bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Water and the Spirit
Authors: Jones Alexander
Published: August 2024

Drought and flood, too little and too much, are alike man's bane. Water is at once a blessing and a curse. In the biblical tradition it has been chosen for a villainous role: from the primeval abyss through to the Deluge, from the threat of the Red Sea to the menace of Assyria's overflowing river, from the flood that would overwhelm the Psalmist to the great waters that were the throne of persecuting Rome, this one element of the four has played its malicious part. Of its nature unruly, it symbolizes the chaos which would, if it could, defy the check and order of God. But it can be harnessed. The controlling spirit of God dominates the first abyss, his hand shuts the doors of the cataracts of heaven; he divides the obstructing Sea, Emmanuel survives the cascades of Assyria; God delivers his Psalmist from great waters and, like Daniel's beasts, the Prostitute is thrust back into the abyss from which she came.
The Use of Mime in Scripture Teaching
Authors: Heddon Rosemary
Published: August 2024

This is the account of an experiment. While the need for the teaching of the Old Testament in Catholic schools is gradually becoming more widely recognized, our children do not, in general, have that familiarity with the language of the Old Testament which is so often found among Christians brought up in other surroundings. While this is neither the time nor the place to discuss the pros and cons of a vernacular liturgy, it is obvious that a child who hears some portion of the Scriptures read at the daily Assembly will acquire a familiarity with the language and images employed therein. To attempt to teach the New Testament without a good grounding in the Old, is to deprive it of considerable significance, and it is in the Junior School that such a foundation can be laid.

While there are many collections of Bible stories (and nowadays even strip-cartoons) for children, the real value of all these attractive aids should be to lead the child to a desire for the real thing: the inspired word of God.
Missions in the Life of the Church
Authors: Magrath Oswin
Published: August 2024

Missions are the Church in a state of growth. They are not merely an outside activity by which external additions are made to the Church, nor are they just the geographical expansion of the Church as it is. They involve a real growth and development of the whole Church, of doctrines, practices and life, and of every individual who shares in that life. For missions are the development of the catholicity of the Church.

Catholicity is of the very nature of the Church. It is the property by which it is able to adapt itself to every human group and incorporates all genuine human values, while remaining one and transcendent. Being of the nature of the Church, it tends to realize itself as fully as possible, until the whole of humanity has been gathered up.

Until the Church has in fact incorporated every human group, and established itself in every nation, its catholicity is undeveloped, though complete as a power.
Galilee
Authors: Phillips G. H.
Published: August 2024

It is a common mistake to visualize Galilee as a small area of country bordering on a lake. In fact it is one of the largest regions of Israel. For travellers who have arrived at Haifa by boat, the first introduction to Galilee will probably be Nazareth. This is a pity because Nazareth is the one black spot in the whole district. Commercialism has reached such heights there that the street vendors have degenerated from nuisance to menace.

Inside the Franciscan enclosure, however, all is well, and the pilgrim kneeling in the grotto of the annunciation forgets any rabble outside. Two pillars mark the places where our Lady and the angel Gabriel stood, and beside the altar of the tiny chapel is a grille through which the rest of the primitive house can be seen.
Ways Many and Various
Authors: Potter Roland
Published: August 2024

God who spoke to our forefathers, through the prophets, in ways many and various, has at last, in these days, spoken to us through his Son…

(Hebr. i, 1).

With these impressive words begins the epistle to the Hebrews, and we are taught that God it is who commands all history, and God who reveals himself by speaking through all the sacred history of Israel as also to the new Israel of God or body of Christ. The stress in the text is first of all on God who has all the initiative, and who brings about a continuity in old and new testament covenants because the same loving God brought all essential history to its real conclusion in the revelation of a Saviour who is Lord of all.

Our text also speaks of ways many and various. Two points are made: the frequency of God's utterance, and the variety of ways in which his message comes to the world. Let us try to illustrate that frequency and the many ways and modes.
St Ambrose, a Contemplative
Authors: Pax
Published: August 2024

I can never quite forgive St Jerome for being so cutting about St Ambrose's Latin. It seems to my ignorant mind that his Latin is only the shell of the kernel of the good nut within. Take at random, the homily for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, almost at once, one finds this: ‘The food of heavenly grace is given, not to the idle, not in the city or to those accustomed to worldly dignity, but in desert places, to those who seek Christ. For Christ receives the humble, and the word of God speaks with them, not of worldly things, but of the kingdom of God.'

