bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
St Augustine as Psychotherapist
Authors: Versfeld Martin
Published: July 2007

During many years of consideration, I have grown into a firm conviction that two of the greatest masters of the human psyche have been Plato and St Augustine. There is a close connection between them. Both considered philosophy to be a sort of therapeia, both were personally and theoretically concerned with the problem of integration, and both saw clearly that the personal and the social problem are at bottom one and the same. That is why we can take so much of our material from Augustine’s City of God.

Everybody knows that Plato declares in the Republic that the individual is the state writ small. Usually this is taken to be a proposition of political philosophy, and this is true enough if we have a right understanding of what Plato intended by politics. If we read the Gorgias we shall find a remarkable sentence in which Socrates says that the science which takes care of the health of the body is medicine, but that that which takes care of the health of the psyche is—politics! The argument with Polus, near the commencement of which this statement stands, concludes by saying that the man who is sick with guilt ought to go to the judge and legislator and beg them for the punishment which will cure him. If we consider how much profit we ourselves could expect for our guilt-ridden souls by approaching Parliament or the minister of justice as the agents for our release, we can imagine the incredulity of Socrates’ hearers. But his point is clear: politics should be regarded as psychotherapy. The right environment for integrated personal living is a community under just laws.
African Culture and the West
Authors: Hindmarsh Roland
Published: July 2007

Within the last seven years Britain has shed political responsibility for most of the areas she formerly governed, and France for all. With the waning and extinction of political power over Africa by former colonial countries, would it not be appropriate to disengage culturally as well?

The case is arguable. To survey the cultural confusion and desolation left in the wake of the withdrawing colonial powers is a deeply disturbing experience. It disturbs not merely the thoughtful Westerner, but, much more profoundly and lastingly, the sensitive African. Chinua Achebe shows the beginnings of disintegration in Things Fall Apart. Ferdinand Oyono in Le Vieux Nègre et la Médaille and Une Vie de Boy shows the growing cultural disorientation. Achebe, again, in No Longer at Ease and Cyprian Ekwensi in People of the City take the process a stage further into the cultural confusion and jumbled values of urban living in modern Africa. Surely the tale of harm is long enough; it is time to withdraw, with bowed heads. It is the West that is in need, of cultural and spiritual regeneration. Why send our disenchantment, our aridity overseas? Let us put our own house in order. If any African wishes to come and make his own gleanings amongst us, let him be welcome, but let him be warned that the pickings are thin.

But the snug haven of withdrawal is no longer open today. Suzerainty has gone but interdependence between states has taken its place. No country can withdraw into political isolation. Britain is still politically involved in Africa, and Africa in Britain, and the involvement will increase. Cultural withdrawal makes even less sense than the spurious neutrality of political disengagement. Cultural interrelationships will grow closer, and will provide the setting and much of the matter of political interdependence.
The Secular World and the Church
Authors: David Julian
Published: July 2007

In recent times there has grown up a strong feeling that our tradition of sanctity is inadequate, and that this inadequacy is connected with its isolation from the secular world. In Fr Rabut’s words, ‘La saintete traditionelle s’est coupé non seulement du peche mais souvent des espoirs et des travaux du monde’.

This period of comparative isolation from ‘the hopes and labours’ of the world has coincided with a period of strong establishment; so that the isolation has expressed itself in practice not in indifference but in active obstruction to most of the advances made in the post-reformation period. Is there a necessary connection between the obstruction and what we may call, for lack of a better phrase, the period of establishment of Christianity in Western society?

Certainly, one of the most curious aspects of the Church in its social dimension has been its almost total opposition to change: not to this or that particular change, but to change as such. This has taken the form of an implacable opposition to a succession of radical or revolutionary philosophies which have fomented change over the past five hundred years. Nineteenth-century liberals met with the same treatment as their twentieth-century counterparts, those theorists and reformers who, at various positions left of centre, have learned not to count the Church as among their allies. They are tinged with ‘secularism’ and ‘utopianism’, are irreverent of precedent and tradition, and easily fit into that elastic ecclesiastical category of ‘dangerous’.

Since history is, almost by definition, change, it will be seen that this puts a great strain on the relationship between the church and a section of the world which has particular claims on the church’s sympathy.
The Chaplain at Aldenham
Authors: Mathew David
Published: July 2007

The purpose of this article is to study the outlook on Catholicism of Sir John Acton, later Lord Acton the famous historian, when he was living in Shropshire as a young bachelor. During his boyhood the provision of a chaplain had been arranged with the Bishop by his mother. Lady Granville.

