bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
World History
Authors: Zacharius H. C. E.
Published: July 2007

“The new linking up of all parts of the world inevitably affects our view of history. In a sense, world history has just begun. Before, it was the history of more or less isolated groups: now, we must think in wider terms, we must emerge from our nation-caves into the wider world of to-day and to-morrow.'’ In these admirable sentences the authors of the most recent World History sum up their survey of human history from palæolithic beginnings to the Manchurian question, with which they bring it to a close: most fittingly, as they say, “since of all the problems of world history that of the relations of East and West, of European and Asiatic peoples, is perhaps the most important for the future of mankind.”

Messrs. R. Flenley and W. N. Weech have indeed provided us with a World History in a single volume, which compares most favourably with any similar attempt made hitherto. It not only tells the whole story—which is not merely one of conquests and defeats, but of cultural development, social changes, artistic and scientific achievements—but it tells it impartially and tells it remarkably well: concise and encyclopædic though it be, it can be read with real pleasure and sustained interest from cover to cover.
Origins of Jansenism
Authors: Whitacre Ælred
Published: July 2007

To investigate the ancestry and relationships of the theological system expounded in the Augustinus of Cornelius Jansen, and to trace the history of the controversy about that system which arose in France in the seventeenth century, is a difficult task. It implies a knowledge not only of St. Augustine’s writings but of Pelagianism and Semipelagianism, and to some extent of Predestinarianism. It supposes, further, a knowledge of St. Thomas’ theology and of the writings of the Thomist commentators; and it includes an examination of the system of Baius, as well as of that of the Molinist school.

An analysis of the doctrine contained in the Augustinus, with its historical implications, has recently been attempted by Mr. Nigel Abercrombie. His work is divided into two parts, the one theological and the other historical. The latter section, beginning with the career of Saint-Cyran and ending with the destruction of the Couvent Port-Royal, affords interesting reading and is not without merit, but it is vitiated by onesidedness. The author loses no opportunity of depreciating the Dominicans.
The Love of Art
Authors: Coomaraswamy Ananda K.
Published: July 2007

Most of us take a certain pride in the great collections of works of art preserved in our museums, and in the systematic efforts that are made in schools and universities to teach the appreciation of art and to bring about improvements in taste; we congratulate ourselves upon the presence amongst us of individual collectors and “lovers of art.” I am not going to maintain that these cultural activities are, humanly speaking, altogether insignificant, but I am going to suggest that they represent very little more than palliative measures applied to symptoms of what is really a fundamental spiritual deficiency in ourselves, too deep-seated to be dealt with by such indirect methods. I am going to suggest that the love of art, and the collection of works of art, when regarded as ends in themselves, imply the view that art is essentially an emotional luxury, that art can be divided off from and known apart from every-day social, industrial, and political activity, and should be seen only in museums and private collections, or heard only in great concert-halls; just as we have come to think of religion as a luxury product, distinct from social, industrial, and political functions, and to be considered only in church and on Sundays.
New Expressions of Religious Life
Authors: Gordon Dorothy F.
Published: July 2007

One of the proofs of the Divine origin of the Church is her adaptability to the needs of successive generations. The Faith once for all delivered to the Saints is always the same, and so also are the Counsels of Our Lord for a life of perfection. But as we have a Christ-given Authority living on earth, the application of these Divine Counsels to the needs of human life have had to be adjusted from time to time to meet the various requirements of a changing world.

The first Religious of the Christian Faith were hermits, who lived austere lives in the caves of the desert. Later these men gathered together in monasteries, where they earned their living by farming, and lived holy lives singing the praises of God. The ideal of these early monastic foundations was always separation from this wicked world, and the construction of a brotherhood according to Christ. But by degrees a far off cry reached the ears of these sequestered Christians, the cry of the pain of the world, the agony of Christian slaves, and a sense of pity and responsibility for suffering humanity crept into their hearts. So heroic men sacrificed the security of the cloister and banded themselves together into Orders for the ransoming of slaves. The next inroad on the peace of the cloistered monk came from the ignorance and the religious needs of the laity, for whom the secular clergy were insufficient.
Is Psychology Possible?
Authors: Elrington G. A.
Published: July 2007

