bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Rural Schools
Authors: Jebb Reginald
Published: July 2007

To live in the country and partake of the life of the country is in itself an education, partly because natural phenomena, experienced by the countryman at first hand, are educative, and partly because craftsmen abound everywhere practising their crafts in the open for all to see. These characteristics of the country provide two fundamentals of education : opportunity to study the relations of God with man, and the opportunity to learn through imitation (the only way that one human being learns, from another) the essential crafts of life.

Observation of nature is like looking at the illustrations of a history book. It offers visible examples of life and the way life is ordered. The pictures may be wrongly interpreted—as can be seen by the origin of the word paganism—but, given true philosophy, the countryside is a constant reminder of the ultimate things of life.

As regards the second educational advantage that the country possesses, almost every activity that a child watches—and is everywhere able to watch—explains itself. No one is likely to make a mistake about the purpose and method of milking a cow; the cutting, making and carrying of hay are their own text-book; the hedger, the thatcher, the ploughman, the blacksmith, the cobbler, each teaches a lesson to the passer-by, as do the manifold processes of cultivation in the fields.
The Essence of Politics
Authors: Leibholz G.
Published: July 2007

The Christian political consciousness has been deeply stirred by the revolutionary events of our time and many to-day feel the need for its revival. Christians widely recognise in this country that they have to fulfil a necessary function in the political order, and this no matter whether the duty is based on the dogma of the sinfulness of man and his necessary imperfection or on the doctrine of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, according to which man as ‘Zoon politikon’ is essentially interwoven by his nature with Politics. Christians are more or less inclined to accept to-day the fundamental thesis that Politics has its own natural right to exist and its own basis and independent sphere within the framework of the natural aims of a community.

This insight has in itself weighty implications, from the political-sociological point of view. For if Politics exists in its own right it cannot be considered a sham or an ideological cloak for the nonpolitical forces of society. This does not mean that economics, or religion, or legal or racial motives, which play so great a part in society, cannot enter the sphere of Politics. On the contrary, they do so to a large extent. But the point is that by entering the political sphere an economic, religious, legal or racial question, from the very fact of its being regarded politically, changes its essential peculiarity. Its former nature remains no longer the same. Aristotle would call this change a ‘metabasis eis genos.’ The question acquires a distinctively political character.
Monastic Economics
Authors: Morson John
Published: July 2007

It would be too much to claim that legislators would find in the monastic codes and histories of the early centuries adequate guidance for their post-war planning. Yet no student of early monachism can fail to admire the practical economic value of much of the history and teaching which make his sources.

The Egyptian monks, both hermits and cenobites, though often supported by alms, probably came as near as the monks of any time or place to adequately self-supporting manual labour. When Palladius visited Nitria, he found that no one was allowed to be idle (not even a guest, as perhaps he learnt from personal experience), and no one was in need. Yet the monks’ liturgical duties were held in high esteem, and those who were qualified had opportunity for intellectual culture. Self-support was not direct, for Nitria throve upon the weaving industry.

The same author describes in much greater detail an inspection which he made of the working departments in one of the Pachomian monasteries. After enumerating smiths, carpenters, camel-drivers and fullers, he says that every craft was practised, so that the monks supported both themselves and the convents of nuns. They kept pigs—but the portions of pork granted to sick and aged monks scandalized later generations and the passage disappeared from many MSS. of the history. In a final list of monastic crafts, agriculture and husbandry hold the first place.
The Deficencies of Christ
Authors: Magrath Damian
Published: July 2007

The following lines are offered with all reverence in an attempt at understanding some of the implications of S. Thomas’s teaching on the sufferings of our Lord, They are meant to suggest the apparent ineffectualness of the theologian’s doctrine in face of the bitter experience of the disciple.

You speak to me of the sufferings of Christ; you tell me to think of them in my pain; to bear my own, and’to offer them up with his. They are the penalty of my sins, and Christ's Passion has given them meaning and purpose, if only I accept them as he did for me. Yet what consolation is that to me, for his sufferings cannot compare with mine? You pretend the Passion was a sortof Epiphany : a manifestation of the realityof Christ’s Humanity. But Christ was not like us, not equal to us in all things ! A very human God would be a consolation and a help. Why was not Christ like us in all things: subject to suffering, pain, ignorance, temptation and sin? You have to draw the line because your Saviour was not merely man but God. It seems to me that the Incarnation has failed to reach me in my suffering, just at those points where I need it most—give me my comrade who is mere man and not this pale Sufferer!

You tell me to think of the bodily suffering of the Christ upon his Cross: the hanging body, the riven members, the wounds, the thorns, the burning thirst.
The Seventh Beatitude
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: July 2007

Rest is the final pattern of all that God has made. In time, in place, each thing has its own mode: it is created thus, and here and now. The singleness of sun and moon, of rock and flower and tiger; the separateness of men, each man a person unique and at last alone—here might seem a broken pattern, each thing good but each thing solitary. But on the seventh day of creation God rests. He blesses and sanctifies the day of his resting, and with it all that he has made: the whole creation is one in that ascription of praise to the creator of all.

