bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Earliest Life of St. John Fisher
Authors: Hughes Philip
Published: July 2007

The beginning of all our knowledge of St. John Fisher is a life written in the reign of Queen Elizabeth from thirty to forty years after his death. This account, after circulating in manuscript for almost a century, was finally published as The Life and Death of that renowned John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Comprising the highest and hidden Transactions of Church and State in the Reign of Henry the 8, with divers Morall, Historicall, and Political Animadversions upon Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas Moor, Martin Luther, with a full relation of Queen Katherine’s Divorce. Carefully selected from sever all ancient Records, by Tho. Bailey, D.D. London. Printed in the yeare, 1655.

The Dr. Bailey thus responsible for this first publication was not however the author of the Life. A manuscript of it, that belonged at one time to the English Benedictine monks of Dieulouard in Lorraine had come into his hands and “making some alteration therein"—“verbiage, méprises, et sottes interpolations,” the later scientific Bollandist styles them—he had printed it as his own work. Bailey was soon found out, but his ill-informed and stupid manipulation of the text threw a discredit upon the biographer whom he had exploited which lasted down to our own times. The pioneer in the work of restoring the credit of this sixteenth century writer was Fr. T. E. Bridgett, C.SS.R., whose monumental life of the martyr appeared in 1888.
Initiation to Christendom
Authors: Bauhofer Oskar
Published: July 2007

Tribute to St. Thomas More

Europe has gone out of Christendom. There are still perhaps Christian nations, whatever this may mean to-day, there is a strong though disunited Christian tradition living in many millions of people and representing, through them, a power of public import still, there is the Church Catholic, and many other forms of “organized religion.” But Europe has gone out of Christendom four hundred years ago. This is not merely another way of saying that the sixteenth century saw the break-up of the formal religious unity it had possessed throughout the Middle Ages. Europe is not merely the name of a continent and a mere factual unit based on the neighbourhood of nations and peoples living within its boundaries. Mr. Christopher Dawson in his admirable work The Making of Europe and others of his books has recovered the true meaning and significance of what Europe has been in the history of mankind—not the natural scene of the lives of peoples like any other similar scene, but Christendom. The religious revolution of the sixteenth century was from the religious and Catholic point of view the gravest event, but it had no less grave accompaniments in fields quite beyond the strictly religious domain. Nor was the Reformation the sole cause—it was in fact just as much an effect. England might never have gone beyond breaking up the ties, with Henry VIII, that bound her up into Christendom, and yet have severed herself from the most living reality of a thousand years of European history.

It was Sir Thomas More who realized that most clearly, “lam not bound, my lord, to confirm my conscience to the counsel of one realm against the general counsel of Christendom,” he said during his trial. In this case it was not the Saint himself that was defendant, it was Christendom.
St. Thomas More: A Last Word
Authors: O'Sullivan Richard
Published: July 2007

“FIRST to respect and regard God and afterwards the King, thy master.”

This “notable and woorthye lesson and charge” was the first instruction given by Henry VIII to Thomas More on the first entry of the latter into the King's service. The occcasion of this entry has a certain historical interest and significance. It happened after the decision of a legal dispute between the Pope and the King concerning a ship belonging to the Pope which the King claimed as forfeit.

“There chaunced a great shippe of his that then was Pope to arriue at Southampton, the which the King claymed as a forfeyture. Wherevpon the popes ambassadour, then resident in the Realme, vpon sute obteyned of the King that he might retaine for his master some Consailers learned in the lawes of the Realme, and that in his owne presence (him selfe being a singuler Ciuilian) the matter might in some publike place be openly heard, debated and discoursed. Among all the lawyers, no one could be founde so apte and meete as Master More, as one that was able to report to the Ambassadour all the reasons and argumentes on both sides proposed and alleaged. Vpon this the Counsailers of either partie, in the presence of the Lorde ChauncelZowr and other the Judges in the Starre chamber, had audience accordinglye. At what time Master More was not onely a bare reporter to the Ambassadour, but argued himselfe also so learnedly and so substantially that he recovered and wonne to the pope the saide forfeiture, and to himselfe high commendation and renowne.”
Sanctity and Marriage
Authors: Delany Selden P.
Published: July 2007

The canonization of Blessed Thomas More is extremely significant for many reasons: he was an Englishman, a layman, a man of great learning, a humanist, and he died a martyr to his belief in papal supremacy. More than any other man, perhaps, he was the typical Englishman. His humour, versatility, and literary achievements have endeared him to multitudes of readers in every part of the English-speaking world. His canonization is notable also for the fact that he was a married man—indeed twice married. It is a long time since any married saint has been officially canonized by the Catholic Church. That so few married people have been raised to the Church's altars since the present process of canonization was initiated, raises the query whether sanctity is in any way incompatible with married life.

