bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Catholic in South America
Authors: Oakes C. S. Cosby
Published: July 2007

The state of the Catholic Church in Latin-American countries is so often and so glibly misrepresented by ‘our separated brethren’ who sometimes succeed in misleading even Catholics, that it may be of interest to some to read the impressions of one who spent some two years in Peru, several months in Chile, and made short visits to Panama, Brazil and Argentina.

Some of the impressions gained are necessarily superficial, as they were gleaned in the course of visits of no more than a few days’ duration in Panama, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires. In Chile, however, and still more in Peru, there was more time and more opportunity for observation, conversation and the forming of definite opinions.

Setting forth from San Francisco for that most fascinating voyage down the coast of Mexico and South America to Callao, I had considerable misgivings as to the state of affairs I might expect to find upon my arrival in Peru, and I carried with me a plentiful supply of prejudice. Arriving at Panama early one Sunday morning, I took the electric tram to the old Spanish city in order to hear Mass. It was half-past eight, and, to my dismay, the policeman of whom I enquired my way to a church informed me that I was too late, there were no more Masses. A kindly passer-by, however, told me that at nine the Bishop of X would be present at Mass in the Church of Las Mercedes; so thither I went, thankful to exchange the torrid, sweltering streets for the cool bareness of the church with its glassless windows. The edifice was already packed, but a well-dressed negro courteously insisted on giving me his place.
Speciosae et Delicatae Assimilavi Filiam Sion
Authors: Gary John
Published: July 2007

Tell us, shepherds, what you saw;

Tell us, were you not afraid?

We saw the King of glory laid,

A Babe, upon a little straw.

Neither of you was afraid;

Neither were you filled with awe.

We saw Him lying on the straw,

The Baby; and we saw the Maid.

Tell us, was the Lady bright?

Was the Baby strange and rare?

Though we have travelled everywhere We never saw so fair a sight.

Were there angels and a throne?

Was the stable filled with light?

The Maid was like a starry night;

And He was like a golden sun.

Tell us if the Mother smiled;

Tell us what the Maiden said.

The Babe was lying on His bed;

And She was looking at Her Child.

Shepherds twain, who speak so fair, Lead the way to Bethlehem.

An angel guided us to them;

And Bethlehem is everywhere.

John Gray.
What is the Class War?
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

The phrase ‘class war’ is in common use, and like many another phrase is more readily uttered than defined. Daily do we read of the ‘preaching of class war’ or the denouncing of class war, and vague but decidedly horrible visions are projected of arson, murder and red terror. (‘All Sir Leicester Dedlock’s old misgivings relative to Wat Tyler, and the people in the iron districts who do nothing but turn out by torchlight’ may be recalled, and ‘the obliterating of landmarks, opening of floodgates, and all the rest

The trouble with metaphors is that they will conjure up such vastly different and often such very shocking visions. Other military metaphors in common use are less disturbing. The ‘hotly-contested fight’ of the cricket field, or the by-election, suggests no bloodshed. The vigorous campaign of the politician is not more fearful than the ‘fierce attack’ of the forwards, or the ‘stubborn defence’ of the goal-keeper in the football season. As for leading ‘forlorn hopes’ and the readir ness to ‘die in last ditches,’ we may approve the sentiment even when we find the metaphor somewhat absurd. That the motto of the famous Middlesex Regiment should be calmly appropriated by a section of one of our political parties, that ‘Die Hard’ should come to be used for a set of opinions, is perhaps the most glaring example of this fondness for military terms in civil life.
Henry VIII and A Modern Controversy
Authors: Swaby Alfred
Published: July 2007

Ever since the Council of Trent defined that ‘in the Mass is offered a true and proper Sacrifice’ (Cone. Trid. Sess. XXII, De Sacrificio Missae. Can. i), theological speculation in the schools has been rife evolving multifarious theories as to how the Mass is a Sacrifice, or what it is that formally determines the sacrificial character of the Mass. Various views have been advanced with which famous names of the Society of Jesus are identified, as, for instance, Vasquez, de Lugo, Perrone, Franzelin, Schouppe, Pesch and Billot. These theologians unanimously agree that the immolation of the Victim in the Sacred Passion is itself the complete Oblation or Sacrifice of Redemption, and that this Immolation was an Act of Sacrificial Oblation distinct from, and subsequent to the Last Supper. Not one of these theologians even implies that Immolation is not itself the complete act of Sacrificial Oblation. For example, Cardinal Billot, whom justly P&re de la Taille calls a Prince of Theologians, teaches that Immolation is the Sacrificial Oblation of a bloody Sacrifice whether the term be applied to the Mosaic Sacrifices or to the Sacred Passion (cf. Billot, De Sacrific. Miss. Thesis liv, § 2). In the elaboration of their views—although conceivably we may not entirely agree with any one of them—it is notable that on the subject of the Redemptive Sacrifice they keep strictly within the limits traced by theological Tradition and the Council of Trent.
Candlemas
Authors: Essex Edwin
Published: July 2007

