bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
War and Peace
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

From a German Dominican, Fr. Franziskus Stratman, O.P., comes ‘the first complete examination of the problem of Peace and War by a Catholic theologian since 1914’—so the publishers tell us. The result of this examination—conducted most gravely and dispassionately—is not only unfavourable, severely unfavourable, to war in general, it leaves all the wars of history, ancient and modern, condemned by the theologians and finds the makers of war guilty of doing violence to Christian principles. The clear statements of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, of Francis de Victoria, O.P., of Bellarmine and St. Alphonsus Liguori, quoted amply and relevantly by Fr. Stratman, prove fatal to proposals for the justification of war. No government in Europe of the nations called to war can be acquitted of offending against justice; so stringent are the conditions of a just war, so many are the rules laid down by theologians to bind mankind in the ways of peace.
St. Nicolas of Bari
Authors: Langdon Donald M. J.
Published: July 2007

Those in Rome who are praying and working for the uniting once again of the Orthodox Church with the See of St. Peter, were encouraged by the sight of the Orthodox Archimandrite and some of his flock who came to honour St. Nicolas at the Greek Liturgy celebrated at the Church of St. Nicolas in Carcere for the closing of the seventh centenary year of the church.

St. Nicolas, called the Wonder-worker, has long been venerated by both East and West. Russia, in particular, has had great devotion to the sainted Archbishop of Mira, who is known as Nicolas of Bari, on account of his body being at that Adriatic port.

The church of this Saint was suitably prepared for his feast day on December 6th by having ikons of Our Lord, Our Blessed Lady, and St. Nicolas placed before the sanctuary where the ikonostasion would have been, had it been an oriental church. The Liturgy was celebrated by the Rector of the Greek College, and five other priests of the Byzantine Rite, including a Russian and two Roumanians, concelebrated.
The European Background, 1829
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

For the Catholic Church in England the year 1829 stood perceptibly for the opening of a new epoch. For the Catholic Church in Europe at large, on the other hand, it meant (although not so realised at the time) the closing of an old one. 1830 indeed was to usher in an era of Revolution. Thrones were to be shaken and dynasties disappear, wild political theories were to be acted on, the map of Europe re-arranged, and the balance of power shifted. Religion was to be insulted, cathedrals sacked, monasteries burned, priests attacked, the Church plundered and cast from her high estate. But in 1829 there was as yet little thought of all this, and on the surface of things there was only an ordered tranquillity. Yet 1829 was to be the very last of those fifteen years of peace which followed on the downfall of Napoleon, and were the outcome of that European settlement so skilfully and (as it was vainly hoped) so lastingly engineered by the statesmen of the Congress of Vienna.
Around Hawkesyard Before Emancipation
Authors: Pope Hugh
Published: July 2007

Was there ever such a benighted stretch of railway as the Birmingham, Cannock and Rugeley Line, L.M.S. P The grime, the smoke and reek, the glimpses of ‘dumps and the offal of modern industrial conditions, the gloomy, forbidding-looking stations, and the dank fields in between are so depressing that we instinctively bury ourselves in a book so as not to see the spectres.

Yet if we knew it, if Vre could but lift the veil of two hundred years, we might be conscious of spectres of a very different type. For we are on hallowed ground, even though now so defiled and besihirched that nothing seems further from it than romance. But here is the romance. In the British Museum there is preserved a list of convicted Recusants in the reign of Charles II. This list has been compiled from the returns made by the clerks of the peace in twenty-three counties during the years 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 28 and 29, of Charles II. In it we have enshrined the names of 10,236 people who, rather than conform to the Church by law established, preferred to pay a fine of £20 a month for each grown-up person thus absenting himself, though only £10 for a wife.
St. Thomas Aquinas and Law
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

A quotation from the fearless and original thought of Baron Friedrich von Hugel will be our justification with those who may consider our praise of St. Thomas Aquinas unjustly superlative. He writes : . this Norman-Italian Friar Noble, a soul so apparently derivative and abstractive, is more complete and balanced and penetrates to the specific genus of Christianity more deeply than Saints Paul and Augustine, with all their directness and intensity. .... No one has put this point better than Professor Troeltsch : “The decisive point here is the conception peculiar to the Middle Ages of what is Christian as supernatural.”’

Whilst I hesitate to give my master, St. Thomas, the praise of this latest panegyrist, I feel that his words will be a clue to my attempt to deal with St. Thomas and Law. Indeed, the names mentioned in the quotation are more akin to the subject of this paper than, perhaps, the writer thought. In the life of St. Paul the idea of Law had played almost the major part. The seeming opposition between Law and faith, or works and faith, had, for a moment, led him into opposition with a section of the Church; and even with St. Peter. Augustine, too, like St. Paul, had come to an intellectual and practical rejection of Manichean Dualism by the master-vision of a creative Law which was, at the same time, one, good, and all-powerful; indeed so powerful in its goodness as to be able to turn evil to good.
Léon Harmel and the Rerum Novarum
Authors: Ginns Reginald
Published: July 2007

It would be regrettable if the present year were allowed to pass without some mention in these pages of the centenary of Léon Harmel, born in 1829, that great lover of social justice whose name is connected with the issue of the Rerum Novarum. The great encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, which may well be called the workman’s charter of liberties, is a doctrinal expression of the principles which Harmel strove during his long life of eighty-six years to put into practice among his own employees.

