bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Spiritual Direction
Authors: William
Published: August 2024

One of the most obvious things in. the world today is the fact that a priest cannot fulfil his sacerdotal function without being a spiritual director. It is not enough to administer the sacraments and preach the word of God in general from the pulpit. He must convince his flock of the message of Christ by an ‘I-Thou’ relationship born of a highly personal commitment, which we can refer to here as spiritual direction. The desire and need for spiritual direction on the part of the laity has been expressed persistently, pleadingly, over a rather long period of time. It can no longer be ignored. It is imperative that all priests respond with zeal, intelligence, and untiring labour.

So many Christians have become aware of their apostolic responsibility and at the same time are conscious of their spiritual poverty.
Messianic Fulfilment in St Luke's Gospel
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

St Luke dedicates his gospel to Theophilus, a man of some rank, it would seem, and tells him that his intention is to help him ‘recognize the solid grounds of the instruction he had received’ (1, 4). To appreciate his gospel to the full, then, we need to have some sort of idea about what instruction Theophilus had received. If we assume that he had received much the same sort of instruction as all other first generation converts of the apostles and their followers—and it seems a reasonable enough assumption to go on, until the contrary is proved—then it is possible to form some idea of what it consisted of from the Acts of the Apostles.
A Note on ‘The Jews’ of St John's Gospel
Authors: Vink Jordan
Published: August 2024

Recent studies (cf. in particular The Destination and Purpose of St John's Gospel, by J. A. T. Robinson, in New Testament Studies, 6, i960, 117-113) have radically questioned certain common assumptions about the fourth gospel. It is too often taken for granted that the evangelist is addressing his message to gentile Christians, and that he considers the Jewish nation—the Judaei—as lost to God, and as rejected by him because they have rejected Christ. But it is surely significant that in his gospel, alone among the books of the new testament, the word ‘gentiles’ never occurs. The dramatic narrative centres almost exclusively on what the author regards as the crisis of Judaism.
Campion's Mission
Authors: Somerville Charles
Published: August 2024

When Edmund Campion after long temporizing finally broke from the allurements of his humanist's life at Oxford and retired abroad, Cecil observed of him: ‘It is a very great pity to see so notable a man leave his country, tor he was one of the diamonds of England’. Four years earlier, in 1566, when Queen Elizabeth visited Oxford, her chief minister nad applauded the eloquence and personal charm of the rising reilow of St John's college. On that occasion Campion had delivered orations in the name of the university before Elizabeth, as thirteen years earlier, representing London schoolboys, he had spoken his address to Queen Mary. Approbation, popularity and honour continued to follow him: he was made proctor and public orator, the highest posts compatible with his standing in the university. Then he tore the net which Anglicanism was throwing round him, withdrew to Ireland, was hunted thence because he lived as a Catholic and took refuge in Douai, 1571.
Let Not Your Hearts be Troubled
Authors: Frederick B. M.
Published: August 2024

Prayer means turning our hearts and minds to God. No two persons converse with him in identical ways; even in corporate prayer we each infuse the same words with our individual needs and aspirations, and private prayer, whether vocal or meditative, is essentially personal. But we all have hearts and minds and, broadly speaking, the same problems: and the greatest of these is aridity. No one has ever advanced in the spiritual life without experiencing times when devotion seems non-existent, prayer distasteful or humiliatingly difficult, meditation moribund and discouragement an ever-present temptation, but though our books warn us of these trials our own experiences are different from anything we expect to undergo.
The Sunday Sermon: A Missed Opportunity?
Authors: Sheed Rosemary
Published: August 2024

From the sonorous periods of the eighteeneth and nineteenth centuries to the friendly intimacy of Billy Graham, preaching has always held a central position in protestantism. The sermon, for many, is the major attraction of the service, and often the quality of a man's preaching seems the chief determining factor in the size of his congregations. The clergymen of detective stories are so often in their studies on Saturday afternoon preparing the next day's sermon that we should suspect the worst if we found them doing anything else. But though we are quite accustomed to priests’ excusing themselves from our dinner parties to finish their Office, I think most people would be astonished if a priest said he must leave to work on a sermon. Somehow, apart from special occasion sermons (such as weddings and funerals), most of us don't seem to take preaching very seriously.
Fairest of Songs
Authors: Potter Roland
Published: August 2024

The Canticle of Canticles of our Douay version very literally represents a Hebrew superlative. We could translate it ‘the most lovely song’ or the ‘fairest of songs'. Over the centuries innumerable books have been written about this great poem. There has been, and there still is, much disagreement about its interpretation; there is no disagreement about its consummate beauty. But there is far more than beauty, for the book is part of scripture and as such is inspired or has a divine character. The more central Hebrew tradition was firm about this. Rabbi Akibah, about A.D. 130, wrote: ‘No one in Israel has ever questioned the Canticle's divine character; indeed the whole world is not worth the day on which the Canticle of Canticles was bestowed upon Israel. All the books of scripture are holy, but the Canticles most holy.’ (Yadaim 3, 5.) The Church teaches that Canticles is part of scripture, and that teaching can be traced to the list of scripture compiled by St Cyril of Jerusalem, when Canticles is explicitly mentioned.
John Roberts of Merioneth
Authors: Meredith Frances
Published: August 2024