What they desired to see and have not seen,

Kings in proud purple and emblazoned gold, Apocalyptic prophets stern and lean,

The aged Simeon in his arms may fold Taken from Mary purified by law With Joseph bringing turtle-doves, a pair,

Meet offering of poorness; and in awe Anna the widowed prophetess, and fair Young men and maidens lifting tapers high, Lights for the Light, and wearied men and bent Sharing new wonder at the Infant nigh :

All are beholding Simeon’s high content Foretold, fulfilled the promise that his eyes Should gaze on Christ before they stared at death, Knowing the passing of all prophecies Isaias made, and Daniel, by God’s breath Elect, prevented from erroneous thought Or speech, that He would come, the Son, the Just, Who spoke and leapt the Universe from nought To fill it with a breath from earthly dust,

And spread the sky with Mary’s own rare blue For mantle, and a sun at heaven’s gate To keep the day (He was the only true Sun, born of Maid the Star immaculate),

And for the shepherds on the midnight hill The arc of moon to light the gathered fleece,

And silver waves He softly spoke to still For all who toil at sea, to give them peace.

Now that his eyes have seen the sudden Light Revealed to those who sit among the shade Of death’s grim valleys, he shall claim his right Of swift dismissal; he must surely fade To rest according to his Lord’s decree,
An Old Russian Treaty
Authors: Cunnington S.
Published: July 2007

Recent affairs have stirred afresh the interest in early British intercourse with Russia which Hakluyt and Early Voyages awakened. To those who love to find history repeating itself it will be especially gratifying to learn that three centuries ago there was a projected Russian treaty which failed. In 1623 the movers were the representatives of the Royal Houses of Stewart and Romanoff; in 1924 they were the Socialist and Soviet Governments of the two countries of Great Britain and Russia.

Casting a glance on previous relations and events it is to be recalled that the Muscovy Trading Company was formed nearly fifty years before the famous East India Company. In 1635 this financial venture (the outcome of the veteran Cabot’s voyages of discovery) was entered into by many persons of high degree as well as by influential merchants, and received a royal charter. Three ships were equipped, and under the leadership of Chancellor made the voyage and returned with many promised trading privileges from the Czar, Ivan the Terrible. So the Muscovy Company was reconstituted into the ‘Company for the Discovery of New Trades/ and, in its royal charter in 1566, was empowered to secure solely any trade’ established by sailing north, north-east or north-west from England.’ These terms suggest the spacious times to which they belong.

In the Public Record Office are preserved copies of the Letters from the English Queen to the Czar and the original replies to them; the subjects discussed are politics and commerce, and various requests are preferred.
Angelica Kauffmann
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

There is just at present an extraordinary revival of interest in the early Academicians. The publication, volume by volume, of the wonderful Farington Diary, the new annotated edition of J. T. Smith’s Life of Nollekens, and Dr. Williamson’s recent sumptuous quartos on Ozias Humphrey and Johann Zoffany, are all evidences of this. And that interest is quite as much literary as artistic; for no one can forget that in the first years of the Royal Academy, Dr. Johnson was its Professor of Ancient Literature, Goldsmith and Gibbon held successively the Chair of History, while James Boswell was Secretary for Foreign Correspondence.

Among the first Royal Academicians there were two women members, though strangely enough there have never been any since. One of these, Mary Moser, is to-day even more of a shadow than she was in her lifetime. But the other, Angelica Kauffmann, after long years of temporary eclipse, appears now to be coming into her own again, and to be fast regaining the popularity and esteem which were undoubtedly hers during the decades preceding the Revolution.

That well-known Catholic man of letters, Dr. Williamson, has, with the assistance of Lady Victoria Manners, lately written a monumental work upon her and her paintings, lovingly gathering together every scrap of biography and criticism, minutely cataloguing her pictures, recording (so far as is possible) their after fate and ultimate disposition, and infecting his readers the while with his own enthusiastic admiration for his heroine and her performances.
A ‘Note’ in English Literature
Authors: Parker Evelyn M.
Published: July 2007

That the poetic imagination is sometimes a companion of, and sometimes the substitute for, the mystical gift is, perhaps, a truism of literary criticism. But it is a truism of especial interest for students of English because the strength of the English artistic genius has always lain in religious subjects, or, at least, in those related to religion. The truth of this may be proved by a very simple experiment. What are the subjects of the stock passages of English literature? Here are a few in the order of memory:

‘O eloquent, just, and mighty Death: whom none

could advise thou hast persuaded : what none hath dared, thou hast done: and whom all the world hath flattered thou only hast cast out of the world and despised. . . .u

And, even more familiar :

‘The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things :

There is no armour against Fate;

Death lays his mighty hand on Kings. . . ,’

And Shakespeare :

‘. . . We are such stuff As dreams are made of; and our little life Is rounded by a sleep. . . .’

Or the famous close of Astrophel’s passion for Stella : ‘Leave me, O Love, that cleavest but to dust,

And thou, my soul, aspire to higher things. . .

Lastly, for this can be but a brief selection, that most apt putting of the world’s most pertinent question :

‘What is Truth? quoth jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.’

