bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Mysticism of St. John of the Cross
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

About the year 1528, the parents of St. John, Gonzalo de Yepes of Toledo and Catalina Alvarez of Toledo, were married in the village of Fontiveros on the plateau of Old Castile. It was not a mariage de convenance, but undeniably a love-match. Spanish biographers of the Saint tell us that, whilst Gonzalo was of ‘rich and noble parentage,’ Catalina was of parentage that was not noble nor perhaps reputable. But these same biographers, as if to soften Gonzalo’s misdemeanour in marrying beneath the family, take care to add that the young girl he loved was of rare beauty and virtue. As was to be expected in the Spain of the midsixteenth century, Gonzalo’s choice of a wife was never forgiven by the family. But, on the other hand, it was never repented of by Gonzalo; whose simplicity of mind seemed to think that a wife not only good but good-looking had the makings of a successful life-mate for himself and mother for his children.

We are not to take too seriously what the biographers say about the nobility of Gonzalo’s family. Their noble Castilian blood did not forbid the Yepes family from making their money by trading in silk. When Gonzalo’s marriage with Catalina meant his dismissal from the service of his silk-mercer uncle, love and poverty became the abiding guests of their home.

The most recent biographer of St. John has wisely drawn a picture of this home into which the doctor of Mysticism was born.
The Bourgeois Position
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

We are in danger of misunderstanding the nature of the resistance to spiritual revival if we fall too easily into the mental habit of classifying a position by its philosophic implications. It needs very little proving to show that materialism, commercialism, are opposed to the stress of Christian living, and little more to show that these two definable ’isms are identifiable in the bourgeois position. The point is that the doctrinal analysis discloses not so much the position itself as its doctrinal relations, while the blind force which stands over against us is hardly probed. It is not in the main an intellectual thing that we fight. It is a cunning thing, but that is another matter. Its stubborn resistance is not of the mind. Not so much, therefore, is it belief in the wrong things that opposes the arduous quickenings of the life of Christ; it is rather desire of the wrong things. If you ask the Enemy of the Absolute what he believes in, he is as likely to reply Credo in unum Deurn as anything else. If the most comprehensive statement could be made of the heresy implicit in the bourgeois position, it is doubtful whether you could find one single bourgeois to subscribe to it. A more successful result might be obtained from a table of practical maxims, for the enemy is a practical man. That is his first attribute. He is the man of business, of affairs, the pragmatist. Not that he would tolerate the elaboration of his pragmatism into a philosophy or a religion. His heart has its own reasons for its religious choice, and these do not include the need for intellectual valuations of the acts of living.
War, Just or Unjust
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

There is a danger of war in Europe to-day; in spite of peace pacts, conferences and other attempts to establish security one nation does not trust another, and war may arise at any moment. On the other hand, it may never arise, and upright men of all nations are endeavouring to prevent it by every means within their power. In all this Catholics are vitally concerned, for we form a large section of the European community, and are directly concerned about the welfare of that community. We must not be blind to obvious facts, we must know what is expected of us if war should actually break out; at the same time, we must show a practical desire for peace in Europe, and assist in any way possible to secure it. But our actions must be guided by sound principles, clearly understood and appreciated. Without such clear intellectual judgment we may be carried away by sentiment either to glorify war in militarist fashion, or to condemn war absolutely as something of its nature evil, like murder or adultery. Either view might lead to the worst disasters; neither is a view which a Catholic may hold. Popes and Bishops have repeatedly insisted on the evils of war, but they nave never categorically asserted that war is always and inevitably sinful. Rather they have pointed out that war may sometimes be just. Living in the midst of a world crying out for peace we may find this attitude of the Bishops rather disconcerting, and the reasons for it are not always clear. On these reasons, on the principles behind the teaching of Pope and Bishops, the present writer has attempted to shed a little light.
The Mystic Instruments
Authors: Claudel Paul
Published: July 2007

In the course of a work on glorified bodies, which St. Paul calls spiritual bodies, the author, passing from the domain of sight to that of hearing, has been led to examine the mystical meaning of the various instruments enumerated in the psalms: strings, trumpets, organs, cymbals, flutes.

Now let the apple of thine eye cease! says the Book of Lamentations (2, 18).

