bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Root of Our Differences
Authors: Quinlan John
Published: July 2007

As articles and comments in Blackfrlars have testified from time to time, Catholic opinion has in some ways become considerably divided. Nevertheless, it seems true to say that there is but one fundamental divergence, of which various controversies are the manifestations. We can group them under three convenient heads: Contemplation v. Activity; Retreat v. Penetration; Authority v. Lay Initiative and Freedom.

We suggest that these difficulties might never have arisen or might more easily be solved, if Catholics were to consider in the first place the practical nature of Truth. It is possible to discover a direction for right action even before considering the circumstances of the particular problem. It seems clear, from historical examination, that in nine cases out of ten an outright opinion or answer cannot be other than suspect. The practical characteristics of Truth are detachment, balance, and synthesis, together with a certain bias towards one aspect. Thus, the Church combines in herself the ideas both of authority and liberty, but with a bias towards authority as the basis and preserver of freedom. This description of the practical nature of Truth is validated in the Orders of Nature and Art. The river is stemmed and its vital movement formed by its banks. In Music, as enclosing the sweep and swing of emotional play, we have the bar and the sonata-form. If, beside the idea of Authority, we place the analogues of Form, Institution, Dogma, and beside the idea of Freedom the analogues of Spirit, Vitality, Creativeness, we can see how Order depends on the latter being conserved and made effective by the former. It is the rules which give zest and meaning to the game. Order is Truth.
A Dominican Martyr in Hampshire
Authors: Mott Agnes
Published: July 2007

Venerable Robert Nutter, O.P.: Martyred at Lancaster, July 26, 1600, “a man of a strong body but of a stronger soul, who rather despised than conquered death, and went before his companion (Mr. Thwing) to the gallows with as much cheerfulness and joy, as if he had been going to a feast, to the astonishment of the spectators.” (Dr. Champney.)

In the year 1579, two brothers arrived at the Douai College (Rheims) to pursue their studies for the priesthood. Their names were Robert and John Nutter, of Burnley in Lancashire. After having been ordained priests, they both left France in the year 1582, in order to devote the remainder of their lives to the salvation of their fellow-countrymen in ‘England. John Nutter was shipwrecked off the coast of Suffolk and, being discovered, arrested on suspicion of being a priest. He was imprisoned for two years in the Marshalsea and finally suffered martyrdom at Tyburn on February 12, 1584. The other brother, Robert, appears to have landed on the Hampshire coasts for, on the report of a spy named Dodwell, he frequented the houses of the Hampshire gentry.

In those days a price was set upon the head of every seminary priest arriving upon these shores. Discovery meant death to the priest. Those who harboured the priests were liable to be charged as “abettors of treason.” A high place of honour should therefore be accorded to those gentry in Hampshire who received Father Robert Nutter in their homes.
Reasonable Service
Authors: Carpenter Hilary
Published: July 2007

The Catholic concept of religion is radically different from most others because it is born of the realization that the true function of religion is the unique fulfilment of a need rooted in the very essence of human nature. This difference is shown in practice by the willingness of the Catholic to submit to the guidance of the Church, primarily of course in matters supernatural, whether of Faith or Morals, but also in matters which do not appear to have any direct connection with ‘religion.’ He is ready to recognize the wise authority of the Church in every department of human life whenever the Church sees fit to offer judgment or advice, even though he is aware that such pronouncements are not infallible expressions of revealed truth nor coercive of his assent.

Then we are priest-ridden after all? No, decisively no, it is not that. The truth is that the Catholic recognizes the true function of the Church and its true relation to human life. He looks upon the Church not as representing only a section of his life that is rigidly separated from his daily affairs. He looks upon it not merely as a place where he spends a perfunctory half hour or so on a Sunday, not as a sort of sedative and balance to the rush and clamour of secular affairs. He knows full well that it provides the means of fulfilling an urgent need of his very nature. Far from being extrinsic to his ordinary daily life, he knows that it is the only thing that can save human life from becoming in reality the futile meaningless thing it so often appears to be. He knows that without the Church a man is like one blind, groping about aimlessly unaware of the pitfalls on every side, who knows that he is in a desperate plight and without hope.
The Christian as Pioneer
Authors: Shove Herbert
Published: July 2007

‘I tell you naught for your comfort,

Yea, naught for your desire,

Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher.’

(The Ballad of the White Horse by G. K. Chesterton)

Father Conrad Pepler has done well to emphasize the sacrifice involved in a return to the land upon which more than one of the older hands at Catholic land propaganda has found it necessary to insist, as against the ‘Arcadian Shepherd’ school on the one hand and the ‘Sound Economic Proposition’ enthusiasts on the other.