To ask such a question, when we consider the publicity and importance which is accorded nowadays to psychology, may appear rather startling, if not absurd. Yet, as the late Professor Miinsterberg observes, “to reach a clear understanding as to the true meaning of psychology is a more difficult task than the solution of any special psychological problem.” Of late years there has arisen a great deal of criticism not only concerning the foundations on which this science rests, but also in regard to its very aims and scope. The student of psychology is at the outset confronted by a perplexing variety of “schools,” each claiming right of way to the general exclusion of all others. Quite recently this discordance was voiced in no measured terms by Professor Spearman. “It is generally agreed,” he writes, “that nowadays psychology has arrived at a very undesirable degree of disunitedness. Each school, if not each individual, seeks to establish the science independently both of his predecessors and even of his colleagues. The result is that all alike have come into general discredit. Psychology is a byword of reproach among other sciences.” Even Professor McDougall, whose writings on Psychology are so widely known, seems infected with this feeling of discontent; for in a recent publication he remarks: “Even now after some forty-five years of sustained effort I am not sure that I have made any progress, have learned anything of human nature.” He further adds that he inclines to the view current among the Oxford philosophers of his day that such a knowledge is impossible.
Cue for Portia
Authors: Benvenisti J. L.
Published: July 2007

. . . And Mr. Timothy worth a hundred and fifty thousand pound nett if he’s worth a penny. Compound interest at five per cent, doubles you in fourteen years. In fourteen years three hundred thousand—six hundred thousand in twenty-eight—twelve hundred thousand in forty-two—twenty-four hundred thousand in fifty-six—four million eight hundred thousand in seventy—nine million six hundred thousand in eighty-four—why, in a hundred years it’ll be twenty million. And we shan’t live to use it. It is a will. (From John Galsworthy’s To Let.)

The passage above comes from the concluding chapter of one of John Galsworthy’s masterpieces. Those who have read the book will recollect the scene. For those who have not I will explain. The old veteran, Timothy Forsyte, has directed his entire property to be formed into a trust which through the provisions of the will will probably remain intact for the better part of a century. The words quoted are put into the mouth of old Gradman, the solicitor’s clerk, and the glee, utterly free from envy, with which he utters them, is one of the most perfect touches in the book.

Now you can make a very interesting experiment with this passage. Give it to read to the average educated English Catholic of normal artistic sensibility and take note of his comments. He will admire what rightly deserves to be admired, the sensitive delineation of the lovable Gradman, the success with which the author brings home a sort of primitive force in old Timothy, that huge embodiment of the possessive instinct, a force that reaches beyond the grave and still continues to mould and impose itself on succeeding generations.
Art and Academism
Authors: Brooks Ivan
Published: July 2007

Academism in painting has been defined as a sort of formalism imposed on art by philosophers and men of letters through too exclusive an admiration for the works of Classical Antiquity. It might also be described as the expression of that which is officially sanctioned by a governing body of painter-professors, endeavouring to control and instruct public opinion and to regulate painting by a sort of schoolmastering system. The Renaissance gave birth to it, and the pedagogues and flatterers who have beset the person and fame of Raffaello Sanzio, living and dead, have fostered it. It grew up side by side with that dignification and ennoblement of painting that is so striking a feature of the sixteenth century, and to it is due the self-consciousness that has haunted the painter ever since. “To this enthronement of Raphael we owe many mediocre and even hateful works. To it we owe the taste for the simpering in religious art; the taste also for modelling that is at once photographic and blurred,

. . . the taste for lowered eyelids or for eyes raised piously to Heaven (expressions that the Saints in ecstasy never had), the taste for noble old men, theatrical philosophers, apostles in paper togas; and all this at the expense of truth which has since been found ignoble, of fine colour which has since been thought too material, and of genius which we have treated as madness.”

Although the spirit of Academism has persisted for four centuries, during which time it has served as a form of arbitrary criterion whereby the art of an individual or of an epoch may be judged by the layman, there have, nevertheless, always been artists of temperament and of fine sensibility who have ignored the precepts of the Academism of their epoch, and who have sought expression by methods that are less dictatorial and pedantic, and, in fact, more proper to art itself.
Wales—A Foreign Land?
Authors: Evans J. Alban
Published: July 2007

There is no more deceptive key to a country than its popular seaside resort. For the pursuit of pleasure is curiously the same, whether it be in Brighton or Boulogne. One has to penetrate beyond the promenades and smart hotels to reach the heart of a nation. Of no country is this so true as of Wales. The English visitor, spending his fortnight at Llandudno or Rhyl, is aware of little that distinguishes these places from their English counterparts. There are probably more chapels, the Sunday restrictions are more puzzling, odd snatches of a barbaric tongue may be heard on country ‘buses. And there are the inevitable comic postcards, depicting tourists battling with unpronounceable names. But these are the most incidental of features. The charabanc tour of the countryside, with its well-worn round of beauty spots, does little to impart the true spirit of the land. The country is but a convenient and picturesque hinterland to the seaside town.