The texts last cited are themselves an invitation to cross over from the domain of sight to that of hearing, from the domain of proportion to that of modulation, and from that of values to that of tonalities. Nothing in this world, says Saint Paul (1, Cor., 14, 10) is without voice. Even soulless things, be they flute or dulcimer, if they give not a distinction of sounds, how shall it be known what is piped and what is harped? And if the trumpet give forth an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? Likewise you, except you utter by the tongue plain speech, that tongue which the Holy Spirit for evermore has put into our mouth, so that we might at last express ourselves, yield to the loving invitation (Arise, speak, my beloved, let me hear thy voice—as I have taught thee to hearken unto mine—for it is sweet). Canticle. The soul is become entirely praise and the daughter of music, after the phrase of Ecclesiastes (10, 2, 4), of that song, that resonant and melodious breath-control or neum (pneuma) of which the craving came to her at night (Job, 5, 10). Entirely is she herself the harp, in herself covering the gamut, and by octave upon octave the means of attaining from the lower to the higher. Arise, says David (Ps., 56, 9) Arise my glory, psaltery and harp. The flutes and psaltery make sweet melody, but a pleasant tongue is above them both (Ecclesiastes, 40, 21). He hath disposed ascensions in his heart, says the eighty-sixth Psalm.
Cajetan the Rationalist
Authors: Ginns Reginald
Published: July 2007

The recent number of the Revue Thomiste, completely devoted to the life and work of Thomas de Vio, O.P., Cardinal Cajetan, is a model of its kind. The occasion of this publication was the commemoration of the fourth centenary of the death of that prince of Thomist commentators. He died on August 10th, 1534.

Though the studies are as diverse in character as in authorship, yet they present a remarkable unanimity with regard to that which was the chief characteristic of Cajetan’s life and work, namely the independence and objectivity of his mind. Those who have used his works will not be inclined to question this. He has been accused by some, indeed, of having shown an independence which was indistinguishable from rashness. But rashness was not his fault. His independence proceeded rather from a great intellectual honesty and courage which led him to carry principles to their logical conclusions without allowing human respect, or any equally unworthy moral influence, to hinder the steady course of his reasoning. If that was not due to his natural character, he had, at any rate, learnt it from his master, Aquinas, who had himself followed his principles unswervingly even though it meant committing himself to, as some think, terrible conclusions about the relationship of God to this world. But both one and the other preferred to be logical and come to a full-stop at inexplicable mystery, rather than to make compromises with sentiment and end in a contradiction which is irreconcilable with the very notion of God.
The Letters of Father Hopkins
Authors: Shewring W. H.
Published: July 2007

These letters have already been much reviewed; I briefly endorse, and need not repeat in detail, the well-deserved compliments which have been paid to their editor and their publishers. I can best show my sense of the book’s importance by treating some questions which a first reading has suggested.

It is natural to refer at once to those passages in the letters which discuss the technique of poetry, and especially the technique of Father Hopkins himself. Many readers, I think, have found obscurities in the author’s preface to his poems; and here some of the letters of Dixon are of great help. It is good, for instance, to have the vague reference to nursery rhymes supplemented by an analysis of Ding Dong Bell. Two unsatisfactory things remain. One is the use of the name ‘counterpoint’ for inversion of accent—this is hardly a difficulty, but it is an abuse of terms. The other is really a difficulty—an inconsistency in the use of the very important term ‘sprung rhythm.’ In one letter Hopkins says: ‘This then is the essence of sprung rhythm; one stress makes one foot, no matter how many or few the syllables’; later he says: ‘The word Sprung which I use for this rhythm means something like abrupt and applies by rights only where one stress follows another running, without syllable between.’
The Objective Ideal
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

We have become accustomed to condemn outright those reactionaries who would wish to return to the manners of the Middle Ages. So much apparent good has come to light since those dim and ruthless days that its denial seems almost blasphemy against the Creator who gave man powers capable of continuous development. In the main a condemnation of this sort may be justified, yet there existed at least one fundamental attitude of mind, lost in the debris of the medieval ruin, the absence of which we must deeply lament for it would be capable of setting the modem world in order if it were present to-day. This attitude, crystallized in the word “objectivism,” has been supplanted by its opposite, a disruptive force which is responsible for many of the modem evils, for when modem subjectivism ousted the medieval objectivism at the Reformation a unity in multiplicity gave place to a multitude of units. It is a commonplace that the Reformation with its insistence on the importance of the individual and its implicit denial of the mainstays of human society gave birth to a subjectivism and a concentration upon self which the Christian world has never since been able to master.

This false attitude of mind has become part and parcel of our mental make-up. It has been handed on from father to son until it has become almost connatural in every act of the mind or will. We can to-day think only in terms of reference to ourselves, forming all things to our own image and likeness as though we were at once the begetter and the conclusion of all things. One’s birthday is a great feast, remembered every year, for that was the beginning. In the beginning was myself, and I am my own god.
Christ Upon the Waters
Authors: Martindale C. C.
Published: July 2007

