bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Freewill in the Modern World
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

Various answers are given to the question, ‘What are we fighting for?’ but it now seems to be commonly accepted that wTe are fighting for something greater than our national independence, for something vastly more important than the British Empire. It is not precisely democracy; we use the word indeed, but with a certain hesitation as we remember how signally we failed in another war ‘to make the world safe for democracy.’ Freedom is now more often the slogan. We are fighting against totalitarian powers which restrict the use of freedom and claim a quasi-religious authority over their subjects, and ire know that we cannot conquer them merely by an appeal to national feeling, and still less by the aid of material resources. We too need a religious impulse to enable us to meet unflinchingly the armies of fanaticism. And as we cannot all appreciate the Catholic spirit which alone can extirpate the newest heresies, we have to appeal to something which is the result of the Catholic influence on Europe, but which is understood by all. And that is freedom.
Reflections on the Veni Creator
Authors: Fay Ruby
Published: July 2007

Let us consider this hymn of the Church as a beautiful summary of the Holy Spirit’s mission in the New Law, according to the promise of Our Lord, by Whom He was sent. His mission is to complete not only the work of Redemption, but all creation, though concerned chiefly with the sanctification of the individual soul; and thus the Veni Creator is a petition for direction of our mind in the way of truth, and our affections in the way of charity:

. . . Mentes tuorum visita
Imple superna gratia
Quae tu creasti pectora.

Yet important as this is, we do not stop there; but are led on to still greater truth, the most sublime Mystery of faith —the very life of God. For the procession of the Third Divine Person is the necessary life of God (creation is the not-necessary life from God).
Where is Freedom?
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

Very illusive is the thing we call Freedom or Liberty, presenting a variety of notions to the men and women who in every age pursue it. Lord Acton, concerned mainly with its political aspect, saw liberty as ‘the delicate fruit of a mature civilization,’ and declared that’ the most certain test of the real freedom of a country ‘was’ the amount of security enjoyed by minorities.’ (But then, as Creighton remarked, Acton demanded that history, as primarily ‘a branch of the moral sciences, should aim at proving the immutable righteousness of the ideas of modern liberalism —tolerance and the supremacy of conscience.’) Dr. Johnson argued that private liberty was the essential thing—‘Political liberty is good only so far as it produces private liberty.’ The later Johnsonian dictum: ‘we are all agreed as to our own liberty: we would have as much of it as we can get; but we are not agreed as to the liberty of others: for in proportion as we take, others must lose,’ still commands wide assent.

Misgovernment in one form or another provokes the passionate cry- for freedom; the perennial revolt that to achieve its end turns to revolution or is suppressed by force of arms. Misgovernment within—Remota justitia quid reg- na nisi magna Patrocinia? The Augustinian sentence expresses consciousness of robbery that must be stopped.

‘Freedom in the governed to complain of wrongs and readiness in rulers to redress them constitute the ideal of a free state,’ is the ideal free state of Erskine May, distinguished nineteenth century English constitutional lawyer.
St. Augustine on Peace and War (II): How Do Wars Come About?
Authors: Pope Hugh
Published: July 2007

Rome, the colossus, insatiable, brooking no rival, had meant then, as Augustine and others realised, a never- ending series of wars, some of them necessary in self-defence, others, perhaps, wars of pure aggression. But now a more appalling spectre was showing its head: the barbarian hordes. Rome had at least stood for law and equity. But these barbarian hordes simply wasted and ravaged. Augustine may well be portraying them when he asks:

‘What else is it but robbery on a huge scale to wage war first on our near neighbours, and after subduing them to attack those more remote; and so, through mere lust of power, to grind down and make subect peoples who have never done us any harm?’ So, too, when he asks again:

’ What else are kingdoms wherein there is no justice, save robberies on a large scale? Take the case of a robber- band. It is made up of men who act under some sort of leader, who have some sort of social pact among themselves and divide their booty by mutual agreement. Supposing now that, owing to the numbers who join it, this evil institution so grows that it is able to establish itself in definite localities and have a centre whence it conducts operations —why, then, it proceeds to attack cities, to subjugate other peoples, and ends by acclaiming itself a kingdom. A rise in rank ‘which was in no sense due to those robbers having laid aside their evil ambitions but simply to their ever growing impunity.’
Federalism and World‐Peace
Authors: Breitesfeld Walter C.
Published: July 2007

A yearning for lasting peace is the common property of all times and of all peoples, and finds expression in all religions. It can be found in the conception underlying the Golden Age and in that of the Garden of Eden, just as in the eschatological idea of heavenly peace.

Christianity, as the sum total of truth, proclaims ‘peace on earth’ in the Christmas message to ‘men of good will.’

We, who are living twenty years after the world conflagration and in the midst of a new one, or rather in the re-kindling of the old, have a special duty to reflect how best wars can be prevented and a durable peace maintained. Our times, in fact, abound in such ideas and projects.

