bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Current trends in Chomsky
Authors: Crystal David
Published: July 2007

When the editor first suggested that it might be useful to have a short, article introducing some of Noam Chomsky’s ideas, I agreed, and was about to begin when John Lyons’ book appeared and made the exercise rather redundant. His introduction is unquestionably the most lucid and coherent account of Chomsky’s linguistic work that we have, and I thought it would be pointless to write at that time an article which would in effect be little more than a paraphrase of its topic sentences. There are, however, a few things that might be said about recent trends, not dealt with by Lyons, which are needed in order to complete an outline understanding of the contemporary scene in generative linguistics; also a few critical comments, from someone a mite less sympathetic to the Chomskyan approach than Lyons is, might be helpful to anyone wanting to reach an evaluation of this field. Hence the following remarks. But first, some background, and a review of what Lyons does say.

It is quite remarkable how Chomsky’s name has become a vogue word in intellectual circles. He is known about, sometimes, even when his discipline, linguistics, is not. To an academic linguist, of course, this can be embarrassing. I suppose it is always the way when a teenage discipline catches everyone’s attention through a famous practitioner: one does not know whether to be grateful, because of the publicity to the subject, or furious, because of the over-simplification and polemic which publicity invariably brings. In Chomsky’s case, in this country, the popular awareness of the man dates from the mid-sixties.
Life in Fire
Authors: Preston Geoffrey
Published: July 2007

Jesus of Nazareth is said to be the sacrament of the saving grace of God and of man’s response to God in that grace. In himself Jesus is the encounter between God and mankind, the Immediator of man and God, the Word of God made world and history, man in his concrete dimensions and the total nexus of his relationships taken up into God. According to the apostolic preaching, in him alone, in his ‘name’ alone, is there the means of passing from a lethal situation into the possibility of survival. If men are going to pass from the world that is doomed to death, that can only be by entering into him, into his name, by in some way becoming him, by living out the biography of the one who, alone, no longer belongs to the dead past. Living it out, amongst other ways, sacramentally. Sacramentally we put on Christ, we are conformed to Christ, we are made one body, one spirit, with him.
Women's Liberation and Christian Marriage
Authors: Nash Daphne
Published: July 2007

Any serious analysis of the systematic oppression of women must focus the greater part of its attention on the structure and role of the family. For us in the West the prevailing ideology identifies as central to a woman’s task in life the running of a husband-and-family, while for the man, his wife and family belong to the private, ‘unimportant’ side of life—to his ‘spare time’. We are taught to equate marriage with having a family, and a family with the bourgeois nuclear family of two parents and a few children living as a self-contained unit. In this guise the family is justifiably condemned by feminists and some psychologists as the most immediate locus of the oppression of women and children. It has the complex function of underpinning the capitalist economy by being the consumer unit it depends on, and of perpetuating both itself and the repressive economic and political system by being one of the most influential places (along with school) where children are brought to see themselves and the world in the terms of the prevailing ideology, and thus to become law-abiding citizens. On top of this is the severe economic pressure on women to marry, while men can afford not to if they like. Working-class and many middle-class women cannot earn enough to survive on their own.
Notes after Foucault
Authors: Sharratt Bernard
Published: July 2007

’ . . . the slightest alteration in the relation between man and the signifier . . . changes the whole course of history by modifying the lines which anchor his being.

It is in precisely this way that Freudianism is seen to have founded an intangible but radical revolution. No need to collect witnesses to the fact: everything involving not just the human sciences, but the destiny of man, politics, metaphysics, literature, art, advertising, propaganda, and through these even the economy, everything has been affected.

The original ‘slightest alteration’ underlying Freud’s intangible but radical revolution can be conveniently dated to 1898, when Freud, travelling to Herzegovina, turned to ask a travelling companion whether he had ever seen the famous frescoes of the ‘Four Last Things’ in Orvieto Cathedral, painted by------: the painter’s name would not come; ‘Botticelli’ and ‘Boltraffio’ came to mind instead. Freud’s account of why he had failed to recall the right name, ‘Signorelli’, contains the core of his later theories. ‘Signorelli’ had been replaced through a series of transformations: ‘Signor-’ into ‘Herr’, recalling both Herzegovina-and-Bosnia and an anecdote about attitudes to death and sex in which the sentence ‘Sir (Herr), what is there to be said?’ had been the punch-line. This anecdote had linked to an earlier incident when Freud, while staying at Trafoi in the Tyrol, had heard of a patient’s suicide because of an incurable sexual disorder. Thus, the ‘forgotten’ ‘Signorelli’ produced ‘Herzegovina-and-Bosnia’, ‘Bo-snia’ conflated with ‘-elli’ to produce ‘Bo-ttic-elli’, ‘Herzegovina’, via ‘Herr’, indirectly produced ‘Trafoi’, which conflated with ‘Bo-snia’ to produce ‘Bo-l-traffio’.
IIltud Evans—an appreciation
Authors: Hislop Ian , Bailey Bede
Published: July 2007

Illtud Alban Evans, though born in London, was quintessential a Celt. His roots lay deep in Wales and the subtle cosmopolitanism of his outlook, equally at home in Athens, Bangkok and Los Angeles, only served to emphasize his strong traditional loyalties. His health was never good but in spite of this he drove himself with extraordinary and our and enthusiasm. He combined a great precision of thought, for he was always most careful about his sources, with a capacity for vivid description that could illuminate the most difficult and obscure political and social problems: here one recalls the articles he wrote in The Tablet in the late 1960’s on conditions in the United States.