Born at Trawsfynydd, a remote lake-side village in North Wales, in the year 1577, John Roberts was, in the words of T. P. Ellis, ‘heir of a thousand years of “Welsh history and Welsh Catholicism'. The awareness of historical continuity displayed by the martyr at his death sprang, no doubt, from the impressions made upon the child John, not only by the stories he must have heard of the kings and princes of whom he was a direct descendant, of the saints who had sprung from the same line as himself, but also from the history implicit in the country-side around him, from the nearby and ruined abbey, and from the desecrated altars of the parish church. Thehistory of Trawsfynydd, a village bearing one of the Welsh names for the cross, embodies in itself the whole history of Wales.
Encounter With God in the Old Testament
Authors: Bourke Joseph
Published: August 2024

‘As the kingdom of God in its perfect form does not lie in mere knowledge, but rather in the life that the knowledge awakens, so it could not be prepared for by the mere knowledge that it was approaching, nor even by the knowledge, outwardly communicated, of what it was. It could be prepared for only by bringing in, and that in ever fuller tides, the life of which it consists…. What we meet in the Old Testament are two concrete subjects and their relation. The two are: Jehovah, God of Israel on the one hand, and Israel, the people of Jehovah, on the other; and the third point, which is given in the other two, is their relation to one another. And it is obvious that the denominating or creative factor is the relation to Jehovah.’

Thus a very great theologian, nowadays somewhat neglected, has defined the scope and significance of the old testament. It is the record of a people chosen from among the peoples to live in the light-giving and life-bringing presence of Yahweh, and to draw from that presence ‘in ever fuller tides’ supernatural light and life. And this process is to continue until at last the Light of the World comes ‘that they may have life and have it abundantly’ (Jn. 10,10).
The Martyrs of Lyons, A.D. 177
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

We have a first-hand account of the sufferings oj these martyrs in a letter which the Christians of Lyons, in the south of France, wrote to the churches of Asia Minor, with whom they had historical connections. The letter was quoted at length by the Church historian Eusebius in the fourth century, and a translation of it as he gives it is here presented. The reader will notice that the word ‘confession occurs very often. It is always used in the sense of a confession of faith, and never in the sense of a confession of sins. Besides describing the gruesome torments which the martyrs endured, the writer constantly refers to them in terms from the athletic world. One such phrase which he uses has become a commonplace of Christian language, the phrase ‘a martyr's crown. Nowadays we think of a crown as a king's head’ dress, made of gold and precious stones.
The Convert's Work for Christian Unity
Authors: Richards Michael
Published: August 2024

Many of those who come to the Church after some years of the faithful service of God in one of the separated Churches express the hope that they will be able, from their knowledge and experience, to make a particular contribution to the re-union of Christendom. Since they know both the Church and one or other of the separated bodies more or less closely related to it, from the inside, they hope that they will be able to help forward the day of reconciliation between the two. How far are such hopes justified? Many of us know people who have had expectation such as these and who have been disappointed; and do are indeed some converts, well-known in the Church, who do not appear to have been able to work for the return of their former brethren in the way others, perhaps, imagined they would be able to do. Does being a convert necessarily imply usefulness in this field?
Counsel in Confession
Authors: Sire Dominic
Published: August 2024

There is always a danger that emphasis on the primary effect or purpose of any one of the seven Sacraments may obscure our vision of secondary effects and purposes. It is only natural that we should think of a Sacrament in relation to its principal effect, but we must never lose sight of the complete picture. It is as though we thought only of the head in a human body and forgot the unobtrusive little finger or toe. Yet should we lose a little toe we suddenly become aware of being thrown out of balance. If a more important limb—none the less secondary —suffers grave damage we notice it still more. In spite of the fact that we adjust ourselves strangely quickly, we do remain crippled and unable to take our full share of life.
St Ignatius Loyola, Soldier of Christ
Authors: Potter Roland
Published: August 2024

These are the words of the Apostle St Paul, penned nearly nineteen hundred years ago; words which would fall admirably from the lips of a St Ignatius; were it not that the Saint, in his lovable humility, would be the last to think that such words could apply to himself.