To answer this question we must first clarify our minds as to what are the constituent elements of sanctity. Many think that a saint is simply one who lives according to high moral standards. But one can live such a life without any conscious relationship with God. A saint is one whose whole life is motivated by the love of God, and who tries daily to do the will of God, as that will is made known to him through vocation and circumstances. According to the degree of sanctity, saints are divided into common and heroic saints.

For obvious reasons it is only the heroic saints that are canonized by the Church. Before any servant of God can be enrolled in the canon of the saints it must be established beyond peradventure that his or or her life was distinguished by the heroic practice of faith, hope, charity, justice, temperance, fortitude and prudence. That is the norm according to which the Sacred Congregation judges in the process of canonization.
Mysticism and Theology
Authors: O'Driscoll Benet
Published: July 2007

The publication of the collected spiritual letters of the late Abbot Chapman reveals a side of his life and work less well known to the outside world. With the exception of one rather long series, these letters are mainly concerned with those stages of the spiritual life which St. John of the Cross has called the Dark Night of the Soul. In their preoccupation with this time of dryness and painful anxiety when no comfort is found either in God or in creatures, they present a rather gloomy view of Christianity. Dom Chapman had formed the opinion that many reach the mystical state without being aware of it, and that for lack of suitable instruction they make no progress. He tried to help, although always refusing to become a “professional director,” and disclaiming special knowledge. The letters contain much that is helpful, expressed with originality and vigour.

He first began to take a serious interest in the subject of mysticism when recalled to Maredsous by Abbot Marmion in 1912—indeed his own state of soul seemed “obviously mystical"—and the first of the letters date from that period. Very soon he had worked out for himself a provisional theory, which he explained at length in a letter of April, 1913 (P-25°)« and in January, 1928, he published in the Downside Review an article “What is Mysticism?” as a theological defence of his ideas. To explain the scattered references in the letters, that article has been reprinted to form the second appendix to the present work. It is exclusively an interpretation of St. Thomas, but it is so novel an interpretation that, put forward with the authority of a great reputation, it requires careful examination. Dom Chapman sets aside the accepted Thomistic doctrine based on the theology of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost ("a harmless doctrine, but unfruitful"—p. 71) and starts again from the beginning.
Kant and the Problem of Peace
Authors: Gigon H.
Published: July 2007

Between the philosopher who returns thanks “to nature for the incompatibility, for the envious emulating vanity, for the insatiable appetite to acquire, or even to rule, (for) without them all the excellent natural predispositions in mankind would slumber to all eternity without being developed,” and the General who proclaims that “war is not merely a necessary element in the life of nations, but an indispensable factor of culture,"* for “without war, inferior or decaying races would easily choke the growth of healthy budding elements, and a universal decadence would follow,” there is a striking “air de famille.”

We may well wonder how the old man of Konigsberg, who saw in human struggles “the direction of a wise Creator,” could write an essay on “Perpetual Peace,” and can easily understand how the controversy as to whether Kant were pacifist or imperialist arose.

It can be affirmed without doubt that Kant was at heart a pacifist, his treaty on “Perpetual Peace” being sufficient proof of that. But had he written this essay alone, he would never have gained his present authority among philosophers; he would rapidly have been relegated to the little comer reserved for an Abbé de St. Pierre, a de Tattel, and other utopists.

Kant’s works may be divided into two parts:

(1) his destructive work, which culminates in the Critique of Pure Reason;

(2) his constructive work, with his Critique of Practical Reason, his writings on Morals and Right, and his study on Universal and Perpetual Peace, which “constitutes not merely a part, but whole final purpose and end of the Science of Right.”
Money Free From Usury
Authors: Drinkwater F. H.
Published: July 2007

Some people seem to be a little alarmed by the phrase “consumer-credit,” as if it involved some vast and dangerous experiment along untried paths.

Don't be frightened at a word. “Consumer-credit” simply means “credit which is not producer-credit.”

Producer-credit consists of bank-overdrafts allowed to industry for production, or to Governments and Municipalities to carry on their work. Loans bearing interest, loans issued upon securities which will become the property of the lender if the loan is not repaid. That is producer-credit as it exists to-day. There is nothing specially Catholic or traditional about it. On the contrary, it is (or would be, if the lender were lending real money, which he isn’t) precisely what was always called sinful Usury in the old days; it is a modem kind of “money” which bears upon it the guilt and stain of debt from the first moment of its existence.

Of course, this producer-credit could be and ought to be controlled in the public welfare and issued free of interest; but even so it would still provide incomes only for those at work, not for the ever-increasing army of the dispossessed unemployed and their dependents, nor for the aged and incapacitated. These would still have to be supported grudgingly out of taxation levied on the working population.