His fellow-countrymen held the celebrations of his centenary in Paris in February last, and in May similar celebrations took place in Rome. It is greatly to be desired that we also in England may find some fitting means during the course of this year to bring back to the public mind the principles and work for which the name of Léon Harmel stands. At present his name and work are almost unknown even among Catholics in this country, where, much more than in France, we are reaping the evil harvest of social injustice which he prophesied with such a certain voice. The French celebrations have produced a fruit of lasting worth in the brochure published by Père Guitton,

S.J., with its title significative of the life-work of Harmel, Léon Harmel et L’ Initiative Ouvrière. Liberty and enterprise of the individual—that is the type of teaching so much needed in these days of insane monopoly and centralisation which are fast bringing into existence the Servile State—the organised exploitation of the work of the masses for the private advantage of the few.
Preachment of a Clown
Authors: Hallack Cecily
Published: July 2007

May it please the Company—Worthies, Worships, Elders and all my Betters : you know how a chance-found quotation will sometimes fish up from one’s subconscious mind a haul of impressions which, when they come to the surface, prove to be a valuable addition to one’s philosophy of life?

That has just happened to me, when, searching through one of my Common Place Books for Somebody’s terse and pertinent remark about Something, I came upon these words of Ernest Hello; whereupon I had to leave my other occupation to haul up the overwhelming catch of ideas and impressions it gave me.

‘Little men,’ he says, ‘borrow all their importance from their actions, which they accomplish. Without these actions they would be absolutely nothing.’
Leakage
Authors: Clegg Aileen Mary
Published: July 2007

I knew a Catholic who married a non-Catholic, and they had three children. One of the children married a convert, one married a bad Catholic, and the third made a mixed marriage. There were seven grandchildren, of whom six were brought up as Catholics, and one, the issue of the mixed marriage, was not. Of the six Catholic grandchildren, one lapsed, one ceased to practice his faith for a number of years, and one nearly lost his faith, but was saved by a miracle of grace.

Five of these grandchildren married, and only one of the five married a Catholic. The lapsed Catholic abjured his faith and married outside the Church. Two marriages were mixed marriages made by the Catholic partners with the best intentions of running the home on Catholic lines, and of bringing up children as fervent Catholics. The grandchild who was born of a mixed marriage in the previous generation, and who had never been brought up as a Catholic, naturally married outside the Church.

The fourth generation numbers eight great-grandchildren, of whom only three are being brought up as Catholics.

In the case of two of the Catholic marriages, the husbands were converts during the period of the engagement. In no single case of mixed marriage did the non-Catholic partner become converted after the wedding had taken place.

We hear and read a great deal about the ‘leakage.’ Here we have a deplorable instance of it. Of the twenty-four descendants of one mixed marriage, fourteen are Catholics and ten are non-Catholics . . . and the tale of fourteen Catholics is only made by including one bad Catholic and two slack ones.
The Anglo-Cathollc Problem
Authors: St. John Henry
Published: July 2007

It is always difficult to see a situation from a point of view which has never been ours, and it is sometimes more difficult to recapture, in imagination and sympathy, a point of view which is ours no longer. The more ardent our conviction the more difficult is the task of approaching a situation with the eyes and hearts of those who differ from us. Yet normally the accomplishment of this task is a necessary preliminary to all fruitful controversy. If you attack a man’s strong convictions and, in attacking them, betray your blindness to their influence over his heart and mind, or to the real truth implicit in them, you will produce nothing but irritation and a stronger loyalty to the error you are trying to dislodge. To be able to understand and to show that you understand what his convictions mean to him; to be able to separate in your own mind the true from the false in the things that claim his allegiance, is the only sure way of securing from him a fair hearing for the truth which he lacks and you possess.

In our relations with Anglo-Catholics we are generally conspicuously remiss in acting upon these first principles of fruitful controversy, and our failure arises in part from a quite natural inability to understand a point of view very different from our own. The result is an inevitable feeling, generally inarticulate, that an Anglo-Catholic must be either a knave or a fool. Even when unconsciously present in the mind this presupposition does not make for success in controversy, when we are faced by opponents whose learning and honesty are probably not less than our own.
That Illusive Socialism
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

The general election (conducted with a solemnity and decorum unknown to our forefathers of Eatanswill, the high spirits of age kept in check by the gravity of youth, now for the first time invited to decide the fate of parties and the choice of rulers), having brought the Labour Party into power and given us its leader, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, for prime minister, we are assured, with sorrowful shaking of head or with open rejoicing—it all depends on the point of view—that Socialism has triumphed at the polls, and that with a Socialist government responsible for England, the Empire, and things in general, we may expect the worst, or the best, to happen.