Before coming to the Order in 1937 he had worked as a journalist, and from the moment of his ordination he pursued his trade relentlessly in spite of frequent severe illnesses. Twice Editor of Blackfriars, where his first tenure of office was particularly fruitful, he also wrote and reviewed for Time and Tide and contributed regularly to The Tablet (under the pseudonym of Aldate) and also to The Times and Times Literary Supplement. While he was in America from 1966 to 1970 he was Associate Editor of Faith Now, a monthly supplement to The Sunday Visitor, as well as working regularly for other Reviews. His writing shows him to be a conservative of the best kind, one who treasures but is not uncritical of tradition and who is at the same time open to modern problems, while being helped by his gift of quick sympathy for those in distress and by those flashes of insight, amounting sometimes to near genius, which brought him close to deprived groups and those suffering from anxiety problems. He gave a lot of his time, particularly in the early part of his priestly life, to helping those in borstals and prisons, and not only did he give generous assistance to many individuals but he also studied closely prison conditions and the problems of penal reform. Some of the principles that lie behind this work are stated in the book edited by him called Light on the Natural Law.
Remaining in the Calling in Which You were Called
Authors: Ruston Roger
Published: July 2007

One of the Christian notions that has been offered a new lease of life as a result of the twentieth-century renewal of ecclesiology has been that of vocation. It no longer ought to be possible to write an article entitled ‘vocation’ in a Catholic encyclopedia and go on to deal exclusively with the call to the priesthood or the religious life. Even when an author has the intention of dealing with these topics, he should nowadays feel obliged to begin with remarks to the effect that all Christians—and, indeed, all men—share in the same vocation to the kingdom of God. It is the sacrament of baptism that is the seal of a vocation before ever there is a question of an ordination or a religious profession. Just as the notion of the ‘Church’, once confiscated by the clergy, has had to be handed back to the baptized, who all begin and mostly remain as lay people, so has the notion of ‘vocation’. A vocation from God is something which every Christian must learn to detect and act upon, whether or not he remains a layman all his life. One hopes that children in Catholic schools run by religious orders are no longer led to believe that there are just two major possibilities in their lives: either that of having a vocation or, if they do not have this, of getting married. (Not that I am going to spend time in this article in setting up marriage as an alternative vocation; rather the reverse, as we shall see.) The confiscation of the notion by the few, besides giving them a false sense of status in the Church, has done immeasurable harm to the Christian lives of ordinary people.
Thomas Merton on the Contemplative Life
Authors: McGreggor Bede
Published: July 2007

Thomas Merton wrote in the letter in which he accepted the invitation to speak at the Congress in Bangkok where he was to die: ‘... the great problem for monasticism today is not survival but prophecy’. There are good reasons for thinking he was right. In the last few years most religious orders and congregations have been busily working on new rules and constitutions which are usually heavily loaded with quotable quotes from conciliar and postconciliar documents, carefully worded résumés of current theological writing, and skilfully framed paragraphs of compromise intended to satisfy the demands of as many pressure groups as possible. In practice these new documents are often ignored, apart from a little tightening up here and loosening up there and the inevitable litter of commissions that will in due course produce more painfully contrived documents that will also be as much ignored as implemented! This may appear to be a cynical assessment of what is going on in religious life today. In fairness it must be pointed out that the Church ordered the search for new rules and constitutions, they are provisional and experimental, and the discussions that took place at every level prior to their formulation have initiated a long overdue rethinking of religious life. Nevertheless, there continue to be more departures and fewer arrivals to religious life. There is no shortage of new laws but an obvious dearth of true prophets. From his new book Thomas Merton emerges as one of the major prophets in contemporary religious life. It would be a pity if he goes unheard because of the din created by the staggering volume of second-rate writing on religious life.
The End of Her Latin?
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

When Hans Küng attacked infallibility as it has been understood in Roman theology until recently, he was accused by no less a theologian than Karl Rahner of being in effect a liberal Protestant. But the majority of friendly critics were more inclined to ask what all the fuss was about. Nobody took this theory of infallibility seriously any longer. There were undoubtedly situations where Church and Pope had to take a stand and, if the promises of the Church’s endurance were to mean anything, this must mean infallibility in teaching: the Holy Spirit would guarantee the Church’s freedom from error on such occasions. But they were rare enough and a ‘sensitive exegesis’ could always take care of out-dated definitions.

