bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Vatican II: Misunderstandings at the Council
Authors: Schillebeeckx E.
Published: August 2024

We can only rejoice that after the turn taken by the second Vatican Council during its first phase we may justifiably hope for greater freedom for what is, somewhat erroneously, called the ‘new theology’. In an earlier article I have already commented on that aspect of the Council. Since then I have given some thought to related aspects of the Council.

When we examine more closely the speeches of the council fathers in St Peter's we have to admit that some of the utterances of the socalled ‘open wing’ strike us as less felicitous, and such as might evoke, during the second phase of the Council, reactions of a kind that could easily cause confusion in the ranks of this ‘open wing’.
Effeta—Open up!
Authors: Swanston Hamish
Published: August 2024

Whenever we talk of the missions we must begin with the mission of Christ: As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And we must recognise at the start that the missionary is not a public relations officer for any system, or government, or way of life, but a man sent by God, a man who is to be himself a true imitation of Christ. Writing to the Philippians, Paul described the nature of the mission of Christ, what it meant for Christ:

who though he was in the form of God

did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped

but emptied himself

taking the form of a servant.
Towards a Theology of Education
Authors: Clements Simon
Published: August 2024

The present debate that is going on at the frontiers about the nature of theology has for most people yet to be distilled and passed on. There is a severe and crucial change taking place that has been given a noticeable liberation through the climate of dialogue created by the Second Vatican Council. Its implications are profound and excitement awaits all who witness the extension of theology as it is brought to bear on secular social problems in particular. Indeed the very life of theology itself depends upon this extension to the creative centres of contemporary culture, with a response to the fully historical situation. Furthermore, theology requires to be done by laymen, contributing to it in their capacity as expert witnesses. The experience of adult members of the Church working in specific situations needs to be seen as the raw material of creative theology, and Christian and non-Christian experience will be at once equally valid and applicable.
He was what I am
Authors: Swanston Hamish
Published: August 2024

Perhaps the most attractive quality of Hopkins’ poetry is the total commitment to the seriousness of man in the world of God. Hopkins is never content to accept things as they seem, he is always seeing then1 anew as they are. In the working out of his Christian vocation as priest and Jesuit he found the deep-down truth of things in their enjoyment of Christ:

I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,

Is immortal diamond.

A similar Ignatian response with the fulness of man, in every sense, to the oneness of Christ, is manifest in the work of Professor Karl Rahner. Rahner too has the feel of all things working together for good, even when we and they appear most eunuch-like. This is evident in the group of papers issued in English as Mission and Grace.
The Inspiration of the Bible and Tradition
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

Origen, the great Alexandrian theologian who died in A.D. 253, is a key figure in the Christian tradition of scriptural interpretation. Earlier this year a monumental book appeared on ‘the sources and significance of Origen's interpretation of scripture'. The author, Dr R. C. P. Hanson, D.D., a senior lecturer in theology at Nottingham University. Allegory and Event is a sequel to Origen's Doctrine of Tradition, which appeared five years ago.

It is a book full of excellent qualities; great erudition, vigorous style, acute judgments. Dr Hanson's over-all estimate of Origen as a ‘prosaic rationalist', a theologian who seriously undervalued the significance of the saving event (heilsgeschichte) in Christian revelation, is probably to be preferred to the more favourable assessments of his thoughts made by the French Jesuits Frs de Lubac and Daniélou, who after Origen himself are the main targets of Dr Hanson's adverse criticisms.
The Deacon in the Parish—I
Authors: Hornef Joseph
Published: August 2024

In Easter 1955 at Freiburg-Wallenried, Father Conrad Fischer, parish priest and general secretary of Catholica Unio, was suddenly snatched from the fruitful field of his activities by a malignant disease. One year before his death he wrote to me on the question of the revival of the diaconate in the following terms:

I personally am deeply pre-occupied with the question, more deeply, perhaps, even than yourself. In very truth it could be the source of a unique renewal of vitality within the Catholic Church. The presence of one or several deacons living with their families in a parish would bring the Church to the notice of many laymen. People would be compelled to a far greater extent to take ‘churchfolk’ into account. The concerns of the Church would be more deeply impressed on the minds of lay-people… . Through the diaconate something would come to life again in the Church; the layman's sense of responsibility towards his parish.
A Study in Fourteenth-Century Piety
Authors: Luff S. G. A.
Published: August 2024

Some years ago there came into my hands a little book in Middle French entitled Le Saint Voyage de Jherusalem. Its author was a certain Seigneur d'Angleure, who in 1395 made the pilgrimage to the holy places, and included in his itinerary Mount Sinai and the monasteries of Anthony and Paul in Egypt. It was a very comprehensive journey; the Seigneur had an eye for detail and would have excelled today as a compiler of Blue Guides or Baedekers. He could not write a travelogue in the Morton style, however, still less Waugh's, and the value of his record lies in the remarkably complete list of relics and customs which he managed to ‘do’ with disarming simplicity and devotion. His piety is not repulsive, for the charitable anxiety of the good knight and his contemporaries to leave no event of scripture unmarked for the edification of the faithful covers a multitude of transgressions committed in their identification.
SS. Cyril and Methodius
Authors: Velecký Ceslaus
Published: August 2024