How wonderful is the next passage as a preparation for confession, for communion, or for, perhaps, a near-convert on the threshold of the Church: ‘None receives the food of Christ unless he be first healed, and those who are invited are healed by the ‘ very call.
Our Lady of Good Counsel
Authors: Ginns Reginald
Published: August 2024

Our frequent salutation of the Blessed Virgin as Mother of Good Counsel in the Litany of Loreto makes us familiar with the above title, even if we are not acquainted with the picture which goes by the name of our Lady of Good Counsel. This ancient painting has been eloquently described as ‘exquisitely humane and tender … the small Child has his right arm round his Mother's neck, his left hand catches at the edge of her dress. His little face is turned upwards towards her; he is certainly whispering to her—but, asking her something? Telling ker some small childish sentence, or even word, or not even so much as a formed word, if you think of him as still too tiny a babe to make a whole word? … Anyhow, a mother's instinct always understands what her baby means, and often, what her grown son means, better even than his father does… .
The Mass and the People
Authors: Crichton J. D.
Published: August 2024

It might be thought that much, too much, has been said about what the Holy See has for over fifty years called actuos participatio of the people in the Mass, and much of what has been said is often superficial enough. The impression has sometimes been given that all that was required was that you should make the people vocal, that it was a good thing for them to be roused, that they should be weaned from ‘individualistic’ ways of assisting at Mass, that they themselves should say all that the server says, or that they should sing all the plainsong chants of the Mass even when these are not fitted to their capacity. Taken separately most of these things are good in themselves but they do not go to the roots of the matter. The question is: why should the people be active at Mass? To answer this question one needs to consider two matters: (I) the nature of the Mass itself; and (II) the nature of the Christian people.
Latin is Still Practical
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

With a title of this nature the reader may perhaps expect an invitatory ‘In Praise of Printing’, followed by a bibliography of the various Missals in Latin and English designed for the laity, in prices ranging from the lowest for the poorest to the highest for those who are reputed to find it difficult to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. But not every enthusiast for the liturgy is now a strong supporter of the Missal for the laity; there have been in recent months refreshing criticisms of the use of this book from men rightly reputed for their support of the liturgicle revival. The Missal more often than not erects a barrier between the worshipper and the altar. In his enthusiasm to match his English with the Latin in the other column the missal-user may forget that he is taking part in an action and not in a linguistic exercise.
St Augustine's Picture of the Church
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

The title of The City of God is taken by St Augustine from that verse of Ps. 86 (87), which is paraphrased by the wellknown hymn, ‘Glorious things of thee are spoken, Sion city of our God'. Is this city, in his mind, a picture of the Church? Clearly yes, but of the Church in its widest, its cosmic dimensions, the Church which is the heavenly Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, that Jerusalem which is above, which is our mother (Gal. iv, 26), of which the earthly Jerusalem is the type and figure. We attain some apprehension of this city of God by contrasting it with another city, the city of confusion, the diabolical city, of which the archetype is Babel, Babylon.

These two cities are cosmic because their history begins with the creation and ends with the end of the world. In their beginning and end they are clearly distinct—distinct in the holy angels and the fallen angels at the beginning of creation, distinct in the company of the blessed and the company of the damned at the end. The Church as it will be in the resurrection is the society of the just, and of the just alone.
Silence
Authors: Hibbert Giles
Published: August 2024

It is in the stillness of our hearts and in the stillness of our minds, in a perfect presence to ourselves, that we rise up—not of ourselves, but through him to whom alone we say, ‘Raise us, Lord, that we may see’. This rise of ours is ‘offering’, achieved in understanding and in loving; we do not rise in any simple way outside our normal selves, but remaining within and yet increasing, growing, rise up upon ourselves to know and see, as yet however darkly, God present in our souls, from whom we have our all; our being, life and understanding; our own true actuality.

If, then, we recognize the tumult of the shifting nature of our thoughts, the milling crowds of our conflicting fantasies, by calming and by ordering these which hold us down we may proceed and may attain to that pure silence of the spirit, where in the rise upon itself of understanding we will see and know and feel, though fleetingly, the presence of him alone who is. ‘Be still and know that I am God.’
The Person and the Place—I: Abbot Suger
Authors: Webb Geoffrey
Published: August 2024

It has been concluded, on the evidence of the verses that Suger wrote to celebrate his new basilica, that he looked upon it mainly as a monument to his own greatness. But although one admits that he was not without his streak of vanity, this particular manifestation of what at first glance appears to be mere complacency is worth examining more closely. His verses are not simply tombstone bombast; on the contrary, each one has a definite message to convey. It becomes clear that they were written for a purpose more interesting than that of Suger's selfaggrandizement. They were meant, in fact, to provide a commentary on the whole conception and undertaking of the new St Denis, his opus nobile, as he calls it.