Hence the idea of introducing credits into industry from the consumption-end of the process also. We affirm the possibility of “consumer-credit,” which would be nothing but ordinary sane means-of-exchange money, based upon the community’s credit or power of production and put into circulation by the Ruler. As its name indicates, it would be issued direct to consumers as such, and would give them a means of setting the producers as such to work. It might be issued to all consumers (national dividend) or only to some (old age pensions, children’s allowances, etc.).
Sigrid Undset and the Modern Apostolate
Authors: Connolly Kevin
Published: July 2007

On the feast of Corpus Christi, 1854, a young man, an artist, stood in the streets of Dusseldorf waiting for the procession of the Blessed Sacrament to pass by. He was not there from any religious motive; indeed, he looked with a certain supercilious air upon the people around him, waiting so silently for their Lord to pass by. It was only inspiration for a painting that he sought, attracted by the pageantry, the rich colours, the myriad candles and flowers. Soon, the distant murmur of prayers was audible and the procession appeared round the bend of the road, a splash of colour and light against the sombre background. The men around him pulled off their hats and all fell upon their knees. The artist alone stood, tall and handsome, with his broad-brimmed hat planted firmly upon his fair curling hair. But it did not remain so for long! The next moment a blow from one of the men near him had sent it spinning across the street. . . . With a sudden realisation of his want of courtesy and good breeding the quick blood rushed to the young man’s cheeks and he bowed his head in shame.

The name of this young artist was Karl Schilling. He was a Norwegian, nineteen years of age and an atheist, staying in Germany for the sake of his studies; but from that day of June when he had stood in the streets of Dusseldorf waiting for the procession, dated his change of heart. After his conversion (November nth, 1854) he worked untiringly till the day of his death for the return of his beloved Norway to the true faith. Gradually he gave up his painting. More and more of his time was given to prayer and the exercise of charity. With the passage of the years the wish to become a priest was slowly formulating in his mind.
The Volume of Cajetan
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

Gale turned the luxurious pages of the tiny treatise with a sense of thrilled satisfaction. It was good to possess at last so capital a work as Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia, competently, exhaustively edited, printed in the best Italian tradition on paper of fine texture. He did not at once begin to read but enjoyed the sense of possession and of authority. So slight in size the corner piece of a now authoritative library. As he rose to find a place for the book on his shelves, a place that must be at once adequate and inevitable, he saw that the light had gone out of the summer evening. He forgot his shelves, leaving the book on the arm of a chair.

The rain came suddenly with a crash of thunder and a simultaneous flicker of lightning. The wonder of storms. From the window he could barely see the railings of the park, so fierce the fall of the rain. Immediate the stride of the storm. Here thundering at the door with its guns of water, and as suddenly would be gone and the world changed in a moment's bombardment. Somewhere at the back of his mind an uneasiness Cajetan would not solve. Sustained violence, an unthinkable thing. Natural causes, his mind told him, workaday, but powerful, tremendous.

The crash and assault of the rain beat the evergreens before his window, tore petals from the few flowers. Window panes aswim with switchback scenery. An early light wept lucidly, pools of yellow in the window frames. A man was standing, coat caught up to the chin, in the inadequate shelter of the grandiose pillared porch, gusts of rain sweeping his legs like impetuous brooms. Gale watched him slantwise through the blear panes. Trousers sodden: would run water soon. He thought of the bell; Thompson his servant; unfriendly? No, he would go to the door himself.
Talents
Authors: Pepler Hilary
Published: July 2007

To accept authority is natural to man. Authority is a kind of status given to those who have proved themselves competent to exercise it, usually a confirmation of authority acquired by practice, but it may be accorded to the incompetent, it may be bought with political honours, and all desire its benefits. The “educated” classes have probably the firmest hold on economic authority, parents pay out large sums for the education of their children expecting some return, hence the Government is obliged to maintain a large number of appointments to which no one who has not qualified through these educational channels has access. It is worth while investing some thousands of pounds in a college course if it secure your child in a good job at the end of it. Nevertheless the authority for which there is the greatest respect is that of talent and ability. The student is not only thinking of ultimate securities but preparing himself to serve his neighbours with medicine, legal advice, bread, boots, houses, lessons in astronomy, even to shrive, anoint and decently bury them. Most men hope to be producers of benefits or goods and not receivers only, they consider themselves fortunate when they have a natural love of the work to be done and unhappy when insensitive of any particular affinity with it.

Hence, in the order of authority which goes with merit, there are two classes: those who work for the work’s sake and those who labour only for a reward outside the work.

It is with the first class with which I am here concerned. Where there is love of the work there is an intuitive power denied to those who acquire proficiency merely by the exercise of the will.
The Recusants' Bede
Authors: Gillett H. M.
Published: July 2007

Tucked away, among a million other books, there is in the British Museum Library a handsome small volume which must have had quite an eventful history of its own before it reached its present peaceful seclusion, but which must, nevertheless, be wishing that its purport and contents were better known, especially in these days when so much has been said and written on account of the twelfth centenary of the death of Saint Bede the Venerable. Not that there is any secret as to its existence. For many years this particular volume has been there, duly catalogued, for all to find who might chance that way. Yet so few people, apparently, are aware of it, that it seems worth while not only to draw attention to it but to its author and subject besides.

