bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
French Renaissance Art
Authors: Murdoch W. G. Blaikie
Published: July 2007

Of those who scan this page there are few, if any who have not gone to pay homage to the great medieval churches of France. And surely numerous pilgrims, at Chartres of the world-famous sculptures, or other Gothic fanes of coeval raising, have found themselves asking big questions. If the French school of artists, say from the twelfth century to the fifteenth, were authors of a wealth of fine religious work, did there come from them no fair things in the sphere, after the Middle Ages had passed away, giving place to the Renaissance Period? Or must it be owned, reluctantly, that the ecclesiastical fabrics in the pointed formula, with the carven figures which adorn them, and the embellished sacred manuscripts which were wrought by men who were linked with those halls of orisons, were the ultimate rare exploit of France, in the sacerdotal realm?

In offering tribute to those very few French artists who fashioned beautiful things definable as art of the Renaissance, it is desirable to spend a moment on recalling the character of that great movement. If it is often described as the advent of a new spirit of enquiry, this description is inadequate; for the affair might also be called a deliberate harking back to the Classic or Antique styles in art. Out of the new spirit of enquiry there came in Holland, in the fourteenth century, the inauguration of the printing press, and in Flanders, at the outset of the fifteenth, the inception of oil painting.
The Ethics Rum-Running
Authors: Carpenter Hilary
Published: July 2007

There was romance in old-time smuggling, if the story-books speak true. There is precious Tittle in that present-day form of it called ‘rum-running,’ if James Barbican’s account is to be considered authoritative. It is a cold, hard business proposition, with abundant possibilities of trickery, fraud, bribery, and murder, as a background. That the ethics of rumfunning are, therefore, a somewhat complicated issue will not be surprising.

Why the general title of ‘rum-running’ has been adopted is a mystery. In point of fact, rum is seldom carried. The normal stock-in-trade is whiskey, with ‘brandy and wines for a side-line. It is probably ‘one of the many words used by the American journalist in his love of alliteration.’ The men engaged in the business are titled according to the part they play, and if there are heroes in the game at all they are the ‘rum-runners’ properly so-called. These are they who command the whiskey-ships which lie anchored twenty miles or so off land, contending with storms, pirates and mutiny; they who own the Seabright dories, those small cockle-shell speed-boats by means of which the cargo is landed, and play a lone hand against storms, fogs, revenue cutters, prohibition agents, police and ‘hijackers’; they who drive motor lorries at breakneck speeds for hundreds of miles at a stretch and who are, as often as not, shot down (‘bumped off’ in the slang phrase) either by police or hijackers.
Dominican Missionaries in South America
Authors: Montgomery Francis
Published: July 2007

That little band of Franciscans in the wake of Cortes, who brought the light of faith to the Aztecs, and gave to Mexico, or New Spain, as it was then called, its first bishop, Don Francisco de Zumarraga, had its counterpart in the company of twenty-two sons of St. Dominic, who landed at Santa Marta on the southern shores of the Caribbean Sea, four hundred years ago, July 29th, 1529. Don Tomas Ortiz was their leader, and he in his turn was the first bishop of Santa Marta, the first, indeed, in New Granada. Another of the friars, Don Domingo de las Casas, was a near relative of the intrepid Fray Bartolomé, so conspicuous for his defence of the natives, since he fourteen times crossed the ocean to gain the ear of Charles and of Philip on their behalf.

Don Domingo was selected by Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada as chaplain to his troops on that expedition into the interior which resulted in adding to the Spanish crown the famous empire of the Muysca Indians or Chibchas. It was due, indeed, mainly to the brave friar’s encouragement and exhortations that they eventually reached the great plateau of Bogota and took possession of the capital.

At sight of his soldiers decimated by hunger and thirst, and the appalling difficulties of the passage of the Cordilleras, de Quesada was several times on the point of turning back to Santa Marta, but the good Dominican urged him to press forward and animated his troops by the thought that they were suffering for the eventual triumph of the Faith.
Principles of Catholic Education
Authors: Kolbe F. C.
Published: July 2007

The Catholic Education question has been much discussed from many points of view. Religion, politics, common sense, all have contributed their share. Philosophy also has been by no means neglected. Still it appears to me that the purely psychological aspect has not yet received adequate treatment, and although I do not pretend to be able to provide such treatment myself, yet I think it only fair that we should never point out a defect without first doing our best to remedy it. Therefore, having criticised, I boldly subject myself to criticism in turn, by putting forward some considerations which may serve at least as an essay (in the original sense of the word) on this all-important subject.