Charles Davis, a little earlier, had chosen to leave the Church because he could not accept the current explanation of papal claims, the present ‘structures’ which prevent even the most sympathetic bishops from treating their subjects with charity or even justice. But Gregory Baum and others were at hand to show that this brilliant young theologian was still too much entangled in nineteenth-century apologetics.
The Obscure Poet
Authors: Foster Paul Urban
Published: July 2007

When Oliver Goldsmith wrote The Deserted Village he made it perfectly clear, both by his title and the content of his poem, what he was intending to say. A great poet of to-day, Mr. T. S. Eliot, in writing East Coker and Burnt Norton, has not been so explicit either in his title or in his contents; few of his readers know Mr. Eliot well enough to realise the significance of these place-names in his own personal history; nor will they find it easy to elucidate all the references within the poems. The title of the third of the trilogy, The Dry Salvages, has been explained by a footnote, though there too the text is not easy to follow.

Recently an attempt has been made to justify the obscurity of modern poetry, and especially Mr. Eliot’s poetry, by maintaining that great poetry in all ages has been obscure, that it is only written for ‘competent’ readers and it not ‘a mere pastime for the idle.’ This is simply not true. Much of the great poetry of the past has been exquisite in its lucidity; many, perhaps, of the references are more obscure to us than they were to contemporaries; but the main themes of the great poems are as plain as their titles, an Ode on a Grecian Urn; Paradise Lost. These poems have formed in all civilized ages one of the very highest recreations to be enjoyed in human leisure; to deny that they are ‘a mere pastime for the idle’ is to misstate the problem. You do not earn your bread by reading poetry, and it can call for more intellectual effort than a detective story without rivalling a Torquemada cross-word puzzle.
‘Ut Unum Sint…’
Authors: Keldany Herbert
Published: July 2007

The modern practice of prayer, meditation, and study for Unity on the basis of our Lord’s words as they are recorded in the seventeenth chapter of St. John can be traced to the striking letter on the reunion of Christendom which Pope Leo XIII wrote in 1894, on his completion of fifty years of episcopal life. The aged Pontiff, who was to remain active for nearly ten more years, prefaced his appeal to Orthodox and Anglican, pagan and lapsed, with the following commentary :

‘As this Divine prayer embraces not only the souls who then believed in Jesus Christ, but also every one of those who were henceforth to believe in Him, it gives us an excellent reason for confidently expressing our hopes and for making all possible endeavours that men of every race and clime may be called and moved to embrace the unity of Divine faith.’
Family Worship
Authors: Meath Gerard
Published: July 2007

Not men alone, but all human institutions, customs and habits of life partake of the effects of Christ’s Redemption, and receive after their own manner a supernatural character. Man has a purpose in this life which transcends the boundaries of this earth, he is a child of God in no metaphorical sense, and his worldly business participates in his heavenly life in so far as it is the means of his attaining his supernatural end. The commonest failing among-Christians ‘S to put on one side our divine sonship and to be content with the earth and what it alone has to offer. Materialism means recognising only matter and the power of matter, and putting aside the spirit. Christians acquiesce in materialism when they put aside the ‘higher things.’ as they are often vaguely called, and are content to live in this world for the sake of making money, living comfortable lives.

In a world which appears to recognise only money, arms, and strength as symbols of the right, we can still find men appealing for the restoration of what they call the more human or homely things, the restoration of the rights of the working man, of family life, and of Christian love. The grounds on which they base their appeal are usually that this is a more human condition of life, and men will therefore be happier when it has been reinstated. The defence of family life is most commonly set out in this way. But family life will not be restored by telling people that it will make them happy; many of them know, or think they know, that they are perfectly happy without family life, and in fact find themselves much more comfortable without the burdens of a wife and children.
The Basis of Political Obligation
Authors: Fitzsimons John
Published: July 2007

One arrives best, perhaps, at the concept of political obligation by considering what is society and what is that particular form of society which is the political society. All men belong to societies, have some community with others—i.e. are compacted with them into a solidarity of one kind or another. Though this may arise in various ways, two main divisions are distinguishable, namely that coming from the division of labour and that coming from similitude. The former expresses our dependence on the planter of Brazil, the rancher of the Argentine, the fellah of Egypt. We all acknowledge our dependence on them, but would scarcely say that we formed a society with them. To admit this would be a manifest absurdity, but to deny it would be to deny the existence, or the possibility of the existence, of an international society of men. All that can be allowed is that there exists a certain inter-dependence which yet does not constitute a society.

