frenchmen whose enforced captivity had led them to alter or modify their pre-war views regarding government. One of these volumes is entitled Les Fondements de la Communauté Française—an attempt to outline the composition, function and powers of a State based on what may be called ‘communitarian’ principles. The treatise is divided into two sections, the first part dealing with basic principles and the second part with their organic applications.

In this article I make no attempt to transcribe the detailed working out of the plans proposed, but only to give the main reflections of this prisoner of war who believes firmly in the resurgence of his country provided she can achieve that national solidarity and cohesion she came so near losing.

To-day France is ripe for a new venture, and yet what she needs is to restate the old ideal which at bottom has always been treasured by the French people in all epochs of their history, at first instinctively, and then consciously—the ‘Communitarian ideal.’ In the 19th century France made the mistake of trying to restore a merely traditional past followed by the other mistake of transposing on to her soil institutions which were alien to her history, her national temperament and her genius.
An Anatomy of Unbelief
Authors: Sarmiento E.
Published: July 2007

It is only with great diffidence that the following considerations on a difficult subject are put forward in the hope of being of possible assistance to others. By unbelief is meant the initial reluctance to accept the doctrines of Christianity as well as the disinclination to retain them that often comes upon those who devote themselves to an intellectual life. This unbelief occurs especially during the formative period, usually, but not necessarily, the years spent by young people at a university, or the time immediately following. The purpose of this essay is to try to isolate the various elements in modern life that tend to disturb settled faith in Christianity, and very briefly to indicate some way of trying to counteract them. Many of the causes are common to all periods of history, some are proper to our own age or have unusual strength now. This account does not pretend to be more than a limited and partial sketch.

Behind every problem of modern instability there lies, first, a fundamental insecurity in social life, affecting all of us in many and sometimes unsuspected ways. This insecurity is manifested in the multiplicity and diversity of moral and political, personal and emotional standards all round ; these react in their turn to make more acute the basic insecurity in the soul—it may sometimes amount to a positive fear of life.
Psychotherapy and Ethics
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

The whole question of the moral aspect of psychotherapy is, it seems to me, a vast and intricate one, and one which has as yet been given little serious and thoroughgoing consideration. This is due in part to the fact that contemporary psychotherapeutic theory and practice is in so variegated, amorphous and contradictory a state that few generalisations about it are possible, let alone any critical examination of it as a whole in the light of any body of ethical principles. It is possible, indeed, to take the written works of a given writer on psychological theory and methods and to subject them to ethical scrutiny, and a certain amount of work of varying merit has been done in this direction; work which is itself, perhaps, by no means impervious to serious criticism. But even such work as this, within its own inevitable limitations, is not always very practically helpful. The theoretical expositions of psychologists and the accounts which they give of their methods are not infrequently both better and worse than their actual practice; and in any case do not afford very adequate material for judgment and discussion on the part of those who themselves lack either active or passive psychotherapeutic experience.

But the practical urgency of the problem is too acute to allow us to wait indefinitely for some decisive and all-inclusive ethico-psychotherapeutical synthesis. The problem is brought home to most of us in its most challenging and concrete form when the question arises of committing ourselves or others to psychological treatment. Do we not, in doing so, risk the undermining of our moral principles, perhaps of our religion and our faith? Rumours have reached us, perhaps, of alleged psychotherapists who, after long and costly weeks of treatment, prescribe some such homely old palliatives as a dose of fornication, divorce, cutting loose from hearth and home, or some other form of uncleanness, injustice or impiety.
Madame Acarie
Authors: Sheppard Lancelot C.
Published: July 2007

After a painful illness of nearly three months there died, at the age of fifty-two, on the Wednesday in Easter week (April 18, 1618), in the Carmelite convent of the reform of St. Teresa at Pontoise, soeur Marie de l’Incarnation, a lay sister, five years professed. Dr. André Duval, who wrote her life, has left some account of the manner of her death. “I arrived at Pontoise,” he says, “at about half-past five in the morning . . . when I got to the courtyard I met the turn sister looking for the chaplain to come and give extreme unction . . . they told the prioress that I had arrived, and she sent me at once a surplice and a stole; I went straightway to the infirmary . . . the doctor told me that it was advisable to anoint her and thereupon I began it; as I was doing so she breathed her last. The doctor having informed me that she was dead I ceased the anointing and began the anthem Subvenite with the prayers which follow . . .”.