July is the usual time for articles about SS. Cyril and Methodius, whose feast is kept on July 7th. Most of these are written by Czechs who think of the two brothers as their own and other Slavs’ apostles. It is true, of course, that these two Greeks did bring the gospel to the eighth-century Slavs living in central Europe, but excessive concentration on that aspect of their life and work may make us forgetful of their much wider significance. Perhaps it is not a bad thing to think of them, for a change, not primarily as the men who brought Christianity to a particular people nor in connection with their feast and die ‘Apostolate of SS. Cyril and Methodius’ but as men whose lives contributed to the growth and the unity of the Church. The Church indeed grows and is made one in a particular place among definite people, but the importance of that growth and unity comes from its universality, not from its particularity.
One in Christ
Authors: Radcliffe Fabian
Published: August 2024

Some have claimed St John Chrysostom as the greatest Christian preacher of all time. Whether this is true or not is hard to say; and in any case it is doubtful if the discussion of such a claim would be of much value. What is certainly true however is that he had all the qualities needed to make a great preacher. He was a man of strong convictions, with the power to express them in vivid, forceful language; concrete and practical in his illustrations; able to evoke the whole range of human feelings, but always with complete sincerity. In himself he was affectionate, generous and open; lacking the tact that might have enabled him to steer more safely through his enemies’ intrigue, but quite without fear; ready with sympathy for all he met, so that he made and held many friends, and when preaching, could catch and hold the attention of his hearers. He did not have the speculative mind which enabled Athanasius, Basil and Cyril of Alexandria to contribute so much to theological development.
The Five Beats of Every Apostolic Life
Authors: Régamey Pie-Raymond
Published: August 2024

After the apostles themselves, as we see them in their writings and in the Acts, who is there better than the Father of the Preachers to show us the laws of apostolic life? St Dominic in fact exhibits very strikingly certain realities which are most essential in such a life. They form what one might call the Law of the Five Beats. The more one meditates on it, the more one comes to think that it deserves to be classical.

Today the first ‘beat’ in order of time does not seem, for most apostles, to be contemplative withdrawal into God. They are in the world, they have experience of it, and grace presses them to proclaim the gospel to it. They begin with what was for St Dominic the second and the fourth ‘beats': they can already taste the experience of combat for the faith.
The Case of St William Fitzherbert
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: August 2024

Persecution from evil men ‘for justice sake’ is hard to bear, and to suffer it patiently is one of the eight beatitudes. St William's way of sanctity lay in the path of persecution from saints and other holy people, with an admixture of interested parties. Almost everything he did, and any circumstance of his conduct, was twisted to his condemnation. These attacks began the moment he was elected to the see of York and ceased only when the grave closed over him.

Little is known of his life before his election. He was the son of a nobleman named Herbert from whom he received his surname, and his biographer Thomas Stubbs, a York Dominican, writing about 1340, adds that his mother was Emma, the sister of King Stephen. On this late authority it has been generally assumed that he was that king's nephew. We have no clue to his age.
The Many-Splendoured Thing
Authors: Frederick B. M.
Published: August 2024

In a gospel passage which is seldom quoted with reference to the spiritual life, our Lord reminds us that no father, asked for a loaf or an egg, will hand his son a stone or a scorpion, and since earthly parents give their children only wholesome food, We may be certain that our heavenly Father will show even greater loving wisdom towards us. Each day we ask him to give us this day our daily bread and, at least in England, usually obtain it. We also ask for patience, charity and such other virtues as we may be in need of; we ask him to increase our devotion and remove our distractions. Very often it seems that our heavenly Father hands us stones instead of virtues; scorpions instead of grace. It seems that the only answers to these prayers take the form of despondency, failure to be charitable or patient, or show any other admirable quality; our distractions are worse and our sensible devotion sinks to zero.
Blessed Richard Reynolds
Authors: S. M. D.
Published: August 2024

'… a man of angelic countenance and angelic spirit, dear to all men and filled with the spirit of God.'

These words, used by more than one contemporary of Blessed Richard Reynolds, suggest at once light, purity, strength; a gaze turned ever to truth, that ‘otherness’ which we associate with the life of the angels and which makes them so ready to give help to sinful mortals.

For what will be said about one of our proto-martyrs in this short account, I have had to rely on the research of the late Dom Adam Hamilton, O.S.B., of Buckfast Abbey in his book, now out of print, called The Angel of Syon (published by Sands & Co.), and on a shorter work by Dom Ernest Graf, published in 1934 for the fourth centenary of the martyrdom.

