bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Stray Thoughts on the Lay Apostolate
Authors: Ripley Francis J.
Published: July 2007

‘If we pass in review the long and sorrowful sequence of woes, that, as a sad heritage of sin, mark the stages of fallen man’s earthly pilgrimage, from the flood on, it would be hard to find spiritual and material distress so deep, so universal, as that which we are now experiencing.’ Those are words of Pope Pius XI, written in the Encyclical Caritate Christi Compulsi some twelves and a half years ago. If they were true then, they are more true than ever of to-day when the bloody shroud of war has enveloped nearly all mankind.

But one feels sometimes that too much ink is devoted to the description of what is obvious. Having, therefore, recalled these striking words of Christ’s Vicar, let us not dwell here upon the depressing thought of the plight of modern humanity; rather we will turn to the remedy for such an unhappy state of affairs.

‘As these evils crowd in upon us, what hope of remedy is left to us’ asked Pope Pius XII in his Easter Homily in 1940, ‘except that which comes from Christ, from his inspirations, and from his teaching, a healing stream flowing through every vein of our society? Only Christ’s law, only Christ’s grace, can renew and restore private and public life, redressing the true balance of rights and duties, checking unbridled self-interest, controlling passion, implementing and perfecting the course of strict justice with his overflowing charity.
‘Harbour Head’ and Catholic Action
Authors: Ross Anthony
Published: July 2007

In Mr. Peter Anson’s pleasant book of reminiscences there are occasional passages about Catholic Action in Britain, usually with special reference to the Apostleship of the Sea, which he helped to found in 1921. In these passages there appears distinctly an uneasiness about the adequacy of the latter’s work in this country, a feeling that it tackles the symptoms of spiritual sickness and not its roots, and the suggestion, by implication at least, that it is in some ways too remote from the people and conditions which it hopes to affect. Mr. Anson himself has changed his mind as to the lines on which the Apostleship of the Sea could best develop; a change illustrated by his withdrawal from all organizing committee work to his present life in the cottage called ‘Harbour Head,’ which has become a flourishing House of Hospitality, for seamen primarily, but also for any service men or local fishers who care to drop in. In his memoirs little is told us about the last five years at ‘Harbour Head ‘; enough to give a rough idea of what is attempted there but, naturally enough, nothing to show how much it has meant to large numbers of men, Catholics and Protestants, British and foreign, brought by war to a north-east Scottish fishing town with only a minute Catholic population, and little to offer in the way of comfort or entertainment to men in port. ‘Harbour Head ‘has become a centre of the Apostleship of the Sea, of a kind which is strikingly kin to Friendship Houses and to the Houses of Hospitality established by the Apostolate of Christ the Worker.
Some Notes on Arthur Koestler
Authors: Birrell Anthony
Published: July 2007

Arthur Koestler is unique among modern novelists for two reasons. Firstly he has written novels which have achieved wide popularity without in any way sacrificing their claim to be serious literature. Secondly, his political philosophy is sufficiently mature to enable him to analyse left-wing politics from a left-wing standpoint and yet to arrive at conclusions far more balanced and critical than we are entitled to expect from any British political commentator starting from the same assumptions.

The popularity of his two novels, Darkness at Noon and Arrival and Departure, has been achieved by his use of all the reader-appeals of the modern best-seller. His subject matter is extremely palatable to those types of middle-class intelligentsia who frequent the circulating libraries. Koestler’s chief appeal, of course, is his topicality. The setting of his novels is in modern Russia and Germany. But one has only to compare his grasp of political realities with the tedious platitudes and gross over-simplifications of such a political novelist as Philip Gibbs to appreciate Koestler’s mature and informed political criticism through characters and vividly localised details.
Sovereignty and Peace
Authors: Leibholz Georg
Published: July 2007

Lionel Curtis has now collected in one volume four of the pamphlets he wrote during the war). We are greatly indebted to him for this collection which certainly deserves careful reading by all who are devoted to the cause of peace and who take the shaping of the future seriously. For the essence of his case, here powerfully stated, is that sovereignty excludes the rule of law and leads to anarchy and to a fragmentation of human society in which the will of the stronger ultimately prevails. Such a world is doomed to war unless the national States surrender their sovereignty and merge it into one international sovereign State.