In the Catholic Truth Society pamphlet on The Catholic Land Movement, the first attempt at systematic public exposition of our aims and motives, the present writer expressed a point of view which he ventures to quote:

‘Now while we believe that, whether in the meanwhile we work for or against it, this [the basing of our social system “on the land whence all our subsistence comes and on the labour of our hands which God has ordained as the means thereto”] is the only possible ultimate development, the continued existence of the vast commercio-industrial organization, with its specious offers of wealth, luxury and “convenience,” its false philosophy of ease, “leisure” and mechanical distractions as the ends of human life, and of work as mere irksome toil to be curtailed as much as possible, must remain as a stumbling block and an irresistible temptation to those not supported by true principles in facing the undoubted physical hardships and inconveniences involved in the return to a peasant life. It has been said that no people has ever voluntarily gone out from the city into the wilderness, save under the influence of a religious ideal. Mere economic considerations are not enough.
The Layman and the Mass
Authors: Timmins Antony
Published: July 2007

Growing side by side with the world-wide movement of Catholic Action there is the ever-spreading liturgical revival. They are but two aspects of the one fact—the mutual co-operation of the faithful among themselves and with their pastors; and they differ in that Catholic Action, of its very nature, includes the liturgical movement. Catholic Action includes corporate activity both ad intra and ad extra: the sanctification of individuals and the defence and advance of Christianity in a semi-pagan world.

To push on the external manifestation of Catholic Action without paying due attention to the preliminary of personal sanctity is to make bricks without straw: Nisi Dominus aedificaverit domum, in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant earn. Furthermore, the interior life must be looked to, to provide inspiration and strength as the cause progresses. There is one outstanding practice of the faithful which gives them a perennial ‘unity without uniformity,’ namely the fundamental act of public external worship of God, as expressed in the sacrifice of the Mass. For, as Fr. Pepler puts it: ‘when we speak of the liturgy, we mean primarily the Mass; and the Mass becomes the essential link of Christian unity.’ ‘Attendance at this ceremony has been imposed as an obligation of membership, so that theoretically the whole Catholic world is present at least once a week. This is the main symbol of the catholicity of the Church.’

The Pope has urged time and again that Catholic Action is an apostolate. It procures not only the personal sanctification of him who participates in it (although this is the foundation), but that also of others.
The Approach to Reunion
Authors: St John Henry
Published: July 2007

The new regroupings of the future are forming themselves round two clearly defined rallying points. One of these is materialism, which attracts those who have ceased to fix their eyes on a life beyond this life. The other is Christianity, towards which are gravitating those who cannot be satisfied with a materialistic explanation of the world, and who believe that in, and around, and beyond its life lies another and more perfect life, in which we are in some way sharers. The materialist grouping is as yet only a nucleus, but it has a coherent creed, a crusading spirit and definite unity of aim. In strong contrast with this small, active, homogeneous nucleus, steadily extending its circle of influence, is the huge army of Christendom, full of supernatural vitality and heroic effort, but handicapped by internal dissension, reduced sometimes almost to impotence; and unable to move forward in strength and unity on its mission to convert the world to Christ.

Is it any wonder that there is an increasing number of men and women in every one of the many sections into which Christendom is divided, who are turning their thoughts more and more to the problem of reunion? They see that to remain as we are, divided and crippled in our efforts, is not merely to court the disaster of being overwhelmed by the forces of pagan materialism, but is a betrayal of our Blessed Lord’s commission, who has bidden us go and teach all nations, not go bewilder them with the multiplicity of our doctrines and the conflict of our many opinions.
Material Thoughts
Authors: Basevi Vincent
Published: July 2007

There is a material side to Christianity as well as the spiritual foundation; and it is on the material side, as it affects our daily lives and our national interests, that my thoughts dwell at the moment. Where does Christianity touch the major problems of to-day: bad trade, unemployment, poverty, lack of general interest in public affairs, wide-spread corruption, indifference to crime and dishonesty, and finally slaughter—I might almost call it human sacrifice—on our high roads? I have no ready made cure to offer for our troubles; nor can I believe that there is a simple and easy path leading out of the complicated tangle of difficulties surrounding the individual and the nation. I am not prepared to join with those who lightly attribute all evils to the war; for it seems to me that the war, with its call for self-denial and a realization of the existence of man’s duty as well as man’s rights, nearly saved the nation from spiritual decadence. I do believe that there is a way out of our troubles, and that the key to all the problems is to be found in discipline.

