bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Marie Stopes Comes to Oxford
Authors: Post J. Shrady
Published: July 2007

Population is vexation,Genetics are as bad;The law of God perplexes me,And babies drive me mad

Ostensibly to deliver a serious lecture, but actually to spread birth control propaganda, Dr. Marie Stopes came to Oxford. Her talk, which had been announced as a scientific one, soon wandered off into a maze of confusing statistics and sentimental appeal. Having tried vainly to disentangle these elements from the rest of the text, the casual observer must be forgiven for wondering whether Dr. Stopes is ever capable of either scientific or logical thought.

Dr. Stopes, who is a doctor of philosophy and not a medico, is a lively and amusing speaker, as well as a woman of considerable charm, but it is difficult to decide whether she is a sentimental scientist or a scientific sentimentalist.

Taking her audience into her confidence at the very start, Dr. Stopes, very prettily, asked them please to stop smoking, not only because it hurt her throat, ‘but because,’ with a slight feminine flutter, ‘I just don’t like smoking.’ Having taken this womanly prerogative, she launched into her unwomanly subject with considerable vigour.
Architecture, The Expression of Religious Life
Authors: Grant Julia
Published: July 2007

Terribilis est locus iste’ are the opening words of the Mass for the Dedication of a Church and the exceeding power of that phrase is perhaps never more completely realized than when one enters for the first time one of the famous old Churches of Western Christendom. Even a slight knowledge of the awesome weight of Christian thought and tradition entering into its creation, overpowers one, for every truly great temple raised to the Glory of God is a meditation of centuries, written in stone. The continuity of development of our Catholic art inspires us with a deep sense of pride in its glorious past and of responsibility to the future. Because it is a real duty to try to appreciate the vast treasure of Christian expression in all its originality and depth of thought, as it is to preserve and to hand on what is best and noblest in our precious inheritance of the fine arts.
Dr. Johnson and Miss Hill Boothby
Authors: Bracey Robert
Published: July 2007

Some fourteen years after Boswell’s Life of Johnson was given to the world there appeared a small collection of Letters addressed to Dr. Johnson which had found no place in the great Biography. These were contained in a slim volume published in London in 1805 and bearing the title Original Letters to Dr. Johnson by Miss Hill Boothby. The little work has never once been re-printed, although some few extracts from it are to be met with in the notes to Dr. Birkbeck Hill’s edition of Johnson's Letters, and it has occasionally been referred to by other commentators. A copy of this now exceedingly rare book lies before us as we write, and suggests to us to set down something about one of the most singular of Dr. Johnson’s many friendships.

When Johnson was a very young man, poverty-stricken and unknown, he paid the first of many visits to his friend, the Rev. Dr. Taylor, of Ashbourne, in Derbyshire. There, we are told, ‘the daughters of some of the Derbyshire squires showed their good taste and good sense by desiring the company of the young genius, poor and unpolished as he was.’ Or, as Miss Seward, the ‘Swan of Lichfield,’ most appalling of poetesses, and a life-long enemy of Johnson, preferred in her acid and waspish way to put it, ‘They probably amused themselves with the uncouth adorations of the learned though dirty stripling, whose mean appearance was overlooked, because of the genius and knowledge that blazed through him, albeit with umbered flames owing to his spleen and melancholy.’
The Murder at Blois
Authors: Hudson Derek
Published: July 2007

December 23rd, 1588.

To us, who look back on it after three hundred and fifty years, the murder at Blois seems an inevitable climax to the continued provocation suffered by Henry III at the hands of his most powerful follower ; but to the Duke of Guise, save in the last few minutes of all, it was a thing undreamed of and unfeared. ‘So blind was that high mind of his to things as clear as daylight,’ says Pierre de l’Estoile, that ‘he could not bring himself to believe that the King intended to do him an ill-turn; for God had blinded his eyes, as he generally does to those whom he designs to chasten.’

In July of the year 1588, five months before the day of his death, the Duke, fresh from a victory in Alsace, rode triumphantly into Paris—and the King trembled at his subject’s approach.

Henry de Guise was thirty-eight years of age. He was tall and well built. His hair was fair and curly, and he wore a close-trimmed beard. Across his left cheek still showed the scar which had been inflicted on him at the Battle of Dormans, thirteen years before, but he was none the less handsome for that. His was the perfect figure of a soldier. All were devoted to him, for his generosity, for his tireless energy, for his prompt actions and decisions. ‘Franee went mad over this man,’ said Balzac, ‘to say they loved him is too weak an expression.’

