bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Recent Popes on Church Music
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: August 2024

It is now something over fifty years since the appearance of that major landmark in liturgical history that was the Motu proprio of Pope St Pius X, Tra le sollecitudini, published on November 22, 1903. The original text was in Italian, though it was accompanied by a Latin text also. It is worth examining briefly the nature of a Motu proprio, by way of comparison with some subsequent legislation. A Motu proprio is a papal rescript, including these words ('of his own accord’), signifying that the Pope has decided personally on its provisions, neither depending upon the request or advice of others, nor setting out to deal with a particular case. (A special legal characteristic of a Motu proprio is that it does not depend for its validity upon the validity of the reasons alleged for its issue, as is the case with ordinary rescripts where the phrase is not used: the Motu proprio is valid whatever may happen to the reasons.) The most well-known Motu proprio is this one on Church Music, so that the term suggests to most people this particular document.
Let the People Sing
Authors: Buckley J. C.
Published: August 2024

Let Them? … If only they would! But let us not blame them. What have we priests done about it? Not that I think that everything is solved by lusty singing in church. Far from it! It is the whole picture of the people's part in the liturgy that we must keep constantly before our minds. Our first task is surely with the theological basis of the liturgical movement. It will be seen for what it is, a pastoral movement, when and only when its underlying theology has been studied especially in the light of the doctrine of the Mystical Body. This threefold movement of thought (theology of the Mystical Body), action (the Mystical Body at work in the lay apostolate) and liturgy (the Mystical Body at prayer) is a twentieth-century phenomenon only in so far as it is an organized movement.
The Movement for a Better World
Authors: Anderson Robin
Published: August 2024

In writing, not long ago, of what he has found in the Movement for a Better World, Fr Ludwig Tovini, Italian Dominican member of the movement's promoting group, referred, amongst other things, to an equilibrium between the grandiose wish to change the world and the realistically moderated belief in the possibility of change, and advocacy of it, without Utopian optimism that would banish the existence of evil from the earth. Such equilibrium, difficult to maintain on account of continually having to avoid die danger of falling into one excess or another, is not so common, Fr Tovini went on to say, even in the Catholic field, ours being an age when ‘whimsical hankerings after originality often lead to the taking up of unbalanced or eccentric positions …'.

A ‘better world’ Pope Pius XII defined as being a world ‘more according to the heart of God', giving to this relative concept an essentially Christian value.
The Legacy of Charles de Foucauld
Authors: Anson Peter F.
Published: August 2024

This stimulating and provocative book is an adaptation of the latest French edition of Au Coeur des Masses, for which Willard Hill deserves to be congratulated, because the reader is hardly conscious that the greater part of the text is a translation. It is definitely a book which ought to be on the shelves of every religious community, and read aloud in every refectory. But, like the disciples of Charles de Foucauld themselves, there is nothing violent about these seeds blown from the Sahara. They might be compared to a spiritual atomic bomb, likely to have far-reaching effects on the religious state in years to come. In a long introductory chapter Pere Voillaume sets forth what are the ideals of the Little Brothers of Jesus. These may be summed up as trying to live as poor religious, and contributing to the Church's invisible apostolate by ‘entering into Jesus's work of redemption', through prayer and sacrifice; what is more, without any enclosure—small groups actually ‘inserted’ into the world of the poor, sharing the hard life of that world.
Symbolism in the Middle English Religious Lyric
Authors: Hignett Dorothy M.
Published: August 2024

I Have imposed rather narrow limits on the scope of this short article, to make possible a close examination of a few poems, rather than deal in a more general way with the subject. I have chosen to examine some examples of Middle English lyric poetry written between the thirteenth century and the fifteenth century. My selection has been confined to the religious lyrics, omitting the secular lyrics of the period. This choice may of course reflect a personal preference, but it should not, I think, misplace the correct emphasis, since most of the lyrics extant from this period are religious: for every one secular lyric there are three or four religious lyrics, and moreover the religious lyric has been neglected to some extent in favour of the secular love-lyric, as many of these are among the more obviously attractive features of Middle English literature. The secular lyrics are nevertheless highly conventional, and, especially in the thirteenth century, lean heavily upon French tradition.
Mr Greene's Sad Men
Authors: Hinchliffe Arnold P.
Published: August 2024

Graham Greene's last two works of prose fiction are very encouraging. No one can deny Greene's competence in the early work, nor his Tightness in choosing characteristic themes of the times (violence, cauchemar, sex and sin) and treating them in suitable modes (the employment of cinematographic devices, newspaper techniques and popular psychology), but the high estimate of Greene, particularly on the continent (he shares it with Somerset Maugham, it appears), has always raised doubts among his serious English readers. There is the central problem of his obvious commitment to Roman Catholicism which affects the reader; and, it is fair to say, irritates both Catholic and non-Catholic reader. Writing as a Catholic, I should say that the main burden of complaint is the meretricious nature of this involvement. We can admit that Greene can and does present the conditions of salvation and damnation with vivid effectiveness; Pinkie, wandering through the back-streets of Brighton in the early morning, presents us with the sensation and the dilemma:

He heard a whisper, looked sharply round, and thrust the paper back.
Faith and the Sacrament of Faith
Authors: Milner Paulinus
Published: August 2024

‘And he said to them: “Go out over the whole world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; he who refuses to believe will be condemned”’ (Mark xvi, 15). Our Lord shows us in these words that there are three stages on the way of salvation. First there must be preaching: the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ must be proclaimed to all creation; the revelation made to prophets and apostles must be passed on by preachers to all human beings. But God's revelation demands response on the part of man. That response is faith. God has taken the initiative: he has revealed himself to us and sent his only-begotten Son to die for our sins, that we may be saved; but as St Augustine says, ‘God who made you without your assistance, will not save you without your co-operation'. In response to his initiative he requires our faith.
The Messianic Idea in Contemporary Jewish Thought
Authors: Polack A. I.
Published: August 2024

On the eve of the Sabbath and Festivals a hymn is regularly sung in all Synagogues and Jewish homes, called ‘Yigdal’ (Magnificat). It contains in poetic form thirteen principles of the Jewish faith, originally formulated in the twelfth century by Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher who had such a profound influence on his contemporaries (such as Thomas Aquinas), and among them there is a verse which runs, ‘He will send our Anointed (Messiah) at the end of days to redeem them that wait for the end—his salvation'.

That is one of many allusions to the coming of the Messiah in the Hebrew Prayer-book in general use today. Some of them actually mention his descent, as the phrase in the Festival Amidah: ‘May our remembrance rise and come and be accepted before thee … together with the remembrance of Messiah, the son of David'.
The Holy Name
Authors: A. K. R.
Published: August 2024

‘See, the name of the Lord is coming from afar and its brightness fills the world.’

We begin the new liturgical year looking forward to the coming of one whose name is hidden from us, but gradually revealed in the course of Advent. This name ‘comes from afar', it comes indeed from the heart of God, from the mind of the Father, because it is the name of his Word, his only-begotten and well-beloved Son. But as yet it is to us a deep mystery. We are gazing at this profound mystery from a great distance, and because of the immense abyss which separates us from God, our sight is blurred. In our state of fallen human nature, our gaze is darkened because of original sin and our own personal sins and therefore we need the brightness, the shining clarity of this name to fill the whole earth. It must fill our minds because the truth of God is for us so obscure.
Church and Council
Authors: St John Henry
Published: August 2024

As yet we know nothing in detail of the agenda, doctrinal and disciplinary, for the deliberations of the Vatican Council to be convoked in the near future by Pope John XXIII. These no doubt will be made known to us as the Commissions go forward during this year with their preparatory work. We can however take the coming Council as a symbol, as all its predecessors have been, of the historical development of the Church's life and teaching. It is a symbol of what may be called the togetherness, in doctrine and life, of all the parts of which the Mystical Body of Christ in the world is made up. Another word for this might be the conciliarity of the Church; both of these are clumsy words for what they are here used to express, namely the living and. spreading of the faith by a society in which by grace every individual person is deeply concerned and closely united with his neighbours in the whole. This holds good of the total hierarchy of its being, from its highest ruling authority down to its humblest member.
Teaching the Faith
Authors: Boxer Charles
Published: August 2024

Those of us who are called upon from time to time to teach the faith to children are often perplexed about what we should in fact teach. The Catholic faith, of course; the catechism seems the obvious choice, it is clear and easy to learn. But then what are we to do about the scriptures? It is not always very clear how we can combine the two, they follow their own rhythms.

When I was sent to teach at a Catechism Camp last summer the problem Was very much in my mind—the very name ‘Catechism Camp’ seemed to indicate the method; and yet I had found, the previous year, that catechism teaching is far from satisfactory in itself. The children know the answers on the whole, and the meaning behind the answers tends to confine one to the logical steps of a remote theology.
The Abbé Paul Couturier
Authors: Ley Dom Benedict
Published: August 2024

In the cemetery of Loyasse on the hill of Fourviére, overlooking the great city of Lyons in France, there is a special plot reserved for departed priests. Here last September I came to pray at the grave of my friend Abbé Paul Couturier. He died on March 24th, 1953, aged seventy-two. ‘Il fut un Apôtre de l'Unite des Chrétiens', so runs the inscription on his gravestone. But the past tense is surely a little deceptive and out of place. For to thousands of Christians all over Europe, in these isles and in America, whether Roman Catholic or Anglican, Orthodox or Protestant, the Abbé Couturier is still a messenger sent by God awaken them to the intolerable scandal of disunity and to proclaim the way to hasten its end—a way all can follow without denying anything of God's truth as it has been shown to them, and without any disloyalty to their respective traditions. For it was the special grace of this humble priest of Lyons to see that the cause of Christian Unity is primarily a matter of the spiritual life.
The Passion
Authors: Belfield E. M.
Published: August 2024