Yet they do speak of him. For the words of the Apostle are the words of Scripture; and the words of Scripture are the words of God; and the words of God have a timeless character, and so a value at all times. Thus it is that without undue violence we can read these words of St Ignatius who went to God on July 31st four hundred years ago. It is this going to God, and then more especially the wonder of a lasting and living and growing work for God that we commemorate in this its four hundredth year.
The Conquest of Fear
Authors: Orchard W. E.
Published: August 2024

There are some people who are said not to know what fear is. If there are any such, which is doubtful, they are generally to be found among those who do not think or have no imagination. Their very lack of fear often brings them into inescapable danger, and then they are surprised that they are not ready for death. It has been said that everyone is afraid; only the brave confess it.

There are certainly some people who are so timid in their disposition, or nervous in their temperament, that they are constantly tortured by fear. They are afraid of almost everything; they are afraid when they need not be; indeed they are afraid of things that do not even exist. Some are in such a state of fear, yet cannot tell precisely what it is that they are afraid of; it is fear they are afraid of, and of what they know not.
The Mass and Our Daily Lives
Authors: Forbes Denis
Published: August 2024

Lining, as many Catholics today are forced to do, in what might almost be called a pagan atmosphere, it is not perhaps surprising to find that some awkward paradoxes have grown to become quietly accepted. One such detail of Catholic life, which for many people goes unnoticed, is the fact that the sacrifice of the Mass has come to mean little or nothing in relation to our everyday lives. There is a terrifying separation between ourselves, our actions, and the source of all aid and strength, the Mass. For a large number of Catholics, Sunday is the only day of the week when they can hear Mass. For six other days they must live and work in machine-shops and offices where often Christian Ideals are openly considered weak, insufficient and out-dated.
The Gospel in Commonplace English
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

The translation of two sections of the Gospel which is given below is an experiment of a sort that seems quite popular nowadays. Its purpose is to make the Gospel strike the English reader with the same kind of impact, the same force and freshness, that it would have had upon the Greek-speakers for whom it was immediately written. It is an attempt to clear the incense-laden air of nineteen centuries, to find the Gospels unembalmed, unritualized; yes, unconsecrated and stripped of the sacred vestments with which every generation has adorned them. Not that this solemnizing process is in any way to be regretted, or that the versions which it has influenced are bad versions. They are signs of a proper reverence for what is holy.
Contemplative Prayer as the Prayer Of Unity
Authors: Cartmell J.
Published: August 2024

It is with the intellect that we contemplate. Christian contemplation is an activity of faith, and faith is an intellectual virtue. The gift of the Holy Ghost which plays a leading role contemplation is wisdom, because, as St Thomas says, it belongs to wisdom, according to Aristotle, to consider the Highest Cause; and wisdom is obviously rooted in the intellect. But contemplation is also intimately linked with charity and is therefore an activity of the will. This is due, St Thomas explains, to the nature of the gift of wisdom; it implies a connaturality with divine things, and this connaturality can come only from charity. He writes: ‘Wisdom denotes a certain rectitude of judgment according to the Eternal Law. Now rectitude of judgment is two-fold: first, on account of perfect use of reason, secondly, on account of a certain connaturality with the matter about which one has to judge. Thus, about matters of chastity, a man after inquiring with his reason forms a right judgment, if he has learnt the science of morals, while he who has the habit of chastity judges of such matters by a kind of connaturality.
A Little-Known Benedictine Mystic
Authors: S.M.J
Published: August 2024

Montefiascone is a charming and very ancient city of Latium; so ancient that its origins are shrouded in the the mist that envelops the strange race of the Etruscans. It crowns the mass dominating one end of the Lago di Bolsena, and its hillsides are famous for their excellent wine. Erected into an episcopal see in 1369, it has numbered in its long line of titulars several conspicuous personalities; amongst others Alessandro farnese, later Pope Paul III, and, during Maria Caecilia's own lifetime Cardinal Pompeo Aldobrandini.
The Sacraments: IV—Marriage
Authors: Bright Laurence
Published: August 2024

In considering this sacrament we have again to see how something natural has been transformed by the power of god acting through his Church. As in penance, where the matter of the sacrament is sorrow for sin, what is transformed is not something non-human, such as oil or water, but the mutual consent of a man and a woman to give themselves to one another for the purpose of continuing the human race; something, that is to say, effectively significant even before it is given a new dignity by the action of Christ. For marriage is as old as the human race, and following the lead given by St Paul (Ephesians v, 31) we can learn its significance from the original institution in Paradise.

The account given in the book of Genesis (ii, 18-24) begins with God's action in creating a partner for Adam, because ‘It is not good for man to be alone’.
Res Sacra
Authors: Magee Malcolm
Published: August 2024

In last month's article ‘Sacrament and Symbol’ we say something of the nature of the sacramental sign and its relationship to the human creature for whom it was instituted. But the sign exists for the sake of the thing signified and its most important function (though not its only function) is to lead us to a knowledge of this thing signified. In this article, therefore, I propose to give a short account of what St Thomas understood by res sacra, the sacred reality lying behind the sign.