There has probably never been a war in history during which peace and its permanent organization have been so much discussed. Indeed, there has probably never been a time in the world’s history when a great turning point has been so clearly recognized and consciously experienced by so many contemporaries.

If we disregard the day-dreams of pacifists which escape from the reality of the problem into misguided asceticism or into the heresy of Gnosticism, we shall see that the ideas and schemes offering lasting peace to the world are concerned with agreements between nations, with the foedus among peoples, with federalism. Whether these effiorts appear as a reform of the League of Nations or call themselves the ‘Federal-Union’ or ‘Pan-Europe’ movement, they all aim, by some form of agreement, at banishing war from the world.
The Earl‐Bishop of Derry and The Catholic Question
Authors: Noakes Robert Aubrey
Published: July 2007

When Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Protestant Bishop of Derry, died on July 8th, 1803, in Albano, having about him none but hired servants, Cardinal Erskine took upon himself the troublesome duty more properly to have been discharged by a British representative in Rome if there had been one, of winding up his affairs.

This wealthy eccentric is best known by the vivid picture given by Froude in The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, of his activities in connection with the Irish Volunteers. He drove to the National Convention of the Volunteers at Dublin in November, 1783, in an open landau drawn by six horses magnificently apparrelled in purple, with white gloves, gold fringed, and gold tassels dangling from them, and buckles of diamonds on knee and shoe: ‘His own mounted servants, in gorgeous liveries, attended on either side of his carriage. George Robert Fitzgerald rode in front with a squadron of dragoons in gold and scarlet uniforms, on the finest horses which could be bought in the land. A second squadron brought up the rear in equal splendour, and thus, with slow and regal pace, the procession passed on, volunteers falling in with bands playing and colours flying, the crowd shouting: “Long life to the Bishop,” the Bishop bowing to the crowd.’

The incident certainly typifies the Earl-Bishop’s strange spectacular character and career, but whilst many popular articles have been written on his queer antics and conduct, he was by no means an inconsiderable man as a political thinker.
The Spirit of Enquiry
Authors: Woollen C. J.
Published: July 2007

What may be termed the empirical bent of modern education is, in the opinion of most educationists, directly traceable to the Reformation and the ‘news-thought’ that arose from it. The teaching of natural science has, at least in primary and secondary education, almost entirely replaced the mediaeval study of philosophy.

Contrary, however, to modem popular notions on the subject, education in the Middle Ages was far in advance of that of modern times in essentials. It is true that a universal level standard cannot be claimed. For instance, in the thirteenth century, universities such as Bologna, Padua and Naples took students through a long and allembracing course, while Paris specialised in philosophy and theology. Germany was noted for its convent schools where both elementary and higher studies were catered for. In England, the founding of Oxford University in the twelfth century and Cambridge in the thirteenth guaranteed for English youths a good all-round training.

Whatever the standard and scope of mediaeval education, it had one characteristic by which it differs from general education to-day: it was inseparably bound up with religion. The customary elementary course of grammar, rhetoric and logic was often the preliminary to a higher course that embraced philosophy and theology; and girls as well as boys sometimes studied theology.

Arising out of the association of all education with philosophy and theology was the fact of its stimulus to thought. Even the elementary course aimed at making the student a thinker, while the higher course, even when not specifically theological, tended in the same direction.
The Sword of the Spirit
Authors: O'Sullivan Richard
Published: July 2007

In the month of December, 1939, His Eminence Cardinal Hinsley stirred England with a broadcast address, which he called ‘The Sword of the Spirit.’ The address was published and had an immense circulation. In the month of August, 1940, His Eminence inspired the Catholic laity, and, one imagines, a great part of the clergy also, by launching the movement which he likewise called ‘The Sword of the Spirit.’ This movement, like the addresses from which it takes its title, may be said to be, or at any rate is intended to be, the response of the soul and mind and will of the Catholic body in England to the spiritual and intellectual and moral necessities of the time. These necessities were, for those who had eyes to see, plain and evident enough in time of peace. They became clamant with the outbreak of war.

