bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Ceylon
Authors: Speaight George
Published: July 2007

The strategy of a world war has imposed a new ‘grand tour’ upon our generation. Via the African desert, the Appenines, or the beaches of Normandy, we travelled to the Rhine; and then, sweating in crowded transports, bound for India, Burma, Malaya or Japan, we gasped across the Persian Gulf to call, usually, at Ceylon. Here, at the commercial port of Colombo or in the great natural harbour of Trincomalee, the Navy massed its White Ensigns for what proved to be an unnecessary invasion of Malaya; and here in the months that succeeded the atom bomb we waited impatiently to come home.

For Jack ashore, Ceylon offered ebony elephants and sapphire engagement rings; noodles and birds’ nests in a Chinese café; and a ride in a rickshaw, with an almost naked coolie pulling you through the streets, and making you feel, half-guiltily and half-excitedly, like a Roman emperor. But there was little beer and no girls. We were soon bored, and longed for Tyneside, the Gorbals, or the New Cut.

Looking back, one remembers the constant sunshine, the flamboyant trees flowering their vivid petals down the quiet avenues of English bungalows, the blare of oriental music from arrack taverns, and the indescribable stench of the little native streets. And one tries to write down a description of Ceylon that will mean something in England.

When one became expert, one learnt to differentiate between two kinds of natives. There were the Sinhalese, who wear cotton skirts called sarongs, have narrow faces and prominent teeth, and are the original inhabitants of the island. Englishmen tend to complain that they are fundamentally lazy and have no sense of business; they do not share the prestige of martial races like the Sikhs or Gurkhas, and when the Japanese raided Colombo—very lightly by London standards—aimcrat the entire native population fled from the city and wouldn’t come back for a week; this was considered to prove that they had no ‘guts.’
Social Anthropology
Authors: Evans‐Pritchard E. E.
Published: July 2007

The subject matter of Social Anthropology, human societies, with special reference to primitive societies, has been a field of philosophic speculation from the earliest times. It has only very recently become a field of scientific inquiry; so recently that Sir Edward Tylor is sometimes spoken of as ‘the father of anthropology’. Tylor defined the scope of his inquiry in his classical work, Primitive Culture (1871) as culture or civilization taken in its widest ethnographic sense, a definition which excludes what the rest of Europe calls anthropology and what in England is sometimes called physical anthropology: the study of racial characteristics, genetics, and so forth. But it covers what is generally called today in England social anthropology, or the sociology of primitive peoples. Tylor was himself the first occupant of a university post in the subject, from 1883 at Oxford.

Social anthropology is therefore still a very young discipline, hardly yet accepted as one of themselves by the august natural sciences. It has, however, taken the first step towards qualifying as a science by becoming inductive. The earlier social anthropologists were what are sometimes called ‘arm-chair’ anthropologists. When they wrote about primitive peoples they relied for the material from which they constructed their theories not on their own observations but on the reports of missionaries, administrative officers, and travellers. Sir James Frazer’s monumental The Golden Bough is one of the best examples of this kind of work—polished, erudite, comprehensive, and occasionally profound. Such writings suffered, in the eyes of men of science, from a serious defect.
Two November Pilgrimages: I. Padre Pio
Authors: Peregrina
Published: July 2007

The thought that I might have passed W.O.S.B. and have gone to England, and the thought that—had my officer not postponed my L.I.A.P. by a fortnight—I would have missed this chance of a life-time (I’m being posted to Klagenfurt after L.I.A.P. and shall thus not be returning to Italy, fills me with horror; and I will try to remember this next time I’m disappointed about something, because my plans don’t work out quite according to my ideas—and I shall remember that in that case they will work out better.

It all came about like this. We were suddenly given Monday, 12th November, ofi duty for the commemoration of Armistice on the 11th, which was a Sunday, and we would therefore be free in any case—or have the half day at least. So I started talking to a girl, who had a boy-friend in Foggia, trying to find out what the possibilities of transport were. Well, the girl said there was hardly any transport on the road, that there was nowhere to stay in Foggia as there are only officers’ clubs up there, that the district was badly bombed and desolate, and that the whole scheme was most inadvisable without transport, but if one had a car one could make it in four to five hours. Well, I got terribly excited at the thought and talked to my Irish friend Bita, and we started scheming. So we put in for a sleeping-out pass to Foggia, and said transport had been arranged.
II. Pabbay or the Island Fathers
Authors: Peregrinus
Published: July 2007