A nation without religion is a nation without backbone; for sincere religious belief is the only form of discipline by which human nature can be trained to healthy growth. The law, to a certain extent, protects the weak man from his strong neighbour (though this does not apply to-day in the realm of finance): religion protects the weak man and the strong man alike from himself.
Reflections on Reunion
Authors: Farrell Ambrose
Published: July 2007

Whilst there need be no doubt that the periodical efforts to resuscitate the question of ‘Reunion’ are motived by an earnest desire to re-establish the unity of the Church of Christ under One Head, there is a danger that the very word ‘Reunion’ may be understood in an unorthodox sense, based on a misconception of the Church. To extend sympathy to reunion as something different from Christian unity resting on the firm foundation of Peter would be to hold out a vain expectation calculated to keep those not in communion with the See of Peter away from the true faith. From this point of view stress cannot be laid too heavily on the incontrovertible fact that Catholics and Anglicans are divided on fundamental questions of Faith, and these questions are not solved, and cannot be solved, by conceding that the Reformation was perhaps partly due to the indifference of Catholics themselves. Nor must we run the risk of allowing this essential divergence to be glossed over in the attempt to establish friendly relations with those outside the true fold, even though this be through no fault of their own. If the word ‘reunion’ is taken to imply that the Anglican communion is a branch of the True Vine, or an entity not essentially different from the Roman Church, or that it has a corporate life maintained by Our Lord and His Holy Spirit, then it is a heretical term devoid of orthodox interpretation. In view of possible misunderstandings, therefore, it seems well to offer the following observations.

It is perhaps not without significance that in the several letters and decrees of the Holy See on the promotion of Christian unity the term ‘reunion’ itself, as well as the term ‘Church’ as applied to the Anglican body, is avoided.
J. O. C.
Authors: Manson Ælfric
Published: July 2007

‘Another movement,’ one can hear the weary parish priest exclaim. There are so many movements, societies, guilds, and so on, in Catholic parishes that the sensible thing would seem to be to eliminate some of them rather than to introduce new ones. That is a rational point of view, and largely necessary. But it is clear that the process of selection must be made on the grounds of whether this or that society fulfils an essential and indispensable function or not. The J.O.C. which as yet is only in embryo in England claims that its work is indispensable, and since this view has the strong backing of the Pope, it seems worth while to devote a little attention to it.

The radical change in the social system which is the dominating feature of our time compels the attention of religion. The exact details of the future society may be left for imaginative minds to describe. But there are two points about it that may be predicted without undue rashness. The first is that it will be a society in which the working class will have come into its own; the achievement will be difficult; there will be set-backs; but sooner or later it is inevitable that just as the middle class may be taken as the typical, the representative class of the last century, so the workers will become typical and representative of ours. The second point concerns the spiritual character of this new society. We can make some judgment with regard to this by observing the youth of this generation; for the youth of to-day are the citizens of to-morrow. Doubtless conditions here in this respect are less extreme than on the Continent; nevertheless, it is not an imprudent assertion to say that the mass of young workers of both sexes are already very largely secularized.
Understanding the Art of India
Authors: Coomaraswamy Ananda
Published: July 2007

Works of art have been thought of in two very different ways. According to the modem view, the artist is a special or even abnormal kind of man, endowed with a peculiar emotional sensibility which enables him to see what we call beauty; moved by a mysterious aesthetic urge he produces paintings, sculpture, poetry, or music. These are regarded as a spectacle for the eyes or a gratification for the ear; they can only be enjoyed by those who are called lovers of art, and these are understood to be temperamentally related to the artist, but without his technical ability. Other men are called workmen, and make things which every one needs for use; these workmen are expected to enjoy art, if they are able, only in their spare time.

In ideal art, the artist tries to improve upon nature. For the rest, the truth of the work of art is held to be its truth to an external world, which we call nature, and expect the artist to observe. In this kind of art there is always a demand for novelty. The artist is an individual, expressing himself, and so it has become necessary to have books written about every artist individually, for since each makes use of an individual language, each requires explanation. Very often a biography is substituted for the explanation. Great importance is attached to what we call genius, and less to training. Art history is chiefly a matter of finding out the names of artists and considering their relation to one another. The work of art itself is an arrangement of colours or sounds, adjudged good or bad according to whether these arrangements are pleasing or otherwise. The meaning of the work of art is of no significance; those who are interested in such merely human matters are called Philistines.
A Reunion Movement In Germany
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

Allusion has already been made in Blackfriars (January, 1933, p. 10) to a remarkable movement for reunion among a small but learned and influential group of Lutheran pastors and laymen in Germany. Dr. Karl Thieme and his associates have since been reconciled with the Catholic Church. The documents connected with the events which led to their taking this step have recently been published—significantly by a Protestant firm in Switzerland. These documents are of the greatest interest, not only as indicative of some present tendencies in Continental Protestantism and as showing yet another of the manifold roads to Rome, but also as suggesting possibilities and hopes of a corporate reunion in a not remote future which may go far towards healing the divisions precipitated by the Reformation.