A certain light is thrown on Acton's religious approach by an account of his dealings with the chaplains who served Aldenham between his coming of age and the final closing of the chapel. During the eighteenth century such chaplaincies, which were then at the hub of Catholic rural life, had been for the most part served either by the religious orders or by some relative or dependent of the squire's family. With the development of the big industrial populations, it became harder to obtain a suitable priest for work of an increasingly restricted scope. There were certain exceptional cases, like Wardour Castle, where the Jesuits had agreed to make a permanent provision. Aldenham, however, normally depended on the priests available in that section of the old Midland District.

At this time the Aldenham appointment had a quite special significance. Lord and Lady Granville had now retired to London and the priest chosen would be the daily companion of the young baronet, who lived at Aldenham when in the country. It would, therefore, appear that the Bishop of Shrewsbury had allowed Acton to make his own suggestion.
Can Mysticism be Christian?
Authors: Zaehner R. C.
Published: July 2007

Is mysticism compatible with Christianity? With so rich a mystical tradition as that possessed by the Catholic Church, this might seem a superfluous question to ask. But the term ‘mysticism’ which for Catholics has normally meant a direct apprehension of God, initiated by God and leading to the closest union of the soul with God, has nowadays been called upon to cover a variety of states of soul which many Catholics would not consider to be mystical at all since there is no direct confrontation of person with Person, no union between the two poles and no love.

Be this as it may, I propose for the purposes of this article to include two well-known types of preternatural experience as ‘mystical’ because, in non-Catholic circles, they are usually considered to be so, and because the characteristic of each is that the ‘mystic feels himself to be transplanted beyond time and space into an eternal ‘now’ in which death can have no relevance and man's natural condition is seen to be one of certain immortality. This type of experience can be ‘extroverted', that is, the soul feels itself to be merged in the undying life of all things; or it can be ‘introverted', in which case the soul plunges into its own deepest essence from which all that is phenomenal, transient, and conditioned, falls away and it sees itself as unfractionably one and beyond all the dualities of worldly life.
The Literature of Africa
Authors: Mathew Gervase
Published: July 2007

Africa has been concentrated on far too long in isolation; both by exploiters and by sentimentalists. It is only recently that African history has begun to be seen as a part of world history and that attempts are being made to correlate archaeological findings in Africa, Asia and Europe. A new series which is being published from the Oxford University Press at last makes it possible to study African literary forms as an essential part of world literature.

The first four volumes of the series have now appeared. The most important of these is Somali Poetry, by W. B. Andrzejewski and I. M. Lewis, both specialists of recognized distinction. The first sixty pages deal lucidly and surely definitively with the social and cultural setting of Somali poetry, the Somali language and the characteristics of Somali verse. Biographical notes on the poets are provided. The next ninety pages consist of Somali poems with the original on one side and the English translation opposite.

Somali verse has been transmitted orally; it is a great tradition and still a living one. The editors write of one class of lyric: ‘While the origins of other types of poem go far back into the past the heelo is an innovation which was first introduced in 1945. Its creator Abdi Deeqsi, nicknamed “Cinema”, was the owner and driver of a trading lorry and composed the first heelo when his lorry broke down near Zeila. In a desolate place he sang his love song, beating the rhythm on an empty petrol tin.
The Cartesian Basis of the New Morality
Authors: McCabe Herbert
Published: July 2007

The Bishop of Woolwich has, I need hardly say, a great number of true and important things to say about morality—notably his magnificent aphorism, ‘Prayer and ethics are simply the inside and the outside of the same thing.’ But the thing I want to discuss here is something he says about prohibitions. Briefly the New Morality is characterised by the doctrine that no moral prohibition is unconditionally valid. That is to say, according to the New Morality you can never describe a course of human action and say that this action would always be wrong in absolutely any circumstances. I think the New Morality is mistaken about this.

It is true that prohibitions do not have a very fundamental or important part to play in ethics. I do not think that a man can base his moral life on avoiding prohibited actions, any more than he can base his physical life simply on avoiding poisons. The law, in the sense of a code of prohibited behaviour, could never be the foundation of a human life. This is the clear teaching of St Paul and I accept it as unreservedly as does the Bishop. If a man tries to live simply by the law it will not help him to do right—it will only make clear to him where he has done wrong. The root and life of morality is not the law but love; what is not an expression of love is not good behaviour however much it may resemble good behaviour. Let us agree once and for all that, for example, chastity without charity is not even true chastity, it resembles the true virtue as a corpse resembles a living animal.
The Bird's Eye View: Some Thoughts about the Just War Tradition
Authors: Windass G. S.
Published: July 2007

Although the teaching and example of Christ clearly call us away from violence and hatred and bloodshed, the world often pulls the other way. The tension which results can be agonising; and it is tempting to get rid of it straightaway by a kind of intellectual manoeuvre. We can for instance pretend that the world does not exist—or that we arc not responsible for it; or we can pretend that the gospels do not apply to it. If we succeed in reducing the tension, then is the time to beware; for the tension between the world and the gospels can only be removed by eliminating one of them; and both are necessary for a Christian-in-the-World.

