bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gerard Manley Tuncks
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

It is Narcissus who sees in the unrippled water the transfiguration flash back of its liquid clearness. He is like a god, so perfectly is his vision proportioned to his seeing, so uniquely has the element reserved for him a significance which is for him alone. Completely and wholly it is for him, but for the pool he gazes on is this interchange of light and of looks anything less than the end possessed, the entelechy and the consummation of its being? For this it was made, that it should receive this imprint of light from above and so render it. A clarity-in-general become indelibly this clarity, uniquely its and his. The word which utters it is a new thing in the scale of creation.

It seems to me that poetry ceased to form itself upon the Liturgy in order to form itself upon the poet's own likeness seen in the mirror of the world. (Or is the’ statement “simplicist,” a priori, slick?) Tuncks, then, in his naked individuality, creeps out from Choir to choose between the apple-orchards and the wilderness. It has commonly been one or the other, according, perhaps, as the sense of sight in his non-spatial anatomy lies nearer the heart or the intelligence, or to the liver, source of black bile and sombre landscapes. So with his note-book Gerard Manley Tuncks searching the inscapes of clouds and flowers, the ash-tree and “weeds in wheels” for the reflection of his own countenance which is in the eyes of Jesus Christ, but vicariously in “the bluebell I have been looking at. I can tell the beauty of our Lord by it.”
Blimpery in Exceuis
Authors: Eppstein John
Published: July 2007

Wishing no doubt to console a group who are more noisy at the moment than they are numerous, a firm of Catholic publishers has now perpetrated an English version of the Comte de Saint-Aulaire's venomous lampoon Genève contre la Paix, a work well calculated to offset their former productions, The Church and War and Peace and the Clergy, which were—well, not quite nice.

It is the “stuff to give ‘em.” M. de Saint-Aulaire is the French equivalent of Colonel Blimp. But whereas our English hero is merely reduced by the thought of that dreadful League of Nations to an inarticulate spluttering of “Gad, sir! Stuff and nonsense, what, what,” his Gallic colleague has a more vivid imagination and the gift of tongues. True, he has his lucid moments, only too rare in this book, in which his shrewdness delights us; but for most of the time he sees red, or, should I say, Red. So eloquent indeed is this excited old gentleman that it is a little difficult sometimes for one, whose humdrum job it has been for sixteen years to acquaint himself with the actual history of the League, to follow his flights of fancy. His essay is not very coherent. It begins by explaining that the League has never existed or, alternatively, (as the lawyers would say), has long since compassed its own decomposition. Having proclaimed the dogma of equality (Has it?), it has built, though decomposed, upon inequality and privilege. The real forces behind it (if it exists) are those occult Internationals, Bolshevism, Freemasonry, Judaism and Pangermanism—oddly united, these last two—which, as Colonel Blimp would heartily agree, are well calculated to make the flesh of all good Christians creep. The League is “a prostitute,” “an abortion clinic,” “a corpse,” “a fantastic hoax,” “a gravedigger,” “aparalytic,” “anassassin,” “asuicide,"etc. It has committed nothing but errors: it has told nothing but lies.
Applied Psychology and Virtue
Authors: Fay Ruby
Published: July 2007

In a recent publication a German Jesuit Father has set down some useful suggestions for the ascetic which are culled from the authoritative findings of modem experimental psychology. He shows, among other things, how psycho-analytical research can, and does, contribute much of importance in educating a stable, virtuous life; and one of the basic spiritual problems dealt with is a faulty disposition of will—a disposition with such urgent consequences as to compel immediate attention of both spiritual teacher and psychologist.

As many of the modern exponents of psychological knowledge and motive-analysis in general have called down upon themselves the condemnation of not a few moralists, Catholics have been inclined to ignore the subject as something not safely assimilable. This appears to be in response to certain authorities who opposed the Christian pursuit of virtue—maintaining it to be an oppression of man’s primitive urges, which of course is not quite the case; for it is a position of one instinct being subordinate to another, and ultimately to the Divine law. But probing as it does the inflammable part of man, experimental psychology should receive constant observation by Catholic teachers in view of the help and enlightenment it affords in self-formation.
“In the Utmost Anxiety”
Authors: Gurian Waldemar
Published: July 2007

The fate of the Encyclical Letter “In the Utmost Anxiety,” addressed to the German hierarchy, is in itself sufficient to show the state of affairs in the Third Reich. It was not allowed to be published either in any secular newspaper or in any purely religious paper. The printers who dared to print the Encyclical for the bishops’ official publication were closed down by the police for the time being and the official papers confiscated. All that was publicly known of the Encyclical was a short notice of a severe protest to the Vatican in respect of it. Following this, the letter was rejected by the Nazi leaders, notably by Adolf Hitler himself who on May 1st made some biting references to critics of the Nazis and allusions to the Pope's Encyclical. In reference to the Churches he said: “So long as they attend to their own affairs the State will not intervene. But if they go against us with sermons and encyclicals and encroach on the business of the State, we shall call them to order and we shall force them back into their proper work of caring for the religious needs of the people.”

