bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Can Any Good Come Out of Communism?
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

No one should attempt to read what I shall write unless they understand a principle which alone could justify what may seem like a justification of Communism. I think I first realised the principle when discussing Henry VIII with Protestants whom Froude’s glorification of Henry had infected. The Froude-infected mind proclaims the great good that came of Henry’s policy; as if the increased fertility of the infant burial place at Bethlehem justified Herod in slaughtering the Innocents. On hearing this mode of arguing I did not refuse to grant, for the sake of argument, that some or even that much good had come of Henry’s thefts and murders; but I refused to grant that Henry’s policy was a good policy because good came of it; or even that Henry was either a great or good man because great good had come of his way of acting.

The abstract principle which Henry VIII’s legal thefts and murders made me see and accept was this: A man, a programme, a policy is not good merely because good comes of it; especially if the good that comes of it has come by the operation of a good-will. Just as there is nothing so good that a bad will cannot turn it to bad, so there is nothing so bad that a good will cannot turn to good.
Nazi Apologetics
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

With the admirable intention of giving the English public reliable and authentic information about present-day Germany and in the hope of thereby promoting friendlier relations between the two countries twenty-one prominent Germans have collaborated to produce a book called Germany Speaks. In many respects the work is well done. It is an attractive-looking book, lengthy without being too discursive, and generous in the amount of information about many aspects of German life and policy. Unfortunately it fails to give anything like an adequate account precisely of those questions which have caused the average Englishman to take up an attitude which is at best distrustful, at worst positively hostile, towards Germany.

The fundamental principles behind the Nazi system, labour, social and economic conditions and Germany's external relations are of interest chiefly to politicians and intellectuals and the average man is prepared to admit the truth and justice of much that appears under these headings. The problems which do need an explanation if the ordinary Englishman is to be won over to sympathetic understanding of Germany and which are omitted or scarcely touched on in this book may be reduced to four.
Endowment of Destitution
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

Relief of distress is one thing, endowment of destitution quite another. Naturally we give the cup of cold water—more probably of hot tea—to the vagrant men and women who ask for it at the door. Naturally the spare coat or shirt goes to the man in want of it. These benevolent acts we all perform, as we supply the match (always supposing we have one) to the casual smoker unprovided with the means of ignition. Which of us would berate the smoker for his carelessness, or require the filling up of a form to explain why he left his matches at home? The natural law enjoins relief of one’s neighbour.

Endowment of honourable and voluntary poverty— dowries and other provision for the sons and daughters of our Lady Poverty vowed to religion—this has been the practice of mankind in many lands long before the coming of Christianity. Plainly it is a matter unrelated to the endowment of destitution.

Nor again because we are bound to do our best for the poor who “are always with us,” the halt, lame and blind, the mentally and physically defective, the orphan, the aged and infirm, must we confound this entirely just and charitable provision with the endowment of persons unwillingly destitute and fully capable of earning their living.

The acceptance of destitution as the inevitable lot of thousands, a merely regrettable feature in our otherwise admirable civilisation, is the shameful thing to-day. Destitution accepted and tolerated by our elected rulers from every political party; accepted and tolerated by our Catholic legislators in Lords and Commons as unprotestingly as by non-Catholic. Only the question of “how much” the destitute shall be given to save them from starvation is hotly debated.
The Catholic Worker Movement in America
Authors: Reinhold H. A.
Published: July 2007

New York, Mott Street, Chinatown ... It is the district of the Law Courts, the prisons and Police Headquarters. Only poor Italians and Chinese live here. At night sightseeing buses come down from Times Square filled with tourists from Europe and the “West” who want another thrill out of this amazing cosmopolis. There is only one bright spot in this ugly place which has grown like a cancer from avid speculation and deforms the gigantic body of New York. It is a square cemented site surrounded with chicken-wire fences, a playground for the poor children of the immediate neighbourhood—another humane deed of Mayor La Guardia and his energetic and efficient assistant Mr. Moses, who has dotted the huge metropolis with playgrounds and parks. Yet even this playground would be sad and dull, were it not filled with the laughter, the singing and screaming of poor Italo-American children and their gossiping mothers. It little resembles our European playgrounds, with their shrubs and lawns, their flowers and shady paths. It looks more like an open wound amidst the ghosts and skeletons and sub-human mansions called tenements. Yet if not here, the poor little boys and girls would have to seek their exercise and amusement on the littered streets, in dark and damp backyards, and between parked cars.
The Primacy of Truth
Authors: Graham Aelred
Published: July 2007

Now there remains goodness, beauty, truth, these three: but the greatest of these is truth . . .