It is, of course, not easy for us to imagine why Gothic architecture and traditional Christian iconography should require any explanation. It requires a real effort to imagine St Denis making the sort of impact on Suger's contemporaries that Ronchamp makes on ours.
St John the Baptist
Authors: Thomas Ivo
Published: August 2024

In Advent we go back to the very beginning of the Gospel to St John the Baptist and his message. He has been called the school-master of the Apostles, and later apostles and preachers ought to study no less intently in his school. First, because he was the fore-runner of our blessed Lord, come to make his path straight and smooth before him. He was the remover of obstacles in that path, that would be in the way when the Lord came. This is not the highest power, but a very necessary one. His work was not so much that of a sacrament, which confers grace, as of a sacramental. The preaching an teaching, the rites and ceremonies of religious life with its specia clothes and organization, is of the same kind. All that has tne power of disposing men to come to our Lord; it stands as a witness to his truth and goodness.
Five Questions to the Catholic Church
Authors: Asmussen Hans
Published: August 2024

The questions I want to put to the Catholic Church can be summed up in one: You Catholics, we Evangelicals—who do you think we are? What do you make of us? (I) To begin with our baptism. It is no secret that in the case of converts, baptism is usually repeated, arousing deep dismay on the Evangelical side. In my opinion there is no justification for this. There seems to be no doubt that, in Catholic doctrine, baptism is usually repeated, arousing deep dismay on the Evangelical side. In my opinion there is no justification for this. There seems to be no doubt that, in Catholic doctrine, baptism performed according to the Evangelical ritual is valid. But in practice the circumstances of a previous baptism are seldom taken into account.
Five Answers from the Catholic Side
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: August 2024

Our non-Catholic friends often ask us questions, in particular about our Catholic attitude to themselves, for most of those who are anxious about Christian unity inevitable feel that their own position in relation to the Catholic Church is a key-issue in the whole matter. In the September Number of Una Sancta a prominent Lutheran theologian asks of his Catholic friends five questions, which to him represent The major problem of a Protestant considering the relation of Catholic and Protestant. The writer is Dr Hans Asmussen of Heidelberg, and his five questions are enquiries about the Catholic attitude towards Protestants on certain issues. The same questions mutatis mutandis mignt be asked by an Anglican or Free Churchman in this country, though every group would present the questions in a different context and perhaps add particular ones of their own.
Therapeutic and Pastoral Work
Authors: Godin André
Published: August 2024

The title of this article seems to imply a dichotomy. First, let me affirm that man, as a living being, and still more as a spiritual being, is a unity, a whole, that cannot be split into two parts.

This may seem obvious when it is question of a normal, balanced, adult man; one who does not need psychotherapy, but only pastoral guidance. On the other hand, when we are talking of a neurotic, we make use of numerous expressions, or ways of speaking which introduce a dichotomy, not in the way in which the neurotic is approached, but in the subject himself. For instance, we make a distinction in his psychology between a healthy part and a part which is diseased. We say that the therapist must ally himself with the healthy part in order to fight, with the sufferer, against the diseased part.
From Synagogue to Early Christian Assembly: I
Authors: Guillet J.
Published: August 2024

The purpose of this paper is to show how the Synagogue as an institution, as it was organized by the Jews on their return from the Exile in Babylon, not only provided the early Christian Church with a whole set of services, customs and ritual laws, but also supplied a certain kind of atmosphere which played an important part in the development of early Christianity.

This appears at the very beginning, when we find our Lord Jesus Christ himself using the institution and attending the Synagogue. It was in the Synagogue at Nazareth that Jesus first proclaimed himself the Messias, when he read from ‘the book of baias the prophet: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me … “ and added, ‘This day is fulfilled this Scripture in your ears'.
The Sacraments: II—Confirmation
Authors: Bright Laurence
Published: August 2024

Baptism joins us to Christ and allows us to share his divine life. It is the Holy Spirit who brings this new life to a Christian—'if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his’ (Rom. 8, 9). This close relationship between baptism and the gift of the Spirit was indicated by our Lord, who coming up out of the Jordan waters ‘saw the heavens opened and the Spirit as a dove descending and remaining on him’ (Mark 1, 10). The Spirit which filled Christ fills us too when we are baptized, and unites us as members of Christ to our head: ‘as the body is one and has many members … so also is Christ. For in one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free’ (1 Cor. 12, 12-13).
Growing up in Christ
Authors: Meath Gerard
Published: August 2024

Although religious instruction occupies a separate place in the curriculum of a Catholic school, and although we pay special attention to this class no one believes that religious instruction, and still less training, is finished when the religious knowledge period is over. Every practising Catholic in England must have heard, perhaps oftener than he cares to remember, the argument for staffing Catholic schools with Catholic teachers, that religion must penetrate all departments. It is a truth which, rightly, Catholics take for granted, and equally surely it is a principle which experienced Catholic teachers put into practice with little or no reflection and with a skill that sometimes seems infallible. As children reach the age of thirteen or fourteen this becomes a more important matter, for they are arriving at the critical years of change from childhood to manhood, and the Sacrament of Confirmation which they may have received recently or some years previously acquires considerable importance.
The Little Brothers of the Poor
Authors: Squire Aelred
Published: August 2024