The decision to ‘return home’ to the Catholic Church was announced and explained in the last number of the Evangelical quarterly Religiöse Besinnung towards the end of 1933. In an article entitled Una Sancta Catholica, Dr. Thieme deplored the spirit of compromise in contemporary Christianity to which, he maintained, the German Evangelical Church had, owing especially to the activities of the ‘German Christians,’ completely and formally succumbed. The Evangelical tradition of Luther had, owing to a variety of causes, been completely destroyed in such wise that it could not be resuscitated. The pure Word of God could no longer be preached except under the protection of the successors of the apostles, the bishops of the Catholic Church.
Social Science
Authors: Perquin Bonaventure
Published: July 2007

Social science has already secured wide interest, and the forms in which this interest has manifested itself are as varied as they are numerous. In this article we shall concentrate on one central idea: the need of co-ordination of the vast amount of literature on social problems. The need of some such co-ordination is urgent. Ever since the publication of the Papal Encyclicals on Social Order, pamphlets and books have become so numerous that the student of social science might be alarmed at the number of works he must peruse in order to acquire a comprehensive knowledge of the literature of his subject.

It is very much to be regretted that no work exists that can be considered an exhaustive and scientific treatise on social science. The lack of such a treatise makes serious study of this subject too complex a task. Pamphlets and short treatises on particular problems are useful, but they can never be satisfactory from a scientific point of view; they are of necessity sketchy, and therefore inadequate. There is, moreover, a great danger that quantities of unrelated material will beget confusion of thought and smother enthusiasm. Consequently any attempt to give to the study of social science a scientific basis by stating and co-ordinating its principles is to be welcomed, and the more so when it is made by authors who are gifted with clarity of thought and who despite specialization keep in mind the larger view of a complete social science.

The Précis de Sociologie is the fruit of close collaboration. The essays, as thorough and substantiated as we may expect in a Précis, are confined to Sociology: the family, economic life, political life, religion, art and science.
An Objective Defence of Denominational Education
Authors: Oram F. St. J.
Published: July 2007

The denominationalist claim to equality of treatment in education is still regarded by most people as a claim to special privileges and subsidies, to be granted, if at all, on traditional and sentimental grounds and on the grounds that denominationalism derives some vague rights from the fact that it is still ‘in possession’ in the legal sense. This confusion may be due in part to the fact that only one denomination, the Church, has stated with clarity the case for equal treatment, and that the statements have nearly all been made by clergy, who are naturally supposed to be arguing in their own interests. The following paragraphs contain a statement of the case for denominational education based solely on first principles and in such a form as to be valid for any denomination.

Education is for the sake of the child; but since the child is irresponsible, the first of all educational principles derives from the right to control the child and to control those things which exist for the sake of the child. Now the child belongs by nature to its parents first of all. By natural right the parents have control of the child until it is able to control itself. It is true that men are born citizens, and to that extent belong to the State, but parental ownership is anterior to, and takes precedence of, civil ownership. This follows necessarily from the fact that, before being a citizen, a child must exist; and existence comes not from the State, but from the parents.

Consequently the parents hold directly from Nature the right ana duty of educating their off spring, and this right is anterior to any right whatever of civil society or of the State. From this it follows that any system whereby parents are compelled to submit their children for education wholly to some authority not of their own free choice, is an unwarrantable interference with one of those fundamental liberties the protection of which is the first reason for the existence of the State and of cvil society.
Art in Relation to Industrialism
Authors: Gill Eric
Published: July 2007

We must begin at the beginning and endeavour to establish quite elementary notions as to the nature of things. And this is especially necessary to-day because in our civilization we have placed a great gulf between those who work at the thing we call Art and all other workers. I shall endeavour to show that this is one of the fundamental evils of our time, and in order to do this it is necessary to go back to the beginning.

The word “Art” in the dictionary has quite a simple meaning; it means simply “skill.” Thus we use the word art in common speech when we call a person “artful,” and when we speak of the “art” of cooking, the “art” of government or the “art” of living. But, it is quite obvious, you cannot be skilful about nothing; you cannot just be skilful. Skill must be applied to something, so by the word ‘ ‘art’ ‘ we mean first of all skill in doing. To get a nail to go into a wall without damaging either the nail or the wall requires considerable skill. So hanging pictures and such-like jobs is, as we say, “quite an art,” and therefore a man who makes a good job of it is, as we say, “quite an artist.” From this it becomes clear that the word “art” soon takes on a meaning of more than merely skill in doing and comes to mean skill in making—to do a thing skilfully is to make a good job of it.
An Introduction to Leon Bloy
Authors: Kehoe Richard
Published: July 2007

It is an important book which can throw light, as this book by M. Fumet certainly does, on the life and writings of Léon Bloy. For since his death Bloy, as man and as thinker or seer, has come to exert great influence in the world of Catholic thought, greater perhaps than that of any other writer of modern times. Already towards the close of his life, it is true, his apostolate had begun to tell (notable among his converts being Jacques and Raïssa Maritain), but it was only posthumously that fame of him blazed out and he came to be widely recognized as a great exemplar and pro-claimer of the spirit of Catholicism in its opposition to all that is mediocre or bourgeois. Yet there is a scandal which still somewhat limits the range and force of his influence. To come into contact with Bloy is not only to be thrilled by a new perception of the splendour and vitality of the Faith, but also to be confounded by the violence and exaggeration of his ideas and the extravagant vehemence and seeming insufferable arrogance of his character. Where we cannot accept all, we are inclined to reject entirely. M. Fumet comes to save us from ingratitude and superstition. This present article is no more than a series of hints at the contents of his book, at the image of Bloy emerging from its pages.