The Mass is constructed round the Passion of Christ. After the consecration the priest says, 'Wherefore, O Lord, we thy servants, as also thy holy people, calling to mind the blessed passion of the same Christ thy Son…' In every church there is at least one crucifix, every Catholic home has a crucifix in a place of honour and at the end of every rosary there hangs a crucifix. Yet so often our thoughts shy away from meditating on the Passion of Christ. The more one thinks on the Passion, especially on the crucifixion, the more unbearable does it seem to be. Nevertheless the great saints have always stressed this necessity of meditating on the Passion.
The Spiritual Life; An Historical Approach—I
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: August 2024

There is a department of theology known as ‘spiritual theology’ or ‘ascetical and mystical theology', or from a more historical standpoint ‘history of spirituality'. (The word ‘spirituality’ is unwelcome in English, but corresponds to, the perfectly acceptable ‘spiritualité’ in French.) This ‘discipline’ or subject within a course of theology is, from an academic point of view, something of a Cinderella among the subjects in which the clergy are trained, and indeed in the 1930s the Angelicurn in Rome claimed to be almost uniquely advanced in possessing a chair of historia spiritualitatis, the chair being first occupied by Père Paul Philippe, O.P., who subsequently became Commissary of the Holy Office (the modern title of the Inquisitor General). But the subject as an historical discipline was gaining recognition at that time, and the great Dictionnaire de Spiritualité was begun by Père Marcel Viller, S.J., in 1937 as a counterpart to the great Dictionnaires in other areas of theology.
The Principal Means of Perfection
Authors: Lallemant Père
Published: August 2024

I. THE SACRAMENTS

THE principal practices which lead to perfection are the sacraments when we approach them with the necessary preparation; yet, curiously enough, this is the very truth which is most neglected. The sacraments give graces which result in the production within us of the effects proper to them: confession brings great purity of heart, Holy Communion close union with God and spiritual fervour in all our actions…. The more you approach the sacraments, the more graces you will receive to share in their effects. But the effects of these sacraments, namely purity of heart and spiritual fervour, are themselves the best preparation we can make to receive them.

A soul which before Holy Communion was in darkness, weak and languishing, but after it becomes enlightened, fervent and strong cannot doubt of the fruit of its communion, because the sacraments’ effect is to give their proper sacramental grace Hence after a good confession the soul receives much light on its interor dispositions, humble and loving contrition, and peace of a quiet conscience.
What is the Church?—II: The People of God
Authors: McCabe Herbert
Published: August 2024

In a previous article I showed that the first effect of the Word was to create a community, and this time I want to speak about this community, showing first what it meant for the Old Testament, and then how the notion was deepened in the New. Textbooks sometimes approach this matter by asking themselves whether Christ founded a church to exist after him, and showing that he did so by reference to various gospel texts. The inadequacy of this lies in the fact that it conceives the possibility of Christ's not having founded a church. When we see Christ in the context of scripture we see that the Church is not an institution which Christ decided to have but might have decided not to have. When we see Christ in his Old Testament background, as he is presented by the New Testament, we see the Church as inevitable. Of course, God might not have planned to have a church but this would have meant having a totally different plan for the world. The Father's plan, as we learn from the tremendous last epistles of St Paul, was to bring all things to fulfilment in Christ.
The New Israel
Authors: Laurie Ian C.
Published: August 2024

’Hath God cast away his people? God forbid! … Goo hath not cast away his people which he foreknew… Even so at this present time there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace.’ Thus wrote Saint Paul to the faithful at Rome: to those who had accepted Christ as the promised Messiah of Israel and the Saviour of mankind. For Christ did not found the Church independently of Israel but used the faithful of that nation in the establishing of it, as the prophet foretold: ‘For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make to stand before me, saith the Lord: so shall your seed stand and your name.’ (Isaias 66, 22.) During his lifetime he prepared his new Kingdom out of the material of the old, and if the old seemed to reject him it was he who in reality rejected those who refused to acknowledge him as Christ and Lord. So he had charged his Apostles, saying: ‘And whosoever will not receive you: when you go out of that city shake off the very dust from your feet as a testimony against them.’
The Spirit in the World—III—Ad Lucem
Authors: Lushington Claude
Published: August 2024

There is a growing appreciation among the Catholic laity that their task in the world is the doing of God's work in and through the work of the world. In other words Christ's life must be actualised by the members of his body through a full participation in the life of the world. The constant narrowing of distance, wider horizons and the increasing independence of former dependant peoples are giving worldwide dimensions not only to problems of politics, economics and sociology, but also to the life of the Church.