So far the ballots cast on Corpus Christi day have neither disturbed the money-changers of the world nor shaken the confidence of the multitude that went to Epsom the following week. The prime minister has chosen his cabinet and formed his government— a ministry of many talents. Socialists of the left, and of the right, veterans of the Fabian Society and the old S.D.F. and I.L.P.; responsible trade union leaders; distinguished university graduates; converts from Liberalism—all are included. Socialists are in office and hold the destinies of Empire in their hands.

But what is this Socialism, which, for better or worse, is the avowed belief, political and economic, of our Labour Government? What in these days does it signify to be called a Socialist? Happily, we may find an answer to these conundrums in the new edition of Mr. Beer’s History of British Socialism, with its complementary chapter bringing the story down to 1928. For the author, an Austrian, long resident in England and an old pupil of the London School of Economics under Professor Hewins, pursued his quest of this illusive British Socialism with conspicuous thoroughness, and his book is of the very greatest value in its interpretation of the facts so carefully set out.
The Bishops' Statement on Education
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

In view of the approaching General Election the J. Archbishops and Bishops of England and Wales deem it well to remind all Catholic voters of the following principles which underlie the Catholic attitude on Education, so that in giving their votes such electors may act in conformity with Catholic teaching and tradition in this matter of vital importance.

(1) It is no part of the normal function of the State to teach.

(2) The State is entitled to see that citizens receive due education sufficient to enable them to discharge the duties of citizenship in its various degrees.

(3) The State ought, therefore, to encourage every form of sound educational endeavour, and may take means to safeguard the efficiency of education.

(4) To parents whose economic means are insufficient to pay for the education of their children, it is the duty of the State to furnish the necessary means, providing them from the common funds arising out of the taxation of the whole community. But in so doing the State must not interfere with parental responsibility, nor hamper the reasonable liberty of parents in their choice of a school for their children. Above all, where the people are not all of one creed, there must be no differentiation on the ground of religion.

(5) Where there is need of greater school accommodation the State may, in default of other agencies, intervene to supply it; but it may do so only “in default of, and in substitution for, and to the extent of, the responsibility of the parents” of the children who need this accommodation.

(6) The teacher is always acting in loco parentis, never in loco civitalis, though the State to safeguard its citizenship may take reasonable care to see that teachers are efficient.

(7) Thus a teacher never is and never can be a civil servant, and should never regard himself or allow himself to be so regarded. Whatever authority he may possess to teach and control children, and to claim their respect and obedience, comes to him from God, through the parents, and not through the State, except in so far as the State is acting on behalf of the parents.
Faith's Infinite Outlook
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

Man, paddocked in a narrow garth Of earth,

Hath only towards the sky Infinity.

(Vincent McNabb, O.P.
What Happened at Kienthal?
Authors: Bordeaux Henri
Published: July 2007

Kienthal? Kiénthal? Does the name recall anything to mind or have we already forgotten that Bolshevism was hatched in that nest?

I spent last year at Kiénthal, merely as a tourist, however, for I had entirely forgotten that it has an historical interest attached to it. This fact was brought to my remembrance through a long paradoxical discussion with my travelling companion on the question as to whether or not we have a right to put an end to life. We all know the problem by which medical men are sometimes faced, that is—is it permissible for a doctor, whose patient is suffering from an incurable disease and whose end is inevitable, to spare him further atrocious sufferings by hastening that end? But is it necessary to encourage doctors in such a dangerous practice, do they not, of course without evil intent, kill off enough people as it is? Or would it be a duty to hold out a saving hand to a dangerous bandit who, when climbing the mountains, lost his footing on the edge of a chasm? Would it not be easy to turn aside and become absorbed in the scenery, very beautiful by the way, and well worth looking at? A little incident told us casually by our guide—not that we needed a guide to cross so easy a pass, but we wanted our bags carried—just missed setting the discussion ablaze.

I went to this valley, one of the most peaceful and least known in Switzerland, in search of rest. Starting from the Lake of Spiez you quit the line of Loetchberg at Reichenbach and follow the length of a torrent by a winding way impracticable for cars.
The Problem of Le Courager, 1671-1776
Authors: Wilkinson Maurice
Published: July 2007

Pierre Francois Le Courager, Augustinian Canon and Librarian of Ste. Genevieve, was the forerunner of many Frenchmen of distinction who have shown a kindly interest in the Anglican position and who have regarded ‘reunion’ as a not impossible dream. The Père Le Courager was a product of the Gallicanism of his day, the result of the long and uncertain contest between the Holy Father and the Kings of France, in which success seemed to incline first to one side and then to the other; but the odd trick, as Maitland would have said, fell to the Most Christian King. Louis XIV at his death left the crown virtually supreme in the Church and State. Apart from his Gallicanism, it is improbable that the Canon would ever have manifested much interest in the Anglican body.

Le Courager reproduced all the arguments of the Caroline Divines in favour of validity and of himself he added nothing fresh to the dispute. In fact, like all Frenchmen who have taken up ‘reunion,’ he knew little or nothing of England and her peculiarities. When he came here to reside and was given the Oxford D.D., a most unprecedented step, and one which aroused the wrath of at least one good Protestant, he no doubt learned more, but he was never really familiar with the psychology of the English.