We have made large sacrifices in various countries for our convictions. In Ireland, naturally one of the most intellectual countries of Europe, the tempting bait of Knowledge was resolutely put aside when Faithfulness was at stake. In America and the British Empire we are paying for our opponents’ schools as well as for our own. Moreover, we cheerfully deny ourselves many educational and social advantages which are open to those whose theories or consciences are easier than ours. For all these sacrifices we are bound to have solid reasons to give; to ourselves on account of our apparent loss; to our people, on account of the burden laid upon them; to our countrymen, on account of our apparent want of patriotism. Reasons, to be solid, must obviously go to the root of things;
Louis Veuillot and Papal Rome
Authors: L’Estrange J. K.
Published: July 2007

The restoration of the Papal sovereignty, which was happily brought about last year, brings to mind the name of one whose voice was amongst the few in Europe to be raised in sincere and unwavering defence of the Holy See throughout the troubled years of Italian unification. In an age when the flock seemed to be denying Peter, as Peter had once denied his Lord, the ardent crusadership of Louis Veuillot would have sufficiently distinguished an otherwise obscure person; but Veuillot, a man of humble origin, self-educated and self-made in his professional career, has been appreciated as the greatest journalist, and one of the most extraordinary personalities, of the nineteenth century.

He was twenty-five years of age, and had been engaged for eight years in political journalism, when a seemingly chance visit to Rome in 1838 led to his conversion to Catholicism. Now for the first time he found a field for the enthusiastic exercise of his talents. Rome had cast her spell on him and, on returning to Paris, he vowed himself to the service of the Pope and of the Church. Under his direction the Univers, from being an unknown and unimportant journal, became the organ of an articulate Catholic party fighting the anti-clericalism of the reign of Louis-Philippe. Under the Second Empire it stood out as the relentless critic of free thought and religious liberalism, and most of all as the champion of the Temporal Power of the Papacy, already menaced by the Franco-Piedmontese victories of 1859 over Austria, and the subsequent annexation by Victor Emmanuel II of Romagna.
The Lambeth Report-Resolution 15
Authors: Pope Hugh
Published: July 2007

Let us introduce this subject with a quotation from the Church Times.

At the Lambeth Conference of 1920, the Bishops issued ‘an earnest warning-against the use of any unnatural means by which conception is frustrated.’ Their Report continued : ‘We are aware that many persons of undoubted sincerity, whose opinions are entitled to respect, do not share this view, considering the whole matter as chiefly a question of expediency, to be determined on medical, financial and social grounds. This contention we cannot admit, as we believe that the question cannot be separated from the moral and religious issues involved.’

That was ten years ago. This year the Bishops have met again and this time the question of Marriage and the use of Contraceptives found a definite place in the Agenda. Their findings are now familiar. For after saying that:

The Conference affirms (a) the duty of parenthood and the glory of married life; (b) the benefit of a family as a joy in itself, as a vital contribution to the nation’s welfare, and as a means of character-building for both parents and children; (c) the privilege of discipline and sacrifice to this end
Ironic and Socratic
Authors: O'Connnor John
Published: July 2007

‘Plato’s Britannia,’ by Douglas Woodruff, is one of the flowers of the Belloc movement, varying as a flower should, from its common factors. Belloc’s humour is vast, Rabelaisian, abrupt, and his irony is sometimes fierce to the point of self-destruction, but this book is a well-sustained display of pawky fun, almost Caledonian at times, and no intrusion of the bludgeon mars or neutralises the anatomising rapier. The noise is, to our slow ear, sufficiently like the noise of Jowett’s Plato to polish the genial jest. The English find it hard to be patient with the Irish, who return the compliment with interest, but here is an Englishman who sees all sides of what is wrong with the English, sees them steadily, too, and never departs from the serenity of the good physician who seeks above all to cure the patient.

It is an easy book to read rapidly, and yet he who reads too rapidly will miss a great deal, from the ‘Foreword by Peter, Bishop of Philepompus,’ to the promise, more or less veiled, at the end, that the Scots are to have a turn from Plato.’ I have known Mr. Woodruff since his schooldays. I taught him then and have prayed for him ever since ‘(he is not past praying for, then)’ and am frankly amazed at the amount of truth the book contains. (He always was a little liar.) ‘for whatever tincture of the cardinal and other virtues (I am writing in the country, far from books, and have not the complete list by me),’ etc. etc.
Catholic Spain
Authors: de Zulueta Alfonso
Published: July 2007

In the minds of many the recent events in Spain must have raised an uneasy doubt as to the boasted Catholicity of that country. Crowds look on apathetically whilst a relatively small band of ruffians pillage and burn and desecrate those things most sacred to a Christian and a Catholic. For the outburst did not limit itself to a mere schoolboy prank, in undoubtedly bad taste, for the annoyance of the more militant elements of the clerical party; but from such beginnings it spread to an inexplicable fury against all Catholic beneficent institutions, and assumed in churches and chapels the proportions of classic and revolting sacrilege.

Can this, then, be a Catholic country, where such things are suffered without protest, where the people look on apathetically and see the benefactors of their children ejected and the most sacred Mysteries of their religion profaned? The answer, like most answers, requires a careful use of distinctions.
Claudel and His Satin Slipper
Authors: O'Connor John
Published: July 2007

This ill-informed and totally inadequate scribe rushed in to translate Le Soulier de Satin almost before he had read it through. In his awe (of later date) at the magnitude of the task, he was much upborne by the encouragements of the illustrious author, and in the final revisions he had the precious aid of Monsieur and Madame Paul Petit, whose keen scrutiny eliminated many a slack rendering. To them also he is deeply indebted for a glimpse into the mental and spiritual history of the present ambassador of France at Washington. The said Ambassador has translated into French the Unknown Eros of Coventry Patmore.