In fact, it cannot be disputed that international law has failed to maintain peace between the States and that this is mainly due to the fact that the national States have not relinquished their sovereignty. For sovereignty is uncontrolled, irresponsible and unlimited power. It embodies in collective entities the evil spirit of selfishness which knows no restraints and no standards of judgment other than its own. It entitles the State to maintain its political existence in the international sphere, even against justice and law. This state of affairs explains why, in the age of the national state, every international question of political weight has become overlaid by considerations of force and power, and why any State, for the sake of its honour, its political existence or its vital national interests can declare war on another State and thereby annul the existing international relations between the States. Writers on international law have even developed the doctrine of the lawfulness of war, although the effect of war is always to exclude the operation of law. Briefly, sovereignty legitimizes licence and arbitrariness and makes an effective institutional world organisation impossible. It perpetuates chaos in international relationships and cannot lead to a pacification of the world.
The Hostages
Authors: de Pange Jean
Published: July 2007

I was arrested by the Gestapo on May 16th, 1941, and taken to the prison of la Santé. Two months later I was transferred to the Fortress of Romainville, then being used as a concentration camp for prisoners usually released only by death or deportation to Germany.

For cell companions I had three young men from Nantes: Caldecott, a chemist, Hévin, a railway draughtsman, and Labrousse, a student of Legal History. Caldecott, a charming fellow with fair hair, bright eyes, a slightly ironic smile and determined manner, was of English extraction.

Romainville was like a convict prison. No priest ever set foot there. Religious services were forbidden. Convicts’ dress was worn. The first time I met Julien Cain, the Director of the Biblioth&que Nationale, I failed to recignize him in this costume of yellow canvas. Soon I was wearing it myself.

One day I asked him: “Are we hostages here? We shouldn’t be since we haven’t been accused.” He thought that actually we Were not hostages.

Shortly afterwards my question assumed sinister significance. A corporal told me that I must prepare to leave. Was it as a hostage for Nont-Valérien where the executions took place? No, Julien Cain was certain that I was returning to la Santé.
Charles Du Bos
Authors: Norman George
Published: July 2007

Charles Du Bos has a particular interest for English-speaking readers from the fact that he, a great Frenchman, was not only partly English but that his sympathies were so largely Anglo-Saxon. Some of the last years of his life were spent in America, though he died near Paris in 1939. Had he lived through the occupation to the present delicate task of ‘rehabilitating’ France, who can say what bearing his unobtrusive influence might not have had on the evolution of French policy? Though ignored in his lifetime by the general public, as Martin-Chauffier says in his introduction to the Byron of Du Bos, “there is scarcely a first-class mind in Europe which does not know him and feel for him the surest and best-founded esteem; ... It is not the least of undertakings to trace his influence on so many writers, so many works, so many matters which have stirred public opinion to passion.”

That so potent a mind was unrecognised by the mass is due to the simple fact that Du Bos did not write what the mass cared to read; such writing, while it finally moulds thought and ideals, does so indirectly and slowly. It might also be thought that he wrote too little. For years Charles Du Bos suffered from a “paralysing” difficulty in writing at all; when he seemed to have overcome it, the first Great War supervened; at its close the same “total inhibition”—a doubt as to his own powers and a resulting scruple in writing—returned to him at intervals. His circle, the most exclusive of French cenacles, attributed his lack of production to a less fundamental cause: Du Bos, they believed, was too gifted in another way—he was a superb talker.
Censorship and Criticism
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: July 2007

Twenty-five years ago, Father Martindale, writing on “The Movies” in the very first number of Blackfriars, decided that “the thing can be used as well as misused, like thyroid or theology”. Since he wrote, the situation has changed: it can no longer be said that in the cinema “voice-anxiety is eliminated”, and we are usually spared “Bishops wearing their mitres at the tea-table and Abbesses giving absolution”. The “hundreds of thousands” who visit the pictures weekly in this country have become as many millions. But the need for a solid basis of criticism is as urgent as ever. The vast technical development of the cinema, its tremendous commercial growth and social importance, have not been matched—at least not among Catholics—by much discrimination.

It is of little use any longer to deplore the existence of the cinema. It is firmly established as the most popular form of entertainment, and one supposes that Catholics are to be found in their proportion to the population as a whole among the weekly millions. There are many features of the cinemas as an industry which are certainly deplorable, but these should not prejudice an objective examination of the cinema as a medium, though in fact “what is wrong with the films?” can usually be traced back to “what is wrong with the Big Business behind them?” But it is difficult to envisage much change in the commercial side of the cinema: the tendency is all towards more mergers, more mammoth corporations spreading their tentacles from the studio right down to the local Ritz. For the cinema is not strictly an art; it is an industry which—among many other people—employs artists. Like any other commercial undertaking, the question it ultimately asks is: “Will it pay?” From the factory (the studio) to the shop-counter (the box-office) this is the real preoccupation; and the millions queueing nightly from Barnstaple to Bogota, they are the people who decide.
Reflections on a Critique of Jacques Maritain
Authors: Graham Aelred
Published: July 2007

Not a little interest has been aroused by the publication, in a recent issue of the Tablet (18/8/1945), of a review by Mr. T. S. Gregory of M. Maritain’s Christianity and Democracy. Even more hostile in tone than an earlier critique (see Tablet 18/11/1944) of the author’s The Rights of Man, its manifest aim is to belittle, if not wholly to discredit, the reputation of the distinguished French philosopher. 6) Maritain has never escaped criticism even’ from his warmest admirers; they have noted a tendency to over-simplify complex historical issues, an occasionally unpersuasive manner of discoursing as it were from a great height, an uncertainty of judgment in aesthetic and literary matters. But these and possibly other limitations have done little to diminish their respect for him as a noble Christian intelligence and perhaps the ablest metaphysician of our day. His writings now have their recognized place as source-books of modern Thomism, to which professors of theology and philosophy are accustomed to refer their students. For this reason, if for no other, Mr. Gregory’ remarks merit serious consideration.