This matter of fact account by the grave doctor of the Sorbonne hides the great reverence he had for her at whose deathbed he was present. Indeed we may wonder why he should trouble to journey through the night from Paris to minister to a lay sister in a provincial convent, even though he was one of the ecclesiastical superiors of that and all the other Carmelite convents in France.
Spiritual Childhood and Mother Julian
Authors: S.M.A.
Published: July 2007

The doctrine of spiritual childhood is sometimes regarded as the Little Flower’s peculiar contribution to the spiritual life of the Church, yet in The Revelations of Divine Love it is fully described and practised by an English Mystic living five centuries before the Saint of Lisieux. St. Therese did not so much discover as reinstate in its true, paramount position, a truth of the spiritual life which had been obscured and almost forgotten under the weight of Renaissance Humanism and Jansenistic rigorism. For, so long as man’s life and way of looking at life were essentially God-centred and supernatural, the God whom he knew and loved and tried to serve was the God of revelation, the God who has declared himself to be our heavenly Father, and who has raised us to the adoption of sons in his only-begotten Son, Christ our Lord. Consequently a spirit of childlike love and simplicity characterised the piety of both great and small, from Doctors of the Church like S. Thomas Aquinas, S. Albert the Great, and the other theologians to whom heaven was always ‘patria’ “our father’s country”, down to “a simple creature who could no letter”, such as Mother Julian. But once man had fixed his eyes not on God but on himself, then he tended to regard his Maker not as the Father but as the Creator, the Lawgiver, the Master, the just, avenging Judge sternly demanding an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; the God of Sinai rather than of the Gospel.
Cluniac Spirituality
Authors: Tablbot Hugh
Published: July 2007

Though many writers have studied the Cluniac achievement from the ecclesiastical, the economic and even the political point of view, none of the standard books on the history of spirituality seems concerned to trace the growth of Cluniac spirituality. Indeed, it seems taken for granted on all sides that Cluny has no spirituality worth mentioning. An elaborate ceremonial, a devotion to the splendours of the Liturgy, accompanied by an easy asceticism, this is the impression that most people have received of it: an impression based solely on a few isolated facts culled from the third century of Cluny’s existence. It may be useful, therefore, to outline a few of the principal ideas that dominated Cluny’s spirituality during the course of its history from its foundation to the time of Peter the Venerable.

When Berno left the Abbey of Baume in A.D. 910 to accept part of the estate of the Duke of Aquitaine for his foundation at Cluny, monastic life was at a low ebb. For sixty years the Normans had ravaged a country already torn by internecine war. Towns and villages had been depopulated, monasteries had been sacked and destroyed, and the few refugees who had settled in ruinous buildings to restore a semblance of monastic life were undistinguished both for religion and discipline. Berno little realised the magnitude of his undertaking, for his own ambitions were surprisingly modest. He simply aimed at establishing the pure Benedictine tradition, and envisaged nothing more exalted than the literal fulfilment of the Rule.
The Active Catholic
Authors: Rooth Marianne
Published: July 2007

To avoid confusion, I must first make clear that this paper does not concern Catholic Action, the need for which is so stressed by the Hierarchy. Here we are left in no doubt as to What we should do. But I have often wondered when, why and how individual Catholics have been most active—what makes the difference between a preacher and a contemplative, and in what respects they are the same—and this represents the results of these wonderings.

What do we mean by an active Catholic? A complication arises at once, because there are obviously two sorts, both equally deserving of the name:

(a) The Catholic who spends his life in purposefully furthering Catholicism, usually by the spoken or written word; the missionary, of whom the great example is St. Paul. Him I will call the Professional Catholic, to distinguish him from

(b) the Living Catholic. He is not a preacher. He may be anything from a fisherman to an emperor, but his every thought, word and deed is vitally informed by his religion, which is the raison d’etre of his life. Of course, these divisions are not mutually exclusive. A good Professional Catholic can be, and indeed must be a Living Catholic, and a hitherto silent Living Catholic may start professing his faith at any time. Without irreverence, one can say that Jesus was a Living Catholic for thirty years, and a Professional one for three.

