bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Ethics of Modern War
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: July 2007

“Any nation,” the present Pope has said, “so mad as to contemplate war would be guilty of monstrous homicide and almost certainly of suicide.” There is, it would seem, a tendency to meet any proposal for the prevention of war and the promotion of peace with the argument that there is such a thing as a just war, and to leave it at that. There is a danger here of relapsing into the laissez aller attitude described by M. Maritain as “using the eternal truths as a pillow to go to sleep on.” To restrict discussion to the question of whether there can be a just war in the abstract is to invite unreality.

“There is such a thing as a just war.” For this position we have a formidable array of authorities, if we are to pin our faith to authorities; a formidable array of arguments, if we choose to take reason as our guide. “There is such a thing as legitimate self-defence, as legitimately helping the injured even by offensive warfare.” A proper authority, a just cause, a right intention, these are, according to St. Thomas, the three prerequisites of the just war. Can they not often and easily enough be fulfilled? In theory perhaps; in the hypothesis of two isolated States, in an isolated point of time, with clear-cut and indisputable aggression or injury on the one side and the impossibility of any defence or redress other than by war on the other. Such a state of affairs, however, in the world of to-day is, to all intents and purposes, impossible.
International Problems
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

During the month of July, two conferences on international problems took place in London. Both were held in semi-privacy, but their importance was such that the organizers of the conferences have seen fit to publish the details of the speeches which were given on these occasions. They present an interesting study in comparison.

At Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs arranged a series of debates from May 29th to July 7th on the Future of the League, and succeeded in obtaining for this purpose the co-operation of some of the best known and most competent students of international affairs in England. The debates have now been published in book form and are invaluable for the large number of English students who cannot claim to the same competence as the personalities whose views are here expressed, but who seek to gain by their learning.

From the 3rd to the 6th of July, the Catholic Council for International Relations held a rather different kind of reunion. The general subject for conference was “The Part of Catholics in the Maintenance of the European Order,” and those who took part were Catholic writers and lecturers from many countries, with an international reputation for their ability in these problems. Their conclusions have already been published in the Catholic press, and a fuller account of the papers will be given in the next issue of the C.C.I.R. organ, A Catholic Survey. The present writer is indebted to the secretary of the C.C.I.R. for the use of notes on the papers before they appeared in print.
The Risks of Peace
Authors: Sturzo Luigi
Published: July 2007

Peace is not a pause between two wars, like a rather long truce, nor is it a gift passively received and tranquilly kept. Peace must be won, be maintained and strengthened by effort, be defended against those who would disturb it. Peace is a continuous creation in which all share, each through the part he plays in social life.

Mr. Wickham Steed, in his recent book Vital Peace, a Study of Risks, has shown how peace has its risks as war has. There can be no life without risk.

The problem of the risks of life can be considered from three standpoints: the psychological, for each one of us; the national, for each State; the “communitary,” for a united group of States or for the international community in general. In life these various planes are interwoven.

The average upper-class young Englishman at Eton or Harrow cannot envisage a quiet life, made up of study and domestic cares, without the adventure of travel, work in the colonies, the army or politics. Sport is enticing to many, but sport for sport’s sake is worse than art for art’s sake; training in endurance for the sake of bodily agility without a sense of adventure would become a matter of professional exercise, to be despized. All do not feel this urge to adventure. The young working-man, brought up in a Labour environment, becomes a petit bourgeois; the young Communist is or wishes to be a fighter, and does not exclude, at least in theory, civil war. The upper- or middle-class boy tends to adopt a nationalist and conservative ideal.
Mr. Nicholson Abdicates
Authors: Foster Urban
Published: July 2007

Mr. Nicholson continues to show, towards the general reading public, that instructive patience which the permanent civil servant must show to his transitory chief. He carries on, in his biography of Dwight Morrow, that implicit instruction in the control of world affairs which he began in the trilogy on Lord Carnock, the Peace Conference, and Lord Curzon.

But his subject here is very different and very unexpected. There is no adumbration, in the story of Lord Carnock, the perfect English civil servant and statesman; in the story of that magnificent aristocrat and administrator, Curzon; no adumbration of the story of the American school-master’s son, who became partner in J. P. Morgan’s, Ambassador to Mexico, was close to being Secretary of State to Mr. Hoover, whose prestige, at the time of his premature death, aged 58, clearly foreshadowed the Presidency, and whom Mr. Nicholson feels bound to call “the completely civilized man.”

