bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Code Religion
Authors: Whitestone Peter
Published: July 2007

If there is one section of the community which seems to remain impervious to Catholic influence, it is that body of educated Englishmen whose religion is little more than an ethical code. There have been, of late years, numbers of conversions from among the Anglo-Catholics, Congregationalists, and others of more or less definite belief; very few from among those supporters of institutional religion whose creed—if it can so be called—is limited to a certain standard of external conduct. Leaders of men, imbued with the best public school traditions, the section is a large and important one; we will typify it by the representatives we should find in a regimental Mess, or in the Ward Room of one of His Majesty’s ships.

Such men have little opportunity of meeting with Catholic life: a mixed marriage here and there: a few Catholic friends in their own profession: a visit to a Catholic country, where they will continue to live very much their own life—a race apart; these are the sum total of their contacts. These separated brethren are worthy of more consideration and attention than they are accustomed to receive. Moreover, there is a defensive standpoint, and those Catholics who are drawn into the same state of life, and often, by force of circumstances, deprived of many of the helps of their religion, have to be on their guard lest they too become “code-religionists.”
Solidarity
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

Christ died wholly for me. Christ died wholly for all men. Christ did not die only for me. Christ did not die only for the totality of men. For each and for all, not for a group or a part. This is the way we are made to stand up together, each person aGod’s purchase and all united in Christ: firstly, as it is seen, by His death, by the price that He paid for us. In the price that has been paid for my soul I am equal to the entire human race. In the matter of redemption you don't count one, two, three; you count Jesus Christ.

Hence the Church is Catholic, universal, when its members are contained in one room in Jerusalem, and the historic Church is Catholic even when it is impossible to say in how many souls faith is sincere or one spark of charity bums. We know but cannot understand the identity of Christ with His Church. But it is Christ who is the unity of the Church, its integrity and its comprehensiveness.
The Mysticism of St. Thomas More
Authors: O'Sullivan Richard
Published: July 2007

“Nec enim arbitror levioris esse operae Morum effingere quam Alexandrum magnum aut Achillem, nec illi quam hie noster immortalitate digniores erant.”

“For I do not think it a lighter task to paint More’s likeness than those of Alexander the Great or Achilles, nor were they more worthy of immortality than this man of ours.”

These words of Erasmus reveal the opinion that the greatest of his contemporaries had of Thomas More. On the friendship of More and Erasmus much history has turned and much history is beginning to turn even in our time. It is of surpassing interest to observe that Erasmus, the friend of More, was also friend of Franciscus de Vittoria, and that in his recent volume on The Spanish Origin of International Law Professor James Brown Scott introduces the work of Vittoria by reference to the Utopia of More and the Institutes of a Christian Prince of Erasmus.
The Pope in Politics
Authors: Eppstein John
Published: July 2007

It is a dangerous thing to describe the present in terms of the past. The pontificate of Pius XI is not yet history; nor are we sufficiently removed from certain great political events in which the Holy See has been involved in the last fifteen years, to judge them without passion and with due proportion. Mr. Teeling has made an ambitious attempt to describe and to account for the apparent trend of Vatican diplomacy, which, especially since the beginning of the Abyssinian war, has been the object of so much unflattering attention in this country. In so doing he has sought to place this prickly subject in its proper setting by describing the manifold moral, political and social problems with which the Catholic Church is confronted in every part of the world. It is a cross between history and guess-work; but it is not without value to non-Catholic readers for whom the book seems to be mainly intended. On balance it may be that it will do more good than harm in those circles where ignorance of the immensity and complexity of the Church's task is as monumental as is, on the other hand, that Catholic prejudice which the author has so rashly challenged.
Rome, Oxford and Edinburgh
Authors: Congar M.-J.
Published: July 2007

Ever since Christendom was divided, the longing for unity has filled many earnest souls. Constant efforts have been made by the Catholic Church to re-unite her separated brethren; but it is only during the last three-quarters of a century that, apart from a few ecclesiastics and university professors, there has been any noteworthy and extensive reunion-movement among the various Christian bodies separated from the See of Rome. To-day, under the name of “ecumenical movement” this movement is widespread, and may be regarded as one of the most important features of Twentieth Century Christendom. Already well developed in 1914, interrupted—or rather slowed down—by the war, it soon became a powerful force in the years that followed. The intense longing for solidarity and fraternity issued in two “ecumenical conferences” in 1925 and 1927 respectively.