The ‘Validité des Ordinations des Anglois,’ published at Brussels but purporting to emanate from Paris, soon caused a mild excitement similar to that with which we at intervals are familiar.
The Gilded Deputy
Authors: Eden Helen Parry
Published: July 2007

Monsieur Fernand Gastebois, Mayor of St. Anonyme, was a Catholic and a Liberal. This feat may cause no flutter in the Nordic hearts of those for whom this story is intended, no quandaries in Nordic minds accustomed to distinguish between the claims of Peter and Caesar with untroubled equability. But in Lower Normandy in the years before the Great War, it took some doing to strike the balance between religion and politics of this particular shade; and the Mayor of St. Anonyme undoubtedly did it, with one unfortunate lapse which it is my business to relate.

A historian versed in the internecine bickers of France would doubtless be able to acquaint you with the springs of the situation. I, a mere looker-on, am not so fortunate and can only guess at the source of my hero’s difficulties. On the political side a Liberal is undoubtedly a fiercer beast in France than elsewhere. Horrid implications of Revolution hang about him. The rustle of innumerable Trees of Liberty is ever in his ears. In other lands such symptoms are tactfully given a Catholic turn and in the Liberty of the Sons of God your Nordic Liberal finds refreshment, light and peace. In France he is merely relegated to the left and kept there in the name of consistency, a false Latin god who did one of his worst pieces of work when he established as an anticlerical the kindly, pious and lovable Monsieur Gastebois.
Old Castile
Authors: Sheils T. D.
Published: July 2007

Tempora mutantur . . . Vergil knew the proverb; yet what a theme for his idyllic muse had he foreseen the restoration of the crumbled ruins of his Tiber city to recall the Golden Age! Even Nemi must be drained for its gold and galleons . . . . ‘Tempora mutantur........’ There is a hungering for the charm of antiquity, a charm which progress cannot destroy. Nor is it peculiarly Roman. The castles and cathedrals of Old England, signs of a lingering greatness, call to the heart of every genuine traveller with the same age-old voice.

Older civilizations, too, are not without this attraction. What of Spain, relic of the Ice Age, one might say? There is no need to resurrect her former glory by excavative endeavour, for the Plaza de Toros still rears its lofty, red-brick walls in disdain over the presumptive football ground that has ranged alongside. The gaudy artistry of cigar-box lids has yet its inspiration; the mantilla still survives, on occasion, the ubiquitous toque; nor has the automobile altogether ousted the bullock-cart off the country lane.

Of course, one does not realise this immediately. Every country has its own type of ‘red tapestry,’ and at Irun one makes acquaintance with the peculiar Spanish texture. It is a nuisance. International relationship seems to demand it. But why, in these enlightened days?

Then, the fresh beauty of the Pyreneean scenery soothes one’s ruffled feelings, and Iberia’s stronghold is entered.
Conversion and Defection
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

The second volume of the Autobiography of Johannes Jorgensen contains an intimate account of his conversion to Catholicism in 1895, his reception into the Church in February 1896, and the subsequent adventures of soul and body. The genius of this distinguished Danish author illuminates the story of his conversion, so that all who care to pursue processes of the mind and spiritual stirrings—hopes and despondencies—will read the tale to the end with avidity. ‘Internal history is the brain stuff of fiction, wrote George Meredith. It is certainly the mark of great autobiography, separating it from the reminiscences and recollections—capital reading, too, in their way, many of these—that are concerned with the busy, bustling life of persons of importance in the world of affairs.

Conversion to Catholicism is an event that through the ages holds the interest of mankind. It seems that men and women, whether they be of the household of the faith or stand without the fold, are for ever fascinated when the story of the convert is told. The very rarity of the story no doubt to some extent accounts for the attraction. For the vast majority of converts are inarticulate; to describe the wonders of God is not for them. The event must be set out in literary form to enjoy the lasting attention of mankind. The flash that blinded and revealed on the road to Damascus, the Passionist father knocking on the door that autumn night at Littlemore, the hour when Augustine saw truth clearly and the old errors fell away, these things are written, and as long as books endure will be read.
Il Venti Settembre
Authors: Montgomery Francis
Published: July 2007