If the implied parallel between these three “transcendent- als” and St. Paul’s disposition of the theological virtues with charity at their heads be not an exact one, the right understanding of the place of truth in human life is nevertheless of no less moment than—is, indeed, an indispensable condition of—an enlightened appreciation of the claims of charity ; a fact which may perhaps go far to justify so seemingly bold an adaptation of the scriptural text.

It would not be difficult to show that whatever is permanent in human activity is in some way an expression of man’s instinctive worship of “the good, the true, the beautiful.” The saints and moral reformers, the philosophers and savants, the artists and poets proclaim their homage by their respective functions; they walk within the sanctuary of this trinity and offer their praises as its chosen votaries. As surely, if less evidently, the more familiar ways of life, the commonplace actions of every day, bring their own witness. To read a newspaper is to admit a need for knowledge, which is another name for truth—however precarious may be this particular means of obtaining it; to smoke a cigarette is to satisfy a craving, assuage desire, that is, to acquire goodness within a limited sphere of reference; to gaze upon an object or to pause and listen for no other reason than that it is delightful is to pay tribute to beauty.
Men and Morals
Authors: Maritain Jacques
Published: July 2007

It is very gratifying to me to have the opportunity to express the good things I think of Father Gerald Vann’s recent book, Morals Makyth Man. A work such as this delights the mind with a “rejoicing in the truth” which is indeed characteristically thomist: a joy in fresh Air and Light. In this book we find, combined with constant care for doctrinal accuracy and for fidelity to the established principles received from tradition, that reverence for experience and for the humble truths of ordinary human existence, that quality of compassionate concern for the needs and the sorrows of the time, which we recognise as part of the heritage of the great Dominicans of history. For it has been written that we “must redeem the time”; and if it be that the distinctive mission of St. Thomas and his disciples is the evangelisation of the intelligence, who would feel more acutely than they the pressing urgency of this work of redemption?

It is certain that such work cannot be achieved without toil and hardship. Not without sufferings and opposition was St. Thomas able to assimilate to Christian thought a pagan Aristotle who appeared suddenly in his time surrounded by a cortège of Moslems and Jews. Towards the end of his life he was called to maintain, against the Bishop of Paris and the great majority of contemporary divines, the doctrine of the oneness of the substantial form of the human being, that doctrine which after his death was to be censured by Etienne Tempier and the Doctors of Oxford, but which now has become classical and established.
Towards Perfect Education
Authors: Doolan Ǽgidius
Published: July 2007

The pertinent remarks of Penguin on “Modern Education” in the September number of Blackfriars invite the expression of the principles of perfect education set forth in the following pages.

There is a marked similarity between the ideal put by St. Angela Merici before her children in the sixteenth century and that set by St. Dominic before his, more than three centuries before. “Angela’s was a war for truth,” writes one of her most recent and authorised biographers. Truth was also the ruling principle, one might almost say passion, of St. Dominic. Both were no doubt inspired by their common father, St. Augustine, whose rule of life was chosen by them both. “What desire,” he asks, “is more deeply rooted in our soul than the desire for truth?” It was so deeply rooted in the soul of St. Angela that on her tomb in Brescia it is written that she was not only an Apostle in word, but a Martyr in desire. Her desire was to give her life, as Christ gave His, in testimony to Truth, in a spirit of self-sacrificing service of the Truth, under the patronage of St. Ursula and the great multitude of virgins with her who were themselves martyrs to the cause of Truth.

The Apostolate of Truth may be resumed, it would not be exaggerated to suggest, in the word “Education.” “Education,” as Newman puts it, “is a high word. It is the preparation for knowledge and it is the imparting of knowledge in proportion to that preparation.”
French Anti-Clericalism
Authors: Folliet Joseph
Published: July 2007

There are few countries the world knows better than France; yet few countries are less understood. Nearly all the opinions which foreigners are accustomed to express about France appear, to the eyes of a Frenchman, to be tainted with error or, at very least, to be unfair generalisations.

Will this be thought a mere reaction of patriotic pride? A refusal to recognise ourselves in portraits which do not flatter us? Perhaps; but it is not only that. For a Frenchman will, as often as not, refuse to recognise himself in foreign portraits which flatter him as well as in some he finds less gratifying. Even before criticising what is said of him, he is suspicious, mistrustful.