It took an hour and a half in the fishing boat driven by its small paraffin motor. Jonathan, the fisherman, sitting on the box covering the engine, said it was the most perfect day for the trip; as calm as it could ever be, and November was already a week old. Everyone that morning had said it was calm: the parish priest, the man who drove us to the harbour from the north of the island at 8.15 prompt, the man at the store who had known the weather of the Islands for nearly 70 years, for them all it was a miracle of fine weather. This is an important point; for although the boat was of the size that normally takes trippers out into the Channel at Brighton, and although Jonathan’s son dextrously steered into the waves so that we never once were splashed, the boat did toss. Jonathan on his perch moved to the rhythm of the waves, but we, his two passengers leaning against a cross-beam two yards away, were alternately looking down at him and peering up at him; and once or twice we were flung brusquely against each other. The sensation was that of a boat swing. This was to be expected. The sun was out, and had been ever since we had first arrived at Castlebay; for fifteen minutes we had peered out under its rays just over the horizon to catch the first glimpse of Jonathan’s boat coming round the point from the island of Vatersay.
The Re—Conversion of Scotland
Authors: Anson Peter F.
Published: July 2007

Scotland, more rapidly than England, is drifting into a confused but not yet convinced paganism. Calvin and Knox are fading into the background as religious heroes. Christ Himself may soon be a mere name to the multitudes unless there is a movement of re-conversion in our midst. About ten years ago the Church of Scotland published a Report which had the courage to admit that no more than 36 per cent, of the total population of this country was affiliated to organised religious bodies. It also revealed that about 150,000 children of school age were not connected with any church or Sunday school. At the present time it would probably be more correct to state that less than 25 per cent, of the people of Scotland are even nominal members of any Christian denomination. This is how Dr. George F. MacLeod, the Leader of the Presbyterian Iona Community sums up the religious situation in Scotland: “We have rejected an earlier discipline and discarded its Reformation alternative, and have left our youth with nothing.”

The Kirk, as a whole, has lost its authority over the people, although Scotland is still a Presbyterian nation so far as its established Church. Its membership is declining, while, on the other hand, the Catholic population tends to increase—through natural rather than by supernatural reasons. The statistics of birth-rate among Scoto-Irish families in the industrial Lowlands prove this fact. To-day about 13 per cent, of the total population of Scotland is Catholic. No statistics of conversions are allowed to he published as in England.
The Image of God in Man According to St Irenaeus
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

In a recent work M. Denis Saurat claims that reality is rendered comprehensible only by the “complete life of Christ”. Christ, Logos and Man, is the centre from which all life flows, unfolding “into the past and into the future". No doubt M. Saurat’s thesis is expressed in pantheistic thought forms, but this does not detract from the value of the imaginatively expressed intuition by which he has discovered that it is Christ alone who gives meaning and reality to the time process, and that it is the Incarnation that makes history intelligible.

Whatever reservations a Catholic is called upon to make regarding the details of M. Saurat’s vision, we are able to recognise that he is attempting to bring home to us a darkly seen variant of St Irenaeus’s doctrine of the recapitulation of all things in Christ. For by recapitulation St Irenaeus meant a recommencement in the opposite direction by which God, reversing as it were the process whereby sin infected the earth, gathers together and reunites all creation, including matter, but specially man, in a new economy of salvation. He gathers up his entire work from the beginning to purify and sanctify it in his Incarnate Son, who in turn becomes for us a second Adam.” (E. Mersch, S.J.: The Whole Christ: p. 230).

Creation points to the Incarnation, and this Christocentric preoccupation of St Irenaeus has important repercussions on his doctrine of man. M. Saurat, arguing from the same premise, has also described man in terms of Christ.
Hope From France
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: July 2007

It needs a long view to assess the uses of adversity. At the time, while the intolerable thing is happening, hope itself seems hopeless. But at the heart of the disaster some new life starts springing: a new life, that is yet the recovery of something old and forgotten. For the Christian, that is only to say that no circumstance is without its providential value. Tout ce qui arrive est adorable.

In France in 1941 there seemed little room for hope. The ignominy of defeat reached deeper far than the level of a military surrender and it is easy enough to understand the mood of tortured immolation—“All that is left to France is to suffer”—which came over many Frenchmen at that time. But it is not given, to the members of Christ to despair, and the failure of human hopes, reveals all the more surely the new life we are called to share: “you will be distressed, but your distress shall be turned into joy” (John xvii: 20).

It was precisely at this time, 1941, that there came into being a movement, later to be known as the Centre de Pastorale Liturgique, which had for its aim nothing less than the recovery of the parish church as the Christian home, the place where the children of God meet and worship and whose influence extends to all they do. It might seem that there was no need to found a society to affirm what is an integral part of the Church’s function as the Mystical Body of Christ. But the Dominican founders of the C.P.L. had precise objectives in view. The German occupation brought grave difficulties for Catholic life in France.
Never to Lack Money-Spend It
Authors: Riviere Isabelle
Published: July 2007

But after all if I spend it, I shall no longer have it, that is clear!