The sabbath-rest of God is God’s contemplation of himself as creator: in it the unity and goodness of the things he has made are revealed. They are his: they are one in him. So, in the history of his chosen people, the seventh day came to be observed as a day of rest and gladness, a still point in the changing world for man to pause and remember. “See that thou keep my sabbath; because it is a sign between me and you in your generations: that you may know I am the Lord who sanctify you. ... It is an everlasting covenant between me and the children of Israel, and a perpetual sign. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and in the seventh he ceased from work.”

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” This is the seventh of the sayings of the Son of God in his sermon on the mount.
Third Orders and the Apostolate of Christ the Worker
Authors: Corr Gerard
Published: July 2007

The Apostolate of Christ the Worker merits high rank among the associations of the Church because it sees social work and holiness in their right perspective.

The apostle of Christ the Worker does not draw a great distinction between being holy and helping other people. His (or her) work for others is an essential part of the quest of sanctity.
The Light of Life
Authors: Meath Gerard
Published: July 2007

If has been maintained that with Chaucer a light—we should call it. the light of faith—was extinguished from English letters.

Though we may not agree altogether there can be no doubt that modern English writers do lack a sense of assurance. Geoffrey Chaucer is known to us for his good tempered satirising of the evils of his time and his genuine enjoyment of the commonplace things of life. Shakespeare and his contemporaries enjoyed life, too, and in spite of less reputable interludes we are compelled to admire their assurance. Yet both these men ended their lives with a Confiteor and Orate pro me. Chaucer retracts his Tales, “thilke that sounen into sinne,” and begs the reader “that ye preye for me, that Crist have mercy on me and foryeve me my giltes”; and Shakespeare in the person of Prospero appeals to his audience,
A Treatise on the Ineffable Mystery of our Redemption
Authors:   Luis of Granada
Published: July 2007

The admirable proportion found by Divine Wisdom in this Mystery between the atonement and the sin, which deprived the devil of his prey by means of justice.

Besides what has been said, in the manner of this remedy the plan of divine wisdom and justice is wonderfully evident, since God ordained that our blessings should come to us in the same manner as our ills, so that as by one man came sin and death, justice and life should come through the sanctity of another man. For it was not reasonable that holiness should have less efficacy as a remedy than guilt had for injury, that mercy should not compete with justice, or that if justice condemned the multitude for one man s sin, mercy should not suffice to save the many by the sanctity of one person.

Nor are there wanting other congruities that show how justly sin was exonerated and man redeemed. For as the pride of the first man, who, though but a man, sought to usurp the semblance of God, condemned his whole race, so the humility of the other Man who, though very God, lowered Himself to take on humanity, and saved us all, so far as lay with Him. For no humility could be found so radically opposed to such pride as this. As the man who by the law of nature was subject to God, exempted himself from this duty by his disobedience, thus injuring us all, so the obedience of the second Man, who by the same law was exempt from all subjection, obtained pardon and justification for us all.
St. Paul's Eleventh Chapter to the Romans
Authors: Graham Aelred
Published: July 2007

St. Paul states the problem in all its poignancy : Hath God cast away His people? Are the Jews, the chosen ones, no longer the People of God? Paul himself was an Israelite of the seed of Abraham; this he could neither forget nor ever wish to repudiate; though he had ‘put on Christ,’ or rather perhaps because of that very fact, a ‘Hebrew of the Hebrews ‘he would always remain. No one could be more acutely aware than he that the coming to birth of the Christian Church appears a refutation by the facts of all the prophecies and the denial of the divine promises. ‘Jehovah had proclaimed himself a hundred times the liberator and saviour of his people : the Messiah was to be first of all the redeemer of the Jews; Sion was designated in advance as the centre of the Messianic theocracy and a bond of union with the unbelieving nations. But now, not only are the gentiles esntering the Church without first passing through the Synagogue, but they are almost the only ones who are entering, while the) Jews, whose rights seem preponderant, if not exclusive, find themselves shut out from it.’

In chapters ix and x St. Paul has been occupied with various aspects of the problem, first vindicating the justice and faithfulness of God (ix), than (x) touching on the concrete human situation which has given rise to it; in chapter xi he shows the providential reason for it and points the way to its solution.
Thomism and Modern Needs
Authors: Temple William
Published: July 2007

Not long ago I was honoured by an invitation to address the Aquinas Society which I gladly accepted, choosing as my subject the title of this article. Since then it has been suggested that I should publish as an article the substance of that address, and I readily do so. It would be impossible to reproduce the address itself, because it was delivered from notes which were no more than headings, and these I destroyed as soon as the address was delivered. That, however, is of no consequence. What is important is not to recover what was said on a particular occasion, but to promote consideration of the teaching of St. Thomas in its bearing on the needs of our time.