England had inherited from the Middle Ages with all their traditions an admirable series of Christian institutions—for example, the great Cathedrals, the great Universities, and the Common Law—and the whole body of theological and philosophical and moral principles that gave life to these institutions and to the civilisation that they served. During the century that followed (shall we say?) Catholic Emancipation, the life of England and the institutions that served it at first gradually and then more and more rapidly ceased to be Christian. Take one example: In the year 1829, I believe it to be true that each of the Fellows in each of the Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge was not only expected to be a Christian, but was also required to be a celibate and in Orders.
In Praise of Standards
Authors: Thomas Ivo
Published: July 2007

Some men profess to look first at examples, some at the exemplar. The difference of air about the two has often been commented on; that they get along together for the most part as well as they do is due to the fact that the former do admit the existence of an exemplar, and that the latter do concern themselves with the production and improvement of the examples. The first standpoint has been subtly expressed in the lines

Though Plato no doubt was a corker, yet our philosopher Is that it's must be ready for dinner when dinner is ready for we;

whereas the others would be chiefly concerned to adapt the dinner hour to their own needs. They will still be able to go amicably in to dinner because both will at least agree that dinner is desirable. They will agree on the existence of standards, wherever they are to be found, and a world to be conformed to them and indeed demanding their embodiment. And to that extent, a wide one, they present us with the classical ideal. For the classical world, now or two thousand years ago, is a world which recognises standards, standards of thought and action, to be discovered, recognised, accepted, and imposed both on individual and communal life. That ideal is not particularly non-Christian, not particularly Christian; it transcends these categories. And like other ideas which transcend categories, it is realised as the same yet very differently in each. The armies of Constantine and Julian, they too had standards, the cross and the eagles, and the demands made on each by the ideals thus represented were very different yet in a tray the same.
Wandering and Wondering
Authors: Woolgar Daniel
Published: July 2007

Here is an interesting point, that it is not the works of art, but the works of raw Nature that wonder the heart of man. However great be the thing man made, there is always the reflection that it was a man who did it, a man like myself, I might have done it; why not have a try? But Nature defies me from the first and it wins my love by winning my respect. The works of Nature produce wonder, but art elicits delight from the heart of man. This must not be taken as an absolute statement, as such it is most certainly not true. Nor is it meant as a generalisation, but rather as a description of a radical difference. There are many works of art which produce wonder, but the wonder comes rather from an affinity with Nature which these particular works possess than from the fact that they are art. There is a word which I love to use to characterise such art; it is ‘creational,’ and it is not irrelevant to notice that the Creation provided the first great occasion for its use. The first chapters of Genesis are beautiful poetry and therefore great art, but they produce wonder in the heart of man because they speak of the making of Nature.
Path to Freedom
Authors: Harari M.
Published: July 2007

As so often in history, so in our time, a gross disorder in Christendom was heralded by a wave of anti-Semitic persecution.

Had we been used to thinking of Christendom as an entity, we should have been more alarmed when this happened. The Jews are a sign, a witness. Mediaeval consciousness was tormentingly aware of the presence of these strangers with its sublime or sinister meaning. It was angry with them: the Jews whose conversion was to precede the Second Coming delayed the kingdom of glory by their refusal. They stood for the official sign of disbelief, but also for God’s answer to it; they were man’s denial of the Incarnation, yet the Incarnation had made their wounds the wounds of Christ.

Was it part of their business to harry the Christian conscience? Did not their spiritual pride quicken humility? Was not their lack of faith somehow a testing of the fruits of faith? Did they not even mysteriously escape God’s condemnation so long as there was an excuse for not recognising His Son in those who should manifest Him? Perhaps they were like hard seeds left in a wintry soil, closed up until the water of baptism had softened it and charity had made it gentle for the slow shoots to break out into the daylight of faith. This might not happen until the end of the world; meanwhile, the world had to suffer it and be prevented from crystalising into mineral perfection.
Our Lady of Victories
Authors: Klimeck Esmond L.
Published: July 2007

‘Adversity,’ wrote Francis Bacon, ‘like a toad ugly and venomous, yet holds a precious jewel in its head.’ In our present adversity the ugliness and venom bulk so large that the precious jewel, the one redeeming feature best calculated to afford consolation, may be easily missed. To the thoughtful mind, and especially to the religious mind that is rooted in God as the one sure foundation of all things, this consoling side can most easily be seen in a comparison between the sort of victory that most were looking for and the kind of victor)-’ that must now be won.

Most people began with a short-sighted view of the war as a conflict for supremacy between certain combinations of nations. They hoped that we had a better combination than our opponents, and that in the long run we should beat them by the weight of our resources and superior position rather than, necessarily, in the field. That seemed the easiest way and the least painful to ourselves. It was but human nature to hope for victory without great suffering to ourselves. Such a view, however, misses both the deeper underlying nature of the conflict and the fact that such a victory would have no more chance, rather considerably less, of solving the real problems than did the victory of 1918. Not peace, but an armed truce would be again the state of the world.
Saint Pius V and the Sacred College
Authors: Gumbley. Walter
Published: July 2007