For he is aware even though he be incapable of analysing it, of the immense complexity of France and things French. France is a nation with a long history, wherein a great variety of traditions intermix and intertwine. Her apparent cohesion, however striking it may seem to the foreign observer, covers an astonishing diversity of very variegated provincial families, and, in the phrase of Maurice Barrès, of “spiritual families.” Monsieur Durand and Monsieur Lévy may be as alike as twin brothers, but they are nevertheless profoundly different. And if Monsieur Durand is a native of Paris, and Monsieur Lévy saw the light at Mulhouse, the difference will be very great indeed. The swarmings of parliamentary parties and groups, the rise and fall of a bewildering variety of political formations and of literary cliques—with all of which the foreigner observer finds it very hard to keep peace—bear ceaseless and ever changing witness to the truth of this.
The New Age
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

That European society is in a state of decline is generally accepted. That the Catholic influence on the institutions of that society has been seriously diminished if not altogether eliminated is deplored by those who appreciate the Church's civilising power. The latter naturally do everything possible to reassert the claims of the Church and serious men of all kinds endeavour according to their limited means to prevent the decline. It may however be more useful and it seems more in accordance with the facts to regard the new age as already begun and, if not completely to solve, at least to propose a number of questions about the newest tendencies.

The fundamental fact is that our civilisation is something utterly different from what is properly described as European civilisation. The latter was established through the contact of the Roman and Barbarian worlds under the guiding influence of the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church fused them and gave to society its distinguishing mark.

It is not a question of whether there were more baptised or better Catholics in mediæval times than there are in our own day. It is rather that society was then Catholic in outlook, with religion influencing all aspects of private and public life, while to-day it can no longer be called even Christian.

The rulers of mediæval society, the Guelfs and the Ghibel lines, the Hohenstaufens and the Carolingians, Henry II and Philip the Fair, quarrelling with one another, disobedient to the head of Christendom, were all Catholics by Baptism and profession.
Progress of the Y.C.W
Authors: Synnott Finbar
Published: July 2007

Accounts of the Young Christian Workers’ Second Annual Congress have appeared in the Catholic Weekly Press. But a general reflection on their position in this country and their prospects in it might yet be useful.

At the first Annual Congress, December 4th, 1937, at Wigan, six groups were represented, numbers in all about 100. At the 1938 Congress, September 4th, at St. Dominic’s, London, N.W.5, 11 groups were represented and numbers approximately 200. There were boys also from places which have not yet a group but are preparing to start. The number of Priests present at the meeting of Priests connected with the movement was also roughly double that of last year. And this year the Congress was honoured by the presence of the Cardinal.

As at the last Congress the impression given by the members was that of real confidence in the enormous work the movement undertakes: to make itself responsible for every interest, spiritual, moral, intellectual, social, of the Young Worker. Indeed the responsibility is the inspiration, a point of strategy in Catholic Action. The London boys, to begin with, made all arrangements for the Congress —for feeding, for meetings, for transport in London; meeting trains and seeing off at all hours of the night and day. The Societies’ magazine was brought out (again exclusively by the efforts of the 14-25 years-old members), with a printed cover for the occasion. At the Congress meeting local section leaders from the North and South stood up and spoke practically of the leakage, social problems of working youth in their districts, and remedies, which the inquiries of the leaders are discovering.
Human Needs and Human Wants
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

The physical needs of man are few—food and fuel, clothes and dwelling place. His wants are as many as his desires.

The weakness of capitalism is that it neglects the needs and continually ministers to the wants; seeking to gratify every whim, wholesome or unwholesome, that the natural man confesses. Why this is so can be seen without difficulty.

The aim of the capitalist—and by the capitalist we mean the managing director of companies and amalgamation of companies—is to secure profits for the payment of interest to the people who have lent him money; that is to the shareholders. Our captains of industry do not ask, “Is this needful?” but “Will it pay?” when some fresh venture is proposed. Nor do our captains of industry, our ennobled and knightly masters of big business, consider whether the toil of tending, year in, year out, machines for the production of trivial luxuries is employment worthy of a Christian man. It is compulsory labour; the machine-minder is free to starve if he declines the job. (Indeed thousands are thankful for this employment, so thankful that positive gratitude is expressed, for permission to endure the monotony of the factory, sure of a regular wage. No wonder, too, when they are married, with wife and children and some measure of domestic happiness dependent on the weekly wage, that thankfulness is expressed.)
Catholic Social Doctrine in Portuguese Corporativism
Authors: Rainer A. A. C.
Published: July 2007

The fundamental moral principle governing the relations between men as producers and consumers, employers and employees, is admittedly that of social justice. The purpose of this article is to show, in a brief synthesis of papal teaching, that this principle implies the social theory of Christian corporativism, and to study the application of both in the leading articles of the Portuguese Statute of National Labour.

The Statute of National Labour was published on the 23rd September, 1933, six months after the plebiscite on the part of the Portuguese nation of the new Constitution establishing a “unitary and corporative Republic.” It is not itself technically a law, it is rather a preamble to all future social and economic legislation, in which has been elaborated the norms of the new social and economic order which in accepting the Constitution the nation had solemnly pledged itself to bring about. (Constitution: Part I, chapters IV and VIII.) Now that the constitution of the late Austrian Federal Republic is a dead letter, it stands unique among political documents for its fidelity to Christian social and economic principles and for the care with which it applies the precepts of papal teaching in the construction of a professional and economic code specially adapted to the needs of a particular nation.