Have you tried? One can never know a worker’s capacity, until he has been made to work.—Whoever really wishes to stop trembling with respect before his own money, and begins to put it to his service, discovers how easy it can be to deal with! Let us forget this useless, anxious care of filling one’s purse, let us think only of emptying it usefully, and we shall find it always full for the present necessity.

I like to repeat the charming absurdity that a small girl said to her mother: “ Hurry up and spend your money while you’ve got it, because afterwards you won’t have it any longer!” We must indeed hurry to make it do service for something while we have it in hand, because otherwise it will slip away without having done anything. We must hurry to use what is lent to us to-day, tomorrow perhaps we shall have it no longer, and we shall have missed the opportunity of acquiring some beautiful or useful thing, or of doing some good action, which would be worth much more than the money we had given for them.

Besides, let us be at peace; If tomorrow a similar opportunity presents itself, the money will be there again to our advantage. There is a principle which we must bear in mind because proof has been made of it. It is what may be called ‘‘the principle of air-inlet.”
The Christian Sacrifice
Authors: Higgins Patrick Canon
Published: July 2007

Anyone who undertakes an impartial appraisement of the book of Canon Eugene Masure “ The Christian Sacrifice “ recently translated by Dom Illtyd Trethowan, O.S.B., has a difficulty in deciding where he ought to begin if the work as a whole is to be viewed in due perspective. Perhaps the first step of the critic should be to eliminate altogether from his purview the section entitled “ The Mystery of the Incarnation,” which constitutes about a quarter of the book. From the Preface of the translator we infer that this section acquired per accidens a domicile in alien territory. We agree with the translator that it would be a pity to abridge this section of Christology. But as we also agree with him that its relevance to the main thesis is rather remote we may proceed to discuss the great variety of material that falls within our scope.

The climax of the author’s thoughts is reached in Book Three which treats of the Sacrifice of the Mass. The liturgical element though introduced for its bearing on theology calls for no special comment. The main purpose of the entire volume, so far as I can interpret the intention of the writer, is to give an answer to the question: In what consists the metaphysical essence of the Mass? or in other words: How is the scientific concept of sacrifice realised in the double consecration? Has the author shed light on this controversy on which the ingenuity of learned and holy men has been exercised for centuries?
Scottish Industrialism and the Catholic
Authors: Handley James E.
Published: July 2007

Some fifty years ago at an investigation into Glasgow housing sponsored by a committee of the Church of Scotland, Bruce Glaiser, secretary of the Glasgow branch of the Socialist League, invited to explain why Irish immigrants did not rise so easily as native labourers to be craftsmen, replied: “I do not believe that it is vice that is against the Irishmen, but rather virtue. The improvidence of the Irish springs rather from virtues; while the success of Scotchmen is on account of their canny disposition and desire to make money ... I think that, as a whole, as social beings they are quite equal to the Scotch; I do not think the ambition to take a position side by side with Scotchmen is a very high one.”

Whether the Catholic has revolted instinctively or not against the bleakness of Scottish industrialism in the past century, the fact remains that he has not made his presence effectively felt among the forces that attempt to control and guide it. For this, the circumstances that have conditioned his existence in Scotland are largely responsible.
Fifty Years of Scripture Studies: Providentissimus Deus to Divino afflante Spiritu
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: July 2007

The present Holy Father wrote his biblical encyclical in 1943 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Leo XIII’s great encyclical Providentissimus Deus, which is such a landmark in modern biblical studies. Pius XII starts with a retrospect, a review of the work done under papal aegis during that half-century, and it is with pride that we Dominicans have noticed that he calls attention to the fact that before ever Leo XIII launched his encyclical he had already in 1892 commended by Brief the Dominican Ecole Biblique at Jerusalem, founded with papal approbation two years before. This foundation was due to the efforts of P&re Marie-Joseph Lagrange, O.P. (+10 March, 1938), and here the pioneer work of scientific scholarship had already begun and the famous Revue Biblique had already been started. Next year, in 1893, Providentissimus Deus appeared.

Pius XII goes on to describe the present state of biblical studies and to prescribe the equipment necessary to the modern Catholic exegete. Not only does he develop the ideas of the preceding encyclicals, but several times he gives more precise definitions of the attitude of the Catholic scholar.

He concludes with a reiteration of his predecessors’ call for zeal for scriptural study, with a special urgency “in these unhappy times” when ignorance of Christ is so widespread in the world.
Presenting the New Testament
Authors: Cary-Elwes Columba
Published: July 2007

There are before me three books: The Scripture Textbooks for Catholic Schools, edited by Mgr John M. T. Barton, and published by Burns Oates and Washbourne. They are uniform and each costs 4/6. The binding is very good for the price.