If Bloy’s mind can only be understood through knowledge of his life, practically all the clues lie in the first half of it, running to the period of the tragic experiences dramatized in Le Désespéré.
The Home-Coming of Michael Field
Authors: Fay Gerard
Published: July 2007

Consider them Thy poets, how they grow,

Thy lilies of the field!

Where are they in Thy Providence?

They do not spin

And yet such fabulous beauty win—

Surely, King, Thou dost delight in these Thy field-lilies?

The close of the Victorian age was marked by a deep and significant unrest amongst those painters and writers who, escaping from the prevailing smugness and weak hypocrisy of that time, had clung firmly to what they looked upon as the true and vital principles of their art. Heralded by the Pre-Raphaelites, and by Ruskin, a period of revolt was approaching which was to pass from one hideous negative extreme to another extreme, so assertive as to lose all semblance of order, that necessary attribute of beauty. To-day, this lack of restraint, this utter impatience of rules still finds ardent support amongst such poets as Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden. By taking the work of so entirely individualistic a poet as Gerard Manley Hopkins as their model, they are condemned at once, on their own showing. They are as rash as the painter who might seek to model himself upon Parmigiano or upon Blake. It is true that the value and deep intrinsic meaning of the work of the artist had been almost entirely discounted by the Victorians. Nowadays, it would be readily admitted by all that any true art is essentially the product of the life of its time, reflecting the thoughts and whole tendency of that particular age.
Wisdom Into Knowledge
Authors: Maritain Jacques
Published: July 2007

Our Western civilization can legitimately reflect that it has bestowed on the rest of mankind one or two valuable treasures in the domain of the things of the spirit. One such treasure is the unspoiled instinct for speculative truth. Greek philosophy, and Aristotle, first enabled us to realize the absolute value of wholehearted detachment from affective inclinations, and of chaste, severe, pure science, whose only function and purpose is the discernment of that which is—vision. Later the West was to know that the Word of God came into the world to the end that He might bear witness to the truth, to know too that eternal life is eternal vision; further, it came to be moulded by scholastic discipline and the stern claims of intellect: hence it is quite natural that it should have so long retained, in its concept of knowledge, an appreciation of the dignity of speculative truth.

Now the modern world is fast losing such an appreciation in every domain of knowledge save in the one wherein it really excelled—I mean in the science of phenomena. At the age of the Renascence a very general propensity of heart towards earthly goods conditioned the widespread success of the new scientific methods, and, with it, the preference given to Science rather than Wisdom. Note too that science, though capable of provoking many a cupidity in man, itself remained immune from the tarnish of appetitive elements. Science has been for the modern world the last stronghold of the sacredness of truth and of spiritual values—inefficacious spiritual values, because the spirituality concerned is not wisdom spirituality and because in the practical order it can be turned to evil as well as to good uses; and that is why present-day rationalism knows so much of melancholia.
The Philosophical Writings of Abailard
Authors: Callus Daniel A.
Published: July 2007

That the problem of Universals was one of the most discussed topics of the twelfth century is an undeniable fact. But to regard it as the keynote of that age, reducing all its activities to a mere concern about that old dispute, as for quite a long time has been the fashion, is as unfair as it is untrue. Recent research has shown beyond dispute that the twelfth century was, on the contrary, an age of extraordinary and comprehensive vigour and witnessed exceptional achievements in all branches of learning. It was indeed the beginning of a new era in the history of Europe and prepared the way, to a large extent, for the “golden age” of the thirteenth century; it was a true “renaissance.” The School of Chartres and John of Salisbury are only two of the striking instances of the general culture of the time.