I must make clear at the outset the fact that I am not in any serious sense a student of St. Thomas—as, for example, my father was. I have read a considerable portion of his writings with close attention, but without that perpetual comparison of one passage with another which is alone entitled to be called ‘study ‘in relation to any great writer. I speak therefore from a general impression which may be due to interpreters and critics of St. Thomas as much as, or more than, to himself. If so, those who are real students of his work can easily confute me, but may none the less be glad to have their attention called to points at which the current presentations of his doctrine have produced on one mind at least an impression calling for correction.
A New Order for London?
Authors: Irvine Helen Douglas
Published: July 2007

London was founded for practical reasons on ia gravel terrace, some two miles broad, lying north of the Thames and east of the River Fleet, and almost certainly it stood there before the Roman invasion. The Romans built a wall round it, and are primarily responsible for its commercial importance since they made it the chief centre of their road system. The Romans left London not only defensible but also accessible by roads as well as by waterways. So it became the capital first of the kingdom of Essex and then of England; it was the diocesan town of a see instituted by Pope Gregory of which the first ibishop was ordained by Saint Augustine.

Who were the men who first dared or were obliged to live outside the walls, forgoing the safety and privileges these enclosed, the men who began the expansion of London? The earliest evidence of suburban building occurs in the tenth century when the Danes, whom the Londoners barred at Ludgate, made the settlement along the river strand which was to name the church of St. Clement Danes. Outcasts of one kind or another : such were most of the mediaeval suburbanites. About the eastern and northern gates—Cripplegate, Aldgate, Aldersgate, Bishopsgate—unenfranchised and poor labourers lodged themselves as best they could. The southern bank, the Borough of Southwark, was a rath'er disreputable quarter, for it contained both prisons and certain areas in which immunity from legal arrest was enjoyed. It-was the Bohemia of mediaeval London, and maintained this character in the sixteenth century when playhouses were set up on the southern bank, the city being inhospitable to dramatic art.
Sobieski and the Relief of Vienna
Authors: Morton J. B.
Published: July 2007

It was the misty dawn of a Sunday morning, September 12th, in the year 1683. From the height of the Kahlenberg, where the last wooded escarpment of the Alps dominated a landscape of hillocks and ravines, a man was gazing towards Vienna, some three miles eastwards. As the light strengthened he could pick out the spires and steeples of the city, and the broken ravelins and splintered bastions which marked the line of the fortifications. He could also see, between him and the city, a vast town of tents, where the besieging Turkish army had encamped in a crescent outside the ramparts of Vienna. A wind arose, and dissipated the mist, and the watcher, sitting his bay horse, could hear the trumpeting of elephants, the beating of little war-drums, and strains of eastern music. The horseman, though only fifty-four years of age, had grown corpulent, and his face was already heavy. But the large dark eyes, with their direct gaze, were accustomed to command, and indeed, those about him at this hour, Princes of the great houses of Europe, deferred to him. For he was a King as well as a renowned Captain. When he had surveyed the ground over which the coming action was to be contested, he again looked towards the city, clear now in the early sunlight. And from the ramparts the sentries of the depleted and exhausted garrison, who had seen the rockets of the relieving force dufing the hours of darkness, strained their eyes for some glimpse of their deliverers. They saw that the defiles and gorges leading out pf the hills were blocked by Turkish troops, and it was not known whether John Sobieski himself was with the allied forces. But the horseman on the Kahlenberg was Sobieski, the hope of Europe in that hour of destiny.
The Teheran Three
Authors: Sturzo Luigi
Published: July 2007

I do not know if the conclusion that was reached at Teheran, now after three months still holds good : ‘We come here with hope and determination. We have been friends in fact, in spirit and in purpose.’ Nor do I know whether the British and American columnists who so solemnly proclaimed that the Moscow, Cairo and Teheran Conferences, had laid the foundations for the perpetual and peaceable direction by the Big Three or Four (leaving out of count all the other countries) of a future world order are to-day of the same mind. What has happened in these months is so significant and entails so many hypotheses as to the future of the world, that it challenges all the over-simple formulae which have nourished a superficial press.

Stalin is in the foreground. He has an active, volitive policy which starts from Moscow and arrives at Moscow. Without stressing historical comparisons too much, he can be considered as a Russian Napoleon, who is as much a Muscovite (a Muscovite of Georgia) as the Corsican was a Parisian. Such types bring to capital cities a certain provincial originality, which cuts them off from tradition, thus facilitating the developments of their inventive spirit. Just as Napoleon transformed the semi-anarchic democracy of the French Revolution, (already at its third phase), into a Directory and then into an Empire, while maintaining the symbols of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, so Stalin has transformed the Leninist Soviet regime into a politico-military dictatorship, while preserving the name and certain structures of Communism.