But men are linked together by resemblances of which they may be ignorant, which are innate and which affect them physically and morally; resemblances coming from race, culture, language, customs, or an historical accident. The formation of ethnical and national groups provides a good example of this solidarity by similitude. Because these people are united by blood, because they are begotten by the same cultural and historical milieu, they are in harmony and have a common patriotic feeling. Yet even here it must be conceded that neither the ethnical group nor the nation is a society. The only way in which they can become this is by taking on themselves the political form of a State, a man-made construction.
Person and Society
Authors: Fitzsimons John
Published: July 2007

Our ideas of the freedom of man and of the rights of man depend on the view we take of human nature and of the purpose for which man exists. Whether we are fully aware of this or not, it is the basis of all our notions about ourselves, about the family, about the State, and about international order.

If man has dignity, freedom, rights, it is because he has, individually and personally, a certain value as a human being. Christianity teaches that this value is given to him by God who has created man in his own image and has made him for himself. That is, man has a soul which is able to know truth and love good and which finds its eternal happiness in the vision of God. God did not make man and then leave him to his own devices. He made him for a definite purpose. The basis of man’s rights is his right to fulfil this purpose. An attack on human freedom is an attack on the human person, on the dignity of man. We shall see that whenever man’s value in the eyes of God is denied, his dignity is debased and his freedom is attacked.

We take our fellow men for granted. But in fact we have one or two deep convictions about them. We think of them as equal. This does not mean that they are the same. Look round about you. You see every size and shape, age and ability. But try to think of the man next to you, the man next door, even those against whom we are fighting, as having a quite different, inferior, nature like a dog.
Medical Psychology and Human Behaviour
Authors: Howden R. A.
Published: July 2007

That branch of the science of psychology, which perhaps is the most important branch, Medical Psychology, has without doubt become a permanent addition to Medicine.

One Catholic psychiatrist has called this contribution towards the Art and Practice of medicine ‘the other half of medicine,’ and the medical faculty would be inclined to endorse this opinion. Most of the teaching hospitals have now a special department in charge of a psychiatrist who acts as lecturer in psychological medicine as Well as being consultant to ‘out patients’ for functional nervous disorders.

Before the war the Institute of Medical Psychology, besides teaching and training an ever increasing number of doctors who wished to specialise in this subject, gave treatment to 14,986 new patients in the twenty-one years of its existence. The number of doctors who specialise in psychological medicine is now very large, and in this war all branches of the services have special psychiatric hospitals, where service patients are given treatment. This brief summary of the activities of psychological medicine should be sufficient guarantee that the medical profession has given an ‘imprimatur’ to what was perhaps considered at one time to be the happy hunting ground for cranks, faddists, and even charletans.
A Model Study‐Circle
Authors: Breitenfeld W. C.
Published: July 2007

In the winter of 1920-21 there was founded in Vienna the Association known as Logos. It was an Association or club of members of the University who sought to solve their problems and difficulties by discussion and research. There were under-graduates and graduates, scholars and professors, men and women of the learned professions : historians, scientists, doctors, lawyer, metaphysicians, linguists, social-philosophers and economists. Those were days of hardship and misery in Austria. The dismemberment of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, the breakdown of a world built five centuries before, the reversal of age-old traditions, poverty and unemployment, anti-religious movements and modern materialistic-rationalistic trends of thought, brought new social and individual needs and innumerable personal problems, and led a few people to gather together for discussion. They soon realised that only faith could provide a firm basis for their proceedings and that authoritative guidance on theological matters was essential. They, therefore, approached the Jesuit Fathers in Vienna and asked for the appointment of a Father to act as spiritual adviser at their meetings. This request was granted, and after a year’s intensive work by some twenty laymen of different learned professions of science and arts and after many experiments a certain definite method was tested and accepted and proved to be perfectly workable.
The English Spirit
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

On the whole the English type of spirituality shows greater consideration for the human needs of the individual than that of, say, Italy or Spain; it has a gentler and more tolerant character. The northern climate preaches moderation in penances and asks for attention to human frailty and feelings. The phlegmatic Englishman is seldom demonstrative in external religion, for he is unwilling to reveal his emotions, though they be intense. The warm blood of the South appears to him to indulge in excess in all things, excess in sanctity as in sinning. We may find a gentle human element in the mystics of fourteenth-century England; but it goes further back than that. St. Aelred of Rievaulx shows it in his life and writings in the twelfth century; he is in fact one of the only spiritual writers who has dealt with human friendships to justify them as part of the spiritual life. ‘I began to wonder whether Scripture had any blessing to give to friendship, or was it only a thing that paganism had praised. However, I had found that the letters of the saints were full of references to friendship.’ And so he sets out in pursuit of a human love within the embrace of the divine. ‘Particular friendships’ have often been condemned; yet there is something of the same sympathy as St. Aelred’s in the writing of Richard Rolle, while the author of the Ancren Riwle (c. 1200) takes it for granted that the recluses for whom he writes will have special friends.
Liturgy and the Vernacular
Authors: Sheppard Lancelot C.
Published: July 2007

Since, at the beginning of this century, Pius X. called the faithful to the restoring of all things in Christ, and indicated as the chief means of such a restoration the active participation of all in the public worship of the Church, much has been done to bring about what he desired. Popular editions of the Missal have been multiplied, courses and conferences, for priests and lay people, have been organized, and in some ways the effects have not been scanty. Yet, in spite of all this, the priest at the altar and the people in the pew seem often entirely separated, notwithstanding all the efforts of zealous pastors to instruct their people to ‘pray the Mass.’