The nature of social justice is clearly expressed by Pius XI in Divini Redemptoris: “it is impossible to care for the social organism and the good of society as a whole unless each single part and each individual member—that is to say, each individual man in the dignity of his human personality—is supplied with all that is necessary for the exercise of his social functions.”
Our Lady's Place in Worship
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

Teaching and worship have always been on friendly terms, arm in arm and in step with each other. Lex orandi, lex credendi, it is said. But it is not always easy to decide which takes the lead, since their action is reciprocal, teaching reacting upon worship and vice-versa. In general most will agree with the Abbé Vacandard, “that in Christianity the feast has always preceded the definition of the doctrine at the same time as the theological discussions contribute to precision in the meaning of the liturgical solemnity.” Yet in particular instances consistent teaching must have influenced devotion and directed it into new channels; though only after it has received practical expression in the liturgical worship of the Church is it crowned with precise definition.

The interplay of doctrine and devotion is of special importance in the honour paid to our Lady and the teaching concerning her, for in theology she is distinguished from all other saints by a liturgical distinction. The pre-eminence of our Lady is established by the type of cultus to be offered her, technically called “hyperdulia.” Doctrine and cultus are united here where she is distinguished from all other creatures by the type of homage which she should receive. But at the present time there are also many ideas concerning the blessed Virgin which are not so evidently connected with worship. By these she is given a very central position in the scheme of salvation as the “Mediatrix of all graces,” as “Co-redemptrix” or the “Mother of the Mystical Body” so that she is distinguished not only by the honour shown her but also by her unique type of co-operation in the redemption of mankind.
On “Gulliver's Travels”
Authors: Sayer George
Published: July 2007

“Personality” is one of the most rampant of the little devils responsible for the poorly state of modem literary criticism. He is the devil behind the heresy of looking not so much at the work as at the writer, and of expecting to find the person of the writer in the work. Than this heresy there are few things harder to scotch; you think you’ve stamped it out in some little corner; but wait a minute and it will perk up its head again like bindweed or the Shepherd’s Purse.

It is certainly a very old heresy, but it can hardly ever have been so common as it is nowadays. For it is apparently related to having to write for a very large public, and there can hardly ever have been so many people reading as now. Most of us are far more interested in persons than in ideas and things. In this we are surely entirely right, and in reading books, so long as they were good books, our attention would naturally be caught and held by the author's characters. Left to ourselves there would naturally be little danger of our being too interested in the author, for the author, especially if he be a good author, is generally a very vague and shadowy person compared with the persons he has created. To the reader of David, Copperfield, David, Agnes and Dora, rather than Dickens, are the interesting persons; and even if the author does figure as a character in his own novel or play, the ordinary reader cannot know it.
Contrition and Action
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: July 2007

“The preaching of the truth,” said the Pope last year to the French bishops, “the preaching of the truth did not bring many victories to Christ: it brought Him to the cross. It is by charity that He won souls and drew them to follow Him. That is the only way in which we shall win them.” The importance of the question of means cannot be overstressed. Over and over again, great enterprises, Christian enterprises, have been brought to nought because evil, unchristian means have been adopted to achieve them. What is the business of the Christian, as a Christian, in regard to the temporal order? It is to work for the building of the temporal City of God: the remedying of injustice and hatred, the establishment of justice and charity. Temporal and spiritual meet and fuse in the structure of society inasmuch as this or that social structure preserves or destroys the eternal values; so that when a social structure destructive of Christian values obtains, it is part of the duty of the Christian to work to change it. What kind of means is he to adopt?

We shall certainly be misled if we allow ourselves to forget —as so often we do—that on the one hand catholic means universal; on the other, that to-day there is no existing Christian temporal order.

We shall certainly be misled if we think of the work of the Christian in the world in terms of making the world safe for the (existing) Christians.
The Spectre of Evacuation
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

Two recent facts without precedent in the history of the world are worthy of being considered by the readers of Blackfriars.

1. By Order of his Majesty’s Government Millions of Gas-Masks Were Distributed to Citizens.

2. By Order of his Majesty’s Government Plans Were Made (And Effectively Begun) For Evacuating Many of The Citizens from the Towns to the Country.