To Catholics, recognition of the individual character of Wales is of special importance. Wales may, in the practice of government, seem little more than an extended England. But it is a fatal mistake to suppose that the accidents of history have wrought a complete and unquestioning submission. This is not to suggest that there is any want of loyalty among the Welsh. Political nationalism is never likely to be a major issue. But there is a loyalty—of culture and of language—that overrides the artificial bonds of a constitution. The survival of this intense regard for national expression is sufficient proof of how deep-rooted are the things of the spirit.
Universal Diagnosis: The True Menace
Authors: Prince J. F. T.
Published: July 2007

Like everybody else who is inane enough to write letters to the paper and put an address at the bottom I get a certain number of circulars sent to me—sometimes even that most exciting of all things, an anonymous letter.

I have therefore been assured in the past six months that the troubles of the nation in general and my troubles in particular are entirely due to drink: and I have of course been assured that I shall get cancer if I continue to smoke, and, inevitably, that the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.

Three circulars came to me (I wish I could say I found them all together on my breakfast table, it would sound so much more impressive—actually they did come within a week of each other), one telling me that Rome was at the bottom of all our troubles (not the Rome of Mussolini of course, but the Scarlet Woman). I cannot remember all the dark and sinister places in which She was featuring—the Colonial Office was one and the Ministry of Education another (I think), certainly She was responsible for the Soviet —Pope Benedict XV having apparently initiated the Russian Revolution so as to get rid of the Orthodox Church.

The second circular (in order of appearance) told me that Communism was at the bottom of all present evil—not merely the Bolsheviks but everybody everywhere who refuses to believe that every Communist is necessarily an incarnate Devil.
Sparkenbroke and Hardy
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

Since novels are often books of science, as scientific anyhow as the whimsical symbolical sketch that journalism has made of modern physics, they fall under two heads according as the tale adorns the moral or the moral adorns the tale; which is roughly what historians of philosophy mean when they class their creatures by the deductive and inductive methods; the latter coming in with Bacon, Francis to some, Roger to others. Great novels, however, like great systems of thought, are not so easily settled, and in Sparkenbroke there is such unity of philosophy and poetry and prose, such fusion of insight and love and everyday sense, that to criticize it as a didactic piece is like the recent attempt to turn Beaudelaire into commercial verse.

Mr. Morgan’s aspiration may be Platonic, yet his art is Aristotelian; ideas are embodied, the universal made concrete, the mind continued into sense. Sparkenbroke may say that Emily Bronte desired more than Marvell could give her: “My outward sense is gone—Gone. Even the green thought in the green shade—gone. No sight in the open eyes; no challenge of the brain; an ‘unutter’d harmony,’ Earth lost, the whole shell of being utterly dissolved’ ‘: he may think his senses a leash withholding him from a higher world of experience, yet often are they charged with spirit without losing their own colouring. Propter melius animae est ut corpori uniatur.
Ebur Castitatis
Authors: Clerissac Humbert
Published: July 2007

When the Church pays honour to the remains of the Saints, when, for example, she translates them with pomp and ceremony, she wishes not only to invite us to venerate their relics, but also to draw a lesson from their memory. Even when for mere social or natural reasons we gather round an illustrious tomb, there is not just homage to be paid, but also a lesson to be learnt. On a tombstone we read at a glance the whole story of a life, its chief moral features and its meaning. In this we find one of the many reasons that justify the veneration of relics. At the first translation of the body of St. Dominic, so touchingly described by Blessed Jordan, there took place a wonderful manifestation of the merits of the holy Patriarch's life. The miraculous perfume which clung to the hands of Blessed Jordan was a lesson as well as a testimony. Lesson and testimony—both teaching and attesting his admirable purity. But to seize the full meaning of that lesson, we must connect that heavenly testimony with the last recommendations of St. Dominic on his death-bed.

Just as St. Francis, when dying, desired to be laid naked on the ashes, so St. Dominic on his death-bed, by an act of sublime simplicity, strips his soul before our eyes. It is sad to see modern historians, blind to the beauty of that scene, toning down its most striking features. Père Lacordaire is perhaps among the few who have gauged its true significance.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

The death of Gilbert Keith Chesterton—or “ G.K.,” as we called him—allows us to see his life as a complete and unique whole.

Looked at merely as a thing of art, the three score and two crowded years between birth in London and burial in Beaconsfield seem to make a full circle or indeed cycle of doings and happenings. Later on his autobiography will let us listen to the man who made the story telling the story or history he has made. But though every line of it will speak the master-craftsman of words, it will be a masterpiece in the humility of self-effacement. We have no hopes that it will deliberately help us to see his life’s pilgrimage from London to Beaconsfield—from Canterbury to Rome—almost as an Arthurian epic.

For one thing we shall be grateful to the artist’s portrait of himself. It will be a vera effigies. It will leave out nothing that would be a loss to truth. And though it cannot speak of how the artist’s life ended in death, it will leave its readers convinced that death came to Gilbert Chesterton in a certain fulness of time and fulness of intelligence.