The very attempt to suppress the Encyclical proves how right the Holy Father was to condemn therein the eluding and violation of the “Reichskonkordat,” for the later, established in 1933, distinctly maintained the right of free publication of pastoral letters and encyclicals.
The Catholic and a Future War
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: July 2007

“The horror of the war of to-morrow is that no fever of collective exaltation, no lyricism of poet or orator, will be able to ennoble it or mark it with the authentic sign of the spirit. The apparent ideological character with which no doubt it will be invested will not long obscure its true nature: the conflict of the selfishness of classes, adding a new complication to the selfishness of nationalisms, will make it wholly inhuman. Not only in its furies, but in its very causes, the war will be wholly barbarous: the bankruptcy of the spirit giving over to the chances of force the care of making a world, the bloody clash of a too numerous population in a too narrow peninsular, the drama of fear and hunger. Such perhaps will be our destiny: to die in a catastrophe, in a medley of causes so confused and of results so dubious for our country itself that we shall really not know for what good we have given our lives” (pp. n, 12). This is perhaps the chief cause of our present distress and despair in face of the future: the knowledge that it is so easy to give our allegiance to a cause which to-morrow may reveal as either wholly or in part the wrong cause: “We are afraid of learning that ultimate bitterness of the dying soldier who does not understand the point of his death; more, we fear lest one day orators stand over our tombs to proclaim us, not what we would have wished but what events have decided for us, or worse still, what the interests of a party will demand should be said” (p. 12).
The Hymns They Deserve
Authors: Tindal-Atkinson Aelwin
Published: July 2007

The Middle Ages will provide a wealth of hymnody, most of which lies unhappily neglected upon the library shelves. The output was prodigious, and was of varying quality. The most outstanding literary form is the Sequence, which found its way into the Mass and was sung immediately before the Gospel. Its originator was a Benedictine monk, Notker Balbulus, the Stammerer or perhaps the Garrulous—he has left most entertaining gossip of his hero Charlemagne. He found it hard, we are told, to commit to memory the long melodies sung on the last syllable of the Alleluia and to counteract this failing he forestalled Mr. Pelman by setting the notes to a simple form of words. In the next three centuries this elementary device evolved into a definite literary form, written finally in metre and rhyme. The Easter Sequence, Victimae Paschali laudes, shows it in its earlier stages and the Whit Sunday Sequence, Veni Sancte Spiritus, shows it fully developed as a recognized form of rhymed composition.

Before dealing with the Sequence, however, we must refer to a series of hymns more familiar in their English than in their Latin form. The original from which they have been quarried is the 12th century production of Bernard of Morlas, a monk of Cluny: Hora novissima, tempora pessima sunt, vigilemus: “The world is very evil, the times are waxing late; Be sober and keep vigil, the Judge is at the gate.” It is for the most part a long denunciation of an evil world fast moving towards the abyss of destruction. In it he attacks vice with a savage candour that lacks both restraint and reticence. But from this majestic diatribe are drawn those well-known Anglican hymns: “Brief life is here our portion” and “Jerusalem the golden.”
Folk-Lore and the Supernatural
Authors: Drewitt Norbert
Published: July 2007

Baron Von Hugel compared the interpenetration of nature and grace to the movements of a hand inside a glove: “God everywhere but stimulates and supports man whom He has made, and His Hand moves ever underneath and behind the tissue—a tissue which, at best, can become as it were a glove, and suggest the latent hand. The Divine Action will thus stimulate and inform the human action somewhat like the force that drives the blood within the stag's young antlers, or like the energy that pushes the tender sap-full fern-buds up through the hard, heavy ground.” All that can be seen is the outward veil. But the movements of it are of such a kind that they point to a power within, other than, on another plane of being than, the glove.

So also in the history of divine activity among men, the raising of fallen humanity according to those concrete needs which spring from the combined historic facts of original justice, original sin, and Redemption, we see only the race, each individual human being. But as in the movements of the glove, so in the activity of grace-impelled men, those movements, that activity, point beyond the visible fringes of the natural vehicle to a Presence of an altogether different kind, working, planning, for the good of men, things far above what we can conceive, or, having conceived, could achieve.
Liberty and Liberalism
Authors: Alexander Bernard
Published: July 2007

We have so often heard the cry that Liberty is threatened. Statesmen preach to us of our precious heritage of Liberty which must be preserved from the attacks of foreign-born political absolutisms. In the name of Freedom we are called upon to rally to the defence of parliamentary institutions or Democracy. Why does this appeal fail to carry conviction? Is it not that many feel that the Liberty that they are called upon to save has not yet been won? They are told that they must not allow themselves to be enslaved as are the peoples living under Dictatorships. But is it not true that the peoples living under dictatorships sometimes renounced their parliamentary institutions because they believed that dictatorships would give them greater freedom?