Amongst the many tasks that St. Pius V was faced with when he ascended the papal throne was the reform of the College of Cardinals decreed by the General Council of Trent. One source of abuse had been the demands made on the Holy See by secular governments for the elevation of royal children or favoured ministers to the purple, also the appointment of unworthy relatives of the Popes. Much against his will St. Pius, early in his reign, allowed himself to be persuaded by the cardinals to admit his nephew, Michael Bonelli, into their ranks; but although he had agreed to their request he insisted on the young cardinal retaining his Dominican dress, refused him permission to wear the red biretta or the silk robes of his new dignity, to use silver plate at his table, and other cardinalitial privileges. He had hopes that Bonelli would prove himself another Charles Borromeo, but if this was beyond his nephew’s powers St. Pius’s choice was nevertheless a good one, and Bonelli remained until his death thirty-two years later one of the best prelates in Rome.
Christian Life
Authors: O'Driscoll Benet
Published: July 2007

The Christian life is a life of friendship with God, ‘I have called you friends.’ More, we are called to share the divine life itself in fellowship with Christ and as members of God’s family; ‘God is faithful, by whom you are called unto the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.’ He is our elder brother, ‘the firstborn among many brethren,’ and we receive the spirit of adoption of sons, and are joint heirs with Christ.

The fullness of the divine life is to be ours hereafter in the blessed, all-satisfying vision and love of God eternally possessed. Then ‘we shall be like to him, because we shall see him as he is-we shall see face to face, and know even as we are known. This life of eternal blessedness is indeed promised as a reward for a life well lived here below, but it will be only the full development of the divine life already begun in this world. ‘He that believeth in the son hath eternal life’; ‘we are now the sons of God.’ At Baptism the soul is born again to the higher life by adoptive sonship, and by this higher life, which we are accustomed to call sanctifying grace, we are ‘partakers of the divine nature.’
Vietnamese, not Vietnamized
Authors: Hastings Cecily
Published: July 2007

It seems to be axiomatic, in most discussions about Vietnam, that the only important questions about that country’s future are ones relating to the Americans. To what extent are Vietnamese capable of efficiently taking over American policies and operations (i.e. just how good a substitute for an American is a Vietnamese)? How worthy of American support is the Vietnamese Government? Will it survive American departure long enough to save American faces?, etc. During a seven-week stay in Vietnam last summer, I was lucky enough to avoid getting stuck in that foreign way of life in which Vietnam is seen simply as a function of American policy, and to meet some people and groups whose work and ideals vigorously make nonsense of the habit of defining everything Vietnamese in terms of American plans and expectations.

Not, that is to say, orphanages with teams busily arranging adoptions as a salve to Western consciences, in implicit denial that Vietnamese children have any Vietnamese future. Not relief organizations where the question is only what proportion of these supplies is being sold for private profit. Not the world on which a Vietnamese academic, met in circumstances of free and friendly discussion, commented bitterly, ‘We drink American drinks, drive on American petrol, fire American bullets and have our governments changed by American coups’. I saw that world too: you can’t miss it. But, luckily for me, I saw some very different things as well.
This Side of Paradise
Authors: Murray Isobel , Merrilees Jim
Published: July 2007

Many weird and outrageous accusations have been levelled at John Steinbeck, but no one has gone so far as to accuse him of being a Christian, nor do we intend to overstep this mark. But interesting light is cast on his fiction by consideration of his use of biblical themes and images. This has become a critical truism in the notorious ‘Christ-figure’ of Jim Casy in The Grapes of Wrath (1939), whether this portrayal is seen as perfection or parody. We think that a profitable and sane perspective on Steinbeck can be achieved by attention to these biblical themes, and propose to demonstrate this by a brief examination of Old Testament references only, in one early and one late novel, To a God Unknown (1933) and East of Eden (1952).

Briefly, we would claim that in To a God Unknown Steinbeck was presenting and exploring in his hero, Joseph Wayne, a powerful and strange personality who becomes a devotee of the land and of fertility, and eventually carries his devotion to his ‘God Unknown’ to crazy as well as to gigantic lengths, when he kills himself upon his ‘sacred’ rock as a sacrifice to bring rain. But it is clear from close reading of the book that Steinbeck employs a number of techniques, which have been largely ignored, to distance Joseph Wayne from the author’s or the reader’s whole-hearted admiration. The reader is constantly kept alert and suspicious of the truth of Joseph’s visions by several means: these include the exaggeration and frenzy of his approach to the land; the close parallel to Joseph of the demented Willie who ends his nightmares of a desert landscape with suicide; the loyalty and worry of his Indian friend, Juanito, who is closer to the Catholic Church and to the ancient native religion than is Joseph; the rather feeble but carefully presented figure of the priest, Father Angelo; and, most of all, the never obtruded but constantly present incomplete parallel between Joseph Wayne and the biblical patriarch, which points most clearly where Wayne moves away both from rationality and from the kind of Providential guidance vouchsafed to the biblical Joseph.
Monica Wilson: Remembrance of Roots, Awareness of Persons
Authors: Edwards Adrian
Published: July 2007