When our Lord Jesus Christ sat down to his last supper he did so, as he had done during all his earthly ministry, not as a host at a table of his very own, but as a guest in the house of another. He who could, had he wished, have turned stones into bread, was content to share the lot of those who have passed beyond being able to help themselves, and who enrich the lives of others by receiving from them. He did this for our instruction. Giving and receiving is a reciprocal action. In that act of humility whereby he, the master, washed his disciples’ feet, he set forth in a final and unmistakable fashion what he had previously been teaching: that his disciples were to love one another as he had loved them, stooping to each other's lowliest needs, cherishing each other with a really personal devotion. In this way they would always find him with them.
Christianity in England
Authors: Braybrooke Neville
Published: August 2024

As the liturgical cycle of the Church renews itself, Good Friday and Easter pass in much the same way as they have since the time of Calvary and the finding of the stone rolled back. Seed-time is so perennial that it unites centuries, making little difference between 1620 and 1720, or dates such as 1870 or 1955. The methods of sowing alter as little as those of harvesting: two thousand years bring small change to the shape of cross or sickle. The apparent relationship between religious and agricultural rites might therefore suggest that the Church is as immutable in her outward life as she is in her doctrines. This is not so. The Church is the people; her bishops are their leaders, and in a healthy society the two must work and pray in union. Yet between the people and the bishops stand the priests; beneath the soutane and habit (which have remained the same through the ages) there are men who differ from each other, who grow and develop all the time. A modern sermon preached on the Passion in “Westminster Cathedral will be less flowery than it was thirty years ago; histrionics do not win converts today.
Bible Reading
Authors: Gray Nicolete
Published: August 2024

The Bible reading which I want to write about, is that which I have practised, the Bible reading of parents and children together; which is indeed the only way in which I have read the Bible—apart from the experience of listening to the lessons in the Church of England as a child, and some rather unsuccessful attempts to read parts to myself in later years. As a family we have read it daily, in principle—though in practice there have been a good many gaps—for ten years or more—that is, from earliest childhood in the case of the youngest, to manhood in the case of the eldest child. In this paper I want to offer some reflections on our experience in the hope that they may be useful to others. Our main experience, that constant Bible reading from childhood is overwhelmingly a good thing, is something which surely goes without saying.
The Prayer of the Church
Authors: Mould Daphne Pochin
Published: August 2024

The Mass, and the beauty of the Liturgy of the Mass, was one of the forces which overcame my struggles against the grace of God, and pulled me into the Church. And I could not get to know the Liturgy of the Mass without wanting to know more about the Church's official daily prayer, the jewelled setting of the daily sacrifice, the Divine Office. So, as a convert, newly received, I began to find out more about the Office and attend its choral recitation as and when I could. Then came my reception into the Dominican Third Order and the obligation to say our Lady's Hours, which, simpler and almost unvarying, are yet built on the same plan as the longer Office and provide an ideal guide and introduction to it. Later still came the possession of a Dominican breviary, the first tentative attempts at saying the Office on the bigger feasts, and eventually the time when I found that it was not whether I would or would not say the Divine Office daily, but simply that I could not bring myself to leaving off so doing.
The Psalms and Everyday Life
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

In spite of the title of this talk, I do not propose to say anything about everyday life. It is not merely that I can think of very little of value to say about it; above all I want to avoid absolutely the idea that we should adapt the psalms to our own lives. The psalms are not adaptable. They are a divinely inspired, divinely guaranteed expression of a whole range of religious sentiments which we must take as we find them, take as God left them, however crude or alien to our native ways of thought they may sometimes seem. Our thought in using the psalms for our devotions should be to take them simply as they are, and let them enrich and envigorate our everyday religion. We must try to adapt ourselves to the psalms, not the psalms to ourselves. So I shall confine myself to a few considerations about what the psalms are.
Antonio Rosmini on the Magnificat
Authors: Sencourt Robert
Published: August 2024

In 1955 Italy in general and the provine of Novara in particular have been celebrating the Centenary of the death of Antonio Rosmini. While some point to his sagacious views on the Risorgimento, and others turn back to his philosophy which anticipated the revival of Thomism, others venerate him as the founder of the Institute of Charity and a master of spiritual life.

His work in this direction was indeed inspiring: and one could hardly find a better example of it than what he wrote on the Magnificat for his Convent at Domodossola, that the nuns might recite it with fuller attention, deeper faith and fuller joy. The essay gains in interest when we know that he wrote it in 1849 after he had failed in a negotiation with Pius IX who had felt compelled to flee from Rome and who then turned against the conciliatory policy he had shared with Rosmini, allowed his works to be attacked, and refused the Cardinalate he had previously offered. None of these disappointments shook the profound spiritual life of Rosmini.
'My World From Within'
Authors: Bell Irene
Published: August 2024

'The woman who is abreast of current thought, who knows the topics of the moment, religious and secular, and who follows her daily Mass in her Missal, and the news of the world in her morning paper …'. These words might be a self-portrait of Mrs Boland, the efficient boxtender who organised the sale of pamphlets in Westminster Cathedral from 1912 onwards and who in 1924 founded the Boxtenders’ Association.

