bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
He That is to Come
Authors: Brocklehurst Mask
Published: August 2024

Nowhere are we told more clearly and briefly of the manner of Christ's presence amongst us than in the introduction to St John's gospel. He is made Flesh; that is to say he is one who comes. In the first instance it is he who comes to us. Secondly he is the light that is the life of men, but a light that shines in darkness. Thirdly he must be awaited and received by us. And fourthly those who receive him fmd that they have the power to see the light shining in the darkness. ‘And we saw his glory, the glory as it were of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.’ (John I. 14).

The Jews were remarkable in that they were looking to the future. Not for them only to rest content with the great favours that God had shown them in the past; the greatest favour was to come, in the person of the Prophet, the Messias, the holy one of God.
The Sacraments: III—Penance
Authors: Bright Laurence
Published: August 2024

We have seen in earlier articles how the Church takes natural, human things, such as water and oil, and supernaturalizes them by the power of God. In the technical language of sacramental theology the natural sign is called the matter, the words which raise it up and determine it to bring about that which it signifies, the form. But it would be quite wrong to imagine an implied contrast between material and immaterial in the normal sense of the words. In the sacrament of penance the natural element is human sorrow for sin, a turning from evil to good: it is transformed into that supernatural love of God which is charity, through words of absolution spoken by a priest who has been given the necessary faculties by the bishop.
Science in Holiness
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: August 2024

The onlookers were amazed after the Apostles were filled with the Holy Ghost; they wondered, saying one to another, What meaneth this? Others mocking said, These men are full of new wine. With the commonsense answer, These are not drunk as you suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day, St Peter went on to give his hearers a dogmatic discourse on the incarnation: it was not an uplift exhortation about moral values nor a fine frenzy, but a down-to-the-earth statement of historic fact, followed by the uncompromising advice, Do penance, ana be baptized every one of you. Then, he added, yon shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. There could be no more fitting preface to a series of studies, of which this is the first, on the seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost in the light of scientific Christian theology.
Working for Unity
Authors: Richards Michael
Published: August 2024

The unity which Christ gave to men in his Church appears to be lost, and must again be found. That theme, repeated by Christians almost everywhere, reveals a longing which he is going to satisfy according to the extent we allow it to grovv within us. Every Christian worth the name must pray, nowadays, for reconciliation with all others who are still separated from them—not, it should be remembered, in spite of their loyalty to the same Master, but, so they are convinced, because of it.

Such prayer, and whatever work we may have to do to supplement it, springs not from any human feelings of urgency in the face of the present political situation, nor even from a desire for greater effectiveness in missionary work, nor from impatience at the unreality of life in a divided Christian community. Prayer for unity is a normal part of our imitation of Christ. It is more than that; it is part of our share in his life. He prayed, and prays in us, to his Father and ours, that all may be one.
The Laity and the Breviary
Authors: Reidy Gabriel
Published: August 2024

Readers of Sir Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel may perhaps recall the Dwarf in the poem, and ‘how much he marvelled’ to find that the wounded opponent of Lord Cranstoun,

‘ … a knight of prideLike a book-bosomed priest should ride.’

And the context reveals that he
‘thought not to search or staunch the woundUntil the secret he had found.'

Ignoring the fact that ‘the mighty book’ in this instance was none other than a magic book of spells by Sir Walter's medieval namesake Michael, and attending to the simile alone, we learn from the poet's own explanatory but confusing note, that ‘The book-a-bosom priests were those who went to a distance to baptize or marry with the Mass-book in their breasts'. Without any pedantic head-shaking in the direction of Abbotsford we may pass from the wounded knight to a more familiar modern figure, that of the travelling cleric, not book-bosomed perhaps, so much as book-pocketed or book-brief-cased.
‘Leviathan Which Yahweh Made to Laugh At’
Authors: Bourke Joseph
Published: August 2024

Why does God permit evil? It is a fatal timidity which induces us nowadays to pre-occupy ourselves exclusively with the apologetic aspects of this problem. A significant train of thought in the Bible invites us to see it from a far bolder, and I think from a more sublime, point of view. If we follow this train of thought we shall want not so much to apologize (in any possible sense of the word) for the fact of evil in the world, not so much to ‘reconcile it with God's goodness as to glory in its being there for him to conquer. For it pertains to God's glory that there should be positive forces of evil in the world, and that they should strive actively against his holy will—and not only that they should strive, but that they should seem for a time to prevail against him.
Charity and the Neurotic
Authors: Elkisch F.B.
Published: August 2024