At once, on the day of the Barricades, he won a personal triumph.
Elegy in A Country Churchyard
Authors: Mathew David
Published: July 2007

It is a misfortune for those writers who base their character sketches on historic fact that they are tempted so often on to ground where it is necessary for the success of their artistic effort that they should form some conception of the reactions and background of the Catholic mind. In the recent past no difficulty was experienced in England in this matter. That reasoned and subdued religious temper which was the legacy of the matured Anglican tradition provided a secure fortress for the spirit from which the ecclesiastical archaeologist could sally forth on those delectable voyages of Victorian discovery. It was a time, too, in which historical episode had to bend itself to the slow movement of the lych gate and attune itself to the dust-laden sunshine of a rector’s study, to the ink wells and the long quill pens, to the Bible and the calf-bound books of sermons, and sometimes to those early, temerarious volumes of an Anglo-Catholic theology, before it could hope to reach the light of print. The broad lines of political history might be seized by some Whig historian, fashionable and remote, but how completely and with what slow content did this clerical atmosphere pervade the Tory camp. But it was never a purpose of the influential Whigs to concern themselves with monks and the old Church life and the Elizabethan priesthood, and it was in the vicarage gardens of the English country that such trees of knowledge grew.
Whistles of Silver
Authors: Eden Helen Parry
Published: July 2007

’ On the contrary part there was no warlike Musicke in the Spanish Gallies, but onely their whistles of silver.’—Hakluyt's ‘Voyages.’

At four o’clock on a June morning of the year 1624 the sister and niece of Master Isaak Fettiplace, Parson of Kintonbury Parva in the County of Dorset, came down to put the Parson’s study to rights while the Parson was still a-bed. The elder woman opened the casement and a warm mist lapped in from the sea, whose purling waves, visible at the base of eroded chalk-cliffs, foretold a tropical day. Her daughter, with a bundle of kindling in her apron, approached the hearth. Contrary to his custom, the Parson had demanded a fire on his return from London the night before, and had sat up late by it. The women, wakeful and a trifle anxious, had heard him move up to his bed-chamber hours after midnight. Now the embers must be swept up and the pyre between the heavy steel dogs re-laid.

‘He hath burnt his journal!’ —the cry came from the niece, on her knees before the hearth.

‘He hath burnt his journal?’ —it was the incredulous riposte of the mother, wheeled round to face the scene of catastrophe.

Flake upon flake of burnt paper, steel-grey like the ‘debris of a wasps’-nest, mingled with, where they did not cover, the brands of the extinct fire. A binding of pig-skin, wrenched off before the rest of the folio met its fate, lay under the Parson’s table.
Russia and Reality
Authors: Prince J.F.T.
Published: July 2007

I was staying a few days in a Missionary College, where two hundred boys, of all ages and types, are doing their schooling, so that when they go forth to teach all nations they shall not be found wanting. I had said the Community Mass, and was making my thanksgiving. Two little boys—my servers—were putting out the candles, they were solemn-eyed, radiant, and the red of their cheeks outshone the crimson of their soutanes. I was distracted: insistently those children associated themselves with something. Remotely, subconsciously, an analogy was forming. But for the time I got no further. In the evening I remembered. I had been walking, and when I returned the college was wrapped in a toga of mist, the hills were frosted, the world white and grey, transfigured by the moon. A year back—almost to the very day— rattling through a land of frozen forest and morass, I had been sitting for twelve hours in a railway carriage. Opposite me were two young Bolsheviks. It was they (I realised with a shock) in their crimson exuberance that co-ordinated and completed my analogy.

They, too, were missionaries, those Bolsheviks. They even hoped to convert me. They, too, were ardent, sincere and well instructed. But the gospel they preached was not of the Saviour of mankind. Their gospel was the story of despair, man made, man tricked, man rebellious, self-assertive against he knows not what. (For here is a generation that cannot admit the God its heart is seeking, and secretly has always loved.)
Magni Nominis Umbra
Authors: Knox Ronald
Published: July 2007

Every scribe instructed in the kingdom of heaven is like to a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure new things and old. (Matt, xiii, 52).

My text is one of those which we are accustomed to carry in our heads without remembering the occasion upon which the utterance was made, and, partly for that reason, to hesitate about the precise meaning we should attach to it. It comes, actually, at the end of that great chapter, his thirteenth, in which St. Matthew has collected for us seven of our Lord’s parables, six of which, if not all seven, deal with the growth of his kingdom, the Church; the Sower, the cockle among the wheat, the mustard seed, the leaven the hidden treasure, the merchant seeking pearls, the net cast into the sea. And four are particularly concerned to point out to our Lord’s hearers that his kingdom was not, as some of them imagined, to be a clean sweep of all that went before it, a complete break-away from all human experience. It was not to be a millennium, in which all sin and suffering would have disappeared ; those who were partakers of it would not be all perfect souls, already confirmed in goodness and destined for eternal life. No, the new kingdom or ecclesia of Christ was to be in some ways like the old ecclesia, the old congregation of the Jews. There would still be tares among the wheat, worthless fish among the catch, side by side with the others.
Thomism for the Times
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