We are only just beginning to realize that much that has been done in the name of the Liturgical Movement has been liturgical only per accidens. People have been persuaded to use a Missal, sing plain chant even, but without understanding. They have followed where they were led, blindly. At last some of this is being realised, and more emphasis is being placed now on the fundamentals, the Mystical Body, the dogmatic truths of the Faith, our re-incorporation with Christ, and the living of the life of the Church through the Liturgy.

But this fuller realization of the true implications of the Liturgical Movement has brought its own problems with it. Now that it has at last been understood that the possession of a Missal is not an entirely necessary passport to the gales of Heaven, that the life of the Church is for all and not an élite, that it must be possible to live this life, not only if one does not understand Latin, but even if one cannot read, the question of the language of the liturgy becomes obviously of the greatest importance. Some people have even gone so far as to suggest that a course in liturgical Latin should be added to the curriculum of the elementary school.
Christian Life in the Church
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

During this week you have been listening-to many speakers on many subjects concerned with the Christian life in the modern world. They have spoken to you about the Christian life in the home; in the school; in work in the factory, the field and the office; in citizenship and Home Affairs; in Foreign Affairs and international relations. It has not been my privilege to hear those speakers, nor to hear what you have been saying about it all among yourselves. But know that those speakers have come to you from different ‘denominations,’ and from what I hear, I gather that they have nevertheless shown a pretty considerable measure of agreement about all these things. Perhaps you have been agreeably surprised; you had expected, perhaps, that they had all been anxious only to praise their own particular wares. Instead of which you have found, I believe, that about all these things they seem to think pretty much alike; and that instead of wanting to sell you their own rival goods you have found them all anxious only to be loyal and faithful to God and his Wood and to love and serve their neighbour in and for God.

Now there can be no doubt that all this is a very good thing, and for it we must be very thankful to God. But the task which is set me this evening is—strange as it may seem—a much more delicate one. I have to speak to you about ‘The Christian Life in the Church.’ And that at once raises a question which perhaps has been haunting you all along.
Handwork or Landwork
Authors: Pepler Hilary
Published: July 2007

To Father Vincent Nazareth was the norm because God had chosen that kind of life for himself, because it met all the Friar Preacher’s own personal tastes and feelings as to what was most fitting to the dignity of man. Shepherds, fishermen, carpenters, in a self sufficient community not dependent upon foreign markets, ‘the primary craft of landwork and the secondary yet necessary crafts of handwork working together in the primary Co-operative Group, ‘here might be found ‘the divine pattern to souls who were to do the Redeemer’s work in the Redeemer’s way.’

He never put the ‘hand ‘before the ‘land,’ and therefore never fell into the error of William Morris and the artist-craftsmen who followed after him. ‘Home-spun will instruct you better,’ he wrote, ‘than the Declaration of Independence will instruct you on the dignity and rights of man,’ but it was the home-spun of the crofter for home use rather than the material traded in the market that he had in mind.

Father Vincent’s appreciation of hand work and land work may, perhaps, best be conveyed by his relationship with Ditchling, and that may ibe seen in his letters after he had ceased to visit us.

‘Your gift of Whitsun cream was more than welcome! It was, oi course, one of the best things that even Ditchling could give. But it had memories in its gift; and they were even better than milk and honey. How irresistibly it brought back the Ditchling I first knew, and loved with the intensity of a first love. I can imagine that many a man marries the girl he loves not merely because he loves her, but because his love of her, or her love of him, has saved him from some fall ...
St. Leo the Great on Christmas
Authors: Rios Romanus
Published: July 2007

[Pope St. Leo the Great (440-461) is generally recognised as the principal Doctor of the mystery of the Incarnation in the Western Church. All know the part he played, through his legates and writings, in the Council of Chalcedon (451). Ho is also the most ancient of the great Latin Preachers, whose sermons on Church festivals are still extant. To this day, in the lessons of the second nocturn at Matins, the Roman breviary makes use of Leo’s eloquence to interpret the meaning and spirit of the various liturgical solemnities, for example, at Christmas and on the feast of the Epiphany.