G.H.'s letter in the August-September issue of The Life of The Spirit has found wide interest. Two priests and two doctors have already given their expert advice on a situation in which an ordinary person with no specific psychological experience or training is called upon to meet, efficiently and in a Christian manner, the difficulties of living with a neurotic Member of the family. The correspondents pointed to the danger of being eaten up by the neurotic and admonished those who are in constant contact with them to be prudent and not to mistake for Christian charity a weak, doormat-like attitude which allows the neurosis of the individual unlimited freedom in producing itself in ceaseless speech, the performance of all those many and varied antics of which the neurotic is capable and intruding into the privacy of other members of the family. The nature of neurosis and the correct attitude towards it was widely discussed and, if in approaching the problem from a slightly different angle, I touch on something that has been said before, I beg the reader's indulgence.
From the Pew
Authors: De La Bedoyere Michael
Published: August 2024

The picture is of a medium-sized church, well filled with mothers and fathers and children of all ages—a baby probably intent on also being heard, and dozens of very small children, restless, crawling about, biting father's ear and being shushed by mother. Besides the family groups there are young men and young girls, more or less aware of one another and the show they are putting up. As with the family groups, the old and the young may or may not have missals, a prayer-book, their rosary-beads. While one would hope that those who have come to Mass, armed with nothing more than their offering, are contemplatives who have passed beyond the stage of actually saying prayers and wondering whether mental prayer or the prayer of quiet is best suiting their spiritual progress, it is not, I think, uncharitable to assume that a high percentage are in church simply because Sunday Mass is an obligation under pain of mortal sin, because it is the custom to which they have been brought up, or because of some more or less clear conviction that bodily presence at Sunday Mass, with an attempt now and then to remember what they are in church for, is an act of religion.
The Revival in Liturgical Prayer
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

The present century has seen a great number of changes not only in the world at large but even very fundamental characteristics of the Church life. Among these the liturgical changes are perhaps the most startling. In the last five years these revolutions have emanated from Rome herself, though the preparatory work was done for the most part in France and Germany. The restored Easter Vigil and the new directives for Holy Week are but instances of the intervention of the highest authority in the general manner of conducting ourselves in church. Looking further afield to the Church at large, we see increasing acceptance of Mass offered facing the congregation, the development of the vernacular, the stream-lined architecture of new churches, the popularizing of the missal and many other activities which our grandfathers would never have tolerated. All this liturgical enthusiasm contrasts strongly with the general temper of Catholics in the last century. In those days the congregation, knelt, stood or sat mute and vainly unaware of what was happening at the altar, while the priest mumbled the low Mass unintelligibly or the ‘picked’ choir entered with gusto into Gounod's Ave Maria during the Offertory of the parish sung Mass.
The Vows of Religion I—Obedience
Authors: Ryan Columba
Published: August 2024

Men and women in religious congregations are traditionally spoken of as occupying a state. By this we mean a permanent status to which they are tied for some fixed period, usually for life. It is by the three vows of religion that they are established in this state. And so the vows tend to be thought of absolutely as what make religious what they are. There is a danger in this way of thinking of them, as if they were something in their own right, for their own sakes. It can be forgotten that the vows are only a means to an end, and have always to do with what is vowed. One comes on queerly used distinctions between, for example, the vow and the virtue of obedience, as if the thing known as religious obedience under vow was something quite different from the virtue of obedience.
The Religious Vows and the Holy War
Authors: Bourke Joseph
Published: August 2024

It was our Lord himself who taught us that it is holy to be poor and chaste and obedient. But even as he spoke, and indeed for many years before his time, other Jews had already realized this independently, and had been striving in their own ways to practise these very virtues. The descriptions of the sect known as the Essenes in the records of Josephus and Pliny the Younger, and especially the new discoveries at Qumran, all bear striking witness to this fact. Where then did the idea originate that man can enter into closer union with God through poverty, chastity, and obedience? Clearly it was in the Old Testament, the common source on which our Lord and the Essenes both drew. And when we attempt to trace the idea back to its Old Testament roots, the trail leads us not, as we might have expected, to the temple, or to the altar, nor even, in the last analysis, to the vows of the Nazirites, but beyond this still further back to the remote nomadic past of ancient Israel, to what was probably one of the oldest of her traditions, the tradition of the Holy War.
On Reading The Bible: II
Authors: Campbell Duncan
Published: August 2024

As we have seen in the first half of this article the Old Testament ends, apart from the historical interlude of the Machabees, with the Prophets and their vision of all in God's hands. The worst that could happen, destruction, deportation, or death, is understood, as punishment from God. It is a marvellous vision, all the more so, first of all, for being in our World, and very much in our world; for the prophetic career is like any other, with its ups and downs. The book of Jonas, for instance ('Dove'; but also ‘Destroyer’), shows us some of the downs.