He witness of The New Scholasticism, a quarterly review and the organ of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, to a vigorous Thomist movement in the United States, is confirmed by a book recently published, Contemporary Philosophy and Thomistic Principles, in which Thomism is presented as a complete and authentic philosophy, not a sort of philosophical parasite on a religion of authority; and as a philosophy able to meet present problems and complete the solutions advanced by modern thinkers. It lays the ghost, evoked by Mr. Wyndham Lewis in Time and the Western Man, of a Thomism incurably conservative, forever the old against the new, anti-modern in a stupid historical manner. The page-references to Aquinas, Thomas, steadily grow in the index to names in books of science and philosophy. His name comes readily to the journalist’s pen and the mouth of that public which reads the review pages of the more serious dailies, and a lady over the tea-pot can quite easily remark, ‘Of course, Mr. So-and-so, you know, is a tomist.’

Dr. Bandas begins with a particularly firm and downright piece of writing on Fundamental Principles (Chapter I). The foundation of Thomism on Being is clearly indicated, as well as the transcendental value and immunity from empirical criticism of the principles immediately deriving from Being—identity and contradiction, substance, sufficient reason, causality.
Shanghai—Japan's Justification: By a British Resident
Authors: Anstice E. H.
Published: July 2007

It is March, and an uneasy armistice rules in Shanghai. Now that the dust and heat of the conflict have subsided, passions and prejudices run a little less high, and the demands of the actual moment are less insistent and exclusive, there is time to look back on the events of the past five weeks; to attempt to arrive at a considered judgment on the rights and wrongs of the situation; to ask whether the chorus of condemnation with which Japan’s actions have been greeted in certain quarters is justified, if the disapproval, tacit or otherwise, which the West seems to have chosen to exhibit, is fair.

The first thing to be remembered is that the provocation suffered by Japan was considerable, far greater in fact than appears to be realised except by those who were witnesses of it. Not only was there the boycott with all its attendant illegalities of confiscation and intimidation, there was also the constant outpouring of a rancorous anti-Japanese propaganda of the most hostile and insulting character, which was condoned, if it was not actually inspired, by the Government; and there were the constant outrages and indignities suffered by Japanese residents. To secure redress by the ordinary methods of diplomatic intercourse was impossible. Protests were unavailing, for the Government, even if willing to control its subjects, was unable to do so. Moreover, with the overthrow of Chiang Kai Shek’s administration there was only a very shadowy government to protest to and negotiate with. Nor was China’s past record such as to inspire trust.
The Area of Catholic Controversy
Authors: Valleley Charles
Published: July 2007

The area of possible controversy among Catholics is of course wide—as wide as the life of the man who is head or member of a family and a citizen. Controversy has been common enough among members of the Church in the past. It is inevitable when essentials of the Faith are concerned, and has rightly gone beyond mere words when schism or heresy raised its. head, as in the time of the Albigenses. More recently, bitter debate has been justified when the implication touched some basic principle and Rome felt called to intervene, as with the Jansenists or, in the more definitely political sphere, with the Action Française. There are lower fields of controversy, aesthetic, literary and purely political, where there is difficulty in finding justification, where the well known dirty-linen metaphor stands as a warning against entry, and where as a general rule debate should be restricted as far as reasonably possible.

There have been one or two examples recently of foolishly provoked controversy among Catholics, and in view, for one thing, of the persistence—the extreme urgency in these days—of the call for Catholic Action which first sounded in Rome, it may be worth while reflecting on the position in general terms and as discreetly as possible.
The Teaching Christ
Authors: Valentine Ferdinand
Published: July 2007

In the eleventh chapter of St. Matthew, Our Lord says (v. 29):

‘Take up my yoke upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: And you will find rest for your souls.’

These words are patient of a threefold interpretation:

First, Christ might be pointing to himself as the exemplar, and mean: Learn meekness and humility of me. This is the usual and popular interpretation of the text; though there can be little doubt that so understood it was not intended by Christ and is an accommodated sense. The correct translation of the conjunction, in the Greek original of St. Matthew, is ‘because’ or ‘by reason of.’ Père Lagrange renders the passage: ‘Recevez mes leçons par ce que je suis doux et humble de cceur.’ ‘Embrace my teaching, because I am meek and humble of heart.’
The Changing Trend of Capitalism
Authors: Betty F. A. Kemmis
Published: July 2007

Though many may disagree profoundly with the conclusions reached in The Coming Struggle for Power, by John Strachey, nevertheless they will admit that they are grateful for its publication. It requires such a book, which challenges all the ideals upon which this and previous generations have been brought up, to rouse people from taking things for granted and to make them ask themselves such questions as ‘whither is our civilization leading us?’