Stalin has dropped the Red International for a more concrete and profitable nationalism ; he has passed from persecution of the Orthodox Church to benevolent toleration ; he has restored a particularist trend to economic life, little by little bringing back private interest.
Responsibility Again (Part I)
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

It is nearly twenty years since Eric Gill wrote in Blackfriars, ‘It has remained for one unworthy to put his pen to the word, and therefore to the argument, which shall give Capitalism and its attendant monster, Industrialism, their death-blow. The word is Responsibility.’

The argument, that Capitalism (production for money, in such sense that all things made are means of making money) and Industrialism (production by machinery with the working man as a sentient part of it) both ‘reduce the workman to a sub-human condition of intellectual irresponsibility,’ was not and is not difficult to follow. It was and is so clearly true as to raise at once the scandal of truth. It was received with applause as a brilliant argument, and it was rejected almost universally, by Catholics and non-Catholics alike, as an impractical one. There were also the incidental reactions of those who were ‘sneeped’ (as they say in the Midlands) by the terms in which it was expressed. ‘Sub-human, indeed !’ and so on.

So, if there was a great cloud of dust put up when Eric was here to press home his own arguments, there is danger now that the word, his word, should be altogether obscured. For the social reformers were, in the main, not really interested, and the interested parties, in the main, wanted his word silenced. It is more than time, therefore, for a restatement.
Welsh Saints
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: July 2007

In a real sense the history of the Church is the history of its saints. For the Church is a living society, and its life is made most manifest through those of its members who are honoured for the integrity of their faith and the holiness of their lives—the saints. If, then, as Leo XIII. said in a famous utterance, the Church has nothing to fear from a truly objective investigation of its history, the lives of its saints can in no way be dimmed by a scientific study of their sources.

But there is a difference. Saints are persons, and persons are loved; round their memory there develops something deeper than documents. The acta of popes and councils are generally available for the study of scholars; their appraisal, while demanding an understanding of the circumstances and persons that gave them expression, is primarily a matter of the authenticity of texts, the chronology of events. In the case of the beatification and canonisation of saints in the modern period, indeed, the Roman decrees, arrived at after a scrupulous examination of evidence, provide an exact account of the reasons for public veneration of these holy ones of the Church. Yet even here there are innumerable factors, reflected in popular devotion, which can scarcely be looked for in a legal document. But in the earlier ages of the history of the Church, and especially in its remoter provinces, the cultus of the saints necessarily lacked that careful regulation which nowadays is taken for granted.
On Poetic Knowledge (II.)
Authors: Maritain Jacques
Published: July 2007

At the beginning of this essay we noted that what a philosopher, reflecting on poetry, observes first of all is that it belongs to the sphere of Art or productive activity. Now the proper end of Art is not knowledge but production or ‘creation,’ not in the manner of physical nature, as radium produces helium or one living thing another, but in the free manner of the mind; it is intellectual productivity ad extra.

Of itself the intellect is expressive; it produces within itself its ‘mental words’ which, besides being the media through which it knows things, are also effects of its own spiritual plenitude, expressions or inward manifestations of the things it knows.

Further, this plenitude is a superabundance which tends of itself, naturally, to an external expression and manifestation, to a song. Not only does the mind’s vitality form words within, it tends also to overflow into works; and this with a natural need or desire which reaches out over the frontiers of intellect itself, and which therefore can only be realized with the aid of the will and the other appetites whose movement, whereby the intellect goes out from itself following a desire natural to itself, is initiated and nourished at its source by the intellect, in such a way that, following this start, they predetermine in a general way the primary tendency of the operative intellect in a poetic (in the aristotelian sense) or in a practical direction. Once this original determination has been given, the ‘poetic ‘activity develops along a line that is much more purely intellectual—the human will with its characteristic ends and purposes being far less involved—than is the line of moral activity (Ethics as a mode of the practical).
Reflections of a Refugee
Authors: X.Y.Z.
Published: July 2007

It is the last hour before Ash Wednesday. Only a little while ago I said the Office of Compline, and the calm of prayer is still upon me. The day has been heavy with many duties, but I was glad to bear them. There is so little we can suffer for him who suffered so willingly for us. The fire on my left is burning steadily. It will have to last the whole night, for we are fire-watching, my companion and I, and it is my turn to wake. She is sleeping peacefully, this dear young girl, and her gentle breathing is a solace to me.