St. Leo is certainly at his best when commenting on the dogmatic fact of the twofold nature, divine and human, in the one Person of Christ, which sums up the mystery of the Incarnation. True to the Western trend of theological exposition, he does not stop to weave subtle theories into the fabric of dogmatic beliof : he simply enumerates truths, but these he follows up with a wonderful wealth of practical conclusions for the everyday life of the faithful. Besides his classic work—the Tomos on the Incarnation which he sent to the Fathers of Chalcedon—St. Leo has left ten sermons which he preached in Rome on the feast of Christmas (see Migne, P. L., t. 54, col. 190-254). Each ranks as both a theological and an oratorical masterpiece.
The Political Philosophy of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
Authors: Williams Watkin
Published: July 2007

It were well that at the outset we should define the sense in which we understand the word Politics. No word has been more cruelly abused, with the result that its true sense has been disastrously obscured to the grave detriment of the people and of their rulers.

Perhaps our minds fly off at a tangent to the Tapers, Tadpoles, Rigbys and the like, so relentlessly and yet so faithfully portrayed in Coningsby by Disraeli; or to some Political Society the sole purpose of which appears to be to provide a licensed cockpit for the envenomed recrimination of rival partizans. We need to disillusion ourselves; this sort of thing is not true Politics; like all false notions it is more dangerous than ignorance.

In the days when Politics came into being the politike episteme was the Science of Citizenship and the politike techne was the Art of Citizenship, that is to say, the theory and the practice of a member of a polis, whether ruled or ruler (cf. Plato, Gorg. 521 D). The duty concerned was primarily social as distinct from individual; not that the individual was dispensed from all responsibility, but that his responsibility as a citizen was determined by his membership of the polls (cf. Plato, Gorg, loc. cit., Apol. 31 D; Arist. Eth. Nic. VI, viii. 2). All this worked, as it were, within a microcosm. Outside the Greek world there were no cities, only the barbaros ge, a variegated waste the contagion of which threatened— especially from the direction of Asia—the purity of Hellenic art and culture and the honest simplicity of Hellenic thought. Nor were the Greek cities, according perhaps to the highest political ideal, encouraged to mutual intercourse—on the contrary the aim of each city was to be aularkes, self-sufficient, to legislate for itself and to live to itself (cf. Arist. Eth. Nic. I, vii, 5).
The Place of the University in the Church
Authors: Talbot Hugh
Published: July 2007

Before the end of the twelfth century when the Universities came into existence, the intellectual life of Europe was centred in the monasteries. It was not an intellectual life of great vigour, breadth or profundity, for the Benedictine lectio was concerned more with devotion than with scholarship. Yet it served to keep at bay the barbarism and ignorance that threatened to engulf the Church, and contrived to make in its multiplication of manuscripts a small but precious contribution to Christian civilisation. It was insufficient, however, for the educational needs of the pastoral clergy, and for that reason the Church found herself obliged to erect Cathedral schools as training grounds for her own ministers. The immediate effect of this policy was to lessen the prestige of the monasteries as intellectual centres : and this, added to the changing economic conditions and the increasing prosperity of the towns, resulted in the final emergence of the Cathedral schools as the focal points of culture. From these schools, founded by Bishops and designed mainly as seminaries for their clergy, the universities took their rise.

Of all these Paris was by far the most celebrated. Whereas at Orleans, Bologna, Salerno and Toledo, studies were almost exclusively confined to arts, or law, or medicine or physics, at Paris no specialisation was attempted. Roman law and Canon law, Aristotle and Peter Lombard, the new Euclid and the new Ptolemy, the Greek and Arabic physicians, all these had their masters and their students. And as strict supervision over studies and scholars was very difficult, all this feverish intellectual activity, all this jostling of humanists, jurists and theologians, coud only lead to extravagance and disorder. John de Hauteville has described in his Architrenius the resulting chaos, violence and squalor of student life in Paris.
The Essence of the Mass
Authors: McNabbo Vincent
Published: July 2007

Lovers of the Mass, and especially lovers of the theology of the Mass, are under a great debt of gratitude to Dom Romanus Rios, O.S.B., for his article in The Clergy Review of November, 1942,’ on “ Sacrifioium Quod Immolamus.” Our gratitude would have been still greater if the valuable list of words had been referred to their place in the Mass.

His two concluding sentences ofier an inducement to clear up some theological difficulties. He writes: “Lainez, S.J., when presenting his Votum on the Eucharistic Sacrifice defined the Sacrifice of the Last Supper, the Sacrifice of the Cross, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, each by itself and in its own way as a verum et plenum sacrificium. He was merely echoing the traditional Catholic doctrine as expressed particularly in the Secrets of the Mass.” (Clergy Review, November, 1942, p. 487.)