The alliance between parliamentary institutions and freedom is a fiction of political Liberalism, which is already denied by half of Europe. Liberalism is, however, more than a political philosophy; it is a Weltanschauung or general attitude of mind. In England this attitude dominated the intellectual outlook of the nineteenth century, permeating theology, philosophy and economics, as well as politics. The Liberal attitude is essentially relativist, anti-dogmatic and anti-authoritarian. Denying the truth of absolutes it is fundamentally hostile to all systems of thought and institutions which seek to preserve them. In the name of freedom Liberalism has waged war on all absolutism, whether theological, economic or political. For religion it has tried to substitute freedom of thought; for a monopolistic economy, a free economic system; for political despotism, free representative government.
A Dialectic of Self-Giving
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

The end of all becoming is being, but not, ultimately, of that which becomes considered by itself: of that which becomes considered as participation in another mode of being which is the mode of being of something which already and really is.

Change means that that which changes is not to be considered by itself.

The end (result) of the body’s constant mutations is the successive participation in the potentiality of matter. But this is not the end (finality) of the body’s mutations. The end (finality) of becoming can be nothing imperfect.

I think this means that the end of all becoming is the participation of all creatures in the risen humanity of Christ.

Being is essentially communicable. You don’t have to explain why being communicates itself, as if it were something being as such were not expected to do. Perfection, what we would call by transliteration the formality of being as such and of actuality, is communicable per se, imperfection communicable per accidens. Imperfection to be communicated implies a pre-established communication in potential being. Communication of imperfection is the abandonment on the part of those who communicate in it of specific and diverse actuality for the sake of that communication in what is potential and common. The communication of perfection is the communication of the diverse as diverse in a unity intrinsically proportioned to its participants. We can understand nothing here without the metaphysical principle of analogy.
The Continuity of Philosophy
Authors: Copleston F. C.
Published: July 2007

The history of philosophy is certainly not the uniform and regular development of a primal seed; there are breaks, irregularities, off-shoots. Yet it is true that we cannot legitimately reduce it to a mere welter of mutually exclusive ideas, to a mere swarm of watertight systems. We shall look in vain for complete breaks. The past cannot but reach over into the present and in some sense perpetuate itself. Period shades off into period gradually and the pressure of what has gone before leaves an indelible mark on the present. Thus all would agree now that we cannot admit a decisive and unbridgeable gulf between the scholasticism of the close of the Middle Ages and the philosophy that succeeded. It is true that the age of Descartes is an age of revolt throughout a great part of Europe, but this very fact precludes the possibility of a complete new beginning, since that age of which the philosopher may be said to be a spokesman by its very contrast and opposition to the preaching age is largely determined and coloured by the past.
Dominicans in the Mongol Empire
Authors: Marsh-Edwards J. C.
Published: July 2007

The story of the gallant attempt of the later Middle Ages to win Asia for the Church is so often passed over with the scantiest reference, even by Catholic historians, that it is almost unknown. It covered more than a century; a century whose short opening years of high hopes were followed by long dreary ones of disappointment, persecution and martyrdom, to end in the destruction of all achievement and the expulsion of the missionaries.

The first great missionary movement, which converted the northern barbarians, was the work of the Benedictines, while the glories of the sixteenth century in the East belong to the Society of Jesus. The great missionaries of the later Middle Ages were the Franciscans and Dominicans. Both Orders bore the brunt of the battle equally throughout Asia, but Cathay and Central Asia was particularly the sphere of the Minorites, while India, Persia and the Caspian Steppes was that of the Preachers.
Wheat Among the Cockle
Authors: Kennedy R. Dingwall
Published: July 2007

Perhaps the most deceptive aspect of this new unrest among the European people is the superficial newness of it. Men are not prepared to recognize the age-old undefeated forces of good and evil, God and the devil, in the new complexity of twentieth century life. They will not realize that the new paganism is saying to-day what intellectual fools have said in all the ages, and that the new Christianity is stealing its very essence from the old, the true, the everlasting Church of Christ. And perhaps the most alarming aspect of it is the subtle encroachment of this sophisticated blindness upon the Catholic field of vision. Now, more than ever before, the need for Catholic Action and the opportunities for its promotion are evident on every hand. The bulwarks of the Faith need strengthening with the strength that comes only from unity of thought and purpose, staunch co-operation between the laity and clergy, and unstinted perseverance in the propagation of God’s revealed Word. Without that strength to stem the flood of anti-Christian feeling which is especially directed against the Catholic Church, there is small prospect of preventing the decline and fall of what was once the whole of Christendom.
What We Can Do About It
Authors: Carpenter Hilary J.
Published: July 2007

“There is to-day an immense amount of nonsense talked about both Bolshevism and Fascism. It is not really necessary, in order to condemn Fascism, to become an apologist for the Russians; nor is it required that those who hate Bolshevism, as every intelligent Christian must, should cry out that Fascism is our only salvation therefrom . . . It is foolish to deny the enemy’s strength, or to blink at one’s own weakness.—Bernard Iddings Bell, A Catholic Looks at his World.”