There is just one connecting link between this book and the preceding Trilogy, and it is the reason for Mr. Nicholson’s writing it. All four books praise men who sought to attain to a mastery of the technique of world affairs, who sought, in fact, to know the true state of things, who were determined to discard notions preconceived to the accurate, orderly, sympathetic knowledge of them, and who were confident that their intelligences were capable of mastering the jungle-like complexity that faced them. Otherwise, this book differs—by a world—from its predecessors. The scene swings from European Diplomacy to Transatlantic Commerce, from Petersburg to Pittsburg, from Whitehall to Wall Street.
Christians and The Class-Struggle
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

Marxism is not a philosophy. It is a technique of revolution. Hence the critique of those whose minds are fixed in academic ways of thought nearly always misses the point. We are not dealing with a system of thinking which claims its confirmation in the identities of being, but with one which claims its confirmation in action and in practice. Moreover it does not confirm itself by referring back to traditional ways of action or established practice; it claims its verification in the unity of thought with revolutionary practice. And it is not merely catastrophic in its method; far less is it merely Utopian. That type of criticism, therefore, which paints Marxism as a Utopian system in order to ridicule it as such may have some bearing on the various forms of Utopian socialism which Marx and his followers always fiercely attacked, but practically none on Marxism.

The basic concept of dialectic materialism is matter in motion, and essentially so. “Motion,” says Engels (Anti-Dühring) “is the mode of existence of matter.” To apply this principle to society, the social situation must be understood in its process if we are to enter at all into the Marxian outlook. For Marxism is a system of social dynamics and it is often rejected at the cost of losing also any grasp of history as a real and living development rather than as a marginal note to an a priori thesis independent of our carnal lives.
Wealthy Childhoods
Authors: Mathew David
Published: July 2007

The publication of a recent survey of the background of convent education gives rise to an interesting train of thought regarding those diverse generations of the Catholic circles of privilege whose daughters receive their formation in convents of a socially exclusive character. Mother O’Leary in her authoritative study, whose scope is very much wider than that by-path which we are now considering, writes with knowledge and calm and has provided us with a most sympathetic but also objective impression. The first section of her book contains an examination of that background of convent education which had given such religious moulding as the polite world of pre-revolutionary France was willing to accept. As a preparation the author devotes some space to an account of the various curricula in use in the colleges, but it is manifestly impossible to touch on more than the fringe of the intricate subject of the mental background of the privileged boys of the Ancien Régime.

In regard to convent education Madame de Genlis has left us a description of the methods of the abbey of Origny-Sainte-Benoîte, where the abbess was ready to entertain a small proportion of the community in her private apartments, and where the social intercourse afforded to the girls trained them early to take their place in that section of French society which was accessible to mild religious ideals when presented palatably.
Diversity in Worship
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: July 2007

“There is no reason in the world” wrote Augustus Welby Pugin, “why noble cities, combining all possible convenience of drainage, water-courses, and conveyance of gas, may not be erected in the most consistent and yet Christian character.” There is, in this engaging statement, an implication which Pugin, alas, did not see. “Our domestic architecture,” he had said very truly, “should have a peculiar expression illustrative of our manners and habits”; but these latter he chose unfortunately to regard as identical with those of earlier ages, despite the fact that the earlier ages were in no position to convey gas. “We are such men as our fathers were, and therefore should build as they built”; so his argument is summarized. Hence his campaign to revive an architectural form which centuries earlier was already played out; a campaign whose success resulted in that torrential and continuous downpour of brussels sprouts from which we are only now beginning to emerge. “The point,” Mr. Trappes-Lomax tells us, “was not whether St. Peter’s might be tolerable in Rome, and Notre Dame in Paris; it was whether the Church in England was to be English or Italianate.” The first tragedy was that Pugin identified Gothic with English; the second, that in the general struggle between English and Italianate parties, while in architecture Italy came out, in the event, defeated, in the sphere of worship she so largely carried the day.
“Integrationists” of the Middle Ages
Authors: Smalley Beryl
Published: July 2007

“It is not good for man to be alone: man is ‘alone’ when he is away from the turmoil of the world; thus monks and holy men build for themselves solitudes. It is not good, says the Lord, for such a man, a contemplative, to be alone, without a companion; it is best that he become active; let us make him a help like unto himself, that is, a people subject to him, who will minister to his temporal, as he to their spiritual needs.”

The contemplative life resembles Paradise before the creation of Eve! Or, to modernize the thought as well as its phrasing: man is meant to express himself in the art of government.

The quotation comes from notes which were taken by students from a lecture on Genesis, delivered in the Paris schools round about the year 1190. The students would apply it to themselves. For the present they were “contemplatives,” if not solitaries; their business, in theory at least, was contemplation which centred in the study of Scripture; and they were all potential bishops. Their lecturer passed dramatically to action from contemplation. From being a master of theology at Paris he was raised to the cardinalate, then to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and “expressed himself” in Magna Carta.
Sir Josiah Stamp on Christian Economics
Authors: Drinkwater F. H.
Published: July 2007

Catching sight of my own name by chance in a periodical several weeks old, I discovered to my astonishment that I had apparently been mentioned in a book by Sir Josiah Stamp which was published this year. Sir Josiah Stamp, needless to say, is not only a director of the Bank of England and a railway magnate, but also an “eminent economist” and indeed the chosen publicity-man who is ever ready to defend the existing financial system with voice and pen and a limitless supply of tact and urbanity.