The birthplace, family and exact date of birth of our subject still evade us, but it seems to be more or less accepted that he was born at Pinhoe, near Exeter, in 1488 or 1489.
What is the Church?—I: The Word of God
Authors: McCabe Herbert
Published: August 2024

This article, and the four which follow, will be about revelation, about the community God has established, and about the sacraments that constitute it: they are theological, concerned with God and his dealings with men. Most of what I say will probably be pretty familiar stuff to you, but some of it may be new; this is because I shall be drawing on the results of the great theological revival which has been going on for some years in the Church but which has not yet had its full effect in England. A word in passing about this revival, because we will be constantly coming back to it. It is one aspect of a quiet reformation, a surge of new life within the Church. The most obvious signs of this are the liturgical movement, the return to the scriptures and the Fathers and, above all, the new understanding of the place of the laity in the Church.
The Catholic Apostolate of Unity
Authors: St John Henry
Published: August 2024

'And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself. Now this he said, signifying what death he should die.' John 12: 32, 33.

Those prophetic words, spoken by our Lord shortly before his Passion, reveal to us the very heart and centre of our Catholic Faith. They were echoed by St Peter in his first sermon, on the very day of the founding of the Church, the first Pentecost: 'Therefore let all the House of Israel knoW most certainly that God hath made both Lord and Christ this same Jesus whom you crucified.' And a few days later proclaiming the gospel of redemption, through the death and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth to the Jewish people, probably within tne precincts of the Temple, he summed up his message in these words. 'Neither is there any other name under heaven given amongs men whereby we must be saved.'
The Mystical Life of Isaias: II
Authors: Humphries Silvester
Published: August 2024

Before Sennacherib, that new and still more powerful king, the policy of Judah fluctuated between restless schemes for alliances, especially with Egypt, and the firm independence of all but the power of God which Isaias taught, and which ultimately prevailed. It was then that he saw with clarity the mystery of creation, and was enabled to vest with reality in his mind that which faith, without sight, imposes. He expresses it under the humble image of a potter making pots as he will; the analogy becomes a permanent tradition in the Scriptures. It has a triple significance. It shows the emergence into the certitudes of the reason of the fact of substance, the independence of one's existence of any but the divine Being. Substance is the immediate term of creation, upon which all else in the creature as being accident depends mediately.
Adaptation in France: I
Authors: Dubois J. M.
Published: August 2024

Father Plé has honoured me with the formidable responsibility of replacing him during this course of study. It is certainly not because of my ordinary work, for I am a professor of philosophy, and, which might seem even worse, professor of scholastic philosophy! That seems sufficiently remote from directing souls, or from canon law! The only qualification I have for speaking here is my collaboration in the organization and the work of the ancelles—that is to say, that part of the active branch of the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion concerned with an up-to-date apostolate.
Unity
Authors: Dinwiddy Hugh
Published: August 2024

There is a limited pleasure to be had from neatness. Neatness at home and uniformity at work, both interpenetrating each other, are the modern substitutes for unity. They are habitual, even virtuous. The several relations between them are governed, not only by the overflow of factory method, business method and military method into the home, but also by the simple necessity, where many live in a narrow space, to slow things away, to be tidy. Here we witness an order that is imposed. Behind this lies the mountainous pile of things and information, and our own diminished understanding of their true relations.
Exposition
Authors: Valentin Arthur
Published: August 2024

Thunder voices prefaced the breaking of the four seals in John's heavenly visions, but prior to the sounding of the seven trumpets and the blaze of fire on the heavenly altar ‘there was silence in heaven'. So, silence issues forth in trumpet calls and in the angelic prayer-action at the altar alight with flame. All public worship expresses itself vocally, for only such prayer can express corporate worship and fellowship prayer; but the Catholic Church has devised a service of silence, just as she has produced Orders of Silence, and that service is Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. The Rite begins with the O Salutaris; it ends with the Tantum ergo, but the interspace is Silence. The High Priest, Heli, was an unwise father but wise as a spiritual director, for how great was his wisdom when he bade the child Samuel respond to the voice of God with these words: ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’ Here is the perfect counsel for those who kneel before the Host exposed. All is silence: the Word is silent; silently the candles immolate themselves in honour of the Unseen Light; the flowers praise their Creator by their beauty and fragrance, but silent is their tribute. Silence is the soul's receptive mood; it is the ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’ When we say prayers, God listens to us; but when we are silent we become listeners to the voice of God.
St Teresa of Lisieux and Her 'Truly Excessive Sensitiveness'
Authors: Robo Etienne
Published: August 2024

In her autobiography, St Teresa of Lisieux has entered accurately, sometimes forcibly, a number of her peculiarities of disposition and character. They are so striking that no attentive reader can miss them. Most of her biographers however explain them away without realizing their true significance or dismiss them as of being of no importance. One well-known Teresian, for instance, speaks of St Teresa's ‘truly excessive sensitiveness’ and leaves it at that. ‘Excessive’ is the right word, ‘sensitiveness’ is not, and we believe that after considering the facts of the case, we shall come to the conclusion that this ‘sensitiveness’ of St Teresa has a medical signification and deserves another name. Why should we be reticent about any element of her personality? Every saint must build up his sanctity with the materials at hand, with, or in spite of, his temperament and constitution, his physical and mental gifts or deficiencies.