With this text Mr. Attwater begins his enquiry into Why Communism Gets Away with It, why it is vital that Communism should not get away with it, and the only way to prevent it. As the text might suggest, his bird’s-eye-view of the general situation is balanced and common-sense. He shows that the purely economic proposals of Communism are “eminently calculated to appeal to men suffering under poverty, distress and injustice,” and further that this part of the Communist programme is not by itself morally objectionable. But he goes on to point out that Communism is not only an economic policy; it is also a quasi-philosophy, taught and held with the fervour of a religion. “And that philosophy is false; it is dialectical and materialist, whereas the truth is metaphysical and spiritualist.” It is not easy to convince the working-man of the terrible importance of this statement. Mr. Attwater endeavours, not without a real measure of success, to reduce the issue to concrete terms.
Work and Property
Authors: Heron Ceolfrid
Published: July 2007

Those who find a congenial atmosphere in movements to preserve our countryside, to alleviate the lot of the working-class or to make marriage easier, will meet in Mr. Gill's writings a different level of criticism. He belongs to the small class of critics who have penetrated the merely symptomatic maladjustments of industrialism to conduct an arduous enquiry into the nature of its revolutionary achievements. He is the critic of the Leisure State. It is customary to refer to the Leisure State as the end towards which we are tending. But industrialism began four centuries ago and in that time has succeeded to such an extent in its revolutionary programme that it is reasonable to maintain that we are already living in a society which, if it has any positive form at all, is a Leisure State. That it is also a Servile State, that its leisure is more commonly unemployment or a highly lucrative opportunity for those in the entertainment trade, is explained away both by capitalists and communists; the former pleading for time to realise a more dignified Leisure State, the latter demanding the power to clean up rapidly the messy beginnings of others.
Groups
Authors: Whitestone Peter
Published: July 2007

Recent years have seen the birth and astonishing growth of a movement whose title, marking the place of its first organization, is the somewhat valuable one of the “Oxford Groups.” Although the movement has almost ceased to be a factor in undergraduate life, the name remains: an annual meeting at Oxford—a distinction enjoyed by many other bodies—fosters the connection.

Catholics are not likely to be encouraged to take part in a religious movement outside the visible Church, “undenominational,” and exhibiting many of the features of revivalism; that much may be said at the start. Often in the past treated by Catholics as a joke, the Groups at least merit attention; moreover, at certain points, they touch upon Catholic life. Part of their main programme of “winning the world for Christ” is, avowedly, the “awakening of the historic churches,” with consequent overtures to Catholics: individuals, perhaps unwittingly, have found their way into its ranks. All the more reason then for Catholics to examine the nature of the movement, and form an estimate of its true worth: further, we ought all, priests and laity alike, to be on the look-out for any lesson that may prove of value when translated into Catholic Action.
Liturgical Education
Authors: Meath Gerard
Published: July 2007

“The way to liturgical life does not go through mere teaching but before all it goes through doing.” These words of Doctor Guardini go straight to the heart of the difficulty of liturgical revival. The numerous liturgical societies and periodicals of to-day are so varied in their matter and their treatment of it, that one is sometimes at a loss to discover in them any common purpose. They all profess to have at heart the cultivation of a conscious liturgical life in the Catholic community; but the various aspects and studies of liturgy in which they indulge cannot all claim to have an equally important share in promoting this end. And indeed it is difficult to see where many of them have led or are going to lead at all. Their journals appear and their summer schools are held with unflinching regularity, yet one fails to discern any results beyond a keener appreciation of the beauty of Plainchant or Gothic vestments. This is very good in its way, but it is not all; and we are so often given the impression that it is all. Liturgy is more than this: it is a life, and therefore not something merely to be learnt; above all it is something that must be done—lived; and living is not brought about just by introducing Plainchant or studying the history or art of the liturgy;—these material adjuncts are all necessary in their own place as long as they do not degenerate into dilettante aestheticism or moribund archeology—but before all else it must be realized that liturgical life is essentially based on theological principles. If then this life is to be lived, the people must be instructed in these principles. In the words of a writer in Orate Fratres: “The first requisite for the liturgical outlook is one of spirit.
The Living Church
Authors: Dominican A German
Published: July 2007

Storms have a sacred mission from God: the twofold mission of sifting and of rooting. Firstly, they have the mission to sift: they separate the weak from the strong, and thus preserve the strong from the pernicious influence of the weak. After the storm has passed, only the strong remain. Secondly, storms have the mission to root: while shaking the powerful trunks these are forced to take deep root in the undermost layers of the fertile soil. After the storm, the strong continue, deep-rooted, unconquerable, in the depths of Life.