The worth of a political essay may fairly be judged on its own account, without reference to its author’s views as expressed elsewhere; but when it is made the occasion for a radical attack upon a philosopher’s system of thought, we have the right to expect from the critic familiarity with the philosophical standpoint in question. Mr. Gregory offers little to justify this expectation; he knows that Maritain has somehow achieved considerable fame, but betrays no inkling of that upon which it is based.
The Yogi and the Commissar
Authors: Dawson Christopher
Published: July 2007

Arthur Koestler is a writer of great intelligence and strong convictions, who has for years been carrying on a single-handed fight against that modern mechanical mystery of ingenuity, the Totalitarian State. He fights alone because he is a writer of the Left, even of the extreme Left, who refuses to accept the myths and rationalizations of his party and is just as outspoken in his condemnation of the totalitarianism of the Left as he is of the totalitarianism of the Right. He fights alone, also because he feels acutely the spiritual tragedy of modern man and the need for spiritual reintegration, and yet rejects any positive religious solution of the problem. His diagnosis of the situation is expressed in the title of his book)—the polar opposition of the passive contemplation of the naked Indian ascetic and the ruthless activism of the Communist bureaucrat.

No doubt the opposition is psychologically justifiable in terms of the pure introvert and the pure extravert, but I do not feel that it really fits the modern situation, and particularly that aspect of the situation to which Koestler devotes so much of the present volume. For what he is mainly concerned with is not the opposition of action and contemplation, but rather the frustration of the modern intelligence in a world which it has done so much to create. The revolutionary intelligence created the Marxian ideology, which in turn produced the Communist State. But something has gone wrong in the process. The intellectuals believed and taught that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would be followed by the “withering away” of the State. In fact, however, what has happened has been the development of a State power more absolute than any absolutism of the past, and it has been the intelligentsia which has “withered away”.
Literature and Criticism
Authors: Shewring Walter
Published: July 2007

There are obvious difficulties about reviewing a dictionary, especially when the dictionary approaches the status of an encyclopedia in the variety of the matters covered and the method of treating them. The most useful way in which can deal with the Dictionary of World, Literature is first to indicate the general scope of the book, then to consider the various forms which the discussion of literature may take and to” use examples from the book to point or illustrate my remarks.

The dictionary as a whole is not concerned with judgments on particular or collective works of literature, but with general ideas bearing on literature, literary forms and technique, ancient and modern criticism, schools and movements, and rhetorical terms. Thus Dante and Milton are not appraised as poets, but their poetical theory is resumed, and the forms they used are considered under such headings as Epic, Sonnet, Terza rimas, English verification. The amount of actual information given is large and wide-ranging, and the Editor may be praised for his general planning and his marshalling of contributors.

Of the various ways in which literature may be discussed the most important is the most general—the examination of the nature and purpose of literature in the light of metaphysics and morals. This may be called the philosophy of literature, and its value evidently depends on the truth of the higher principles it appeals to and the skill with which deductions are made. False principles to begin with, or inexperience in application, may render it nugatory or harmful. It is nowadays rare to find a writer on literature whose general philosophical training is adequate for the attempt, and Mr. Shipley has been fortunate in securing a leaven of such work for his dictionary.
Contemplation and Peace
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

Contemplation is the way to peace. But there are some who hold the contrary, not without good reason: for.

1. Those who are entrusted with the drawing up of peace- treaties are generally men of action. And if we find much to criticise in their achievements, we can rarely doubt their goodwill and we must admit their success in establishing what all men are agreed to call peace.

2. Contemplatives withdraw from the world to seek peace as the first condition for the fulfilment of their vocation.

Against this we have the testimony of the Church’s liturgy: Beata pads visio. That is to say, peace is achieved through a vision or contemplation.

Peace is something more than concord. There is concord when one party to an agreement accepts his obligations reluctantly, but there is no peace: one desire conflicts with another, there is no tranquillity or order in his soul. Yet desire is never completely at rest until the soul is in the presence of God. A relative tranquillity can, however, be attained in this world, more or less perfect according to the degree to which we perceive that only He who created our soul can maintain its harmony. When the perception of this truth contents us we are at peace. And this is attained through contemplation.