Nowadays we are familiar with the Catholic Truth Society cases in our churches, and are inclined to take this contribution to present-day propaganda for granted. The origins of the C.T.S. go as far back as 1884—there were various developments—the first meeting was convened in the house of Lady Herbert of Lea, under the chairmanslaip of Dr Herbert Vaughan, then Bishop of Salford, who had already started a similar project in his own diocese. The date of the foundation meeting was carefully chosen—the fifth of November. This is no place to deal with the history of the C.T.S., it suffices to say that the scheme withstood the consequences of two major wars.
Being Objective about Neurosis
Authors: Scott Murdoch
Published: August 2024

In a recent issue of The Life of the Spirit a question of the utmost importance was raised in a letter about neurosis. And among other points that of having an objective view about neurotic illness is worth serious consideration.

In a neurosis there arc two factors to be considered: the fundamental disorder of the psychic structure—the unhealthy psychic tensions which are die source of further trouble (the so-called ‘nerves’ of the ‘highly strung’ person)—and the consequent result of this psychic tension in terms of the reaction to life and its problems. The fundamental inner tension is not a single, definite fear of some evil, but rather a general, unspecified fearful attitude. And although this psychic tension is to be found in both introvert and extravert personalities its result in terms of adaptation to the demands of life is different in each type of temperament. The introvert whose psychological constitution is of a generally fearful kind tends to develop an illness which is itself a psychic disorder— Repression, anxiety, morbid fear—and so is called a psychological illness.
Our Lady and her Rosary
Authors: Vann Gerald
Published: August 2024

Those who accuse the Church of mariolatry would do
well to study the history of mariology. Of our Lady more than of any other creature it can be truly said that she has had greatness thrust upon her; true, she foresaw it, and humbly stated it when she sang, ‘Behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed’; but the honour, the glory, the veneration were not of her seeking, and when they came to her it was first of all as a result of defending the truth about her son; and as they grew and grew through the ages their effect was, as she would wish, to increase men's love and understanding of her Son; while on die other hand attempts to destroy her cultus and deny her greatness have ended in a denial of the divinity of her Son. She began by declaring, ‘Behold the handmaid—the chatted—of the Lord’; and her words summarize not only her life and personality but the story of her cultus as well.
Encounter with God in the Old Testament—II
Authors: Bourke Joseph
Published: August 2024

In a previous article we considered the Old Testament theme of ‘pilgrimage, encounter, communion’ from its initial instance at Sinai to its later eschatological developments. At the root of this theme lies the idea of the kabod, the visible manifestation of Yahweh's holy presenceto the people in the form of a numinous and fiery cloud. We have now to consider a second tradition which grows out of this initial conception of Yahweh's presence by his kabod, and which has also exercised a decisive influence on the development of Old Testament theology as a whole. It is the theology of the tent of meeting. We have seen that the essential characteristic of kabod theology is that the fiery cloud, the kabod, descends at certain sacred moments on a holy place chosen by Yahweh for his encounter with his people. At first this is Mount Sinai. But at Sinai itself Yahweh chooses to have a movable sanctuary made so that he can accompany the people. Instead of the people going up to him in the mountain, he will come down to them at the tent. The shrine which awaits his presence accompanies them wherever they go.
St Augustine on the Trinity—I
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

The De Trinitate is not the best known of St Augustine's works. But in my opinion it is his masterpiece, of a far greater doctrinal importance in the history of the Catholic faith than the Confessions or the City of God. It is indeed something of a theological portent, and as befits such a portent it took an uncommonly long time in coming to birth. As he himself says in a letter to the Bishop of Carthage which prefaces the work: ‘I was a young man when I began it, an old man when I had it published'. It seems that he began it about 400 A.D. Twelve years later it was still unfinished, and his friends getting impatient managed to publish the first eleven books of it and part of the twelfth, which was as far as he had got, without his consent. At this he stopped work on it altogether for some time, but was at length prevailed on to finish it— there are fifteen books of it in all—and publish it, perhaps round about 418 A.D.
The Training of the Heart
Authors: Watkin Dom Aelred
Published: August 2024

If I shall be lifted up, I shall draw all things to myself, said our Lord speaking of the new life to be given to men by his redemption. ‘All things’—every faculty of man, every from of human experience; indeed, everything that man does and is, save for sin alone, is drawn into Christ and into his life. Apart from sin there is nothing which cannot partake in and be an expression of the eternal life of Christ endlessly renewing itself in time and place by the sacraments of his presence. ‘This is the bread that gives life to the world.’ And what is this bread? ‘This is my body.’ The bread is Christ himself. And what is the life? It is his life—‘I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me’. Without Christ there can be no life.
The Religious Education of Children
Authors: Heddon Rosemary
Published: August 2024