The foreword by Cardinal Griffin states the fundamental point: ‘So many people are taught all about the Scriptures, but few are taught to read them’. That set me thinking. It is certain that an inconsiderable number do read the New Testament. Our aim is to persuade them. There is no need for persuasion with the children; they take what is given them by their masters. So the first question arises: do three more books on the New Testament make it more or less likely that the people who read them will read the New Testament itself? Many times I have set about reading, particularly the Old Testament, and found myself very soon reading a commentary instead. Will these books have the same effect on the children?

To begin with the Lives of our Lord. One is for small children, but is so written that it could be read with pleasure by a person of any age; the other is for school children in their teens. The method employed in both is to make a straightforward account of the life of our Lord drawn from all four Gospels, with occasional digressions and enlargements on local history, geography, liturgy, and so on. They both read easily and have a telling style, but not so telling as that of the New Testament writers, for these have a brevity and economy of words truly breath-taking, while the use of direct speech in the New Testament is so much more suitable to children than the indirect which both these authors favour. Nothing pleases children more than the dramatic style.
St Dominic in Modern Rome
Authors: Delany Bernard
Published: July 2007

Mr G. K. Chesterton tells us in one of his essays of a man who went to Rome and missed seeing the Pope because he stood too long staring at the Papal Guard. We can have more sympathy with that sort of absence of mind than with the more serious kind of tourist who, Baedeker in hand, ‘does’ Rome dutifully and grimly and comes home exhausted and dazed with a blur of memories. Sight-seeing ‘according to plan’ is one of the penitential exercises of the pilgrim: much better to keep your eyes open and let the sights seek you, and you will stumble on surprises at every turn and be rewarded with thrills all the time.

When you go to Rome to attend a General Chapter there is not much time or opportunity for sight-seeing: in a sense you become part of the picture; for the time being you are one of the sights yourself. But even so, you can’t help noticing things and there are wonders for your delight on every hand. When we came down from the sky it was a very abrupt change from the wet winds and cold rains of the North to the parched, dusty airfield at Chiampino blazing in the sun. The tropical dress of the R.A.F. men in contrast with ourselves dressed in the attire of a less torrid climate made us feel even warmer than we actually were; but we positively gasped and perspired when from the bus that took us to Rome we saw a football match being played before a cheering crowd at a terrific pace while the themometer registered nearly a hundred degrees.
Experiment or Suffocate
Authors: Conlay Iris
Published: July 2007

In England it all started in the respectable years of the early industrial development, when common sense was valued above sensibility and far above spirituality, and when church-going was done more for the sake of propriety than to worship God. In that time the pious vaguely felt that art was wrong and the artists were sure that religion was silly. The Church glared at the artist and the artist at the Church, both mutually suspicious. And there was no growing school of religious art—none in the Protestant Church for the state of affairs indicated above, and none in the Catholic Church because Catholics at that time had neither status nor money.

At the eleventh hour who should turn up but the Pre-Raphaelites. They swept Puritan prejudice before them and proceeded to paint religious subjects and even to make a lot of money out of their productions. But the Pre-Raphaelites did us no good. By their superior pastiche they put the clocks of appreciation right back and the sentimental ‘Light of the World’ is still influencing public taste.

But in spite even of the Pre-Raphaelites the average middle-class educated man still refused to take art seriously. He considered it as a furbelow in his house and far less important than comfort. He gave no thought to art in the church whatsoever. The churches were as bad. Even they had the idea that art was something that had been taken up by the Church as an extra glory in the Middle Ages, but as soon as art showed up in the Renaissance as a truly pagan business, then it had to be rejected as dangerous.
In Whose Camp?
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

If one wishes to know the reasons for the decline and ultimate failure of the Austrian Republic in the space of some fifteen years, one cannot do better than read Miss Alary Macdonald's succinct, clear, well-informed and amply documented account. The documentation, especially in the form of lengthy quotations in German, is perhaps too full for the average reader; but the latter may be confidently recommended to restrict himself to the text, for the author's knowledge and control of her sources are beyond dispute. Not that there ever was any serious dispute about either the facts or the records: differences of opinion have been largely ideological, the tendency to see a bloodthirsty fascist in every opponent of the Vienna Socialists or. on the other hand, the fear of the red hand of Bolshevism in every expression of a democratic spirit. These were extremes, but a middle way was rendered difficult by excesses on both sides and the inevitably limited capacity of the not ignoble men who tried to take it.