The order in the world and its tranquillity are fashioned according to a divine plan. Those who seek peace cannot therefore afford to neglect examination of the design which it is their task to realise: “They must be made to climb the ascent to the vision of Goodness, which we called the highest object of knowledge; and, allowed to remain on the heights, refusing to come down again to the prisoners.”
The Contemplative Life in the World
Authors: Graef H. C.
Published: July 2007

There seems to be a special need in our time for new forms of the contemplative life, lived not behind grilles and high walls, cut off from the world as much externally as internally, hut lived in the midst of the world, open to its needs, but not contaminated by its vices. This form of life is nothing new; on the contrary, it is older than other forms, for it is the life lived by our Lord, our Lady and the Apostles as well as by the Christians of the first centuries. All through the history of the Church there have been men and women who, though remaining “in the world’’, have combined a life of intense contemplation with the life of the Apostle who goes out to seek what is lost—we need only think of Saints like. Catherine of Siena, Francis de Sales, Bl. Anna Maria Taigi or the Curé d’Ars.

But, it may be argued, they were saints, souls with a unique vocation specially chosen by God—is it possible for a person less abundantly gifted to live in our distracted paganized world a life that can he truly called contemplative? There are many souls today who, despite their admiration for the life of the Contemplative Orders, yet feel the need and the attraction for this other kind of life. The world seems to cry out for it in its very blindness and indifference, and where there is a need God will not withhold the means of satisfying it. With such a call to a life of contemplation without “leaving the world” in the physical sense, there seems to be no reason to ignore the opportunities. For the contemplative life in this noisy world is so difficult that there need be little fear of illusion.
The German Catholics of the Universities
Authors: Vermehren Erich M.
Published: July 2007

First of all I would like to thank the Executive Committee of Pax Romana and the Chairman for allowing me to address you here to-day and to speak to you about the position in Germany. You know that the German Catholics are not officially represented at this Congress, and I would like to stress the point that my credentials to speak on their behalf consist in nothing but the simple fact that I am a German Catholic myself, and that I was in Germany and in contact with some of the most eminent German Bishops, priests and laymen until the end of 1943.

The theme of our discussion to-day is Relief and Reconstruction. It concerns the tasks, with which Pax Romana will have to deal in the near future. I must, therefore, ask your indulgence if, before talking about what lies before us, I shall refer at some length also to the past. There are two reasons why I should like to do this: first, that if you want to find the remedy, you must first know the disease. The problems of Relief and Reconstruction are thus of necessity to some extent retrospective. Second: Pax Romana will have to decide—and I hope that will be some time soon—whether it is going to re-admit as constituent members German University Federations. Monsieur l’Abbés Gremaud has told me—and I am painfully aware how right He is—that the spirit of Pax Romana has found only very few faithful witnesses among the Germans—students and graduates—and that the great question of the future would be how to make sure about the trustworthiness of any new federations that might be formed.
A French Catholic Review Appears Again
Authors: Maydieu Augustin J.
Published: July 2007

lt is a great joy to be able to give some account, in the friendly columns of Blackfriars of La Vie Intellectuelle, the Dominican review which started to appear again last February after four-and- a-half years of silence. That joy is all the greater, because during the occupation we always envisaged our work after the war as united to that of Catholics throughout the world, but especially to that of our English brethren, linked to us as they are by the closest of ties. It was indeed because I had tried to get into touch with them, despite the German occupation, in order to prepare for this work for the Church, that I, with one of my brethren, Pète Dubarle, was arrested on the Swiss frontier in March, 1944. Only a few days after my liberation I was able to meet in France some of my friends from across the Channel, and now, less than a year later, on a visit to England, I can write, in an English review, something of what has happened and of our hopes for the future.

To begin with, let me recall what La Vie Intellectuelle stood for before the war. Begun in 1929, under the editorship of Père Bernadot, that indefatigable creator of reviews, who started La Vie Spirituelle, as well as many other publications, La Vie Intellectuelle was animated by a small group of Dominicans, with the active collaboration of many secular priests and lay people. Its aim was to contribute in France to that intellectual effort required in order to make the influence of the Church felt in the world. We know with what interest Pius XI, and after him, Pius XII, always encouraged such efforts.
Beveridge Debunked?
Authors: Fogarty M. P.
Published: July 2007

The fashionable Beveridge school of full employment economics is open to a good deal of detailed criticism, and Professor Fisher has made a valiant, if not wholly successful attempt to suggest the greater importance of a different approach. In spite of a number of dexterous jabs the Beveridge school still stands, sore but unshaken; in rightly denying that the New Economics are new, Professor Fisher tends to slip too easily into denying that they are frequently good economies. But he has made out his cause on a great many individual points, and provided a valuable corrective to the tendency to over-emphai se monetary solutions.