For us who are left there is deep consolation in the way he left us. We saw no slackening of his handiwork; nor any lessening of its power. He did not set slowly like our northern sun. He was as a ploughman turning his best and last furrow when the master said, “Call the workers; and give them their wage. ‘’
Is A Catholic Psychology Possible?
Authors: Elrington Aidan
Published: July 2007

In view of the manifold interests of contemporary psychology and of the searching criticism in regard to the meaning and foundations of psychology to which we called attention in a previous contribution, the question of the possibility of a Catholic psychology arises with a certain amount of urgency.

The Catholic student, whether of psychology in general or other subjects in which psychology may enter, as well as the educated layman interested in such subjects, sometimes asks whether there is any Catholic book on Psychology to which he may turn for guidance. One has had to admit regretfully that, outside the manuals of philosophy written primarily for the use of ecclesiastical students, there do not appear to be any which quite meet the needs of the lay student. It is true that books dealing with various aspects of modern psychology have from time to time been written by Catholic professors of the science. We may mention, for instance, one by Prof. T. V. Moore, O.S.B., of the Catholic University of Washington, D.C., Dynamic Psychology, and another by Prof. John Lindworsky, S.J., of the University of Prague, Experimental Psychology. There are others by continental writers not translated into English, but all of these works deal with scientific psychology, and do not touch upon philosophical problems. When therefore we speak of Catholic psychology we have to ask in what sense the expression is to be understood, and what precisely is to be sought from a Catholic book on Psychology as distinct from any other.
Some Thoughts on Education
Authors: Williamson Claude
Published: July 2007

Habit is one of those things that everyone knows about, but few can correctly define. The common notion of it as the getting used to a thing, finding it easier to do, acquiring a taste for it, or permitting it to get a hold on one, is all very well as far as it goes, but it does not bring us very far after all. Can we hope to make things any better by invoking the aid of psychology and philosophy? Well, of course it is possible in this way to throw some light on the subject, and especially to render it more interesting by linking it up with the more attractive problems of these sciences; but when all is said and done, our ignorance of important aspects of the question will, from the very nature of the case, still largely outweigh our knowledge.

St. Thomas, following Aristotle, has defined habit as “A quality, not easily admitting of change, which modifies its subject, either in the sense of improving or impairing it, in its inner constitution or in the exercise of its activities.” Like all the definitions of Aristotle, this one, for all that it has a rather commonplace air, possesses a really vast depth of meaning.

A habit must not, however, be regarded merely as the sum total of a series of impressions, but rather as the unique and indivisible resultant of them all. It bears an analogy, not so much to a cinema film, with its graduated series of distinct though almost similar photographs, which, when flashed rapidly across the screen, produce the illusion of a continuous motion, as to a composite photograph, the distilled essence of several exposures combined.
The Blackfriars Codex
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

Recently the Dominicans of Blackfriars, Oxford, have become possessors, through the munificence of Miss Jean Smith, of a most valuable liturgical manuscript, a Dominican Gradual, which on examination proves to be contemporary with the establishment of the Order’s special rite by Humbert de Romans between 1254 and 1260. Hitherto only four examples have been known to exist, two of which, including the Codex Humbertinus, are in Dominican hands. Now this newly discovered Codex has been returned to the Order that produced it, but whereas the Codex Humbertinus was recovered, during the French Revolution, only at a great price, the Blackfriars MS. was most munificently restored, as a free gift, by one to whom the English Dominican Province thus owes a tremendous debt of gratitude.

The volume was undoubtedly written between 1254 and 1263, seeing that it contains the Mass of St. Peter Martyr but lacks those of St. Anthony of Padua and St. Edward the Confessor, whose feasts respectively were ordered to be celebrated throughout the Order by the General Chapters of Barcelona in 1261 and of London in 1263; whilst the Mass of Corpus Christi, with its famous sequence Lauda Sion, granted to the Order in 1264 has been inserted by a later hand between the de Tempore and the Proprium Sanctorum. The book throughout is written in extremely well-executed lettering, each minuscule letter being 5 cm. high, and there is an abundance of ornamented capitals done exclusively in blue and red, all of exquisite workmanship. The whole consists of 235 folios on vellum, each folio measuring 35.5 x 25 cm.
Dominican Spirituality
Authors: Mathew Gervase
Published: July 2007

It is a sequel to the Catholicism of the Church that the unity of her members has not necessitated their uniformity; racial cultures have been strengthened by the acceptance of a common faith, and English like French or Irish or Italian types are still most distinctively national when most deeply Catholic. The history of the great religious orders affords a parallel, for the common end to which they are directed, the common faith that has created them and the bond of priesthood, have yet enabled them to maintain a full individuality. The greatest of their saints are those who most incarnate the particular spirit of each order. For they have found their perfection in the fulfilment of God’s will, and God's will has been fulfilled in their obedience, an obedience to tradition as well as to command, an acceptance of custom as well as of written law. Each of the greater religious orders has therefore possessed its own school of spirituality. For “spirituality” is but a clumsy term for the conscious following of a way to God.