Curiosity had to be satisfied, and at the first opportunity I looked up his book, which is called Motive and Method in a Christian Order (Epworth Press). As regards myself, the results of the search were very disappointing. The distinguished author had indeed mentioned me (amongst others) and even quoted extensively from a little book of mine, but only by way of illustrating how unwise some of the clergy are in committing themselves to the “Douglas Credit System.” I call this disappointing, because I have never at any time been a follower of Major Douglas or an adherent of his scheme, and indeed was at considerable pains to distinguish myself from the Douglasites in that same little book from which Sir Josiah Stamp took his quotations. I have even criticized the Douglasites quite a lot in their own periodicals; though not in articles addressed to the general public, because it seems a pity to give the impression that moneyreformers are at loggerheads, when they are all united in their exposure of the private Money-Power. Also it is true I have often used the terms “social credit” and “national dividend,” but Sir Josiah Stamp can hardly be unaware that these ideas are common amongst others than Douglasites and by no means involve acceptance of such junk as the A + B theorem, etc., which the Douglasites are now finding it so difficult to throw overboard quietly.
Catholics as Super-Pharisees
Authors: Kehoe Richard
Published: July 2007

The prominence of Pharisaism in the Gospels—the sustained energy of Our Lord’s denunciation of it, His use of it as a sort of dark background against which to illustrate His own religious teaching, should alone be enough to convince us, since we believe in the divine praeparatio evangelii, that the Pharisees are for all time a supremely important type of religious corruption. Whereas we generally look upon them as a type of such imbecile hypocrisy as could hardly be reproduced, and without a qualm of misgiving we continue to spit upon their gaberdines. One thing that helps us to regard their miserable failings as something quite foreign to us is the false notion we have that their general religious position was essentially Protestant, or rather Puritan, in spirit. The truth is that the Pharisees were more akin to Catholics than to Protestants; and they seem to have been far removed from Puritanism. Their multiplying of religious observances upon which we look with great disapproval was at its best an attempt to carry devotion to the Law, that is to the will of God, into everyday life: and not out of any hatred or suspicion of life but simply in order to sanctify it. For far from being Manichees they were not even passable ascetics. The famous rabbinic saying, “A man will have to give account on the judgment day of every good thing which his eyes saw and he did not eat” probably reflects their general mood. Apart from the New Testament, what evidence there is would seem to show that their religious programme was not regarded as burdensome by the people; rather one would gather that it was welcomed by them, only too gladly accepted as a very satisfying way of fulfilling their duties.
Catholicism and Myth
Authors: Drewitt Norbert
Published: July 2007

‘It is to be held as an article of faith,” wrote Pope Pius IX, “that outside the apostolic Roman Church no man can be saved, for it is the sole ark of salvation.”

Nevertheless, we find in the same pronouncement, we are to hold with equal certainty “that those who are afflicted by ignorance of the true religion, provided that ignorance is invincible, are not accounted in any way guilty by God on that account.”

The Church’s language is that of paradox. Her decrees, her definitions, sketch out supernatural cosmic realities in huge, generous, sweeping outlines. There is little refinement, distinction, qualification. The faith-lit mind is trusted to press on behind these symbols to the grand totalities symbolized. Thus the Church guards us against seizing the relative sign for the absolute thing, the letter for the Divine Word, representing for us infinitesimal fragments of the integral reality to be believed and loved.
The Mystery of Christ in US
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

Mere handling of these two volumes—the second edition of Père Mersch’s unique book on the Mystical Body—gives one a good sensual delight through sight and touch. But within the attractive format lies still greater pleasure for the intellect, for not only is it accurate in textual and historical criticism complete with footnotes, bibliographies and indices, it is also written in an easy-flowing style. As the positive treatment of an actual and profound point of Christian doctrine it is a perfect work of its kind. With great skill P. Mersch leads the reader to the authentic sources of the doctrine of the Mystical Body, and once there the reader looks back perhaps to discover that in his previous attitude towards the Church as the Mystical Body he had been veering the wrong way.