Truth, and death, and love: these would seem to be the habitual subjects of the great literary tradition of England; and, as Spenser has it, love turning from earthly to divine pleasure. And this even when the work does not profess to be of a specifically religious character.
An Eighteenth Century de Retz
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

Voltaire (or was it Lord Chesterfield?) once declared that human beings should be divided into three classes, ‘Men, Women and Herveys’; while Dr. Johnson was wont to say, ‘Call a dog Hervey, and I shall love him.’ These two celebrated utterances aptly hit off the characteristics of a brilliant family intimately associated with English history and literature. For the Herveys were almost all of them eccentric to a degree, and yet at the same time possessed of a superlative charm.

John, Lord Hervey of Ickworth, the friend of Queen Caroline of Anspach, and the writer of those invaluable memoirs on which every historian of the reign of George II to-day so greatly relies, had for his third son a remarkable being who figures largely in not only the England but the Europe of the eighteenth century. Frederick Hervey, Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry, the ‘mitred Proteus’ of Horace Walpole, the ‘wicked prelate’ of George III, the ‘episcopal patriot’ of Northern Ireland, the ‘modern Maecenas’ of artists and sculptors, and the ‘man plenteous in good works’ of John Wesley, if he left no mark on his age as author or statesman or courtier, was a cosmopolitan personage whom we meet with in every memoir, diary, newspaper, and letter of his time, and whose memory as a wealthy epicurean, open-handed globe-trotter is still kept alive by the inevitable ‘Hotel Bristol’ found in every continental town. The foreigner’s fixed and traditional idea of the rich, mad, restless English ‘milord’ can be largely traced in its origin to him.
Notes on the Holy Year
Authors: Gumbley Walter
Published: July 2007

The establishment of a Holy Year, or year of Jubilee, is universally attributed to Pope Boniface VIII, who in the fear 1300 published a bull granting a plenary indulgence to all who, having approached the Sacraments, should visit as pilgrims the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul in their separate basilicas on the Vatican Hill, and outside the Walls. Amongst the many reasons which led Pope Boniface to publish this jubilee was a strong tradition that exactly a century previous Pope Innocent III the Great had promulgated the same indulgence. Many witnesses came forward to attest that they had heard this stated by those who had actually been present in Rome as pilgrims in 1200. Two men from Beauvais and several Italians were amongst the most aged of the witnesses, in addition to two reputed eye-witnesses. One of these latter was a Spaniard, Fernandez by name, a reputed nephew of St. Dominic, who now in his hundred and fifteenth year told the Pope that he had been present in Rome during the indulgenced year of Innocent III. The other was an Italian, aged one hundred and seven years, who related that his father (prophetic man !) had ordered him many years before to come to Rome if still alive in 1300, in order to gain at the tomb of the Apostle a plenary indulgence such as he himself had gained in 1200.

Boniface VIII published the Jubilee by the bull !‘Antiquorum, February 22nd, 1300, and so great were the crowds of pilgrims that flocked to the Eternal City to gain the indulgence that the Pope directed the Jubilee to be held for the future on the first year of each succeeding century.
The Springs of Bland
Authors: Childe Wilfred
Published: July 2007

The far blue landscape was holy,

As I walked into Bland;

Be sure that I stepped slowly,

Lest the wild flowers fell from my hand,

Lest the wild flowers I had gathered In the fields at the dawn of day,

Fell down to the ground to be withered,

And utterly faded away.

So silent the hills stood, watching The little high town and pure;

Six rustic men stirred thatching To make some cottage secure.

Six white-necked goats came bleating Over the cobbles gray—

But I would be making my greeting With the wild flowers picked at day.

And at last I came to the fountain,

Little and crystal clean,

And I looked all round at the mountain,

And bowed my knee to the Queen.

I left my gay-coloured blossoms,

Where I wished that they should be,

And I thought from the great hills’ bosoms Came a voice that whispered to me.

‘Little son, it is well to have given The heat and toil of the day

To the dear-sweet service of Heaven,

And the words that thy dead friends say:

On Earth there is never a cleaner Word amid worn ways come

Than Ave Gratia Plena,

Virgo Virginum.’ Wilfred Childe.
Humility and Literature
Authors: Parker Evelyn M.
Published: July 2007

Our modern literature has become so self-conscious, analytic, subjective, conventional, and, invariable concomitant of the last, licentious in the true meaning of that word, that it would be an interesting experiment to see if any of the old accomplishment were still possible to it. Owing to our unfortunate acquisition of ‘temperaments,’ ‘view-points’ (loathsome word) and subjective theories of all sorts we have become singularly skilled in distorting language from its proper use as principally to make it the means of telling various kinds of lies which are no more true because they fall into the artistic heresy of subjective sincerity. (And, O Sincerity, what crimes are committed in thy name.)