Taken one by one, the idiosyncrasies of St Teresa may seem obscure. Take them together and you soon perceive a logical link between them all. They are in fact extremely important since her personality is inexplicable unless you give them due consideration.
A Technique of Spiritual Liberation (II)
Authors: Régamey P.-R.
Published: August 2024

Three admitted facts of our actual times impose themselves on us more imperiously than the rest.

First is this need for experience which we touched on towards the beginning of this article. We have said that it needs to be kept within legitimate limits. Then everyone will take care not to be satisfied with notions which have no spiritual value, any more than with observances which are followed because they are prescribed or recommended but which are, in consequence, burdens: they must become the means of liberation. The actions of the clergy and of the faithful, the functioning of institutions should lead to an increasing experience of lucidity, coherence, control and peace. Every spiritual man knows, with an immediate intuitive certainty, that these are normally the criteria of an authentic spiritual experience. Let us put it that in other times one could leave the ‘spiritual senses’ in penance to the extent of opposing the effective and the affective, and imagining a charity which was not affective; today there could no longer be a question of living the Christian life without a certain sense of its success—success in its own order, which is, let us repeat, that of faith and hope, but which must no less, normally, be ‘palpable to the heart'.
Comment
Authors: O’Sullivan Joseph
Published: August 2024

It might have been called ‘Hy Brazil the Isle of the Blessed’, for a blessed isle it unquestionably is. There is a reverence in the air here that is almost palpable. It has been generated by the prayers and sufferings of the pilgrims that have trod its rocky surface for fifteen hundred years. But the resemblance to Hy Brazil must end there. Hy Brazil was a mythical place, Lough Derg is a reality. It is one of the oldest places of pilgrimage in Christendom, and secure in that knowledge it reposes quietly and unobtrusively in the brown lake amongst the little bare hills. It has no need to advertise itself, for it is famous throughout the Christian world. To this hallowed spot year after year and century after century the faithful have flocked barefooted and penitent to lift up their hearts in prayer to God.
The Spirit in the World—II: The Institute of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Authors: Melia Teresa
Published: August 2024

‘Don't you think it would be nicer to be a proper nun’? This question, seriously addressed by a priest to a member of a secular institute, reveals the unfortunate lack of understanding of the vocation to a secular institute. Why ‘proper nun?’ Because in his mind was the erroneous idea that members of secular institutes are, since they take vows, some sort of nun, semi-nuns, not quite the right thing.

But women in secular institutes are not nuns in the world, not nuns in mufti. They are lay women who keep their lay status, even though consecrated fully to God by the practice of the evangelical counsels, poverty, chastity, and obedience, and dedicated to the apostolate in the world.

It was to make this absolutely clear to all who knew us and to all who would come to know us, that we, an institute dedicated to our Lady of Mount Carmel, were led three years ago to take a most decisive step. I say ‘led’ because we believe that our decision was taken under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Sex and the Sacred
Authors: McCabe Herbert
Published: August 2024

In order to talk theologically about sex, we have to look at the place which sex has in the divine plan, in the revelation of God. It might be imagined that we could explain what God has revealed to us about sex so that we could compare or contrast it with what Freud or D. H. Lawrence or Dr Kinsey has to say about sex. But this would not be quite accurate: what we want to discover is not what God says about sex, but what sex as interpreted by the Old Testament, by Christ and by the sacraments, has to show us about God.

We may begin with a poem which has been inserted at the very beginning of the Bible. Its opening lines give us the theme of the poem ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ It is to be a poem about what creation means.
Background to the Spirit
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

The fundamental reality of all early religions is that of union, union with the family, with the tribe, with the rest of creation, with God. There is a general consensus of opinion on this point among anthropologists and other students of the prehistoric and the primitive. Thus, ‘The savage seldom or never thinks of the individual as having a distinct personality; all tends to be merged in collective or corporate personality, or is dissolved in fortuitous relationships between men, animals, plants and cosmic and other inanimate objects and forces.’
The Liturgy of the Sacraments
Authors: McGowan F. A.
Published: August 2024