This “ecumenicist” tendency in non-Catholic Christendom pursues two distinct but parallel lines, corresponding to two distinct viewpoints of the way in which unity is to be achieved. The older of the two movements, that called Faith and Order, which held its first world congress at Lausanne in 1927, had its origins towards the end of the last century among American Episcopalians. The younger movement, Life and Work, whose first world-congress was at Stockholm in 1925, is also of American origin.
The Second Adriatic Concordat
Authors: Novak Ceslas , Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

The recent attempt to settle the relations between the Catholic Church and the Kingdom of Jugoslavia has been attended by tumult in the streets of Belgrade and in the minds of some religious publicists in this country who have seen in it an example of Roman Catholic aggression. Yet consider how subtle must be the diplomacy of the Vatican, when its schemes are initiated and promoted by the State, while the Catholic populations of Croatia and Slovenia look passively on, contenting themselves in their newspapers with chronicling the facts, almost without comment.

The following piece of documentation, representing the somewhat detached point of view of a Catholic Croat towards the whole business, may help to set things in proportion.

The first steps towards the Concordat were taken by the Government more than ten years ago, when a delegation, headed by M. Yanitch, was sent to Rome. The negotiations, however, hung fire owing to some bother over undiplomatic interference with the affairs of the Slavonic College of St. Jerome. Eventually, on July 25th, 1935, an agreement was initialled in Rome by Cardinal Pacelli, for Pope Pius XI, and Dr. Auer, the Minister for Jugoslavia.
Art and Prudence
Authors: Brocklehurst Mark
Published: July 2007

Comparing his own book with M. Maritain's Art and Scholasticism, Mr. Adler says of the latter that it is “for me the best analysis of fine art.” He continues: “The scope of that is more general than this. I am concerned primarily with one problem and, moreover, with that problem as it occurs in the special case made by the cinema as a fine art. The attempt to apply everything that is relevant in the intellectual tradition to this contemporary problem necessarily requires some interpretation and extension of the basic texts I have relied upon. To this extent, and only to this extent, my work has been constructive.” These words of the author fully outline the scope and nature of his work, but not I feel, with the right emphasis.

The book, with its seven hundred pages of texts and notes, may be only “an interpretation and extension of basic texts,” but the result is almost of a different order to the sources of his texts. Without wishing in the least to underestimate the importance of his sources, it would be more accurate to see in this a work of a different kind, and something of equal importance.
An Orthodox Heresiarch?
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

“I See so increasingly plainly the triple fault and undermining character of my influence ... If only I had looked out against the selfishness of leaning on one whom I ought to have propped still for many a day! I have dropped my own child, my first-born, whom God gave me to carry and to guard . . .”

These words occur in the poignant appeal which Baron von Hiigel addressed to his newly-found friend, Father George Tyrrell, S.J., in 1897. The Baron, lonely in his unique intellectual and spiritual greatness, hungry for companionship and understanding, had made his twenty-year-old daughter his confidant and the close sharer of his mental strife. In so doing he had wrecked her health and her faith, and he turned to Father Tyrrell to help her in her need. Tyrrell responded nobly and wisely, and wrote to von Hiigel:

You neglect St. Paul’s caution against giving to babies the solid food of adults. The result is indigestion. Things that your formed mind can easily swallow, without any prejudice to simple faith, may really cause much uneasiness in a mind less prepared.
Consummatum Est
Authors: Synnott Finbar
Published: July 2007

Speaking as one less wise in such matters, I should say that Mr. Epstein's object in the grotesqueness of his sculptured figures is twofold: first, to bring out, by deliberate over-emphasis, points that others might overlook; and secondly, to balance the inadequacy of his medium, stone.

The first point explains the exaggeration of feature in his figures. And how justifiable this is I was able to note upon seeing in the flesh the original of one of the busts, exhibited in the Leicester Galleries, standing alongside the bust itself. To look at the original immediately after seeing the reproduction was to see how much one had missed in the former —and what a great sculptor Mr. Epstein is.

The second object explains what one might call the brutality of his technique, the hard mathematical lines, the artificial disproportions, and the rough, clay-model surfacing. A sculptor’s problem is this: he has to produce out of stone upon the observer the same dynamic effect as a living personality produces. Stone with the lines of a human face is something much less than the lines of a human form in flesh and blood vitalized by a human personality. The deficit has to be made up. There are many ways of making it up. Mr. Epstein’s way is to change the lines or usual appearance so that the thing presented is calculated, by its very strangeness, to jolt the mind and encourage the recognition of underlying realities, or suggested realities.
Personality and Gain (I)
Authors: Hope Felix
Published: July 2007

The source of most of the cruelty and at least half the folly of the world is ignorance. What we do not know may on rare occasions be magnificent. It is more frequently alarming and odious. Ineradicable ignorance of one another among the nations is the fruitful cause of war, and similar ignorance between the various classes of society is responsible for much that is unjust and indefensible in the social system. But ignorance has seldom been more harmful than when it disguises the real nature of a conflict.