Mr. Strachey has no doubts but that communism is the goal to be aimed at, and that it is also the goal towards which we are being irresistibly drawn. It would be unprofitable to examine in detail the multiplicity of arguments which he has advanced in support of his general thesis, but the general trend of the argument in the book needs careful attention—Mr. Strachey first points to all the evils which at present exist in the world; wars, famine, and poverty on the one side, over-production and accumulation of vast fortunes on the other; periodical crises, booms and slumps; tendencies towards monopolies and nationalism. All these, he says, are the obvious results of capitalism, and it is impossible for capitalism to provide a cure for these evils. This, in brief, is the first stage in his argument, and I think it is worth our while to consider it at some length.
The XIX Centenary of the Redemption
Authors: Callus Daniel M.
Published: July 2007

The beginning of April witnessed the opening of the Holy Year and the proclamation of the extraordinary jubilee. The Redemption is the chief event in history, not only for Catholics, but for everyone for whom Christ is not merely a name, but a living reality. It is out of the Redemption that ‘has come this civilisation in which we rejoice and on which we pride ourselves.’ This event carries with it ‘a wonderful succession of divine gesta,’ above all ‘the institution at the Last Supper of the Holy Eucharist, entrusted to the Apostles, who saw themselves elevated to the priestly order by these words: Do this in memory of Me; the Passion of Jesus Christ, His Crucifixion and His death for the salvation of men; the Virgin Mary, constituted, at the foot of the Cross of Her Son, Mother of all men; then the wonderful Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the sign and assurance of our own; presently the dispensation to the Apostles of the power of forgiving sins; the true primacy of jurisdiction given and confirmed to Peter and his successors; and, lastly, the Ascension of Our Lord, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and forthwith the prodigious and triumphant teaching of the Apostles.’

In his Christmas broadcast, the Pope had said that although 1933 is regarded as the centenary year in the common opinion of the faithful, and that in this they have scientific support, scholars have not yet fixed the date of the Crucifixion with absolute certitude. As some controversy has lately arisen on this point, it may be well to review briefly the grounds on which the date has been traditionally established.
The Anarchy of Ideas
Authors: Prince J. F. T.
Published: July 2007

The case against the moderns is clear enough. Less than three centuries has been sufficient to allow the inductive method an uninterrupted passage through the domain of the physical sciences. And face to face with problems no longer of inanimate nature but of conscious behaviour, the modern mind (for our present purpose essentially the product of inductive procedure) continues unchecked in the impetus of conquest. Infatuated by his discoveries, the scientist incontinently postulates faith in wholly unverified theses—enchanting his disciples with the vague and the transcendental.

Psychology is substituted for metaphysic. Empirical introspection is found a more amusing pursuit than the problems of ontology. Subjective verification is the vogue. To criticise the interrogation of consciousness (to identify introspection with the arrestation of the process under examination) is to return amidst contumely to the Middle Ages. Psychology in its turn is content to take its media axiomata from physiology. There is little resentment at the annexation of mind to matter: attention is unduly urged towards the physical antecedents of what were formerly know as moral states and actions. Nor does the specialist abstain from aggressive dogmatism on matters which lie wholly outside his legitimate province. We are fairly familiar with the physician turned Father Confessor, the journalist turned theologian, the tradesman turned economist. And the hopeless diffusiveness which is mistaken for universality goes hand-in-hand with a mania for unification.
Bolshevik Theory of Jurisprudence
Authors: Prince J. F. T.
Published: July 2007

I remember once hearing a Bolshevik discuss the difficulties of a Soviet representative at an imaginary pan-European rapprochement. I asked him whether ne referred specifically to confusion and embarrassment in ethical issues, and he answered me with a frank outline of the hybrid, and indeed unreal, nature of an entente between traditional Western democracy and the Soviet. He talked, too, I recollect, of the obvious unfruitfulness of external arbitration in matters of justice and discipline in the U.S.S.R.

This was long before M. Litvinoff applied himself (for the benefit of Great Britain) to the defence of the G.P.U. procedure in respect of foreign nationals. If sabotage (an extremely comprehensive term, by the way) is a sin crying to the State for vengeance, and if a man be adjudged guilty by a constitutional tribunal functioning normally, who can complain because the tribunal is the G.P.U., or because (the discharge of its austere commission being a trifle arbitrary) its patients, once convicted, are dispatched swiftly and without show?
Using Art to Sell Beauty
Authors: Brocklehurst Mark
Published: July 2007

As Mr. Hannen Swaffer said some time ago, they are using Art to sell Beauty. The remark was made, I believe, on the subject of the enlightened and progressive windowdressing of the shops in Regent Street, but it applies to quite a large number of things. In the first place, the capital ‘A’ recalls the unfortunate incident described by Anatole France, where the man who had learnt all the Art in the world was suffocated in his own catalogue.

The problem which is called, very impressively, the Adjustment of Art and Life, and which, in theory, has been solved over and over again, is, in practice, the subject of the most discouraging caricature. In spite of intelligent window dressing, of fine buildings and bridges, the ultimate comment, it seems, should be ‘they are using Art to sell Beauty.’