(1) The theological difficulty betokened by these words of Lainez called forth this plain decree of the Council:—Si quis dixerit, blasphemiam irrogari aanctissimo Christi sacrificio in Cruce peracto per Missae sacrifioium, aut illi per hoc derogari—anathema sit. (Sess xxii. De Sacrificio Missae, Can. iv.) Many minds, both inside and outside the visible Church, were perplexed by the words of those theologians who, rightly enough, maintained the sacrificial character of the Last Supper and of the Mass.

Theologians of the Church scrupled to call the Last Supper a sacrifice. To them it seemed that if the Last Supper was Christ’s redemptive sacrifice, then the Passion and Death were not Christ's redemptive sacrifice
On Patience
Authors: Marinoff Irene
Published: July 2007

In our age of frenzy and unrest, when peace and tranquility are threatening to leave Europe altogether, it is a good thing to reflect for a while upon patience, and thus reflecting to recover that spirit of quiet and detachment, which is an essential condition of our spiritual regeneration.

Patience is not a popular virtue. It lacks the splendour of charity, or the persuasiveness of humility. Its light pales beside the brilliance of an heroic virtue such as courage. To the superficial observer its attraction is only slight. This low estimation of patience is not unfounded in fact. St Thomas Aquinas teaches that this virtue is not only second to the theological virtues; it ranks lower than prudence and justice, fortitude and temperance. For these either establish man in the good life or restrain him from the more serious obstacles to virtue, while patience only enables him to suffer evil without being unduly cast down by it. Thus patience appears as an almost negative quality, no more than a necessary condition for the practice of virtue and the development of the spiritual life.

Yet patience is by no means an insignificant virtue. God Himself attached to it a promise which is well worth pondering, “In your patience you shall possess your souls.’’ The Church, in her wisdom, reminds us of that virtue in the very periods of the liturgical year, which are marked by slow development rather than by outstanding events. The “Dominus autem, dirigat corda et corpora nostra in caritate Dei et patientia Christi” of the Apostle is a prayer appropriate to that hidden life of the spirit, which continues quietly under the surface, whose fruits will only be revealed in the next world.
Majestas Divina
Authors: Przywara Erich
Published: July 2007

The name of Fr. Erich Przywara will be chiefly familiar to English readers through his “Augustine Synthesis” and “Newman Synthesis.” In “Majestas Divina” he has attempted what may be described as an interpretation of the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. Many people find the Spiritual Exercises a baffling work. Even those who are familiar with the practice of making retreats may fall into a literalism in their study of the text which prevents their seeing the movement of thought and feeling which makes the book of the Exercises the powerful instrument that it can be. It seems to be the great merit of Fr. Przywara’s work that it brings out the pattern woven by the words of St. Ignatius, and by linking up the language of the Exercises with St. Ignatius’s other writings—his Constitutions and Letters in particular—clarifies that often misunderstood thing, “Ignatian Spirituality.”

In this first section, the author is concerned to underline the general dispositions of mind and heart that are required of one who would learn aright the lessons that St Ignatius is seeking to teach. The section is entitled “Solitude” because a certain solitude of spirit, expressed in the practice of silence and withdrawal characteristic of a retreat, is fundamental if the exercitant is to draw near to God.

The translator has adopted the device of printing his version in short phrases simply in order to make it possible for the English reader to cope with the massive German sentences of the original.
Our Claims for Mercy and Justice
Authors: Granada Luis
Published: July 2007

What love can be compared with this, that Thou, seeing that I was condemned to burn in eternal flames, moved by the compassion of Thy heart, shouldst descend from heaven to the prison of this world and taking the likeness of a sinner, shouldst stand in my place and be sentenced to death for my debts? What plea of charity urged Thee so far, and was to urge Thee much farther, were it needful?

O Jesus, our Redemption, our Love and our whole desire, what was the pity that moved Thee to take such a burden on Thee? How could I not love Him who showed me such clear testimonies of His intense love? He would be more senseless than the beasts, more cruel than tigers, harder than the rocks and iron, who would not let himself be conquered by such love.

Not only our love but our confidence is strengthened by this blessing. For how should I not hope for grace and glory and forgiveness of my sins when I have such payment and such a Paymaster, who came forth from the presence of God for them. If it was just that the innocent should he so punished and the treasure should be so cheapened because He wished to pay the debts of sinners, would it not be just that the guilty, for whom He paid, should be delivered from their evil doings and justified before God? Would it be right for justice to enter the bouse of the saint who owed nothing and execute on him such a terrifying rigour of justice and yet not have the mercy to visit the guilty, release him from his misdeeds and free him from penalties? It is more marvellous that God should be judged, condemned, publicly disgraced, and should die on the cross than that His enemy should be treated as a friend, and the traitor adopted as son after he had repented of his past treachery and turned to God; and since the greater action has been performed there is no reason for doubting of the lesser.
The Hidden Life
Authors: Graef H. C.
Published: July 2007

The Christian life is pre-eminently a hidden life. This is a commonplace, but it seems difficult to grasp in our noisy time, which worships publicity and confuses activities with action. Yet God Himself has set before us the beauty and power of the hidden life when he chose to be born in a stable in an unknown tqwn of an obscure province of the Roman Empire, and to live in a carpenter’s family for thirty years. The devil, too, knew the strength of hiddenness, when he tempted our Lord with the prospect of spectacular success, the miraculous flight from the pinnacle of the Temple, the possession of all the kingdoms of the earth. But our Lord chose to hide himself on the Cross between two thieves, and thenceforth has remained hidden even more deeply and impenetrably under a little Bread and Wine: In Cruce latebat sola Deitas, At hic latet simul et humanitas. . . .