On the central issue of full employment, the essence of the Beveridge case is that needs must be clothed with purchasing power. If demand shows signs of failing to absorb the whole available output, then tax remissions or subsidies must be used to enable or induce people to buy the goods which they want—or, more commonly, what the current political majority thinks that they ought to want. Professor Fisher prefers to approach the other way round. If goods are unsold, why do producers not make more effort to give consumers what they want? Why not try to promote new enterprise at the “growing points” of the economic system, and to render existing firms more adaptable? There is not much difficulty in showing that along these lines a great deal more could be done than was actually attempted in the thirties; most of all, of course, in Professor Fisher’s own special field of international trade.
Nazi Liturgy
Authors: Breitenfeld Wlter
Published: July 2007

Modern men are inclined to disregard the power of ideas. With Hitler and a number of his lieutenants dead and the others in captivity it seems to them that Clio has written finìs to the short, though comprehensive chapter, “National Socialism”. Our age is wont to see things purely in terms of politics and politics in terms of material power. If this were true, National Socialism would have found its end with the destruction of .its material power and its organisation. National Socialism, however, was not only a political machinery, masses and guns, it was also, and above all, an idea. When the Nazis spoke of totality they avowedly wished to make it clear that they would not confine themselves to economics and politics, or indeed, confine themselves to anything. Their idea was that of an all-embracing Weltanschauung, a definite order of values with the claim to be absolute, or in other words, a religion.

While insane national pride, injured by the defeat in 1918, together with economic and social pressure created an atmosphere suitable for revolution, the real core of the Nazi movement lay in a much deeper stratum of the people's minds. The revolution against the religion of love and the spirit of the Sermon of the Mount—prepared during centuries and manifest in Bismarck’s fight against “Ultramontanism”—rose immediately after 1918, sponsored by Hitler’s forerunner and temporary companion Ludendorff. His wife Mathilde, especially, attempted to preach a romantic mysticism in form of a queer combination of pantheism and Wodan idolatry, which seemed to her the adequate expression of the Teutonic religious spirit. This experiment failed since the theatrical nightly ceremonies in woods and the sight of spectacled German schoolmasters growing wild beards and drinking beer from wassailhorns proved too much even for the most romantic German little bourgeois.
Internment
Authors: Zacharias H. C. E.
Published: July 2007

Adjustment to the novel life one is condemned to lead behind barbed wire begins the moment one has been assigned one's quarters. This adjustment is at first purely physical; but long before one has mastered the routine of living in such a place, there are naturally attempts at adjusting oneself to it also mentally. The obvious and most general first adjustment comes by way of resentment, disguised in most cases by a forced jocularity, which tries to laugh off the whole thing. “Are we downhearted?—NO”, used to be the slogan for this sort of attitude during World War 1. In my own case this kind of light-heartedness came naturally as a reaction against the period of uncertainty preceding it: for we had lived for months in a daily atmosphere of anxiety, as to whether our place (an S.V.D. seminary in Manila) would be commandeered by the Japanese army or not, and where we could go in such a case. The wearying part of this had been that one day it seemed quite certain that the Japanese would never take this place, whilst the arrival of another military party of inspections the next day made it certain that they would. When, therefore, on July 8th, 1944, the thunderbolt struck, cancelling our previous release on parole, I for one, felt a great relief that all uncertainty and futile conjectures were over and that now one found onself actually interned, with no more anxieties as to what course to take and what decisions to make. There was nothing now to do, but to wait and “suffer fools gladly”.
A Schoolboy's Reminiscences of Cardinal Newman
Authors: Pope Hugh
Published: July 2007

I am only too conscious of the impertinence of this heading: What value could such memories have? And how far are they trustworthy? Yet they are my memories, and though some sixty years have elapsed, they remain as fresh in my mind as though they had happened but yesterday.

When I was just over four years old my mother took me to a dairy kept by a Mr. Godwin, who had been Newman’s butler in Ireland. He put me on his knee and said: “Do you know Jack Smallman?” I did, for Smallman—whom I had always thought of as Mister Smallman—was a carpenter who fascinated me by working with saw and chisels, which I longed to handle. “Well,” said Godwin, “I was JJr. .Newman s butler and the lad Smallman was the ‘buttons!.” I saw my mother smiling at this; she was probably wondering what I was making of the term ‘buttons’.