For this sacred reality is the thing signified. ‘A sacrament, says St Augustine, ‘is the sign of a sacred reality’; and St Thomas adds, ‘in so far as it is making men holy’. The Augustinian definition is too wide; as wide, in fact, as it possibly can be for it includes the whole of creation.
The Church of England and Divorce
Authors: Clarke Francis
Published: August 2024

Divorce In Britain, a trickle in the second half of the nineteenth century, has become a flood which has already done irreparable harm to the national life and threatens to do still more in the future. The Anglican attitude to this evil is often criticized as ambiguous and inconsistent, but it is only fair to recognize that the corporate influence of the Church of England has been, and still is a real and important check to the further spread of this erosive tide of divorce. While most non-Catholic bodies in England have long since ceased to offer any effective resistance to the practice, the Church of England continues, in the face of ever growing criticism, to maintain her ban on the rege marriage in her churches of divorced persons who have a former partner still living. This ruling has been lately reaffirmed by an Act of Convocation.
Tobias—A Neglected Classic
Authors: Bannister P. A.
Published: August 2024

It is a pity that the story of Tobias is not more widely read by Christians and that it is used so little in the religious instruction of children. Although one of the inspired books of the Old Testament, it is also, as the Monks of Maredsous have pointed out, 'a true guide for the righteous which the Christian can use with practically no modification'.
The Quest for God in the Judean Desert
Authors: Potter Roland
Published: August 2024

It is an age-old commonplace of spiritual writers that God is mysteriously nearer to those who would flee ‘the world’ and seek him alone in solitude. Such writers can justifiably point to the orgins of monastic life in the deserts of Egypt, as also to the constant renewal of a monastic ideal by a return to the desert as can be seen in Cîteaux's efforts. In our own day a Père de Foucauld lived and died like an eremite of old; and that precious life and death would seem to have begotten a thriving new spiritual movement in the Church. That solitudes and deserts can foster and nurture spiritual realities is certainly a traditional and valid theme. We can always retain the doggerel-like text ‘O beata solitudo, O sola beatitudo’ ('Blest solitude, our solitary bliss’).
A Technique Of Spiritual Liberation
Authors: Regamey P.-R.
Published: August 2024

A technique of freedom? The expression is, quite certainly, too strong. A title says what it can, as briefly as it can. Properly speaking we have no right to hope from our own efforts anything but conditions favourable to the play of our freedom—let that be clearly understood from the start. Nevertheless we shall see better what we ought to hope from the means, and what cannot be expected of them, if we take up the matter in several different ways.

The word ‘means’ is wholly valid only when applied to material things. You hit a nail with a hammer and you (who are not clumsy) drive it in, and even do so in such a way that the effect is exactly proportionate to the communication of your energy to the nail and the resistance of the wall.

The ‘means’ is sufficient to the ‘end’. But when you ask yourself what you are going to do to become more vitally, more fully free, no-one will teach you the great means of all the means: it is simply to be free. There is no other means, and all that you can do will be worth’while only in order to vary this means according to the particular case.
The Nature of Accidie (II)
Authors: Cassian John
Published: August 2024

To The embers of such faults, then, he now hastens to apply a suitable remedy, and laying aside the apostolic power which he recently called into play, he turns once more to speak with the heart of a kind father or a gentle physician, and, as speaking to his children or his patients, he presents the medicine of health with words of salutary counsel, on this wise: ‘Them that are such, we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus that with quietness they work and eat their own bread’ (2 Thess. 3, 12). He has cured with the one salutary precept of work the causes of such terrible sores which spring from the root of idleness, in the manner of some most skilled physician, and he knows also that the rest of the ailments which sprout up from the same soil will straightway vanish away, when once the primordial disease has been destroyed.

If gnawing sadness once gain, by individual attacks, or in different and unseen ways, a power of mastery over our souls, it separates us ever and always from any insight of divine contemplation, and casting down the mind from whatever of purity it might possess, entirely overthrows and depresses it.
The Pulpit Presentation of the Faith
Authors: Valentine Ferdinand
Published: August 2024

The subject-matter covered by this title is so wide in extent that we are in danger from the outset of being lost in generalities. For this reason I propose to explore one corner only of its extensive field, by confining myself to the parochial apostolate. I think you will find that the more general principles will emerge.

Let us begin with a quotation:

‘Television is a blessing', an American Bishop said recently. ‘Spiritually radio and television are beautiful examples of the inspired wisdom of the ages. Radio is like the Old Testament … hearing of wisdom without seeing; television is like the New Testament because in it the wisdom becomes flesh and dwells among us…. We are thankful to radio and television for being the most spiritual symbols of the truth by which we are saved.'