We are told that Jonas has a message for Nineveh. Now no one likes to go into a strange town, especially with unpleasant messages; so Jonas runs away in a ship. There is a storm; the sailors cast lots to find the unlucky one; and the lot falls, of course, upon Jonas. He is thrown overboard, at his own request, in fact; as the waters close over his head he must think, ‘At least, it's the end of that message.’
The Gospel of Grace
Authors: O’Mahony P.J.
Published: August 2024

The Fourth Gospel has variously been called the ‘Gospel of Grace', ‘of Love', ‘of the Divinity of Christ',and all these may be applied to it with equal aptness. Perhaps the most striking title is that of'Grace'. It is the Gospel of hope in our future glory and of our present bliss. We are presented in it with a a divinely optimistic view of life because it brings the message of God's infinite and eternal love for mankind. One cannot read it, seems and not deepen one's love of God. All this arises from its central theme, which is Restoration. It brings to sinful man new hope of sallvation.
A Pattern in the Mass
Authors: Julian Mary
Published: August 2024

Not much of a Red Sea, a mere smudge of holy-water dabbed at in the porch, but in the moment that it takes we have left Egypt, the door has closed behind us like the pillar of cloud and we set out on our journey up the aisle into the domain of the holy, to the mountain of God. The Sinaitic fire burns in sanctuary lamp and candle-flame; the limit of approach is fixed. ‘Judge me, O God, and distinguish my cause from the nation that is not holy’. To say that is to accept the responsibility of being God's holy people. Far from being merely a self-righteous expression of religious apartheid, it is an appeal to God to implement his choice, to give us the grace to fulfil the priestly purpose of the making of the nation. ‘Send forth thy light and thy truth … And I will go unto the altar of God’. To be ‘distinguished’ in this way by God's choice of us in baptism is to enter into the creative pattern, the opus divisionis; land emerging from the abyss; light separated from darkness; a separation not destructive but creative.
Faith and Reality: Two Major Works of Biblical Theology
Authors: Ernst Cornelius
Published: August 2024

It is generally admitted that the Catholic Church is distinguished by an insistence on the reality of the objects of her faith. For those who are in one way or another alienated from the Church this realism often appears unenlightened and superstitious, a kind of primitive surrender to the principalities and powers of a magical world which lies behind and yet permeates the world of everyday, and heightens its common-sense obviousness by charging it with a mana derived from supposed agencies like, but more powerful than, the agencies and objects of the tangible world. Within the Church this sense of the reality of the object of faith has; become incorporated in devotions of many kinds, and also in a metaphysical theology. It would be interesting to examine in some detail the various forms taken by this incorporation of a living and sensitive faith, stretching out to touch and handle its objects
Liturgy for Children
Authors: Julie Agnes
Published: August 2024

Being at Spode brings to my mind recollections of Fr Austin Barker, who often came to lecture to us on social questions, and also gave us a very beautiful retreat. He was very dramatic and highly entertaining, and his name always brings to mind certain phrases, such as: “Watch it, sisters; watch it very carefully!’ I always remember hearing him speak about the children's mass on Sunday. He described it thus: ‘Rows and rows of children—tall figure at the end—rows and rows of children all squashed together—tall figure at the end, booming out instructions, and directions and prayers—My dear sisters', he would say appalled, and holding his head in his hand, ‘the divine sacrifice of the mass'.

Well, we all long to make this divine sacrifice real to the children— we would love to make them want to go to mass—we would all like to be able to say with Cardinal Newman, ‘I could hear masses for ever and not be tired'.
The Liturgical Year
Authors: McGowan F.A.
Published: August 2024

It seems reasonable enough to have a Church calendar, It seems obvious that the chief events of our Lord's life should be arranged round several pivotal feasts and the whole neatly distributed throughout the year. All healthy lives have a rhythm in harmony with the seasons of the year. We plant, cultivate, harvest, let the soil pause in a rest, then begin over again. We mark off anniversary dates of births, deaths, victories, catastrophes. Some are family affairs, but those of national importance are celebrated with a regularity and a protocol which is a test of our patriotism—lest we ourselves forget or lest we fail to pass on the torch to the next generation.
Less than Catholic
Authors: Middleton Neil
Published: August 2024

We are known as an organization holding an easily definable body of ideas as indisputable, ideas, which, on the whole, are unacceptable to many intelligent people. We are also seen as something like a series of pressure groups in trade union, political and social spheres; but it is felt our pressure is just to get something or other stopped. Where people are aware of the existence of educated and intelligent Catholics, their Catholicism is regarded as an aberration that can be discounted. If it is remarked upon at all, it is seen as a matter for surprise that X is a Catholic. This is such a universal state of affairs, that a consideration of why this should be the case is not utterly out of place. One does in fact often come across appeals to make some sort of self-examination, and having done it to go out and become a better Catholic cricketer.
Our Lady
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