Mr. Gill, with his classical and impersonal precision, again gives us light on the subject.
The Centenary of the S.V.P.
Authors: Kildany Herbert
Published: July 2007

A hundred years ago eight .young law-students of the Sorbonne gathered in the back room of a Paris newspaper office. Tired of decrying the low ebb to which the Faith had fallen in the chaos of the preceding half-century they had decided to put their hopes to the test of action. Under the patronage of St. Vincent de Paul, whose indefatigable zeal for the poor was not yet forgotten, they constituted themselves into a lay confraternity with the object of achieving their own sanctification through charitable works. Their rule was perfectly simple, in its first article it welcomes all young men anxious to unite in prayer and good work, in the second it states that no work of charity may be regarded as foreign to the aims of the society.

From this modest beginning the Society has grown from strength to strength, so that in May of this year representatives of provincial Councils from the four comers of the earth met in Paris to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the foundation. Instead of merely stirring the youth of France to a proper sense of its responsibility, the Society has come to be one of the most active spiritual organisations for Catholic laymen, and as such perhaps the best example of social action in modem times. Yet because its work is done unobtrusively, it is not as well known as it deserves to be outside the humble homes which enjoy its special care. Yet in the course of a hundred years of diligent activity the society has increasingly shown its ability to cope with the multifarious problems which are not and cannot be dealt with directly by the Church.
A Land Reform in The U.S.S.R.
Authors: Jensen G.
Published: July 2007

After a short trip to Russia Lord Passfield has published a few articles dealing with Russia and Communism. Russia, according to him, ‘has a will and a plan,’ whether it is the will of the people themselves, or one which has been forcibly imposed upon them, the writer does not tell us, and yet this is precisely what the average reader is anxious to know. Nevertheless, despite this reticence, Lord Passfield conveys a sufficiently clear idea of the only state which has adopted in its totality the teaching of Communism.

To begin with, the population of this Socialist State is strictly divided into classes. At the summit stands a very small minority—the Communist Party. The writer estimates it at one and an half million strong, which represents less than one per cent, of the total population of one hundred and sixty millions. This Communist Party, which does not wish to increase its membership but remains numerically stationary by a process of continuous weeding-out, is, as the writer puts it, the ‘governing class’ holding all power in the State. Next to it stand the candidates for membership. These are selected from another half million whose fidelity to the régime has been tested. Then come various other classes of the population graded according to their economic importance to the State, and lastly the people who have no right to exist in the Socialist State and must be ‘liquidated’ or destroyed not only as classes but as individuals also. These Socialist ‘untouchables’ do not interest Lord Passfield: he knew of their existence, for in one of his articles he has a passing reference to one of such classes, namely the kulaki.
A Student Crisis
Authors: Perquin Bonaventure
Published: July 2007

In the Church's appeal to common action hardly any sphere of activity has received less attention from either clergy or laity than the universities. This remissness suggests that in the hurried apostolate of our times there is a lack of appreciation of the great importance of university education in the social life of the Church. It cannot therefore be a matter of surprise to those who have had this in mind, to see how in many countries ecclesiastical authorities are now much alarmed by the feelings of distrust and opposition exhibited by the anti-clerical or non-clerical attitude of young intellectuals. As no movement in the Church is more alive to the position of university students than Pax Romana, its annual report may be considered a suitable starting point for some observations on this question.

The administrative secretary, M. Rudi Salat, merely hints at this problem when he says ‘Car pour le travail international catholique futur, la sympathie et la collaboration des théologiens est indispensable.’ The question at issue is, therefore, not only the desirability but even the need of the co-operation of priests and students in catholic activity. That this collaboration is of prime importance can be of little doubt, but it seems that the way in which it should be brought about has not yet been sufficiently discussed.
Revolving Stage
Authors: Valleley Charles
Published: July 2007

The world’s a revolving stage, and the scene changes diurnally. Indeed, the admirer of this era of the machine would say that it is, in effect and appropriately enough, a stage supporting a ‘talkie’ screen, for the flicker of changing terrestial affairs occupies the eye of the remote unsleeping observer throughout the twenty-four hours. At our midnight, the light still shines above the earth’s Big Ben, and discussion or action, charged with immanence of immediate influence on the life of man, is taking place half way, east or west, towards the other side of the globe.

While, as always, we know not what to-morrow will bring forth, we dare no longer tempt fate by forecast. If a state of war does not formally exist in the Far East, war is proceeding in actual fact, tentatively or may be very explosively, with a prompt possibility of louder local repercussions, and a more remote chance of extensive international complications. At the same time two men sit over a cup of tea in Washington, and their talk may decide the fate of mankind for generations and may reinforce or disintegrate the very foundations of our civilization.
The Comfort of the Stars
Authors: Sainsbury Harrington
Published: July 2007

In these days of widespread anxieties with little trust, owing to small belief, anything, any influence which may bring assurance, in whatever degree, should be welcomed. It is fortitude based on confidence that we need, as we face the issues of life seeking how they may emerge, whether to our welfare or our undoing, before all things asking—do we see guidance or is it chaos that confronts us?