The whole man must be the holy man, the deprivations of evil made good, the darkness of sin enlightened, the faculties and powers of mind and body integrated and controlled by the will, the whole fired by the flame of charity. This is God's will for each of us, the work which never ceases and at which we must hammer day by day. Everyone concerned with the religious education of children must have these considerations in mind. But who are they? All too often the phrase is taken in tthe narrow sense of the school teacher, or the priest who teaches the catechism class. ‘They’ will prepare him for his first Confession, his first Holy Communion, and in due time for Confirmation. The responsibility is ‘theirs’. There are signs that this attitude is beginning to change, but do we as teachers relize sufficiently the delicate balance between the contributions of home, church and school?
Saint Hilary
Authors: Suzanne
Published: August 2024

St Irenaeus, with whom Hilary of Poitiers has much in common, says: ‘No doubt there are many tongues spoken throughout the world, but the strength of tradition is one and the same … for as one and the same sun, created by God, shines throughout the world, so the light of truth shines everywhere, enlightening all who wish to know it'. St Hilary is one of the first saints in the calendar on January 14th, perhaps because his very name is in keeping with the joy of that season of the year, reflected from the coming of Christ anew each Christmas.

He can be a model for Christians of whatever kind. He was a married Man, yet his life was as austere as a monk's. He was a bishop and champion of truth, an exile and refugee, a writer and theologian; active all his life, yet deeply contemplative.
On Prayer
Authors: Campbell Duncan
Published: August 2024

I suppose we must all, at some time, have been disturbed by the thought of how seldom we pray. We find, when we think it over, that we ‘never seem to have time to pray’, or even that we just ‘never feel inclined to pray’. It does not ‘come naturally’, we realize; perhaps because there hardly ever seems to be any real ‘occasion’ for it; and all this can worry us. We feel, somehow, that we ought to pray more often, and more wholeheartedly, than we ever manage to do.
The School of More
Authors: Stafford Brigid
Published: August 2024

It is to Saint Thomas More and to the School of More, as his home in Chelsea was called, that honour must be given for leadership and inspiration in the movement for the higher education of women in England and in the subsequent development of education for the people. For the former, the court of Henry VIII and Catherine, his Spanish Queen, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, provided a model. Around the royal table, More and his daughters and many other scholars stood and took part in the discussions. In his home, More entertained as his friends and as tutors for his daughters learned and scholarly men, Vives, Erasmus, Richard Hyrde, Dr Linacre, John Clement and others. Here round the fire in winter and in the spacious grounds in summer, that intellectual community of scholars was founded, whose life work was to open the gates of learning and scholarship first to women and later to the masses of the people.
Bossuet, the Church and the Protestants
Authors: Richards Michael
Published: August 2024

Towards the middle of the seventeenth century, it began to seem that the differences between Protestant and Catholic in France might soon be settled, and that the great division between Christians, little more than a century old, could be healed. That hope faded, but the Bishop of Meaux was one of those who, having caught it in his student days, never entirely lost it, and whose work for re-union, which made him the greatest Christian peacemaker in Europe, remains as a point of departure for all those who set the same hope before them today.
The Person and the Place—III: Daniel of Chernigov
Authors: Webb Geofffey
Published: August 2024

For Daniel, a pilgrim from Kiev, the journey to Jerusalem began with a cruise among the islands that was in itself full of interest. At Petal, for instance, there were the asphalt deposits on the water that were piously believed to be an oil distilled from the bodies of drowned martyrs. Gallipoli, Abydos, Crete, and Tenedos in sight of Troy, all had something to offer. On Mytilene there was a shrine to St Georage,and on Chios another to St Isidore. Ephesus was full of recollections of St John and the seven sleepers, and at Cyprus of the twenty bishoprics, the pilgrims climbed the mountain where Helena had had a shrine built for the holy cross. Daniel makes no mention of the time the journey took, such a question having no importance for him whatsoever. But he does keep a note of the distances he covers.
Peace
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: August 2024

Peace be upon you.’ Our Lord's greeting to his disciples after his resurrection from the dead is one of peace: for a new life has begun for all who believe in him, a life , peace. The old conflicts are over, the war is won; man is restored to God's friendship, he is reconciled, redeemed. And this is to work of Christ our Lord: he has triumphed over sin and death through his own dying, and the barriers that separated men from God are broken down, the barriers of sin which no merely human power could ever destroy. And peace begins: the peace of Christ himself communicated now to all whom he has redeemed.