We keep finding that Catholic enterprises fail because there is no public opinion, and no business-sense, about them. There is a public opinion, for example, about Lourdes and the value of going there on pilgrimage. There is, to a considerable extent, a public opinion about Catholic schooling. There is to some extent a public opinion, now, about SS. John Fisher and Thomas More; but, if I may risk mentioning a personal impression, not all the heroic work of Mgr. Hallett and of others who so long toiled for their canonization, suceeded in creating it: perhaps it was largely due to the determination of the Holy Father that two men, who clearly deserved to be canonized, should be canonized. A kind of “public opinion” in the sense of a Catholic opinion, i.e., not confined to one nation nor universal in any one nation, to the effect that most religious Art is bad, and that the Liturgy is good, seems to be forming itself. An ecclesiastical “general” opinion certainly seems to be growing up, to the effect that Mass should be preached in a different way, that St. Paul should be studied increasingly, and that the doctrines of grace and incorporation with Christ (and all their consequences) should be made more of in and even out of retreats or convent-exhortations. Nuns keep telling one that “retreats are quite different from what they used to be.” Maybe writers like Abbot Marmion, Abbot Vonier, Fr. Prat, Karl Adam, are outstanding figures among those who have helped towards this. Abbot Chapman, Fr. R. Steuart, and others, have alike witnessed to and assisted a somewhat new and “general” appetite in the matter of prayer; and it is quite obvious that Blackfriars from its very beginning has similarly witnessed to and fostered a better conscience in what concerns social justice.
Monarchy in Modern Europe
Authors: Johnson Humphrey
Published: July 2007

Seventy years ago a traveller, making an overland journey from Lisbon to Peking, would have traversed throughout the whole of his route the territories of states whose constitutions, however much they might differ, were all monarchical in form: Portugal, Spain, France, the German states, Russia and China. To-day all these countries are republics, as is Poland, the one additional state whose territory would now be crossed on such a journey.

Has the revolt against monarchy such characters as would point to its effecting a permanent change or will the fallen thrones be re-erected? In Asia republicanism is an exotic growth, but in Europe the system under which Athens and Rome grew to maturity is not so. On the eve of the American Revolution, but an insignificant fraction of mankind was living under republican institutions. These survived only in the old maritime Republics of Venice and Genoa, the Swiss cantons and the little republic of Ragusa in Eastern Europe. To these we may add the autonomous Hanse towns. The Netherlands were technically a republic, though in practice a constitutional monarchy, since the Stadtholdership was hereditary in the House of Orange, which intermarried with the reigning families of Europe. Sixteen years after the American Declaration of Independence the French monarchy fell. Animated by the crusading zeal which characterized the Soviets in the first years of their existence, the French republicans desired to impose their system of government on Europe. At one time it looked as though they might do so. Within a few years French arms had created the satellite Batavian, Helvetian, Cisalpine, Roman and Parthenopean Republics. But after a life of twelve years the First French Republic was destroyed by its Chief Magistrate and monarchy under a new dynasty was restored in France.
Modern Catholic Literature
Authors: Hope Felix
Published: July 2007

We usually confine our reading to books upon subjects in which we are interested, but this is a mistake. It is often more repaying to read a good book on a new subject about which one does not care two straws than a poor one on a subject in which our interests are already engaged. One may come to care about the new one. If the proverb L’appetit vient en mangeant is true of the pleasures of the table, it is still more true of the pleasures of reading. We can become interested in almost anything once we begin to know something about it. Teak and hard-wood trees, Roman pottery, the Man in the Iron Mask, the history of the fork, the habits of earwigs, the trade routes of the Phoenicians, are subjects which, though they seem to appeal to different tastes, may end by interesting the same person, once he or she has taken the preliminary plunge. We do not profit half enough by the flexibility of our interests; if we did, we should not so often find ourselves complaining in a library crammed with books that we can find nothing to read.

Should sailors in books talk like sailors or like parrots? (I exclude, of course, parrots that have lived with sailors.) The question may appear frivolous: it comprises, I believe, one of the central problems of criticism. It is not necessary that an author should make his characters talk as they would talk in real life: it is entirely necessary that he should make us believe they are talking as they would talk in real life. Consider the difference in technique, in this matter, between Meredith and Hardy.
A Celtic Prayer Book
Authors: Macfarlane‐Barrow J.
Published: July 2007

So far as concerns his native language, the Scottish Gael of to-day is illiterate. Educational policy has not been too sympathetic with the Gaelic.

This accounts for the fact that, in spite of the tenacity with which Catholics in the Highlands have kept the Faith, there is but one book of devotion, printed in Scottish Gaelic, procurable to-day.

A study of Lochran an Anama, “The Soul's Lantern,” gives us a glimpse into the mind and soul of the Gael. Here we find, in addition to Gaelic translations of Latin and other prayers familiar to all Catholics, devotions peculiar to Celtic temperament. Here we are with Patrick and Columba and the other saints of Gaeldom, praying in the forms they used.

Redolent of the daily life of the inhabitants of the Highlands and Isles in those far-off times, these prayers are still appropriate to the needs of their descendants. In the Outer Hebrides the Gael's manner of life, his hopes and fears, even his natural surroundings, have altered less in 1,200 years than those of his neighbours in the course of a century.