It is to the great towns and cities, particularly the industrial and manufacturing, that we would draw attention here, and to London imprimis, the World City; our quest —how these influence their indwellers especially their outlook visual and mental; for the business of the thronging multitudes is wont to obscure the sight by interposing a pall of smoke and dust betwixt them and the skies. Nor is this all of obscurity that results from the activities of men, for strange to say their very efforts to illumine the darkness of their thoroughfares by night, do but hide the more effectively the lights of heaven: —in the glare of the street lamp even thy glories, Orion, are extinguished; and thus it comes about that the more brilliant the near light, the more are our eyes blinded for far-vision, to our incalculable loss.
Newman's Approach to the Church
Authors: Walker Luke
Published: July 2007

The first of the Tracts for the Times, published in Sep tember, 1833, and entitled Thoughts on the Ministerial Commission respectfully addressed to the Clergy, was devoted to the proclamation of the chief of those truths which it was the special aim of the Tracts to enforce. ‘There are some,’ Newman therein wrote, ‘who rest their divine mission on their own unsupported assertion; others who rest it upon their temporal distinctions. This last case has, perhaps, been too much our own; I fear we have neglected the real ground on which authority is built—our apostolic descent . . . [the many] have been deluded into a notion that present palpable usefulness, produceable results, acceptableness to your flocks, that these and such like are the tests of your Divine commission. Enlighten them in this matter. Exalt our Holy Fathers, the Bishops, as the Representatives of the Apostles, and the Angels of the Churches; and magnify your office, as being ordained by them to take part in their Ministry.’

The leaders of the Tractarian Movement were not, as some seem to imagine, ardent Ritualists, if by that term we mean men enamoured of ritual for its own sake. They were on the whole distinguished by soberness in their use of ritual. What they were seeking primarily was to renew and to deepen the supernatural Christian life of the members of the Church of England. For this it was necessary to be sure of the possession of two things—the revealed truth and the ordinary means of grace, both committed to the Apostles.
Hurrell Froude and the Beginnings of the Movement
Authors: St. John Henry
Published: July 2007

From the days of its foundation in the sixteenth century it has always been possible to trace in the Established Church, side by side with the Puritan and Erastian traditions, a tradition of teaching which approximates very closely to the doctrines of Catholicism; a tradition which lays strong emphasis on the supernatural character of the visible Body of Christ, on the importance of the sacraments in the scheme of salvation and in consequence on the Catholic ideal of holiness. At times in the history of the Church of England this Catholic tradition has flourished widely, but never to the complete exclusion of other traditions, and at times these have appeared to squeeze the Catholic tradition almost out of existence. The beginning of the nineteenth century was such a time; with the Revolution of 1688 and the consequent schism of the Non-jurors the old Catholic High Churchmanship of the Caroline divines, with its solid Patristic learning, its sober but definite exposition of the corporate existence and supernatural basis of the Church of Christ and its insistence on sacramentalism, began to fade into obscurity. Political circumstances had much to do with the gradual disappearance of a school of thought which had almost dominated the Stuart period. The failure of the ‘45 made Jacobitism for ever a lost cause, and from that date Jacobite Toryism began to make terms with the established order and Jacobite churchmen drank the health of the Hanover kings.
Newman and the Fathers
Authors: Chapman H. John
Published: July 2007

In 1850 John Henry Newman wrote: ‘Even when I was a boy, my thoughts were turned to the early Church, and especially to the early Fathers, by the perusal of the Calvinist John Milner’s Church History, and I have never lost, I have never suffered a suspension of the impression, deep and most pleasurable, which his sketches of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine left on my mind. From that time the vision of the Fathers was always, to my imagination, may say, a paradise of delight to the contemplation of which I directed my thoughts from time to time, whenever I was free from the engagements proper to my time of life.’

Brought up as an Evangelical, he studied the Fathers through Protestant spectacles even as late as his twenty-eighth year, when he was already under the influence of Whately and beginning to reach out to idea of a National Church with teaching powers and Sacraments. So he tells us:

‘When years afterwards (1828) I first began to read their works with attention and on system, I busied myself much in analysing them, and in cataloguing their doctrines and principles; but when I had thus proceeded very carefully and minutely for some space of time, I found, on looking back on what I had done, that I had scarcely done anything at all; I found that I had gained very little from them, and I came to the conclusion that the Fathers I had been reading, who were exclusively those of the ante-Nicene period, had very little in them. At the time I did not discover the reason of this result, though, on the retrospect, it was plain enough: I had read them simply on Protestant ideas, analysed and catalogued them on Protestant principles of division, and hunted for Protestant doctrines and usages in them.
The Tractarians and Education
Authors: Tristram Henry
Published: July 2007