For the purpose of this paper, the term Active Catholic will mean what I have described as the Professional Catholic, as his work involves more definite physical action than that of the Living Catholic, whom we will dismiss with the comment that his state is that to which everyone without exception should aspire.
Education “Growing Up In Christ”
Authors: O'Leary M.
Published: July 2007

St. Paul supplies us with an answer to this ever recurrent question with a phrase which gives us at once a definition and a goal. To the thinking Catholic the process of growing up can never be a haphazard one for it is founded upon settled laws, directed by an established method, inspired by an ideal made concrete in the person of Christ Himself.

Now, it is of the very nature of the living being to wish to attain to maturity and the rational being strives towards that maturity not by a blind urge but with philosophic and selective apprehension. The social being, “Man-in-Society”, sees maturity not as his own isolated development, but as the widening, deepening and raising of the life, both natural and supernatural, of the society in which he lives.

Viewed in this light, the question of education cannot be narrowed into the confines of the School-system, the examination-syllabus, the University programme. It cannot be conceived, merely, as a branch of politics. On the contrary, the term must be made to embrace the whole of life and society, with every human being as its subject; while for its object we envisaged the rational, harmonious use of all created things. The field is vast, certainly, and by its demands for comprehensive thinking this vastness often frightens away the student. Nevertheless, it is only when viewed in its totality that the question of Education can be made to yield its full fruit of human interest and creative power.
The Dominican Spirit
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

The Founder of the Dominican Order was a Spaniard of the thirteenth century, alive to the needs and conditions of his age and steeped in tradition. His spirit survives in his Order, and the friars of to-day still bear the mark of that Spanish modernity and strength.

St. Dominic was a man of his age, vital and ‘modern.’ The representatives of the Church in his day had been overtaken by time and in many ways left behind in an earlier age. The Church was losing ground because the churchmen of the time were unaware of current problems and consequently unable to find the right means to correct the bias of the spiritual force then working strongly among the people. The Cathari and Albigenses were the Communists of the thirteenth century, appealing to a general fraternity and calling for a purification of society with as much zeal and apparent asceticism as the Nazi, Fascist-or Communist. They drew the people away from the Church. By their works you shall know them—works testify to truth. These men of austere life seemed to have the Spirit; the Church with its easy-going monks and ecclesiastics seemed in comparison to have betrayed its ideal. And for the heretic matter was evil; things of the flesh, things made by man for his use and delight, art and ritual, had come from the evil spirit of lies, and truth was not in them.

Then again the towns and cities of Europe were growing. Commerce had moved from the landlords in their rural stability and passed into the hands of the bourgeois traders of the larger towns, and the centres of culture had also been transferred from the great monasteries dotted over the countrysides of Europe to the nascent universities of the cities.
‘Principium Verborum Tuorum Veritas,’ Ps. cxviii.
Authors: Pope Hugh
Published: July 2007

‘The sum of Thy Words is Truth,’ and for us who have to search for that Truth fidelity or loyalty to it when discovered. Easy in theory, difficult in practice : ‘ascetic practices,’ says St. Jerome, ‘for example continence or mortification of the flesh, are of great value; but nothing is so mortifying as knowledge of the truth ‘(On Nahum ii. i, P.L. xxv, 1244); he seems to be thinking of a man’s reactions on coming up against some wholly unexpected truth, something running counter to his preconceived notions. ‘Nothing,’ says St. Augustine, ‘is easier for a person not merely to say but really to think he has discovered the truth ; but how difficult a thing that is ! ‘(De Utilitate credendi, 1). If the Bishop of Hippo could ever have felt annoyed, he who had made the search after truth the passion of his life must have felt indignant when Secundinus the Manichee told him : ‘the truth makes you as angry as philosophy made Hortensius ‘(Ep. ad Augustinum, 3, P.L.xlii, 574).