The sea and the mountains still provide the chief perils, whilst tilling the soil, herding the cattle, and fishing from small craft in stormy seas constitute the principal means of existence.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

Be the Three-in-One with us by day and night,

In the trough of the sea, or on mountain-side

Be our Mother with us, and her arm about our head.

“The Consecration of the Three Narrows” (Wrists, Waist and Ankles), a prayer to St. Columba for the sanctification of every bodily act, is probably one of the oldest Celtic prayers we have.
Romano Guardini and the Liturgical Movement
Authors: Raybould A. N.
Published: July 2007

The Liturgical Movement, maintains Guardini, was born, not made. It came apparently into existence from a universally expressed desire for a life more fully and symbolically Catholic.

From whatever sources this movement sprang it is certain that in Romano Guardini it found its most able interpreter. In France, Germany and elsewhere this liturgical revival coincided exactly with the publication and translation of Guardini’s Sinn der Kirche and Geist der Liturgie.

Perhaps a certain parallel may be found between the rebirth of metaphysics and the liturgical revival. Both movements have the same foundations, both spring from the need of some absolute order, and both are heralded as an escape from individualism.

Guardini shows how the liturgy, by incorporating all revealed truth, insists on the existence of an established order. Through collective prayer it offers an escape from the individualism of the times.
The Humble Singer of Emmanuel
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

The Eucharistic hymns of St. Thomas are a cycle—indeed the only cycle—of liturgical song. They form such a unity and fulness of Eucharistic truth and worship that a greater than Elgar or Bach would be needed to express them as an oratorio.

But there is one spiritual quality throughout them which the greatest master of music would confess to be beyond the power of his craft. Every line of these Eucharistic hymns, though unmistakably wrought by genius, is yet dyed by a subtle rosential humility which has escaped notice only by the semblance of a miracle. Yet if none but the prayer of the humble pierces the clouds, this twice-hidden humility of the Eucharistic hymns has given them a place apart in the great throng and song of liturgical prayer.

Let us draw attention to this quality (i) in the Hymns of the Divine Office and (2) in the Sequence of the Mass.
Women's Housing Conference
Authors: Liveing Susan
Published: July 2007

Sir,—My attention has been drawn to an article on ‘‘The Elements of Social Justice” in the November number of Blackfriars, in which the statement is made that “starting with a sub-committee of the Catholic Social Guild, a programme of Housing plans was circulated among various Utility Societies, with the result that a National Council is to be formed under the presidency of the Chairman of the original C.S.G. Committee.”

This statement is incorrect. A sub-committee of the C.S.G. —the C.S.G. Housing Enquiry—was formed some time ago. It sent out a Housing questionnaire which was not sufficiently supported to be of practical use, and the Committee languished. The Chairman, Lady Sanderson, then called a Women’s Conference of societies interested in Housing, to urge the necessity of a Women’s sub-committe to the Central Advisory Committee under the new Housing Act. This idea was widely accepted; delegates from Public Utility Societies, the National Council of Women, the Federation of Women’s Institutes, the Women's Committee of the Royal Institute of British Architecture, Women Housing Estate Managers, Women Pubilc Health Officers and many others have attended the Conferences and given cogent reasons for their co-operation. As a result of the Conferences it is hoped that the Minister of Health may consent to receive a deputation.

It may fairly be claimed on behalf of the C.S.G. that the inception of the Women’s Housing Conference is due to the initiative of the Chairman of its Housing Enquiry, and that she and the other officers of that enquiry have acted as Chairman, Vice-Chairman and Hon. Secretary of the Women’s Housing Conference.
The Music of A Dead Culture
Authors: Tindal-Atkinson Aelwin
Published: July 2007

Dorothy Osborne, writing to her lover, Sir William Temple, in 1653 gives this description of her daily life at her home in Bedfordshire:

The heat of the day is spent in reading or working, and about six or seven o’clock I walk out into a common that lies hard by the house, where a great many young wenches keep sheep or cows, and sit in the shade singing ballads. I go to them and compare their voices and beauties to some ancient shepherdesses that I have read of, and find a vast difference there; but trust me these are as innocent as those could be. I talk to them, and find they want nothing to make them the happiest people in the world but the knowledge that they are so. Most commonly, when we are in the midst of our discourse, one looks about her, and spies her cows going into the corn, and then away they all run as if they had wings to their heels.