From London Alone 2,000,000 (Including 500,000 Children) Were to be Evacuated.
Symbolism and Belief
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

This is a work of sane and considerable scholarship covering a field in which, in spite of the work of Père Lagrange, Catholic scholars have shown some measure of diffidence: a field also in which thomist theology has a peculiarly acute responsibility. The problem is stated on p. 25, “The difficulty is that while Christian theology asserts that God is unknowable, it simultaneously asserts that God can be known. And not Christian only, but any form of belief which can be called theistic is bound to assert that in some sense God can be known.” The approach to it, “Not to get rid of anthropomorphism, which is impossible if man is going to have any idea of God at all, but to make the division between right and wrong anthropomorphism where it ought to be made— that is the main problem for all philosophy of religion.” Already the Catholic theologian has grounds to fear that the edges of the problem have been blurred. Not that, in such a fear, there is any room for sectarian pride or aloofness. Dr. Bevan himself underlines the nature of Catholic responsibility in the matter (p. 317), “It would be quite a mistake to suppose that these discussions (of the theory of analogy) are of interest only to Roman Catholic theologians. The problem with which they grapple is a problem which must confront any modern thinker who believes in any God at all.” Further back (p. 315) he says of the same doctrine of analogy, “I cannot profess myself able to make sense of this explanation.
Rite of Braga
Authors: King Archdale A.
Published: July 2007

Of all the rites of Catholic Christendom, that used in the Archdiocese of Braga in the North of Portugal is probably the least known. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Braga is remote and an end in itself, since it is not passed en-route for anywhere else, such as Lyons or Milan, and few books have been written on the subject.

Of late years the retention of this venerable rite has been made the subject of two decrees of the Holy See. In 1919, since a section of the clergy had forsaken its distinctive Liturgy, Pope Benedict XV declared (”Sedis hujus Apostolicæ”) the Rite of Braga to be obligatory throughout the Archdiocese for both Mass and Office, a decree specifically endorsed by the present Pontiff in 1924 (“Inter multiplices gravesque curas”). This last decree finds a place in the preface of the latest addition of the Missal (1924), where the rite is referred to as a “Portuguese glory” (“Lusitania nitidum velut speculum”).

The ecclesiastical importance of Braga dates from the fifth century, when its bishop was advanced to metropolitical rank, as the town, after the destruction of Astorga by the Visigoths (433), had become the capital of the Suevic kingdom.

A distinctive liturgy appears to have been formed— Roman in foundation, with Mozarabic, Gallican and local additions—for in the sixth century we find Bishop Profuturus appealing to the Apostolic See for liturgical guidance. Thus, in 538, Pope Vigilius sent the Church of Braga the Roman Baptismal service, the Canon of the Mass and the proper of Easter to serve as a specimen for the formation of other Masses.
Faith in the Church of England
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

In considering first the Second Part of the Report on Doctrine in the Church of England, we have deliberately postponed consideration of those sections which have aroused most discussion and which would seem to indicate trends and tendencies very different from those in the section on The Church and Sacraments. Before trying to form an estimate of the significance of the whole from the standpoint of those concerned with the fidelity of the Christian witness and with the prospects of Christian unity, we may, without attempting a full analysis, draw attention to some salient points raised in these other sections.

The first of the three main divisions of the Report covers The Doctrines of God and of Redemption. Herein the doctrine of the Triune God is confined within a page and a half, not of dogmatic or theological exposition, but of pure history of dogma. The question What do we mean by the word “God”? is answered exclusively in terms of purely natural theology without reference to Revelation; but it is found subsequently that the “Biblical conception [of the ‘Living God’] is greatly to be preferred,” for purely pragmatic reasons, to “the leading conceptions entertained by Greek philosophers and Indian sages.”
Education in An Abnormal Society
Authors: Shewring Walter
Published: July 2007

In a recent essay on education in a Catholic review, the writer was concerned to show how “vocational education” (i.e., school training in manual work for particular occupations) might be accompanied by “cultural and religious” training so that pupils should have the advantages of all three. He was anxious that clerical attainments should not make for contempt of manual work, but thought that all would be well if teachers would “blend but not confuse” in those whom they taught the “three streams of education, the religious, the cultural and the economic.” So taught (he concluded hopefully) “the individual will be content to earn his living at the job, whatever it may be, that he is best fitted to perform.”

The writer was a man of great experience in education, but it is to be regretted that words like “culture” and “vocation” should have been used without apology as they are used by secular sentimental thought; that almost no reference should have been made to Christian principles and tradition; and that any idea of integration should, seemingly, have been dismissed from the writer’s mind. Doubtless he thought some truths too plain to need repeating; I differ, and shall repeat them here.
Some Aspects of Catholic Education
Authors: St John Henry
Published: July 2007