St Augustine felt forced by historical circumstances to admit that a man could serve in the army and still please God; but it was not without a great sense of strain that he gave some kind of approval to ‘such great, repulsive and cruel evils’. From scraps of St Augustine, the Western Church evolved what has come to be known as the ‘just war tradition’, permitting war, and later making it obligatory, in certain defined circumstances. The idea of a ‘just war’ is an explosive one; it provokes extreme responses. The Roman Catholic who still bases his thinking on this tradition, or the more common type, who simply relies on the opinions of ‘experts’ and does not think at all, will regard the just war as part of the Creed and will afford it an unquestioning reverence; those who do not have such faith consider it as just another piece of appalling Roman casuistry.
Snow against the Poets
Authors: Foster Kenelm
Published: July 2007

To this second edition of his now famous Rede lecture Sir Charles Snow has added fifty pages of further thoughts provoked by the extraordinary amount of attention it received. One can say ‘extraordinary’ without irony, or with little. In itself the lecture was not very remarkable— neither deep, nor subtle, nor closely reasoned, nor witty. But it made its points with force and it was exceedingly topical. Moreover Sir Charles is an interesting and versatile man, and as a writer he has a beguiling knack of combining a certain high seriousness—solemnity even—with the common touch. One feels that he has tried hard not to be spoiled by success—not, in a sense, to be changed by it at all. He brings the whole of himself, his feelings as well as his gifts and experience, into all that he writes. He does so here. Allusions to Rutherford and G. H. Hardy, dropped with a tone at once admiring and affectionate, and to high table conversations, evoke the Cambridge background and the thrill of having been a young research student there at ‘one of the most wonderful creative periods in all physics’. Allusions to the working class origins widen the perspective and humanise it; reference to important tasks well performed in the civil service add the impression—and a perfectly just one— of a man who knows much front the inside about power and the workings of power. Indeed the only ‘inside’ allusion one misses is to the novelist’s art; which is a pity since so much of the lecture, on its more polemical side, and so much of the comment now added to it, amount to an indictment of the ‘literary intellectual’ and, indirectly or by implication, of a good deal of the literature which he either produces or spends much time and energy discussing.
Heard and Seen: Retrospective Rauschenberg
Authors: Reyntiens Patrick
Published: July 2007

Robert Rauschenberg, whose show has just ended at the Whitechapel Gallery, is a traditional artist, binding into one vision all the major streams of experiment and achievement of twentieth-century art which interest him. The paintings, combine paintings, and objects on view are a digest of influences which in fact we all know; if we do not, then there is no excuse, because books on the art leading up to Rauschenberg are a commonplace in bookshops, let alone the pictures themselves which are on view at the Tate and other galleries. Rauschenberg’s is probably the best example of a kind of art in the mid twentieth century which starts off by making you think it is art autre, and then it becomes art engagè, only, on final analysis to turn into a kind of art pour I’art. At first glance nothing could be more art autre than the first combine paintings with their wilful inclusion of everything that is not art. The point of art autre as I see it, is to cut to the root any kind of making or appreciating that involves the aesthetic faculty; it is done expressly to destroy the academic and conventional idea of what constitutes Art and substitute a gratuitous gesture in its place, a gesture that is in the end only made valid by the vision of the maker, the true artist. It is a simultaneous alienation of the art-object from the spectator and from arty, or aesthetic, art; but this situation is never a complete success unless the art-object is thumpingly bad—then of course you do get a complete alienation. Rauschenberg’s art is very good however and so the feeling of alienation is quickly replaced by a feeling of magnetism.
Christendom and Jewry: a Study in Irony
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: July 2007

I take the terms ‘Christendom’ and ‘Jewry’ to mean the cultural and political embodiments of the Christian and Jewish religions. Christendom is the socially visible manifestation and product of Christianity, as Jewry is of Judaism. It is with these products of the two religions that I am concerned, not directly with the systems of religious belief and practice that constitute the two religions.

'Christendom', however, the concrete equivalent of the abstract ‘Christianity', is a much less definite term than ‘Church', which is so to speak the official and necessary embodiment of the Christian religion. Now it is in the almost Protean development of the indefinable, ill-disciplined, not always very Christian reality meant by ‘Christendom’ that I see much irony; not in the mysterious theological reality meant by ‘the Holy Catholic Church'. And I am presuming – I hope fairly enough – that as Christendom is to Church, so mutatis mutandis is Jewry to Israel. Jewry in its very different manner I find as ironical a reality as Christendom. My point, in fact, will be that in some ways Christendom would have been a much more suitable correlative to Israel than to the Church, and Jewry more suited to the Church than to Israel.