The most typical figure of the twelfth century, and assuredly the most remarkable one, is Peter Abailard. He is the personification of the genius of that age of quickening and restlessness, with all its virtues and all its defects. Born in 1079 in Britanny at Palais, or Le Pallet, a village near Nantes, from his ancestors he inherited an excellent and prompt disposition to learning. Eager to learn and as quick to assimilate all he had learnt, he excelled in all branches of knowledge, from music to theology, leaving his contemporaries far behind. Mathematics, it seems, was the only science to which he did not feel any inclination: “Ea quoque scientia cuius nefarium est exercitium, quae mathematica appellatur; . . . quia eius artis [arithmeticae] ignarum omnino me cognosco” (Dialect, ed. Cousin, 435, 182). Vain, presumptuous, thinking of himself as the only learned man of his time, of fighting spirit and bitter in criticism of all and sundry, he passed from one school to the other, from Roscelin to William of Champeaux, to Anselm of Laon, only to attack his masters and scorn them to ridicule.
Balance of Power in the City of God
Authors: Farrell Ambrose
Published: July 2007

The term “social reconstruction” has almost of late years become a pass word assuring admission into the House of Commons. Perhaps by design it is nebulous in meaning and the more capable of adjustment to varied contexts. In common usage an idea is enshrined expressive of consorted endeavour to marshal forces within society with a view to economic needs. With this ill-defined campaign, peace conferences and international treaties may well harmonize. Assurance is given, by an elegant gesture, of every type of worldly gain and to the best advantage. The fulcrum of world leverage is money made productive by wealth. So now peace itself is converted into a commodity on the world market for sale at the costly price of armaments. But here, too, moral values are involved and though disguised as national “interests” cannot be weighed in material scales. The bodies and souls of men are incapable of adjustment to a gold standard. The moral worth indeed of human enterprises is accorded to them by ethical sanctions in regard to which they are deserving of praise or blame.

Civil society has as its worthy aims felicity and prosperity in common, yet to make these aims exclusive is to unsettle the balance of power and to leave standing a tottering ruin. A polarizing of society by the decentralisation of its moral units must inevitably lead to social unbalance. Over-much indulgence to the freedom of disorderly and shattered instincts cannot result in anything harmonious within the social group. Under pain of social anarchy self-realization must be allied in partnership with self-restraint. Social reformers have not been unaware of the unhappy path which events have taken, and have adopted various methods to avert the threatened destruction.
The Basis of Self-Realization
Authors: Farrell Ambrose
Published: July 2007

The sin-stricken body weighs heavily on the soul which by nature yearns to behold its Maker. Perhaps it is the consciousness of this clinging burden which causes a man to regard himself as another in endeavouring to express his own personality. Yet the divine figure of the Word Incarnate gives assurance that self-realization may be only reached by the self-abasement of all that is human in the presence of the Divine. At this point are placed in close opposition self-idolatory and the God-centred attitude towards life which is the main-spring of life’s worship. But who will deliver us from the body of this death?

Divine revelation informs the erring mind that the culminating point in the Christian life is to be found in nothing less than eternal happiness which St. Thomas describes in no uncertain terms. But the life of grace, “semen gloriae,” is an eternal life since it holds within it the very roots of glory. It differs not in kind from that life at its apex where God is seen and all things in God, yet a ceaseless effort after spiritual liberty is demanded by a closer union with God in Christ.
New Horizons
Authors: Durkan John
Published: July 2007

The mind of man has an inborn bias towards unity. Hence the unity of ideas which even the anarchic self-realizer cannot escape. Hence, too, a critique of the history of ideas must always appear an angular if not arbitrary cross-section through the jungle of fact. If the mind of man was a machine we could take it to pieces, but because it is organic and even supratemporal, it is always more than a welter of faculties and even more than its history. So that if criticism is so specialized that it forgets that the whole mind is more than the sum of its parts it becomes geometrical and is an escape from the truth: geometry is a measure of matter and not of mind. Again, the reality the mind experiences is not a mere metaphor for something else that the mind in its otherness cannot reach, and not mind-stuff or a construction the mind has put on the real. The external world, and the whole of it, means everything to the mind: closing the mind to it is like closing the body to air; it is intellectual death. Unless we grow into the real, and the whole real too, we become unreal people: we not only stop seeing objectively, we stop being objective. The history of the ideas of unreal people is therefore a history of unrealities, and the critic who shows how they hang together in the unreal mind is proving again that there is method even in madness. If he forgets however that the mind is more than its history, he becomes a determinist who begs the question and equates mind and matter.
Brother Martin
Authors: Windeatt M. Fabyan
Published: July 2007

To those who live abroad, the problem of the American Negro may seem vague and distant, for missionary fields in China and Japan are much better publicized than those in the Southern United States. But the soul of an American Negro is just as important as any other soul, and it is a certain fact that the elevation of an American Negro to the dignity of Sainthood would do much to further the cause of the Church among the coloured people of the world.