Claudel began life—intellectual life—as an honest Monist. Possessed by this Calvinism of Philosophy, he realised vividly the interplay of all creatures and their reactions to one another. His high poetic instincts led him on to the mysticism of the mind, less vague and specifically graver than that of Shelley, and here the French genius was never more valuable. He brooded on the nature of things and discovered for himself an Hegelian mystery, that every single reality connotes its opposite : motion connotes rest, and a starting-place as well as a winning-post; reality connotes nothingness; and can it be that there is something which is motion and rest in one, and an All-in-all which can contemplate and contain and actuate the Nothingness? So one Christmas afternoon he discovered how the Infinite had fallen in love with and embraced our nothingness, made it His very own; and from that hour Claudel may be said to have lived anew.
An Oasis in the Desert
Authors: Montgomery Francis
Published: July 2007

If we except the domain of the Soviets, where the schismatic church is in fetters, the small ancient dependencies of Portugal and France, the struggling missions in Japan, China, India, the Malayan States and Islands, Persia, and Asia Minor, nearly the whole of the vast and densely-populated Orient is still immersed in the darkness of error, still aloof from the Christian Faith. There is, however, one bright spot in this all-pervading gloom, one polity which can distinctly claim for itself the title of Christian, one centre in union with the Apostolic See which radiates the light of truth among the pagan nations surrounding it.

The Philippines, which are said to comprise more than seven thousand islands, though only some ten or twelve of these are of considerable size, possess more than eight million Catholics in a population of say ten million. The largest island, Luzon, about the size of Great Britain, is almost entirely Catholic and contains the famed harbour of Manila, capital of the islands and the seat of government. It was in March, 1521, that the Portuguese navigator Magellan on his way back from South America—he has given his name to the straits separating Tierra del Fuego from the rest of that Continent—disembarked at Mindanao, the second largest island of the archipelago, and caused the first Mass to be celebrated there on the 30th of the same month. He himself died on the following 27th of April in the island of Mactan. Forty years later Philip II, after whom the name Philippines, husband of Mary Tudor, decided to annex the islands to Spain and despatched a fleet which set sail from Mexico under the command of Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and arrived at Leyte, one of the islands, in the early spring of 1565.
The World in Transition
Authors: Carter Barbara Barclay
Published: July 2007

Since M. Ferdinand Lot’s vast survey of ‘the most difficult problem of history’ was begun, in 1913, and even since the completion of the French version, in 1921, the movement of events and thought has given it an actuality once suspected only by a few. M. Lot is at pains to discount facile comparisons, pointing out that an economy based on usury is the antithesis of an economy based on credit, that the organisation of the Roman Empire, developed from the city-state and over-ruled by the army, in spite of superficial resemblances, differs radically from any modern government, that the exhaustion of economic resources is not to be feared in the present world; and yet, one cannot read without a continual and uncomfortable sense of precedent and analogv. A footnote, c this was written in 1914,’ has to qualify the statement that progressive economic downfall ‘is a very surprising phenomenon to us, who are accustomed to an ever-growing prosperity.’

As M. Lot shows, even before the barbarian invasions of the fifth century, the Roman Empire was only a ‘ruin in repair,’ disintegrating, in spite of the herculean efforts of a Diocletian, a Constantine, a Theodosius, through ‘the dissolution of its vital forces’ . Wealth is drained away through the growth of ‘tentacular’ cities; the currency, thrice restored, grows increasinglv debased and scarce, and ends by disappearing altogether: taxation becomes a crushing burden, and Diocletian seeks in vain to fix maximum prices for provisions, salaries, and articles of common use.
St. Thomas Aquinas and Thomas Traherne
Authors: Wade G. I.
Published: July 2007

Father D’arcy, in his book on St. Thomas Aquinas, has pointed out that, although the tnought and writings of the saint continued after the Renaissance to be potent influences on the Continent, in England they fell into almost total neglect. ‘E ew among the lovers of the New Learning imitated the example of Erasmus and excepted Aquinas from their censure of the Scholastics. The majority were of the mind of Bacon .... The tradition of medieval thought and culture lingered on in Oxford .... but was seldom, if ever, renovated by an adequate knowledge of the writings of St. Thomas/ And m another passage, ‘No one, save a Catholic, thought of studying his system from the point of view of pure philosophy.’