We hold as Catholics that the truths of our faith should be the basis and life-giving principle of our ideas and judgements and actions in every department of our lives, and that nothing should be excluded from the all-inclusive influence of that principle. I had not been teaching very long before I began to be conscious that, as in the life of ordinary Catholics in the world, so in school life, there were often two distinct areas. One area was an explicitly Catholic area, in which Christian standards were fully realized and fully applied; but there was another area, and in school this was chiefly covered by what are termed the secular studies, where Christian standards were not indeed denied, but either not applied at all or only applied occasionally at certain isolated points where their non-application would have been glaringly apparent. At other less prominent points our standards of judgment were not really Christian at all, but those of the world around us. In other words, we were not living the Christian life integrally; the principles of the faith were not penetrating into and informing every idea and judgement in every department of our lives; and in consequence we were producing characters, forming personalities, that were all-unconsciously divided in allegiance, in the service of two masters, ruled in part by Christian principles, but in part either without definite standards of any kind or ruled by standards that were not Christ’s and that in the last analysis were quite irreconciliable with Christ’s law.
On Criticism
Authors: Williamson Claude
Published: July 2007

The life of the spirit is the life of freedom, the life that responds to nature’s charms, to her colour, her cadences, her music: the poetry that sums these up and calls them evanescent and calls them also beauty. Spirit is not created art. Spirit is the poised brush; it is gazing; it is listening. Spirit is sensitivity that asks not why nor whether, that simply enjoys and through enjoyment may give rise to creativity.

What is the Imagination? That it is a very important thing, or an essential human faculty, we can all agree; but after that the trouble begins. And, as generally happens, those who have spoken of it with most seriousness and authority are the hardest to understand. “Imagination is the Human existence itself,” said Blake, who had plenty of of it. It is “the esemplastic power”—that is, the power of shaping diversity into unity—said Coleridge. “It may be compared to Adam’s dream.” A. C. Bradley, elucidating this, yet speaking with his own authority, said: “Wherever the imagination is satisfied, there, if we had a knowledge we had not, we should discover no idle fancy, but an image of a truth. “ That brings us back to Blake again, in his dictum: “Everything possible to be believed is an image of truth.”
Political Morals From The Left
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

The people who are restrained in their communism by a tug from their tradition of culture form a considerable body of opinion in this country. Their state of mind is hinted at in the title of the periodical they patronize, for the New Statesman incorporates the Athenaeum, and the Week-End Review into the bargain. Catholic publishing has entered popular journalism and has also admirably engaged the Tory temper; it has not yet succeeded in addressing itself to this Liberal-Marxist sentiment, though at one time the Catholic Herald promised fair to do so. Accordingly the book Mrs. Mitchison has written to clear her own mind, should be of more than biographical interest. Her object is to bring some kind of order into the modem economic and political scene. She advances in Indian file, from question to question, or rather from questioning to questioning, sensitive to the rustle in the undergrowth, and not by deployment from massed and established premisses. To reduce this Socratic method to scholasticism reminds one of the general from home who tried to make the Virginians fight according to the drill-books. Still, they both wanted the Ohio Fork, and it may be profitable to indicate here some strategic positions held in common by St. Thomas and the symbolic Mrs. Mitchison.
Pius the Eleventh
Authors: Hughes Philip
Published: July 2007

Whoever would write about a modern pope labours under serious handicaps. The public utterances of the popes are veiled by a conventional language that most effectually muffles their personality. In the action of the Roman See upon the universal Church during the time they are its bishop, it is not by any means easy to disentangle the part of the pope and the part of the high official whose trained mind is the papal instrument. Convention, again, seals the mouths of those who could speak about the personal reactions of the pope whether to the personalities who cross his path or to the crises of his reign. And once the pope is dead interest shifts rapidly to his successor. In the reign of that successor, in the press of business and of actuality that absorbs the high officials of the Curia from the moment of the new pope’s election, there is little leisure left for the composition of memoirs by those who really knew the pope who has died. The portrait of a pope has thus to be built up from scanty materials indeed, and the most promising of these, from the biographical artist’s point of view, are only too often sadly lacking in authenticity. If Pius XI had been a letter writer as industrious as Queen Victoria, if he had kept a diary, and if there were any chance of these documents seeing the light, then we might, some one might, at some future day, be in a position really to analyse his personality in the best French manner, and set his greatness before the world with the skill of a Gainsborough or a Goya. As it is . . .
Medicine and Religion
Authors: Newsholme H. P.
Published: July 2007

When I received your Secretary’s invitation to address the Midland Catholic Medical Society, I was moved to accept by the fact that the very title of your Society showed that you expressly associate medicine and religion, or rather medicine and a particular outlook on religion; and I felt that, if it could be done without impertinence, it might be helpful to trace some of the consequences of such an association.