I take it as a starting point that some sort of visible embodiment in human society is of the essence of both religions. And that is why I cannot altogether agree with Dr James Parkes when he makes the generalization in one of his Parkes Library booklets (Jewry and Jesus of Nazareth by Maurice Eisendrath and James Parkes), that, whereas Judaism addresses man as a social being, Christianity addresses man as a person.
A liturgical language in a linguistic perspective
Authors: Crystal David
Published: July 2007

It may seem strange, now that the hierarchies of the world have begun to put the Council's recommendations into practice, to see an introductory article on a linguistic framework for discussing liturgical language. But there are several good reasons why such a perspective is necessary. First, any decisions licensing the use of certain forms and withholding others must always be kept under review, as language is in a continual state of change. In a hundred years time, the language of today may well seem as archaic as the (never-defined) ‘Victorian English’ which biblical translations are frequently accused of being in. One must beware of complacency. There is bound to be further modification, and much future discussion. Secondly, the perspective would be valuable as a therapy for much recent popular discussion, whose utility is lessened by using undefined or irrelevant critical terminology, when words are condemned for being ‘ugly', ‘un-English', ‘incorrect', ‘debased', and so on – all highly subjective and misleading criteria. Thirdly, a linguistically-orientated basis for discussion would provide a means whereby the public's suggestions and views could be of use to any committee working on the liturgy. At the moment, sporadic opinions sent to the Catholic press about the kind of language vernacularization should bring make interesting reading, but because of the haphazard, occasional origins of this information and the variety of critical principles on which views are based (everything from a vague impressionism to a precise logic), the resultant mass of data is unco-ordinated, of little generality, and hence of little assistance. But it is just this knowledge about popular attitudes to language which a committee needs.
The Responsible African
Authors: Foster Paul
Published: July 2007

It is ten years since I went along to Stanford’s in St James's to buy a map which would show me where Uganda really was. This was my first move towards becoming chaplain at Makerere, then the University College of East Africa, now a constituent unit in a fully-fledged university.

While my ship turned the corner of Africa off Cape Gardafui the Kabaka was flying back to Uganda from exile to be welcomed by a Governor, the notable Sir Andrew Cohen (whose seat at Entebbe he now occupies as Sir Frederick Mutesa). The train from Nairobi was protected by armed guards against a possible Mau-Mau raid. Jomo Kenyatta was imprisoned in the far north and Sir Evelyn Baring ruled Kenya. Sir Edward Twining governed Tanganyika. Today, under Kenyatta, Obote and Nyerere, it is East Africa which is travelling into an unknown and sparsely-mapped future.

I like to recall what I said when taking over my major teaching assignment at Makerere, the first Honours Class in Political Ideas. ‘I am aware,’ I said, ‘that I am speaking to the the leaders of three future republics'. Neither the class nor I realized how quickly that future would arrive. I do not think that even Dr Jowett's pupils at Balliol reached ministerial or near-ministerial level within three years of gaining their degrees. There have been a few cases of swelled heads as a result of this swift elevation, but in general I find it heartening, on their visits to this country, to observe how these men, recently undergraduates, are conscientiously shouldering their formidable tasks.
The Council and Religious Life
Authors: Merton Thomas
Published: July 2007

The Second Vatican Council draws to a close amid the rather general realization that the Catholic Church has reached the end of a historic age. Indeed it is sometimes, provocatively, said that we find ourselves now in the ‘post-Christian era’. Naturally this term has such undertones of pessimism and ambiguity that it cannot be taken too seriously. From the point of view of theology, there can be no post-Christian era. Since the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us, and since ‘behold He is with us all days even to the end of the world’, all ages are His and He is the King of Ages, immortal and invisible. Yet on another level, that of social and cultural history, it may perhaps be possible to find certain fruitful suggestions in this insolent expression.

For over a thousand years the Catholic Church in Western Europe has first helped to build, then to sustain a Christian culture, a ‘Christendom’, which has after all been not without its glory. It is the culture and society not of the last days of the Roman Empire, though inspired by Augustine and the other Latin Fathers, but of Garolingian and then Medieval and Renaissance Europe: the Christendom of Chartres and Canterbury, Paris and Rome, Cambridge and Salamanca, of St Anselm and St Thomas, of St Bernard and Peter the Venerable, of St Francis and St Dominic, Duns Scotus, St Theresa, St John of the Cross, St Ignatius . . . What need is there to go on?
The Language of Renewal
Authors: Eagleton Terry
Published: July 2007

Here, almost literally at randon, is a paragraph of print from the front page of a Catholic newspaper:

‘(Sunday) is a day primarily for Mass, then for relaxation and for good works. The precept of servile work was first enunciated to give an opportunity for relaxation so that people might be able to worship God and to be with their families.’