From a psychological point of view these things are doubtless very interesting; and we ought to be very grateful to most of our modern authors for showing us so very instructively how many things can be used for purposes which their Maker never intended : how the English language can be tortured into a parody of German or Greek, and the fine gold of our verbal heritage transmuted, by a devil’s alchemy, into the base tokens of our common speech. But, in the intervals of our scientific raptures, some of us would like, occasionally, to read a little poetry, and, even more, a little prose. The air is full of neologisms unbeautiful, and twisted syntax inexpressive of thought, and not less opaque of feeling . . . ‘But that large utterance of the early Gods,’ where is it?
A Question of Vocation
Authors: Essex Edwin
Published: July 2007

Dukie, dear, I think Zania most suitable.’ Lady ‘ Trevor tactfully withdrew after delivering the blow. With one ingratiating look behind that might be interpreted,’ Well, just think it over quietly,’ she swept out of the room.

Of course his mother had said much more than that. She had talked for half an hour and enjoyed herself enormously. Like the experienced general she was, she had given no indication that this was to be a great offensive. Lady Trevor began with a little preliminary skirmish round the pages of a Sunday paper, and closed in suddenly on the Society column. Wasn’t this photograph of Miss Zania Wilkins just too sweet! Dukie must really look at it, and read what nice things they said about dear Zania. Sweet girl, of course she deserved every word of praise they could find to say about her. And they said it so cleverly, too. ‘This charming debutante’ and ‘this beautiful blonde’ . . . what happy phrases, that hit off darling Zania too perfectly. Didn’t he think so? Of course he had met her several times recently (yes, she came out at the Wen-ham’s dance, and what a sensation she created too!', and he would be meeting her constantly through the season. If only Providence had blessed Lady Trevor with a daughter, she would have wished her to be like Zania, so fair and frolicsome, full of such high spirits, and bubbling over with life. It was wonderful how the dear child kept it up so well. Lady Trevor supposed it was youth, beautiful youth, and sighed.

It was at this point in the monologue that the bir attack began to develop. Mother wanted to talk seriously to her big, bad boy. Well, he wasn’t really bad at all, but the best big baby on earth.
The Regular Tertiaries of St. Dominic in Red Moscow
Authors: West Kathleen
Published: July 2007

Before the Revolution of 1917 religion in Russia was very real; the people, as a whole, were pious and God-loving, and a stranger would have been struck by the intense piety which existed in town and country alike. The vast solitudes of his native land have had their effect on the character of the Russian peasant, filling him with an extraordinary spirit of mysticism. Young and old seemed possessed by some strange power of detachment from external influences while engaged in prayer. They appear to be raised into a state of ecstasy, and I have often noticed quite young children, apparently lost to their surroundings, praying with a fervour which is astonishing to a Western mind.

Up to the year 1917 there was little or no religious freedom in Russia; then followed a few months of liberty, after which the Catholic Church was subjected to a persecution which could only have been originated by the spirit of darkness. Very few Catholics outside Russia know anything of the sufferings of their brothers and sisters in the faith. Perhaps here I may be allowed to quote from the introduction to Princess Almedigen’s book, The Catholic Church in Russia To-day : ‘ Go to Russia and see how Catholics live there, and then come back and tell me whether people whose beliefs are not founded on the rock of truth can stand one-tenth of what they endure.’

During those critical years, 1914 to 1920, I lived in Moscow, and there I found a little band of workers who, in God’s mercy, had been gathered together to carry on his work in this time of stress.
Insolvent
Authors: Benvenuta Sister Mary
Published: July 2007

Too well we know the hundredfold safe stored; Must all our gifts be given for final gain?

We Godward run, uneas&d of love’s pain, Hot-foot pursued by pitiless reward.

Ah, veil awhile Thine eyes, too loving Lord,

Still watching, like a smiling mother fain T o thank the baby stumbling in her train For stalkless daisies from the dappled ward.

Tenderly mirthful with a mirth divine,

Comes speedy answer, kind as a caress :

‘If I should veil Mine eyes, what sun would shine? Beauty and colour on the light must wait.

I am the worth of all thy worthlessness,

Thy Way and thy Reward exceeding great.’

Sister Mary Benvenuta, O.P.
Man's Visible Works
Authors: Gray John
Published: July 2007

It is not easy to find the word descriptive of that hold which the external can exercise in favourable conditions through the senses upon man’s spirit. There might be a successful plea that this influence is more real than is supposed, necessary to men if human dignity is to be upheld; such is not here advanced; but rather one or two practical questions, modestly constructed, are submitted with deference, as : Is not the vague, unnamed, very real relation between man and his inanimate correspondent subject to all the varieties and discriminations allowed to ‘taste’? Again, in discourse of this matter the word beauty must sooner or later be used; very well, but man is beautiful, though this is only a memory. Regrettez vous le temps oh le ciel sur la terre marchait et respirait dans un peuple de dieux? The little we can say at present is : man might harmonize with the created beauty external to himself; but the fact is that his presence is seldom tolerable and yery rarely acceptable. Shrinking, he has lost a function; he is reduced to a spectator, and can no longer be wedded to bosquet and glade except in spirit, Walt Whitman’s endeavours and other’s non-obstant. It is by chance that man and his are not feyesorrow, distraction, hindrance, scandal, discord among the elements where he might have wonted place.