As Dominicans we pride ourselves on having a special devotion to our Lady. If that means that we consider ourselves to have more devotion to her than other orders or other Catholics generally, then our pride is foolish and based on a manifest untruth. It is hard to think of a single order or organization in the Church which doesn't pride itself on a special devotion to the Mother of God. But surely we are not reduce to infantile competition on ‘who loves Mother most'. What our special devotions ought to mean is that we all love her in different, characteristic, ways. And our characteristic Dominican way, I would suggest, of loving our Lady, is to give her the service of our minds as well as of our affection.
The Beauty of thy House
Authors: Frederick B. M.
Published: August 2024

The Holy Family is our God-given model of domestic perfection, but because the gospel tells us so astonishingly little of the hidden years we have to build up our exemplar with the aid of thought and imagination. There is no dearth of devotional writing on the subject but we may find that, though suitable for pious reading or for abstract meditation, it does not lend to practical application. We are in danger of falling between two stools. If we are theologically minded we cannot forget that the Holy Family was unique: it has no counterpart in our own experience. We cannot conceive what life was like in a family in which one Person was divine, one sinless and one, to say the least, a very great saint.
Sex Love and Marriage
Authors: Scott Murdoch
Published: August 2024

Why do we say, rightly, that sex is something that generally speaking, should not be talked about in public, in mixed groups, especially between boys and girls? Is it because sex is mean and shameful, perhaps even sinful?; Is it because sex is the private concern of men only, something therefore, that women need not bother about and are not entitled to know about? Is it because sex is something holy and sacred, something to be protected; a mystery whose secrets we penetrate only gradually; something, therefore, to be kept secret, in various measures, from the eyes of the uninitiated; and all this in order that this holy thing might not be abused by ignorant, careless, or wicked people?

Certainly not for the first reason. Sex is not dirty and shameful still less sinful. ‘God created man to his own image; male and female he created them.
Hell and Heaven
Authors: St John Henry
Published: August 2024

If we turn to the Scriptures, under the guidance of the teaching Church, for enlightenment concerning the doctrine of everlasting punishment, we shall find two things stated in them with painful clarity by our Lord himself. There is a final punishment for the unrepentant; it is eternal and it is fire. If thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into unquenchable fire; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished (Mark ix, 42). And again: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. xxv, 41-42). In the moving passage too, in St John's gospel, where our Lord sets out his teaching about himself as the way, the truth and the life, under the image of the vine and the branches, the same warning is contained; that burning by fire is the inevitable result of complete separation from him.
The Marriage Relationship in the Life of Prayer
Authors: Haughton Rosemary
Published: August 2024

In Writing of marriage and prayer I am writing of normal, happy marriage. In a marriage which is unhappy for physical, mental, or spiritual reasons, through the fault of either partner, or both, or neither, there may be great holiness, but this holiness will not be according to the pattern of sanctity which God designs for marriage. It is of the life of prayer within pattern that I want to write, using the word ‘prayer‘ in its widest sense of the whole relationship of the dedicated soul with God. It is a pity that the saints are so little help in this matter. Most married saints either lost their partners early, or struggled towards sanctity through the suffering caused by an unhappy marriage. There are exceptions: St Margaret of Scotland and St Elizabeth of Hungary are great examples, but we know so little of their private lives that for practical purposes they are not much help. St Thomas More's first marriage seems to have been happy, but his young wife died early, and his second wife was never more than a well-loved house-keeper, whom he seems to have found on occasion rather irritating.
Symbols and the Scientists
Authors: Nicholl Donald
Published: August 2024

I would not venture to read a paper on this subject to a gathering of natural scientists did I not hold that the process by which the natural scientist comes to understand the natural world is often analogous to the process of understanding carried out by other scientists, such as historians, for instance. Holding this opinion, I believe that other scientists may have helpful observations to offer to natural scientists on methodology and the basic principle understanding phenomena.

The three observations I wish to put forward are as follows. That in all our knowing-processes (the natural sciences included) we employ images or symbols, through which our mind's eye can see the objects our mind is searching for. Secondly, that the mind's capacity for throwing up symbols is especially vital in tne discovery of new truths—or even new techniques.
The Writer's Predicament in a Scientific Age
Authors: Dinwiddy Hugh
Published: August 2024

The power of the writer is a transforming power. It is in operation from the day he weaves fables round the play-things of his nursery, and it is the power which vitally penetrates, his world which re-incarnates the raw material of his world. And his world is that small part of creation which he knows, and which, in knowing, he manages to love. Today, as he looks out upon the expanding universe which science has prepared for him, he has to find a centre in himself round which he can wrap his belief in human values. Facing him is a world living numbly, automatically, on the sanitary, progressive, anti-theistic, hence antihuman, thinking of the recent scientific past. It is upon this massproduced, disinfected world that the writer is called to exercise his transforming power. Here, amid the disguised cruelty of routine he must kindle the spark of life. Here, though every day he watches ‘the dwarfing of man’ in the perspective of machinery and light years, he must, no matter what his religion, affirm his faith in the uniqueness of man, ‘heir to all the ages'.
The Spirituality of St Thomas More
Authors: Fisher Bernard
Published: August 2024