The significant date, October 9th, 1845, recalls a crisis in the religious development of an individual, and through him in the religious history of England. But it has also a significance in quite another sphere, since it marks the end of an epoch in university history: with the repression of the Tractarian Movement Laudian Oxford finally ceased to be. Newman realised his defeat in his campaign on behalf of dogmatic religion, and recognised his conquerors. ‘The men who had driven me from Oxford,’ he admits in the Apologia, ‘ were distinctly the Liberals.’ And again: ‘I found no fault with the Liberals; they had beaten me in a fair field.’ With this Matthew Arnold agrees; but he, while admitting that other and more intelligent forces were arrayed against the Movement, less politely characterises the liberalism on which it broke as ‘middle-class liberalism.’ The effects of the Movement persisted in the country at large; but the Movement itself could no longer be properly regarded as peculiarly the Oxford Movement. As for Oxford itself, Mark Pattison observed that, if he had gone to sleep in 1845, and been awakened in 1850, he would have found himself in a new world. For the time being the University abandoned its previous interest in theological controversies, and directed its attention upon itself and its specific function, upon the educational demands of the age and its own response to them. The inevitable liberal reaction, as soon as it gathered force, and this soon happened, rudely thrust aside as irrelevant all the debatable issues that had made life uncomfortable during the past decade, and forced to the front the solitary question of University reform. Theology gave place to education, as the absorbing topic of the day.
The Future of India
Authors: Foster P. D.
Published: July 2007

In a general picture of world bewilderment before problems which have grown beyond the grasp of responsible statesmen, the bewilderment of Britain concerning India is peculiarly tragic, peculiarly ludicrous. Picture an aged burglar who, many years ago, on entering a house by force and stealth, found it occupied solely by naughty children at continual blows, with no one to control or smack them; picture him reformed and, Smee-like, turned governess, guiding the young into more orderly ways; picture him finally debating his position with the elder children, fully grown, eager now to control their own prosperity, rebellious against his dominion; picture his anxieties; are they really old enough, are not these tantrums proof of youthful lack of balance, are there not other burglars abroad? What will happen when, as still occurs, the young ones start to pull each others’ hair?

Dr. Zacharias’ book is a fairly detailed account of the growing up—socially and politically—of modern India— with special attention paid to the agitation of Congress against British domination. As a Jew by birth and a Catholic by belief Dr. Zacharias claims impartiality, but he makes no secret of his whole-hearted preference for Congress and is certainly not impartial in his account of events such as the Partition of Bengal or the Amritsar Massacre.
Psychoanalysis and Catholicism
Authors: Elrington Aidan
Published: July 2007

A point that frequently strikes the outsider about psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts is its inaccessibility to logical argument. This is not said by way of reproach, but as a statement of fact. Whenever a person raises a difficulty about psychoanalysis he is countered with the remark ‘you are putting up a resistance,’ and treated as the analyst treats the patient (making difficulties).

Now, it struck me, that something similar occurs in regard to Catholicism, by which I mean, not only or merely the official teaching of the Church, but also all those currents of thought, feeling, and emotion which go to make up the life of Catholicism, a life which at times becomes so exuberant as to be considered detrimental to the truth and unity of the Church, and so has to be pruned. (As, for instance, in the outbursts of religious enthusiasm, devotions, cults, etc., which, only after careful examination are tolerated or permitted, and finally perhaps incorporated officially .... others get suppressed, but often linger on).
A Catholic Group Movement?
Authors: Bousfield M. A.
Published: July 2007

There probably never was a time in the history of the Church when it was not true to say that the great thing needed was a well-instructed laity. To say that the need to-day is for teaching is trite, yet there is a sense in which it is perhaps unprecedentedly urgent that there should be teaching, and more and better teaching of the Faith than there ever was before. For there certainly never was a time when there was so much and such unescapable teaching going on about everything but the Faith, and against the Faith. The competition for human attention is so clamorous that many minds are simply stunned by it and rush headlong into the thing that gives them the best emotional outlet without ever stopping to think at all.

It is not easy to make people think in these days, because of a habit of superficiality and unreceptiveness which is partly the result of an instinctive mental self-defence in this welter of conflicting propaganda. The sermon has largely lost its appeal and its power, not because people are hardened but because their minds are so full of the clamour and racket that they have lost the power of attention. The people with a definite need may hear in Church or on a C.E.G. pitch something that answers to their need, but the majority, who are not making any particular demand of their religion, may never develop the knowledge they acquired at school or when they were instructed.
Ground-Floor Religion
Authors: Herring A. G.
Published: July 2007

It there is a common bond among all the non-Catholic sects it is probably their opposition to the Church; and if there is a similar bond between the various Philosophies ranged against Catholicism to-day it would seem to be their opposition to the idea of a Transcendent God. Many are willing to admit a Spirit of some kind, but Immanent in Nature, in Men, in History, or in Time. And this is true not only of those whose main concern is with life and evolution, such as Bergson and his later followers, but also of those who hold that the one reality is History or the operation of mind, such as Croce and Idealists of the extreme type. We will, therefore, examine some of these systems to see, if possible, the reasons for this condition of affairs.