This double Mission is being fulfilled by the tempests which in our time have broken upon the World-Church in German as in other lands. They have wrought separation: weakly members who never fully lived of the trunk of the Church have broken off in the onslaught. The stronger members have remained, and in them we witness the glorious fact that, in the face of the most formidable attack, they tend only and desire to root deeper and deeper into the soil of the Church.
Social Vocation
Authors: Walsh R. P.
Published: July 2007

Ignorance is one of the greatest evils. It is often the cause of great harm in both the moral and physical spheres. Especially one can note this in the sphere of the social problems. Ignorance is an important factor in helping class hatred.

After the Paris Commune a lay brother of the Vincentians pointed this out to two members of the French aristocracy and in doing so helped to change their lives.

The three were inspecting the ruins of palaces when Brother Maurice turned to the others and said, “It is you who have amused yourselves within these palaces now in ruins: you who pass by without seeing the people, without knowing them or their thoughts or characters, or caring for their needs and their sufferings, it is you who are the real culprits.”
A New Apostolate?
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

It is often dangerous to apply the conduct of the past as a norm to the present. Only too often a facile parallel between days gone by and the present has led to an absurdly literal equation between the two, as we may observe sometimes in the use made of precedent. At the same time fresh light may occasionally be thrown on a situation by indulging in such fancies without intending too rigid an application. It is a fanciful comparison of this sort which we set down here as a feeler, searching out a possible method of regaining the proletariat for Christ, and so of counteracting the powerful appeal which Communism makes to our age.

The facts of St. Dominic's life and vocation are generally known, and here we wish only to draw attention to certain aspects of it. When St. Dominic came to Languedoc, on his way to negotiate a marriage with a foreign princess on behalf of his Sovereign, he found the Church hard pressed by an enemy powerful because popular. One of the causes of the popularity of Albigensianism was the apparently severe interpretation of Christian life by the leaders of the movement, and the people, as always, were profoundly impressed at the sight of rigid austerity linked with a burning zeal. The Church had, of course, attempted to save her people from the ravages of the heresy, and had sent out her emissaries in the sombre yet rich state appropriate to their condition as bishops, abbots and priests. But if such attire and accoutrement was the due of these defenders of the faith, it turned out to be a hindrance to their fight for truth since it contrasted ill, in the minds of the populace, with the ostentatiously ascetic lives of the Albigensian leaders.
The Task of The Living Church
Authors: Dominican A German
Published: July 2007

The sublime fact of being members of the essentially living Church, bestowed upon us in Holy Baptism, implies a task with regard to our people. The Living World-Church wills, through us her living members, to build our German people into a living Church. There is very little sense to start by drawing up magnificent plans for the re-conquering of the de-christianized populations for the Church, although it goes without saying that this re-conquest remains an important task to be accomplished by us. But in order to achieve it successfully, another task is even more important, viz., the total Christianization of those who are still living in the Living Church. Re-christianization of the estranged population is only possible by means of total Christianization of the Christian community itself. In conferring together as to the method of building up our contemporary German people into a Living Church, ways and means will have to be discussed, and in the first place, how to make each one of us into a Living Member of the Church.

By far the most important element in this personal transformation into a Living Church will be the Life-preservation and the Life-intensification by means of the Holy Eucharist.
Synthesis on Social Transformation
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

It is the most frightful of ironies that our economic system has opened new and valid horizons to the aspiration of our work precisely by that same liberal-commercial drive which has smashed pre-capitalist systems of personal labour and family production. Man’s work and woman’s bearing—the bitter things under the domination of the balance sheet, the world-wide market, the clean-cuffed man of commerce. Because clean-cuffs does not care a damn for man’s work and woman’s bearing. A production which is primarily judged by its export balance (and that means a production which is primarily for the profit and prestige of the clean-cuffs, the telephone-manipulators of marginal prices, the destroyers) runs clean counter to the restoration of the personal in industry. But, says Marcel Melcor, liberalist commercialism at its present stage involves an impossibility and is being destroyed by it. You can’t go on developing the consuming power of a minority at the expense of the majority. You can’t go on developing the consuming power of a minority at a greater pace than that of the majority. Morals aside, you can't do it. The agricultural population of the world (three-fourths of the world's population) cannot continue to be exploited in the interests of export balance sheets. He says we’ve got to stop it before it breaks us. And he says the only way to do it is to turn the trend of economic effort away from international export balances and build up justice through recognizing the existence of our next-door neighbour. And he is speaking here primarily as an economist. The humiliating lesson is rubbed in: if you want to save your bacon you must seek first the kingdom of God and His justice. Which is a bit of a surprise if all you wanted to save was your bacon.
Spain—Persecutions Old and New
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