In all the ancient civilizations we find the spirit of gain, and in uncivilized races also. It is one of the natural qualities which distinguish man from the other animals. There are men who rise superior to it, when they have enough to live upon without gain, and some there are who will take the chance of having enough. But for the mass it holds good under every economic system. A man wants to improve on his condition. In a money economy it is easier, because a man can save more readily. In our own civilization we find it at work in the period before the dominance of capitalism. There is the striking case of St. Godric, the Norfolk lad who began life at the bottom, then started as a pedlar and did so well that presently he acquired a vessel, took partners and traded along the East Coast and overseas with such success that in sixteen years he amassed magnas opurn divitias. His parents were pious folk and he was a devoted son of the Church.
Morality Play Making
Authors: Pepler Hilary D. C.
Published: July 2007

A Play whether moral or otherwise is a plot, an action in which one human force is pitted against another to culminate in victory or defeat. It is not a reality of human ambition, joy of suffering, but a figure, a picture, a statement of it, a thing made for presentation by actors to an audience. It is, therefore, conditioned by the language, knowledge and experience of those for whose delight or instruction it is performed. Not only each word and action but all costume, properties, lighting and scenery should be designed to develop or explain the plot. The author, the producer and the actor must know why a character is “garbed in black tights, dull red jersey and black cheese-cloth veil,” or in khaki and a steel helmet; why the Lighting plot is for “Red and blue Foots and Borders” at the rise of the curtain; and why a Castle of the World is made of silver blocks in the form of a triangle.
Anti-Christ and the Antidote
Authors: Gilchrist E. R.
Published: July 2007

When the old pagan civilization in the West went down with Imperial Rome there was one institution which, surviving the general decline, gathered together the fragments from the wreckage and incorporating the new elements rebuilt again more solidly, more splendidly than before the edifice of Western civilisation. So intimate was the union between that institution and the new civilization in the West that we may call Christianity the soul of Christendom, for Europe is the Faith and the Faith is Europe.

Till about the beginning of the 16th century the Christian revelation and ideology were accepted universally even when their precepts were not always adhered to. Though disagreement and conflict might arise between Prince and Pope, the basic principles on which society reposed remained unchallenged. But after the decline of the later Middle Ages revolution came, a reaction set in.
A New Deal From St. Thomas
Authors: Gilby Thomas
Published: July 2007

Once it was a sign of taste to knock down the little grecian temple at the end of the glade and build a gothic ruin in its place. Does it not seem that the contemporary revival of St. Thomas is sometimes conducted in the same spirit? And does not this to some extent justify the mutters about philosophical feudalism? At any rate such reflections have produced a most candid and enquiring essay, an examination of conscience as to why our philosophy should be either accepted or rejected more or less as a vogue.

In his own university the author discovers a feeling against St. Thomas out of all proportion to the effort of revival. He does not permit himself to suppose that the reaction comes from a fresh reading of the text. The fault is largely ours. We have presented our philosophy almost as a religious creed, not indeed by appealing outright to ecclesiastical authority, but by sundry becks and nods hinting, and not too gently, that we have bread where all else is synthetic confectionery; playing on the verbal emotions; using the psychological magic of security, a conservative code, the few simple tests. Rationalism, like racialism, can have its superstitions, and both can offer violence to the free individual, sensing only the forces of disintegration outside their own particular pattern. In both cases, too, it is the Jew who suffers, the wandering Jew; the mind unhappy, ironic, searching, but still unattached. We have avoided the issue with modern thought, or begged the question, bringing forward half a dozen or so of our own principles tricked out with technicalities.
The Profit Motive
Authors: Lunn Arnold
Published: July 2007

Language is an instrument designed for the clarification of thought, and not, as Socialists too often assume, as a substitute for thought. This is no new development, for the discussion groups of Mr. Victor Gollancz’s Left Book Club carry on the tradition of the revolutionary clubs in eighteenth century France.