Yet it would seem puerile to discuss which order and which tradition in spirituality is the more perfect in the concrete. Each retains the possibility of corruption and each will mirror in its finite contrasted achievement the infinite unity of God, since each will be perfect in so far as it participates in the divine and yet remain inevitably separate in so far as it is participant; “quod in Deo est simpliciter et uniformiter in creaturis est multipliciter et divisim.”
Religious Life in the World
Authors: Carpenter Hilary J.
Published: July 2007

For many centuries past Religious Life, in the official or technical sense, has implied the cloister and the religious habit; and the obvious advantages of these external helps need no showing. Yet it has always been the way of Holy Mother Church, is indeed one of her essential qualities, to accommodate herself in her modes of life to the needs of her children in every age. In recent years many of the faithful have discovered in themselves a desire and a need to seek the perfection of religious life and yet, for one valid reason or another, cannot enter a religious Order or Congregation. For these, too, there is a special corner in the understanding heart of the Church; so that now there exists a number of organizations whereby these souls may pursue the special vocation which has been given to them. Amongst them is one that is under the aegis of the Dominican Order, and it is about this we propose to write a brief account.
The Sixth Malines Congress
Authors: Gestel G. Van
Published: July 2007

The Bishops of Belgium have recently made public the convocation of the Sixth Malines Congress. It will comprise three days of lectures and discussion, will be held in the archiepiscopal city, and will be brought to a close by a great demonstration in which tens of thousands of the faithful will participate; but, in view of the fact that Malines is not extensive enough to hold this concourse, the demonstration itself will take place in Brussels, upon the high plateau of Koekelberg which is dominated by the national Basilica of the Sacred Heart. As far as one can judge beforehand, this demonstration will surpass anything that has hitherto been seen even in Belgium, where the popular temperament loves to show itself in enormous public gatherings with processions, local choirs, and hundreds of banners.

It can be maintained without any exaggeration that the religious history of Belgium has been moulded by these Congresses of Malines, an account of which is given in an interesting book by Professor M. Defourny. In the Congresses of 1863, 1864 and 1867 the Catholics of Belgium assembled their forces together and laid the foundations of their corporate public action. It was about 1840 that the Liberal Party in Belgium began to evolve into an anticlerical party, and the Catholics saw themselves under the necessity of defending their rights in the political field and in public life. Thanks to M. Edouard Ducpétiaux, who was the moving spirit in these earlier Congresses and remains one of the greatest glories of Catholic social action and the courageous precursor of social reforms, these Congresses effected the concentration of the Catholic forces and inaugurated their fruitful operation in public life.
First Philosophy
Authors: Drewitt Norbert
Published: July 2007

When Sir Arthur Eddington writes that “Religion first became possible for a reasonable scientific man about the year 1927” and when apologists expound their novel vindications of the classical cosmology in the light of quantum mechanics, it is clear to a metaphysician that both sides have missed the point. For the metaphysical approach to reality, with its immediate determinations in psychology and cosmology, either transcends the contingent data of individual research, or it does not exist. Yet apologists and even representative metaphysicians have not always appreciated this essential preliminary to philosophy and apologetics.

Hence it is all the more a remarkable fact when a non-Catholic writer appreciates it, independently, it would seem, of any manifest contact with a philosophical tradition. And in spite of the charges of buffoonery and leg-pulling sure to be brought against him from academic strongholds, the fact that he penetrates again and again to radical metaphysical realities, scattering pseudo-scientific question-begging postulates right and left in his convinced insistence, evidently commands our conscientious attention. We do not praise him precisely for his individual work, but rather because he is representative of an approach greatly, but often vainly, sought. The added fact that he is a professional mathematician, nurtured in the atmosphere of modern physics and thoroughly familiar with it, inevitably inclines many of us all the more to give him a hearing—not because he is a physicist, but because he is a physicist who has gate-crashed the conventional postulates of the physicist philosophers of the last three decades—intelligently, that is to say, and not by mere reaction.
The Origins of the Anglican Ministry
Authors: Congar M.-J.
Published: July 2007

The distinctive position of the Anglican communion consists in its claim to be at once Catholic while non-Roman, Reformed while non-Protestant. For the maintenance of this claim nothing is more crucial than the vindication of the reality of its Orders and Sacraments. The more the importance of the idea of the Church is re-discovered and reappreciated, the more important is seen to be the reality of the Eucharist and the Liturgy. Hence Anglicans have come to realize that if their Orders and Eucharist are open to question, their very existence as a Church becomes equally problematical.