This is indubitably a fact; and one that renders all the more interesting those individuals who ran counter to so strong a current of national thought and feeling. For there are brilliant, though sometimes unsuspected, exceptions to this general rule of neglect. The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas continued to influence the few if not the many; and of these none is more worthy of note than Thomas Traherne, that most attractive seventeenth century devotional writer, who has been rediscovered by our own age, and who is being proclaimed as one of the greatest mystics England has produced, perhaps the greatest Nature-mystic the world has ever seen. This Traherne, whose limpid poetry and surpassingly lovely prose are attracting more and more readers to-day, owes much of his power to the beauty and wholeness of the personality his writings reveal; and from this point of view it is interesting to discover how deeply he was influenced by the spirit and thought of Aquinas.
On the Poetry of A. E. Housman
Authors: Rope H. E. G.
Published: July 2007

When I was close upon sixteen there appeared a book of poems which was quickly recognised by the judges of literature as a classic. From that verdict there has never been any appeal. A Shropshire Lad is one of the great achievements of English poetry. The author’s vernacular English is chiselled to a Greek perfection, his metrical mastery is triumphant. Until 1922 he published no further collection. To one familiar with A Shropshire Lad, Professor A. E. Housman’s Last Poems betray a notable falling off. Very few of these pieces are worthy to rank with those of the earlier volume; and that which seems to me by far the best I well remember reading in some periodical (was it the excellent Monthly Review?) about thirty years ago, a masterpiece of verbal and rhythmic beauty.
Religious Music
Authors: R.R.T.
Published: July 2007

The words ‘musicology,’ ‘musicologist,’ and the like will not be found in English dictionaries—sufficient evidence that we lack the science which the words connote.

Since Burney’s day, English musical history has been either a safe following of ‘recognised authorities’ or a self-conscious appraisement of national achievements—plagiarism or parochialism, to be perfectly frank. But the ‘authorities’ have usually been a generation or two out of date, and our national achievements have been too rarely measured with those of other countries; hence our defective sense of proportion and our un-catholic (in the literal sense) outlook.

It is, therefore, refreshing to take up a book embodying the latest research, written by a Frenchman who is also a musicologist, and there to find ordered and logical arrangement as distinct from our own haphazard or individualistic methods, together with a Frenchman’s cultural breadth as distinct from our own musical nationalism.
The Council of Ephesus
Authors: Scott S. H.
Published: July 2007

It is a striking instance of the wondrous ways of Divine Providence that the city whose past renown circled round its false cult of ‘great Diana of the Ephesians’ should be the place whence should be proclaimed to the world, and for all time, the Divine Maternity of Mary, παναγíα θεοτόκος, the All-holy Mother of God.

The Council of Ephesus, the fifteenth centenary of which occurs this year, is in importance second only to the Council of Nicaea. That earliest Oecumenical Council affirmed against Arius the Divinity of our Blessed Lord. This Synod of Ephesus by proclaiming the Divine Motherhood of Mary, affirmed against Nestorius, God-Incarnate, One Person in Two Natures, and that Person Divine.

In the controversies that led up to both these Councils the very existence of the Christian Faith was at stake. It was saved in the one by the test-word όμοούσιος (of one substance); it was saved in the other by the touchstone of orthodoxy θεοτóκος (Mother of God).

Nestorius, monk and priest of Antioch, became Patriarch of Constantinople in 428, and soon after, in his presence, the priest Anastasius preached violent diatribes against the term Theotokos.

‘It was impossible,’ cried he, ‘that God should be born of a woman. Let no one call Mary Theotokos, for Mary was but a woman.’ The people were roused. But the Patriarch, instead of showing them that there was little to fear in a term which everyone used, and which had been employed for at least two centuries by great writers, such as Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Didymus, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, Theophilus of Alexandria, and others, himself endorsed the sermons of his chaplain and began to commit to writing and to circulate widely his objectionable doctrines.
Flogging a Dead Horse
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

Commodities often belie the promise of their labels, a failure noticeable in other things as well. Philanthropy turns out to be rather unfriendly, industrialism does not make for industry, a libertarian state denies the right of free association, and expels the Jesuits.

The name ‘Rationalism’ conveys the impression of something hard-headed and matter-of-fact, which scrutinizes everything in the cold light of reason, and is not averse from giving a cold douche to the emotional postulates of piety and idealism—and all that.

Accordingly, a Catholic, picking up The Rationalist Annual for 1932, might perhaps be expected to fortify himself with the thought that still le coeur a ses raisons .... But as he reads, and especially if he is a Thomist, the conviction grows that in reality the roles are reversed. He begins to feel like Charles Kingsley’s East Wind blowing into a centrally-heated hall. He must mind his manners, for he has entered a religious edifice charged with all the earnest feeling of of an ethical society; an atmosphere (to argue like a Rationalist) heavy, not with the fumes of incense, but the steam of damp umbrellas and goloshes. And if he stays, he must resist the temptation to scoff.
Catholics and the Open Road
Authors: Foster Thomas
Published: July 2007

The movement from the town back to the country is typical of to-day, and the call of ‘the open road’ was never so much heeded in England since the days when pilgrimages were a part of our national life. While twenty years ago only a very few enthusiasts went into camp or took to tramping for the duration of their holidays, to-day these pastimes are rapidly becoming universal. In America and on the Continent—especially in Germany—this movement has become an established part of the national life, and here in England it is on the brink of assuming like proportions. For this reason alone it is at least a matter of interest to Catholics.