There is nothing very startling about this statement for a Catholic, but it’s worth considering the effect of it on someone outside the Church. What kind of sensibility does it show at work? There is a marked tendency to categorization, to begin with: Sunday is divided neatly from week-days and then subdivided between Mass, relaxation and good works. The language has a stiff remoteness: ‘good works’, ‘precept’, ‘enunciated’ have a period flavour, and so does ‘servile work’, which the Catholic eye takes in and slides over automatically. But the stiffness is a matter of feeling as well as language, as the final message makes clear: Sunday was enunciated by precept as a day of rest so that people could worship God and be with their families. What kind of concern is it which arranges worship and rest by precept, under pain of serious sin ? What validity is there in the implicit assumption that worshipping God is done better relaxed than driving a bus? Is worshipping God a special activity, in its own category, apart from working or even from being with one’s family ?
The Transformation Theme
Authors: Webb Geoffrey
Published: July 2007

We have already considered William’s eleventh meditation as a sort of examination of conscience, designed to enlighten him about his major problem, namely his vocation. One cannot help feeling that he went on thinking about it for too long, since the passage in question recalls something he had written probably ten years earlier, in his ‘Nature and Dignity of Love’. Between the ages of about thirty-five and forty-five, he seems to have been thoroughly bugged by the noonday devil, and there were still five years to go before he was finally to make up his mind and transfer to the Cistercians at Signy. The big problem was one of responsibility, for he felt a failure as a superior, and even more than that, he felt it was stupid that he of all people should be in charge of a monastery, when all he wanted was peace and quiet. The fault, naturally, was with those who had put him there.

In the Nature and Dignity of Love, he had written . . . ‘In this school (the monastery, his schola charitatis), those who are tired by their journey lose nothing by taking a rest: neither did the two hundred of David’s men who were so spent that they could not cross the brook at Besor (I Samuel, 30, 9). If anyone will sit and “tarry with the stuff”, as these did ... if anyone sits by the baggage and faithfully guards it, he will hardly be worse off than his companions who go on ahead and win the victory, for he shall have an even share of the spoil’.
The World in the Church—An Exercise in Natural Theology
Authors: Gregory T. S.
Published: July 2007

In February 1963, the Cambridge faculty of divinity sponsored four lectures on Objections to Christian Belief. In the last of them, Canon Bezzant pointed out that we need a natural theology. He said that ‘the only possible basis for a reasonably grounded natural theology is what we call scientific. The difficulty is that there is no such actuality as “science”; there are many and increasing sciences’. True, but there is such an actuality as a scientific discipline, a scientific attitude and habit of mind, a scientific conscience. To be detached, self-effacing, humble, industrious, co-operative, patient, observant, accurate, truthful, temperate is to be scientific. But why should you be any of these things? Why not be passionate, aggressive, arrogant, lazy, lonely, hasty, purblind, vague, false and lustful? Because the conventions of society chance to forbid these self-indulgences ? They don’t. Perhaps it is that without these high qualities and the discipline that lives upon them you cannot penetrate the mystery of the world we inhabit or discern a meaning in the life we have to live. Why is the world open to Aristotle, Newton, Planck, Einstein and their kind and closed to Tamerlane and Jenghiz Khan? Only through the discipline of science, a moral and even mystical discipline, can the existing universe be induced to yield up its secrets. Moreover the power thus liberated creates a human situation (e.g. the unity of the human race) in which the inferior human virtues such as courage and thrift are all inadequate and we cannot live without faith, hope and charity.
Theology in a Hot Climate
Authors: Smith Jerome
Published: July 2007

Theologies have always differed from age to age and from region to region. Since theology is the intellectual articulation of man’s response to the Word of God, and both response and articulation are conditioned by the historical and cultural circumstances within which they take place, this differentiation is as right as it is inevitable. In the age of the great Christological controversies Alexandria and Antioch had each a special contribution to make: Alexandria a deep apprehension of the underlying unity of God the Word through all states, activities and experiences, Antioch an equally necessary emphasis on the real and full humanity of Jesus. Eastern and Western Christianity have differed in their starting point for an approach to the mystery of God since the days of Tertullian, the West starting from the unity of the Godhead and the East from the Three-foldness. Provided that the unity of the faith is preserved, such variations in theological tradition are an enrichment for the Church.