The intervention of Pope Leo XIII in this question of the validity of Anglican Orders and the decision of his Bull Apostolicae Curae are familiar to all. Equally familiar is the fact that there are some who hold that neither the intervention nor the decision were final, either because they maintain that, in view of what some Catholic theologians themselves have said regarding the relative and practical character of the Bull, the judgment was not irreversible, or because they dispute the accuracy of the matters of fact on which the unfavourable judgment was based. In this way the majority of Anglican ecclesiastics and scholars are accustomed to contest the historical argument on which Catholics rely.
Property, Capitalist and Human
Authors: Gill Eric
Published: July 2007

The question of property is now again receiving the attention it needs. Catholics have for too long assumed that there is no difficulty about it. They have taken for granted that Communists and Socialists wished all the means of production, distribution and exchange to be public property and that Capitalists supported private property. They have taken for granted that it is a principle of Christian teaching that private property is a natural human right and that, therefore, Capitalists were on the whole in favour of Christianity, or at least that Capitalism was not anti-Christian. The development of Capitalism in the direction of large combines, cartels and monopolies has been so gradual that it has passed unnoticed that this development has involved the destruction of private property among the masses of the people. The growth of Communism and Socialism has therefore seemed to be mere wickedness.

But the events of recent years have opened our eyes. At last we are able to see that the development of Capitalism with its accompanying development of machine industry has in fact undermined and to a large extent destroyed the reality of private ownership and individual appropriation, and that, in consequence, the development of Communism and Fascism is inevitable, that in fact these movements are the logical conclusion and consummation of Capitalism.

Take as a simple example such a thing as the Great Western Railway. Before the coming of the railways there were the Stage Coach and the Carrier. Any man with a horse and cart could run a passenger service or could carry goods from town to town.
The Mass: Theory and Practice
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

When St. Thomas wrote his Summa to embrace the whole of theology, he did not think it necessary to divide his treatise in two independent parts, Dogma and Morals. The division, adopted many years later for pedagogical reasons, was not an improvement on St.Thomas’s method. To treat the truths of faith separately from the virtues and vices was an easier method of teaching the queen of the sciences, yet results have shown that the easy division has been allowed to develop into a fatal dichotomy. It is now generally considered, implicitly at least, that dogmas have little effect on everyday life and that for practical purposes the all-important subject is “Morals.” The sermon in nine cases out of ten is a moral exhortation, while the discussions of the “schoolmen” are considered as far removed from the realities of life.

Unfortunately the latter allegation cannot be wholly disproved. Whether we hold that the beginning of the world can be shown only by faith, or maintain its proof by natural reason to be possible, our lives remain unaffected by the discussion. On the other hand, the great dogmas contained in divine revelation concerning God, the Holy Trinity, Grace or the Incarnation should have an infinitely greater effect upon our behaviour than the clearest notions about contraception or the evils of capitalism. There are, moreover, many discussions in theology which possess the power of altering very profoundly one’s relations with God and one’s personal life in grace.

A very actual and important example, to which the above remarks are intended as a preface, is that of the nature of the Mass.
Parish Priests, Beatified and Canonized
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

In Henri Ghéon’s Secret of the Curé d’Ars we read the following statement: “M. Vianney was terrified to learn that in the long roll of the ages not a single parish-priest had been raised to the Church's altars as a saint. Popes had been canonized, cardinals, bishops, religious and laymen; but of parish-priests not one; not the shadow of one. The melancholy inference was that there was no condition in the whole world in which sanctity was more difficult to attain.” (Translated and ed. Sheed & Ward, p. 123.)

This statement is not merely a depressing one, but, if true, a disturbing one to clergy and laity alike. As a matter of historical fact we hope to show that it is an extremely inaccurate one. Who makes the statement? Not Ghéon, he records it. Not the Curé, he learnt it; but whether orally or by reading we are not told.