“Young Smallman,” continued the old man, “was sometimes impertinent. So one day I put him over my knee and smacked him well” I gasped at the bare idea of smacking the man of chisels and saws. Gut the old man continued: “What do you think that lad said when I had done my duty by him? He said to me: ‘You must feel very exhausted after that, Mr. Godwin. Let me draw you a glass of beer’.” *

A few years later, it must have been in 1878 or 1879, a man leaning on the gate, which in those days separated the school premises from the part of the cloister by which people came to church, astonished me by saying: “Say, I reckon if I hang on this gate long enough I might see ‘Nooman’ pass this way?” I was very doubtful, for I had never seen the future Cardinal there.
A Solution of the Leakage
Authors: Woollen C. J.
Published: July 2007

There are some who see in Catholic participation in the Youth Movement a powerful means for stemming the leakage. They recognise that the Catholic club or youth organisation may well be the bridge between the school and the world. It is obvious, indeed, that there is immense gain to our adolescents when they are nurtured in a Catholic atmosphere by those who are solicitous for their spiritual welfare. It would be difficult to overestimate the good that must come from their taking part in activities directed by helpers whose outlook is necessarily apostolic.

But these good results will only be achieved if our own attitude to the Youth Movement is right. We must not regard it as a kind of rescue work, as if there had already been failure in the cultivation of the tender plant. If it is not yet a proclamation of the glorious fruition of youthful endeavour, it must not at any rate continue the artificial forcing that was begun at school, now in the form of an imposed culture and a suggested enthusiasm for social betterment. Our Youth Movement must be a real one in the sense that it is Youth which is making the movement, and not Youth being moved by its self-appointed guardians.

In short, the Catholic participation in the Movement must not be allowed to involve us in a false philosophy. On the contrary, we have in the Catholic youth organisation an opportunity of combating false ideas on “culture”. We can show that any concentration on collective activities, physical and mental, points not to a material life-goal, but to an eternal one. We must emphasise that we are making no pretence to stay the time which is all too surely and rapidly running its course, but are encouraging our young people to make the best use of the vital period in preparation for this life and the next.
The Husbandman of the Visible Universe
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

Husbandman’ is the word; for, if not wholly adequate, as one word could hardly be, it does, better than any other, express man’s status and function in the universe, and especially in the visible universe, so that its immediate concrete sense and the analogies to which it gives rise are verified essentially and verified to the full. Whatever is verified essentially of mankind is verified in Adam, the head of this family, and in Christ in whom this headship is restored. We should beware of any kind of mere generalisation—even the generalisation, ‘All men are sinners,’ is made at a level quite different from that of such an essential judgment —and emphatically we must not be understood to mean ‘in fact men are most commonly tillers of the soil’. Man has the cosmic function of husbandman whether this last statement is verified or not. But then it follows that our meaning is deeper than the level of fact and of generalisations of fact.

We should note that the whole of the sub-human creation is ordained in and through man in the cosmic unity. The sub-human world is not fully a world and not fully a cosmos by itself. From it may be drawn suggestions of unity but not really a unity of its own. In man as part (head) of the visible creation, the visible world has a unity of which man is the guarantee and ‘sacrament’ (in the same sense in which it may be said the Pope is ‘sacrament’ of the Church’s unity).
The Parish as a Missionary Community
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: July 2007

Colombes is a working-class district on the outskirts of Paris with a population of about 23,000. For the last five years it has been the scene of an experiment whose importance can scarcely be exaggerated, and the latest volume of Rencontres) is a detailed account of the work of the Abb6 Michonneau and the group of priests who are engaged in evangelizing a parish in which practising Catholics number scarcely five per cent, of the population. It would be impertinent to praise a document whose whole purpose is to make available to priests everywhere the fruits of day-to-day experience of the hardest apostolate of all. Much of the detail in these five hundred pages has special reference to conditions in France, but the methods described—and above all the spirit they manifest—are of the liveliest relevance for all priests at work in a pagan world.

‘The proletariat is pagan. Not because it doesn’t “practise,” but because its mentality is pagan, wholly alien to the Christian spirit, indifferent to the teaching we offer, careless of the demands of the moral standards we proclaim.’ At once, then, it is necessary to distinguish between the Christian parish, where the Church is still recognized for what she is, and the missionary parish in a pagan environment. ‘Our methods must be revised if not totally changed.’ As Cardinal Suhard has remarked, ‘We must free ourselves from every sort of narrow traditionalism and adapt ourselves to present needs.’ Hence, ‘since 95 per cent, of the Church’s children don’t come to her, 95 per cent, of the Church’s concern and activity must be directed towards them. And not only by groanings and optimistic hopes, but in reality.’

What, then, is the ‘parish’? Is it the faithful few or the apostate many? ‘The life of my parish is the life of everybody who lives in it.
Red Army Soldier
Authors: Dalgleish John
Published: July 2007

We all know Tommy Atkins. In two wars he has become symbolic of the British soldier. We know what he thinks, how he will react to most events, and his general likes and dislikes. He has been hailed as ‘Britain’s best ambassador’. In foreign countries his demeanour has been one of kindly tolerance, cheerfulness, and some degree of self-effacement. All in all, these things have built themselves into a reasonably understandable character.