Yet, what power on earth has ever equalled the power of the Figure hidden and lifted upon the Cross and in the Mass? It is one of the scandals of Christianity, this mysterious hiddenness which the world ever derides: “ Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his Mother called Mary? . . . Whence therefore hath he all these things? And they were scandalized in him.” And he shares this hiddenness with his friends, and the nearer they are to him, the more they love to hide their lives with him in God.
The New Life
Authors: Marinoff Irene
Published: July 2007

Those who are received into the Church later in life lack an inestimable privilege. Not for them the intimacy of long acquaintance, nor the memories of a childhood spent at their mother’s knee, not for them the almost imperceptible growth in an atmosphere perfectly adapted to the needs of their soul. It is only with faltering footsteps, not rarely after some profound crisis, that the convert approaches the Church, conscious of his defects, yet eager to learn. Then, as he meets the Teaching Church, this desire will quickly deepen into love, a love which seeks expression in manifold ways. It is true he may discover no new features in the well-loved face. But as Her perfections are infinite, Her praise admits of endless variations.

It was seven or eight years ago, I believe, in the Cathedral of Cologne, with its vast spaces and soaring pillars, its lofty chapels and the majestic aloofness of the High Altar, that the meaning of the word “ House of God ” first dawned on me. Unlimited space moulded into the austerity of form, exuberance of life disciplined by perfect order, infinite variety in complete harmony. This was indeed a mansion worthy of the Most High, with places set apart for various purposes, each of profound significance, all worthy of further exploration. It is true, the faithful who pursued their different errands in this vast building were dwarfed by the grandeur in which the overwhelming majesty of God became outwardly visible. It seemed to matter little that they were there. Yet, even so, I cannot but recall a strange feeling of wonder at the ease with which they moved in a house, the presence of whose Divine Host, though invisible, was everywhere manifest.
The Jewish National Home
Authors: Simpson William W.
Published: July 2007

It is just fifty years ago since Theodor Herzl, a Viennese Jew who, short of baptism, was completely assimilated, went to Paris to report the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jew and an officer of the French army who, like Herzl, had ceased to be Jewish in anything but name. The extraordinary outburst of anti-semitism to which the trial gave rise and the completely unjustifiable conviction of Dreyfus moved Herzl to the depths. The Jewish problem, the present plight and future destiny of the Jewish people, became the dominating concern of the remaining years of his life. Three years later a Zionist organisation was set up under his leadership. Its aim was formulated foy its first Congress, held at Basle in August, 1897. ‘Zionism,’ the Congress declared, ‘aims at establishing-for the Jewish people a home in Palestine secured by public law.’

Twenty-five years later, on November 2nd, 1917, a letter was addressed to the then Lord Rothschild by Arthur James Balfour, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, viewing with favour ‘the establishment in Palestine of a “national home for the Jewish people,’ and undertaking to ‘use their best endeavour to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.’
The Place of Jews in the Liturgy
Authors: Hennig John
Published: July 2007

One of the greatest changes which in recent years has taken place in Church life is due to the fact that the liturgy is no longer regarded merely as the order of the Church’s public and common worship, but as one of the most important expressions of the life of the Mystical Body of Christ. On the other hand, we realise that the liturgy is not only a matter of spiritual meditation, but also a source of practical information on the full reality of our life as children of the election. It could not be expected that this twofold discovery would reveal its full significance at once, yet it is surprising to see how frequently discussions on vital problems of Church life are still carried on without consulting the definite authoritative teaching contained thereon in the liturgy. With regard to the Jewish problem, it is evidently due to the almost overwhelming influence of excellent studies by non-Catholic writers that Catholic authors draw only from the source of Holy Scripture and of theological speculation. Thus Fr. Przywara, S.J., Professor Erik Peterson, Leon Bloy, Jacques Maritain and many others have written on Christian-Jewish relations without making reference even to the most obvious liturgical text concerned with Jews, namely the Solemn Supplications of Good Friday.

After praying for the various grades of the hierarchy, for the absent members of the congregation, and for the catechumens, heretics and schismatics, these Supplications conclude with petitions for the Jews and the Heathens.