Whether or not beauty is in the eye of the beholder, history surely is. ‘We do not’, said A. J. P. Taylor somewhere, ‘understand the present by the past, but the past by the present.’ For an historian this is courageous, for an anthropologist it would be trite. Even at undergraduate level, social anthropology teaches one to see how often the appeal to history is just the excuse for, or the indictment of, the present; what Chesterton, I think, called ‘the democracy of the dead’, the influence of an acknowledged tradition on decisions, may prove to be the most rigged of ballots. Perhaps this way of seeing things is partially a result of the pre-selection of anthropologists; certainly a remarkably high proportion of us do seem to have undergone some sharp uprooting, whether of country, or faith, or family ties, between infancy and early maturity, and hence are especially sympathetic to rejections, or reshapings of the past, on the part of others. Clearly enough, there are continuities in our lives and our societies which, even though they need reshaping, also need to be honestly interpreted; and I think that what Professor Monica Wilson has given us in Religion and the Transformation of Society is such an honest interpretation of southern African society as a whole, and, more closely, of Nyakyusa society in particular, and also, impressively though unintentionally, of Monica Wilson’s own understanding of life. It seeks, to be sure, to interpret societies which, more than most, experience the torment of unrealized change; yet the impression of the author’s personality which remains after reading, as that of one whose very fulfilment has been through the conscious seeking of continuities and the willing acceptance of change, is stronger than that given by many garrulous autobiographies. Perhaps, therefore, it may be legitimate to sketch out her life and work a little more fully than this book does.
Signposts Through the Hermeneutical Labyrinth
Authors: Mann Peter
Published: July 2007

It is a pity that theological communication so often gets bogged down because a key concept is never satisfactorily and clearly explained. The key idea then degenerates to a kind of magical word, periodically invoked, temporarily perhaps exciting, but ultimately mystifying. A few years ago the word ‘existential’ underwent this process of degeneration. Although the word had a clear meaning in Heidegger’s early philosophy, and indeed, as ‘existential analysis’, signified an enduringly valuable method, the basic insight represented by it failed to shape and illuminate the popular theological discussion. (A fine example of the kind of communication that should have taken place on a much wider scale regarding this word is still Cornelius Ernst’s 1961 Introduction to Karl Rahner’s Theological Investigations.) Instead, the word ‘existential’ became used indiscriminately for anything remotely ‘relevant’ or ‘concrete’. This inflation ended by making the word worthless and unusable—where everything had to be ‘existential’, nothing could be any more. And the mystifying communicators and the befogged hearers concluded about the same time that the word had become meaningless. This need not have been the case: as so often before, a chance had been missed.
Look Back in Ambiguity
Authors: Egner G.
Published: July 2007

The most significant thing about Cardinal Heenan’s autobiography is its preface. He cannot write the whole truth, he tells us, because ministers of Christ must keep confidences without limit of time; and he has written his own life-story because that was less trouble than the granting of frequent interviews to a prospective biographer. In other words, he regards the history of a man’s life as total recall tempered with discretion. How well does this dubious conception serve him?

Best, obviously enough, in narratives of a circumscribed and picturesquely memorable kind. Days in the infants’ class; a schoolboy’s escapade; anecdotes of life at Rome or in a parish; episodes in a journey to Russia. Some of the anecdotes are entertaining; of some (especially those of an edifying character), the best to be said is that c'est la guerre, mais ce n'est pas magnifique. However, it is good to have the criminally bad diet at Ushaw set down for posterity by a cardinal, while his account of The Day World War II Broke Out should find a place in any anthology of such narratives. The book proceeds in this style from schooldays to Rome and from Rome to ordination in 1930 and parish work. Before and during the war the author became involved, not only in local affairs, but in public speaking and writing. There follows the resurrection of the Catholic Missionary Society in 1947, retreat work for Clergy (of which the unfortunate The People's Priest was the precipitate) and the author’s appointment in 1951 to the See of Leeds. We are promised a second volume. What kind of man emerges from the first?
Carry on Calepin
Authors: Allen Louis
Published: July 2007

There’s nothing very poetic about the title ‘XVIIIe arrondissement’, but it contains districts with a claim to poetic nomenclature as strong as that of the Rue du Chat qui peche or The Land of Green Ginger. One of them is the area called la Goutte d’Or, though its surroundings are far from rich and far from poetic. It is, in fact, one of the many Arab ghettos of Paris, a violent, rowdy, and unsalubrious spot, where North African labourers try to construct some kind of domestic life for themselves in the teeth of the environment and the intolerance of their French neighbours. In one of the tenements of la Goutte d’Or, in the last week of October 1971, a young Arab boy was shot dead on the staircase outside his uncle’s flat by the concierge, Daniel Pigot. Pigot pleaded legitimate defence, his story being that the lad, Djellali ben Ali, had attacked Pigot’s mistress—his wife, according to another version—scratching her neck as he went down the stairs to buy the morning’s milk and bread for breakfast. Djellali’s uncle, Lahaouri Djahafi, tells a different story. A week before he had been threatened himself by Pigot, who brandished a rifle at him. Djahafi had brushed the incident aside with uneasy humour, but he knew that Pigot, a laundryman who worked in Boulogne-sur-Seine, lived in an explosive situation: his damp hovel contained not merely his wife/mistress but five children in one room, and he was envious of what appeared to him the increasing worldly success of his neighbour across the landing. Djahafi had been a hawker who had left Algiers for France in 1948 and had managed to set himself up in a little shop selling cloths and silks, ‘Aux tissus et soieries d’Orient’.
A Sort of Fiction?
Authors: Gregor Ian
Published: July 2007