The English Press for some years past has consistently misjudged the Spanish people and our Press of to-day, with scanty exceptions, is not exempt from this unhappy phase of English journalism. But however complacent we may hitherto have been in accepting the views of our journalists, we must feel something of a shock in the revelations of the Spanish Hierarchy who have so effectually drawn aside the curtain concealing things deliberately hidden from us.

The document they have published is one couched in calm language uttered without either bitterness or rancour. It is a plain statement subscribed by 48 prelates ruling or administering 54 of the 60 dioceses of Spain, men on the spot speaking from personal experience. It opens with a clear account of the injustice of the 1936 elections, when through “the lawlessness of a Government, which, in defiance of the will of the people, set up a political machinery in direct opposition to the majority of the nation, the Right, with a majority of more than a million votes over the Left, was given 118 deputies less than the Popular Front. For this purpose the votes of entire provinces had been entirely cancelled.”

Of the utmost importance is their reply to the objection that “Whatever were the Reds’ excesses, the fact remains that, had Franco not rebelled, the hundreds and thousands of priests who were assassinated would have been saved for their spiritual work.” The Bishops’ answer is: “As witnesses of the position at the moment when the conflict arose, we are unable to agree with the statement. The exact opposite is the truth.
Pauline Jaricot and the Rosary
Authors: Kildany Herbert
Published: July 2007

Research made in connection with the impending canonisation of Pauline Jaricot, the French girl who is perhaps best known as the foundress of the Association for the Propagation of the Faith, has brought to light an interesting chapter in the history of the practice of saying the rosary. A little more than a century ago the seventeen-year-old daughter of a Lyons silk-merchant was inspired to start an association which would promote prayer and almsgiving for the conversion of the heathen. The humble effort which begun among her father’s work-girls spread rapidly thanks to the zeal and organizing ability of this would-be missionary. Her system was simplicity itself: a short prayer each day and alms of a sou a week, the members to be grouped in dizaines, centaines and milles; and the widespread success did much to rehabilitate the fortunes of the French missionary societies who had been reduced to inactivity by the upheavals of the revolution and the Empire.
Modern Thomist Psychology
Authors: Elrington Aidan
Published: July 2007

In a preface to a recent and up-to-date treatise on modem scientific psychology, based upon the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Viennese psychiatrist, Dr. Rudolf Allers, emphasizes the importance of such a foundation for modem psychology and maintains that no system of philosophy is better suited to this purpose than that of the Angelic Doctor. The peculiar position occupied by psychology, standing as it does between biology and philosophy proper, demands just such a basis. Man is a psycho-physical organism, composed of mind and body, spirit and matter, the ultimate nature and correlation of which cannot be discovered by experience alone. As other psychologists are beginning to realize, the detachment of empirical and experimental psychology from speculative psychology leads to uncertainty and confusion; and the failure to adopt a definite and common-sense philosophy has resulted in a number of divergent schools, each with some vague and uncertain philosophical background.
Russian Sophiology
Authors: Danzas J.
Published: July 2007

Russian religious thought is experiencing an acute crisis. The mysticism which, in pre-revolutionary days, greatly interested certain Russian intellectual circles has now reached its full development among thinkers grouped around the Russian Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris; a “new school of theology” is even being spoken of. Occasionally this group has used the term neo-gnosis, or orthodox gnosis, to describe their particular mystical tendencies. There is no question of a rupture with the Orthodox Church, but of a broadening of her doctrinal teaching, by the introduction of conceptions purported to belong to her traditions, though discarded by the official Church. So, in the name of these traditions, Fr. Bulgakov, head of the Institute, expounds a so-called sophiological doctrine based upon the conception of a hypostatized divine Wisdom, idea (in the Platonic sense) of the creation co-etemal with the Creator.

This doctrine is taught in several important works of which The Light Undimmed was written before the author's ordination. Fr. Bulgakov has subsequently developed his thought in a number of books, mostly published in Paris: The Burning Bush, The Friend of the Bridegroom, The Ladder of Jacob, Icons and their Veneration, and especially The Lamb of God, which forms the first part of a work upon theandrism intended to epitomize the writer’s sophiological teaching. We must add an essay on Hypostasis and Hypostatisation published in Prague, also a series of articles in Putj, Russian philosophical periodical isued in Paris, some of which are noteworthy as they explain the writer’s intellectual evolution.
Newman and Pater
Authors: F. S. B.
Published: July 2007

John Henry Newman stood alone among the leaders of the Oxford Movement; he possessed that elevation of mind which helps men to acquire those rare attributes of spiritual cultivation making for the fulfilment of life in Divine terms. Spiritual cultivation demands many qualities, and among the more prominent may be discerned courage, strength of will, sensitiveness, courtesy, kindliness, refinement and enlightened reticence. The last the rarest of all and the crown of the edifice. It is no rhetorical exaggeration to urge that all of these reposed in the character of Newman.