Even the staid Nonconformist News-Chronicle has become its sponsor, and there are several magazines, including a new monthly, devoted entirely to the joys and advantages of an informal holiday in the open air. In addition, there are many clubs and similar organisations—both local and national—which have for their end the popularisation of the open road. What is more significant is that the first of a chain of youth hostels—where a night’s lodging can be had for a shilling—was opened at Winchester only a few weeks ago.

It is all so natural and at bottom so right; it is part of that revolution—or revulsion—against the drab gloom of the city that has been steadily growing in intensity for the last two or three decades and has produced, among other things, the Garden City Movement and Mr. Chesterton’s Distributism.
The ‘White Brothers’ of Saint-Malo
Authors: Balfour M. C.
Published: July 2007

On the day of the Fête-Dieu or Corpus Christi in Saint-Malo and the surrounding district known locally as the Clos-Poulet, the windows of all the confectioners’ shops, large and small, are heaped with little bags of dragées or sugared almonds, known (on this occasion only) as Cornets-de-la-Saint-Jean. Till recently it was also the custom to sell them in the streets, when from early morning the cry could be heard:

‘Les cornets de la-Saint-Jean,

Pour les petits et pour les grands,

A chacun pour son argent . . .’

—and there were few who could not spare a few sous to buy them, if only to give away to the children. But as their name indicates, these cornets do not really belong to the festival at all and were only transferred to it when la-Saint-Jean fell more or less out of observance; in earlier days it was on the 24th of June that they made their appearance, and if one goes back further their origin is as interesting as it is remote. For the Cornets-de-la-Saint-Jean have a history that dates back some six hundred years, and they are all that is left to-day—these gay and gilded little ‘pokes’ of sugared almonds—of a very ancient and noble Confraternity.

It was somewhere about the year 1240 that, under the auspices and with the support of the Bishop Geoffroi, the Confraternité des Frères-Blancs de Saint-Jean was first founded at Saint-Malo; and there still exist very precise details of its earlier years in certain ancient MSS, some of which (originals or copies) are now preserved in the archives of the town.
Faith
Authors: Maynard Theodore
Published: July 2007

Must I submissive bow to earth my head?

Restrain the restless daring of my mind?

Bound by the palimpsests of men long dead,

Live in the daylight as a man made blind?’

‘Yea, lowly bend thy stubborn neck and knees,

And thou shalt win what thy proud ardours seek.

This pathway leads to kindled mysteries

That none have ever seen except the meek.’

‘Never for me such craven sacrifice!

Bravely I go upon a lonely quest.

I will not fold my hands and close my eyes

To gain an easy and ignoble rest.’

‘So thou hast courage? Test it. Thou shalt find

Precipitous the pathway to be trod.

Summon the utmost valiance of thy mind.

Only the audacious ever win to God.’

Theodore Maynard.
Shadows
Authors: Balfour M. C.
Published: July 2007

When a summer visitor goes to Saint-Malo, he sees the obvious; the ancient town peering over her encircling walls, the narrow streets and tall old houses, the great church with its single soaring steeple and the arrogant castle of the Duchess Anne: very interesting if he cares for such things and likes to inquire into their history, very picturesque if he prefers to take them only at their scenic value. And in most cases he is probably content so to regard them, or to read of them in the common or garden guide-book. But for those who care to look a little deeper, Saint-Malo has other and more intimate tales to tell—tales that are sometimes based on history and sometimes have grown out of tradition, and oftenest of all belong to both. And these tales have left shadows behind them—shadows that like ghosts still linger about her shores as in her houses, and if unseen are at least unforgotten to-day. Assuredly, on both sides of her, seaward and river-ward, there are places that have every right to be remembered.

On the Sillon, the roadway that links Saint-Malo to the mainland, there stands opposite the casino, a cross of granite. I was not able to discover its precise date, but it is said to be very old; it is known locally as the ‘Stone-Cross’ and a story is told of its origin for which there seems to be little reliable authority. Be that as it may, it serves now to mark a spot on the beach above which it stands that is a place of very notable memories; there is nothing else now left to record them—and yet these memories are actual history, and not only tradition.
Dominicas for Persia
Authors: Rice Cyprian
Published: July 2007

The news that Dominicans—and English Dominicans—are, under the active encouragement of the Holy See, to recommence work in Persia is calculated to stir our blood and turn our thoughts towards that ancient country, and Dominican connections with it.