What are the motives which make a man wish to write his autobiography? Notoriety, fame, money—these are end products They don’t dictate the decision to write, the impulse to construct an artistic form which will be the shape of one’s own life. We might, perhaps, start by saying that to write an autobiography is a form of self-discovery through the necessity of having to shape and frame one’s life. This affords a measure of control which is also a liberation; we can write the past out of our system by re-living it. But perhaps it is more our sense of the present or an ever diminishing future which hastens our pen. From this vantage we must feel that our life has a kind of totality about it which makes it more than just ‘our life’. It makes a representative gesture, giving our memories and reflections more than a confessional interest. We must have a deep conviction that our constantly repeated first person singular is on easy terms with the first person plural. Looking at these suggested motives for autobiography—-the ordering of experience, the self-discovery, the liberation, the belief that your impressions will hold good for others —we see how little they differ from the motives behind any piece of imaginative writing. There are reasons for thinking that writing an autobiography is closer to writing fiction than to writing history. And if it is a novelist himself who should write his autobiography, a man whose life has already furnished a whole house of fiction—then I think rather odd things begin to happen, particularly if that novelist is Graham Greene.
East of Eden
Authors: Murray Isobel , Merrilees Jim
Published: July 2007

Steinbeck’s use of Old Testament material in East of Eden (1952) is very different from that in To A God Unknown (1933). As outlined in a previous article, Steinbeck was there qualifying the status of his protagonist, Joseph Wayne, by a number of literary means. But the most powerful qualifier of Joseph Wayne as prophet and saviour of his people is the manner in which Steinbeck contrives to keep the closely parallel story of the Joseph of Genesis ever-present throughout To A God Unknown. In East of Eden Steinbeck again, and indeed more obviously, makes use of Old Testament sources. But the Old Testament Cain and Abel do not loom reproachfully behind mere human characters in the book: when considered at all, they are considered explicitly and rationally in discussion, and in another sense the whole novel is clearly devoted to re-enactments of the episode and discussions of its significance.
Women and Episcopal Power
Authors: Morris Joan
Published: July 2007

The quasi-episcopal jurisdiction held by abbesses over the ‘separated’ territories of exempt orders has been presented by some writers of today as an abuse. I am alluding to such authors as Giovanni Mongelli, who has written on the mitred abbesses of San Benedetto, Conversano, Italy, and José Maria Escriva, who has written on the abbesses of Las Huelgas de Burgos, Spain. Bath these abbeys, like very many others, received innumerable papal bulls in their favour confirming them in their independence of any bishop and accepting their civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. Although many religious orders in Europe lost exemption at the time of the French Revolution, the Abbey of Las Huelgas de Burgos, after a brief lapse of some eight years, continued to be exempt up till 1874. The system was brought to a close by Pius IX in a bull entitled Quae diversa addressed to all religious orders in Spain, both men and women. The reason given was that the system was no longer suitable to the changed social conditions.

Such a reason is plausible; but to consider the jurisdiction held by abbesses as an abuse is pure prejudice. Abbesses, like queens or empresses, had a right to rule when their position was officially accepted. Such a system was in keeping with early Christian custom, throughout the feudal period and up to the fall of the nobility at the time of the French Revolution.
Judgment and the New Morality
Authors: Hauerwas Stanley
Published: July 2007

This essay is an attempt at a modest diatribe against some of the themes often associated with the ‘new moral theology’. It is my contention that in our enthusiasm for the seeming freedom promised in the new love ethic we have forgotten that the self must be transformed if we are to see the world as it is, and that the transformation into loving persons is not accomplished overnight by declaring our good intentions but by submitting patiently to the suffering that makes us real. We have impoverished our ethics by assuming that our lives can easily embody and reflect the good. In our moral behaviour, we have tacitly accepted existence in a world where God does not exist; in such a world, evil often appears beautiful and even kind. Such a situation is all the more pernicious because we claim to base our self-imposed blindness on love, kindness, justice, and even Jesus Christ. The main purpose of this essay is to try to locate some of the problems that have led us to confuse illusion with reality, for only when we understand the nature of our self-deception can we begin to appreciate how wonderful and yet how painful it is to live in a world where the good is not easily done.
Does Simenon write a Metaphysical Novel?
Authors: Luff S. G. A.
Published: July 2007