To understand the sacramental principle, it is necessary to recall the Plan of Redemption. God, three Persons, knowing and loving each other, exists from all eternity. When he chose to create other beings out of nothing, there was but one model, himself. Therefore, each creature is a unique reflection of God. It is itself and, at the same time, it is, to intelligent beings, a revelation of God. This quality of being real yet symbolic makes every creature, in the wide sense of the Latin word, a sacramentum, or, in Greek, a ‘mystery’. The correct attitude towards creatures saves their dignity from two false extremes. Some people would make each creature an absolute in itself—unrelated to anything else, no more than its physical constituents. The opposite error limits the creature to its function of symbol, ignores its value as an individual reality, credits it only for the power to suggest something else. Saint John Chrysostom has neatly described the creature as sacrament: ‘that of which one aspect is seen and the other aspect is believed’.
Scruples at Confession (II)
Authors: Hilton Walter
Published: August 2024

Some men in shrift tell a long fit in fair words, as it were a long treatise, and with a dry heart and cold as lead, more by custom than by contrition of heart. Those men though they say mickle they receive not ever in shrift the virtue of the sacrament. And truly againward, there are many simple Christian men rough and rude, that when they are touched then loathe their life in sin. They wail and weep if they may, and run to Holy Church for help. And if they would shew their sin fully, scarcely then they shew any so clearly as they would. But they are letted sometime for simpleness, sometime for uncunning and sometimes because they are so sorry and ashamed of themselves that they desire to shew all their sins with the circumstance and they cannot bring them forth.
The Mystery of the Trinity
Authors: Foster Kenelm
Published: August 2024

It hardly needs saying that it is not easy to about the Trinity, at Least if one aims at being intelligible as well as verbally accurate. Yet this mysterious doctrine is certainly not of merely intellectual or speculative interest, with nobearing on practice. Quite the contrary. The fascination it has for the greatest Christian minds—St Augustine's for example or St Thomas's—has not been primarily the fascination of a more problem. These saints, in their endeavour to see as clearly as possible into the mystery of the three Persons, and even while they were perfectly aware that the reasoning that this effort entailed was too subtle to be followed by the majority of believers, never thought of themselves as engaged in a merely theoretical enquiry. They reasoned about the mystery as masters of Christian doctrine, but the mystery itself they knew as intimately involved in their own moral and religious lives, in their daily communion with Christ.
Is Religious Life Worth Living?
Authors: Farrell Ambrose
Published: August 2024

Judged in the light of human standards the answer to this question may well be in the negative. But it is unsatisfactory to measure the value of human life simply by natural standards, since the standards set by God for man are supernatural. The real, true end of man is supernatural, that is, beyond his natural reach, and the means thereto must needs be supernatural. To be raised above one's nature signifies to be elevated beyond one's natural capacity. In a sin-laden world and in a nature broken by a fall, man cannot be lifted up into a realm that is not his, into God's own kingdom, without grace bestowed out of the divine bounty, which is both life-giving and healing. Even so the downward drag and fret are so great in making the ascent that no one can scale the heights without intensive effort of his own and more than his own.
A Letter to Novices
Authors:   Saint Catherine of Siena
Published: August 2024

In the name of Jesus Christ crucified and of sweet Mary. Dearest sons in sweet Jesus Christ. Catherine, servant and slave of the servants of Jesus Christ, writes to you in his precious blood, with a desire to see her sons obedient unto death, learning of the spotless Lamb who was obedient to the Father, even unto the, shameful death of the cross. Consider that he is the way and the rule which you and all creatures must follow. Put him before you and look at him with the eye of your mind; see how obedient he is, the Word of God made flesh. He does not shrink from the heavy burden put upon him by the Father. On the contrary, he shoulders it and runs with great desire. He made this clear at supper on Holy Thursday when he said, ‘With desire I have desired to feast with you before I die’. That is to say, he intended to keep the paschal feast, fulfilling the will of his Father, and his own obedience.
The Congregation of Adoration Reparatrice
Authors: Cholmley Katherine
Published: August 2024

Acentenary of a special work of reparation falls in this year, 1948. It is carried on by contemplative nuns who seek by adoration to make reparation for blasphemy and for the neglect of God. The Blessed Sacrament is exposed day and night in their chapels. All the round of the clock the Sisters come in turn, two at least at a time, to pray in silence for an hour. They seek union with the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, offering through it, and with it, praise and love, and supplication for sinners.
The Martyrs' Altar
Authors: Thomas Ivo
Published: August 2024

In the splendid ceremony at which we have been assisting, there are two elements: the dedication of the altar and the burying of the relics of martyrs in that altar. At some periods and in some parts of the Catholic world these two elements have been so distinguished that they have even taken place on different days. Since this is the Feast of St Peter's Chains, and St Peter, Apostle and Martyr and first Bishop of Rome, is our great patron, propose to dwell chiefly on the most Roman of these two elements, which were not conflated as they are now until the Middle Ages; and the most Roman of them is the enshrining of the relics of the martyrs in the altar of sacrifice. It was not till after the Roman Empire had officially recognised the legality of the Catholic religion in the early fourth century that we were able to have permanent churches and fixed altars; and then the churches were at first dedicated, set apart for the worship of God in the celebration of Mass, simply by the decree of the Christian Emperor handing them over to religious uses. And the altars which it was the main purpose of those churches to house, were considered sufficiently hallowed by the celebration of Mass upon them. How indeed could they be more or better hallowed?
Encounter with God—III: from Tabernacle to Temple
Authors: Bourke Joseph
Published: August 2024