For this reason, the cause of Blessed Martin de Porres, the famous South American Negro, has become a favourite topic in the Catholic Press of the United States. The Dominican publication, The Torch, published in New York City, has recently inaugurated a movement known as the Blessed Martin Guild, which co-ordinates all efforts toward canonization made by Martin’s friends. In its work, the Guild is constantly actuated by the thought of the thirteen million American Negroes who have yet to receive the light of faith, and to whom a Saint of their own race would be an undoubted inspiration. It is with this same purpose, therefore, that the present article is submitted to the readers of Blackfriars—that they may realize to some extent the vast apostolate awaiting the humble Dominican laybrother.
A Great Adventure in Education
Authors: Richings Ronald
Published: July 2007

“It is difficult to foretell what will become of our exclusive boarding schools if the nation ever takes seriously the problem of providing secondary education, of one kind or another, for a substantial part of its population, and at the same time realizes how effectively, as well as expensively, in present conditions we educate the difference classes to misunderstand each other.”

The corporate spirit of “Churnside” owed much to the fact that the boys were drawn from widely differing homes and were of very varied antecedents. The original terms of the foundation made provision only for successful scholarship candidates from the County elementary schools, and a few nominated scholars, but the school was early opened to fee-paying pupils whose number steadily increased. No distinction was made between any of the boys; they all wore grey suits provided by the school; their pocket-money was limited and an equal weekly allowance was made by the Governors, from which joint sum “taxes” were levied to defray the cost of those departments directly controlled by the boys; and they all shared in the household duties allotted to them—serving at table, preparing certain rooms for daily use, making their beds and cleaning their shoes, besides working on the games field and keeping sports material in good repair.
Comparative Study of Religions
Authors: Drewitt Norbert
Published: July 2007

Let us follow the sun in its perpetual rising, as it passes over the earth's scarred surface, crossing illimitable oceans, continents, deserts, and towering mountain ranges, and the eternal snows—silent, glistening, old.

It lights up, with its dawn, the dawn of the world—the superposed strata of archaic cultures, one upon another in an unfolding phantasy, of prolific confusion, yet a crumbling order, proclaiming an ordered growth in the buried millennia of the world’s childhood. It tells us things we had never grasped as a whole, till we came to this preparatory contemplative vision (preparatory to all real thought), or, perhaps, which we never knew at all. Giant human forms, of enigmatic origin in the abyss of time, emergent, yet now in retreat, from crumbling stone, among the old decay of Easter Island. The stone lamps, the lavers of holy water, and 200,000 shrines, each with its frail conscious beings, who reason and pray within, in the red dawn of Shinto Japan. The convents of Tibet, and Burma, and Siam, where thousands upon thousands of devoted religious pray, and work, and sacrifice—the daily priestly offering of incense, fruit, and flowers, to the lord Buddha’s golden image, and his relics, in their precious shrine. The earth’s-dawn mysteries of Ur, and Agade, and Babylon: crumbled, earth-sprawled temples, where vultures call and jackals prowl, and all is distant, and dim, and past, the crumbling symbols of a mighty religious conception—the ziggurats, or ‘‘step- temples,” of Babylon and Ur, each a consciously planned microcosm, in form and detail, organically symbolizing all creation: the steps or degrees of created being.
Past and Present
Authors: Toledano Andre-D.
Published: July 2007

The present cannot be understood if we do not keep in mind the past, the immediate past at least. Not that the present necessarily should be a continuation of the past, the result of a natural evolution the origin of which is to be found in the immediate past. The present can be a sort of reaction against the past. Qualis pater, talis filius does not apply to nations, it does not even apply always to father and son.

Take the present state of things in Europe. Democracy is either dead or questioned in most of the Continental nations; yet President Wilson wanted to “make the world safe for democracy.” After-war statesmen felt the acute need for an international economic organization; yet economic nationalism is rampant everywhere; Herr Hitler last month uttered a speech in which he announces his determination of making Germany an entirely self-supporting country. Article 8 of the Covenant of the League of Nations reads as follows: “The Members of the League recognize that the maintenance of peace requires the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and the enforcement by common action of international obligations”; yet competition in armaments is active throughout Europe, including Great Britain.

Has the Great War been fought in vain? Have we done away with autocrats, emperors and kings, only to throw ourselves into the arms of dictators? Have we improved in so notable a way all means of transport, making the earth smaller and smaller, in order eventually to pen up all nations within the narrow limits of a sort of economic wall of China?
Order or Chaos?
Authors: Eppstein John
Published: July 2007