Is that statement true or fanciful? You may have your own ideas about that. There are however one or two incontrovertible facts about this new situation.
Lourdes: A Place of the Gospels
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: August 2024

There is nothing new to say about Lourdes. The statement ment is not so superfluous as it seems, for in a centenary year the need is not so much to find fresh superlatives, or even to quote spectacular statistics, as to return to the simple, original fact and find its essential meaning once more. This is far from easy to do: it is as difficult indeed as it is to remenibe the grotto in the modern town of Lourdes. And the analogy is not inexact. What men make of the marvellous can reflect all their cupidity and stupidity, too. We should not under-estimate the effect of the horrors that surround Lourdes on those who may be anxious to discern its truth but are baffled by its setting—in the written record as well as in the piety stalls and the hotels. And the bluff apologetic of the hearty publicists—‘I really like all those shops’—is far from reassuring.
Our Lady in Tradition
Authors: Ginns Reginald
Published: August 2024

The centenary year of Lourdes has drawn the attention of the world as it was drawn in that wonderful year 1858. Some approach with an attitude of reverence, others with a faint but somewhat sceptical admiration, and there will no doubt be others who greet the celebrations with a scoffing smile of contempt. So far, however, there has been little sig of scoffing or contempt. Indeed the most striking thing that has appeared since the opening of the centenary year was, not the enthusiastic crowds of pilgrims who assisted at the ceremonies of February 11, but the dignified and respectful way in which the great journals of the secular press reported the event. They showed no fumbling or hesitation in the use of Catholic terminology nology; they spoke of ‘the Blessed Virgin’ and ‘Saint Bernadette’ without the use of inverted commas, nor was there any hint of scepticism about the visions or the miracles of Lourdes.
An Approach to Prayer
Authors: Vo Der Heydt Vera
Published: August 2024

Hundreds and thousands of books on prayer exist. Many of them are handbooks from which one can learn of and be instructed in the science and art of prayer. I am not going to speak about those things, but about attitude. I have met with regard to prayer.

I know full well the difficulties connected with this attempt. The word ‘prayer’ touches us off in our emotions and it may make us feel embarrassed, apprehensive, or even hostile to hear about it, as it may come very close, too close, to the innermost secrets of our hearts. The idea of prayer may bring up deeply hidden wounds and despair when we think of times when we prayed in anguish for a chalice to be taken away, and it was not. Our distress may have started in childhood when we were taught to pray, and when we were told that prayer is always answered. We may have prayed and asked for a sunny day, or mother's understanding or father's safety, and it rained, and mother did not understand, and father was killed.
The Sacraments: V—Order
Authors: Bright Laurence
Published: August 2024

The sacrament of order is much less familiar to most people than the sacraments which have so far been considered. Every Catholic has been baptized, confirmed, has gone to confession; many are married or have assisted at a marriage; very few have taken part in an ordination. The priesthood is often falsely thought of as a special privileged state, remote from the Catholic community at large, and naturally there is little interest in the sacrament by which priests are made. We must therefore begin by getting an idea of the meaning of priesthood in relation to the whole Christian people.

A priest is a man who offers sacrifice to God. In the Old Testament we find careful regulations for the offering of ritual sacrifices of every kind by the official priests.
Contemplation and the Modern World
Authors: Watkin Aelred
Published: August 2024

The obliteration of familiar landmarks and the destruction of an old and accustomed order seem to produce a twofold effect. The majority of those who come afterwards seems quickly to adapt itself to the new outlook and new ways, while a minority clings with determination to what it can remember of the days gone by, and, filled with an intense desire to preserve the values of the past, canonizes both the bad and the good in the old order. It was thus with the Reformation. The forces which produced it had slowly been gathering for centuries. The scandals of the late medieval church were but the manifestation of far deeper ills, of which perhaps the most deadly of all had been, in practice, anv almost complete loss of the sense of the oneness of all Christians with the triumphant and risen Christ. In consequence, a spirit of gloom and insecurity, coupled with an unconstructive puritanism in morals, had prevailed among the devout and had tended to make salvation depend almost entirely upon the precariousness of subjective intention.
The English Mystics and their Critics
Authors: Colledge Eric
Published: August 2024

Professor David Knowles, when still a young Downside monk, published in 1927 a short survey, The English Mystics,which workers in this field have used and quoted and respected as one of the first appraisals to be both popular and scholarly, free alike from prejudice and enthusiasm, of the reputations of some spiritual writers of later mediaeval England. In that same year, Hope Allen produced her vast study, Writings Ascribed to Richard Rolle, and since then much else has been accomplished. She assisted in the sensational discovery and the publication of the Book of Margery Kempe; and although most of us have come to deplore her methods, her ebullience and many of her contentions, we who have followed her have all learned and profited much from Hope Allen's tireless devotion to her subject. Professor Arnould's text of Rolle's Melos, Professor Hodgson's critical editions of The Cloud of Unknowing and the allied treatises, Dr Helen Gardner's studies in the text of the Cloud and The Scale of Perfection, and the edition of The Chastising of God's Children in which Miss Joyce Bazire and the present writer collaborated, are all works which could not have begun where they did, had it not been for the pioneering of Miss Allen.
Science and Religion in the Sixth Form
Authors: Bright Laurence
Published: August 2024