‘ Behold, I make all things new ’—such is the glorious claim of Jesus Christ and, through Him, of the Church. In the fourteenth century Dominicans, encouraged by Pope John XXII, went out to Persia and did a great work there among the Armenians. So great, indeed, was the expansion of Dominican missionary work in the East, that a special congregation within the Order, named Fratres Peregrinantes,’ was set up, and certain distinctive features in their costume —a red sash or cummerbund, and red socks—marked out its members from the rest. The story of the reunion, effected by our friars, of large bodies of Armenians together with their clergy, is a curious one. So great was the prestige of the Order among them that the Armenian liturgy was abandoned and the Dominican liturgy, translated into Armenian, put in its place. This step proved in the’ long run to have been imprudent. Those who, among the Armenians, had refused to join the movement protested loudly, and with some justification, against so unwise an abandonment of the ancient and beautiful Armenian rite, and this was, no doubt, among the causes wdiich ultimately brought about the arrest and decline of a work so gallantly begun.
Since Then
Authors: Jarrett Bede
Published: July 2007

What a whirl of memories are stirred up by this new book of Sir Philip Gibbs! To read its pages is to be confronted by forgotten hopes, by noble plans that failed of their purpose, and again by ignoble greeds that equally failed to secure the accomplishment of their designs. Even the mistakes of postwar policies are hardly less in evidence than the inability of selfishness to establish its controls. A cynic would have merely given a catalogue of the blunders of the politicians; a sentimentalist would have talked glibly of the records of disarmament, of the League of Nations, and of the increase of the standard of comfort of the working man. Sir Philip is neither cynic nor sentimentalist, at least he is neither for very long, though he is sometimes each by turns : however, he chiefly sets himself to the task of telling us the story of what has actually befallen our world since the war ended. By ‘our world’ is meant exclusively the world that went to war. Thus Spain, the first of the dictatorships, the earliest of the new fashion of government, gets no mention : Holland and Scandinavia are equally and deliberately ignored.

But the spirit in which the book is written is amply demonstrated on the front page of it: it is called Since Then, The Disturbing Story of the World at Peace. You realise that Sir Philip is considerably disturbed by what has happened since the war ended; and as you read the volume, and especially as you read the last pages of it, you also realise why he is disturbed.
The Cardinal of Lorraine
Authors: Manson ÆLfric
Published: July 2007

The sub-title of this work is ‘A study in the Counter-Reformation,’ and this indicates its real importance. As Mr. Evennett remarks, the unfortunate name ‘Counter-Reformation’ invites a disastrous over-simplification’: it was not a mere reaction to the ‘Reformation’ —another misnomer—it was a most complex movement’ : it was ‘essentially a hybrid.’ The present volume deals with that curious and interesting group of moderate men—among whom the Cardinal of. Lorraine is the most significant figure —that became a vital centre in France during the period between the election of Pius IV, December, 1559, and ‘the moment when the Fathers at Trent turned their attention to serious considerations in April, 1562.’ The movement culminated and broke down in the Colloquy of Poissy, and petered out in the Conference of Saverne. It was a lost cause—at least in its eirenic projects—but while it lasted it was ‘one of the gravest crisis for Catholicism,’ and its effect can be felt in the attitude of the French hierarchy in the ensuing sessions of Trent.

The Cardinal of Lorraine, Charles de Guise, Archbishop of Rheims, was regarded by contemporary Protestants as a sinister and untrustworthy person, and later historians have, on the whole, endorsed their view. This attitude is probably in great part due to the permanent inability of the Nonconformist mind to appreciate any greatness that is rich and diverse and unconfined to one single fanatical aim. Mr. Evennett, completing the work of M. Romier, has succeeded in rehabilitating the Cardinal’s character.
Reason and Faith
Authors: Carpenter Hilary J.
Published: July 2007

Those who oppose the acceptance of supernatural truth through the medium! of Faith take up their position, theoretically at least, in the interests of Reason. Speaking largely there are three groups in the opposition. There are those who maintain that the so-called ‘supernatural’ is a mere myth of traditional superstition, rather less crude, no doubt, than the fetishes of uncivilised tribes, escaping the grossness of classical mythology (though lacking the artistic merit with which Greeks and Latins adorned their legends), yet nevertheless merely the more or less finished and elaborated results of a tradition ‘derived from semi-barbarous Hebrew peoples.’ We are told by modern Rationalists that ‘we must cease talking of God in the Biblical sense and, as the foundation of the new order, must supplant theology by mental hygiene. Space is too crowded with stars and universes for heaven above and hell beneath.’

If the supernatural is in truth such a myth, then Faith is mere credulity. It is no better than a child’s belief in bogies and fairies, and is far less excusable because it is exhibited by those who should have the intelligence to know better. Proud Rationalism frowns upon the puerile fantasies of Faith !

The more intelligent antagonists of Faith, however, realise that what is called ‘the supernatural’ cannot be thus easily and conveniently disposed of. To some extent it has to be reckoned with as an aspect of reality. They attempt, therefore, to eliminate Faith on the ground that what is called the supernatural is in fact nothing more than the higher reaches of the purely natural.
The Prayer of Christ
Authors: Walker Luke
Published: July 2007

Let me begin by setting down a passage from the now well-known One God and Father of All, by Eric Milner-White and Wilfred L. Knox (pp. 46, 47):

A common argument of Roman writers on the same lines may be noticed here, since it sometimes causes great perplexity. It is said that our Lord in the .great prayer in S. John xvii prays that the Church may be one. This prayer is sometimes described as a ‘creative prayer,’ whatever the words may mean. If they mean anything, they would seem to be plain heresy, since they would mean that our Lord was simply God, not God made man and therefore subject to the limitations of humanity which made it necessary for Him to pray. More often the argument is used that our Lord at this supreme moment prayed that His Church might be one; we cannot believe that a prayer uttered at such a moment would not be answered. Therefore the Church must be one. But the Roman Church alone claims to be the one Church; therefore the one Church for which our Lord prayed is the Roman Church.