In two previous articles I have tried to explore that special conception of Yahweh's encounter with, and presence to Israel which Old Testament theologians call kabod theology. When the Jerusalem temple was destroyed in 586. B.C. the exiled priests finally committed to writing their own sacred tradition of how Yahweh had first encountered Israel in the desert, made himself present to her, and chosen from among her tribes a priestly race to minister to him in the immediate sphere of his holiness. At the roots of this tradition lies the conception of the kabod (glory), the manifestation of Yahweh's holy presence in the form of a radiant and fiery cloud, numinous and death-dealing to all that is profane. The kabod descends at intervals to meet the people at a sacred place chosen by Yahweh himself.
The Disciple whom Jesus Loved
Authors: Potter Roland
Published: August 2024

Many of the simplest phrases in St John's gospel have an arresting character and may powerfully urge us to turn them over and over in mind. ‘The disciple whom Jesus loved’ (Jn 21. 20) is one such which calls for further thought, and which may well help us to pray. This disciple is first explicitly referred to at the last supper

‘Now one of the disciples, he whom Jesus loved, was reclining at Jesus’ breast. Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him and said to him, who is it of whom he speaks? He then, leaning back upon the breast of Jesus, said to him, Lord, who is it? Jesus answered, It is he for whom I shall dip the morsel and give it to him’. (Jn 13. 23-26).
Scripture Words—III: Holiness, Justice, Truth and Grace
Authors: Johnston Leonard
Published: August 2024

‘Holiness’ seems to be the term we would choose in preference to any other to denote moral perfection in its highest and most general form; a holy man is one distinguished by the practice of outstanding virtue.

For this reason it is important to note that in the Bible holiness is not used primarily of men at all, but of God; and in God it is not first of all a moral quality so much as a quality of his being. (This is not to say that Israel's idea of God was ever divorced from morality, or that the Bible was ever concerned with a philosophical definition of God like the Greek First Cause. That, I hope, will become clear in what follows. But it does mean that the Bible is not so anxiously concerned with morality, especially human morality, as we are inclined to be).
From Temple to Heavenly Court
Authors: Bourke Joseph
Published: August 2024

In a series of articles, of which this is the fourth, I have attempted to Trace a particular theme of God's presence to Israel, and of Israel's encounter with God in his holiness, through the Old Testament into the New. The theme has its source in a vision—Moses’ vision of the burning bush (Exod. 3). A blaze of mysterious fire, awful, yet irresistibly attractive, draws Moses towards itself, and the voice of God himself issues from the flame summoning him and miraculously empowering him to enter within the sphere of its numinous radiance. At Sinai (Exod. 19) the same encounter with holiness is repeated on a gigantic scale. Yahweh descends on the mountain in the midst of fire, amid earthquake, thunder and lightning and the sound of a terrible trumpet which grows louder and louder. Here the whole mountain becomes charged and glowing with holiness and so constitutes the numinous sphere of mortal danger to all creaturehood.
Bringing up the family—today
Authors: Haughton Rosemary
Published: August 2024

There is nothing intrinsically virtuous about scrubbing a stone floor— nor about peeling potatoes—nor about doing large quantities of washing by nand. It is not sinful to put down a good plastic floor covering and wipe it over easily with a damp cloth. Using a potato peeler is not one of the seven deadly sins, and the washing machine was not invented by the devil.

When one makes such statements baldly, like this, they are so crudely obvious that it seems fatuous to waste one's breath uttering them. Yet there is a school of thought among Catholics in this country that makes it necessary to say such obvious things. Perhaps it would be better to call it a school of feeling, as there doesn't seem to be much real thought behind it. It may be as well to name no names; but there has been, and still is, a tendency among certain high-minded Catholics (male) to regard the scrubbing of floors as practically necessary to the Salvation of females.
Lumen Vitae
Authors:   Sister Joseph Of The Angels, S.N.D.
Published: August 2024

‘The most significant factor of the last one hundred and fifty years is the urbanisation of the world’ said Fr Houtart, Secretary of the International Centre for Research in Religious Sociology. Addressing the members of the International Catechetical Year at Lumen Vitae, he compared the revolution caused in society by this phenomenon to the barbarian invasions of the fourth century, which changed the face of the world as it was then known. This signifies, he said, far more than an increased density of population in the cities; it is a real transformation of social life. M. Labbens, President of this Society, also speaking during this course of lectures in religious sociology, went so far as to assert that ‘The world is about to give birth to a new civilisation'.
Strength Against Temptations
Authors: Flete William
Published: August 2024