That the scandalgiver is man sometimes seems to justify impatience and abandonment of the enterprise; but to close our eyes is to relinquish our only true external inheritance, and that is the last sacrifice. Remains for the beholder to accommodate his desires to facts, accept inevitable dilution and look with discretion.
The Chudrch of England and Protesdtant Reunion
Authors: Clayton Joseph
Published: July 2007

In the sixteenth century a new Christendom,outside the obedience of the Holy See and owning no Papal authority, a union of all the newly-created Protestant Churches, a pan-Protestant confederation, was the vision of Archbishop Cranmer. Several attempts were made to bring together German Lutherans and Swiss Zwinglians and Calvinists. The formularies of the Church of England, to be read in the Book of Common Prayer, were framed deliberately that all Protestants who accepted the Creed of Nicea might be members of the established church; and not unskilfully framed, since Lutherans, Zwinglians and Calvinists alike were included in the Anglican episcopate of Queen Elizabeth’s appointment. But the efforts to secure a European Protestant confederation failed. The policy of Cranmer was frustrated. On the reformed doctrine of the Lord’s Supper a common denial of the Mass and Transubstantiation could not bring peace between Lutherans, who held to a Real Presence, and Zwinglians, who as stoutly maintained the contrary. On the questions of discipline and Church government the followers of John Calvin were not to be persuaded to accept the rule of princes in matters of faith and morals. International rivalries and the clash of political interests irritated and still further divided the various schools of Protestantism. When the ‘new religion,’ its forms defined and settled, was established in England and Scotland, in Holland, Switzerland, North Germany and the Scandinavian countries, minorities who would not conform to the religion of the State were penalized and dissent made an offence at law.
Palermo
Authors: Steuart A. Francis
Published: July 2007

Though it is not as much visited as other capitals, Palermo, still the chief town of Sicily, has been a great metropolis in its time. That time is now long ago, but one can still see in it traces that it has wielded sway once, and had the course of history been but slightly different, that it might have rivalled many of the capitals of ununified Italy and all of those of Spain. For fate played Palermo a nasty turn, as we shall see, by subjecting Sicily through her own assent and foolish will to the Aragon domination, long after her quasi-native rulers had ended in Queen Maria. But we are anticipating. Let us go back to earlier times. Palermo began—if we can say that of any town in ancient Sicily, one of the oldest of European countries—as a Phoenician settlement, for Sicily twice was the European outpost against the African invaders, first the Phoenician Carthaginians and then later the Saracens. It, like the rest of Sicily, fell under Greek rule, under Phyrrus, King of Epirus, 276 b.c., but, unlike Syracuse, has no remains redolent of Greece. Then like all Sicily it became Roman (there is a casa romana opposite the Royal Palace), but all the Romans wanted of Sicily was a beautiful province to be filled by cruelly entreated slaves for the benefit solely of the free Romans. After invasions of Goths, Vandals, and other conquerors who passed like locusts, the Byzantines held sway and Palermo was reduced by Belisarius, but they concerned themselves much more about Messina and the slopes of Etna than the Western side of the island in which Palermo lies. The Saracens took it about 835 a.d. Under the African Fatimite Khalifs, in 948, an hereditary Emirate, with its seat in Palermo, was established.
Theodore de Neuhoff
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

Horace Walpole’s charities were on a much larger scale than a perusal of Lord Macaulay’s bitter and waspish character-sketch of him might lead one to expect. Walpole had an especial fondness for relieving the necessities of those poor souls who lay languishing in the many debtors’ prisons of the age. Again and again we find him writing to his man of business to expend for him in this way two, five, or six guineas, as the case might be, for the prisoners in the Compter, the Clink, the Fleet, or the King’s Bench prisons. He would take pains to raise similar subscriptions for them among his friends, would write to the press on their behalf, and in one instance at least he was at the expense of raising a striking memorial over the grave of a heart-broken bankrupt.

Right in the centre of the metropolis, amid the purlieus of Soho, surrounded by play-houses and taverns, there lies a sad little graveyard. Those who read this may often have passed by it. The gates stand ever open in the day-time, there are seats amid the tombs, the poor and the homeless can rest there awhile, and the children make the place their familiar playground. On a wall opposite the entrance is an old and crumbling monument surmounted by a royal crown. The inscription tells us that near that place is buried Theodore, King of Corsica, ‘who died on Dec. n, 1756, immediately on leaving the King’s Bench Prison’; and it concludes with these lines :

‘The grave—great teacher—to a level brings Heroes and beggars, galley-slaves and kings;

But Theodore this moral learn’d ere dead;

Fate pour’d its lesson on his living head—?

Bestow’d a kingdom, and denied him bread.’

The verse is from the pen, as the cost of the tombstone was defrayed from the purse, of Horace Walpole.
Catholic Newspaper
Authors: Moon Gerard
Published: July 2007

A Defence

AUDI alteram farteni! The Editor of Blackfriars has in recent numbers of his periodical encouraged a certain criticism of his Catholic contemporaries. Criticism is of course the inalienable privilege of the Englishman, and I would not suggest that the Editor should forgo this privilege. But it may reasonably be urged that he should allow a witness for the defence to have his say, and give him the same measure of indulgence that he has extended to the destructive critic. What is here written is therefore offered to him in the hope that he will admit the reasonableness of this contention, and listen, if not with agreement at least with patience, to an argument which runs counter to his own.