Georges Simenon writes detective stories, many featuring the amiable Inspecteur Maigret, almost too human to fit the traditional image of the sleuth. Simenon may be read more for atmosphere than for thrills, for Maigret's Paris, or the provincial towns of many non-Maigret stories; the weather mostly wintry with long evenings, the interest in trains, back streets, canals, bars, the small homes of small people in small worlds. And among these I find even more intriguing those with a Belgian scene, the Meuse, the industrial zone around Liege where young Simenon began as a reporter on the local press. Here are his native tow-paths and backyards, alleys and impasses, and a certain quality of mud, of earth and water and the two compounded.

Simenon does not normally set out to retail experiences that demand a transcendental world, least of all that purveyed by the Church. Where religious detail slips in it is seldom more than part of the narrative, handy description—as far as the author is concerned echoes from childhood, and usually no more than that for the characters too. Churchgoing is something children do and it is good for them; subsequently a minority elects to remain in this church sub-culture and becomes a characteristic feature of Sunday mornings.
Joseph Berington—‘Prophet of Ecumenism’?
Authors: Holmes J. Derek
Published: July 2007

The Reverend Joseph Berington (1743-1827) has never had a particularly good press even from sympathetic Catholic historians. This is almost certainly due to the fact that he was a leading supporter of the cisalpine, if not gallican, Catholic Committee and was one of those Catholics who belived that an Oath of Supremacy, properly understood, was not incompatible with Catholic principles. As a result of his attitude and activities, he was at one stage censured by the bishops and deprived of his faculties. Berington himself felt that English Catholics had suspected him since he taught philosophy at Douay where he was regarded as being too modern and bold in his philosophical opinions, and that this explained the later questioning of his orthodoxy. Joseph Gillow simply claims that Berington’s ‘love of novelty and of the affected liberality of the day created great prejudice against his writings, which, however, was considerably removed before his death’.
Human Relationships, Celibacy and Sexuality
Authors: McDonagh Enda
Published: July 2007

In the context of this colloquium it may be as well to begin by indicating the purpose and scope of an opening paper on this topic. The topic itself is so wide that any adequate treatment would presuppose expertise and experience far beyond the range of the author and perhaps beyond any single individual’s range. My approach is necessarily conditioned by my professional interest and experience, a moral theologian who is, in fact, a celibate by choice. The more precise meaning of these qualifications will, I hope, emerge later.

I can at once outline my approach and summarize my position by saying that I regard the celibate state as a form of human relationship in the way I regard the married state; that I see it as having in common with all other human relationships a sexual dimension; and that I am naturally concerned as a Christian theologian with the Christian meaning of human relationships and their sexual dimension.
The Trinity and Human Love
Authors: Mackrell G. F.
Published: July 2007

‘Batter my heart, three-Personed God’, wrote the poet John Donne. However, it has been the mind, not the heart, which has been battered by this most unfathomable of all mysteries. Centuries of long and painful battering of Unitarian hammer on tritheistic anvil eventually forged a statement which expressed the mystery: three persons in one nature. And ever since the Council of Florence there has echoed down the centuries a thunderous ‘So what?’. For the riddle of the Trinity is not merely that of the Three-in-one, but the revelation of it. Not ‘how?’, but ‘why?’. What is its relevance?

Karl Rahner, in his Theological Investigations, is exaggerating only slightly when he notes:

‘One might almost dare to affirm that if the doctrine of the Trinity were to be erased as false, most religious literature could be preserved almost unchanged throughout the process. And it cannot be objected that the Incarnation is such a theologically and religiously central element in Christian life that on that account the Trinity is always and everywhere irremovably present. For when the Incarnation of God is spoken of, theological and religious intention is today concentrated on the fact that “God” has become man, that “a” person of the Trinity has assumed flesh—but not on the fact that this person is precisely that of the Word, Logos.’
Looking for Transcendence
Authors: Sharkey Michael
Published: July 2007

One morning, I rose from my bed and walked out to explore the world. There was much that was familiar to me and after a short time I felt the need to break new ground. I set off towards unknown regions, while my gaze left the familiar things and settled on the distant horizon. Far and fast as I walked, I could not reach that horizon, for, as I advanced, it receded, yet my journey seemed far from fruitless; it was full of discovery.