For as mickle as the apostle says that without faith and true belief it is impossible to please God, therefore is it that our old enemy the fiend enforceth him night and day through false incastings of errors and false engines and imaginations and other such manner of wonderful devises, for to destroy and let our belief and our faith which is the groundstone of all holy kirk and beginner of all virtues. And them that he sees he may not cast down utterly from stabilness of this belief, he ceaseth not to cast them down by other diverse manner of ways (through his quantise and his wiles and his temptations). Wherefore we shall warily and ghostly withstand his wiles on this wise.
Lisieux—Inside
Authors: Todd John M.
Published: August 2024

We walked steadily down the long, straight road, a Roman road no doubt, from La Pommeray where we had been to attend the 'peasants Mass' at the little hamlet in the apple country up above Lisieux. We had heard the new vernacular messe des Paysans sung by the J.A.C. (Jeunesse Agricole Chrétienne—Young Catholic Farmers). Only the creed was in Latin. At the offertory we saw a procession such as is suggested in Pius XII's encyclical Mediator Dei. A young man came in with a cross made up from ears of freshly harvested wheat (it was Sunday, August 7th, and the patronal feast of this church of St Lawrence was being kept), then another followed with a model of a chalice and hosts outlined upon it, then a third came in with a bunch of grapes in a bag.
The Virgin Mary in Islam and the Apocrypha
Authors: Fakhry Majid
Published: August 2024

The Virgin enjoys, like her Son, a position of unique pre-eminence in Islamic legend in general and the Koran in particular. Many of the traits with which the story of her life is embellished derive from apocryphal sources, but are nevertheless of the utmost interest in filling in the gaps in the canonical narrative of the Blessed Virgin's life.

In the Koranic version of the angel's salutation, the superiority of Mary (Arabic, 'Mariam'), whom God had 'chosen and purified, over all the women of mankind' (3, 42) is proclaimed. She is even made to share with her Son the singular distinction of being a 'divine sign unto the generations' (21, 91). In popular legend, however, this preminent position of the Virgin is sometimes disputed and so she is made to share this honour with four other women, who include the two favourite wives of Muhammad and his dearest daughter, Fatimah, from whom the 'noble House of the Prophet' descends.
Recent Moral Theology
Authors: Kenny Anthony
Published: August 2024

It is hard to imagine why Karl Hörmann's Introduction to Moral Theology has been translated into English. The author states that the book was written for lay people. In fact, it is the kind of book which is most at home in the pocket of the seminarist at examination time. The publishers claim that it is ‘a guide to principles and practice in modern life’. In fact, many of the infrequent practical examples are hot from Aristotle or the thirteenth century. Every page is leprous with jargon. We read of ‘the positive method’, of ‘substantial union’, of ‘ontological goodness’, of ‘the sense-appetite’; words such as ‘convenience’, ‘determine’, ‘incomprehensible’ and ‘elevated’ are used in senses quite alien to their English usage. Frequently the examples take us back to that quaint and vivid world where men set fire to their neighbours’ houses and kill their friends while hunting, where captains throw overboard their merchandise to lighten the ship, and where maidens miss mass to avoid being put to the blush by their banns.
Our Freedom to Think
Authors: Lawlor Monica
Published: August 2024

It soon, emerges from any discussion about freedom of thought, with for example one's university colleagues, that the very idea of Catholics thinking freely still strikes many people as essentially funny. One quickly realises that many non-Christian intellectuals hold the view that Catholics are forbidden to think on pain of sin, heresy, excommunication and the whole apparatus of the Inquisition. But before discussing the peculiar difficulties of Catholics in this matter, I must say something in general about the meaning of freedom to think, asking the reader always to keep in mind its bearing on the particular problem of Catholic thought.

In order to consider whether we make the best use of the capacity for thought which we have (to which there are obvious limits set by native endowment both in the individual and in the species) it may be useful to establish the conditions in which thinking can occur at all.
The Feast of the Eucharist
Authors: Hibbert Giles
Published: August 2024

In this antiphon is to be found what is probably one of the most perfect expressions—being both precise and comprehensive—of the nature and function of the mass or eucharist. It comes from the liturgical office of the feast of Corpus Christi and is also used on other occasions connected with the eucharist. It is of the mass as a whole however that it is descriptive, as its opening words show: O sacrum convivium—the sacred feast in which Christ is preached, made present and then eaten.