’ ‘Dans la vie,” writes Pierre Gaxotte, “ce qui compte, ce sont les actes; ici, ce sont les paroles. Dans la vie, ce que l'on recherche, ce sont des résultants matériels, tangibles; ici, ce sont des votes. Dans la vie, gouverner, c’est lutter contre des choses, prévoir, préparer, organiser, agir; ici, le grand art consiste à composer l’ordre du jour et à faire la majorité. Dans la vie, une pensée se juge à l’experience, à l’èpreuve des faits. Ici, c’est l’opinion qui règne. Est réel, ce qui emporte l’assentiment des auditeurs; est vrai, ce qui entraine leur adhésion . . . Dans la société de pensée, l’initié fait table rase de tout ce qui n’est pas abstraction et raison raisonnante. Il retranche de lui-même tout ce qui lui est vraiment personnel; il se réduit à cette petite faculté déductive qui est la chose du monde la plus répandue.”

Word fetishism plays an important part in the propaganda of the Left. The Oxford Dictionary defines “fetish” as “an inanimate object worshipped by savages for its magical powers.” To the Socialists inanimate words seem invested with magical powers. “Democracy” is such a word. No genuine Socialist worships the fact of democracy, for the intellectual Socialist has a contempt for the people and is ambitious not to be governed by but to dictate to the demos.
The London House of Hospitality
Authors: Whitestone Peter
Published: July 2007

Catholics are often criticised, where social questions are concerned, of talking much and doing little. This is not the place to make public confession—usually unwarranted, almost always odious; and whether or not there is justification for this criticism is more a matter for private examination of conscience. The fact remains that a certain empty verbosity is a fault to which fallen human nature is only too prone, and it is some gain if we are alive to the possibility in us of that strain of Pharisaism, “for they say and do not.”

The Young Christian Workers’ Movement strives to counteract this tendency. Having before its eyes the words of Pope Pius XI that ‘‘the first apostles of the workers are the workers,” it aims at transforming the conditions in which the young workers live, not by force of arms, but by the love of Christ and of souls in Him. This means being intensely practical, getting down to brass tacks, to concrete cases. A realization of this has given birth, quite spontaneously, to a House of Hospitality in London, following the example of that in Wigan. The idea of wage-earners under present conditions extending hospitality on any considerable scale may seem fantastic, and the effort in London, from very small beginnings, has not been without difficulties and seeming failures; but the work goes on, and appears to be growing. After some three months of life, this new venture is able to give some account of itself. Naturally, the control and direction of the house cannot be in the hands of those who are themselves at work elsewhere all day, and there is now a resident voluntary staff, but the Young Christian Workers, after taking an active part in the starting of the house, assist whenever they can.
Practical Reflections on Grace
Authors: Clerissac Humbert
Published: July 2007

Divine grace may be regarded: firstly, as the primordial vocation of man to the supernatural order; secondly, as a gift habitually dwelling in the justified soul; thirdly, as an actual and indispensable help from above.

The practical importance of the doctrine of the primordial vocation of mankind to the supernatural order is unlimited. In it we shall find unending motives for admiration and adoration. It is said of St. Augustine that, after his conversion, he could never fully satisfy his desire to contemplate the divine plan for the salvation of the human race—that is to say, the idea of the Incarnation; and yet, in truth, the Incarnation is, as far as we can judge of such a mystery, only the remedy to the check which the fall of man gave to an antecedent plan. Let us go back further than the Gospel and put ourselves face to face with that incomprehensible love of God for his creature, which destined us from all eternity to the participation of His essential and infinite Beatitude: for that is exactly what we mean by our vocation to the supernatural order. “We shall be like unto Him, and see Him as He is, face to face.” This is indeed a great mystery, since, as St. Thomas teaches, God loves nothing in us that He has not first caused in us. In the natural order, His providence inclines Him towards the needs of that degree of being that He, as Creator, has imparted to us.
Truth and Poerty
Authors: Bullough Sebastian
Published: July 2007

And he brought them to Adam to see what he would call them.