The sixtieth anniversary of the breach of Porta Pia through which the Italian army, under Victor Emmanuel, King of Piedmont, entered Rome on September 20th, 1870, sees at long last some fulfilment of the prayer with which the noble President of Ecuador, Gabriel Garcia Moreno, terminated the official protest of his government and himself at this final outrage to the Holy See. The whole Catholic world had seen with consternation and amazement the invasion of the last strip of Papal territory by the King of Piedmont and Sardinia in spite of his protestations of loyalty to the Sovereign Pontiff, in spite of his formal assurance to the French Emperor who, involved in the conflict with Prussia, had been obliged a month previously to withdraw his garrison from Rome. But even then Christendom was hardly prepared for the climax; the seizure of the Capital itself, and the virtual incarceration in the Vatican of the saintly and beloved Pontiff, Pius IX. The Chancelleries of Europe, indeed of the entire world, had nevertheless remained dumb in face of this flagrant injustice, contenting themselves with filing in their archives the formal remonstrances of the Holy See. Earlier in 1848 the voice of Pius IX in exile at Gaeta had evoked the assistance of Austria, of France, of Spain, but now Isabella Segunda was dethroned and in exile, Napoleon about to surrender to Prussia, Austria still quivering under the recent defeat of its armies and no other Power able, or at any rate willing, to defy the ‘Brigand of Savoy.’
Some Sicknesses and Their Saints
Authors: Gibbons John
Published: July 2007

While St. Vitus’s Dance stands in this twentieth century as a term perfectly well recognised, a query as to St. Hubert’s Disease would probably puzzle even most doctors in a sort of ‘How much do you know’ medical examination. But time was when it was quite a common synonym for Hydrophobia. The Saint, of course, was converted while in the hunting field, and so became the Patron of Hunters and incidentally of their Hounds. ‘His’ disease, then, was the ailment that occasionally attacks the pack. And this is only one out of plenty of similar instances.

In the Middle Ages ‘radegoundes’ was a recognised and very prevalent disease. It comes over and over again in the literature of the day, a notable instance being a reference in Piers Plowman. A kind of running sore, it owes its popular name to the patron saint of Poitiers, in France, Ste. Radegonde, wife of Clotaire the First. So many cures were effected at her tomb—later sacked by the Huguenots in 1562— that the ailment itself began to be called by the name of the saint. In precisely the same way St. Avertin’s Disease was an ancient name for epilepsy, so many miraculous cures having been wrought at the tomb of this saint, a friend, by the way, of our own St. Thomas of Canterbury, that in old French the word ‘aver-tineux’ figures as meaning epileptics. While on the subject, one might remember that the same malady had two other popular names, ‘St. John’s Evil’ often standing for epilepsy, and ‘St. Mathuron’s Disease’ being one more title sometimes found in the old medical books.
The Anonymous Article
Authors: Swinstead A. E. H.
Published: July 2007

During the last year or so, English Catholics have been subjected to a good deal of criticism. Their taste, their devotions, their religious education, their papers, have all been weighed and found wanting. Criticism is no bad thing, and Catholic criticism of Catholics is no new thing; for a certain measure of criticism is a sign of life, and, as Père Brou has well said of the Church, ‘Sa grande tradition, si l’on peut le dire, c’est de vivre.’ But the criticism to which I am now referring has this to distinguish it, that it is anonymous. No doubt, that is no new thing, either; but whether it is desirable is worth considering. We are told that an anonymous article is judged on its merits, as things should be judged; and we are led to presume that the signed article is judged with too much reference to the name, distinguished or not, that is appended to it.

The argument has had the support of some respectable names, and it might, at first sight, seem to have the authority of The Imitation of Christ, where it is written : ‘Non quaeras quishaec dixerit, sed quid dicatur, attende.’ But the quotation occurs in the chapter on the reading of Holy Scripture, and the attitude is recommended just because the scriptures are to be taken, not at their face value, but on the authority of God. And whatever the authority behind the opinion, it can hardly blame us for considering it on its merits, as, in fact, it bids us do.
Judas
Authors: Maynard Theodore
Published: July 2007

‘Where are you going, Judas,

With that rope in your hand?’

To scatter what God will not forgive

To the dark wind and the sand.’

‘Why is your purse empty, Judas,

Dangling light and loose?’

‘Silver I had; but all earth’s gold

Could not ransom Him from the Jews.’

‘Could you not cry for mercy, Judas?

His kindness has no scope.’

‘The kindest things that I shall find Are a tall tree and a rope.’

‘Oh fool! fool! Even this sin, Judas,

He will pardon from His cross.’

‘The death that saves all other men Is my eternal loss.’

‘Wait, and you shall see Him risen, Judas.’

‘His eyes would be to me a rod—

For I have betrayed an innocent man.’

‘Nay, Judas, only a God.’

Theodore Maynard.
The Church To-Day in Norway
Authors: Lorentzen Veronica
Published: July 2007

The Scandinavian countries, and not least of them Norway, have long remained strongholds of Lutheranism. That is, in outward appearance, for the Norwegian State Church counts among its members an unusually large proportion of formal adherents, people who are baptised and ‘confirmed’ in the Lutheran State Church, but who remain for the rest of their lives totally indifferent in religious matters, never attending Church services, or otherwise manifesting any interest whatsoever.

This general apathy has now begun to react on the State Church in a marked degree. Methodists and other Free Church sects have steadily increased their influence and numbers, and have drawn over a large proportion of members, who are recruited from the same classes as in England, namely from among prosperous tradesmen and the best section of the working class population.

Catholicism, on the other hand, here as elsewhere, makes her primary appeal to the intellectual section of the community, but as the first movement broadens and deepens, she sweeps with her people of all ranks and conditions.