I began to question the existence of the horizon, though, and I met one who had travelled much more than I, and I held him in conversation for a while. He laughed, and said that the horizon is always there, always receding as man advances. ‘Then why advance?’ I inquired, seeking a reason for my own behaviour. ‘Because there must be an end’, he said. ‘It is of the very nature of the cosmos that there must be an end to time and to space.’ This perplexed me because I could not imagine an end to time and space, but he drew on the ground and waved his hands in the air until his words settled on my understanding. Although I was annoyed to think that I was captive to time and space, I could not help but think that an infinity of time and space would be a bit of a bore.
Schools, De‐Schooling and Education for a Future
Authors: Haughton Rosemary
Published: July 2007

All over the ‘developed’ world, children left their homes this morning and went to school. All over the undeveloped world, parents were wishing their children could do so.

All over the developed world, millions of children are accepting school as an unavoidable bore, or actively hating it. Some weep, some play truant, some produce psychosomatic symptoms to avoid going to school. Most just put up with it and long for the holidays. A lucky few enjoy school, at least until the age when the shadow of public examinations falls over their lives. Yet all over the undeveloped world, angry or wistful teenagers see schooling as the means to a good life—a means withheld from most of them.

The greater part of the world’s children long for what those who have it dislike. And even those who loathe it grow up to assume it has an absolute value, and should be imposed on every human child. No wonder the whole notion of schooling as a method of education is coming under fire. But too often the question of schooling or not schooling is treated in isolation from its social and economic setting. What follows is an attempt to consider a few of the problems involved, and possible solutions, for there have been changes recently, in the way people think about the schooling situation. For one thing, an uncomfortable realization is spreading that the schooling systems of the prosperous nations are not working too well. Violence in schools is frequently in the news, and organized as well as spontaneous protest by school children is not uncommon. Part of the reason for this unrest lies in the rocketing costs of normal educational equipment and of teachers (salaries and training) plus the demand for still more elaborate educational gadgetry for a technological future. This has created a huge gap between what educationists think schooling should be like and what it is actually like for most children. The overcrowded schools, the overworked teachers, the bored, resentful children, are there because governments have refused to acknowledge that their resources were not equal to their published principles on education.
The Case of the Abbé Barreau
Authors: Allen Louis
Published: July 2007

If I were very irreverent, and had thoughts only of a world from which Coco Chanel and Maurice Chevalier have disappeared, I’m not sure I ought to take with desperate seriousness the defection of one young clergyman from the ranks of Parisian ecclesiastics. Or is this being frivolous? In a sense, it is, because although there is something banal about the way in which the press here or in France seizes upon the marriage of a priest for a ready headline, Barreau is not just any priest. His origins, for one thing, were most unusual in a candidate for the priesthood. His parents were atheists, with those Freemasonry connections which make French Catholic hair stand on end in a Pavlovian instant; in fact his grandfather was chef de cabinet to Combes, whose anti-religious education laws under the Third Republic in the early years of this century drove the religious orders—for a time—out of French education. To cap it all, his greatgrandfather was a communard, shot by the Versaillais. All in all, the number of tongues that wagged with I-told-you-so’s and what-can-you-expect’s must have been pretty considerable when Barreau announced his intention to marry one of his parishioners. But he had come to the Church the hard way. His education at the lycée Condorcet and then his studies in law at the University can have done nothing other than confirm him in the dry positivism which characterizes a good many French agnostics. For Barreau, though, there was the Christianity of the personal encounter which made all the difference. His history teacher at Condorcet was Olivier Clément, whose person and example converted him to Christianity. Not that Clément preached at his pupils. But what Barreau learned from him of the true nature of the real evangelical message—‘subversion, scandal, madness to the world’—showed him that he had been content to dismiss what was merely a caricatured Christianity, itself dechristianized.
Some Thoughts on the Eucharistic Presence: 1
Authors: Egner G.
Published: July 2007

One of the words we learned at school about the Eucharist was ‘transubstantiation’ : we were given to understand, quite rightly, that the use of this word marked off Roman Catholic belief here from what had traditionally been Protestantism, and that the Council of Trent had declared the word to be used very suitably by the Church. Another thing we learned at school was that a consecrated host looks like bread, tastes like bread, but is not: we are sometimes told, again quite properly, that this phrase puts into popular form what Trent asserted.

I reject what Trent said. I don’t believe in transubstantiation and I think that a consecrated host is still bread, bread in precisely the way that an unconsecrated host is bread. I want to show you why I hold these views. What I have to say is derived from a book I am writing, and I obviously can do no more than give you a brief glimpse of some of its contents. I have not written my book to deny the eucharistic presence: but I have written it to try to persuade people that the ways we talk about it are misleading and empty; and to suggest some better ways. It will be on the negative part of the book that I shall be dwelling for a good part of the paper, expounding and criticizing first the views found in Trent, then the views found in certain authors today, particularly in Holland. As you will know, one of the many bickerings between the Dutch and the Vatican concerns the eucharistic presence: my contention is that both sides are saying basically the same thing and that both sides are wrong.