The picture of the shepherdesses singing at their task on an English summer’s evening catches the same pastoral beauty that one finds in Gray’s Elegy: to some it may seem romantic and a touch sentimental. The writer, however, was not of that temper: she shows in her letters a plain common-sense and humour, which gives this description a sense of exactness: nor is her picture exceptional. Sir Thomas Overbury had written this of milkmaids and shepherdesses a few years earlier:

She dares to go alone and unfold her sheep in the night, and fears no manner of ill, because she means none; yet to say the truth she is never alone; she is still accompanied with old songs, honest thoughts and prayers, but short ones.
The Nature of Paganism
Authors: Armstrong Hilary
Published: July 2007

Of late years there have been signs of a considerable change in the study of comparative religion, in so far as it affects the origins of the Faith and its relations with the Pagan religions contemporary with its earliest period. Not so long ago it was almost assumed as a commonplace fact among scholars that the application of the Comparative Method to the religions of the Roman Empire had disposed of Catholic Christianity's claim to uniqueness; and on the Catholic side the study of Comparative Religion was generally regarded with suspicion and distrust. Plenty of examples of the first attitude could still be found, especially in the works of the older contemporary scholars; but on the whole students of Comparative Religion who concern themselves primarily with the Mediterranean world are becoming more and more disposed, to admit the uniqueness of Christianity. Works like W. R. Halliday’s Pagan Background of Early Christianity, Guthrie’s Orpheus and Greek Religion (though the authors’ very occasional expressions of their personal views on Christianity sometimes seem rather naive compared with the rest of their work), and Nock’s admirable Conversion are all examples of this tendency in the work of non-Catholic scholars. And on the Catholic side a really scholarly interest in Comparative Religion is growing up, as is exemplified in the new series of C.T.S. pamphlets on the subject and in many other works. This interest is only part of the general modern tendency among Catholics to pay more attention to that element in non-Catholic religion which is positively good and therefore Catholic, and not to contemplate so exclusively as sometimes in the past the negative element which makes it pagan or heretical.
Grace and the Mystical Body
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

The vitally important doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ has found a valuable exponent in Mgr. Fulton Sheen, in whose recent book is to be found a popular exposition of this hitherto somewhat neglected teaching of St. Paul and the Fathers. Unfortunately, however, there does not appear in it a clear notion of the union of the Mystical Body, without which the significance of the doctrine must inevitably escape the lay reader. In this book, as elsewhere, one finds a very useful distinction between an organization and an organism, which serves to set the Church apart from any other type of social unit. Yet many of the terms, such as “body,” “organism,” “life,” “cells,” commonly used in this context swing to and fro between mere metaphor and strict analogy, so that it is not always easy to pierce the cover of resemblance and lay hold of the reality beneath. Further, analogy is of the lower with the higher, and represents the attempt to arrive at a knowledge of the invisible by comparison with the visible and the material. Continual stress on material likeness is apt to shape the hidden truth according to the unreality of the looking-glass; so that when there does exist a notion which is immediately applicable to the truth itself, and which is commonly understood by the general reader, that notion should be used with insistence. We may gain a considerable knowledge of the nature of “art” by studying it in terms of lines and masses, but we can hardly obtain by these means a clear idea of the vital spirit which makes a work of “art” something beyond either line or mass.
Extracts and Comments
Authors: Penguin
Published: July 2007

Mucking in Again. Penguin has learned, with some surprise and distress, that his paragraph in last month's Extracts and Comments on Mucking-In and Sanctified Detachment has been interpreted by some readers as a condonation, if not an approval, of “activism,” the secularization of religion, and of the “Americanismus” concerning which Leo XIII had such strong things to say. He has himself, in previous issues (e.g. in November, 1934, August and September, 1935) expressed himself unequivocally on these lines of approach to the position of the Catholic in the modern world, and has constantly reiterated, both in extracts and in comments, that the only effective and specifically Christian and Catholic action in secular society can be brought about only by a deepening of specifically supernatural life. The Christian can pull his weight in the world only by withdrawing from the spirit of the world and, in the traditional sense, despising it. Nor does the policy of “mucking-in” as he understands it, in any way involve, as some critics seem to suppose, approval of the existing order of society—whether it be the Nazism of Germany or the suburbs of England— but it does mean the determined and deliberate acceptance of the existing historical situation, not as our ideal, but as our God-given material. We cannot be too grateful for students like M. Maritain and Mr. Christopher Dawson for their analyses of the evils inherent in that material. We would only draw attention to the danger—and we think it is a real one—that we become so disgusted with it, and so preoccupied with the preparation of our tools, that we neglect to tackle it and, perhaps, find pretexts for ignoring it.
The ABC of Escapism
Authors: Durkan John
Published: July 2007