The first establishment of the Catholic Church in Norway was made in 1856, in Oslo, then Christiania, under the patronage of St. Olaf, the saint who brought Christianity to the heathen Norsemen. Since then Churches and chapels have sprung up in the larger towns throughout the country, and Norway numbers at present nineteen Catholic churches and twenty chapels.
Cardinal Bourne's Congress Addresses
Authors: Zulueta A. de
Published: July 2007

The success of the recent Ninth National Catholic

Congress, held at Westminster, marking as it did the celebration of the Centenary of Catholic Emancipation in this country, lends an added interest to this handy little volume, which contains the pith and kernel of those principles so steadily upheld and so well expounded on innumerable public occasions by His Eminence of Westminster.

Catholics in this country have come to look with confidence and affection towards Cardinal Bourne during the twenty-six years in which he has occupied the chief ecclesiastical position amongst them. They can safely look to him not only for the maintenance of Christian principles, but also for opportuneness in the statement of them and wisdom in their application. To these qualities His Eminence adds others peculiarly suited to his position in this country, strong but intelligent feeling for England and the British Empire, and a thorough sympathy with the English character. He is a thorough Englishman, most suited to guide the destinies of the Church in England at a time when Catholics are becoming increasingly numerous and increasingly free to take an active part in the life of their country and of the Empire. To start from this trait, we cannot fail to notice in the volume before us how His Eminence identifies himself throughout with the national life in its widest manifestations, whilst on the other hand his international outlook and above all his position in the Universal Church do not permit him to remain blind to the particular limitations of the British race and to the dangers to Catholic principles which have arisen at the present stage of British civilization.
Bored and Entranced
Authors: Dimnet Ernest
Published: July 2007

A Parable

A few years ago I travelled from Montreal to Quebec in a Pullman car which, strange to say, never contained more than three passengers till we reached our destination. Opposite me sat a McGill girl—a junior I inferred from her conversation with two other girls who were seeing her off On the other side of the aisle sat a young man, one of those handsome, perfectly well-tailored youths, so attractive that you are willing to ascribe genius to them as well as a host of minor perfections. This demi-god was reading. The McGill girl looked across at hjm for some time, till their eyes met. ‘Reading?’ she half queried, after an interval of mute presentation leading to a simultaneous smile. ‘Yes,’ a very uncultivated voice answered, ‘what I want is a love story with a kid in it and lots of devilry in him.’ The book was handed across the aisle, and the girl began to read. The voice had been an anti-climax, and so evidently was the book, yet the girl read on, skimming and skipping. After a while my conscience smote me, and, bending over the love-and-kid-story, I whispered : ‘Have you ever read Vanity Fair?’ The girl looked up, flushed a little, and answered : ‘Dickens?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘Thack------’ ‘Oh! Thackeray, of

course! No, it was not on our list.’

What would I not have given to have Vanity Fair in my valise, open it at random, and watch the girl’s delight at Becky Sharp’s introduction to Sir Pitt’s town house and to his immortal charwoman!
Content and Happiness:
Authors: Maynard Theodore
Published: July 2007

‘Man should aim, at a happiness too great for man.’—Aristotle.

A crust of bread,

Brook water, and, for condiment,

Wild berries, rushes in a cave for bed—

With these my soul could be content.

But when I see

The kindled stars upon the skies That stretch to desolate infinity,

I tremble, and tears cloud my eyes.

My hands reach out To happiness, the unattained :

This palace for my pleasure, that redoubt For my protection . . . Naught is gained!

Like other fools

I brood and strain to foil my fate,

Greed using wrath and cunning as its tools To force life’s adamantine gate.

In vain! The.lock

Holds fast. But ah! the skies still draw My spirit as an eagle of the rock To heights of mystery and of awe.

Content, was I,

With rushes, water, berries, bread?

Content. But happy only in the sky With God’s fierce bosom as my bed.

Theodore Maynard.
France and the Holy See
Authors: Gwynn Denis
Published: July 2007

At a meeting of the French Academy in Paris at the end of November, two pronouncements were made concerning the renewal of diplomatic relations between France and the Holy See which are so remarkable that they deserve quotation in some detail. The occasion was of unusual importance, for it coincided with the recent troubles in French politics which had compelled M. Poincaré to reconstruct his Government, as the result of attacks by the Radical Party, directed very largely against his proposal to encourage the French foreign missions. M. Herriot and his colleagues had been compelled to retire from the Ministry, and M. Poincaré had to form a new Government drawn very much from the same elements which composed the old Bloc National. Once again, during November, the old controversy over the relations of Church and State had cut across party politics in France; and M. Poincaré, after going to the furthest possible lengths in concession to the old sectarian spirit, had decided to trust to his own prestige and persuasive powers to carry the Chamber with him.
St. Thomas on the Incarnation
Authors: Walker Luke
Published: July 2007

There is only one way of making supernatural truths manifest, only one way of showing such truths to be truths, and that is by showing them to be vouched for, and therefore revealed, by God. If they are really truths, before they were revealed, they were, as being supernatural, known to the Divine Wisdom alone, and we can come to the knowledge of them only by getting His word for them and taking them on His authority. Before, then, we can accept such truths as truths, the assertion of them must come to us clothed in some way with the light of His divine authority.