St Thomas More, ‘the one genius of England’, to quote Erasmus, is one of the best-loved of Englishmen. His wit and learning led Swift to number him among the seven great men of the world. His gentleness and charity led the Elizabethan London playwrights to name him ‘the best friend the poor e'er had’. Yet his very greatness and the warmth of his humanity have, in some respects, obscured the essential More, to the vast collection of Moreana available there is very little concerning Thomas More the saint, even less on More the theologian and little on Thomas the lawyer. By profession St Thomas was a lawyer, but it was as a theologian that he was admired and criticised by his contemporaries, and it was as the ‘leader of the opposition’ that he was liquidated by Henry.
Martyr of Charity
Authors: Nicholl Donald
Published: August 2024

In September 1931, a young priest entered the Carmelite Monastery at Lille, which is under the patronage of the Little Flower. It was a month of stirring events in the world of high finance and politics, for the question of the gold standard was throwing the money-markets into confusion and unemployment was kindling the flames of class-hatred. The British Association was in session at the time, listening amongst other things to a broad-sweeping address from General Smuts, an address in which he painted his holistic Deity on a canvas large enough even for the views of his audience.
St Augustine on the Trinity-II
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

In his introduction to the De Trinitate, Augustine stated his plan, as we saw in the first article, of beginning by establishing what he calls the initium fidei, the starting-point of faith, which he does by showing that the mystery is revealed in Scripture; and then of going on to give reasons for—reddere rationem, which is better translated, perhaps ‘to account for'— the one true God being a Trinity, and for the rightness of saying that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are of one substance or essence. It has been commonly held that the first part of this programme occupies Bks I-VII, in which the dogma is discussed, and that the second part is undertaken in Bks VIII-XV, in which Augustine is thought to look for a sort of proof of the mystery in the created image of the Trinity which is man.
The Spirit in the World—IV: The Catholic People's Weeks
Authors: Oliver  , Pratt Ianthe
Published: August 2024

The organisation now known as the Catholic People's Weeks was founded in 1945 by a small group of priests and laity and has the main aim of helping ordinary Catholics to appreciate their faith more keenly and to live deeper and fuller lives in their homes, parishes and places of work. The original, and eventual, aim is to provide residential Catholic colleges for further education. The immediate need met by these study weeks has proved to be considerable and the organisation, which has Cardinal Godfrey as its Patron, has expanded rapidly in the last few years.

Our first introduction to this association was when we joined its group going for Easter to Worth Priory. Despite the high standard of chant in a Benedictine church, we were not to be mere spectators, for with great charity we were encouraged by the monks to participate fully in the liturgy.
The Throne of Wisdom
Authors: Yendell Agnes
Published: August 2024

Fr Bouyer is never superficial, but it is a pity that his profound thought should not be expressed with more clarity and economy. This is particularly true of'an essay on the place of the Virgin Mary in Christian theology and its significance for humanity,' since a subject of such maystery and delicacy suffers in its impact on the reader from a very analytical and somewhat heavy and repetitive treatment. Nevertheless the basic thought of this book is of great value, particularly at this time when much attention is necessarily given to the subject of sexuality. Fr Bouyer faces questions which arise in many minds and, in the light of the scriptural exegesis of the early church and of the gospel account of the place of our Lady in the work of redemption, he strives to provide answers on the subjects of sex, virginity, marriage and the family as seen in the light of revelation.
Saint Paul on the Redemption
Authors: Sharp Robert
Published: August 2024

It is the word of God himself, declaring his merciful purpose to Moses and the people on Sinai, that tell us the principal elements in the concept of ‘redemption’ as significant for ancient Israel. ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you in to me. Now if you will heed my voice and keep my covenant you shall be my own special possession from among all the peoples…’ (Ex. 19.4f). The first element is God's entirely gratuitous act of intervening in history to liberate the Hebrews from Egypt. The second characteristic, just as unconditional, is shown by the words ‘and brought you in to me'. To set the enslaved people free, only to abandon them in the desert to starve or to be re-taken by their oppressors, would not be redemption. The notion is rather that of a slave redeemed and adopted as a son into the redeemer's household.
The Spirit In The World—VI African School Essays
Authors: Jackson Mary
Published: August 2024

We awoke in the aircraft high over the Southern Sudan, flew parallel to a tremendous red line of dawn, and touched down at Entebbe, on Lake Victoria, to a melodramatic roll of thunder. But the thunder did not quench or contradict the dawn: as even something so commonplace as a bunch of middle-school terminal examination papers goes to show. Perhaps school essays in King Alfred's school in the tenth century showed a similar dawn. Here are some extracts: first from a young girl, who wrote:

‘It is clearly seen that there are very many primitive people in this country. Poor people have no religion and they believe in spirits. Such are the people in my native land.