The fly-leaf alone is worthy of notice. It is covered with bold writing in several hands, which in themselves betray a little of the romance that can follow a humble book. These inscriptions read thus:

(a) this book belongs to the english convent of St. Dots order at Bruxelles.

(b) this book belongs to the English Convent of the Domicno

order in Br-----order in —(sic)

And the third, which supersedes both the others, apparently, is quainter still:

this Books belongs to the Inglish Nuns of St. Dominicks order in Bruxells— for the use of Sister Maiy Catherine with Leave of her Superiour.

These three inscriptions leave no doubt about it, that this book did indeed belong at one time to the Dominican Nuns at Brussels, and, from the style of handwriting, it seems at a date soon after its publication, in 1650-1658.
The Ignatian Inspiration of Gerard Hopkins
Authors: Devlin Christopher
Published: July 2007

So much has been written about the effect of Gerard Hopkins’ vocation on his poetry that it may seem tedious to say anything more. Yet when the sum of things said has established a first-class misunderstanding, it is tantalising, if not requisite, to attempt a reconciliation.

Assuming, then, that Jesuits are provided with a mould in which each after his own fashion may mould himself (please note italics for subsequent reference), that mould being the Spiritual Exercises, and assuming further that the poet could not change his character without in some way changing his poetry, a double question arises, making room for two misunderstandings. First, as to the importance of the change—was it an inside transformation or merely an outside limitation? Secondly, as to its quality—was it for better or worse not only in Hopkins but in the general development of poetic expression?

The answer to both, which avoids alike religious enthusiasm and anti-religious dyspepsia, is that the Exercises were circumstances which channelled the poet's working just as other sets of circumstances, poverty, blindness, war, etc., have done to other poets, so that their importance though considerable is not strictly poetic; they make the critical occasions but are not the intimate origin of poetic thought. Their qualitative effect therefore is indifferent; not bad, because helping perhaps that chastity of mind and spare tautness of diction so much admired to-day; but hardly good because of repressions, etc. So: indifferent. If not tile Jesuit training, some other thread would have assisted results poetically equivalent however widely different in other respects. This answer is balanced, and likely to prove the acceptable one.
The Arbiters of the New Deal
Authors: McKenna Charles H.
Published: July 2007

“Equal Justice Under Law,” is the inscription carved on the pediment of the new United States Supreme Court building. Recently erected, this legal temple in white marble stands majestically on a hill near the national Capitol, a fixed reminder that the judiciary is a co-ordinate branch of the government.

For the past seventy-five years the sessions of the court were held in the small chamber that once housed the United States Senate. Its walls seemed to whisper memories and great names of the past. Here Webster, Clay, Calhoun and other famous statesmen before the Civil War battled with the nation's problems. Around the curved wall are busts of former Chief Justices. It is, no doubt, with a feeling of regret and a spirit of estrangement that the court has moved into its new quarters with its huge Sienna columns, ornate ceiling, heavy crimson hangings, and bas-reliefs.

The nine gowned men who sit on the bench of the highest judicial tribunal in the nation are not spectacular: no aura of Olympus surrounds them. Each has a deep appreciation of the dignity and responsibility of his office: and all, despite an external austerity and necessary aloofness, are very human. Their appointment, which is for life, is made by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. They can be removed only by impeachment. During their tenure of office they cannot occupy any other position. All interests, no matter how profitable, which might possibly influence their judgment are severed. No justice sits in a case with which he has been previously connected as counsel, or in which he has any direct personal interest.
Are You a Christian?
Authors: Prince J. F. T.
Published: July 2007

Some three years ago, in articles and editorial obiter dicta Blackfriars commented upon the menace of Anti-Communism. It was something of a dissentient note; to Catholics who read, as well as buy, our Catholic weeklies, at least a little unfamiliar. To some indeed the slogan “Anti-Communism is not enough” was positively scandalous. Was there ever a surer title to Election than to be the first to detect heresy in the Left, or the loudest to clamour about the latest iniquity at Moscow?

There was applause, too, from enlightened quarters where it was not believed that to be a Communist you must first be a monster, where people were awake enough to realize that the U.S.S.R. (terrorist bureaucracy that it may be) is not exclusively representative of every evil under the sun. Since then, we have heard at least three Catholics (who go to Mass every Sunday) laugh about the portentous assurance of a tract-writer that the Sinister Thing modern art is, even too, a manifestation of the Bolshevist Leviathan.