Our Dominican history furnishes us with three great examples, among many others, of this unflinching loyalty to the truth as they saw it, a loyalty which was not obstinacy but conviction based on the triple foundation of reason, faith, and their outcome—humility.
In Studiis Perseverare
Authors: Thomas Ivo
Published: July 2007

The obligation to be perseverant in study is an essential characteristic of the Order of Preachers. It has been so from the beginning. The modern form of the Constitutions shows the importance which the Order attaches to it, not only by the express statement of this obligation in Constitution No. 189, but by the repetition, almost word for word, of that statement in No. 690. In a document generally regarded as reflecting the succinctness of the Code of Canon Law, with which it was brought into conformity in 1932, and as somewhat sharply contrasted with earlier editions in this respect, such a repetition carries enormous force. It provokes an enquiry into the mode of life which it conditions and into the character of those who are dedicated to its fulfilment. The text itself is instructive: ‘Our priests, by reason of their vocation, or of the special purpose of the Order, are all the more (i.e. by comparison with those students not yet ordained to the Priesthood) bound to be perseverant in study throughout their whole life, especially in the study of dogmatic and moral theology, of sacred Scripture, of the Holy Fathers, and of the other sacred sciences, both for the purpose of fostering spiritual life in themselves, and in order to render themselves daily more fit to exercise the apostolic ministry with fruit.’ (Constitutions, 189).

The reference to the special purpose of the Order requires the further quotation of Const. No. 3 : ‘Our Order is known to have been specially instituted from the beginning’ for preaching and the salvation of souls.
The Rule of Saint Augustine
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

These notes are intended to be nothing more than a brief summary of Père Mandonnet’s excellent and exhaustive treatise on the origins of the Rule of Saint Augustine, extending over a hundred pages and forming part of the monumental work entitled Saint Dominique, L’Idée, L’Homme et L’Oeuvre, published in 1938 (two years after his death) by his disciples and assistants Père Humbert Vicaire and Père Reginald Ladner, in two volumes. This work, with the exception of five valuable études critiques, has recently been translated into English by Sister Mary Benedicta Larkin, O.P., of Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, U.S.A. As unfortunately these essays which occupy eighty-two pages of the original book have not been listed by the translator, but only referred to numerically, their titles are here given for the guidance of those who cannot have access to the French edition :—(1) The Chronology of Saint Dominic’s Life between 1205 and 12107, by Vicaire; (2) Cardinal James de Vitry’s account of the Preacher-Canons of Bologna, by Mandonnet; (3) Paul of Hungary’s Summa de Poenitentia, by Mandonnet; (4) The Constitutions of the Order between 1220 and 1227, by Vicaire; (5) The Beginnings of the Order of Penance, by Mandonnet. Admittedly these studies are technical and do not all touch directly on Saint Dominic and his work, but Vicaire’s first study, not a very lengthy one, could have been included in the translation with much profit.

The Rule of Saint Augustine, as universally known to-day, is prefixed to the Book of the Dominican Constitutions, and is incorporated in the Institutions of many other religious Orders.
Fatima and the People's Theology
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: July 2007

‘For I am thy servant and the son of thy handmaid, a weak man and of short time, and falling short of the understanding of judgement and laws.’ (Wisd. ix, 5.).

What do we mean by the ‘mind of the Church’? In the most obvious sense the Church is an autocracy : the life and the power and the wisdom are from above, from the Head which is Christ. But there is another sense in which the life of the Church has its democratic aspect: for the vitality and vigour of the Church, the degree in which the life and power and wisdom are used and expressed, this depends not least on the masses of the faithful, on their acceptance of and response to what is given. So the development of the Church’s dogma is a process which can be found to begin from below : first the gradual fermentation of the idea in the devout life of the layfolk, then its discussion and analysis in the controversies of theologians, then finally the decisive voice, the consecration, by the wisdom from above, of the truth in these new discernments and elucidations of ancient fact. Can there be a similar process in the realm of morals? We do well to remember the power of the Spirit in giving to the hearts of the simple and unlearned a sense of the right and the good. In two ways this connatural knowledge, as St. Thomas calls it, differs from the work of the theologian and may complement it: it goes straight to the conclusion, while the theologian, working in another medium, must first sift and test the premisses; it concerns the particular fact or type of fact, where theology is concerned primarily with the general principle.