In 19541 went to live with my grandmother who was surrounded by Pagans. There was a village nearby in which there was a newly-married couple…
Recent Scriptural Studies
Authors: Ginns Reginald
Published: August 2024

The word recent is hardly applicable to the first of the works here under review, La Voix Vivante de l'Evangile au Debut die l'Eglise (Casterman, Tournail & Paris), by M. Le Chanoine Cerfaux of Louvain. It is three years since the Collection Lovanium published this excellent little study of the origin and character of the Gospels. In that collection it finds itself in somewhat strange company with works on genetics, archaeology, law, the atom bomb, and even on the tendencies of modern English democracy. But the series claims to be a collection of studies on general culture, and no one can claim to be cultured who is ignorant of the Gospels. It may be said without hesitation that this book provides a useful course of introduction for the student of the New Testament, showing him his way about in the maze of difficulties he will meet. Readers of the book already familiar with the teaching of the venerable Père Lagrange will not fail to recognise how copiously the author has drawn from that admirable source.
Charity and The Will of Man (I)
Authors: Barker Austin
Published: August 2024

In appraising the order and internal correspondence of the faith and human reason, St Augustine had used a phrase, in epigrammatic summary, which not only described his personal discovery and that of every convert to the Church, but also correctly stated the right causal sequence of these correlatives, Faith and Reason in their continuous development: per fidem venitur ad cognitionem. The phrase may even provide some explanation how philosophy even within its own sphere, needs and may receive assistance from the supernatural truths revealed by God. The student of Aristotle's metaphysics is often tempted to wonder why it was that the philosopher, who so clearly understood the first principles of reason and causality, and so explicitly deduced from them the existence of the First Mover and the Primal Intellect.
Heavenly Manna & The Holy Eucharist
Authors:   The Monk of Heilsbronn
Published: August 2024

The sacred food of the holy Eucharist was pretigured for us in olden times by a heavenly bread called Manna, which God rained down upon our forefathers. This heavenly food had six characteristic qualities or properties, all of which are also present spiritually in our eucharistic food.

The first characteristic of the heavenly bread was that God caused it to drop down from Heaven in a marvellous manner, contrary to the laws of nature. Concerning this God said to our forefathers: It will rain down bread from heaven, for when they arose each morning it lay everywhere on the ground outside their tents, like newly fallen snow. Of this same Manna the prophet says: 'God opened the gates of Heaven and rained down Manna. In like fashion our Lord gives us the bread of his Body in marvellous manner, contrary to the laws of nature, and comes down to us from heaven. Thus God says: I am the living bread that comes from heaven'.
The Stations of the Cross
Authors: Valentin Arthur
Published: August 2024

Why did Pilate condemn our Lord to the Cross? He knew our Lord was innocent of the crimes brought against him; he knew more: he realised in some way our Lord was not merely man. The Romans believed in gods appearing in human form, in goddesses having human sons, and so on. Quite clearly Pilate was awed by the presence of Christ. Yet he condemned him! There were two reasons for this awful sin: first, Pilate's evil life, his horrible cruelty, had raised up against him many enemies, and given them a handle to bring about his disgrace with the Roman Emperor. The background or Pilate's life was wrong. The second cause was self-love. When Blessed Henry Suso had a vision of his Dominican master in glory he was told that to attain holiness there must be the renunciation of self. From this station I learn that I may sin suddenly and gravely against my Lord unless my life in general is true and spiritually healthy; and that the more I have of self-love the more I shall prefer self to God and his will.
The Redeemer
Authors: Farrell Ambrose
Published: August 2024

‘On mount Calvary the side of the divine Saviour was transfixed. From that gaping wound blood gushed out, like a torrent, bounding forward over time, cleansing men's souls, expiating their sins, and lavishing upon them the riches of salvation.’ These words written by Pope Pius XII recall his famous encyclical in which he wrote, ‘on the Cross the Church like a new Eve, or mother of all the living, was born from the Saviour's side. Thus St Ambrose, speaking of the pierced side of Christ, says, “Now it is built, now it is formed; now … it is fashioned; now it is created. Now the spiritual house is erected into a holy priesthood.” … By the blood which he shed on the Cross he removed the obstacle of the divine wrath and enabled all the heavenly gifts … to flow forth from the fountains of the Saviour for the salvation of men, and especially of the faithful. It was on the tree of the Cross, finally, that he purchased his Church.’
The Revised Standard Version
Authors: Bullouch Sebastian
Published: August 2024

The publication on 30th September, 1952, simultaneously on both sides of the Atlantic, of this new edition of the Bible is without a doubt a most important event in the history of English biblical translation.