Nearly thirty years ago the founders of Ad Lucem were already thinking along these lines. They saw the needs of the under-developed countries of the world, which includes two-thirds of its peoples, and they wanted desperately to help these areas in some way. This was long before current international thinking had begun; long before the idea of the United Nations Organization, and the world's consciousness of to the poverty of the under-developed countries.
Changes in the Liturgy: Cri de Coeur
Authors: Ward Maisie
Published: August 2024

Orate fratres, say the priest — ‘Pray brethren, that this sacrifice which is Mine and your my be acceptable'. So the congregation is offering the Sacrifice of the mass with the priest. We are not simply there, we are taking part. Our part is subsidiary, certainly, but it is not just a fiction or a facade, it is real. Therefore, we should think about it and utter ow. thoughts. We have a subsidiary part in the offering, we should make our subsidiary contribution to the discussion of the mass which is now everywhere being carried on. We have been co-offering, sub offering, for nineteen hundred years. I have sometimes asked myself ‘Doesn't anybody wonder what we think?’ And now an editor has asked me.

It may seem surprising that the liturgical education of my childhood was as good as it was—for my first eleven years belong to that very unliturgical period, the nineteenth century.
Discernment
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

In entering a dark and strange room we have to depend upon external direction to find our way about it. We need some other person to speak and tell us where we are, or someone to lead us by the hand. We can rely only very meagrely upon our own powers of discretion. On entering the Cloud of Unknowing the soul needs the clear voice of some spirit other than its own to tell it where it is and whither going. There must be some interpreter near at hand to declare what the darkness means and to read the signs which appear in the experience of the soul. The minor works of the author of the Cloud are mainly concerned with the discernment of spirits, for it is the Spirit of God who is the principal interpreter while a director, such as the author, is needed to assure the soul when the Paraclete interprets and when the human or the evil spirit deceives.
The Crown of Life
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

Traditionally, meditations on death have leagued with those on the judgment and on hell to induce a type of fear that leads to repentance. Death terrifies the pagan and the Christian who by sin has strayed into a pagan way of life. In a world given over to the search for material well being and the more physical perfections of human life these terrors are pushed into the background of the mind. The foreground is wholly filled with the desires and activities connected with good living. Meditation on death is the last thing the living materialist would willingly undertake.
The Meaning of Genesis: A New Commentary
Authors: Sharp Robert
Published: August 2024

It is a pleasure to welcome the appearance in English of a work of deep theological relevance. Dr von Rad's commentary was published in the German Protestant series, Das Alte Testament Deutsch, nearly a decade ago. Now that it is available in English, it is to be hoped that it will be widely read. If so, the result can only be a growth in our understanding of the developing relationship between man and his creator, who has revealed himself in scripture as the Lord of history. Let us be clear that this commentary on Genesis is not primarily aimed at the expert philologist or literary critic. Von Rad accepts the classical documentary theory in general, and he devotes a minimum of space in this book to discussing the sources of particular passages. In this he is at the other extrerne to Martin Noth in his commentary on Exodus in the same Series (scheduled to appear in English also in the Old Testament library), which is devoted very largely to source criticism.
The Death of a Christian—I: The Objective Fact
Authors: Schillebeeckx E. H.
Published: August 2024

Throughout the course of the growing development of the kingdom of God, the death of a Christian has taken a well-defined and importan place. The ending of the earthly life of a Christian man is an essential phase in the coming of the kingdom of God. What I propose to do in these articles is to analyse the meaning of this phase placed in the whole of Christian eschatology or expectation of the future. I shall first examine death as an objective occurrence in Christian saving history, and then in a subsequent article show how we Christians should personally experience the event of death in an eschatological attitude of mind: in other words what the answer of our life to death will be.

In the Dominican rite of interment, we sing ‘let us be glad and rejoice on this wonderful day God has made, on which he has called one of our loved ones to himself'.
Worship at Pentecost
Authors: Weatherhead Benet
Published: August 2024

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost can be seen to have fulfilled several currents of Old Testament prophecy and symbolism. As the spirit inspired the heroes of Israel andled them to victory over Israel's enemies, we can see the Spirit working in Christ's victory over the prince of this world and the Christian's victory over evil. Or, again, just as the spirit of God hovered over the primal chaos rendering it obedient to the ordering word of God, so the Spirit is at work now bringing the new heavens and the new earth into being, the redeemed world out of darkness to the light of the final day. Or the spirit is a fire of purification, or the refreshing waters the nomad depends on in the wastelands. But there is another aspect which it may be worthwhile winging out in this age of liturgical revival, the connection of the spirit with prophecy, with one stage of prophecy in particular.
A Notable Tercentenary
Authors: Battersby W. J.
Published: August 2024

Centenaries are interesting events for they show that, if we give time time, it performs a double function. In the first place, the lapse of a lengthy period acts like a sieve, eliminating the dross and allowing only the finest to survive. Then a distance of time acts also like a distance in space; it enables us to view in perspective that which is too big to be seen close up.