While you are medical men and women engaged in medicine, but so engaged with a definite theological and religious outlook, I would open my remarks by referring to the converse case of a theologian who approaches his theological work from a standpoint fixed towards science. At the time when your invitation reached me, I had just come across a passage in a Protestant theological work which I had had occasion to consult, in which the writer shows how certain of his convictions in the sphere of modern medical science have patently affected his theology. Discussing Christ’s reference to the possession of individuals by evil spirits, this theologian assumes that Christ was accepting beliefs now outworn, the general beliefs of His time in regard to demon-possession, that ‘in fact, in matters of human science, our Lord’s information did not extend beyond what a man, born and educated as He was, might naturally have acquired.’ The theologian has drawn that conclusion through his acceptance of modern medical views of disease. He is regarding Christ’s interpretation of the origin of particular types of disease as unsound on the assumption that the modern medical interpretation of such disease is sound. Granted that either Christ or modern medicine must be right, the theologian whom I am quoting comes down on the side of modern medicine. Now I assume that Catholics would conclude, on the contrary, that if one of these two must be wrong, then modern medicine must be that one.
Movement in the Church of England
Authors: St. John Henry
Published: July 2007

To ensure a full understanding of the situation to which the publication of the Report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Christian Doctrine has given rise, it must be viewed against the background of Anglican history. The upheaval of the Reformation tore the Church of England violently out of the living tradition of Latin Catholicism, but it did not place it completely in either of the main streams of continental Protestantism. From the moment of its final separation, it stood in isolation—with a heritage from the Catholic past, and a considerable infiltration of contemporary Protestantism. It appealed, not as did Catholicism, to a living voice, nor to a great interpreter of God’s revelation, as did Calvinism and Lutheranism, but to the primitive Church of the early centuries. Thus, while Catholicism invoked a living continuous tradition as final witness to the faith, and Protestantism, tending to ignore the interval between the Apostles and its own second founders, presented a new interpretation, Anglicanism, rejecting both, based itself upon an appeal to the earliest ages of Christianity, and created a tradition orthodox, sacramental, sober and learned, biblical, patristic and historical in approach, but dogmatic only where the primitive Church seemed plainly to have given its decision. Scholasticism, with its tradition of close theological thinking, was set aside, and so in the main were the systems of the continental reformers, and thus grew into being the characteristics of the Anglican ethos.
Liturgy and the Child
Authors: Meath Gerard A.
Published: July 2007

Liturgy may too easily be thought to include nothing more than a somewhat archaic formula of public and official worship in the Church confined to the Mass and the Office of the day. It is true that these latter constitute the essence or core of the liturgy; but if we care to probe deeper than a mere study of chant and formulae and rubrics will take us, we discover beneath these a spirit emanating organically from the fundamental doctrines of the Church and the more primitive outlook of Christians upon life as a whole. The liturgical rites and ceremonies we now know did not spring from an early and undisciplined urge to worship such as is common in all primitive peoples. Though based upon this universal instinct, they were evolved through well-defined motives for worshipping in a particular way the personal God Whom divine revelation had made known to them with certitude and much understanding. The liturgy as we have it came into being gradually as the expression of a desire at once human, being based on a specifically human urge to worship, and at the same time intensely Christian, being the development and perfecting of that urge by the light of Faith and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost coupled with the human rendering of divine truth in the Incarnation. Thus the liturgy was the direct expression of the Christian mind, somewhat as the music of Grieg was, within a much narrower compass, an expression of the Norse mind and the literature of Shakespeare of the English mind. We might add that in the same way the very absence of effective liturgy is an expression of the Nonconformist ethos and the plain table and severe interior of the Scottish kirk the reflection of the Puritan attitude to life.
Christian Liberty and Obligations
Authors: Chenu M. D.
Published: July 2007

(I)

Now in those days Marcus Aurelius was Emperor and it seemed as if Wisdom herself in the person of this adopted son of Antoninus Pius, this disciple of Epictetus, ruled the Roman world . . . Nevertheless the Philosopher Justin, accused of being a Christian, was brought with several companions before Rusticus the Prefect of Rome, the very man who had placed in the hands of the young Emperor the Discourses of Epictetus.

‘What is your branch of study?’ Rusticus enquired of Justin.

‘I have studied all the sciences in turn and I have come to find rest in the teachings of the Christians, unacceptable though they may seem to those led astray by error.’

‘Miserable man, is that your chosen study?’

‘Yes, for the Christians possess the true doctrine.’ Rusticus turning to one of Justin’s companions, asked: ‘And you, what are you?’

‘I am Caesar’s slave, but Christ has given me freedom.’ But the accused men refused to obey Caesar and sacrifice to the Gods and the Prefect passed sentence upon them. Justin and his companions were beheaded.