It is the result of fifteen years’ work by a committee of American scholars, numbering thirty-two in all, assisted by an Advisory Board representing forty Protestant denominations in the United States. Many of the foremost biblical scholars of America have been concerned, and the story of their labours is one of remarkable co-operation between represenatives of almost every shade of Protestant opinion in the land. A Jew was on the committee of the Old Testament side. The New Testament ad been published in 1946, and with it an interesting booklet describing the methods of work and the principles involved. Now the Old Testament has been finished and the Bible published as a whole, but the corresponding book of introduction to the Old Testament was delayed until January, and this is the principal reason for the delayed appearance this review, since it is obviously better to judge a translation in the light of the translators’ own principles, and the committee is to be congratulated on having made this possible.
Patroness of Failures
Authors: Meath Gerard
Published: August 2024

On October 20th, 1946, Marie Thérèse de Soubiran was declared Blessed fifty-seven years after she had died a failure in the eyes of the world and of her rellow Christians. She was another Jeanne d'Arc in whom holiness looked like madness or stupidity and very unlike wholesomeness. Yet she had promised to be the most conventional of saints with breviary lessons written according to the book: she came of a comfortably placed French family with long traditions of piety and priests and nuns in the ancestral role; she was precocious in holiness and at the age of ten was put to direct the retreat of a young woman of twenty. Of the two the ten-year-old found it the greater humiliation. Her new foundation developed unobtrusively out of the sodality organised by her uncle, Canon de Soudan, and at the age of twenty-one she was the first Superior of the first regular community. Yet though the congregation grew steadily and Marie Thérèse duly became Superior .General, by the age of forty she was expelled, never to be Vindicated and to die in disgrace.
Saint Teresa and Lesser Matters
Authors: Elwes Columba Cary
Published: August 2024

Interest in Saint Teresa of Avila is almost as inexhaustible as that in the little saint Thérèse. Publishers time and time again risk their money—and that is saying a lot these days—upon works dedicated to a study of some aspect of her life and works, and, having done so once, they do it again’ Here we have Messrs Burns and Oates, after recently publishing the Letters, now producing a life translated from the French of Marcelle Auclair. Faber and Faber have brought out a posthumous series of essays upon her, and other matters, by E. Allison Peers. Publishers are wise in their own generation. Why? Because Saint Teresa sells. There is that no sé qué about her which is everlastingly attractive. She is not a saint with a frown.

In the Allison Peers volume, St Teresa of Jesus and other Essays and Addresses, the other essays are by no means negligible. To begin with: the historical problem of Spanish Mysticism. Professor Peers asks the question: how account for the mystical eruption in the second half of the sixteenth century in Spain? He laboriously puts aside a number of partial answers.
Grace is Common
Authors: Clark Alan C.
Published: August 2024

It is a strange fact of history that the Church does not escape some loss when she has to engage in doctrinal controversy. So much has been gained, such steps forward; in the clarification of doctrine made, that it is only after a period of years that the suspicion grows that the whole truth has not yet been said. Yet closer analysis of the nature of 'controversial theology' shows how inevitable this must be. From the first the Catholic protagonist suffers the disavantage of being forced to fight on ground chosen by his adversary. If he is able, he will seize his opponent's weapons and turn them against their owner. But what has happened? He is left victorious in a field not of his own choosing and with weapons not of his own making, effective though they were in the historical context of the controversy.
Temptations Against the Church
Authors: de Lubac Henri
Published: August 2024

The Church of Christ is our mother: the true mother of the living. It is through her that we have life, it is she who nourishes life within us, it is she who gives us access to the living God. None the less, concerning this Mother for whom we should have only love, how many temptations beset us! Some of them are fierce, yet recognisable others are obscure, hence more insidious. Some temptations are perennial and others are peculiar to our age. They are too many-faced, indeed, even mutually contradictory, to allow any of us to feel safe from their threat.

There will always be some individuals who perfectly identify their own cause with that of the Church and end by subordinating, in good faith, the Church's cause to their own. In their desire to serve the Church they actually put her to work for themselves: ‘a dialectical turn about', which changes friend into foe, and takes place with as much ease as subtlety. For them the Church is, in fact, a certain familiar social order to which they belong.
Preparation for Holy Communion
Authors: Albert S. M.
Published: August 2024

The Mass is both sacrifice and sacrament. As sacrifice it consists principally in man's activity, Christ's and ours, inspired and aided by grace, and of God’s approval and acceptance of what we do. Christ as man and Head of his Mystical Body represents that sacrifice of himself and us in him which he offered on Calvary. We his members endorse and ratify this, associating our own offering with his. It is in Christ's name as well as his own that the priest says: ‘Brethren, pray that my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God'. And God's reply is to receive and accept this offering as if saying once more: ‘This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased'.