But the peace that our Lord brings to man is very different from the peace that is so often on men's lips, the peace that is simply the absence of conflict, an interval between wars. His peace, he tells us, is his legacy to those who believe in him—'My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you…. But not as the world gives …'.
The House of Gold
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: August 2024

The Home, the Christian home based on the sacramental grace of matrimony, was the theme of one of the last series of sermons preached by Fr Bede Jarrett, O.P., in America. That was in 1929, only a few months before Pius XI's great encyclical on Christian marriage delivered in Rome. Twenty-five years have passed since these sermons were first published and the welcome new edition of the book gives us an opportunity to look back over this epoch which has been characterized by so much discussion and theologizing on the of marriage. With the attack on marriage and the home to such intensity during this century it was inevitable that the Christian should have to think out his position anew in his defence of an intitution so central to his life as a human being and as a sharer in the life of God. During these last twenty-five years in particular there have been many theories which seemed to place the love and companionship of the married couple above that of the family, that is of the children.
The Scientist's Integrity
Authors: Bright Laurence
Published: August 2024

I Recently attended the meeting of the British Association at Oxford, at which a number of distinguished scientists emerged from the mysterious shadows of their laboratories and tried to give the general public an idea of what they had been far doing-with varying degrees of success, since science has travelled far from the time when it was readily comprehensible to all educated people. One of the things that struck me was the number of times that the speakers went out of their way to emphasize that there was no longer any conflict—indeed, any possibility of conflict—between science and religion. It was natural enough, at an Oxford meeting, to recall the celebrated dispute which took place there in 1860 between Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce over the question of evolution. Tempers on that occasion ran very high. Nowadays, as was pointed out, such a scene is unthinkable.
Monachorum Norma: A Sketch of St Hugh of Lincoln
Authors: Farmer Hugh
Published: August 2024

The first Carthusian saint to be formally canonized by the Holy See was not their founder St Bruno but our own St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln from 1186 till 1200. His achievements as a bishop and the historical importance of his resistance to kings have sometimes led writers to underemphasize the fact that he owed to his monastery the training which made him what he was—a saint whose austere and fearless strength was tempered by a gentleness which is one of the finest fruits of charity. The life written shortly after his death by his chaplain, the Benedictine work Adam of Eynsham, does justice to this fact, and, in spite of its omissions, it is one of the most accurate and detail portraits in existence of a medieval saint.

Born in 1140 of a noble family at Avalon near Grenoble, Hugh was neither an Englishman nor a Frenchman by birth, but Empire man. He was brought up from childhood after his mother's death in a neighbouring house of canons at Villarbenoit, where his father had retired to dedicate his last years to Religious Life.
Saying Mass with Devotion
Authors: Smith G. D.
Published: August 2024

I suppose it is the experience of nearly every priest that in the course of time his outlook on the daily offering of the Mass undergoes a considerable change. At first the thought uppermost in my mind as I say Mass is that what I am doing is very wonderful. It may be because the theology of the Eucharist is still fresh in the memory; but, whatever the reason, the aspect of the Mass that chiefly appeals in those early days is what theologians describe as ex opere operato: I am above all intensely conscious of the marvellous power which God is manifesting in and through myself. At my words bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, in my person the Word Incarnate is offering himself in sacrifice to his Father. It is with a feeling of awe, almost of fear, that I tremblingly handle the frail host and gaze wonderingly in the chalice at the blood which Christ has shed for me. And this sentiment, mingled with a feeling of exhilaration, which holds me when I realise that I am acting as God's minister in the miracle of transsubstantiation, is so overpowering that I can hardly think of anything else.
Too Good to be Used
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: August 2024

When at length Job's comforters had done their reasonable best to justify God's ways with man according to their own theological preconceptions, the Lord answered him out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Let a scholastic psychologist bear in mind that closure to the debate when he sets out to outline how we should use our faculties in our life with God.

Using is what we do with utilities, and these as such are expendable objects which though not valuable in themselves do serve a higher purpose. Hence it is not the same as cherishing, which is what we do with things dear in themselves or as enjoying, which is what we do with things that give us pleasure.
The Community of Christ
Authors: Middleton Neil
Published: August 2024

The term ‘mystical body’ is a curious one, curious, that is, in. the sense That very few ordinary Catholics make very much of it as an important Element in their lives. They are members of it, they know the name, But thinking of it as something real in the sense that our Lord or our Lady are real to them is very rare; this is Partly due, I think, to the debasernent of the word ‘mystical', and partly due to historical circumstances. For so long it has been fashionable to think of Christianity as an affair of regulating our own spiritual lives that we have hardly given The idea of the community of Christians a thought. Now that ‘mystical Body’ is a term heard on all sides, there is a consciousness that it is Somehow important, but little idea how it is to be integrated into our daily lives.
St Augustine on the Trinity—III
Authors: Hill Edmund
Published: August 2024