I have been thinking of many things to-night, my friend, and>my heart is very full. Here I am fire-watching, waiting for one of my people to come and bring destruction upon-your people, to ruin their homes, mutilate their limbs, even to kill them. The first time was in an air-raid I was lying-flat on my back in a strange bed and the aeroplanes were droning overhead. I knew they had come for a fell purpose, and I thought of the untold thousands who were threatened by a similar danger both here and in Germany. As I opened my heart to their sufferings I could believe for a moment it were possible to embrace both countries with an equal love. For one night at least in the face of that deadly menace, I seemed to bear the agony of both, and there was neither friend nor foe, only a communion of suffering under a mighty cross.
Leon Bloy, the Church and the Bourgeois
Authors: Bethell Ruth
Published: July 2007

Léon Bloy, who fought in 1870, suffered great poverty all his life, and died in 1916. He knew, as a matter of personal experience here on earth, that the absence of God is Hell.

Le Pélerin du Saint Sépulchre, as he called himself, he lived at the loot of the Cross, with infinite longing; seeing in History the great span of God’s holy Will (’ I am going to write a History of the Will of God ‘) stretching from the Fall to the Incarnation and from the Incarnation to the still unrealised reign of the Spirit; and underneath, the horror of godless man, ‘la hideur plus qu’effroyable d’un monde qui a cessé de ressembler à son Créateur ‘(La Femme Pauvre, p. 214). His meditation was all in depth, taking this form:

‘When the ruffians came down from Calvary, they brought to all people the great news that mankind had come of age. In a single bound, Suffering crossed the infinite abyss separating Accident and Substance, and became NECESSARY.

‘Then the promises of joy and triumph in which the Scriptures are soaked, appearing in the new law under the brief heading “ Beatitudes,” coursed through the generations, cutting across them like a whirlwind of swordblades. In a word, humanity set about suffering in hope, and that is what is called the Christian era . . . Great souls, Christian or not, long for the outcome of it all . . .’ (Le Désespéré.)
Afterthoughts on Aftercare
Authors: Grosch Alfred
Published: July 2007

“When I first took up rescue work,’’ wrote Canon J. Bennett, Administrator of the Liverpool Catholic Children’s Protection Society, “the late Mgr. Hudson drew up for my guidance ‘Ten Commandments of Rescue Work’. The last was, ‘If a child fails, examine your own conscience’.”

The same Mgr. Hudson also wrote, “The test of good rescue work is aftercare.” It was his view that the best method of aftercare, for boys at any rate, was to be found in a well-conducted Working Boys’ Home. It may be that he was right. I cannot say, for it so turned out in my experience that Working Boys’ Hostels, as they were called, were practically a failure. “A Working Boys’ Home is a most difficult and a most expensive organisation to run. The Superintendent in charge must be a man of deep spiritual instincts, a man of practical faith, a man of refinement and education, a man of business mind who can win the confidence of employers, a man whose very presence is a joy to the boys, one who inspires them with his justice and Catholic character. Given such a man, I can unhesitatingly say that the great majority of the boys will become steady workmen and practical Catholics.” That, also by Mgr. Hudson, is certainly a very good description of the right man for the job.

There have been of recent years some half-dozen different attempts in London to run Working Boys’ Hostels under such management, and all ended in failure. I believe there were as many attempts in the past which ended in much the same way. A few years ago, a house was taken in Steele’s Road, Hampstead, N.W. One couple after another went in, and after a few weeks, or months, threw up the job, or were practically thrown out.
Liturgical Propaganda
Authors: Sheppard L.C.
Published: July 2007

A recent correspondence in a Catholic weekly newspaper on the subject of the vernacular in the public worship of the Church showed that there is some feeling on this topic among a certain section of the faithful. The correspondence was noteworthy for it broughtout clearly two things which should prove useful in the future: the unsuitability of newspaper columns for the discussion of such a question, and the strange ideas that exist among many as to the proper function of the public worship of the Church in the spirituallife of the faithful—the strange ideas, be it said, were not confined to the laity.

For some years now, throughout the West, we have been in the throes of what has come to be known as the Liturgical Movement; here in England we have, in manyways, felt its effects in lesser degree perhaps than in some other countries. On account of the war, which has brought about a grea shifting of population, in many parts of the country one has been able to obtain a rough but certainly interesting estimate of the advance of the liturgical movement. In the majority of cases indeed that evidence has pointed to a lamentable lack of penetration of those ideas for which the movement stands, and the present time of upheaval seems hardly propitious for their further intensive propagation. On the other hand the actual state of ferment of ideas provides certainly a suitable moment for sowing useful seeds. If in the past there have been mistakes, and serious mistakes, in presentation, on account of which many people have a wrong idea, and themajority perhaps no idea at all, of what the liturgical movement is, surely now is the time to seek the reason for so sorry a condition of affairs.
The Study of Liturgy
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