We do believe in the Holy Catholic Church. Every time we repeat the Creed we profess our faith in that doctrine. But sometimes we forget what faith means, and try to put forward natural reasons as convincing evidence of the truths we profess. Particularly do we tend to see the total explanation of the Church within the limits of human knowledge, forgetting perhaps that faith is a special grace from God by which we are enabled to assent with utter certainty to divine mysteries, to supernatural truths inexplicable to the human mind. The Church is just such a mystery, ranking alongside of the blessed Trinity, the Incarnation or the Eucharist. Her nature, the intimate union of her members in Christ, cannot be wholly explained with any more convincing natural evidence than those other mysteries; nor shall we be able to analyze her more successfully than St. Paul who piled simile upon simile in his effort to describe this society which requires a divine light to be seen in its true colours.
English Dominican Sanctity (I)
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

The English Dominican Province has given to the Church five cardinals, seventy-two archbishops and bishops, several papal legates and nuncios, and to the state some ministers of prominence such as Archbishop William Hotham, the favourite minister of Edward I, and Bishop John Gilbert of Hereford, twice Lord High Treasurer. In theology, philosophy, Sacred Scripture and other branches of ecclesiastical science English Dominican writers of repute number more than a hundred, and it is easy to show that during the first three centuries of their existence they were by far the most prominent theological body in England, whilst extant MSS. of sermons and state documents testify to their ability and popularity as preachers. In contemplating this long list of eminent men the question has sometimes been asked why there are no English Dominicans officially enrolled in the Calendar of Saints either as canonized or beatified. The difficulty, which applies equally to the Irish Province with its lengthy list of martyrs, is not really hard to answer. At the time of the Henrican schism the feasts of six Dominicans only were kept in the Order, now the number is three hundred and four, of whom two hundred and ninety-four have been raised to the altars since 1600. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the English Dominicans, persecuted and generally working in secret, and frequently in prison, had little leisure for gathering the information necessary to obtain the beatification or canonization of the many members of the Province noted for their sanctity or heroism as martyrs. It has been left to us in more propitious times to undertake this task, and surely we can hope that such a work will be blessed with success.
Claudel, Dramatist
Authors: O'Connor John
Published: July 2007

Jacques Riviere, one of Claudel’s converts, writes:

It is no good thinking that one can bring to Claudel a frigid admiration! It is not our taste he thinks to please, he demands our soul so that he can offer it to God. He wants to force our innermost consent, to drag us in our own despite from doubt and dilettantism. His presentment of the world is so dense, his explanation so forceful, so practically convincing, that to reject it is to be self-condemned to seek comfort in the void.

The French have the dramatic instinct better developed than the rest of us, to judge by their power of staging things. Lourdes from day to day is a good instance of the ease which only instinct can give in the setting out of thought or prayer in action. The French also work harder at the things of the mind, and their literature is central, that is, they can get all the thrills they want at home, and when they desire to add to their store, they assimilate the great things from abroad, and leave the trivial. Their Ecoles moyennes study Milton better than ours. They as a nation know much more about Dante than the English, whose national comprehension has been increased, for good or ill, by Dore’s illustrations.
Humanism and the Claims of God
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: July 2007

“Can there be an heroic humanism?” It is to ask, in effect, whether Christian humanism is possible, a humanism not merely compatible with sanctity, but essentially directed to the achievement of sanctity as to the achievement of its own purpose. But the adjective is significant. Heroism implies a more than human effort, a strain therefore and tension; and the persistent presence of tension implies for the Christian humanist two outstanding dangers: forgetfulness of divine transcendence, forgetfulness of irremediable human sorrow.

The things that are seen have a directness of appeal to the heart that the greater glories miss for being hidden in the obscurities of faith. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.” “It remains, then,” wrote Joannes a Sancto Thoma, “that the captive soul, bound in the bonds of faith to its clouded object, can be illumined only by the flame of love.” And there is no mysticism without tears. “I sought Him Whom my soul loveth, I sought Him and I found Him not.” But the beauty that is not God is ever present, and pulls at the heart to such purpose as to become potential rival of divinity. So the discovery of God often entails a first reaction against the things which before had distracted attention from the search for Him.
André Gide's Return from the U.S.S.R.
Authors: Gurian Waldemar
Published: July 2007

In 1934, when it was known that André Gide had turned to Communism, the news excited much attention. Gide had stood for an extreme individualism. Had he not, in a popular phrase, exalted the morals of the aesthetic? Had he not glorified that type of individual merely in order to portray a personality pure and real, beyond all moral ties? Had he not always been in search of truth, in praise of truth, despising all dogma, all belief in the possibility of a traditional authority capable of comprising the truth? And now André Gide, the descendant of an old French family, the symbol of an over-refined intellectualism, had become the follower of revolutionary dogmatic Moscow. Did this fact alone not signify that the bourgeoisie was at the end of its power and influence?