‘Parsons are all liars’. This was the opinion of a sergeant in a military training establishment who taught me how to ride a motor bicycle, long before I ever dreamt I would enter the parsonic ranks myself, The sergeant spoke in praise, not blame. For it was also his duty to instruct cadets in the art of expounding the mechanisms of the objects they rode, and it was his view that if parsons could speak fluently for forty minutes on stuff they could not possibly prove—and that was what he meant by saying they were liars—then cadets ought to be able to speak for five minutes, in the classical military ‘lecturette’, on the hard facts of the internal combustion engine.
St Pambo
Authors: Felicity
Published: August 2024

It is a pity we know so little about a holy man with such a quaint name as Pambo, commemorated on July 18. Pambo strikes a frolicsome note among the renowned and dignified names of the Fathers of the Desert with whom he worked: Antony, Palladius, Isidore, Macarius. It may be that the sound reminds us of Jumbo or Sambo and if so the sooner we stop our ears to this skittish euphony the better. Pambo was by no means reminiscent of the nursery.

He was born round about the year 315, of whom and why he was called Pambo there is no record, but he became one of the founders of the Nitrian monasteries in the Egyptian desert and in his youth a disciple of St Antony. His life was the same as that of all the monks of the Thebaid, with severe fasts, long hours of prayer and the inevitable mat-making.
A League For Penance
Authors: M.B.
Published: August 2024

In a recent review of Thomas Merton's The Waters of Silence the reviewer concludes with this stirring challenge: ‘Thomas Merton writes for the world, and he writes, as he must, of a special glory of Catholic life that, despite its wonderful growth, inevitably remains the privilege of a small minority. A harder and more insistent task must be to reveal the depth and delight of the common life of the members of Christ whose lot is to live in the world, so that they, in union with the hidden ones, may sanctify it. Would that there were another Merton who might show, with something of his skill and grace and popular appeal, how the “Waters of Silence” may flow into a world that dies for lack of them.’
Writing about Prayer
Authors: Hibbert Giles
Published: August 2024

It is generaly admitted that far too many modern books on prayer and The spiritual life are of little value. Such books often enough claim to belong to the tradition of the Church, depending upon and being continuous with the great figures of the past such as St Bernard and St John of the Cross, but in fact this dependence is merely superficial, there being a fundamental break in a process of transmission which must be essentially organic, with its roots in the past and its life in the present—that surely is the significance of tradition.

To claim that our thought about the nature of prayer should be up to date is not to claim that it should dissociate itself from the past—far from it. The very nature of Christian speculation is that it must give full value to and appreciate language and thought-form in which the Church has given expression to her consciousness of the life of Christ within her throughout her history and particularly as witnessed to by the great patristic figures and doctors of the Church.
Do we need Liturgical Reforms?
Authors: Reinhold H. A.
Published: August 2024

Since the Holy See is involved in liturgical reform, we naturally ought to assume that at least in the minds of the scholars and pastors who are engaged in it, the work is relevant. The details of this reform are obviously chosen for pastoral reasons. In other words the concern was definitely and decidedly one of the spiritual welfare of ordinary Catholics, not only of an elite of archaeologists, historians and those who use their missals with understanding and devotion. This pastoral concern is the one thing all liturgical reforms have in common. Damasus I was probably the pope who established the vernacular Latin, Gregory I remade the calendar and the music, Gregory VII stabilized the Franco-Roman form and Trent froze the best available text in its present form. Thus we must assume that the recent changes were supposed to be relevant to the spiritual growth of the average more or less instructed faithful.
Et Mundi Domina
Authors: Dawson Clare
Published: August 2024

For a Catholic the main lines of the Christian faith are as certain as, if less demonstrable than, the law of gravity. This attitude of mind is not only part of the concept of faith, which in itself excludes doubt, but a psychological characteristic of ‘being a Catholic', considered as a state. However lightly any Catholic may sit to his religious obligations, their existence, and the existence of a determinate authority with the right to loose and bind, is generally acknowledged, even if only with a snarl; and when it is denied there is something in the quality of the denial that tends to stress the fact denied. The idea of the Church has a precedence in individual lives as fundamental as the symbolic rock on which it is founded. It is not just a case of knowing all the answers.
Not Married Yet?
Authors: Attwater Rachel
Published: August 2024

Two preliminary points: the first can be sufficiently made through a series of quotations.

From the Aylesford Priory News Letter;. ‘There was also (at a dinner) a very interesting and lively parish priest from a nearby (French) parish. His work has to do with the “problem” of industrial relationships between employers and employees. He apologized for mentioning the word “problem” to describe his work'.

From a private letter of an Oxford history graduate and ex-family case worker, now married with two small children. ‘I was asked with five or six others (to the B.B.C.) to discuss problems of new housewives. I always say I haven't had any problems—of course I burn the chips regularly but I accept this as a part of life!’