The elements of dissolution at once showed themselves in 191K. Austrians who had formed the habit of living in an empire could not easily conceive the possibility of a single nation-state within their sadly shrunken frontiers; Vienna was an imperial, capital or nothing. Hence the attempt to create still smaller states out of the Lauder. or for such a province as Vorarlberg to seek union with Switzerland—the nearest neighbour, with a people speaking almost a common dialect and offering an economic prosperity such as even a united Austria could scarcely hope to create.
A New Version of the Epistles
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: July 2007

The Bishop of London first published this book in Australia in 1943 when he was Archbishop of Brisbane, and the present English edition includes a few alterations. In the Preface he explains how the letters were freshly translated from the Greek into an entirely modern medium, and then rewritten into a freer translation with occasional explanatory phrases. The result he has called either a free translation or a close paraphrase. A careful study of his text shows that it is frequently a very close translation, although the title of paraphrase has freed the translator’s conscience from an obligation to strict adherence to the original word—or phrase—order, has permitted the insertion of phrases or even whole sentences, and has sometimes made possible a completely English idiom to replace that of the original.

Naturally the Catholic reader will make comparisons with the Catholic versions familiar to him : the Challoner-Rheims of 1749, and the new translation of Mgr Knox of 1945. He might also compare the American Revision of 1941, which is too little known in this country apart from its use in Fr Stedman’s Daily Readings and Sunday Missal, and which is in fact a new version with great merits as a literal translation (usually very close to the Greek), which is easily readable, and which is in ‘biblical’ English with many archaisms removed and without notable Americanisms. For checking according to the Greek he will of course turn to the Westminster Version of 1931.
The Crisis in Crisis Theology
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

When these two essays were written—in 1934—a climax was reached in what some have called the Theology of Crisis. For some time before that date it had been obvious that Brunner and Barth, the leading exponents of the school, had been drifting apart in their respective formulations of the doctrine of man, but the clear lines of their divergence were not defined till the publication of these essays. Both writers appear to have modified details of their teaching since 1934, but the radical disagreement remains. The essays, therefore, may be regarded as giving classic expression to two fundamentally opposed interpretations of the interaction of nature and Grace from a Protestant standpoint.

The disagreement is partly explained, but only partly, by temperament. Barth is a preacher, a prophet who thunders from the heights, often through obscuring clouds; he is a man of passion, impatient in his convictions. Brunner on his part is a teacher, much concerned with clarity in exposition, far more sensitive to difficulties, broader in his sympathies; but at times he lacks the intuitive genius of his opponent. While all this is important and a key to much they write and to some of their oppositions (for the one, by his very psychological constitution, is often the complement of the other), yet it is not the whole story. The problem raised in the essays is not susceptible of any such facile solution. There is a real divergence, a parting of the way which is fundamental for their theology.
‘I, Too, Am An African’
Authors: Magrath Oswin
Published: July 2007

Historically, from the fact of its colonization by white men from the sea, Southern Africa has been linked in men's minds rather with Europe than with the rest of the African continent, and the truly African character of its inhabitants, even of the Whites, has been too easily forgotten, in spite of the use of the name Afrikaner (meaning merely African). In recent years, however, largely owing to the war and consequent movements of troops and population, the average white inhabitant of Southern Africa has become much more conscious of his relationships with the rest of the continent and with its aboriginal inhabitants, and aware of his responsibilities and the opportunity there is for him to play a decisive part in the future of Africa south of the Sahara, now in a state of rapid social, economic, religious and political development. This new awareness, long latent in the land-consciousness of the Afrikaans-speaking population, and now making itself felt among all sections of the people, is given utterance in the words of Field-Marshal Smuts used as a title to this article, and may be traced in many recent items of news from South Africa.

It is necessary, in order to avoid misconceptions, to preface a few statements of fact about the area of which we are speaking. Southern Africa differs from the rest of Black Africa in being the only part in which a people of European origin have made a home, though it can be doubted whether this colonization will be permanently successful much further north than Pretoria or Durban or in the arid western parts of the region.
South African Native Missions
Authors: Humphries Nicholas
Published: July 2007

Being asked to describe native mission work is rather like being asked to describe children. Each mission, like each child—or like each angel—is unique. There is only one member in each species; and it is this that makes the fascination of the world. Every missionary has to build according to his own circumstances—meeting his own problem. In visiting a mission one sees what that missionary has made of those circumstances; and one is liable to think how poor it all looks, and how much better it might have been. Which is frequently perfectly true. I shudder to think what my successor here will say and think when he takes over my job some day. Yet, in fact, many such missions are almost miracles of progress—in those circumstances.

Missions may be divided into various types—like children. There is the mission in a town which has no industries, where the natives are mostly domestic servants; and there is the country mission where there are no adjacent towns and the natives are farm labourers. Both of these have a fairly settled population. There is the industrial centre mission—as in Johannesburg—where there is no country and hardly any settled population. Then there are the missions in the tribal areas, which are again quite a different order of work.