There has been a ‘marked change in liturgical writing in the last few years. It can hardly be called a change for the better, for that would imply disrespect for the great liturgical work of the beginning of the century. A great deal of the work immediately connected with the liturgical movement has not in- ‘ deed merited deep respect in so far as it has indulged in a facile andover-naturalistic philosophising which ill becomes the humble worshipper. But the great historians of the liturgy, men like Neale, Brightman, Bishop or Fortescue, performed the scholarly task of research without which our modern writers would have nothing to say. The previous work still continues in such important studies as Mr. Dugmore’s researches into the Jewish ancestry of the Divine Office). In this book the author has done for the Divine Office what Oesterley, in his study of Jewish origins, did for theEucharistic worship. He has moreover opened a new way of approach in the more neglected study of the non-eucharistic parts of Christian worship. He shows not only that the Pro-Anaphora or Mass of the Catechumens was often celebrated in the early church apart from the Eucharist and so formed a service like that of the synagogue of prayers, lessons and psalms distinct from the central liturgical act, but also that the three daily prayers of Jewish worship begot three or at least two Christian assemblies a day of like nature. This means that the Divine Office is not simply an expansion of the first part of the Mass, which all agree is itself of Jewish origin, but that the day was sanctified by more than one assembly for prayer even before the Mass was celebrated daily, and that this early form of Divine Office was directly inherited from the synagogue. This work on the early shape and ancestry of our official prayer is in the best tradition of liturgical study.
The English Martyrs
Authors: M.M.M.
Published: July 2007

“Of twisted scarlet, the work of an artist, with precious stones cut and set on gold ...” (Ecclesiasticus, XLV. 13). Nor this nor any text, inspired word of God, can be too high for these, his Saints, canonised or uncanonised, to whom He gave the great gift of martyrdom.

In early times, the Church rightly set her precious stones in the Mass, cut them out in the first Litanies, wove their scarlet threads of love and fame into and out of the histories of the first great basilicas, in Rome and elsewhere. We bless and revere the practice of the Church, then as now, and in all humility follow it, in speaking of our own later Martyrs, since there is no time with God . . . “Jesus Christ yesterday, and to-day and for ever.”

It is true that we in these islands would not have the Faith, humanly speaking, did not in God’s Providence some early missionary bring and preach it to our forefathers; but it is as least as true that we could never have kept the Faith were it not kept for us by those whom we have come to call the English Martyrs. This name is peculiar to that company of men and women who were put to death for their Faith, and for that only, between the years 1535 and 1689; that is, from the beginning of Henry VIII’s hist claim to be Head of the Church, to the Titus Oates Plot and the wave of anti-Catholic feeling in the reign of Charles II.
Madame Acarie (II)
Authors: Sheppard Lancelot C.
Published: July 2007

In a sketch of this nature much must be passed over. Pierre Acarie’s banishment from Paris, the extreme want to which his family was reduced, and the valiant and continued efforts— finally successful—made by his wife for the complete restoration of the family fortunes and the return of her husband, can be hut mentioned. Gladly she endured poverty, many insults, and much suffering, so that she might redeem her husband’s good name and property. Yet from the time of Pierre’s return his temper seems to have become sharper. It has been pointed out by some biographers that this change occurred in Pierre Acarie in direct proportion to his wife’s increase in holiness. Without going so far it may be said, perhaps, that Pierre’s increasing ill-humour, caused to a certain extent, no doubt, by his many reverses, the triumph of all that he abhorred, and the upset of his dearest political plans, was used by God in the sanctification of his wife. Women who sanctify themselves in marriage, as Barbe Acarie did, give to those they love, a love which is extremely pure for it is deprived of all element of self. They love, perhaps, no more than other wives, but surely they love better. For, to be able to live “in one flesh”, without that life becoming a veritable prison for the soul requires harmony of spirit. And such harmony is not attained without sacrifice. Barbe loved her husband, and the pursuit of perfection in no wise decreased her love.
On Reading the Mystics
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

The Early English Text Society have presented the public with a critical edition of the original text of The Cloud of Unknowing and The Epistle of Privy Counsel. The work is that of Dr Phyllis Hodgson. Dr. Hodgson has done her work thoroughly with a description and discussion of the MSS, an elaborate analysis of the language, all in the best traditions of the Society. To this she has added a discussion of the subject-matter, the sources and the author of these two mystical writings, which are the most important in the English language. There is little fresh light to be thrown on the authorship, which remains as unknown as before in spite of much research. But Dr. Hodgson has been more rewarded in her exploration of the sources, for she has established in particular the direct influence of the treatise De Adhaerendo Deo, upon The Cloud and The Epistle of Privy Counsel. This work was formerly attributed simply to S. Albert the Great, but is now regarded as having been amplified by a Benedictine at a later date; it teaches the same doctrine as The Cloud in very much the same style—a guarantee, if one were needed, that the English work is no esoteric, over-spiritualised attempt to short-cut the way of Christ which is the way of the Church. Then there are the direct borrowings from Richard of S. Victor’s Benjamin Major which shows how the author of The Cloud swam in the full stream of mystical doctrine, beginning with the Pseudo-Aropagite whom he specifically acknowledges as his master, and proceeding through the Victorines to the great movement of the 14th century.
Venerable Nicholas Postgate, Martyr
Authors: M.M.M.
Published: July 2007

Nicholas Postgate was born in 1596, in the parish of Egton, some miles from Whitby, in the North Biding of Yorkshire. In a Recusant List of 1604, of Egton, is mentioned the martyr’s mother . . . “All Recusants (that is, all these who are mentioned in this list as given) for eight years past,” says the entry. A further note adds: “Jane Postgate widowe, doth keep in her house William Postgate, her father, a Recusant who teacheth children”. Again another note: “Jane Postgate, widowe. . . (and others) have had children baptised privately of late years.”