Lord Davies, indomitable apostle of international order, turns the Abyssinian fiasco to good account to reinforce his familiar plea for the creation of a tribunal of equity and an international police force. The latter remedy, it is true, has lost some of its pristine simplicity. Instead of an international air force coming fully fledged to life, it is conceived as the end of a process, “the organization of sanctions culminating in the establishment of an I.P.F.” The writer’s main conception of what is required to maintain peace in the future can be judged from the moral which he draws from the failure of the League to mobilize effective sanctions against Italy. “In order to rally world public opinion in support of the maximum penalties provided for in Article 16, both the moral and the material factors should have been brought into play, the former represented by an impartial tribunal charged with the task of recommending an equitable settlement to the Assembly, the latter by a Standing Board of Commissioners entrusted with the duty of co-ordinating sanctions in order to exert the most effective pressure upon the aggressor. Both these institutions were indispensable if it was intended to assert the rule of law.” Lord Davies sees that such a system—a supranational tribunal judging ex aequo et bono supported by adequate force—is impossible in the present condition of the League of Nations, which is little more than an association of Sovereign States. He therefore concludes that “the problem of the League is the problem of federalism,” and he urges that the League, beginning with the Federation of Europe, should develop into a Confederation, similar to the United States of America, having a Supreme Court and an executive authority “entrusted with a superiority of centralized force.”
Blimpery
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

There is little ease in a world so rich in forms and still in process, the end of which for every part is waste and death. Buds must break, maggots must breed, and man may not curse though his heart must break, and even at last his reason. This is not evil, for why should it be otherwise? The heart of the wise is where there is mourning: and the heart of fools where there is mirth.

Still the death of one is the birth of another; what is lost on the roundabouts is gained on the swings. The wiser heart will withdraw from mourning as well as from mirth, and without personal ache will consider the balance of loss and gain in the general scheme. Wherefore I left off and my heart renounced labouring any more under the sun.

Vain hope, for we are in the world and labour we must if we are to live, making and destroying, pleasing and hurting ourselves and others. So many things, and all so different: all can be at peace only when all are still. But all are moving, and better so. They cannot be still. A time of love, and a time of hatred. A time of war, and a time of peace.

Violence is inevitable. We are part of the world and needs must join in the making and the breaking: cut down our trees, kill our cattle, deny our friends. Be not over just.

Why, then, should we not fight and hasten the death of others to postpone our own?
Law and Conscience
Authors: Carpenter Hilary J.
Published: July 2007

The age in which we live presents a rapidly growing cleavage between law and conscience; and this cleavage is resulting inevitably in the destruction of both. It is due almost entirely to the subjectivism which has been steadily gaining ground for the last four hundred years. Once private judgment is admitted as a principle in the conduct of human, affairs the objective norms of human action cease to function as such and both conscience and law are deprived of their vitality. As early as the sixteenth century an incipient subjectivism made its appearance in Philosophy as well as in Religion; it is possible, indeed, that the effort to segregate Philosophy from Religion was the source of the whole evil. For when Religion has ceased to provide a philosophy of life it is no longer true religion, and its sanctions lose their compelling force. Moreover, Philosophy unallied to Religion is as a ship without rudder; it follows the caprice of any intellectual wind that blows. The purpose and the very content of human nature is lost sight of; law becomes an unstable shadow of its real self; and conscience, left to stand alone, is no more than a blind guide leading the blind. This cleavage was not suddenly wrought; nor has it come about without protest; Thomas More, whom we now rejoice to call Saint, was amongst the first to protest against it and thought it worth while to seal his protest with his blood.
Faith
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

Faith is the subjective counterpart to objective Revelation: the human response to God’s Self-showing; man’s humble, worshipful assent to and acceptance of the words and the Word of God, itself a gift of God. To understand the nature and the necessity of Faith we must therefore recall and amplify what has already been said regarding Revelation.

Revelation means that God has spoken—has spoken to all men and so to me—through His appointed spokesmen, the prophets, and through His Son. He has told me things I could never have discovered for myself—things of the most vital and supreme importance to me for this life and hereafter. Revelation is essentially concerned with Mystery, with that which of its very nature is unknowable by man’s unaided efforts. It is not enough for me to know that God exists, that there is an Infinite, an Absolute, an Ultimate Explanation, a First Cause, a Supreme Intelligence, a perfect Beauty, a final Value, an Object of all yearning, striving and desire. These truths which thought and philosophy can tell me are, in themselves, of relatively little practical importance if God is to remain the unattainable Infinite, remote, impersonal.
The Dominican Conscience
Authors: Clerissac Humbert
Published: July 2007

There is something fine in the way St. Paul proclaims the great importance and value before God, though not the independence, of the human conscience. He says that whatever does not proceed from conscience, whatever is not in conformity with it, is sin. This statement contains something of a psychological mystery; for conscience may be misinformed, yet we are obliged to follow it. Now although St. Paul admits, especially in practical matters and in doubtful cases, the decisive power of conscience, and although he is ready to grant that a man may be in good faith, yet, at the same time, in error, still he does not teach that everything which proceeds from conscience is really the voice of God, but only that which proceeds from conscience duly and properly instructed. At one and the same time, St. Paul recognizes in conscience a certain autonomy and yet he also realizes the obligation upon conscience of watching over its motives. Now without pretending that the Dominican conscience differs from that of other men, I maintain that there is a special note, a Dominican accent, so to speak, in its dictates.