The keyword of our generation is “Life.” The pathos of this will to live occasionally electrifies cafes and dance halls in the hysteria of an adolescent or middle-aged woman. By typography and photography the Press galvanizes its dead news to an artificial life. The educator no longer sells the corpse of knowledge with copy-book slogans like “Knowledge is power,” but alike for adult and child baits the powder with the jam of “vital interest.” A radio or a dance band resurrects from the dead our animal appetite for food. That our will to life is the drowning hope of a bankrupt age in despair, that is the diagnosis of our critics, and I for one do not deny its truth. But the bankruptcy of life is a bankruptcy of love. The Waste Land is our legacy from the nineteenth century humanists and humanitarians, who taught us to love our neighbour because we can only be certain of ourselves. How repulsive is that ingrown love with all the neuroses it breeds in us! And so, certain workers and certain bourgeois find that hate at least is healthy and primitive and radical in human nature. The nineteenth century did not, however understand the nature of love. Love desires something else; it wishes to explore and penetrate other things for their own sake. No man can lead a human life who rejects this interpretation: life is destitution itself if love has no way out to other things and other people. The human unit of grace and nature is disorganized and the heart indulges in orgies of self-pity to the detriment of the mind. The only exit from self is in sentimentality—love directed to the unreal.
Liturgical Prayer
Authors: Clerissac Humbert
Published: July 2007

When Liturgical Prayer is spoken of as an excellent and perfect prayer, as an exercise in meditation and even as a source of contemplation, two common objections are raised:

(1) that it is purely vocal and too much a matter of words;

(2) that it is too impersonal and not easily adaptable to individual needs. Let it be said at once that these objections are not serious. We may readily admit a certain incompatibility between private vocal prayer and meditation; but it is quite a different matter when Liturgical Prayer is in question. The Divine Office, even when celebrated with the joyous briskness of Dominican custom, leaves ample scope and full play for mental activity, in whatever direction that activity may tend. Besides, the divine praise—through the consideration of created things—goes straight to God: it fixes the attention firmly on the Supreme Object of all prayer. It is GOD we are concerned with, not the words, which are but the vehicle of our prayer. Thus, the Liturgy makes it easier to transcend the facts and circumstances of our earthly condition; it enlarges the field of vision; it leads per ea quae facta sunt to the invisibilia Dei.
In a World Redeemed …
Authors: Potter Roland D.
Published: July 2007

And the Word was made flesh. No Catholic worthy of the name can stand outside the realities of faith and of grace, and seek to live his life as one alien, aloof and “secularized”; at best he can only detach himself by taking up hypothetical attitudes of mind. The Incarnation means that a new world, transcending the limits of time and touch, is flung open to him; and he is necessarily of it and in it, inextricably caught up, so that the only “escape” is no escape but death of the soul. “All things betray thee who betrayest Me.” He must live and move and have his being in an atmosphere saturated by grace. He must experience at once the exhilaration and crucifixion of having mind and will set heavenwards, for our citizenship is in heaven, and of still living amidst the world’s realities, very much a man among men, with no right to be estranged from human interests. Further, there must be growth in the life of grace; and this necessary growth entails deeper appreciation, more vivid realization of what the Incarnation means, of what grace means, of the supreme reality of the Mystical Body—all this and more must play upon his whole being in all its complexity, and not least upon his mind; for his mind looks out upon a world leavened by grace, wholly centred in, and only fully knowable in terms of, the Incarnation. A glance over the course of history shows a tangled skein, hard to unravel; yet the Catholic can be conscious of the extension of the Incarnation in time, of the mysterious life of the Church, and can say “Vicisti Galilaee,” for the Incarnation means Redemption and therefore hope.
Abbot Chapman's Theory of Contemplation
Authors: O'Driscoll Benet
Published: July 2007

The theory of contemplative prayer put forward in Abbot Chapman’s Letters was examined in the June, 1935, issue of Blackfriars, but since then certain passages in the letters themselves have been the subject of controversy. The question of the soundness of a widely read book of spiritual instruction is obviously an important one, and it merits some further consideration. One learned writer has recently suggested that, since we have nothing but incidental phrases by which to judge the Abbot's correctness in stating the problem of contemplation, it is unnecessary to assume that he intended to express general principles in the passages that have caused misgivings. This view does not accord with the fact that one of the published letters, dated as early as 6th April, 1913, explains fully the theory of mysticism which the Abbot had worked out for himself. The same theory appears in his article on Catholic Mysticism in the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, published in 1917, and it is further elaborated and defended in the Downside Review article of 1928, which is reprinted as an appendix to the Letters. This theory, then, and its practical implications must claim attention.

The Church has had no occasion to make a solemn judgment on the nature of contemplative prayer, but two pronouncements of her ordinary magisterium require careful consideration by anyone who would study the subject. The first is the Encyclical Letter Divinum illud of Pope Leo XIII (9th May, 1897), a document that was clearly inspired by, and well sums up, St. Thomas’s general teaching on the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, as indeed the teaching of St. Thomas sums up and explains the Catholic tradition, scriptural, patristic and liturgical.
Montessori Practice and Thomist Principles
Authors: Standing Mortimer
Published: July 2007

The Montessori Method of Education may be said to be based on the twin principles of “Freedom” and “Prepared Environment.” This is an inadequate definition, but it will suffice for our present purpose.