André Gide was a model to all those intellectuals, coming out of the bourgeoisie, to whom the existing order had become so unbearable that they took in earnest the promises of Communism, sometimes even knowing, as Gide knew, that the world of Communism was in reality a contradiction of their own being.
Pietas Anglicana
Authors: St. John Henry
Published: July 2007

The second volume of Lord Halifax’s life completed a first-rate biography of a striking and dynamic personality. It gives to the many who only knew him externally, in his chivalrous championship of Reunion ideals, and in the part he played in the domestic politics of his own Church, a vivid picture of the whole man. Mr. Lockhart sketches with skilful pen Lord Halifax’s mental background, his temperament and character, his inner spiritual life and his family, social and ecclesiastical relationships. And this complete portrait, seen by most of us now for the first time, will compel thoughtful Catholics to search afresh for the answer to the question: What was it that kept so exceptionally gifted a man, whose high principle and personal integrity no one could question, unwaveringly faithful to the Church of England through a long life of incessant preoccupation with Catholicism, during which he came to hold almost every doctrinal truth which the Church proposes to the faith of its members? The answer to this question, if it could be found, is likely to provide the answer to another of great moment: Do the causes which operated to keep this one man faithful to the Church of England operate also to keep many others, similarly circumstanced, to the same allegiance?
A Recall to Reason
Authors: Kildany Herbert
Published: July 2007

If any new proof were required to establish the rapid decay of the society in which we live, none more convincing could be adduced than the increasing volume of appeals to reason which have been issued by competent authorities of late years. It is an unhappy reflection that this iteration is made necessary by the disregard with which they have been met; for it is axiomatic that the frequency of such appeals is governed by the heedlessness with which they are received.

A recent issue of the Tablet contained a report of the moving address made by the Pope, from what was thought to be his death-bed on Christmas Eve, as well as a careful commentary on the Recall to Religion made a short time previously by the Archbishop of Canterbury. On another page news was given of the latest book written by the Master General of the Order of Preachers. Appel au Bon Sens has created something of a sensation in France and it will, perhaps, not be out of place to suggest some reasons for this; particularly as the book is not likely to have a wide circulation among English readers.
English Dominican Sanctity (II)
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

The dominant note of English Dominican life from the accession of Elizabeth to the end of the Penal days was heroism. Often with a prison for a convent and a dungeon for a cell the friars suffered all cheerfully for the salvation of souls. They kept alive the Province not for the sake of the Province but for the maintaining of Catholic Faith in their native land. Reduced to the rank of a Congregation for want of a central house, they sent their recruits to foreign Provincials who in splendid charity trained them for the religious life and apostolate.

Heroism of the highest order is seen in the life of the martyr, the Venerable Robert Nutter, the English Dominican nearest to the supreme honours of the Church. He, and his brother John who was beatified in 1929, were Lancashire men and members of Brasenose College, Oxford, and both were admitted to the English College at Rheims, where Robert, though reputed the younger, was ordained priest on January 6th, 1582, nine months before his brother. Immediately following his ordination he set out for England and landed on the south coast, probably at Portsmouth, from whence he made his way into Hampshire where he worked until his first arrest, February 2nd, 1584.
Representation
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

The Catholic is aware of his solidarity with all men, aware too that in the sacrifice of Christ the whole of human history presses upon our present immolation and oblation for the achievement of Christ’s kingdom. It is certain that in being dead to ourselves we may become channels of the Church's redemptive action upon the body of mankind. We know first of all that what God now demands of us is not that which we possess but that for which Christ died. Nothing can be restored to Christ that does not belong to Him already. Our vision of the boundaries of the Church’s redemptive action has extended beyond the saving of our isolated souls to include all existence. And the boundaries of our own action are also extended. We do not have to prove before God the precise relation of our action to its effects, but our action, however partial and limited, is a participation and formulation of mankind’s supplication to the mercy and the victory of Christ.

If we are that grain of wheat which, falling to the ground, has not flinched to die, our fruit is com where men are hungriest and where the poor and the stranger come to glean. To bring the simile into terms of living, this losing of our life that we may gain it is a twofold supplication and identification. Firstly it is that death to self which through the agony and crucifixion is the identification of ourselves in Christ, and the supplication of God for a no less universal intention than that for which Christ died. So much is true of ourselves in so far as there is supernatural life in us.
Claudel, Dramatist
Authors: O'Connor John
Published: July 2007

After Golden Head in 1889, The Town in 1890 written in France, and a second version written in China 1897. The Golden Head is the drama of a man alone with his own nothingness; The Town is that of the Commonwealth of Men. Not the entire population is brought on to the stage as a really sophisticated modem would attempt or would pretend, but four men and one woman come forward, and behind them is the murmur of the masses.