To begin with, I find it necessary to state as fairly as possible the charges which have been levelled against the Catholic press in this country. It will, I think, conduce to clearness if these charges are reduced to certain comprehensive heads, and with this purpose I should reduce them all—from vague to specific condemnation—to three. I think it may fairly be said that the Catholic press has been charged with sectarianism, with uncharitableness, with vulgarity. It will not, indeed, be easy to keep these counts always separate, but the reader will be grateful for some effort at discrimination. I assume also that he will be content if I ignore the references to cross-word puzzles and cookery columns as unessential, and limit myself to the three points just mentioned. The indictment is certainly a serious one, and calls for an answer. Let us try first of all to understand it, and then endeavour to offer a satisfactory defence.
In Defence of John Donne
Authors: Walker Luke
Published: July 2007

Mrs. E. M. Simpson has recently published a study of Donne’s prose works. The author of such a study could not avoid giving some account of those ideas which writers on Donne usually label his ‘Medievalism.’ For no one can read either Donne’s poetry or his prose intelligently unless he is fairly well acquainted with what Donne himself calls the philosophy of the ‘Schoole.’ Seemingly conversant with the whole range of scholastic writers, he had studied St. Thomas Aquinas with particular diligence, and he admired his genius profoundly : indeed he puts him on a level with St. Augustine, and in one place, addressing God, he speaks of St. Thomas as ‘that other instrument and engine of thine, whom Thou had st so enabled that nothing was too minerall and centrick for

A Study of the Prose Works of John Donne,by Evelyn M. Simpson, D.Phil., Oxford. (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press; 1924.) It may not be altogether useless to say here that Donne was born in 1573, and died in 1631. He belonged to a family of which he himself said that no family ‘which is not of farre larger extent and greater branches hath endured and suffered more in their persons and fortunes, for obeying the teachers of Romane Doctrine.’ His mother, who was connected with the family of Blessed Thomas More, was ever a zealous Catholic, serving the Church to the best of her power. His younger brother, Henry, was thrown into prison in 1593 for harbouring a Jesuit named Harrington, and died there of a fever a few weeks later
Aquileia
Authors: Eden Helen Parry
Published: July 2007

As far beyond Venice as Venice is beyond Verona x\. lies the gentle ctiy of Udine, citat zintil as they call it there, for all the common people and all the scholars and poets speak, or can speak, a language like that of the troubadours. The city lies on the level plain of Friuli like a town held by a patron saint on the palm of his hand; but in the midst of it rises an abrupt hill, and under the hill spreads a tree-planted hollow. This hill, say the Udinese, arose at the bidding of Attila the Hun. Every soldier of the Hunnish army contributed a helmetful of earth. And when the great mound was made, the king stood alone on the top to watch the burning of Aquileia.

Forty kilometres of country road lie between Aquileia and Udine to-day; and a vast, silent basilica, a vast silent museum, a scattering of poor farms among vast, silent fields of tall corn and small vines are all that is left of Aquileia when you reach it. The Guide Bleu gives the names of two inns. Personally I saw no sign of them, but then my visit was a short one. Yet when our Lord was born under Augustus in the middle of the great peace, Aquileia was the second town in Italy. It boasted two hundred thousand ‘Roman’ citizens, besides Roman legionaries and a unique con course of foreign merchants; it possessed enormous markets of wine and corn; its palaces, baths, circuses, temples, tombs and triumphal arches were like nothing outside Rome;
A Seventeenth Century Guide to the Imitation
Authors: Makepeace John Foster
Published: July 2007

The purpose of this article is to call the attention of lovers of the Imitation to James Merlo Horstius’s edition of it, the Viator Christianus.

An old copy of this rare, and exceedingly interesting, book—to which a reference is made on page 745 of the lovely English translation (Burns and Oates, 1912) of the Paradisus Animae—came into the present writer’s possession a few years ago. It was published at Cologne in 1643. Its full title is ‘Viator Christianus recta ac regia in caelum via tendens, ductu Thomae de Kempis.’ It is a Latin edition of the Imitation, with quaint marginal notes and curious allegorical prints, and a picture representing Thomas a Kempis himself offering his book to Our Lady. At the top of the picture is the legend ‘In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angello cum libello,’ and at the foot ‘Thomas a Kempis canonicus regularis Obijt A° 1471, 25 Iulij. JEtat 92.’

James Merlo, called Horstius from the place of his birth, was born at Horst, a German village, in 1597, and died in 1644 at Cologne, where he was parish priest of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Pasculo. He was the author, or compiler, of several devotional books besides that unrivalled collection, which every wise Catholic knows well, The Paradise of the Christian Soul. He tells us there that he has surveyed ‘the gardens and pleasure-grounds of every author,’ and culled thence ‘the most notable plants, flowers and shrubs,’ and planted with them ‘a new kind of Paradise.’
The Benson Saga
Authors: Bateman May
Published: July 2007

Obvious pitfalls are in the way of one who writes about a member of his family. Friends and foes alike are ready to raise objections, to discount the value of praise on the score of personal bias, to resent criticism on the grounds that, as Jane Find-later says, £ so often there is something between people of the same family like a pane of glass. You mayn’t know it’s there until you try to touch one another, but it divides.’ Relations with whom we are thrown too intimately, in too frequent contact, never see us, according to this view, in perspective.