What of Ivan Ivanovitch, ‘Tommy Atkins’ of the Red Army? There are three million of his kind in occupied Europe, stretching from the Balkans to the Arctic, and from the Russian frontier to Central Germany. Can we define a general character for Ivan Ivanovitch, whose role is such a significant part of the international play being performed in Europe today?

I have known a hundred Ivans. I have seen him in this aftermath of war. I have seen the results of his handiwork. But my knowledge-is coloured by the difference between the Oriental and the Occidental minds. This barrier is a constant difficulty, necessitating a re-examination of every event. For instance, there was the Red Army soldier who deprived an Austrian of his wireless set, then, as he was leaving, dug his free hand beneath his tunic, brought forth a jade ornament and thrust it at the Austrian, saying: ‘A present for me from Hungary. I give it to you for this present’ (pointing to wireless set). The interest of the situation lies in the word, ‘present’. Was the expression meant humorously, as you and I might have said it? Or did the Red Army soldier interpret finding as keeping? Closer acquaintance with Ivan shows that it is legal for the Red Army soldier to possess what he finds, as long as the article is not required by the State. Hence, there was no humour or veiled sarcasm in the soldier’s remark to the Austrian.
Charity Abounding
Authors: Carpenter Hilary J.
Published: July 2007

It is no doubt inevitable that the Holy See should have been unjustly condemned and wrongly praised by prejudiced or ill- informed people in this country and elsewhere, especially during the years of war and its aftermath. The Holy Father has been condemned when some word or action of his did not, or was deemed not to, conform to the ideology or bias of the critic, just as he has been praised according to an equally false norm of criticism. If he blessed a group of Catholics who happened to be Italians and soldiers, or expressed approbation of Catholics who happened to be Spanish, or condemned the intrinsic evil of an atheistic Communism propounded by men who happened to be Russians, he was dubbed fascist. If he gave succour to British prisoners of war, condemned the evil of Nazism as propounded by the Germans, or pleaded for the Jews persecuted by the totalitarian states, or welcomed to the Vatican the Allied Commanders and their troops, he was congratulated (grudgingly enough, it is true) on these presumed expressions of approval of the Allied cause.

It could hardly be expected that the run of mankind in this narrow, materialistic, selfish, modem world should appreciate the simple truth that the Holy Father both is and acts as the Vice-regent of Christ upon this earth; and that he has a peculiar obligation of paternity in regard to Catholics of all nations; that he has a God-given duty to proclaim to all men the basic principles of morality and to condemn in no uncertain voice, and without respect of persons, any blatant and general disregard of them; that he is bound to regard himself as the universal protector of those in need and the protagonist of justice for all mankind.
The Japanese Return Home
Authors: van Straelen H.
Published: July 2007

In European and American publications it is customary to describe the Japanese as a mysterious, impenetrable, deceitful and enigmatical race. To a certain extent, a similar description is made to apply to the Chinese also, with the exception—at least for so long as they still belong to the United Nations—of ‘deceitfulness.’

That East and West are quite different and do not understand one another very well is a generally accepted fact. The Eastern peoples have quite a different spiritual orientation, and for that reason we shall never be able to understand the Japanese and Chinese completely, in the sense of finding an absolutely satisfactory ‘explanation’ of them. Our nervous reactions and sense impressions are quite different from theirs. Our two life-streams—to use that beautiful Oriental metaphor—do not merge. They do not even flow in parallel directions. They have a quite different mental machinery. Our whole brain system, physical energies, reactions to intellectual and sensorial impressions and other unnameable forces of our racial complexion, are different from theirs. The case is not the same with the German or the Frenchman or the member of any other white race. These we can fully understand; we may not agree with them; but their way of doing things and their outlook on life, their objectives are for us reasonable. This is not the case with the Far Easterner. Of course, if we consider the human mind with reference to its essence, we shall find it to be one and the same in all men. Yet this one mind works differently in an Oriental and in an Occidental, so that we are justified in speaking of an Eastern and a Western mind. As an Oriental puts it rather poetically: ‘
A Recent Advance in Human Ecology
Authors: Badenoch A. G.
Published: July 2007

Philologists may be interested enough to find out when this word ‘ecology’ became part of the language. Its frequent use in scientific writing today is a portent. The sister-word ‘economy’ has reflected the history of much of our modern thinking about man and mankind in the emphasis laid, not on ‘goods’ themselves as such, but on commerce in and distribution of such goods. Just as, from Devas onwards, there is a growing tendency among economists to consider human, as well as material, factors in the definition of such ideas as prosperity, so a new branch of science has found it increasingly necessary to study in detail what one may call the raw materials of prosperity.

Materially speaking, there are two main aspects of the environment of homo sapiens that repay modern study. One may be summed up under the term exterior influences—climate, housing, clothing, and the like. The others, subject of this short essay, are internal: in a word, man’s diet.