Lambert de Besme is a political Boss. To him you turn when things come to a head, for he knows the magic formulae which quieten the crowd, and can give pleasant names to the behaviour of the herd. Yet he is not happy: after wasting his life in futile fuss he feels his soul awaking: stricken in years, he has not known the love of woman; this way, his world will fall to dust, he will seek shelter with the dead, will hug the dust before he is one with it; nay, the champion of the settled order will voice the vengeance of the oppressed.
The Growth of Dogma
Authors: Whiite Victor
Published: July 2007

In these “talks” we have been trying to meet the difficulties of those thousands of people who say they have no use for creeds and dogmas. We have tried to show them that dogmas —doctrinal statements—are necessary because knowledge of God is necessary, and that such knowledge can be conveyed to us only by words. And not only so, but we hold it to be a matter of plain historic fact that it was by words that God has conveyed the knowledge of Himself, of His love and His salvation, to us. We have described, too, the response which that historic Self-Revelation demands of us: the response of Faith.

But a difficulty remains. Granting all that has been said: granted that the truth of God is available to us; granted that we can learn about God through nature, and still more through His Self-Revelation in Jesus Christ—a difficulty still remains. For what, it has been asked, has all this to do with the vast and complex dogmatic system of the Catholic Church of to-day as we find it in her dogmatic formularies and catechisms? What have they to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ? What is it that we claim for these dogmas and formulas? We know that many of them have been drawn up only in comparatively recent times; every one of them subsequently to the time when Our Lord was on earth. What authority do we claim for them? Do we pretend that they were all expressly taught by Him during his earthly sojourn? Or do we claim that God makes new revelations to Popes and Councils and compilers of catechisms, in such wise that they can add to the content of the Catholic Faith which that Revelation demands?
In Hoc Signo
Authors: Pepler Hilary
Published: July 2007

The first reactions of a convert are either to shout (forgetting the time it took to unstop his own ears) or to hide in a remote spot (unmindful of the fact that very few people will be aware of his transfiguration). The tone of the Catholic Press and our more prominent Societies suggest that the shouters are in the majority. As one who was vociferous, anxious to proclaim the new experience, may I at once express penitence? I am now silent. Every outward sign of the faith is abolished in places where my non-Catholic friends and acquaintances are likely to penetrate. If they find me in Church or between the honourable covers of this magazine that is another matter, such places are proper to the faith. The dentist's waiting-room, the grocery store, the lawyer's office are not proper to the faith but to their functions; it is in such place that an aspidistra is preferred before a crucifix!

The absence of Catholic tokens does not mean that the Catholic dentist, grocer or lawyer is ashamed of his faith and lukewarm as to its propaganda. It means that his time is so fully occupied in being a Catholic privately and attending to his business publicly that he refrains from advertizing a fact which he might easily fail adequately to prove or practically to achieve.

In this country the Catholic is allowed out on sufferance, our churches are not stoned and our priests are tolerated only because the general public thinks them harmless. The Holy Father appears in the news as a distinguished foreigner with a sufficient number of friends in this country to justify half a column in the Press.
The Faith of Baron von Hugel
Authors: Manson Aelfric
Published: July 2007

One must be either a disciple or a critic. Or, at least, when interpreting the thought of a great man the criterion of interpretation should be indicated. The trouble with M. Nédoncelle’s book is that although it is not a simple exposition—it is in its way an apology—although his personal sympathies are evident enough, his general position is left vague. He writes neither as a theologian nor a philosopher; and no appreciation of von Hügel can help us very much unless it is undertaken from both these points of view. As is stated in the Foreword, certain minor changes have been introduced in this English edition. That they were necessary is evident from the fact that in the French edition (p. 114) M. Nédoncelle stated that von Hügel’s ideas on the limitation of Christ's knowledge were not contrary to the Faith.

In England it is especially necessary to be accurate about von Hügel. His influence has been considerable in religious bodies external to the Church. In some ways this has been good; the massive fact of a transcendent religion has been brought home to them. But since the Baron, although achieving an ever fuller orthodoxy, never eliminated certain heterodox elements in his statement of religion, his life seems to offer an example of what a “liberal” Catholic of the future might be; that future when Rome shall be more “enlightened.” This attitude towards him appears to be common among the Anglican body, now so unhappily in the throes of modernism. It is an attitude which the Baron would have intemperately resented! He was fiercely proud of being an ultramontane Roman Catholic. M. Nedoncefle notes that at the time of the modernist crisis “he did all he could to steady Tyrrell and to dissuade him from joining the Anglican Church.”
War Loans Without War
Authors: Drinkwater F. H.
Published: July 2007

Mankind may be preparing its own destruction, but in the city where I live it all means more and more employment. On Sunday mornings at all the Masses in our little church you can see scores and scores of new faces—young men, whole families too, from South Wales, from Lancashire, from Glasgow way, from Tyneside, from Ireland—all crowding into our big city (which is so much too big already) and mostly finding jobs in the thousand-and-one preparations to be made before Britannia can put on her armour again.