But it would be equally legitimate to argue that at an even greater moment in the crisis of the Passion our Lord prayed, ‘Let this cup pass from me.’ Consequently this prayer could be used to show that, as some early heretics held, He did not really die upon the Cross, but substituted for Himself a phantom or Simon of Cyrene. Obviously our Lord’s prayer in S. John xvii proves nothing more than that the Church ought to be one—which everyone admits. The argument is ludicrous.

With some things in this passage I could not, of course, agree, but with one thing at least I do agree, and that is with the dislike expressed in it for calling Christ’s prayer a ‘creative prayer.’
Hungary After Trianon
Authors: Cunningham Charles
Published: July 2007

If there is one thing which, above all others, impresses the mind of the casual traveller through post-war Hungary, it is the amazing resistance to an adverse fate which the people of this Central European country are presenting. Rhapsody—the word most frequently thought of in connection with Hungary—according to my dictionary means : an enthusiastic, high-flown utterance or composition. Well, in so far as its application to post-war Hungary is concerned, this word means something totally different. Hungary’s greatest rhapsody, something infinitely finer than Liszt ever dreamed of, is the slow, firm, unwearying heroism with which she is meeting the trials of Trianon.

Before attempting to show what an amazingly plucky fight Hungary has made since the war, it is necessary that I sketch very briefly the condition of the country before that upheaval.

A thousand years ago the Magyars crossed the Carpathians and settled in the fertile lands to the west; and, from, the time of King and Saint Stephen in the eleventh century, when the nation embraced the Catholic faith, to the commencement of the last war, these people have gone on and on, steadily building up a national culture and a national feeling second to none throughout the world. As early as the fifteenth century, under the rule of Matthyas the Magnificent, Hungary was known as the most brilliant renaissance kingdom in Europe. By the fourteenth year of the present century the country had achieved a civilisation which could not but deeply impress all who came within its influence.
An Experiment in Africa
Authors: Martindale C. C.
Published: July 2007

In 1098, Robert, Abbot of Citeaux introduced into his monastery an adaptation of the Rule of St. Benedict and thus grave rise to what is popularly known as the Cistercian Order. From this proceeded such houses as Fountains, Tintern, Melrose, Buckfast and Furness, the last two descending from the Cistercian house of Savigny, as also did La Trappe in France, founded in 1122. In 1664, the ‘Thundering Abbot,’ whom a recent biography has made more familiar if not too attractive amongst us, re-reformed his monastery, not least along the lines of manual labour : hence the ‘Trappists.’ It was these whom Bishop Ricards, vicar-apostolic of the Eastern Province of Cape Colony, begged, in 1879, to come to his assistance in South Africa; and in July 1880, a contingent of fifty arrived at Port Elizabeth. A start was made at Dunbrody. The locality proved too obdurate, and in 1882 the community removed to Durban and thence went inland to what is now Mariannhill. It seems difficult for religious congregations in South Africa to survive satisfactorily as branches of their original group : in 1909 the Mariannhill Traopists separated them selves from the Traopists, and became the ‘Religious Missionaries of Mariannhill,’ a congregation devoted entirely to South African work. Numbering at prespnt about two hundred and fifty, of whom more than half are lay brothers, and predominantly German in nationality, the Fathers work in a very great number of mission stations, not only in Natal, but in the Cape Province and in Rhodesia, confining their work (save quite incidentally to the native population.
St. George and the Dragon
Authors: Stanton A. J. Francis
Published: July 2007

That ‘an Englishman is never so happy as when he is miserable’ is true up to a certain point, but we nave got far beyond that point; hence there is none to the paradox.

Englishmen just now are very miserable indeed, for there is no misery quite so poignant as that which comes from the lowest depths of pessimism. What we need in these days is fervent and true patriotism, and there is a great gulf fixed between patriotism and pessimism.

Patriotism is derided and scoffed at in England, though, curiously enough, not in ireiand, Scotland or even wales. Yet there never was a time when we Englishmen more needed true patriots, a rallying cry and a cause. The trouble is that whilst glorying in our history, we are coming to believe that we have no first-class possibility for the future. We are accepting as a first axiom that we are doomed to become a second-rate country. The peril is not so much our politics as our pessimism; not so much the Dole as the Dumps.