‘I am Caesar’s slave but Christ has given me freedom.’ My whole discourse is based on this clear, this dazzling reply. My one object will be to make you conscious of its deep meaning. For to me falls the honour of bringing before you during these discussions on the subject of liberty in social life the testimony of the Christian, or, to be more precise, of the theologian; that is to say, of the Christian whose task it is to justify his religion to himself, to examine its structure and its inside workings.
The Missions—Yesterday and Tomorrow
Authors: Keldany Herbert
Published: July 2007

‘L’Eglise, c’est Jésus-Christ, mais Jésus-Christ répandu el communiqué.’ Bossuet’s words were quoted by Père Clérissac to reinforce his argument that the purpose of the Redemption embraces mankind as a whole before it affects the individual. This dynamic aspect of the life of the Church springs to mind as the new pontificate opens fresh vistas so soon after our reading of the several attempts to assess the achievements of the previous one. In spiritual as well as temporal affairs the stage would seem to be set for a new epoch. The two troubled decades which followed the Armistice of 1918 appear to be leading to a more realistic because less treaty-bound polity, while the conclusion of the pontificate which spanned that anxious period, and alone among reigns survived it with enhanced prestige, has left the new Pope a simpler if no less heavy task.

Before attempting to trace one aspect of this in the special field of the missions abroad, it will perhaps not be out of place to dwell upon the paradoxical fact that more profound progress has been made within it during the past seventeen years than in as many preceding centuries. Today the Church is indeed universal, there is a Chinese, Indian, and African Catholicity as distinct as the English or the American; and this remarkable achievement, because it has taken place while the Church has been subject to considerable difficulties in lands older in the faith, has passed almost unnoticed, even in well-informed circles. But the fact remains that no Pope has been mourned by so numerous or so varied a Church as was Pius XI, rightly surnamed the Pope of the Missions.
Mr. Teeling on the German Church
Authors: Quinn Edward
Published: July 2007

Mr. William Teeling has now replied to the many critics of his book The Pope in Politics, which was published in 1937. His reply takes the form of a study of the conditions and prospects of the Catholic Church in Germany, a subject with which he is undoubtedly familiar and about which he can speak with considerable authority. He knows the language and the people well, and has taken pains to interview all kinds of personalities to ascertain the real state of feeling in the country. And though conversations, even with the most varied authorities, are not the most certain way of getting at the real truth, it is scarcely possible to adopt any other method in Germany. The Nazi press is inspired to tell just what the party leaders wish to have announced and the foreign press is often biassed.

The method has its drawbacks, so serious that one has to read the book with some caution. For it is undoubtedly true that it is a very dangerous thing to speak to foreigners about the faults of the system, and it is questionable whether even Mr. Teeling’s interviewing ability would elicit the whole truth about these from any responsible German. It is also a fact that the more highly placed ecclesiastics are rightly unwilling to grant interviews of the type that the author needed for the purposes of publication. Every spokesman, of course, is made anonymous in this book, but even this security would not encourage many to speak quite openly about politics.
St. Catherine, The Papacy, and England
Authors: S.M.F.
Published: July 2007

As an instance of the work done by the Friars Preachers for the good of England, it is interesting to remark the part Dominicans played in keeping the country faithful to the true Pope during the Great Schism. This has not been sufficiently noticed in the history of that sad time.

On March 27th, 1378, Gregory XI died at Rome, whither he had returned from Avignon in 1376. The chief instrument used by God to persuade the Pope to take this step was that great daughter of St. Dominic, St. Catherine of Siena. She it was who reminded him of the secret vow he had made to return to Rome; and when innumerable obstacles were put in his way by the Cardinals, who were loth to leave the peace and luxury of Avignon for the grass-grown streets of turbulant Rome, it was Catherine who cried with holy boldness: ‘Be a man, Babbo miol’
War and the Catholic
Authors: McDermott Francis
Published: July 2007

War is on every horizon to-day—a black cloud that, coming nearer, resolves itself into a swarm of enemy aircraft bringing death from the skies.

Fear of that black swarm is hypnotising half the civilised world, and there is no decent man or woman but detests the new horror it has brought into warfare, the Massacre of the Innocents. A dead or dying soldier on the battlefield is an ugly sickening fact, but it is possible to cover it with the decent cloak of duty or even to dress it with glory. The woman or the young child dying in torment amidst the ruins of a home is plain, unvarnished, abominable evil, beyond palliation, beyond glorification. Yet it is an inescapable part of war to-day. Spain has seen it; China has seen it; and where will modern war be waged without it?

The Catholic feels the utmost aversion from taking part in warfare that involves such horrors. If it be a necessity, it is a most evil one. But is it a necessity? There are Catholics who say it is no longer so, that modern warfare can never be justified. ‘War has become impossible,’ says Eric Gill, Catholic artist, writer and craftsman; ‘a just modern war is unthinkable,’ writes Father Gerald Vann, O.P.; and Father F. Stratmann, O.P., in a book, The Church and War considers that ‘modern warfare with the all-round ruin it brings must be immoral.’ The Catholic hating the barbaric methods of war to-day reads these and similar denunciations with sympathy but in growing perplexity of mind.