It is now over twenty years since the first “Casa dei Bambini” was opened in Rome, and hundreds of visitors came from every quarter of the globe to observe the behaviour of those small slum children from the tenement houses. During this time the Method has spread to the most distant corners of the world—not only amongst Europeans, but also amongst Indians, Chinese, Africans, South Sea Islanders and many others. The results have been always the same, and can be summed up in a sentence. The Montessori Method has proved beyond a doubt that the child loves work.
The Reunion of Christendom and the Social Problem
Authors: St. John Henry
Published: July 2007

May I confess at the beginning of my paper that I have no particular qualification for speaking about the social problem; but for a long time I have been interested in the problem of how Christendom can be reunited again, how all the separated religious bodies or organisations can be brought to a realization of the truth that the unity and authority of the Catholic Church were appointed by Our Lord, and that all Christians must some day return to them. I believe that the two problems are very closely connected, and that the ultimate solution of the social problem depends upon the extent to which a solution is found for the problem of the Reunion of Christendom.

I suppose we should all agree that the social problem is primarily an economic one. The modern industrial system has brought an enormous increase in production, but it has also brought about a dislocation between production and distribution. The primary economic problem is how to get rid of this paralyzing dislocation. But this primary economic problem brings in its train a whole host of moral problems, because many of the attempts to solve the economic problem involve actions and policies which in one way or another come into contact with the moral law. Thus we get the tremendous problem of the gradual dehumanization of human beings by the conditions of life and work which seem inseparable from much of our industrial civilization, and with it the attendant problems of birth-control, sterilization, euthanasia, and so on.
Catholic Action in the English Milieu
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

The object of Catholic Action is to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. It is identified with the mission of the Church to teach all nations “to observe whatsoever I have commanded you.” The Bishops, by their strict apostolic succession, acquire the right and the duty to lead in the Church’s mission. With themselves they associate priests, who are ordained for specially sacred functions in the Church, and lay apostles who, by Catholic Action, share in the Divine Mission. The methods adopted by Bishops and priests in pursuance of this mission—prayer, exhortation and the Sacraments—are universal in their application and effective under all conditions. The methods of the lay apostle must depend largely on conditions of time and place, on the atmosphere in which he works, on the temperament of those with whom he comes into contact and even on his own human qualities. In a word, the method of Catholic Action depends on the milieu. It may therefore be of value to the apostles of Catholic Action in this country to attempt an analysis of the milieu in which we find ourselves and which we seek to supernaturalize.
The Perennial Apologetic of the Church
Authors: Drewitt Norbert
Published: July 2007

Hilaire Belloc defined the attitude of the Catholic apologete to his sources, when he wrote: “I say the Catholic ‘conscience’ of history—I say ‘conscience’—that is, an intimate knowledge through identity: the intuition of a thing which is one with the knower—I do not say ‘the Catholic Aspect of History.’ This talk of ‘aspects’ is modem and therefore part of a decline: it is false, and therefore ephemeral: I will not stoop to it.”

Tertullian, too, was a Catholic apologete in act, when he wrote, of the Church in the third century: ‘‘Is it likely that so many churches, and they so great, should have gone astray into one and the same faith? No casualty distributed among many men issues in one and the same result. Error of doctrine in the churches must necessarily have produced various issues. When, however, that which is deposited among many is found to be one and the same it is not the result of error, but of tradition.” As Thomists would express it, more exactly: for this agreement no cause is given except it be one alone, namely the identity of the primitive dogmatic and hierarchic seed set in the world by Christ. This is certain.
The Spanish Elections Analyzed
Authors: Quinlan John
Published: July 2007

After a preliminary period of confusion, it is now possible to gain a clearer view of the political scene in Spain. Two facts emerge: that the Catholic question was not the dominant issue and that it did not decisively swing votes either the one way or the other; that the Catholic deputies who lost their seats (Traditionalists, Alfonsists and others) did so not as a consequence of their Catholicism but because of specific political issues. Acción Popular, which we may legitimately describe as the Catholic party in Spain, actually increased its representation and is easily the largest party in the new Cortes. The Left gains have been made principally at the expense of the Centre Radicals, who staged a spectacular collapse, despite the promotion of a Centre ‘ ‘hold-the-ring’ ‘ party by President Alcalá Zamora and Premier Portela. Centre deputies who lost their seats paid the penalty of “betraying the Republic.” Don Alejandro Lerroux, one of the oldest Republican leaders, failed in two constituencies, and but a bare dozen of his followers have been returned. Señor Cambó, leader of the Catalan Lliga (Right) for many years, was also defeated.
Chaplin's “Modern Times”
Authors: Turnell G. M.
Published: July 2007