As a country our hopes are deteriorating, our ideals are drooping, our enthusiasms are withering. We are not moving through the desert, we are settling down there. Over England there spreads the pale cast of cynicism. We are losing heart, and when a nation loses heart, it loses everything. It is not that we are making bricks with a shortage of straw, rather that we are building without a plan. We do not know what to build. We quake and whine in the daily press and in the monthly magazines as though we were for ever vanquished.
A Landmark in Liturgical Art
Authors: M.B.
Published: July 2007

The worst enemies of an art are those of its own household, the people with natural talent but no aesthetic education, and whose technical training too often merely gives them greater facility in expressing and more show of authority in propagating their own bad taste. For how many art schools, even among the best, teach anything of the general and fundamental principles on which all craftsmanship should be based? In an age of classic art instinctive good taste might be looked for as part of natural talent, but in these days the critical faculty is warped before it has time to develop, by low standards in music, literature, architecture and art in the narrower sense of the word, whether domestic, decorative or pictorial. Even Rubens, for all his genius, did not escape the coarsening influences which the later Renaissance left behind it; and his pictures could never be universally loved for their beauty as are those of a Fra Angelico who, although his drawing is not always accurate, had lived in fourteenth century Florence. How many potential musicians might be found in a jazz band, writers among journalists who have never read an English classic, and artists in the perpetrators of the so-called devotional art displayed in ‘Catholic repositories.’

L'ouvroir liturgique, quoted in Vestments and Vesture (pp. 220-221) on the subject of professional workshops, says:

The unlucky thing is that everyone imagines that he himself possesses that quality of good taste which, in the realm of the beautiful, occupies the position which belongs to good judgment in the realm of reason—innate qualities both of them, but capable of development by practice and study. They require a clear vision, deliberate choice, and the power of drawing the particular out of the general . . . The aesthetic part of the work should be allotted to persons with aesthetic gifts and training.
Contributism
Authors: Le Huray C. P.
Published: July 2007

Of social panaceas there is no end, and after G. K. C.’s Distributism comes Mr. J. R. Bellerby’s Contributism. As the author of A Contributive Society promises us a criticism of the idea contained in that book during the present year, it would seem unfair for a mere layman in the economic world to enter the lists of criticism before the appearance of that second work. But it may be shrewdly suspected that it is only the latter part of the book, containing the reconstructive ideas, which will be submitted to this self criticism, and an examination of the premises on which the scheme of social reconstruction is based may not come amiss. In any case, the critical volume may be anticipated with unmixed feelings, for how rarely do authors develop into critics of themselves.

Mr. Bellerby’s description of what he is pleased to call the ‘economic system’ gives the impression that he has been shown round by someone who regards that system with complacency. It has weak points, he admits, but it is a good machine which only requires better oiling and one or two minor replacements to function perfectly.

Throughout his analysis of what he calls the economic system (although many of us are inclined to regard it as the economic scramble), he makes use of terms which, like the words used by Humpty-Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, mean just what he intends them to mean. He speaks of ‘goods’ not ‘commodities’ —a vital distinction.
A Note on Saint Joan and Bernard Shaw
Authors: O'Connor John
Published: July 2007

To use the dialect Shaw loves and uses so well, he is ‘as cute as a pet fox,’ and I for one believe him when he says that many Catholics approved of his treatment of Saint Joan. What I refuse to believe is that a man of his cool judgment on so many matters could go ‘blind and bald-headed’ into that intricate subject, Amazing, truly, in the trial scene of his play is the elaborate care with which he states the case for the established order. Yet lo! the snare spread in full sight of the bird, and the birds of the less experienced order have been caught—with chaff. Shaw’s chaff in this case is an error in a matter of fact and a misreading of even the fact under his eyes. He dismisses in a word the whole rehabilitation of Saint Joan, he whitewashes Cauchon thick as plaster of Paris, and he muddles the end of the trial to justify his view of Cauchon.

In a recent article in Blackfriars it was well and truly shown how the Dominicans befriended the Maid as much as the said Cauchon would let them, which was very little indeed. It is all very fine for Shaw to ignore everything in the Rehabilitation, which was commanded by the Pope to be reopened after it had failed twice over. It is all finer still for him to ignore the pulverization administered by Andrew Lang to Anatole France’s (whatever his real name was) two-volume sneer at everyone of Joan’s century, but the man who says that all men are liars even on oath in a ‘superstitious’ age, cannot himself escape being thought a somewhat excessive liar. All this Shaw gladly risks, at the expense of ruining the best dramatic points in the muddled trial scene of his play, in order to get at the Church, and not the Church of those days, but of all time.
Charity and Justice
Authors: Fox S. F. Darwin
Published: July 2007

Shelley told Leigh Hunt in the duomo at Pisa that a new religion might be founded on charity instead of faith. It is in quite another sense that it is now so often and so passionately declared that what is wanted is not charity, but justice; further, that charity is only possible in an unjust society. It is one of the gravamina against the Gospel that it says so much about charity. ‘Curse your charity!’ was the legend on a Hyde Park banner. And ‘Christian-Socialist’ divines go so far as to say : ‘We do not want brotherhood, but justice.’ The reason is obvious. Brotherhood speaks of sympathy and helpfulness, of mercy and gratitude; whereas what is demanded is rather equal rights.

So St. Simonism, that pantheistic and epicurean religion of humanity, had for its object ‘the harmonious development of human society by the establishment of justice, and the increase of well-being and comfort.’ Roaring Camp and Poker Flat have also this aim.