Don’t think that I am condemning the Government for rearming. It is hard to see what else any Government could do, in face of all the maniacs armed to the teeth who are swaggering round Europe now looking for trouble. What the Government might have done is to carry out its pledge that profiteering would be prevented. That pledge has not been kept, and the speculators are enjoying themselves thoroughly. One company—formed to produce fighting-planes—began in July, 1935, with a capital of £2,000,000, doubled this in May, 1936, and issued a bonus to shareholders, and then in November declared a 30 per cent dividend and made a further bonus share issue of one new share for every ten. As the ordinary shares were issued at 15/- each and by November had risen to 45/-, this bonus issue was worth nearly £900,000, on top of the £300,000 distributed in dividends.
Shakespeare's Search for A Hero
Authors: Speaight Robert
Published: July 2007

When I speak of a hero I do not imply the possession of those qualities which we normally think of as heroic. I do not mean courage in battle, constancy in love, generosity in triumph, resignation in defeat; I do not mean the glamour of physique and the leadership of arms, although we shall find these qualities in many of Shakespeare’s people. I mean by a Shakespearean hero, not the character whom his judgment approved, but the character with whom his imagination was identified.

A very penetrating critic, Mr. Middleton Murry, to whose recent book on Shakespeare I am greatly indebted, has written as though he did not exercise the prerogative of moral judgment. He would have us believe that Shakespeare’s genius was a mirror wherein the contradictions and the multiplicity of life expressed themselves, and that it was not in his nature to interpret this movement in the light of moral principles. In a word, he was a man of imagination rather than a man of character. I do not question a limited truth in this. Shakespeare was a man of his own time. The romantic tradition of criticism, to which we owe the dangerous elucidations of Coleridge, so stressed the universal character of his genius that it forgot that he had also a “local habitation and a name.” It ignored his particularity of time and place. I can see no reason to doubt that he shared the baffled and half-sceptical philosophy of his time; nor that in the person of Hamlet he gave it a definitive voice. His mind did not move against any fixed background of theological beliefs, as Dante’s did, but he clearly inherited, along with many others of his time, a hierarchy of moral values which were the legacy of a Christian and a classical culture. He will indict Goneril and Regan for filial ingratitude, Anthony for excess of passion, Macbeth for treachery and murder. Even when his characters have committed crime or folly they are haunted by a high conception of honour.
Mr. Baskerville and the Monks
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

Many extravagant claims have been made in the Press for this book, none however as sweeping as that made by a writer in the Daily Telegraph of March 5, in which he gravely assures us that “the result of his [Mr. Baskerville’s] study of these sources [the contemporary documents in the Public Record Office] is a book which one must accept as the most authoritative account yet published of this curious chapter in English history” [namely the Suppression of the monasteries]. He also tells us that the “sob-stuff” writers, against whom, he requires us to believe, Mr. Baskerville tilts with complete success, are those who “have either not consulted contemporary documents or have ignored them.”

This is indeed devastating, for the most prominent twentieth-century “sob-stuff” writer (a “sob-stuff” writer being one who refuses to accept the religious houses as “corrupt, immoral, and obviously having outlived their usefulness”) was the late Dr. James Gairdner, a nonCatholic, who during his fifty-four years of work in the Record Office edited the twenty-one volumes divided into thirty-one parts (each part a great tome) which form the Calendar of Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, a work so much appreciated by Mr. Baskerville that he has liberally helped himself from it to the extent of no less than one hundred and eighty-eight quotations. At the period of Mr. Gairdner’s work another assiduous toiler in the Record Office was the late Father C. F. Raymund Palmer, O.P., busy between 1870 and 1890 compiling his many works on the history of the English Dominicans. His is a very honourable name amongst research students.
Mauriac's “Life of Jesus”
Authors: Kehoe Richard
Published: July 2007

If this book could take over something of the prestige enjoyed until recently by Renan's Vie de Jesus, it would be a great blessing for France and for us all—instead of the portrait of Christ according to Rousseau, to have one which despite many faults and insufficiencies is at least genuinely Catholic. It is not a preposterous hope. In our own country already the Daily Express has been placarding generous excerpts from the book. And—a more serious factor—it has found a translator who has supplied a sufficiently attractive text. However, this article is not concerned with the external success of the book, but only with certain of its internal failures. Not with the idea of condemnation, but of reaching a sober appreciation. Fortunately, it is possible in this task to make use of an article contributed to the July issue of the Revue Biblique of last year, in which Père Lagrange, O.P. —whose judgment in such a matter is pre-eminently valuable—has expressed himself freely and at some length. But only when appeal is made explicitly to this authority can the views here expressed be taken as having any supercharged value.
Inside Out 2037
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