When Adam was invited by God to name all the animals, he was the first poet. Thus poetry is as old as mankind, and fundamental to man. Adam had a head, a heart and five senses: he was a perfect man and could sing. Adam the poet, when he named the animals, did not give them their scientific names, studied by genus and difference: no, he beheld the marvels of creation, he loved them, and he cried out the music of their names. And the sons of Adam also have intelligence, desire and sensation as their father had, they also have the experience and love of Creation, and— amantis est cantare—they will also always sing of it. For man, endowed with the power of speech and song, will not rest with experience. His experience will overflow, he will always be ready to speak of what he loves, he will make something drawn out of himself, that self which has somehow been transformed by the love-experience, and spontaneously will say the Thing that he has got to know and to love. From the day when the first man called out the names of the living things of the earth, the heart of man has continued to utter a good word—eructavit cor meum verbum bonum, as the poet hath it—echoing the refrain of that first divine poem: “And God saw that it was good.”
Another Way Round
Authors: Synnott Finbar
Published: July 2007

In the history of the Church there are many examples of the Faith ‘persecuted in one city fleeing to another’ and eventually finding its way back from the second to the first. The Faith may be sent by one country to another and lost in the sender and sent back by the receiver. A remarkable example of this is the history of the conversion of the British Isles and their subsequent sending of missionaries into Europe.

In South Africa it is heard that when the Apostolic Delegate visited the late Holy Father last year, the Supreme Pontiff, the undying Peter, of whom Newman wrote that ‘in the history of the ages his words have been facts and his commands prophecies,’ said to his representative that the foreign missions represented now his chief hope for Christendom in view of the present outlook in Europe.

And the Church has an inarticulate as well as an articulate voice. It is not without significance that the Foreign Missionary Orders are now overflowing with vocations. Both Voices represent the Infallible Spirit, which may well be stirring the Church to develop rapidly elsewhere before the work of the new vandals be done—if it is to be done. It may be that the trusteeship of the Kingdom of God will pass to other races than the white, at least in part.

Among the various Missions in South Africa at the moment there is one, recognised as one of the most prospering in the world, which suggests very strongly the hope of a new way round. While, to leave violence out of our calculations, it can be said at least that problems and prejudices in Europe are too mixed to allow of any very rapid evangelisation without quite extraordinary miracles, the Basuto people in South Africa are giving an example of mass conversion to the Faith recalling that of first evangelisation of Ireland, the most peaceful and triumphal in history.
Unique Experiment in Co‐Operation
Authors: Kerr James
Published: July 2007

Possibly the above title might be considered somewhat of a misnomer, for the particular Co-operative Movement I have in mind, although inaugurated in comparatively recent years, is already far past the experimental stage. I refer to the St. Francis Xavier Co-operative Movement, in the Province of Nova Scotia, Canada. Its story reads like a veritable romance, but underneath it all it is easily seen that one of the chief factors at work has been unremitting toil and service on the part of its sponsors, for those less fortunately placed.

A few weeks before he passed away, the late Sir Arthur Currie, Principal of McGill University, Montreal, defining the role of the modern university in what he well described as ‘the desperate battle of modern life,’ said: ‘The University of to-day must not be content to be a mere reservoir of knowledge, a storehouse of equipment, a base of supplies. Rather it must be a creator of forces for moulding human lives.’

The St. Xavier University, a Catholic centre of learning, in the eastern part of Nova Scotia, has in these late years been making a determined effort to do this very thing, and what is more, is succeeding. Unwilling to go on turning out graduates to seek, but not always to find, a place in the world, St. Francis Xavier has taken upon itself the task of endeavouring to lay more solid and stable economic foundations in this particular part of Canada. In other words, these university leaders are fashioning a new life-pattern for Nova Scotia.
Moral Re‐Armament
Authors: Carpenter Hilary J.
Published: July 2007

Man is a complex being, largely due to the fact that he is a microcosm of Creation, comprising within a single unity the essential elements of the vegetable, the animal and the intellectual worlds. This is admittedly platitudinous; but it is also very widely overlooked by so many of those who produce the stream of panaceas for the cure of human ills and the remedying of human evils. Yet the simple truth is that if human nature is to be approached effectively and rightly it must be approached in its completeness and not just from one angle to the exclusion of others. The supreme example of the true approach to man for the furthering of his happiness is to be found in the Incarnation. To reveal the truth of man’s purpose, to provide a meaning to the problems of human life and to open the way to redemption and happiness, God became man and adopted as His own all the complexity of the human microcosm; and His subsequent approach to man was and is through all the channels implied in that complexity. Moreover, the point of primary importance in the Incarnation is that it is the final and perfect moment of Divine Revelation—that Revelation which covers not only the nature of God and His love-longing for man, but also the nature of man and his need for God. Though it is true that Faith without good works cannot save us, it is equally true that good works without; Faith are futile.
Reunion in Catholicity
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

The unity of Christians, Our Lord implies, is a necessary condition if the world is to accept His mission from His Father; He prays that His followers ‘may be one . . . that the world may believe that thou hast sent me’ (Jn. xvii, 21). The scandal, the futility, of the continuance of Christian divisions whose origins and meaning have been long forgotten is plain for all to see. Yet nobody with any sense of realities can be blind to the immensity of the obstacles which hinder Christian reunion, nor to the theoretic unsoundness and the practical hopelessness of the various well-meaning but man-made solutions that have so far been offered to the problem. Meanwhile, with bewildering rapidity, the alignments for what looks like becoming the final struggle between Christ and secularism for the soul of civilised man are being formed, leaving those who profess the name of Christ hopelessly divided among themselves.