In a time when the question of the African personality is a sharp and even agonizing problem for the majority of politically, socially and culturally conscious Africans, it is natural that the question of a peculiarly African theology should arise. African self-awareness seems to take on a special, and philosophical, turn among those who have been educated through the medium of French, and it is notable that it has been the Congolese bishops who have called most clearly and ringingly for an indigenous African theology.
Aggiornamento
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

The attempt of the Church’s Council to renew its life and to enter into a dialogue with the non-Catholic world has led in fact to the attempt to find ways of communicating with, or of understanding, at different levels, elements within itself and the world in which it finds itself. If the first discovery of the Council was the need for the bishops to communicate with each other, to form a collective mind, and to learn to regulate the processes of civilised discussion, the second was that ancient defensive positions should not prejudice the necessity for intelligibility in a world increasingly literate. The first led to a restatement of the primitive teaching about the bishop’s role, both as representative of the local church, and as a member of that group, or college, that succeeds to the apostles, and shares with the successor of Peter in the direction of the Catholic Church. The implications of this, both in the traditional ecclesiastical sphere, and in relation to the sharing of the presbyterium, or priestly group, in the affairs of the local church, and in the necessarily growing part the holy people of God will take in areas, till recently confined to clerics, is in principle outlined in the Decree on the Church, though the carrying out of the implications of the decree may take long enough.
Religion and Race in the United States
Authors: Merton Thomas
Published: July 2007

The idea of kairos – the time of urgent and providential decision – is something characteristic of Christianity, a religion of decisions in time and in history. Can Christians recognize their kairos? Is it possible that when the majority of Christians become aware that ‘the time has come’ for a decisive and urgent commitment, the time has, in fact, already run out?

There can be no question now that the time for a certain kind of crucial Christian decision in America has come and gone. In 1962, and finally in 1963, there were ‘moments of truth’ which have now passed, and the scene is becoming one of darkness, anarchy and moral collapse. These, of course, still call for a Christian response, a Christian decision. But it might seem that the responses and decisions of Christians will necessarily be less clear and more tragic because it is now apparent that there is little left for Christians as such to do to shape the events – or forestall the tragedies – that are to come. At best they can pray, and patiently suffer the consequences of past indecision, blindness, and evasion. They cannot lead and guide the nation through this crisis, but they can still help others, if they choose, to understand and accept the sufferings involved in order to make a creative and constructive use of the situation for the future. Are they really likely to do this? Who can say?
The Tradition of Christendom and the Second Vatican Council
Authors: Markus R. A.
Published: July 2007

'Tradition’ is one of the most problematic words in the vocabulary of theology. At one end of the theological spectrum it serves as the name for a norm whereby to judge any practice or belief, a standard endowed with authority related – in a way which it is not my concern to define more closely here – to that of the scriptural revelation. At the other end of the spectrum it can approximate to customs, practices, beliefs which are carried by the Church through her history as the debris of the past, a dead weight which may have lost meaning and relevance but is built into the Church's sociological structure. Thus a pope of the eleventh century, Gregory VII, who always liked to stress that his own reforming ideals were only to bring the Church back to the precepts of the holy fathers and the ancient canons, could nevertheless reply to his opponents, who invoked time-hallowed customs to justify their opposition, by remarking in words themselves borrowed from a long tradition – that Christ had said he was the truth, not that he was tradition. In general our talk of ‘tradition’ moves on a level a little lower than the angels of authoritative norm and above the beasts of outworn custom. It is this peculiarity that gives such evocative power to the language, to take a recent example, of Mrs Rosemary Haughton. in one of the more thoughtful contributions to the symposium Objections to Roman Catholicism.
Philosophy in the Seminary
Authors: Ernst Cornelius
Published: July 2007

This article is concerned with the practice of philosophy in religious institutions such as seminaries or the study-houses of religious orders. But it is clear that the possibility of such a limitation – the practice of philosophy in some particular setting – is itself problematic. Philosophizing would seem to claim that it is independent or can become independent of the setting of its practice in all relevant respects. Speaking as a theologian (as I intend to do throughout this article) and claiming therefore complete freedom to appeal to revelation in Scripture and the Church, I must maintain that there is one setting, one Sitz im Leben, of which philosophizing can never become independent: the concrete economy of sin and salvation which embraces humanity and the whole of creation with it. But to admit this is not yet to commit oneself to the view that the theological Sitz im Leben of philosophizing is philosophically relevant, i.e. that philosophical discourse is dependent for its shape and content on the theological existence of philosophers. If it is possible for any intellectual activity to release itself from the constraints of the concrete conditions of its exercise – we can think in spite of a feverish cold though not when we are delirious – then there would seem to be no obvious reason why philosophizing, the intellectual activity par excellence, should not precisely define itself as just that discourse which actively releases itself from the particularity of all and any concrete conditions of its exercise, including theological ones, by simple (though perhaps costing) pretermission or by reflexive objectivization.
The New Churches of Europe
Authors: Cornford Christopher
Published: July 2007