Among the many causes there can be no doubt that one of them is the present-day tendency to exalt Experience at the expense of Reason. One bad effect of this is a loss of objectivity, which is well illustrated by a story of the war when a returned soldier was convicted of a glaring contradiction in relating his adventures. His retort was: ‘Oh, thought you wanted experiences, not a blooming argument.’ For while Experience may satisfy an individual of the existence of an Immanent Spirit, reason is required to demonstrate to others the reality of a Transcendent God. As Maritain says, ‘it is in virtue of that intellectual operation which is the activity most profoundly distinctive of man, namely ratiocination, that it (the existence of God) becomes evident to us.’
Mystical Marxism
Authors: Watt Lewis
Published: July 2007

The life of Mr. Middleton Murry as told by himself in the early part of his book on God is moving and tragic; tragic, not only because of the temperamental difficulties which made his relations with his wife, Katherine Mansfield, so painful both to him and to her, not only because of her sudden though not unexpected death, but because his own character is such that he seems to have spent most of his life in a state of spiritual darkness, struggling to find a gleam of light, and yet, by some strange psychological perversity, shutting his eyes when the light appeared. He has studied the Gospels. The sayings of Christ fall from his pen as easily as from the lips of a fervent Christian. But he is not a Christian (though he has said in the Scots Observer that he counts himself one), for he rejects Christ’s claim to be divine. He is not even a theist, for he has written in so many words ‘God does not exist’ (God, p. 233). Yet he looks upon himself as a mystic. ‘We mystics, we fanatics! Yes, that is true .... Out of our serene impartiality, out of our final loss of all illusion, arises mysticism, arises fanaticism.’ (The Necessity of Communism, pp. 113-4).
Take Care of the Pence
Authors: Blake Gerald
Published: July 2007

It’s an unusual experience for a community to awake one morning to find the only tangible medium of exchange is the cash in the pockets of its citizens, especially when the citizens had no warning that it would be a good idea to have enough cash in their pockets to provide for the situation. That’s what happened in New York six months ago and that’s the state of affairs that obtained there, the financial centre of the world, according to some, for more than a week.

It’s a little difficult to convey the sensation derived from reading the announcement of a banking moratorium. Most people take their banks pretty much for granted. But imagine yourself of a morning entering your own dining room, ready to sit down to a nice hot breakfast. You open your morning paper. Large headlines inform you that, not only your own bank, but every bank in the country is closed for an indefinite period. Quickly you make a mental calculation of whatever small amount of money you have on your person. There’s that ten-bob note, and then there’s about three-and-six—no, that’s right, you spent ninepence on the way home—that’s two-and-ninepence in small change.
The Field of Blenheim
Authors: Hudson Derek
Published: July 2007

On a sunny morning in August I walked out of Donauworth and took the straight tree-lined road which leads up the Danube valley towards Ulm. The time was still one for harvesting; peasants dotted the wide and open plain, piling bullock waggons with their sheaves, or eating the midday ration in the shade.

A warm silence hung over contented fields. Geese gossiping down the village street, a white church rising among its cottages—these were the things of yesterday and tomorrow, the gentle ornaments of peace.

In my mind’s eye, as drew nearer the battlefield of Blenheim, I saw other and less soothing symbols: English red-coats, lively with the rumour of action, tramping along the same road, with their heavy cannon lumbering behind.

From the church tower at Tapfheim, on the evening of August the twelfth, 1704, Marlborough and Prince Eugene were watching the infantry of France, as they moved without suspicion of alarm to their encampment on the vast plain before them. And even I, walking through Tapfheim in the year 1933, could sense a little of their exaltation.
A New Catholic Genius
Authors: Sencourt Robert
Published: July 2007

‘With Uriel: a hymn in praise of Divine Immanence,’ said The Times on July 28th, 1933, ‘Mr. W. Force Stead takes his place among the foremost of to-day’s poets. Uriel may be called a philosophical poem, but it springs radiantly lyrical from an immediacy of experience. There is abundant testimony both to faith and to poetry in this lovely work.’

On August 17th, 1933, Mr. Stead was received into the Catholic Church. The week before he had resigned his post as Chaplain and Fellow of Worcester College. For three years he had been the only American to hold a Fellowship in Oxford; he had begun his career in the American Consular Service, after a course in the University of Virginia at Charlotteville—a course which is still remembered there. Though he has never fully given up his American citizenship or lost his love for the United States, it could hardly be said that Mr. Stead is typical of his republic: he is, it is true, devoted to the United States, but his loyalties are centred in the traditions of the Southern aristocracy from which he sprang: he is a fervent Tory and monarchist; and he has found most of his inspiration in Europe, and especially in the English countryside.