The mission I am describing is one that embraces a country town and its surrounding district. There are no important industries apart from farming—and even that is scarcely important, for the yield on the whole is poor.
Personality and Relation
Authors: Thomas Ivo
Published: July 2007

As a being, man is dependent on God, the first cause of all things; as a being endowed with mind and will, powers of thought and desire, he is a close reflection of that first cause, in the knowledge and love of which, to the highest of his ability, he must And his perfection and his happiness if he is to find them at all. The first cause has not left man to develop the mere scope of his natural ability, great as that is. God has freely bestowed on him, as an overflow of his goodness, supernatural powers of knowledge and love which leave the natural pattern of human nature unimpaired, but make possible the attainment of a higher kind of perfection and a much greater happiness, consisting in consciously being so like God that man can have the same divine object of his thought and love that is proper to the life of God himself. Whether we think of man, then, as coming from God's creative hand, or as in process of conscious return to him, in either case we see ourselves as conditioned by that relationship, that company, the society of God.

It is interesting to notice how very close the Church and the world are in the subject-matter of their chief preoccupation nowadays. Secular thought is concerned as never before with man’s relation to human society, and the Church is particularly concerned to elaborate man’s place in a divine society too. This is not purely by way of reaction or correction on the part of the Church.
Young Christian Seafarers
Authors: Anson Peter F.
Published: July 2007

The Jeunesse Maritime Chrétienne is a mass movement to reconquer the maritime world for Christ. It was at the Sea Apastolate Congress at Boulogne-sur-Mer, held in September 1929, that the first suggestion of forming a maritime section of the Jocistes was made by Père Lebret, O.P. This Dominican, who must be given the credit for launching the J.M.G., was formerly a lieutenant in the French navy. In collaboration with the Abbé G. Havard of Saint-Malo he drew up provisional rules. Cardinal Charost, Archbishop of Rennes, gave them a cordial blessing, and the new oeuvre was established in his diocese. The first group of Young Christian Seafarers to be formed was on the Ile-de-Sein, a small island off Finisterre, mostly inhabited by fisher folk. In January 1930 the first issue of Jeunesse Maritime was published. For the past seventeen years this monthly magazine has been the official mouthpiece of the J.M.C. During the next few months other groups were set up in many maritime parishes of Brittany, Normandy, the Côtes-de-Nord, and elsewhere in France. The movement spread rapidly. A large body of members of the J.M.C. took part in the French National Pilgrimage at Lourdes in August 1930.
R. H. Tawney and the Christian Political Tradition
Authors: Cameron J. M.
Published: July 2007

The conservative Catholic critic of socialist thought in this country is inclined to argue that at the level of explicit theory the neo-marxism of, say, Professor Laski is representative; but that the inarticulate masses in the Labour movement feel differently and would, were they articulate, express a theory more in line with the traditional Christian social philosophy. I dare say there is much truth in this argument, though whether it follows from it that the Conservative Party is closer than the Labour Party to the Christian tradition in politics is another matter, and one I do not propose to discuss. It is perfectly true that Professor Laski, with his uneasy combination of liberalism and marxism, is on the whole representative of the socialist intelligentsia. But it may be worth noticing that there is at least one socialist thinker of eminence whose work derives from the Christian tradition and is plainly of the highest order. I have in mind Professor R. H. Tawney. Certainly, his work has been less immediately influential than that of Professor Laski or Mr John Strachey. He has not been ‘put across’ by any publicity machine and, indeed, his thought is unsuitable for slick generalisation. What he writes is always the work of a scholarly historian and is academic in the best sense.
‘There is No Wealth But Life’
Authors: Derrick Paul
Published: July 2007

There was once a time when people who wanted to make the working life of the working man more tolerable called themselves socialists. Fourier was not concerned with industrial efficiency so much as with establishing conditions in which the worker could take a pride and pleasure in his work. Robert Owen at New Lanark was primarily concerned with improving the conditions under which his employees lived and worked, even though his expenditure on houses and schools for his workpeople may have reduced the output of his mills’ per unit costs; that is, reduced their efficiency. In his projected Villages of Co-operation he wanted to replace the plough not by the gyrotiller but by the spade because he considered that the settlement of as many people as possible on the land raised their ‘standard of living’ in the literal sense of the words even though it might not always lead to the largest possible output of consumption goods per man per hour. In later years William Morris and others reaffirmed the view that the primary purpose of socialism was not to produce the largest possible quantity of goods but to change the quality of the life of the nation, to place a full and satisfying life within the reach of all, to free the people from the narrow struggle for a living wage and teach them to value freedom and responsibility.
Peguy the Paradox
Authors: Brophy Liam
Published: July 2007