None of this applies to the different authors of the Benson Saga. The Bensons must have come together as friends even if the ties of blood had not linked them. Frankly aware of each other’s foibles, not one of which escaped the sense of humour which they had in common, they responded just as impulsively to individual fineness. Passionately interested in each other, indefatigable talkers with an avid flair for argument, no subject, no dogma, however controversial, was taboo. At times, Mr. E. F. Benson explains in the latest volume of the Saga, Mother they metaphorically fell upon each other tooth and nail. As a rule, play was fair. But ‘to argue with Hugh on religious topics,’ according to his brother, ‘was like playing Rugby football under rules framed by himself ! . . .’ When things ‘got too hot,’ however, an onlooker would break up the game.
Fray Bartolome de las Casas
Authors: Wilkinson Maurice
Published: July 2007

Las Casas was a Churchman whose activities in the cause of humanity against the ruthless exploitation of the Indians by the Spanish colonial adventurers are well known and appreciated by many, and due credit has ever been rendered him by Protestant historians : but it is well to realise that he was not a brilliant and solitary exception. The Spanish Churchmen were ever famous for their uncompromising morality. Many of his own order—Pedro de Cordoba, Antonio Monterino and others whom we shall meet, as well as many of the Spanish clergy of every rank—made a no less determined stand for justice against immorality. In 1538 the Pope, Paul III, unequivocally stated the doctrine of the Church.

Nor were the secular authorities remiss. The Audience of the Indies, Charles V, and Philip II issued order after order and edict after edict against the enslavement of the natives, the theft of their property, and the outrages against their persons. Yet a terrible state of things existed. The trouble arose from the impossibility of controlling at that great distance greedy and cruel adventurers who, sure of the support of their fellows in the remote lands of New Spain, were able to a great extent to ignore all orders and ordinances on the matter. The clergy had more success; for they could and did wield the spiritual weapon of excommunication, and the Spanish adventurers, if in their hearts they did not agree with the humanity of the Church, did for the most part fear her censure.
Third Class Pilgrims
Authors: Attwater Donald
Published: July 2007

A good deal of fuss has been made one way and another about the Catholic Association’s Christmas pilgrimage to Rome; vivid pictures were drawn of the horrors of third-class continental trains, especially at night: the idea of staying in Rome at anything but an hotel was supposed to be particularly revolting : while even the Association itself thought it necessary to print in heavy type a warning extract from the Bull Indictio Universalis fubilaei urging pilgrims to accept discomforts in a spirit of penitence.

Quite apart from the fact that, once a man has made up his mind to visit St. Peter, nothing will stop him, these vaticinators might have kept their breath for their prayers. There were no hardships; and of discomforts, no more than any healthy man or woman, to say nothing of a pilgrim, would regard as an amusing novelty. A pilgrimage is not necessarily and in se a penitential undertaking; contemporary English custom makes of it rather a comfortable conducted tour; the Catholic Association at Christmas hit the mean, so that their 380 representatives of Great Britain and Ireland, having the right spirit, found the right conditions and could call themselves pilgrims without an incredulous grin.

There were no hardships—but there was heroism, for not all the travellers were young and strong. There were many old folk and some in bad health, to whom hard seats and full carriages and sleepless nights were far more than a mere passing irksomeness. Their patience and devotion are to be remembered with humility, rather than to be written about with fulsomeness.
The Last Bulwark of Christendom
Authors: Shove Herbert
Published: July 2007

Time was when English judges could say, without apparent insincerity, that the Christian religion was part of the Law of the Land. That was how the judges put it; what they meant was that at least theoretical acquiescence in Christian principles was assumed in those for whom the Law was framed and administered. In fact, that England was ‘a Christian country.’

The beatitudes were always, and perhaps necessarily, outside the Law’s purview. But there used to be some attempt to enforce the Ten Commandments. To-day, the blasphemy laws, though never repealed, have long been a dead letter. And the London traffic may, it seems, be held up for a triumphal procession of any idol—whether it be the symbolical figure of ‘Big Business’ or the living person of Rudolph Valentino. But not, of course, for one of the True Incarnate God in His own Corporeal Presence. The offer of such a spectacle being, one must suppose, too blatantly like wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve to accord with the ‘grand old English Public School tradition’ of ‘what’s done.’