Probably, then, Nicholas Postgate was one of these children, most carefully sealed to God by some zealous priest working secretly, since twenty of the sixty Recusants returned on Egton’s list had been so named since Lady Day in 1603. This bitter year would allow of none but secret work. Perhaps the risks run by this and other priests were the seed of the glorious harvest the little Nicholas was one day to gather for God. His family name is usually said POSKITT or POSKETT, and is not uncommon in Yorkshire. His father seems to have been one William Postgate, of a Kirkedale House estate, and his mother a Watson. Later, Fr. Postgate was to use her maiden name as an alias, stating that he was “of that kindred.” No doubt his boyhood was familiar with hunted Catholicity, with details of recusancy, and that staunch Yorkshire resistance to all forms of persecution, which helped to breed in him the stuff of which all the Martyrs were made.
The Critics' Probation
Authors: Cardiff Ethelbert
Published: July 2007

A recent reading of the reviews of Wilfrid Ward's Life of Cardinal Newman in 1912 has deepened a long-harboured suspicion that appreciation of Newman is very much a moral matter. Whether you agree or disagree with his conclusions, you will never do him justice until you yourself begin to feel some spark of his deep and self-disregarding love of truth. Just acknowledgements have yet to be made by the literary spokesmen of England to the titanic genius of this great Englishman; but the failure, if failure it can be shown to be, is mainly a moral one.

When his biography appeared in 1912 it was met by a cautious but unmistakable disparagement of the Cardinal’s intellect. None of the writers indeed stooped so low as some of those of the generation before, when Carlyle, with shattering imperceptiveness, had described him as possessing “the intellect of a moderate-sized rabbit’’. Lord Morley too, more sweetly but with hardly less critical obtuseness, had written: “Mill had none of the incomparably winning graces by which Newman made mere syren style (italics mine) do duty for exact, penetrating and coherent thought: by which moreover he actually raised his church to what would not so long before have seemed a strange and inconceivable rank in the mind of Protestant England. Style has worked many a miracle before now, but none more wonderful than Newman’s.” To trace the Catholic Revival in England to Newman’s style needs nerve enough. But only the conviction that his readers knew the writings of Newman as little as he, could have steeled honest John Morley to accuse the author of The Grammar of Assent of abandoning exact, penetrating and coherent thought for mere honeyed words.
Sisters of Martyrs: A Sidelight on Dominican History
Authors: Whatmore L.E.
Published: July 2007

John Bridgewater, the martyrologist, writing in 1588, makes the interesting statement that the Dominican convent at Dartford numbered in its ranks not only a sister of St John Fisher, but also some sisters of the Carthusian martyrs. He is enumerating those Catholic women who had suffered persecution under Elizabeth, among whom Elizabeth Cressner, the Prioress of Dartford and her nuns occupy a rightful place. The passage in question is contained in an appendix at the end of the Concertatio Ecclesiae Catholicae, published at Trier in 1588. This book being rare, we give the extract as it stands:—“Elizabetha Chresnera Priorissa monialium D. Dominici cum toto conventu, in quo erat soror Sanctissimi Martyris Ioannis Roffensis Episcopi et sorores aliquot Carthusianorum martyrum”

That St John Fisher had a sister in this convent (a royal foundation by Edward the third) is fairly well known; but that there were sisters of the Carthusian martyrs in the community is less so. On checking up on Bridgewater’s assertions we have found that no less than eight of the nuns were related to martyrs of Henry the Eighth in one way or another—a fact which, no doubt, goes far to explain their subsequent heroic history.

As Bridgewater himself was ordained priest in Queen Mary’s reign and left England in 1576, he could hardly fail to know something of the Dartford nuns who were refounded under her and afterwards, like him, went into exile for the Faith. But a study of the list of nuns who received pensions at the time of the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539 amply bears ‘ out his statement.
The Heroic Century
Authors: Foster Kenelm
Published: July 2007

One effect of the very strong French habit of self-assessment and self-apprajsal is that foreigners are often mildly surprised to see the literature of the French survive and continue to renew itself. We are apt to take our neighbours’ introspection for granted; we cannot get used to their vitality. They have summarised themselves so often that we expect this to go on almost automatically, and we expect little else. In fact there is much else, a constant renewal of creative effort; but it never or hardly ever gets detached from the the critical reason. And this constant exercise of reason, on the part of the creative writers just as much as of anyone else, tends to make the work of the literary historian easier; for he finds, already in being and ready to hand, defined points of view and definite groupings and loyalties. It must be rather easy to write manuals—bad, facile manuals— of French literature. The “clear idea’’ is everyone’s property and nobody’s earnings, once it has been made clear It becomes, in a word, cliché.