Newman was logical in matters of Religion; he combined the qualities of the scholar and the saint; he was an intellect and a master of the spiritual life. A gentleman deeply read in English literature and with whom I have had the privilege of written discussion on the character of Newman, noted in one of my papers that he regarded it as singular that Newman, more than the other outstanding figures of the Oxford Movement, should have possessed the logical faculty in a degree unusual among men of definitely artistic temperament, as his perfect literary style shews him to have been. My literary acquaintance went on to say that although the criticism and comparisons Froude makes in Volume IV, “Short-Studies,” have encountered much hostile criticism he still thought that Newman was shewn in his proper magnitude as against Keble’s wistful sentiment and Pusey’s hesitation. Newman’s mastery of spiritual values shewed that he was well versed in the management of conduct.
“Right” and “Left”
Authors: Maritain Jacques
Published: July 2007

We Christians of 1937 are the spectators of a terrible drama, a drama which confronts our consciences with agonizing problems. This drama is the disastrous struggle for power between two rival complex ideologies which have come to be known as “Right” and “Left.” Already this conflict is sapping the life-blood of Spain; already it is breeding rancour and hatred of brother for brother throughout the civilized world, and threatens the very foundations of civilization with irreparable disaster.

Elsewhere (in my Lettre sur l’Indépendance) I have sketched some of the characteristic traits which seem to me, as a student of philosophy and of current political trends, to be the distinguishing features of “Right” and “Left.”

To those observations one might add that in concrete experience, which is for the most part in actual fact an experience of misrepresentation (for misrepresentation pertains to man and leaves him only at the price of supreme intellectual discipline—omnis homo mendax), in concrete experience, I say, a particular and typical misrepresentation, closely bound up with the complex question which we are considering, makes its appearance.
John Wesley and Christian Peace
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

Some little time ago the present writer was ordered by his Prior to speak at an Inter-denominational Anti-War demonstration on Hampstead Heath. The demonstration was no doubt due to a widespread opinion that, all physical and political expedients for ensuring peace having failed, the only hope for peace would be through moral means. This opinion bore on its face the outline of sanity and almost of inevitability. Indeed so sane and inevitable did it seem, and does it still seem, that even men who profess to believe that religion is the opium of the people are often found blaming the ministers of religion for not bringing in, as by a miracle, the reign of peace.

The difficulty I felt in being obedient to the command of obedience was not a distaste for any command. Still less was it a disagreement with the belief that no physical nor political expedients but only moral expedients will end war. But I felt a great disinclination to speak on an interdenominational peace platform; and that, firstly, because of an inevitable conclusion and, secondly, because of an undeniable observation.

The inevitable conclusion was that if war could be ended only by moral means the chief agents in ending it could only be the moral expert or professionals, namely the ministers of religion.

The undeniable observation was that nowhere was there such a state of war and such a need of peace as in the sphere of religion.
Faith and Order
Authors: St. John Henry
Published: July 2007

Whatever opinion Catholics may hold about the utility of the World Conference on Faith and Order recently held at Edinburgh we must at least recognize the witness it bears to a deep and growing determination on the part of Christians of widely differing allegiances to bring to an end the disastrous divisions of Christendom. This determination has given rise to a new way of approach to the problem of re-union, a new technique in dealing with the differences which divide Christians. Controversy of the old type between antagonists, who laboured without any attempt at mutual understanding or sympathy to prove themselves entirely right and their opponents entirely wrong, is of comparatively little use in attaining truth. Its place has been taken by the way of affirmation which first explores and emphasizes every possible point of agreement and by so doing clearly marks off the points at which divergence begins and how far it extends. Experience shows that such divergence is often due more to the partial or faulty presentation of truth than to perversity of mind or will in accepting it. The careful probing of historical causes can do much to prepare the way for reconciliation, by a frank acknowledgment of shortcomings where they exist and a sympathetic understanding of the false emphasis and consequent error to which such shortcomings have often given rise. This is the human and preparatory element in the work of the Reunion of Christendom; the necessary spade-work which must be done before the soil is ready for the Holy Spirit to produce the fruits of reconciliation—a perfect union of heart and mind in Christ Jesus.
Christian Spain
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

One of the minor tragedies of the Spanish Civil War lies in the fact that Professor Dempf of Bonn was not able to give at Santander in 1936 his projected course of lectures on “Christian Political Philosophy in Spain.” It is however no small compensation that he should have published these lectures, which are thereby communicated at present to all who understand German and, it is to be hoped, later to English-speaking readers.