For the proper appreciation of a man like St De La Salle, a hundred years was a minimum. In fact, it is only now, as the tercentenary of his birth approaches, that he is really coming into his own. The cloud of brilliant nonentities who crowded the fore-front of the stage in his day has disappeared, and he is beginning to emerge so that we can see him in his true proportions.
Easter Sunday
Authors: White Victor
Published: August 2024

Easter Sunday is not a feast day standing by itself. It is the culmination of a celebration which may be said to begin on Palm Sunday and which continues through Low Sunday and beyond to Ascension Day, and even to Whit Sunday and its octave. All this is the Pasch or Passover, which we call Easter. It is the Spring Festival, in a sense the New Year—the New Year not of our arbitrary calendars but of nature and of life, vegetable, animal, human and divine.

Easter is the centre and climax of the whole Christian year. But in a sense it is not only a Christian feast, nor does it originate with Christ or in Christendom. We know that the word Pasch or Passover is not a Christian name, nor originally it was a Christian feast: it is a Jewish name and a Jewish feast. By the time of Christ it had come to mean for the Jews principally a commemoration of their passage from the slavery of Egypt to the Promised Land ‘flowing with milk and honey'.
St Augustine on the Trinity—IV
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

By the end of bk vii Augustine has completed his original programme of first establishing the starting-point of faith—that is to say examining the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity in scripture—and then going on to justify it or account for it, against Arians and others, in the language of metaphysics and logic. His work is finished then, apparently, and yet he is still not halfway through. He gives us the key to his intentions in the short prologue to bk viii; he is going to go over the same ground all over again, but in ‘a more inward manner’, a characteristically Augustinian design. So far we have been considering the mystery of the Trinity objectively, as something ‘out there’, seen from the outside. But this can hardly satisfy us unless our interests are merely academic. We must find our way inside the mystery, and the way into God is into ourselves.
The Spirit in the World—VII A Catholic Home of Rest
Authors: Hope Wingfield
Published: August 2024

In my recent book, Each His Own Tyrant, I introduced a Catholic Home of Rest where a young postulant was helped to understand her own neurosis, and to work free from it. My postulant (Alice) was fictitious, but not so the Home. And I have been asked to write a little more about it here, chiefly in connection with its work for nuns.

First, a brief description of the background. The Home is in a beautiful part of England. It consists of a number of houses and cottages, each in charge of a housemother—the Principal being in close touch with these groups, which are like small families within a larger one. (There is also a house for men, with its own farm, but as this works separately, I shall not describe it here.)
Christ the Word
Authors: Armstrong D. P.
Published: August 2024

In an age of technical achievements and the mechanical repetition of words the unique Redemptive action of Christ The Word is particularly significant. Men are obliged in the exercise of free-will to choose Christ, who is the Word and brings the words of life, or Satan whose words are lies leading to death. Life eternal is the proper end of the whole man, but since the Fall he is open to temptation, and most of all to temptation through natural pride. Thus his especial tendency to pride is found in those activities which distinguish him from the other living creatures. His reason, a common object of idolatry, his humour—did not Bernard Shaw among other satirists take refuge from faith in a kind of pseudo-Godlike mockery? — his ability to use tools, whether useful or artistic or for pleasure, and above all his power to communicate the life of his soul through language, to other souls.
Third Sermon For Pentecost
Authors: Tauler John
Published: August 2024

This is the day, my dear friends, when the Holy Spirit, so long promised, was sent from heaven to the holy Apostles and to all who were living in the love of God. Again this is the day when, by the divine mercy was restored to us the precious and priceless treasure that we had lost of old in the earthly paradise, by the devil's instigation and human weakness. Doubtless the manner of the Holy Ghost's visible descent upon the disciples was marvellous, but what happened interiorly was of another and different beauty: beyond the understanding of reason, intelligenee or feeling.
The Church and Charity
Authors: Ple Albert
Published: August 2024

The Church and Charity are two realities which are intimately connected with one another: the community (koinonia) which is the Church is grounded in a loving union (agape) and the union which is charity (agape) is in turn based on a communion (koinonia). To state more precisely the relationship existing between the Church and charity will be our concern in what follows.

Of the many references in Holy Scripture to the bond which exists between the Church and charity the most notable is that of Ephesians 4, 15-16: ‘Rather we should hold the truth in charity, and grow in all things into him who is the head, Christ. From him the whole body, welded and compacted together by means of every joint of the system, part working in harmony with part—from him the body deriveth its increase, unto the building up of itself in charity.’
God and the Unconscious
Authors: Nicholl Donald
Published: August 2024