In the first place, what exactly is meant by the office of parish-priest? Surely nothing else than the charge or, to use the canonical term, the cure of souls in a defined district. In this sense parish-priests have existed since the peace given to the Church by Constantine in the fourth century; possibly as early as the third century in the comparatively long gaps between the persecutions. What is meant by ‘‘being raised to the Church’s altars as a saint”? Does explicit or even tacit approval of a saint’s cult by the Holy See suffice?
Integral Humanism
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: July 2007

“To propose to man no more than what is human, Aristotle remarked, is to betray man, to will his unhappiness, for by the principal part of himself, the spirit, he is called to something greater than a merely human life. On this principle, if not on the manner of its application, Ramanuja and Epictetus, Nietzsche and St. John of the Cross are all agreed” (p. 10). Is the remark humanist or anti-humanist? Humanism, like so many other good things, is sometimes looked at askance by pious people because of the associations or the expressions it has wrongly or at least accidentally acquired. The Renaissance humanism, anthropocentric as M. Maritain here calls it, was or became an enemy of humanism as Aristotle, as the Christian, understand it, because it in fact reduced the potentialities and in consequence the possible fulfilment of man to the narrowly human. It was a partial humanism, a half-truth. Against this the Christian sets up the ideal of a humanism which is integral and theocentric, and integral because theocentric, the boundary of the perfection at which it aims being nothing less than the sharing in the life of God, including within this the human life of body and spirit in the world of men. “Let us say that humanism . . . tends essentially to make man more truly human, to manifest his original grandeur by making him a sharer in whatever may enrich the personality in Nature and in history. ...
Philosophy and the Meaning of History
Authors: Mathew Gervase
Published: July 2007

It is the nemesis of a cliche-ridden prose that a term may become trite yet stay ambiguous. The phrase philosophy of history covers four distinct approaches to three subjects, and before its relation to a Thomist scheme of thought can be considered it will be necessary to analyze the contrasted senses of the adjective “historical” and to determine the meaning of “Thomist” and of “philosophy.” Thomism may be conveniently defined as the application of the principles of act and potency to the study of the necessary and of the contingent. Philosophy may be restricted to a consummated human study in an ultimate causality: “consummated,” for as a science it implies the achievement of a certitude, not a content with an opinion; “human” since it is achieved through reason, not through the supernatural; “ultimate causality” since it is a search for origin, not for occasion, for undeviating principle rather than for contingent event. Such concepts are relatively simple, the complexity of history has commonly been expressed through a consistent use of analogy.

The three primary divisions of modern historical writing, the Chronicle, the Myth, the Culture Study, seem contrasted rather by their perspective than by their object. Each is in intention a form of record of the past; the first in terms of the past, the second as an explanation of the present, the third often primarily as a premature reflection of the future.
An Evangelical Approach to Catholicism
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

Principal John Oman, invited to explain why he was not a Catholic, began with the following memorable and instructive words:

For disbelieving anything there may be three good reasons. The first is that it is incredible; the second that it is not proved; and the third that it is inconsistent with beliefs conceived to be higher and more certain. On all three grounds I disbelieve the Roman claims, but I will deal with the last first, because, though less often dwelt upon, it is what is most decisive, and, what is more, it has a right to be. Nothing proves so much the reality of any faith as the making of contrary views incredible. There is a kind of facile catholicity of accepting all sorts of views, which is due merely to no one of them being sufficiently in the light to show that the others are in darkness. Moreover, by their positive direction our lives should be determined: and when we steadfastly pursue what we believe to be the higher road, the others simply reject themselves. In this way, I am not a Roman Catholic, primarily for the reason that all my conclusions regarding life and history are not only inconsistent with it, but seem to me higher as well as more certain.

This, the reason which on analysis will be found to be the one that most powerfully withholds men, especially thinking and religious men, from becoming Catholics, is, curiously, the one of which least account is taken by the zealous apostle and apologist.
Plain Talks on Fundamentals
Authors: O. P.
Published: July 2007

Catholic doctrine rests on two foundations: the revelation of God in nature, and the historic Revelation given to man which culminates in the coming of Jesus Christ.

We have already said something of how God is revealed to us in nature. We have seen that there is not a phenomenon in the world around us or within our own consciousness that does not tell us something of God, which can be so much as explained fully without some reference to a God, a creative, dynamic, supreme Intelligence and Will. The very existence of phenomena postulates the existence of such a One; their varied goodness and beauty tell us something of the goodness and beauty of God.

Yet, what nature has to tell us about God is not wholly satisfactory for many reasons. Although it is a fact that all phenomena in some measure reveal God, it is certainly not a fact that all men have found themselves capable of realizing that God is revealed to them in the world around them. The human mind is commonly too weak, too prejudiced, to be able to penetrate all that nature has to tell it; to see in phenomena the reflection of God’s attributes; to reason out patiently and accurately all that nature implies.
Patron and Artist
Authors: Gill Eric
Published: July 2007

This book consists of two lectures, the first on The Normal View of Art, the second on Liberty and Discipline. We wish it were possible to have them delivered and redelivered in every public place (not specially Art Schools) in the English-speaking world; for the principles they enunciate are precisely those which our civilization most completely flouts and most needs to know. Such a wish is, however, not only “crying for the moon,” it would also be no more than “locking the stable after the horse has gone.” It is much too late now to hope for any widespread and deliberate reform of our world; what we must expect is such a complete breakdown of our palpably inhuman and therefore doomed institutions as will place us again in a state of primitive simplicity and barbarism and thus make possible a new growth, and eventually a new flowering, of the human and humane spirit. Meanwhile the existence of such lectures is all to the good. It is, under divine providence, possible that some memory of them will survive to fructify the new dark age which is obviously upon us. “My words shall not pass away,” and the words printed in this book are so clearly conformable to the Word which was in the beginning that we may hope for a like permanence.