It is needful to be quite clear about the nature of our activity. The priest says words and makes gestures which are essential to the offering of the sacrifice. There would be no Mass without them.
Spirituality and Personality
Authors: Westow T. L.
Published: August 2024

In the course of twenty centuries the simple message of Christ has developed in many directions, like the mustard-seed of the Gospel. Dogma, moral theology; canon law, administration and organization have branched out, together, into a gigantic system which gives the impression of providing all the answers the world needs become heaven on earth.

The only answer the system does not contain is the personal answer of each soul to its Maker. That is the soul's own and exclusive preserve. It also happens to be to be the only answer that really matters. St Paul made that abundantly clear in his statement on the nature of true love (I Cor. 13). The worth of the whole system, its vitality, its measure and stature in terms of final redemption, all this depends ultimately on the individual soul's response to Christ and his Church. Tiaras, honours, demonstrations, movements, vestments or medals will not be restored at the Last Judgment to cover our personal nakedness.
Lead us not into Temptation but Deliver us from Evil
Authors: Steuart R.H.J.
Published: August 2024

The next clause in the ‘Our Father’ that presents itself is ‘Lead us not into temptation'. The beginning of the ‘Our Father’ is a prayer, not so much that his will might be done directly as that we may really and truly wish it to be done. I ask to be enlightened, that my will may be strengthened, that I may always want to do Your will’, I want it as perfectly as I know I shall want it in heaven.

From ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ onwards, we pray for protection from sin, from the danger of falling away from God. We are so liable to be drawn away by the fascination of trivialities. I ought to want even to deprive myself of perfectly innocent pleasures in this world if thereby God's Will be better done. And I want, too, to be protected from falling into sin. Why is it that we ask, ‘Forgive us our trespasses'? Why is it that we make that petition? Because we are aware that since sin came into the world it has spread itself all over the world.
Holy Work
Authors: Squire Aelred
Published: August 2024

To say that Dom Rembert Sorg's Holy Work disappoints the hopes it arouses, is not to deny that it was an essay well worth writing. It attempts to show the relevance of the monastic tradition concerning manual labour not only for the rejuvenation of the monastic life itself but also for the solution of the problems of Christian labour in a pagan society. Let it be said at once that its claim to present a theological rather than an historical justification of its approach is somewhat exaggerated. It assembles a number of reflections which have a theological bearing, but they are not built into a cumulative and cogent argument, a weakness which reveals itself clearly in the important final chapter on the laity. To those not already favour. ably disposed to the author's thesis, its presentation will seem uncomfortably divided between two methods, neither of which is adequately used for it dispenses with a detailed historical treatment without compensating for it by a sufficiently judicious theoretical one.
The Person and the Place—VI: Exile at Aebelholt
Authors: King Peter
Published: August 2024

William was born into a noble family about 1105. His uncle was abbot Hugh IV of St Germain des Pres in Paris, and the boy was sent to the abbey to be educated. Here the young William noted the life of the monks, how they sang and prayed and sat reading in the cloister, but he remained undecided about a monastic vocation. He made no objections when his family obtained for him a prebend in the collegiate church of Sts Peter and Paul and St Genevieve, though he soon found that the worldliness of his fellow canons contrasted unfavourably with the regular life. The canons returned his dislike. An unsuccessful attempt was made to trick him into entering a monastery. In the end, however, William remained a secular canon until he was forty-three, by Mediaeval standards an advanced age.
Why Did God the Son Become Man?
Authors: Aquinas St Thoma's
Published: August 2024

Pondering the mystery of God taking flesh, we ought to notice that everything which acts intelligently acts through an idea, a verbum, formed in its intellect. This we see in a builder or any craftsman producing an article according to the plan which his mind has conceived. Now because the Son of God is the divine Verbum, it follows that God has made everything through the Son. further, the maker of anything is the one to repair it; if a house falls down the architect who built it should be consulted.

Amongst the creatures created by God through his Word, rational beings hold pride of place since all else seem to be arranged for their service. This is understandable because rational beings have control of their actions through their freedom of choice, whereas the others are motivated by the force of nature and not by deliberate judgment.
The Scale
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

No study of English medieval spirituality would be complete without a treatise on Walter Hilton. That is patently true. It is also clear that he should come at the conclusion of such a study for he is at once the most learned and the most analytical of all these writers. He is a man of wide experience both in his life of prayer and in his direction of contemplative, religious, and he is a man who has studied in the Schools with greater patience than Eolle and with a tidier mind than the author of the Cloud of Unknowing.