Fr Victor White has contributed so frequently to The Life of the Spirit that any attempt to avoid a slightly domestic atmosphere in this account of his work would be forced and unnatural. Not that this present collection of his essays contains more than one which has appeared here already. Some day, we hope, the others which have been published here may also be collected into a book. Such a work would be more concerned with the theological side of the frontiers of psychology and theology than is God and the Unconscious, where psychology is at least the starting-point—thougli never the terminus. Much of the material will be familiar to the readers of Blackjriars, Dominican Studies, and the Guild of Pastoral Psychology pamphlets. But there are several important new chapters; all the essays have been re-worked; and the result is a book of surprising unity.
The Tradition of Solitude
Authors: Sewell Brocard
Published: August 2024

It is a curious fact that in the Codex Juris Canonici, the new canon law for the Latin Church promulgated in 1917, there is no mention whatever of hermits and recluses. In the official legislation for the ‘religious’ life today such persons are simply not considered or provided for. It is no reflection on the genius of the compiler of the Codex, Cardinal Gasparri, to consider this a regrettable omission. It merely reflects the existing state of affairs. Whereas in the Middle Ages hermits, anchorites, and anchoresses were a familiar part of the religious and social scenes, by the twentieth century (and much earner) they were barely a memory, best known perhaps from the romantic pages of the Gothic novelists, from Mrs Radcliffe to Sir Walter Scott.
'Duc Nos Quo Tendimus'
Authors: Martindale C. C.
Published: August 2024

There are two Feasts which, maybe, can be celebrated with special unselfishness—that of the Immaculate Conception, and that of the Assumption. We must not feel it wrong if we keep the great feasts of our Lord with a certain consciousness of ourself, for after all, the Incarnation and all that it made possible—the Passion and the Resurrection itself—were ordained propter nos homines; for the sake of us men and our salvation. Even the Ascension, which can indeed be celebrated most unselfishly’ as the feast of our Lord's glorification, yet reminds us that as we are co-risen, so we are to be co-glorified.

Of course, since all the perfections of our Lady were granted to her in view of her Son—Christus cogitabatur—she too can be thought °f as existing ultimately for our sake. But I should find it difficult to see how the Assumption can be regarded otherwise than as something for our Lady's own sake, and for the glory of God.
The Fourth Glorious Mystery
Authors: Delany Bernard
Published: August 2024

Recently I came across an attractive little booklet entitled, How to say the Rosary, written by an Anglican. It was well printed and everything about it was in the best possible taste. There were artistic prints, the letterpress at first sight seemed very good, and the instructions admirable: it was almost too good to be true. I turned over the pages and read on to what actually turned out to be the bitter end, for I was told after the third Glorious Mystery, that the last two. the Assumption and coronation of Our Lady, were to be omitted because there was no justification for them in Holy Scripture. That meant presumably that they were nowhere explicitly mentioned in the Bible. Well! I had already been told to say the Hail Mary, including the second part in which our Lady is invoked as Holy Mary, Mother of God— a title not to be found in Scripture and (like the Glory be to the Father) only explicitly formulated as Catholic doctrine in the fourth century. Then too the Salve Regina is not to be discovered in so toany words in Scripture, and I could not help thinking that my would-be instructor in how to say the Rosary was being a hit inconsistent.
The Followers Of Foucauld
Authors: Sheppard L. C.
Published: August 2024

It seems to be the lot of some of the servants of God that they begin to exert a powerful influence only after their death. One such case, of course, was Soeur Thérèse of Lisieux, unknown at death, of world-wide renown within twenty years afterwards (before her beatification). Such too seems to be the case with Fr Charles of Jesus-Charles de Foucauld, the missionary monk and hermit of the Sahara.

His way of life can have but a limited attraction though his teaching and methods have anything but a restricted application. It is perhaps the very relevance of his method of apostolate that is drawing men to study what he did, and in some cases to imitate him, with the necessary adaptations of course, in the task of pro-claiming the Gospel by their life. Crier l'Evangile par toute ma vie was his watchword; if it were indeed done by all Christians how quickly would the world be conquered for Christ.
Suffering and Holiness
Authors: Sumner Dom Oswald
Published: August 2024

One day at Segovia a picture of Christ spoke to St John of the Cross. ‘“Brother John, ask me for what you wish, and I will give it you for the service you have done me”. And I said to him: “Lord, what I wish you to give me are sufferings to be borne for your sake, and that I may be despised and regarded as worthless”.’
Congregation of our Lady of Pity
Authors:   A Member of The Congregation
Published: August 2024

During the years between the two great wars it became apparent to two Catholic laywomen, one n doctor's daughter, the other a hospital nurse, that there was a great need for various forms of charitable activity in the countryside. They saw too, how a single-handed parish priest can be overworked and in need of help to enable him to carry on his apostolic work. They felt God was calling them to this end, so they gave up those things which go to make up the social life in the world, and while still living at home, consecrated themselves to God to be used as he willed in his service. They became tertiaries, and followed a rule of life. For some years it was very uphill work; they experienced great suffering and many difficulties until they were almost at breaking point, but they put their trust in God who, they believed, had called them to be his instruments in this work. In due course others with the same ideals joined them.
The Solitary Religious Life
Authors: Rusticus
Published: August 2024