A father used to be held responsible for his child’s welfare. And a child was presumed to be under parental control. Now-a-days the Law looks daily with greater favour on the interference of the ‘health visitor’ and the school teacher (non-sectarian). And magistrates listen gravely to stories of how Tommy, aged ten, is ‘beyond control’ and unbirched youngsters file off in the full tide of impudence to the industrial school.
A Modern Donne
Authors: Strong Eugenie
Published: July 2007

It seems strange that the work of so remarkable a poet as M. Andre de Lujan, who is, moreover, a great force in the Catholic world, should be comparatively little known in England. Though his last work, Le Miroir Diving has attracted the notice of some of our best reviewers, it has not by any means received the close study it deserves. The Miroir, like the rest of Lujan’s poetry, commends itself to the critic by the fact, only too rare in works of the imagination, that its thoughts and the way in which they are expressed are so harmoniously fused that the reader cannot dissociate the music of the verse from the spiritual life which it reveals. The following short notes, offered by one who has no claim to criticize poetry, are solely meant to draw attention to the philosophical and religious value of the book. The trend of the thought is already familiar from the poetry previously published by M. Andre de Lujan, a pseudonym borrowed from one of the famous pilgrimage shrines of South America to conceal the real name of a distinguished diplomat. Yet, however great the beauty of his earlier verse, however lofty its intuition, it is now surpassed in the Miroir Divin, where the poetry strikes a note that is quite original in modern literature. Indeed, were we to seek for parallels to Andre de Lujan among contemporary English or French poets, we should discover them with difficulty. In point of fact, this book of French verse brings to the mind of the English reader the religious poets of the seventeenth century, the mystics Donne and Crashaw, the pious Herbert.
Rhythm in Word and Phrase
Authors: Kealey Edward J.
Published: July 2007

A World without rhythm would be a world without joy and sorrow, toil and rest, life and death; a world without its land and water, hill and valley, light and shade, sunshine and storm, springtime and autumn; a world without alternation, relief, contrasting harmonies, and that ‘variety’ which ‘is the spice of life.’

Whence does the placid lake derive its beauty, or the pathless snow? Surely in very small measure indeed from mere placidity or pathlessness. Given the boundless sea with never a wave, no play of light and shadow; or an Antarctic waste of untrodden snow, and who would say ‘How lovely!’? Not so the gallant Scott, as he gazed on the white wilderness around him.

‘O God ! this is an awful place ! ‘was the poignant cry he recorded—not because of the terrible cold, or even the disappointment that met him at his goal, but because of that feature of the Antarctic solitudes that weighs most heavily on the stoutest heart—dreary, unrelieved Monotony.

In every work of nature and of art the human spirit craves for relaxation after effort; in other words, for Rhythm—a ‘flow,’ not of tone, but of tones; variety of tone, not a monotone.

And man’s language is no exception to the rule.

Now I propose to deal here with only one or two of the simpler aspects of rhythm in language, leaving aside the wider subject of rhythm as affecting balance and harmony of ideas.
The Church and Art
Authors: Gill Eric
Published: July 2007

We set out in this essay to make two discoveries. In the first place we have to discover what the Catholic Church has done for Art, and in the second place what, according to the Church, is the relation of Art to Life. The discovery of the practical effect of the Church upon the Arts is of much less moment than the discovery of the necessary implications of Catholic doctrine, for observations upon the fruit of the tree are less important than the knowledge of the tree itself. But as a tree is known by its fruit, so we will attempt to get knowledge of the doctrine of the Church, in the matter of Art and Life, by examining first the artistic product for which the Church may have been responsible. It is true that by examining the artistic product we might, if we conducted the examination with sufficient insight, historical sense, and knowledge, arrive at a true view of the implications of Catholic doctrine, and that, therefore, it would be unnecessary to do more than summarise the results of the examination to discover a Catholic doctrine of the relation of Art to Life. But the artistic product of which the Church appears to be the instigator is so manifold and so various, and the period of time with which the examination would have to deal has seen so many changes and revolutions of thought and manners, that it is better to deal with the matter in two distinct parts, in the first to note simply the material facts, and in the second, not drawing conclusions from the first, to set out, with but brief reference to any examples, the fundamental principles of Catholic faith and philosophy and the resulting aesthetic.
Reminiscences of a Maynooth Professor
Authors: McNabb Vincent
Published: July 2007

In reading these reminiscences we are reminded of Goldsmith’s classical criticism of a third-rate work : ‘This book is easier to write than to read.’ But to enclose Dr. McDonald’s book in an epigram we should have to say : ‘This book is better to read than to write.’ To speak our mind quite frankly, we must be allowed to think that of all forms of literature the Apologia pro vita sua, though sometimes the most literary is seldom the most excusable. No man is at his best when he is seeking to show his moral uprightness or his intellectual consistency. The pharisee reminds us that our best apology before the ultimate tribunal of God is :

‘Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.’ And the wise man was never wiser than when reminding us that our claim to intellectual consistency should be tempered by the conviction that ‘the number of fools is infinite.’

But whilst we should have counselled the Professor of Maynooth not to write his so-called Reminiscences, we cannot counsel his fellow Catholics, and especially his fellow priests, not to read what he has written. It need hardly be said that a book so hot from the heart of a Celt fighting for intellectual freedom must be read with discrimination. Dr. McDonald’s bringing-up was so provincial that he does not recognise how often his sceva indignatio is over little more than the politics of the village pump. Even the O’Hickey case, which might seem to centre round the fate of a dead or a dying language, almost dwindles down to a melodrama on an income of, say, £400 or £500 a year.