France is reawakening. Not the France of Voltaire, but of Ste Jeanne d’Arc, not the France of Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract’, but of Péguy’s Christian social contract, the contract of universal brotherhood and charity. Charles Péguy was the day-star of that reawakening. None better than he understood the past and present of France, and none was better equipped to reconcile them. With reason he urged his fellowcountrymen to recall the soul of then race: ‘Nous sommes une veille race de moines, d’apôtres, de soldats. de maîtres d’oeuvres’. His socialism was not the socialism of Fourier and Saint Simon but of St Francis of Assisi and Ste Jeanne d’Arc. a socialism which is the very antithesis of that propounded by the German Jew. Marx, a socialism to which France, if we read the signs of the times aright, is returning. The socialism that best accords with the mind and soul of France is the charity of her saints, such as St Vincent de Paul. It would seem to be providential that Péguy was sent to lead the spirit of France, essentially Catholic and chivalrous, to new dimensions of Christian social justice.
The Mystery of Human Motive
Authors: Prince J. F. T.
Published: July 2007

The value of the theories of Freud, in dealing with juvenile delinquency (publicly debated recently) brings up the whole question of their assessment of the problem of abnormal moral behaviour. For Freud the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is something more than an allegory. It is also a code in which Mr Hyde figures with immense preponderance. ‘It is’, says Jung, ‘a detailed elaboration of man’s shadow-side such as had never been carried out before. It is the most effective antidote imaginable to all idealistic illusions about the nature of man’. (Integration of the Personality. Jung.) The conservative estimate of the theories of Sigismund Freud is that they contain much that is true and much that is new, but that unfortunately that which is true is not new and that which is new is not true. When Freud tells us that the media axiomata of the psycho-analytic theory of the mind rests on the assumption that the cause of all mental processes is automatically regulated by the pleasure-principle (Beyond the Pleasure-Principle), he merely declares himself a disciple of Epicurus. He merely proclaims that the object to which all men are attracted is Pleasure and that when a pleasure is consciously rejected it is only in order to make room (albeit unconsciously) for a greater pleasure. In other words, if we take ‘Pleasure’ in its broadest sense and define the word as meaning conscious satisfaction (not necessarily sensual, and often stimulated only by the prospect of benefit) there are few who do not subscribe to the obviousness of such a limited Hedonism.
The Artist's Relation to God
Authors: Shirley M.
Published: July 2007

On comparing the major and some of the smaller exhibitions held in London during the winter and spring, the striking factors were the vividly contrasting choice of subjects and the widely differing styles of expression: to name three examples, The Indian Art, Marc Chagall, and Vincent van Gogh. At the outset it seemed impossible to imagine that a common note could be found. Upon greater reflection, however, it appeared that perhaps their unity lay in the variance that previously seemed to ridicule any notion of coherence—briefly, that the completion of a work of art is, either consciously or unconsciously, an act of worship, and a record of the artist’s experience of God. Broadly speaking the common purpose exists in this context.

From a Christian standpoint a notable feature was the almost entire absence of ostensibly religious paintings—as distinct from those which could be religious in their implications—completed in the course of the last fifty years.

This was especially obvious in the exhibition recently held by the Institute of Contemporary Arts entitled ‘Forty Years of Modern Art’. The exhibits were drawn solely from British private collections, which may account for the inadequacy of some of them, for instance the Matisse ‘Head of a Girl’ which was the only example of his work. Also, on recalling the selection of Georges Rouault’s paintings, none of his religious works were included, although from the aesthetic point of view the water-colour ‘Odalisque’ was a superb choice, displaying the characteristic simplicity of his draughtsmanship and the resonance of his colours.
Christianity and Anti-Semitism
Authors: Berdyaev Nicholas
Published: July 2007

That fervent Catholic, Leon Bloy, wrote in one of his works: ‘Suppose that there were people round you continually speaking of your father and mother with the utmost contempt, who had nothing to offer them but insults and offensive sarcasms, how would you feel? Well, this is just what happens to our Lord Jesus Christ. We forget, or rather we do not wish to know, that our God made man is a Jew, nature’s most perfect Jew, the lion of Judah, that his mother is a Jewess, the flower of the Jewish race; that the Apostles were Jews, as well as all the Prophets; and finally that our whole sacred Liturgy is drawn from Jewish books. In consequence, how may one express the enormity of the outrage and blasphemy of vilifying the Jewish race?’