By adequate signs the Divine Wisdom showed His presence in the Christian Faith, showed that what was asserted in the preaching of that Faith originated from Him; from Him, too, the inspiration of those who preached it. These teachers of the Christian Faith taught, not only by the spoken, but also by the written word. This written word was later gathered together to form what we know as the New Testament. Hence what is taught in the New Testament comes to us invested with divine authority.
The Reformation in Ireland
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

The course of the Reformation in England—’ that catastrophe in the history of Christian civilization —the Reformation so-called ‘—is plain sailing, the proceedings in the alteration of religion are clear. It is otherwise with Ireland. Confusion and obscurity attend the narrative of events and historians of the period have for the most part earned an advocate’s reward and left truth to take care of itself. The work of Father Ronan is therefore the more valuable, and this second volume, which covers the critical years from Elizabeth’s accession till the death of James Fitzmaurice, is of high importance.

The story itself is dreary enough. It was ‘an age of insincerity, inconsistency, bluffing and temporising on all sides.’ Pride and avarice are exhibited, and at their worst; treachery and murder most foul are recurring incidents in the history of the relations of the English government to the people of Ireland. The feuds of the great Norman-Irish chieftains, of the houses of Butler and Geraldine in especial, the overweening pride of Shane O’Neill—whose patriotism is not to be denied, though Father Wolf, S.J., the papal commissary, wrote him down ‘a cruel, impious heretical tyrant’ —the nominal submission of chiefs and nobles to the sovereignty of Elizabeth, the acceptance by seven of the Irish bishops of the Elizabethan supremacy and the further acceptance by five of the seven of the Protestant order of service—all these conspicuous things make melancholy reading. But despite the failure of the Irish chiefs to stand together in the presence of a common enemy and despite the utter misery and savagery of the people, the Elizabethan ‘reform’ had no success in Ireland.
Daniel O'connell and Ellen Courtenay
Authors: Gwynn Denis
Published: July 2007

To discuss the private life of Daniel O’Connell as though it required vindication is, especially around the centenary year of the Catholic Emancipation Act, an impertinence which would have called forth a scathing rebuke from the Liberator himself, if he had not passed beyond the range of those bitter controversies that saddened all his later public life. But a vindication has, in fact, become requisite in view of the extraordinary and quite gratuitous attack upon O’Connell’s moral reputation which was made a few years ago in a book which has attracted a great deal of public attention both because of its sensational style and because its author is not only an Irish Catholic but a former Lord Justice of the Irish Courts.

In all the vast output of recrimination with which O’Connell was assailed during his long struggle to win Catholic emancipation, and later as the leader of the Repeal movement, there is certainly no more astonishing and vindictive attack than that which was made quite recently by the Rt. Hon. Sir James O’Connor in his History of Ireland 1798-1924. And as this ex-Lord Justice has seen fit to attack O’Connell’s reputation from a new angle, throwing into the scales against a dead man his own prestige and authority as one of the principal former members of the Irish judiciary, the attack cannot, in fairness to O’Connell’s memory, be left unnoticed. The present writer has by accident discovered quite recently new evidence bearing directly upon the flimsy testimony which Sir James O’Connor produced.
Charlemagne in the Clos-Poulet
Authors: Balfour M. C.
Published: July 2007

In that stretch of country that may be described as lying between France and Brittany—the pays gallot —there is a still narrower district that encircles the Three Towns (Saint-Malo, Saint-Servan, and Dinard) and lies along the banks of the Rance. It is known in the local speech as the Clos-Poulet, a quaint phrase with a ring of the patois about it, and like the patois itself venerable and significant; for it has a meaning that is plainly declared by the name of a village within its borders, Saint-Pierre-Marc-en-poulet, or in the Latin Sanctus Petrus de Marco in pago Aletho.

Now this ‘Aleth’ deserves at least a word in passing. Very long ago—I cannot give a precise date, but it was in ‘the time of the Saints’ when they crossed the water (in stone boats or not, as you may prefer) as missioners to the folk of Armorica : when Saint-Malo found his way to Saint-Aaron’s hermitage on the rock then rising in the midst of forests that was later to be called after him; when men of our own race, our own blood, Scots, Welsh, and Irish, came here to conquer, to teach, and to pray, saints and fighting-men, an endless list of amazing names, Coulfmith, Armaël, Cadocanam, Jagu, Maclou—somewhere in the fifth or sixth century, Aleth came first into being. Very little is known of that first settlement, but it was the home of one of the many early bishops or missioners, more important than the rock of Malo to which some centuries later the Bishop and his Chapter removed. And somewhere very early in the ninth century it emerges from the shadows, if not into the full light of history, at least into the daybreak of a clear tradition.
Daniel O'Connell and Ellen Courtenay
Authors: Gwynn Denis
Published: July 2007