How possible is it to design a first-rate new church in the middle of the twentieth century ? Our grandchildren, perhaps, will be able to answerthis question better than we can, because what is being built now will, if it survives at all. be much easier to evaluate after it has been lived with and used for a couple of generations. Meanwhile one can at least draw up a balance sheet of our contemporary advantages and disabilities. On the positive side, the apparatus of rationality, simplicity and appeal to first principles which the modern architectural movement wrought for itself should, anyway notionally. give its present-day followers a good start – or at the very least it should preserve them from the worser kinds of pretentiousness and vacuity. A generation reared on le Corbusier's dictum that ‘the plan is the generator’ ought to be able to devise liturgical spaces that are light, plain and sensible if they are nothing more. Further, the independence from ‘historic styles’ which the modern movement asserted should make our architectural idiom more readily responsive to changes in liturgical practice and indeed to all the new kinds of religious sensibility and orientation which, long latent, seem at last to have found expression in Pope John and the Council. If, as seems tremulously possible, the Church does in fact decide to enter the twentieth century, understand it and lead it, there is available at least the makings of an architectural vocabulary to suit the purpose.
After ‘Pacem in Terris’ ‐ What?
Authors: Lee A. D.
Published: July 2007

Although the suggestion of a dialogue with Communism has been looked upon by some Catholics as hopeless and unproductive, while being openly criticized by others, the possibility of such a dialogue is at least implied by Pope John XXIII in Pacem in Terris.

'It must be borne in mind, furthermore, that neither can false philosophical teachings regarding the nature, origin, and destiny of the universe and of man be identified with historical movements that have economic, social, cultural or political ends, not even when these movements have originated from these teachings and have drawn and still draw inspiration therefrom.

This is so because the teachings, once they are drawn up and defined, remain always the same, while the movements, working in constantly evolving historical situations, cannot but be influenced by these latter and cannot avoid, therefore, being subject to changes, even of a profound nature . . .

It can happen, then, that meetings for the attainment of some practical end, which formerly were deemed inopportune and unproductive, might now or in the future be considered opportune and useful.’

Applying this insight of Pope John XXIII, a distinction should be made between the theory of Communism and the Communist movement in history. Certainly Communism is based on a false philosophy of the nature, origin and destiny of man. The historical movement of Communism originated from those false teachings and still draws upon them for inspiration. Further, these teachings, as permanently recorded and defined, remain the same.
The New Theology and the Life of Prayer
Authors: Dalrymple John
Published: July 2007

What effect have the new theological insights on our understanding of the life of prayer? It is a question of impact on the spirit of man. Theology deals with God, but it concerns man, and therefore, if a theology is to have any impact on the age it lives in, it must answer the questions which men of that age ask. Otherwise, however wide its research and valid its conclusions, it will remain outside the current of life. The best way. therefore, to examine the spirituality of the new theology is to begin by by examining the needs of modern man. From our understanding of the latter will grow our appreciation of the former.

Man's understanding of himself has developed in the modern age. A hundred years ago, if you said ‘person’ you conjured up the image of separateness. Words like ‘sovereignty’ and ‘inalienable’ rose to the lips. Man was thought of primarily as an individual with rights of his own, an island in a sea of other islands. But now we understand things differently. Without denying the inalienability and essential separateness of a person, we think it equally necessary to stress that he is only a person because he can enter into relations with other persons; that, as well as existing in himself, he also exists for other people; that ‘the most vital core of man does not consist in the solitary and hardened affirmation of his individual autonomy, but in availability, welcome, receptivity'. (Charles Moeller). In fact that man is not an island, but part of the main.
Go to the Engineer
Authors: Toole S. M. W.
Published: July 2007

‘Go to the engineer and consider his words and learn wisdom.’

(adapted proverb)

At one time to call any one an automaton was by no means a compliment; today the term may be used to praise exemplary behaviour. What has brought about this change of meaning?

If we take the question on the practical side, the answer seems to lie in an analysis of the achievements of modern engineering. Today engineers can make, and do make, machines which control themselves and each other. Such machines recognize the requirements of a given situation and adapt their behaviour to those requirements by selecting the means most fitting to the end. In process of such adaptation, they apply rules which they have previously learnt and some machines can even find a new rule to meet a fresh situation and ‘remember’ the rule when the need occurs.

In all this machines resemble men in their behaviour and, although they have not man's variety of response, they outstrip him in accuracy and speed. They are largely self-directing and the need for supervision is reduced to a minimum. Once his machines are set up, the engineer's job is reduced to the task of keeping them in first-class condition and when necessary, ‘telling’ them what they are expected to do.