Time was when science seemed to have summed up the whole matter of the human body and how it is nourished, in the three magic words: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates. But already the biochemists were beginning to analyse the individual components of each of these, and the necessity for certain minerals—at first the list was limited to iron and calcium—was emphasised, together with observations of their deficiency in the diet of civilised man. A little later, first Lunin and then Hopkins proved that there was a missing factor which the latter called ‘accessory food substances’ and to which Funk gave the name vitamines.
The Return of Franciscus de Vitoria
Authors: O'Sullivan Richard
Published: July 2007

In the month of June, 1946, the fourth centenary of Franciscus de Vitoria was celebrated at Salamanca before a concourse of theologians and lawyers and scholars from all parts of the world.

Relatively speaking, one imagines that the name of Franciscus de Vitoria means more to the world today than it did at the date of his first or his second or his third centenary. In these last years, men of many lands, one may say men of all the lands, have come to acknowledge the debt that international law owes to him as its first founder. Years ago Holland, the birthplace of Grotius, made handsome acknowledgment; as France has done, and Italy too; and all the Americas. On 23rd December, 1933, the Seventh International Conference of American States, passed a resolution ‘that a bust of the Spanish theologian, Francisco de Vitoria, be placed in the headquarters of the Pap-Ameriean Union in Washington, as a tribute to the Professor of Salamanca, who, in the 16th century, established the foundations of modern International Law’.

In Boswell’s Life of Johnson, the good Doctor is said to have spoken with great emotion these words: ‘I love the University of Salamanca ; for when the Spaniards were in doubt as to the lawfulness of their conquering America, the University of Salamanca gave it as their opinion that it was not lawful’. At the celebrations of 1946, in Salamanca, Dr Brierly the distinguished professor of International Law of the University of Oxford attended. His acknowledgment, and the acknowledgment of Dr Johnson, go not only for Oxford but also for England.
Vitoria and International Law Today
Authors: Wortley B.
Published: July 2007

The great Dominican Order of which St Thomas Aquinas is the finest flower may still be, in the minds of many Englishmen, ‘in a special way associated with the Inquisition in Spain. It may therefore come as a surprise to those unacquainted with the work of Francisco de Vitoria, to learn that it was a Spanish Dominican, who died four hundred years ago, who was in his day Europe’s foremost champion of the rule of international law and of human rights. Of Basque origin, Vitoria was an active university teacher at the violent epoch when the Spaniards, having defeated the Moors at home, were founding their American colonies. Vitoria's opinions commanded wide attention among his contemporaries; so much so, that his idealism incurred for him considerable opposition in powerful governmental circles at a time when interests and passions combined to obscure impartial thinking on international affairs.

It may be instructive, in what follows, to compare some of Vitoria’s principles (as set out and expounded in the collections of his works produced and introduced by J. B. Scott for the Carnegie Endowment for international peace) with the principles now to be found in the United Nations Charter, the latest constructive attempt to create an international order.

No doubt the discovery of the Americas by Columbus in 1492, when Vitoria was young, was an event just as stupefying as the discovery of the atomic bomb is to us. The mariner’s astrolobe of 1480 may be compared with the cyclotron of today. Neither of these wonders has prevented international lawyers from facing the future and applying their principles to new problems and unthought-of circumstances.
Human Dignity in the Thought of Vitoria
Authors: Sarmiento Edward
Published: July 2007

Without falling into the detestable errors of racialism, we can say that national cultures enshrine, at least in a measure, qualities both good and bad truly characteristic of the nation. Thus we may see in Spanish history, literature and art, a great emphasis on man’s natural dignity, an emphasis which at times passes from virtue to vice in the pride which is at present so curiously insisted on by some who pretend to a special understanding of things Spanish. The great Spaniard, Francisco de Vitoria, although far from approving an unhealthy national pride, does in fact bring out very clearly that man, by his own proper nature, is invested with a dignity which is involved in the moral consideration of the most diverse activities.

In his day the Spanish tendency to boasting—pilloried in the Rodomontades—had real and marvellous achievements to rest on, and the reconquest of Christian Spain was at last an accomplished deed. Moralists and theologians were imbued with a feeling for man’s greatness. Vitoria in particular was concerned in his thought with the dignity of man as such, rather than man as Spaniard. In the Relectio de Indis he brings out most clearly that the treatment of barbarians must be governed by what is worthy of man in himself. Nothing does so much credit to Spanish culture as that, even while the baroque style in sentiment and manners was elaborating its less admirable features—ostentatious display, excess of pride, of panache, and the absurdities of pundonor—Spain could still produce a man like Vitoria whose simplicity, austerity, and firm adherence to principle give us the Spanish feeling for dignity in its best form, as expressed by gravedad.