Monsignor Bosco Chang felt cold and stiff and tired. He could not but compare this lumbering progress from the English coast, shaken and jolted in the clumsy coach along the rutty roads, with the ease and speed of travel in China, either by air or through the new compressor tubes, where you stepped into a private padded carriage, dialled your destination, and were shot there at 700 kilometres an hour. Why, one morning he had consulted the voice records at the great central phonary of Nanking, lunched with his friend from seminary days the Vicar-General of Honan-Fu, seen his publishers at Canton in the afternoon, and started his retreat that very evening at the great Manresa in the Snowy Mountains on the borders of Tibet. So little friction, he reflected, so little distraction; the mind could concentrate and the will fix its desire on the Simple Sheer, unworried by the multitude of little things. But here one was so close to time and space, to all the trivial quantitative modalities of being; to soft and hard and sore and wet, the fleas, the cold, the grit, the shaking; congested veins and broken finger nails, the smell of a drink that lingered in the breath of the natives, sour and yet touched with the sweetness of chrysanthemums decaying in the late autumnal gardens round Ko-Hoa. And their minds and speech, so definite and slow, with the edges of a chunk of Cartesian matter and the labourings of an ox before the plough; their nerves, too, like so much muscle and bone.
Notes on An Industrial Tour
Authors: Worker A
Published: July 2007

In the course of a tour of the Industrial North and Midlands extending over three months and meeting, in the main, working men, their wives and families, several facts have presented themselves that concern Catholics.

The first: that there is now at work in industry a generation more alive to the inequalities of the Capitalist system than there was ever before. This is undoubtedly the fruit of education. It is arguable how far this education (elementary and secondary) has been of real worth to the Nation as a whole, and it is quite certain that a great deal of the dissatisfaction with things as they are is not, as many magistrates and social workers would have us believe, entirely due to the influence of the Cinema. The Cinema certainly does harm in so far as it is largely amoral, but not in showing pictures of a standard of living that so many of the audience believe, quite sincerely, to be theirs by right; it is only exacerbating an already running sore.

The second: the great increase of Left propaganda and ideas. In the majority of factories visited there was either the group or an individual which had taken on itself the dissemination of ideas, sometimes literature, and always with extreme fervour. They are on the spot wherever an argument starts and, once having made their “contact,” they do all they can to pin their man (or woman) down.
The Soul of A Child
Authors: Rice Cyprian
Published: July 2007

The presence or lack of certain philosophical or religious preoccupations at any period has a great deal to do with the prevailing attitude towards children and their education.

In primitive or spontaneous forms of human society the child is not a special subject of study. Children are naturally and roundly brought up in the large circle of the home, with its traditional wisdom and salutary rough and tumble.

In many of the Greek states, where political life was allpervasive, it was inevitable that educational theories should emphasize the primary importance of education for citizenship—a phase reproduced for us in modern states such as Italy and Germany.

A Jansenistic theology once darkened men’s outlook on human nature and, in consequence, on its budding period. This gloom and the severity which harmonized with it persisted throughout the Victorian age. It was a time when children were habitually treated as criminals latae sententiae, an evil and perverse generation, to be repressed and chastized without mercy and without truce. For men of this epoch the child was, before all, a nuisance. It had no proper place in an adult world. A child (as Maria Montessori points out) was not to sit on the grown-ups’ chairs. Nor was it to sit on the stairs. Hence, having no chair of its own, it could sit down only when some big person condescended to offer it the hospitality of a pair of knees.
Shakespeare's Search for A Hero
Authors: Speaight Robert
Published: July 2007

Harry the King intervenes between Falstaff and Hamlet. He is Shakespeare’s last successful version of the natural man. And by this I mean that he is the last of those heroes who is himself a success. He has all the natural graces and he has them in abundance. He meets no problem which he does not solve. He is victorious in arms, just though stem in government. He is a Hotspur sobered by responsibility and a Falconbridge of the blood royal. What he successfully answers are, of course, those questions on the nature of kingship which history had posed for Shakespeare in Richard II. The royalty in Harry is no mere lineal prerogative. It is a quality of the soul. It is an earthly echo of what we mean when we talk of the kingship of Christ. It draws its power from its capacity for fellowship with men, and it makes the humblest of men a king in his own kind. It operates with the discriminating generosity of grace and is at the disposal of all who seek it worthily.

After Henry V comes the great bend in the road of Shakespeare’s search. He begins to see into the depth of the human soul and into the extremities of human circumstance; and what he sees is his subject for the next few years. He sees the failure of the human nature he had glorified. He sees tragedy. His hero becomes Brutus and Antony who divide a play between them. There is no doubt that Shakespeare sympathized with Brutus, but he cannot help making him illustrate the thesis which is now hammering at his mind. I mean the futility of action, or rather the incompatibility of action and thought. Brutus is a philosopher-politician; the Arthur Balfour of republican Rome, intellectual, honourable, and detached. His material is thought, not men. But he becomes the General Franco of this particular conspiracy. He is drawn in reluctantly, but once in he assumes a full share of responsibility.