And behind this there is a greater hope yet. In reading the book one cannot refrain from asking again and again, “Will Spain which has so magnificent a Christian tradition, which has produced so many of the world’s greatest political theorists, succeed this time after the agony of revolution and martyrdom in realizing the noblest ideas in practice and returning to the authentic Christian and Catholic outlook in politics?” Or will it be as before—a noble idealism existing side by side with an unintelligent hard realism personified in the classical figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza? Dr. Dempf is content to remind us of the historic Spanish paradox, to express the hope that the Spanish people will rediscover themselves after the thunders of the civil war and then, as if preparing the way for return, to indicate with the insight and conciseness of a master the teaching of the great Spanish political theorists. For only by returning to the ideas built up by these men will Spain be able to re-establish a healthy political life.
Russian Sophiology
Authors: Danzas J.
Published: July 2007

It is commonly thought that gnostic systems are grounded upon a dualist conception of the origin of the Universe, but this is subject to question. Gnosticism was the source of many religious and philosophical movements in nowise marked by dualism, suffice it to recall Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and later the mediaeval adepts of secret teachings who, through many perversions, were seeking for the one Divine Absolute. Dualistic elements, more or less marked in different gnostic systems, co-existed with a monistic element often predominant.

In Christianity pure dualism, i.e., the essential and primordial opposition between two distinct principles, has existed only within Manicheism which owed its origin to Persian Mazdeism. Before Manes this Persian dualism had only an indirect influence upon the great syncretistic movement of the Hellenic world. Actually this term—dualism— is applicable only there where the principle of evil is considered to be in its origin independent of its opposite—the principle of good. In the gnostic systems the evil principle is the outcome of a slow evolution proceeding from a unique First Principle. These systems are essentially monistic, differing one from another precisely by the way they conceive this creative evolution resulting in an inferior world and its final reintegration into the Godhead. The ancient gnosis, with its multiple systems, was an effort to connect the actuality of the material world with the divine transcendency. Modern Russian thinkers are concerned with the same problems. Gnosticism originated outside Christianity, but borrowed its soteriological doctrine as a basis for speculations closer to pantheism than to dualism, and it is within this pantheist evolution that the idea of Sophia, link between the unknowable and the actual, originated.
Advance in Retrospect
Authors: Tindal-Atkinson Aelwin
Published: July 2007

The business of preparation is complete. The men know what work lies in front of them, if life is spared, before the sun, now setting behind the steep roofs and towers of Bailleul, rises again above the fortified ridge of Messines, still held by the enemy. As the column leaves its high resting place on Mount Ravetsburg and winds on towards the darkening East, a ground mist veils the sordid straggle of wreckage in the valley, where heaped debris of earth, metal and smouldering timber had once been trains of linked trucks loaded with explosives. A chance bomb dropped from the air yesterday had blown wagons, wheels, rails, sheds and men skywards in blasts of flame.

The thick dust stirred by the movement of many men fills eyes, mouth and nose, for the grass underfoot that once carpeted the country lane has been crushed out of life, and the earth that fed it has been powdered by the tread of innumerable feet. Yet the June evening is still redolent with hawthorn; and the scent of the hedgerows softens the acrid impact of sweat. Shellfire has not yet violated the virginity of trees in full leaf; and the eye lingers on their shapeliness as if to stamp their form on the mind. Within an hour the memory of them will seem as fantastic as the prospect of the trees further ahead which stand with stark limbless trunks pared of life-giving foliage by the engines of war.
A Fifty Years Plan
Authors: Walsh R. P.
Published: July 2007

We all know that Great Britain is suffering from some ill. We are all becoming rather tired of all the examinations of this fact and of all the cures. Generally we find that the “doctors” are only concerned with bolstering up present economic order by removing the more glaring evils. We find Communists and Fascists all opposing capitalism with another form of capitalism in which they will be the capitalists.

Very rarely do we find anyone questioning the fundamental issues on which Great Britain and the Empire have been built.

We know we have lost a great proportion of our export trade, but we hope to recover it. Few of us ask if this is possible.

Now we have a distributist examining the sick—Great Britain, and wisely pointing out the fallacies of the treatment prescribed by other doctors. In the first part of this booklet we find all the causes; “Small minority possessing property and the vast proletarianised majority ...” “The deadly effect of urbanization possesses a profound biological significance.” “Only a minute fraction of the population is engaged in work on the land ...” “England’s industrial monopoly is on the wane ...” “The beginning of a process which will end in England possessing but a fraction of its present population; and of that fraction, half will be mentally deficient ...”