M. Gonzague de Reynold, fortunately, is no dealer in clichés. His recent work on the 17th century is not even a manual, but a lucid summary thrown into a series of short essays, each of which represents a real and powerful effort to understand. It is a good introduction because it is lucid and alive, even if it does, at times, remind one of the commonplace manual, much as a man’s face may remind you of a caricature of him. For M. de Reynold is so sure of himself. From the first page he raps out questions which he is perfectly prepared to answer and to answer immediately; and this speed and this assurance go on for 300 pages.
Father Dominic Barberi the Missionary
Authors: Gwynn Denis
Published: July 2007

Father Dominic Barberi’s name is always associated particularly with that of Newman because it was he who received Newman’s submission at Littlemore in October 1845. He arrived there (apparently by accident but actually as the result of years of constant vigilance and sympathetic correspondence) just at the moment when Newman had decided to take the final step but knew no Catholic priest in England to whom he could turn without feeling tongue-tied. But although the immediate reason for the recent petitions to Rome to hasten the cause of Father Dominic’s beatification is his connection with Newman’s conversion, it is probable that Father Dominic’s preaching as a missionary pioneer in England will be the chief subject of interest to the authorities in Rome. Undoubtedly it was his missionary labours in the English towns that made Newman regard him with so much personal veneration both before and after their first meeting. For it was he who first provided the convincing answer to that challenge which Newman had unconsciously formulated when he wrote to Ambrose Phillips nearly five years before he became a Catholic. At that time Newman was still convinced that the Catholic Church did not possess the marks of sanctity by which the true Church was to be recognised.

“This I feel most strongly and cannot conceal it,” Newman had written, to warn off Ambrose Phillips at the beginning of 1841, when Phillips desired to meet him in Oxford to discuss the, possibilities of union between the Church of England and Rome, “that while Rome is what she is, union is impossible.
Wisdom in Education
Authors: Todd John M.
Published: July 2007

Some weeks ago in two articles in The Tablet, entitled: “Education and Technique”, J. B. Sandeman, O.S.B., described the rejection by the 1944 Education Act of the idea of liberal education and asked what the Wisdom of Christ’s Church has to say and do at this time. He epitomised the historical facts thus: “In 1870 we abolished God, or at least reduced him to the rank of an idea . . . And now we are engaged in the abolition of man, for he too, in his turn, is to be sacrificed to something lower than himself, to the exigencies of technique”.

The State rejects liberal education because it only understands it as a pagan thing, as the practice of traditions, which, rising from the noble but pagan ideal, “mens sana in corpore sano”, have become corrupt and moribund, lacking the principle of life; it rejects a “classical education” because it knows no reason for its existence. When the Holy Spirit ceased to pour the water of life through Christ’s Church into our schools, when in fact, “God was abolished, or at least, reduced to the rank of an idea”, the virtue went out of our schools, the virtue went out of liberal education. When the study of the classics became an end in itself, instead of being part of the means and methods of training minds to logical and later to theological thought, in fact when man was abolished or at least “in his turn sacrificed to something lower than himself, to the exigencies of technique”, the idea of a classical education came into disrepute. But the Church lives still in Europe.
Contemplation and the Life of the Church
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: July 2007

We are used to hearing the present age in the Church’s history described as the age of catholic action: there is a possibility that we may not sufficiently realize that catholic action essentially demands and implies catholic contemplation. By catholic action we mean the sharing, by the laity, in Christ’s redeeming work in and for the world: trying to make known the truth entrusted to the Church, trying to create a Christian order of society, trying to reclaim for men and women those fundamental rights and duties which our Lord came to teach the world and which the world has so largely lost. But all this work, and every part of it, implies the need of contemplation; and if the contemplation is lacking, the action will not achieve much lasting good. Misguided benevolence can do almost as much harm in the long run as sheer wickedness; and action without contemplation is blind.

Action of any sort is blind without contemplation of some sort. The symphony played on the concert platform is significant only if it expresses an artist’s vision; the military campaign would be military chaos without the precedent thought of the strategist. And the need of contemplative vision becomes greater as the aim of given action is more important for humanity: the artist whose material is stone or paint must be a contemplative, but it is still more important that the maker whose material is human flesh and blood should be a contemplative; and when you come to those whose material is the souls of men and women you come to the greatest need of contemplation of all.