In English universities there has been a growing awareness during the last dozen years or so of the need to integrate science with other sources of knowledge, even with religious knowledge: this independently of any specific Catholic investiga tion. Faculties of the history and philosophy of science have been started, in which undergraduates reading science can spend a year either before or after taking their degree. It is important for schools to be aware of this, not only because they will be sending pupils on to the university, but because young science teachers will increasingly have their eyes turned towards the implication of their subject beyond the narrow limits of an examination syllabus, and in Catholic schools in particular towards religious instruction. In this moreover they will have greater help from books than has been available in the past.
Our Lady in Scripture—II: Oral Tradition
Authors: Weatherhead Benet
Published: August 2024

Before the gospels were written, or rather before the gospel was recorded in writings which achieved stability in the four books we now have, there was an oral tradition. Before even the passion of our Lord, his sayings were circulated by word of mouth, handed on by those who had been present, to those who had not yet heard or seen him, stirring some to enmity, drawing others towards him. The apostles themselves were sent out by our Lord in his own lifetime to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of heaven and to set out the general lines of his teaching, a new teaching distinct from that of the rabbis, calling men to repentance and a greater purity of intention, to an inward purity of the heart deeper than outward purity before the law. They would have reported the actual words he used; perhaps he even gave them schemes to remember the outlines by and made them learn his sayings by heart
Cardinal Newman on the Laity
Authors: Dessain Charles Stephen
Published: August 2024

Newman complains of Catholic preachers that they think it their duty to give a bird's-eye view of Christianity in every sermon, and never to expound one truth without bringing in every counterbalancing consideration and saving clause. To apply such a method to the subject of Newman's influence in the second half of the twentieth century would be fatal! He lived so long, he touched life at so many points, he anticipated so many of the best movements in the Church today, that there would be no ending. The biblical and patristic movement, the ecumencical movement, the Catholic intellectual and university movement, the concrete and real approach in philosophy, the lay movement—all these, and much else owe a debt to Newman. This article will limit itself to Newman's connection with the lay movement, and will outline his views as to place of the laity in the Church.
St John the Baptist and the Desert
Authors: Potter Roland
Published: August 2024

The traditions about the birth of St John the Baptist enshrined in St Luke's gospel would appear to have come from a Hebrew source, and they correspond to a literary type, we might almost say a theme, which recurs in the Old Testament. John, or ‘the Lord gives grace’ was a child of divine promise, born of aged parents against all expectation. The scriptures had already told how Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah, and told too of how an angel appeared to announce the birth of Samson. Whereupon Samuel was born in answer to prayer, to put an end to a would-be mother's anguish, and above all to be a prophet in the great designs of God. Jeremiah, we read, was sanctified from his mother's womb. All this, and more, in the scriptures prepared for, and pointed to, the precursor and herald of the saviour.
Christian Materialism
Authors: Dawson Clare
Published: August 2024

One of the recurrent objections to Christianity, from the time when, as St John records, many disciples forsook our Lord because he said he would give us his flesh to eat, is that it is materialist, and the objectors wish the materialistic lumps could be strained out of the soup, which would then be a pure nourishment, suited to the most delicate digestion. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that Christianity is not a mass of facts from which we can pick what we like and reject the rest, but an organic whole, and that truth is bound to present some difficulties to human minds, it may be worth considering what revelation has to tell us about matter.

Obviously to material beings such as ourselves the subject is meaningful. he world confronts us as a reality: so does our own flesh.
Our Lord's Tears and St Catherine's
Authors: Hinnebusch Paul
Published: August 2024

Jesus, in the days of his earthly life, with a loud cry and tears, offered up prayers and supplications to him who was able to save him from death, and was heard because of his reverent submission'. (Heb. 5. 7). Thus writes St Paul of the prayer and agony of Christ in the garden.

Notice that St Paul does not say that Jesus prayed to be saved from death. but to ‘him who was able to save him from death'. For what, then, did he pray, if not to be saved from death; St Catherine of Siena gives an answer to this question which at first surprised her spiritual director, Blessed Raymond of Capua. But after hearing Catherine's further explanation, Raymond could say only: ‘I kept silent, and simply admired the grace and wisdom she had received from God'. (Raymond of Capua, St Catherine of Siena New York: p. 147).
Greek and Jew
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

In the last few centuries before the coming of Christ the Greek influence began to make itself felt. It reached Judea through Egypt where there was a great number of Jews centred Alexandria. But there was also a direct influx of the non-sacramental hellenic view of religion from the cities which Alexander himself founded in Palestine. The Jews were introduced to the families of the gods, and the Machabees revolted against this attack on their allegiance to Jahwe, for the hellenic familiarity with the gods naturally offered its attractions. But it was not from the Greek myths that the greatest influence was felt. These were rejected. But the intellectualization of Greek philosophy was spreading all over the near East, and it was this that was wedded to Jewish thought in the Wisdom literature.
Those that Lie in the Sleep of Peace
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: August 2024