Inevitably, however, the Anti's continue to talk most and be the most heard: Anti-Communist, Anti-Anglican, anti-what not. Theirs is a simple school: negative polemic, the disgruntled gibe, the well-worn cliché, the worn-out reference, the same inescapable, infallible authorities, the stock specialists (of whom the most eminent are rarely acquainted with their specialities, first-hand. How many, for instance, of our critics of Russia have been to Russia?). Whence we may be excused for registering relief that Professor Macmurray (the distinguished author of Interpreting the Universe, Freedom in the Modern World, etc.) is one of those who see in Communism by no means unmixed evil— since evil of itself cannot stand—still less, inspire.
Psychology and Medicine
Authors: Elrington G. A.
Published: July 2007

The influence of psychological factors in the genesis of both mental and physical ill-health is to-day a generally accepted fact, although opinions differ widely concerning the nature and medical significance of these factors. The general notion that the mind is of more importance in health than was admitted by the materialism of the previous century, it must be admitted, is in a great measure due to the work of Dr. Sigmund Freud in the special field of the psycho-neuroses.

With this change of outlook there has come a demand for the psychological instruction of medical students and practitioners, for as Dr. E. B. Strauss remarks “it is undoubtedly a fact that the average student of medicine leaves his medical school with scanty understanding of the mental side of his future patients.”

The question therefore arises as to the form such instruction should take, and its place in the curriculum of medical studies. These two questions are closely connected. Considering the line taken by Dr. Kretschmer in this'text-book, some preliminary training in the elementary details of clinical psychiatry is required, and this is suggested by the author himself. Were it however feasible, some preliminary grounding in general psychology might with advantage precede special medical studies, concurrently, let us say, with biology.
Politics and Eternity
Authors: Zacharias H. C. E.
Published: July 2007

“If life must come to an end,” says Fritz Strich, “it is not in itself necessary; it is not bound to live. Out of the depths of this dolorous recognition and experience there arises that which alone makes the spirit to be spirit, and man, man: the will to something that is necessary in itself, that necessarily must perdure and never can terminate.”

“The will to something necessary”: echoes of the Schopenhauerian world as will and imagination? An eminently “Western” will; a will to action, to movement. A will to change, then? And yet a will to something unchangeable, necessary in itself, solidly static!

“Unquiet is the human heart, until it rests in Thee, O God,” confessed St. Augustine. He did not, in the first place, “will” God: before willing Him, He recognized that He was already, and that He is necessary in Himself—not only so, but that He is the only thing that is necessary in itself. Knowing God, he willed to rest in Him and thus to transcend the world of change and death, of becoming and ending, the world of samsâra, as Indian thought would express itself.
In Defence of Public Schools
Authors: Hope Richard
Published: July 2007

It is no new thing for attacks to be made upon the Public Schools, and although many of the arguments are, I believe, specious, there is a sufficient body of solid and well-considered criticism which should and must be fairly met, if schools of the older tradition are to survive; and I would like to try, in the short space available, briefly to take stock of the position and attempt to justify a system which many students of education believe to be obsolete. The angle of attack has, I think, shifted in recent times; the argument which was once very prevalent was the complaint that schools turn out all their boys to one pattern, individuality and originality being sacrificed in the process. Few people denied that the pattern was a good one, but it was felt by critics that any deviation from the set model was regarded with undue suspicion and dislike. This argument has lost some of its force to-day, because conditions have changed and public opinion in a school is far more lenient towards diversity of outlook and difference of taste; certainly it is not true now, and I much doubt if it ever was, that a boy interested in the fine arts, music or poetry is regarded as a curious or undesirable person. Possibly the very friendly relations which exist in most modem schools between master and boy may have helped in this change, if it is not presumptuous for masters to hope that they do have a humane and civilizing influence.
A Catholic Interpretation of Religion
Authors: Graham Aelred
Published: July 2007

The work of the philosopher may be considered fundamentally from two points of view: as an activity directed to an object which is of its nature an end and pointing to nothing outside itself, or as concentrated upon an object to be regarded as a bonum utile, a means to be employed to some further purpose. Accordingly as either of these tendencies predominates will the mind receive, so to say, its determination and character, its philosophical habitus. For those who accept the first point of view philosophy will be an activity formally of the speculative intellect, essentially contemplative; for those who accept the second it will be an exercise of the practical intelligence, a work, in a sense, artistic and creative.