Ellen Courtenay’s ultimatum to O’Connell, declaring that she had received promises of assistance from ‘many persons,’ and that ‘it would make her fortune’ to denounce him publicly, was posted to O’Gorman Mahon, the young Member of Parliament for County Clare, at the end of February, 1831. It was exactly a year later that, in the Fleet Prison in London, she added the date to the last footnote to the pamphlet, which was published and at once broadcast over England, by the Editor of the Satirist. He must have made a very handsome profit on the sale of so small a publication at the price of half a crown per copy. The pamphlet comprises twenty-seven small pages of narrative in large black type, followed by ten pages of footnotes in smaller type, which are mainly concerned with a denunciation of O’Connell’s public activities as an Irish agitator, and are written in the familiar style of all his political critics at the time.

The first footnote, for instance, denounces ‘this man of atrocity’ for having ‘violated the sanctity of the Lord’s day by changing even its title, and styling it “the O’Connell Sunday”’ with the object of ‘wringing from the poor Peasantry their last penny .... to enable him to pursue his insatiable ambition.’ And the concluding footnote, which is quite obviously written to serve as political propaganda for quotation throughout England, fills four pages of close type.
The Art of Mr. Eric Gill
Authors: Bennigsen George
Published: July 2007

Two recent reviews of Mr. Eric Gill’s latest book, Art Nonsense, make us think that it is time Mr. Gill’s art was discussed from the point of view of his own writings and the Thomistic philosophy of which he professes to be so ardent a follower.

Few living artists enjoy the distinction of being the subject of special books; both Mr. Joseph Thorp and J.K.M.R. in Mr. A. Rutherston’s series of Contemporary British Artists have written with keen appreciation of Mr. Gill’s artistic achievements, illustrating their books with numerous reproductions of his sculpture and carving. Yet opinion as to the merits of his work is widely divergent. Whilst some admire it unreservedly, others dislike it as intensely. Undoubtedly the same divergence of opinion exists concerning all artists’ works, but in the given case the Artist who is at the same time a writer will help us to a correct appreciation of his work as judged by his own principles. And in fact it is not the writing but the work that matters, for, as Mr. Gill himself reminds us : ‘There are plenty of lying documents, and very great skill and judgment is required to use them. But works are infallible guides .... You may write an elaborate series of lies on paper, but your handwriting will betray you and show what manner of man you are.’ So we shall proceed with the examination of these ‘infallible guides’ in the light of Art Nonsense which one of its reviewers declares to ‘say the last word on matters which have long been spoken of in vain.’
Six Decades of Oberammergau
Authors: Manning W. S.
Published: July 2007

The writer of these words first witnessed the Passion Play in 1880, and he has done so on each occasion since. The contrast between then and now is indeed a striking one. In 1880 the arrangements were very primitive, there was no railway to the village, and visitors had to drive by carriage fifteen miles from the nearest station if they could afford the expense, or else walk or get a lift in a jolting hay waggon. Whilst the accommodation was much easier to obtain in those days, the lodgings and commissariat were naturally on a very modest scale, foreign visitors were rare, and the necessity for providing modern facilities had not arisen. The theatre itself was very uncomfortable, for the seats were merely narrow planks without backs, and to sit on them for the eight hours of performance was most fatiguing. On the other hand, the prices were very much less. The audience, mostly peasants and their families, brought provisions—beer and sausages—with them and consumed them during the performance. Then, as now, the actors were exposed to the elements, but their costumes, which were formerly supplied from the Royal theatres, are now designed and made in the village workshops. It is indeed remarkable that the whole performance is produced without any aid from outside, and that even the large orchestra is recruited in Oberammergau. In fact, no one who is not native-born can take any part in the play.
What is Marriage?
Authors: Lechmere Joscelyne
Published: July 2007

To Catholics marriage is a Sacrament. Wealthy persons treat it as a settlement in life. For ordinary people it may spell a career in the man’s case, and to the woman an emancipation from family ties. Doubting souls may call it a vocation. As regards the ‘masses,’ the only ‘classes’ which really count in these Labour days, marriage appears to be a lottery in more ways than one. Catholics, and I speak of adherents to the ‘old-established firm with its headquarters at Rome’ —the expression is Henry Labouchere’s—have a very definite conception of marriage. ‘Hoc est magnum sacramentum,’ exclaims St Paul. And he adds the proviso : ‘Dico autem in Christo et in Ecclesia.’ It is the life-long union of man and woman indissoluble as the union of Christ with His Church.

Marriage implies children. Catholics adopt this principle as their own. In Catholic countries the birth-rate remains at high tide. Their women accept child-birth as a natural incident of married life. Therefore, they are not afraid of it. Birth control is anathema to Catholics. And by this I mean artificial birth prevention. The Church does not forbid control by abstention. She insists on the Pauline precept of each party according to the other its due rights. But if both parties agree to live for a space as brother and sister, either to limit a family or for any other such reason, the Church does not say them nay. So far the Catholic standpoint. It is held wholly by High Churchmen, and partially by other religious bodies.