When, in the Mass, we pray for the dead we speak of them as ‘sleeping in the sleep of peace'. There seems to be an echo here of our Lord's words, ‘The maid is not dead but sleepeth', and again of his use of the same verb when speaking of Lazarus. Chrysostom suggests that he is telling his followers not to be afraid of death; and perhaps he is contrasting two very different ideas of the after-life: the grey, wraith-like half-existence of Sheol or Hades with the Christian idea of fulfilment, glory, peace. Certainly nowadays we need to be taught not to fear death: in earlier days it was the sex-words which were taboo; now the taboo has been transferred to the death-words, and one must speak not of dying but of passing on or away or even over.
The Book of Lamentations
Authors: Robinson Bernard
Published: August 2024

The Lamentations of Jeremiah is a book with which the old Tenebree Office for Holy Week gave many people at least a nodding acquaintance. Not infrequently, however, the much admired musical settings tended to detract from the attention given to the words themselves, a fact noticed by Mendelssohn, who remarked that the most powerful music was usually expended on the mere rubrics, the alephs beths, and incipits. That Lamentations does repay, both for theological and for literary content, a careful study, will I hope emerge from this article. But before we speak of content, we should say a word or two about the structure and authorship of the book.

The book consists of five poems, corresponding to its five chapters of which the first four are abecedarian in structure (which is to say that each stanza begins with a fresh letter of the Hebrew alphabet and each line of the stanza begins with the same letter as the first line)
Retreat and Action
Authors: Luff S. G. A.
Published: August 2024

If so many modern forms of apostolate require their members to make an annual retreat, or even a monthly day of recollection, I am inclined to think it is far less a case of their organizers including something from the familiar Catholic stock-in-trade than one of needing to satisfy a real want. It really is an impressive feature of the twentieth-century apostolate and goes a long way to prove its authenticity. As long as apostles—actionists—realize they have nothing to give without first finding it in prayer and seclusion we can trust their work to be truly under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The first rousers of conscience among the Catholics of France and Belgim were the Abbé Cardijn and later the Abbé Godin, creating The Young Christian Workers to redeem an entire class; not a remote dusky jungle-dwelling race, but a nation of neighbours, living in the closed World of factories and workshops, who had become alienated from the Church.
The Family and the School
Authors: St John Henry
Published: August 2024

One of the points most strongly emphasized in the two great encyclicals of Pius XI on Christian Marriage (Casti Connubii) and The Christian Education of Youth (Divini Illius Magistri) is that the foundation of true education is the family. That is where education begins and where the ground of human personality is first prepared for its full growth to maturity. If this basic education is missing or defective all further education is liable to be like building an elaborate superstructure on faulty and insecure foundations or trying to cultivate plants in poisoned or exhausted soil.

Unfortunately there seems to be a growing tendency, even among practising Catholics, to shift the responsibility for the basic education of the young from the family circle to the school. A tendency to imagine that the good nuns or other teachers from the infant school onwards, will do all that is necessary in the way of teaching religion. It is almost taken for granted in consequence that the father and mother, and elder brothers and sisters, have no immediate concern with the religious atmosphere in which the younger children are growing up.
Holiness and the Times
Authors: Reidy Gabriel
Published: August 2024

The function of the philosopher, or part of it, is to explain in terms of his system, the mysteries of time and space. The function of the scientist, or part of it, is to explore increasingly efficient techniques for manipulating time and space. The function of the theologian is to transmit a reasonable account of revealed religious doctrine and practice to all men, irrespective of time and space. As Karl Adam particularizes it for our own times the aim of theology is to ‘render the spirit of Catholicism intelligible to the contemporary mind'. (Sidelights, Sheed & Ward, p. 2.) Sometimes the theologian is distracted, sometimes disquieted by what is happening about him in the schools of the philosophers and in the laboratories of the scientists. Considering amplitude of his task, it ought not to cause undue surprise if, occasionally, he seems neglectful of spatio-temporal affairs which loom so large in the minds of everybody else. Yet to him also, time and space are amongst the mysteries of human existence, though not what calls ‘entitatively supernatural’ mysteries.
Adaptations in France—III
Authors: Dubois J. M.
Published: August 2024

If, in order to remain truly religious, any adaptation must leave untouched the essence of the vows of obedience, and of poverty, it is even more evident that it must not touch the essence of the vow of virginity. One day I was reading various passages from the Directory of the ancelles to a Benedictine nun. The paragraph concerning obedience began with these words. ‘Fundamentally it is obedience which makes nuns of you.’ She exclaimed: ‘Oh, no, indeed! If I am a nun it is before all because I am a consecrated virgin!’ I think that as a matter of fact she was right. Of the three vows one can say that in substance virginity is, by all that it offers and expresses, the most characteristic of a religious. consecration. Perhaps we shall come back to this. In any case it clear that there can be no toning down in the practice of chastity. Consecration to God is an absolute.