It will hardly be questioned that for St. Thomas Aquinas the object of the speculative intellect, truth (or being as known) can never be subjected to any kind of intellectual utilitarianism; for the contemplation of truth is the supreme end of man, an end which alone gives point and meaning to all subordinate activities, itself, in an ultimate and sublime sense, completely useless. Consistently then with this view, if the philosopher engages in the practical work of teaching, his task is not one of rendering the transcendental order acceptable to the tastes of his disciples, but of leading their minds to the contemplation of truth in its essential clarity by subtilizing and strengthening their native powers of apprehension; fortificando virtutem intellectivam; in this way he participates, in his own degree, in the angelic activity of “illumination”: illuminare nihil aliud est quam manifestationem cognitae veritatis alteri tradere (Summa Theol. I, cvi, i).
Catholic Action and Catholic Life
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

The zeal which has come over some of us to develop Catholic Action in obedience to the Holy Father’s command is altogether admirable and it is unfortunate that there are still so many yet untouched by it. But there is a danger, which has already appeared in a mild degree, of this zeal developing into a mere passion for external works. The inner spirit which gives rise to Catholic Action gradually disappears and those who have not yet acquired the zeal are still less inclined to take part in the new apostolate. The excesses of the fervent and the criticism of the lukewarm are alike due to the error which consists in thinking that unless we are obviously doing something we are not participating in Catholic Action. To many of us Catholic Action still means principally public demonstrations, protests to members of Parliament, anti-Birth-Control agitation, accompanied by the painful futility of numerous committee meetings. Some of these external effects are indeed produced by Catholic Action, but they are quite secondary to the real movement, which is simply the overflowing of the inner life of the Catholic.

For Catholic Action is essentially Catholic Life, we are told by the Pope, who has done most to inaugurate this movement of modem times. “Catholic Action is justly identified with the Christian life,” said Pope Pius XI to the students of the Mexican Institute on May 29, 1934. It is the characteristic of life to give rise to external works, to common social activity, but these are not the essence of life, nor are they the essence of Catholic Action.
Family History
Authors: Prince J. F. T.
Published: July 2007

Peter, a clergyman’s son, the only child of a late marriage, was born in ‘92. To his father's superlatively unstable career and change from place to place, he attributed not only his own tendency to gyrovagrancy—but the passion for nature, for the elemental, for width of vision, for adventure in human contingency that for him was character and fate. For the parsonages in which his childhood was spent looked in rapid turn on the watery business of the Mersey, the chimney stacks of Birmingham, the ivied fragments and vistaed landscape of Hazelcrom, on Yorkshire moors, and the expanse of tidal flood at Southampton. The Reverend Walter Michaelham, a rebel spirit clad picturesquely in Pauline pate and beard, with haggard, restless eyes, might in other circumstances have been an anarchist. But the temperamental egotism, irritibility, energy and heroic generosity that might (half a century later) have been enlisted by Socialism and Revolution found vent in a rebellious Evangelicanism. At Oxford as a young man, he was a fierce opponent of the Oxford movement, then for most a living memory.Evangelical reaction was gaining strength and the prospect of discrediting Tractarianism captured his imagination. Pusey a ghost from sad years appeared infrequently in the pulpit, amongst the rising generation, at least, a diminishing influence, a robed stooping figure, going to and fro the Cathedral, and little more. Wilberforce was in a weak way. Jowett professed Greek, Arnold poetry. With the latter many of the rising generation professed affinity. And there were those of exploratory and dialectic turn of mind to whom the legacy of Whately was a stronger appeal than the teaching of Keble or Pusey.
Re‐Building the City of God
Authors: Farrell Ambrose
Published: July 2007

The world in which we live and the social order which regulates its movements has for some time been passing through a crisis, a period of transition. We cannot see into the future, and we know not what it may bring. But we are aware that every change implies a passing-away and a coming-to-be, a re birth following on death which is its price. Only the divine Nature is exempt from the invariable law of change or destruction leading either to the building up of a new life or the falling away into decay by disintegration. Yet God in His goodness has as it were placed limits on His omnipotence and will by not suffering His creatures to be annihilated. Every variation is therefore based on a permanent structure which is itself eternal and unchangeable.

In human nature, whatever modifications a man may undergo, the spiritual element of necessity dominates the material, since in his composite being the soul is created to rule the body. Similarly when the spirit is elevated to the supernatural plane it will by divine ordination and of necessity supersede the purely natural and temporal. The supreme application of this principle, and indeed a reflection in time of the eternal mind of God, is found in the God-man. Here in this most wonderful of mysteries a human nature was made to be the instrument at hand of the Divine Person of the Son.

That which God the Father realized in the Person of His Son He intended in like manner to be accomplished in every Christian. For in being incorporated by baptism into the Mystical Body, the Church, of which the head is the living Christ, each is become a partaker of the divine nature and life. That which is accomplished in each living member must similarly be effected in the body politic, which is the Christian commonwealth.
Virgil Father of The West
Authors: Tindal‐Atkinson Aelwin
Published: July 2007

St. Thomas in affirming that the Birth of Christ took place at the time which was most fitting—convenientissimo tempore—supports one of his arguments with the fact that the governance of a single ruler, the Emperor Augustus, had given the world that most mighty peace—maxima pax fuit in mundo—in which Christ, Himself chose to be born. That temporal peace was instinct with tranquil expectancy. Men who looked to Jerusalem and to Rome as their Mother Cities were filled with hope: for the Jew, now under the Pax Romana, the lines of prophecy and portent were swiftly converging upon Bethlehem. Rome herself, so lately racked with civil strife, was ready to turn from bloodshed and proscriptions as ‘from a horrible nightmare, and to apply all her energies to reconstruction, and even to hail, in the Pax Augusta, the dawn of the new Golden Age.’

Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas;magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo,jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna,jam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto.Now hath the last age come, foretold by the Sibyl of Cumae;Mightily now upriseth a new millenial epoch.Justice the Maid comes back, and the ancient glory of Saturn;New is the seed of man sent down from heavenly places.

Her power was at its zenith, her most brilliant writers expressed for her the standards of human virtue and justice which were fitting her for iter true destiny.
Catholicism as Unconscious Art
Authors: White Terence
Published: July 2007

If it is by inspiration that idea takes bodily form, the word is made flesh, it follows that, given a common material, the greater the inspiration the greater will be the completed reality. Moreover, the greatest imaginable inspiration (that is, God Himself in entire perfection, rather than in isolated attributes) would demand and receive an infallible response. We have, therefore, in seeking for a religion that is unconscious art, to seek for a religion that claims direct, certain, and complete infallibility from God. There are many such religions, including the Catholic Church.

But the Catholic Church differs from the rest, not only in the actual authority for its infallibility (a matter beyond the province of metaphysics and aesthetics), but in the fact that it alone claims to be the Body of Christ, the Word made Flesh. Thus Catholicism, since it is a continuation and extension of the Incarnation, becomes not only a work of art, but the abstract type or pattern of all works of art. For, just as Christianity claims Christ to be the incarnation, the world of God in the world of flesh, so does Catholicism claim the Church as the incarnation of Christ in the world of history and institutions, though with this difference, that whereas Christ, being God, was perfect as man, there can be no such guarantee for the private lives of the personnel of institutions (however divine). In Christ God associated Himself only with man’s imperfections, but in the Church Christ associates Himself with man’s sins. Those who reject, ‘on spiritual grounds,’ the possibility of the incarnation of Christ in a ‘corporation,’ should be led to reject also the possibility of the incarnation of God in a human body and soul. Both these doctrines comprise the realization and justification of the supreme experience of the aesthetic world—that of the Word being made Flesh.
St. Francis in Uganda
Authors: Crawford V. M.
Published: July 2007

To most of us leprosy as a disease is something at once so remote and so repulsive that we put it wholly out of our minds and at best connect it only with R. L. Stevenson’s generous defence of Father Damien, or—more romantically—with the fatal kiss that Violaine, out of sheer pity, bestowed on Pierre de Craon in L’Annonce faite a Marie. Yet, prosaically considered, leprosy is one of the health problems of the Empire, for though practically nonexistent in Europe, it remains a real scourge in several of our tropical Colonies and not least in our Protectorate of Uganda. Here, unhappily, thousands of lepers, calculated indeed as high as four per cent, of the native population, are living to-day, largely untended and uncontrolled, spreading their terrible disease among children and neighbours, the means of coping with the situation being still sadly inadequate.

From a useful little booklet issued by the Uganda Government for the instruction of all concerned, one gathers that leprosy is emphatically a poor man’s disease, the outcome of dirt, drink, ill-ventilated huts, over-crowding, under-nourishment, in brief of a total disregard of the laws of hygiene and sanitation which extreme poverty entails in all countries. Leprosy is not an infectious disease as was universally believed throughout earlier centuries— hence the terrible sentence of isolation imposed on the victims—but it is acutely contagious, especially to children, under conditions of close intercourse in over-crowded dwellings, by a common use of bedding, drinking-cups, etc. If due precautions are taken, such as entering infected huts as little as possible and careful washing of hands immediately after touching infected objects, there need be no special risk for healthy persons in tending leper patients, although the heroic nature of such a vocation remains without question.
St. Wanderlust
Authors: Synnott Finbar
Published: July 2007

The season will shortly be coming round when, in sympathy with the resurrection of life around, some ebullience in the blood moves all sorts of people to be on the wander. Some will be lacing on nailed shoes and gripping sticks to get up into the hills; some will be fitting out small boats to be away to sea; some will be throwing handbags into dickys and luggage racks, or climbing, armed with a day’s rations, into charabancs. But one and all are moved by the same pleasantly impatient spirit: Wanderlust.