One of the greatest difficulties of cinema as an art is that many of its effects can be obtained in two ways—legitimately by the proper use of the medium, and illegitimately by borrowing from the other arts and principally the theatre. The majority of commercial films fall into the second category. From time to time, however, comes a film which stands out from the general run by virtue of its essentially filmic qualities. We experience the peculiar pleasure that is derived from seeing the resources of an artistic medium used as they should be—to produce effects that no other art can produce so well. The Virtuous Isidore and Remous were both films of this kind. And now America has provided an example which is far richer and subtler than either—Chaplin’s Modern Times.
Sedes Sapientiæ
Authors: Clerissac Humbert
Published: July 2007

Nothing is more beautiful than the way in which the Church has drawn from the few light touches and scattered references in the Gospel story, the perfect image of Mary. The world leaves to theologians the study of those prerogatives which exalt Our Lady as the co-redeemer of mankind and give to her a share in the distribution of graces. All must agree in their admiration of the Catholic type of the Virgin Mother, in whom we recognize the supreme ideal of the superlatively perfect woman; yet with all our marvelling love, we fall short of complete understanding of her excelling dignity. Still, with all our limitations and without going beyond the simple Gospel narrative, we can find in Mary’s character features of stupendous beauty. We should like to show here how the Gospel reveals her as a perfect type of wisdom.

Wisdom is the most excellent of the intellectual virtues. Its object is the consideration of the highest causes, and the most sublime aspects of things. It is a certain participation in the infinite and eternal Wisdom. St. Thomas observes that it judges and sets in order all the other virtues: for Christians, wisdom is a guiding principle of life, while for the pagan philosophers it was only a speculative power. Now, Our Lady was in a special way united to the Divine Wisdom; she is the mother and the spouse of the Eternal Wisdom: so the Gospel teaches.
On Christian Art
Authors: Brooks Ivan
Published: July 2007

If the art of painting exists for its own sake, if painting is nothing more than a sensuous arrangement, or (as the modernists would put it) an “organization” of line, colour, rhythm and mass, and if there is no underlying ethical or religious principle that finds its way from the artist's mind to the painted work, then of necessity the speculations and conclusions contained in the following essay are valueless. As a basis of agreement it may be acknowledged that art has no conscious concern with morals, and that the painter who has the deliberate intention of expressing an ethical or moral concept by means of his art is handicapped from the start. We may agree also that the satisfying quality (which we call beauty) of a painting depends upon quite other elements than those that belong to moral worth, and that the ethical outlook of the artist cannot and does not affect the aesthetic perfection of his work. All this we may concede. But it would be unreasonable to infer from this that his ethical outlook does not nevertheless find expression in his work, whether he will it so or not. A pious person may produce an execrable or negligible work of art, but at least the piety will be apparent in it. A hedonist, of a robust and vigorous habit of mind, may produce a series of works of great aesthetic perfection, but in the sum total of his works his hedonism can hardly fail to appear. All art is self-revelation.
Giuseppe Toniolo and Christian Democracy
Authors: Sturzo Luigi
Published: July 2007

To Catholics of the older generation the names of La Tour du Pin, Leon Harmel, l’Abbe Naudet, l’Abbe Pottier, Henri Lorin, and with them those of Mgr. Ketteler and the two Cardinals Mermillod and Manning, evoke memories, memories of the movement known as Christian Democracy.

It is strange that those two words, which forty years ago aroused such hopes on the one hand, and at the same time such rage and resentment among good Conservative Catholics, mean very little to the youth of to-day. Is this really so? And if it is, will people ever speak of Christian Democracy again?

Professor Giuseppe Toniolo was not only one of its chief supporters, but its theorist. The epithet Christian as applied to democracy (which was then as much feared as communism is to-day) appeared in Italy for the first time in Father Curci’s voluminous work Christian Socialism, published in 1885. But it was the Belgian Verhaegen who, in 1893, brought the expression into current usage as an ideal to be fought for: “Christian Democracy” had henceforth an established footing.
The Catholic Mind
Authors: Gilson Etienne
Published: July 2007

“Love not the world, nor the things which are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof: but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever. . . ” (I John ii, 15-17).

Bossuet recalls these words at the beginning of his Traité de la Concupiscence, and he adds this brief but profound commentary: “The last words of the Apostle show that the ‘World’ of which he speaks consists of all those who choose things visible and passing in preference to things invisible and eternal.” I would add in my turn that once we have grasped this definition of “the World,” we have as good as solved the vast problem we are going to discuss.

We are in the world. That is a fact, whether we like it or not. We cannot alter that fact. And yet we are told that we must not be of the world. How be in it and yet not of it? That is the great problem that has haunted the Christian conscience from the beginning. It is true that the Church, offers one radical solution: to flee from the world, to renounce it utterly and take refuge in the religious life. But that solution cannot be everybody’s.