To translate it into English is not easy for each original word contains overtones, depth of meaning and openness to further interpretation, the exact equivalent of which cannot all be captured in translation. Thus as well as translating and considering each phrase in turn it will be well to comment almost word by word, bringing out the meaning of each within its overall context.
Theology and Disbelief
Authors: Wicker Brian
Published: August 2024

It is a fair question for the enquirer who encounters theological talk to ask at what point, and in what way, such talk is rooted in common human experiences that can be discussed. His difficulty is that, while not wanting to deny to theological talk some empirical foundation, he is at a loss to know what this foundation is. The problem is especially acute when there appears to be a claim by believers that only ‘insiders’ can really understand the language that is being used: that is, when credo ut intelligam is interpreted as ‘unless you are prepared to believe what we believe you won't be able to understand what we are talking about’. The enquirer feels that he is being invited to take a blind plunge, on the grounds that only real swimmers can know what swimming is, when he has no idea what it is he is being invited to plunge into, or how to do it.
The Christian Myth
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: August 2024

The word ‘myth’ has fallen on evil days so far at least as common speech goes. We say that something is a mere myth, an old wives’ tale, or else that it is primitive, interesting enough for the anthropologist, but from the sophisticated point of view only a fable. The word carries with it the suggestion that something untrue is being asserted in a specious and attractive way. A lie is clothed with all the charm of a story for children.

So far as this sense goes we are all, rightly, children of the Enlightenment. The myth story is no substitute for science. The myth is not, in any of its forms, verifiable in the same manner as is the scientific proposition, but it does not follow that mythological statements are untrue or unimportant. To assert this a priori is simply to restrict one's notion of verification to an admittedly useful technique, which quite clearly fails to test the whole content of experience.
Our Lady's Fool
Authors: Winowska Maria
Published: August 2024

His story reminds one of the finest pages of the Golden Legend; and like the lives of so many saints, is hardly credible. Modern man, used to psychological and other methods, may find it offensive: might we call it a challenge to human reason? Where shall we draw the line between the marvellous and the absurd? Certainly we prefer stories that we can measure against our own limited standard. But, God is not logic. He is not (so St Teresa says) even reasonable. And the saint, every saint, always remains unfathomed—a sort of walking scandal, a challenge hurled at reason, a wager. The Creator's imagination infinitely surpasses the cleverest of those who ape him, romancers and poets, and the improbable is the natural habitat of his masterpieces, the Saints. That is why they bewilder us and lay hold of us: does it not prove, in a tangible way, that man is made to surpass himself and that true sanctity scorns to be stereotyped?
St Catherine of Siena and Dame Julian of Norwich
Authors: Levasti Arrigo
Published: August 2024

It is always attractive to make a comparison between mystics differing in their nature and formation; and a study of their experience, fundamentally the same, in its different interpretations, helps us to discover lights and shades, tones and accents, individual peculiarities that may escape our notice when we consider one mystic alone. This is so in the case of Catherine of Siena. Set by the side of other women mystics her world becomes more distinct, and her own figure takes on clearer outline. Compared with St Gertrude, for instance, she is more ecclesiastically-minded; compared with St Hildegarde, more positive; with St Teresa, more subtle; while perhaps she outstrips them all in enthusiasm and eloquence.
Structure of Religious Chastity (II)
Authors: Magrath Oswin
Published: August 2024

Christian chastity and purity, therefore, look towards God, and by a development in this direction can become a new virtue, that of vowed virginity or perfect and perpetual continence. Virginity consists in the will to abstain totally from sex for God, the will to be immune from sexual pleasure. It is destroyed by deliberate consent to such pleasure, though restored by penitence, in the sense that there can return a will to remain virgin and to have remained virgin, though the fact of indulgence cannot be done away with. Bodily integrity is not essential. Perfect perpetual continence is the same will to abstain from all use of sex, but only in the future, in those who take the vow after voluntary experience of sex. While those who take the vow before any such experience can reiterate their former good will even after losing the virtue, and so regain its formal element in the will, though not the material element of never having experienced sex, those who vow after such experience cannot will virginity, except as a might-havebeen.
St Teresa of Lisieux in Her Letters
Authors: Graef H. C.
Published: August 2024

The Letters of St Teresa of Lisieux, now first published in English, are an indispensable companion to her Autobiography. For they shed new light on her character and underline the special cachet of her sanctity. In the many short letters and occasional billets we are permitted to watch her soul as it were in working dress—and, let us say it at once, from the first letter to the last we see sheer sanctity. John Beevers, in his very understanding biography of her with the somewhat flashy title Storm of Glory writes: ‘St Thérèse of the Child Jesus is the greatest Saint of modern times . . . because she has liberated sanctity and made it obviously accessible to everyone’. It is this that strikes the reader so forcibly in her letters.
The Priority of Mercy
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: August 2024

Granted the pre-eminence of charity among the virtues, the superiority of the contemplative over the active life, there is still a sense in which we are most. like to God when performing the works of mercy. For the whole order of things, the relations between creatures and the pale semblance of rights which we are permitted to assert in the divine presence, are dependent on the Creator's prerogative of mercy. Whatever is, is the consequence of God's mercy removing the defect that is non-existence; the even more abysmal deficiency that is sin is removed by his greater merey and by that very fact we are brought without merit into a still higher order of justice. This last was effected by a mercy determined to stir our hearts and to show how much God would be like ourselves: because divine beatitude can admit of no defects, God as God cannot suffer with us; but becoming man, he could both remove misery and feel it—he knew compassion.