Religiouis life implies certain specific characteristics: the vowed and dedicated life; the three counsels of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience; the ordered sequence of Mass, the daily Office and Mental Prayer; with some element of work and recreation at ordered times. We are so much used to the life's being lived in community that we are apt to think the Religious life implies, per se, Community life. But to be precise, this is not so.
Plainchant, Icons and Mosaics
Authors: Graef H. C.
Published: August 2024

There are, broadly speaking, an netive and a contemplative life. Are there, perhaps, correspondingly also a contemplative and an active art? By this is meant an art born of, and again conducive to, contemplation, and, on the other hand, an art reflecting the active temperament of an epoch or an artist. Or, expressed differently, an art that is nourished by the contemplation of the Divine, of the eternal; an art that is, therefore, itself objective, timeless, expressing Being in so far as it can be expressed by human media; and, again, an art that observes the fleeting moment, the actual and temporal, and which, therefore, is itself subjective, timebound, expressing Becoming. Take the Gregorian plain chant and Bach's Mass in B Minor, take the ‘Madonna of St Luke’ in Santa Maria Maggiore and, say, the Sistine Madonna, take any mosaic executed between the 5th and the 12th centuries and any fresco painting of the Renaissance, and you have the two kinds of art that might be distinguished as ‘contemplative’ and active’.
The Monastic Idea
Authors: James Bruno Scott
Published: August 2024

In the mind of the average Catholic, especially of the average cradle Catholic, a monk is someone who wears a habit. For this reason one constantly hears of Friars, Canons, and even Clerks Regular referred to as monks. Of course this is completely wrong. The only monks in the Church at present are the sons of Saint Benedict and Saint Bruno. Nevertheless, even the best instructed Catholic would find it hard to say what a monk is and in what way he differs from other religious. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines a monk as ‘a member of a community living apart under the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience'. The first part of this definition is all right, but it is hopelessly wrong over the vows. A monk takes a vow of obedience in common with other religious, but he does not take explicit vows of poverty or chastity; in their place he takes the vows of stability and conversation of manners.
The Apostolate of Satan
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: August 2024

The world has little belief nowadays in the existence of a personal devil. If you meet Satan only, let us say, against the background of the Parisian society of Baudelaire's day you may be tempted to dismiss him as just part of the paraphernalia of a fashionable dilettantism; if you know him only in terms of medieval gargoyles and illuminations you may think him just one of the many childish fancies of a superstitious age. But in fact it is very unsound and unscientific to leave the matter there. Underneath all the superstitions of the Middle Ages, the fashionable posings of a later society, the unreasoning panic of the recurrent periods of witch-baiting, there does lie a world of a very different sort: a world of deadly and horrible seriousness where men know exactly what they are doing and do it and effectively, a world that you know to be real because of its horror. That world is with us still.
A Parish Priest on Liturgical Devotion
Authors: Valentin Arthur
Published: August 2024

The subject of Liturgy is so vast that only a few can command a deep knowledge of its history, but there is one aspect which does not call for high scholarship, and that is the pastoral—the Liturgy as its affects the average Catholic, especially as his normal means of instruction.

By general agreement these days in which we live have witnessed a general falling away from Bible reading amongst non-Catholics, whilst that practice has not been a strong point amongst English Catholics; then, too, only a small fraction of our people ever hear a sermon, for most come only once to church on a Sunday, and then to a Low Mass, at which they hear only the usual notices. Few in proportion to the sum total study Catholic books on religion, and so thousands have starved minds, a condition responsible in large measure for so much apathy. Apathy is the inevitable prostration of will which follows on after a long period of mental starvation. Now, in the Liturgy, and I am here using that term as equalling the Mass, we have an unequalled book of instruction, and the finest comment ever produced on the meaning of Holy Scripture.
The Way of Perfection in the English Mystics
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

Before proceeding to a detailed discussion of the English spiritual authors, some explanation is required of the order and design of the treatment. For we do not intend to follow a chronological order and indeed we have included the Ancren Riwle which is outside our period, as also William Langland who scarcely deserves the name of mystic though he was a great poet and the mystic is often, if not always, a poet too.

Our plan is to climb up the scale, the ladder of perfection, from the lowest rungs to the topmost, where, like Jacob’s ladder, they disappear into heaven. The theme of this essay has been adopted from Père Garrigou-Lagrange’s now celebrated thesis that the highest flights of infused contemplation and mystical union are on the royal road to holiness open to all. A scheme therefore of tEe normal growth of the generous soul cooperating to the full with the graces offered her, will begin with the first conversion and end with the heights of union described in different terminology by St John of the Cross, Mother Julian, and the author of the Cloud of Unknowing.
The Rule of St Augustine: A Modern Rendering
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: August 2024

Our chief concern, brethren (sisters), is the love of God; and after this the love of our neighbour, for these are the two greatest commandments. To these ends we give the following directions for the regulation of monastic life.