This brings to our mind one of the Church’s ‘Canonizations,’ one of the triumphs of that triumphant humanism by which it admits even the life we share with the animals to partake in acts of worship which it teaches have an eternal significance. It has canonized Wanderlust by the institution of pilgrimages to shrines. He is now ‘Saint Wanderlust.’ He has lesser forms in the everyday desire to be up and moving, if it be only up the hill or about the town, which the Church has canonized by such institutions as processions, or the round of the Stations in Rome, or the Stations of the Cross up the hill at Pantasaph —with the view at the top. He has one supreme form in the Spring Wanderlust, which the poet noted when he said that spring was the time of pilgrimages. So he has been taught the way to shrines.

There are, of course, things much more profound that lie behind the institution of shrines than this harnessing of a mere stirring in the blood. Sometimes, as at Lourdes, they are of immediate divine institution. Sometimes even when of human institution they are the occasion of the granting of many favours, even of the working of miracles, as is apparently the case at Carfin; and hence of a great increase of devotion.
The Conventional Stage
Authors: Pepler Hilary
Published: July 2007

At the end of the last century there were two homes of tragedy which, to the young of those days, seemed to be built upon imperishable and not altogether antagonistic principles; they were the Lyceum (of Henry Irving, actor) and the Adelphi (of Andrew Melville, playwright). The former patronised by the middle, high-brow, and upper classes, while in the latter oranges were still sucked in the gallery and spitoons provided in the corridors. In the one we saw actors, usually in fancy dress, exploiting their own talents; in the other we met unreal but conventionalized characters in ordinary clothes—the villain who never quite killed the hero, and the heroine who always escaped from the net of evil woven for her fall. This Adelphi realism was different in kind from that of the Lyceum, and still further removed from the emotional’ type of more recent years. It was bound by convention, even to the necessity of a hooknosed swarthy villain and a fair-haired, muscularly Saxon hero.

In the Adelphi an audience was never at a loss as to the course of events and took a much fuller part in the proceedings than one which is kept guessing. There was an intimacy between stage and gallery now unthinkable. The modern hero is not cheered as he liberates the heroine— though the play is often interrupted by applause personal to the actor; the modem villain is not hissed; on the contrary, he will receive the same acknowledgment for personal success as the hero. I cannot now imagine an adult audience so engrossed in the play that, when the villain is denying his promise to marry the girl, an indignant voice from the ‘gods,’ as I once heard it, could shout, ‘I’eard yer, yet bounder !’ without sounding unreal and superfluous.
A United Front
Authors: Walter T. C.
Published: July 2007

In an admirable artide on the Spanish situation by the Dominican Father H. Munoz these words occur: ‘What Spain needed was an intelligent organizer who could coordinate all the disjointed elements into a united front against the destructive forces of irreligion and anarchy.’ On reading this it is impossible not to reflect that this is an echo of what many English Catholics have been saying about their own country for a long time.

The present position of Catholics in England is not so very far removed from that of Catholics in Spain just before the revolution. Indifference and lack of organization sold the pass and allowed the forces of an anti-religious Socialism to seize power. And not till the Catholics of Spain found their diurches pillaged, convents burned, schools secularized, religious orders expelled and a sheaf of anti-Catholic laws on the statute book did they wake up to the realities of the situation and organize themselves into a force which now promises to be the salvation of Spain.

In England, a generation of ever-increasing indifference in matters of faith and morals has enabled the anti-God propaganda of Moscow to make tremendous progress. The traditional Conservative and Protestant party, product of the Reformation, exists in a fog. In matters of faith and morals they simply do not know where they stand, having neither standards nor guidance. And from not knowing to not caring is but a short step.

Liberalism no longer counts. The more extreme Liberals have gone over to Labour. A few have thrown in their lot with the Conservatives. The rest plough a lonely furrow in the wilderness.
Dominic and Francis in the New World
Authors: Dunstan
Published: July 2007

I am not over-assured as to the happiness of my title. For the New World, especially of late, is becoming more like the Old World to which we look for tradition. Indeed, I would venture the opinion that the eagerness on the part of the Old World to shed her ancient traditions is parallelled only by the desire of thinkers in the New World to gather up the best lessons of European history before they perish.

Again, I fear that territorially, at any rate, I am going to be confined to a very small and, if we are to credit authoritative American critics, a very unrepresentative portion of the New World—New York City. Personally I am satisfied with the conviction that New York is American and of the New World; for only America could produce New York City.

Furthermore, centuries before the happenings of the facts which I try to appreciate here, practically the whole of the New World knew Dominic and Francis. It knew these thirteenth century patriarchs of religion through the numerous friars who, together with the intrepid sons of the great Ignatius, preached the faith in Northern and Southern America. Your American high-school child, Catholic or Protestant, knows the associations of the friars with Christopher Columbus even as he knows the history of the civilizing influences of the Jesuits, especially in North America.

As a matter of fact a source of bewilderment to me, after many years spent in the United States, is exactly why the term ‘ New World’ is applied to-day to the vast lands lying on the other side of the Atlantic.