These words are addressed to Christians, who ought to understand them. In truth, the superficiality of Christians who believe they can possibly be anti-semites is prodigious! As a matter of fact, Christianity, in its human origins, is a religion of messianic and prophetic type, the spirit of which, as utterly foreign to Greco-Roman spiritual culture as to Hindu culture, was introduced into world religious thought by the Jewish people. The ‘Aryan’ spirit is neither messianic nor prophetic; to await the coming of the Messiah—the irruption into history of forces beyond history—is foreign to it. Moreover, the fact that German anti-semitism has evolved into anti-Christianity must be considered a highly significant symptom. A wave of anti-semitism has broken upon the world, casting away the humanitarian theories of the nineteenth century and daily threatening to submerge new lands.
Nietzsche, Jaspers and Christianity
Authors: Hennig John
Published: July 2007

One of the first books published by authority of the British Military Government in Germany was Nietzsche and Christianity by Karl Jaspers. This was the first of a number of post-war publications through which Professor Jaspers became practically the spokesman of academic Germany. He had been one of the few outstanding university professors who, though not directly discriminated for racial, religious or political reasons, had never for a moment associated themselves with National Socialism. Apart from church dignitaries and scientific technicians, he was the first German intellectual to be invited after the war for lectures abroad. When the first German university was re-opened by the Allied Military Authorities at Heidelberg, he was not only restored to his professorship but appointed Rector. Fifteen years after the publication of his chief work, Jaspers has become perhaps the most influential figure in the intellectual life of Central and Western Europe. In Switzerland, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, England and France, his Existentialism is discussed even by those who used to take but little interest in philosophical pursuits.

In these countries, it is difficult to obtain genuine information on Jaspers’s philosophy. Only one small book of his has been translated into English.

In 1931 the publishers of Sammlung Goeschen asked Jaspers to write the 1,000th volume of this series of popular text-books on all branches of learning. He gave his book the title The spiritual Situation of our Time, which the Australian translators (E. and C. Paul) rendered by Man in the Modern Age. This book is long out of print.
Real Education
Authors: Richings Ronald
Published: July 2007

What I have long wanted to say may have been said before by many people better qualified than I to say it, but it has not been said often enough. There are too many critics and potential pioneers ready to rush into print to condemn existing school systems and propose exciting new ones: there are too few who consider their attitude towards three fundamental questions.

First of these questions is, What are we educating boys for?-— or—Do we aim at turning out boys to live in the world as it is, or as we think it ought to be, or as we hope it will be?

The question is the more important because many parents will think it silly. They provide so little or so impoverished a home-life for their children that the only discipline boys now experience is what they are subjected to at school, and if parents’ ambition is that their children shall be fitted to share in the prevalent laxness of modern life, our present system of education with its irksome rides and obligations offers unsuitable training.

If parents wish their children to change the world they must realise their own obligations: they must cease to baulk the efforts of the schools by permitting indiscipline in their homes; they must co-operate with those upon whom they thrust the burden of bringing up their children, and I fear that few of them would come out well if reports were written on their conduct in this respect during the holidays.
Claudel's Poetic Art
Authors: Ryan Mary
Published: July 2007

On April 4th, 1946, Paul Claudel was elected a member of the French Academy by 24 votes out of 25, the 25th being an abstention. The recognition was tardy, for he was in his 78th year; and in reversing the resounding rejection of 1935 the Academy was only ratifying the place he occupies as one of the foremost modern poets, and the greatest modern Catholic poet.

It is opportune to analyse his poetic theory.

Not indeed that the hostility shown to Claudel in 1935 was mainly for literary reasons. These existed, certainly: a deliberate departure from accepted rule and custom, an apparently lawless technique and a degree of obscurity that seemed to flout the reader, a most personal choice of subjects and use of words as well as disconcerting syntax, transitions, sudden changes of tone, mingling of the loftiest with the most colloquial language. His poetic system, wrote a critic of the time, ‘goes counter to all the advances laboriously realised since Ronsard and even Villon’. But there was also the strongest opposition on political and personal grounds: it is painful for example to read the virulent article in which Léon Daudet (Action Française, 3 Avril 1935), exults over Claudel’s defeat, having first recorded his own early admiration for the poet.

Claudel though an official was no politician. His consular and diplomatic career was a step-by-step achievement of steady work. He contrasts himself in this respect with Mallarmé the professor-poet, who hated his teaching and never crossed the Pont de l’Eveque ‘without feeling inclined to throw himself over the parapet’.
A Thomist Society
Authors: Grenet Germaine
Published: July 2007

The Thomist Society of St Nicholas of Caen was begun in May, 1942, because some women students at the university in that town wanted to have a religious education on the same level as their intellectual training. They therefore decided to become disciples of St Thomas Aquinas, seeing that the Church names him as the surest master and guide.

The intention (and indeed the result) of the first lectures was to introduce the students to St Thomas’s thought and principal theses, and to stimulate them to do more than merely consult him, in fact to go right into his monumental Summa Theologica and live in contact with his spirit and teaching.

Seeing for themselves how capable St Thomas was of bringing them to the knowledge of God and giving them the basic principles of their own lives, they opened the Summa and studied it over a period of two years, 1943-45. This work was directed by Père Fauvergue, the Dominican Prior at Le Havre. They took the first eleven questions of the Prima Pars, studying them article by article—God, his existence, his nature—and they were filled with admiration for a teaching so wonderful in itself and so exactly suited to their needs.