The first aim of community life is the ideal of unity in community—all our thoughts and desires united and centred on God.
Religious Life
Authors: Jarrrett Bede
Published: August 2024

It is with a consciousness of our own sins and failings that religious life makes its appeal to us. We enter the cloister because we are conscious of evil in our hearts. It is not indeed of itself a sufficient motive to force anyone into religious life far less to keep him there, this consciousness of sin, the mere sense of sin. We were drawn by the fact of positive love of God. It is not the mere escaping from danger. To look upon a cloister as a place from which is shut out temptation, a haven of rest, cannot be a motive. It does not take us long to find we cannot escape temptation as long as we have our own hearts, from them we cannot escape. A stricter relationship with the outside world may alter our temptations, that's all. We do not shut out the worst offender—ourselves.
The Prayer of the Agony
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: August 2024

He began to be sorrowful: he began to be afraid. We live today in a world so haunted by fear that this story of Christ's agony must be very close to us. Anxiety lies heavy on the heart of men; and on the lips of philosophers the very word has become a commonplace. But it is not only fear that we share with this figure in the garden. The most fearful thing about the world's fear is its hopelessness, its sense of futility, a futility reflected again by those philosophers for whom anxiety is an anguish from which there is no issue. Here, in the garden, he began to be afraid: and it was indeed a dread of the torments to come; it was indeed the burden of loneliness; it was the terrible sense of defilement, the even physical horror of the black waters of evil overwhelming him; but added to all this there was the knowledge that it would all to some extent be in vain, to some extent be futile.
Religious Service: Types of Prayer in Spiritual Infancy
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

In leaving the life of sin the ‘convert’ now enters the service of God. Eventually he aspires to the embrace of God through love, but his immediate concern is to become an obedient servant. He seeks to render what is due to his Lord, to recognise the worth of his Lord, to perform his religious worth-ship. All worship is service; it falls short of the perfect virtues, the so-called theological virtues, which thrust their points straight into the heart of the Godhead. Religious worship is the concern of a moral virtue; the creature as a creature in face of his Creator behaves as he should, as a dependent, one of God’s dependents. Prayer, adoration, sacrifice, all these activities are activities of dependents, they ure part of their tribute, their service. Later the religious service begins to become absorbed by the broader virtue of love which pervades every action and gradually comes to predominate. At that time the Lord will say, ‘I no longer call you servants but friends, as he said to the apostles after the first part of their apprenticeship had been fulfilled.
The Sweep of Praise in the Apocalypse
Authors: Potter Roland
Published: August 2024

A total view of Scripture shows that Genesis tells of the emanation of all, of the Fall and the Promise; the apostolic writings speak of Redemptive Incarnation as relevant to all; now there remains the Apocalypse to throw light on the return of all, as it now is, and as it will be, fulfilled. Too often the prophecy is inadequately appreciated, precisely because of its apocalyptic character and the difficulty of its imagery. The difficulty of the book is lessened by a triumph of Catholic exegesis; its inner lessons are indispensable. Despite its utterly judaistic dress and a riot of oriental imagery, it is intensely realist in its deep doctrinal content, which is no less than Jésus-Christ vu et écouté dans sa gloire. It is a fifth gospel.

'…Thou wast slain and hast redeemed us to God in the blooo out of every tribe and tongue, and people, and nation, and hast made us to our God a kingdom and priests, and we shall reign on earth.’
The Bible in Recent Centuries
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: August 2024

Everyone who considers himself a Christian does in some way admit the divine authority of the Bible, and in it brings to mankind. In view of this, the fact that very many Christians never read the Bible constitutes a peculiar problem. Why do they not read it? For some, the position of the Church as a teaching authority seems to stand between them and the Bible; for others, to read the Bible suggests a host of technical teaching authority seems to stand between them and the problems, which they feel only scholars can resolve. But these obstacles have their origin in the history of men's attitude to the Bible in recent centuries, and to explain these questions is perhaps a useful way of clearing people's minds of these hesitations. I. The ‘jansenistic’ Attitude The chief obstacle is ignorance. St John Chrysostom in a well-known homily deplores the fact that many good and pious folk did not even know how many Epistles St Paul wrote.
Mosaic and Mystery
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: August 2024

In Ravenna, on a spring morning, it is easy to believe that the untroubled achievement of the early Christian mosaics reached a point of fidelity to the Christian mystery which was never to be matched again. The immense volume of medieval carving in the round, the seven centuries of religious painting in the West, the whole story from Duccio to Matisse: it would be fantastic to deny the religious meaning of such a Benedicite of the things of men's hands. But, confronted in Ravenna with the unique evidence (in the West, at least) of a representation of the Christian mystery that has known no later modification, here in the empty basilicas with nothing to interrupt the full impact of those eloquent walls, one is led to a simple acceptance.