However, in this sphere as with the others a certain adaptation is noteworthy. It lies either in the teaching of the vow of chastity or in the traditional ascetism organized with a view to its preservation.
An Open Letter: To any recent convert from Anglo-Catholicism who thinks he may have A Carthusian vocation
Authors: Anson Peter F.
Published: August 2024

Dear Fellow Convert, I am writing this letter at the request of the Prior of Park minster. He seems to think that because I ‘went over to Rome’ more than forty years ago and decided that I had a Carthusian vocation even before I ceased to be in communion with Canterbury, I might be able to explain to you, better then he can do, why all converts, especially recent ones, should recognize that the Carthusian life is in the literal sense an extraordinary and abnormal one; and whilst it is most admirable to fall in love with the golden heights, no one dare take this thing to himself unless God calls him. This is just common-sense. God does not Call the world as a whole by abnormal ways. Few men have the vocation to climb Mount Everest. Perhaps it has never struck you that at the present time there are less than six hundred Carthusian monks in the whole world, of which the Catholic population is reckoned to be about 423,000,000? These figures are enough to Prove that a Carthusian vocation is only granted to a tiny elite.
Adaptation in France—IV
Authors: Dubois J. M.
Published: August 2024

The examination we have made of each of the three vows reveals at least in principle the various domains where — problems of adaptation might be, and in fact are, posed, aat we have noticed is sufficient to indicate in what directions their possible solutions lie.

Nevertheless, before concluding it would be interesting to consider certain of the most important dimensions of the religious life. As we have already spoken of observances in dealing with virginity, it will be enough to consider rapidly three kinds of cases Particularly instructive: first of all prayer and silence; in the second place formation and intellectual work; and finally questions of hierarchy and government. Prayer And Silence In all that concerns prayer and silence, it is clear that the life of the ancelles, or of any nun more or less involved in the world, as also the life of sisters in a secular institute, does not profit by the guarantees offered by a stable existence in a convent.
Martyrs in Training
Authors: Harper Thomas
Published: August 2024

Behind the more dramatic features of the history of the Church in England during Elizabeth's reign—threatened military intervention by Phillip of Spain, the excommunication of Elizabeth, the rise and fall of her many suitors and the rather spectral presence of Mary Stuart beyond the northern border—lies the unfailing influence of the missionary priests. It is probably no exaggeration to say that the fact that Catholicism in England did not suffer the fate it has met in the Scandinavian countries is to be attributed to them more than to any other elernent of the Counter-Reformation movement. At a time when the ranks of the old Marian clergy were thinned by death, life imprisonment or banishment and the strength of the Elizabethan administration was concentrated with a particular violence against the priesthood, the Mass and the sacraments, Fr William Allen conceived the idea of founding a seminary at Douai.
The Martyrs' Friends
Authors: Anstruther Godfrey
Published: August 2024

The apostolate of the Missionary Priests would have been I impossible without the heroic co-operation of the lay Catholics. As in the early Church, the faith lived in the houses of the faithful. No less than eighty laymen and women—a Quarter of the whole—find a place in the calendar of the martyrs. But there were many who suffered a slow martyrdom in prison, under conditions inconceivable to us, and whose sufferings have deceived scant recognition. The names of ten layfolk who died in prison are among the Dilati (those whose causes have been postponed through lack of evidence), but this list is woefully incomplete. There were many others who spent most of their lives in prison, but were let out to die. Richard Wenster, the Yorkshire schoolmaster, and Francis Tregian were there for more nan thirty years. Thomas Pound, after a similar ordeal, was sentenced in his old age to lose his ears for protesting against the martyrdom of Laurence Bailey in 1604. The sentence was commuted, but he had his ears nailed to the pillory in London and Lancaster. Roland Jenks the printer was sentenced to be nailed to the pillory by his ears and to release himself by cutting them off with his own hand. Yet none of these are martyrs properly so—called
The Unchanging Priesthood
Authors: Davis H. Francis
Published: August 2024

In 1950, two important works on the priesthood were published. The first was a posthumous work of the late Rector of Wonersh, Mgr Hallett, a small work but invaluable, the result of many years of experience in the training of the clergy. The second was a new translation by Fr Henry Davis, S.J., of St Gregory the Great's Pastoral Care. The latter has had a considerable influence on priestly spirituality in England ever since it was translated in the ninth century by Alfred the Great. It had been familiar in England in recent times, especially through Bishop Hedley's edition, Lex Levitarum.