To write a “review” of Dr. Coomaraswamy’s lecture is in fact an impudence; the only proper review would be a complete reprint. It has a clarity of vision which amounts to holiness.
Channel Crossing, 1838
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

“London was a bumper,” wrote old General Dyott in his diary for 1838, “foreigners in abundance.” Here are some of them. Dr. Mathew starts with Queen Adelaide, 677 tons, a Deptford built schooner-rigged paddle-wheeler with the new feathering floats, riding alongside the stone quay at Calais, and tells of her passengers, most of them crossing to attend Queen Victoria’s coronation. In previous works his treatment has been admired of the little Carthusian world before the Reformation, of the Celtic peoples about Queen Elizabeth, of the English Catholic minority in the seventeenth century. Now he evokes the decade after the Reform Bill: chokers and oysters and muffins and grog, fretwork iron verandahs, the London and Greenwich viaduct railway —“the enginemen are most judicious and the carriages are accompanied by guards in the livery of the company”— steamers so new-fangled that in rough weather it was feared the machinery might break loose.

The book is a delicate and allusive study of the different conventions and temperaments displayed when the vessel runs aground in a fog. Serene round the whist table sits privilege, the Austrian Ambassador, the Russian Envoy Extraordinary, the Minister of the brand-new Hellenic kingdom, and Lady Augusta born a Somerset. A shabby Carlist courtier is less assured, though he stands for a polity older than the Holy Alliance and Badminton House, more defined than the bourgeois monarchy of Louis-Philippe represented in the first-class saloon by M. Gratry. For a European order more ancient and secure, Mgr. Beccaria is writing in his cabin, “in an even light he could see his reports and their weaknesses and their passage through the Congregations in Rome, the venerable prelates and the gradual and sometimes retarded victory of balanced argument.”
Meditation on Peace
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

In these days greatly troubled by War, we may well speak of Peace. The word itself almost brings refreshment to our minds when the sky above us has been troubled by the sounds of our country’s preparation for war. I feel we are in one of the most critical periods of the world. For the moment, I presume that God alone, and those in the secrets of God, can see the end.

The kingdoms of the world must go forth to war if they want to spread; if they wish to be world-wide, they prepare quite consistently for world-war; and it might succeed. The great Pax Romana was essentially a peace based on war— the peace that came from the Strong Man Armed.

Peace has so many consoling qualities that it is constantly taken for an end. Peace should never be sought as an end. Disorder always results if we seek as an end what is only an effect.

When Our Blessed Lord sent out His apostles, He was commissioning a thing that was world-wide; not Religion, but the Religion; not just for a race, but for mankind as such; world-wide because it is to be One and Holy. Therefore this Kingdom of Christ offers, at once, Peace, and never the sword. Sometimes the sword has been used in defence of the Church. I do not know whether it was ever a very effective defence of the Church. In the Garden of Olives, Peter very naturally used the sword. It was quite a natural defence.
Pax Christ in Regno Christi
Authors: Stratmann Franziskus
Published: July 2007

“Pax Christi in regno Christi.” It is difficult to make people realize the significance of this ideal even within the Catholic Church. But if we would propose this watchword to the outside world and make it a plank in the programme of Catholic Action, we shall meet with little more encouraging than a shrug of the shoulders, if not with positive rebuff. To many Catholics it is inconceivable that the Pope had in mind political peace between the nations, as well as religious peace based on the foundation of the common faith, when he proposed this watchword. They will not agree that Catholic doctrine and moral teaching should impose Christ’s command of peace as a duty upon the States of the world or that it has any political reference. To refute this error it must suffice to quote two papal pronouncements. Benedict XV writes in his Encyclical Pacem Dei (1920): “The command of Love among individuals found in the Gospels differs in no respect from that which should reign among States and peoples.” And the present Pope Pius XI declared in his first Encyclical: “It is a holy duty for peoples and governments to follow and use as a guide the teachings of Christ in both the internal and external aspects of their political life” (Ubi arcano, 1922). Nobody will underestimate the difficulties which lie in the way of a policy which is based on the principles of the Gospel. But the teaching of the Gospel, because it is opposed to the spirit of the world, is hard to follow always.