If we translate the behaviour of machines into human terms, we shall find what is ideally the goal of those in control of men and of those who are controlled.
Theology in a Godforsaken Epoch
Authors: Kerr Fergus
Published: July 2007

The presupposition of the argument of this paper is that all Catholic theology occurs in the first place within the context of some Church-mediated experience of God. This does not mean reducing theology to spirituality or to the conceptual elaboration of personal piety. It is simply saying that theology requires a starting-point, a source of intelligibility, which is encounter with God himself: for without some prior relationship to its ‘object’ theology can never be anything more fundamental than the philological investigation of more or less ancient documents. What we are therefore taking to be theological understanding (hermeneutic), even of classical texts in theological tradition, depends radically on some personal or anyway epochal (in a sense to be explained) experience of what theology is about in the first place: that is, on somehow being addressed by God himself. Doing theology at all depends on hearing the word of God: God must be allowed to speak to us before we can begin to speak about him. It was on the basis of this presupposition, and in the context of collective reflexion on the challenge to theological renewal facing one of the older religious orders at the present time, that the following observations were originally adumbrated.

The Church must enter into dialogue with the modern world': this is a phrase and a programme with which we are familiar today. It is not always noticed, however, that all the terms of it are very obscure. We are not at present very clear about the nature of the Church nor about the nature of the modern world, and any dialogue between the two is consequently very difficult to visualize. It may be said that we are at least aware that we are not very clear about the nature of the Church; the real difficulty is that we tend to suppose there is no problem about the nature of the modern world.
The Council Resumes
Authors: St John Henry
Published: July 2007

By the time these words are in print the Vatican Council will be about to enter on its fourth, and presumably last, session. Undoubtedly this session will be an important one, its decisions are likely to make or mar the full realization of all its previous work. Pope John had two principal aims in calling together Vatican II. The first was the renewal of the inner life of the Church. A striking manifestation of such renewal would reveal its native truth and splendour to the world, not in pomp and pageantry, but in humble service of mankind. That native truth and splendour have been too often obscured by the slow unrecognized pressures of history, and by human limitation and failings. Their remedy, by sincere self examination, would enable the Church's eternal message to penetrate the world it lives in more acceptably. The progressively widening divorce of world from church might then, in some measure at least, be narrowed and bridged.

The second aim, equally important, but subsidiary to the first, was to promote by a change of heart and mind the unity of all Christians in the one Church, as Christ the Lord wills it and designs it to be. These two aims were of course intimately connected in Pope John's mind, though no doubt he himself learned much, during his short pontificate, of what this first step, so clearly indicated to him, would ultimately involve.

In his recent book Mr Hales has done much to clarify these two aims of the late Pope and how they formed themselves in his mind.
Can War be Just in a Nuclear Age?
Authors: Corbishley Thomas
Published: July 2007

Perhaps it is worth while beginning by taking a look at the traditional Catholic teaching on the just war. to see how and why it developed. It is significant that, in approaching the question of war. Aquinas asks whether it is always sinful to wage war. His discussion of this topic concludes with the formulation of three conditions for a war to be just. His doctrine has been elaborated by later theologians and perhaps the most comprehensive brief statement is to be found in the following passage from Father Henry Davis, S.J.:

That war may be just the following conditions must be fulfilled: It must be declared by the State itself; it must be necessary in the last resort after diplomacy has failed; there must be a grave and just reason for it; the method of it must be just and in accordance with international law; an upright purpose must be intended; it may not be protracted after due satisfaction has been given or offered; the conditions of peace must be just, and may not be crushing, unless such severity is necessary for present self-defence.

When the reasons for undertaking war are not certainly just, it is more generally taught that war may not be undertaken, for another State may not be deprived of rights in possession, one of these being immunity from attack. But when a State is on the defensive, it is sufficient justification for defence that its own injustice is not obvious.’ It seems to me fair to suggest that the Just War doctrine arose precisely because Christians felt almost instinctively that war needed to be ‘justified'.
The Night Spirit and the Dawn Air
Authors: Merton Thomas
Published: July 2007

How the valley awakes. At two fifteen in the morning there are no sounds except in the monastery: the bells ring, the office begins. Outside, nothing, except perhaps the bullfrog saying ‘Om’ in the creek or in the guest house pond. Some nights he is in Samadhi, there is not even ‘Om'. The mysterious and uninterrupted whooping of the whippoorwill begins about three, on spring mornings. He is not always near. Sometimes there are two whooping together, perhaps a mile away to the woods in the east.

The first chirps of the waking day-birds mark the point vierge of the dawn under a sky as yet without real light, a moment of awe and inexpressible innocence, when the Father in perfect silence opens their eyes. They begin to speak to him not with fluent song but with an awakening question that is their dawn state, their state at the point vierge. Their condition asks if it is time for them to ‘be'. He answers ‘yes’. Then, they one by one wake up, and become birds. They manifest themselves as birds, beginning to sing. Presently they will be fully themselves, and will even fly.

Meanwhile, the most wonderful moment of the day is that when creation in its innocence asks permission to ‘be’ once again, as it did on the first morning that ever was.

All wisdom seeks to collect and manifest itself at that blind sweet point. Man's wisdom does not succeed, for we are fallen into self-mastery and cannot ask permission of anyone.