Anglo-Saxondom has much to answer for in originating and continuing the divisions of Christendom, and it alone is responsible for most of the subdivisions of those divisions—the final atomisation of Christendom, the reductio ad absurdum of schism. But to Anglo-Saxondom is due also the origin of many of the efforts of recent years, however pathetically inadequate, to undo the damage. Faith and Order, Life and Work, the Branch Theory and the Bridge-Church Approach, all these are of British or American origin. And to all these, and to most other reunion schemes or dreams, ‘Rome’ has appeared as the great obstructionist.
Homo Sapiens and H. G. Wells
Authors: Smith R. A. L.
Published: July 2007

In a comparative study of modern French and English culture published in a recent number of the Spectator, Mr. D. R. Gillie commented on the ‘unnatural prolongation of the joint reign of Mr. H. G. Wells and Mr. Bernard Shaw over British reason.’ Whatever explanations may be offered—and Mr. Gillie himself attaches high importance to the success of the Group Movement, despised by the great majority of thinking people—there can surely be no doubting the substantial accuracy of the statement itself. If Mr. Shaw’s influence is more that of an individual and peculiar genius whose strength lies in the field of destructive criticism, Mr. Wells has managed to identify himself with the spirit and ethos of his age in a manner altogether remarkable. He is, as he proudly asserts in his latest work, The Fate of Homo Sapiens, ‘a fair sample of the more progressive thought of my time’ (p. 99), which, as he candidly confesses elsewhere, ‘no doubt owes much more than I realize to the phrases and assumptions of the liberal, protestant, progressive world of half a century ago’ (pp. 110-11). This new book is therefore of particular interest and importance in giving us the summarized thought of one who regards himself above all as a ‘sample of a generation.’

As one reader sees it, the strength of Mr. Wells’s thought seems to lie in three very positive qualities; its consistency, its clarity and, from one aspect, its rationalism. No one can ever mistake his meaning; it is always abundantly dear.
Woman and the Church
Authors: Beaumont Mary
Published: July 2007

In the world of to-day, and especially in a world at war, the Church stands apart. It has standards that do not change with circumstances, though their application may. And it has never thought that man is capable of standing alone, or expected him to provide perfection in this life, knowing quite well that however much you may alter the world, human nature will be much the same. So to-day it would seem that the Church may have, already has, a great opportunity and a great work to do. And one, moreover, that her officials, the priests and Bishops, cannot do alone. Pope Pius saw this when he developed Catholic Action, that emphasis on the part the laity can and must play in the mission of the Church to the world. It is clear from many passages in different Encyclicals that men and women have each their part in this mission, as it also is abundantly clear from a consideration of fact. What is the part of women? Our experience of war and its aftereffects in our own life-time bids us see even now another new world in the making. The apostolate of the laity will be of more urgency than before. Here we are concerned with certain fundamentals of that apostolate, and in particular with the role of the Catholic woman.

All through the history of the Church women have played a great part. Our Lady in the beginning had, and still holds, a most exalted position; among the innumerable women saints there have been very public and active ones like St. Catherine of Sienna, a dyer’s daughter who actively influenced Popes and Kings, and others whom the world has hardly heanl of till their death, like St. Teresa of Lisieux: women who have worked at home and pioneers who have gone all over the world.
The Solidarity of Salvation
Authors: Prince J. F. T.
Published: July 2007

Catholicism, like Jewry, is persecuted because of its solidarity. But we are not forgetful for want of reminders that there is a Catholicism accurately distinguished by inverted commas: a heresy as subtle as that of the Pharisees: a ‘faith’ impotent to find expression in action. It is the faith of multitudes, but more especially of the elect. I would explain: it is the faith that has been called super-Catholicism.

Super. For it is courageous in condemnation (where the weaker brethren, through foolish sympathy or fear of inhumanity, fail), it is admired, rather than considered inordinate, for its craving for Test. Its width is infinite; dare I say, its depth negligible? It deplores ‘materialism’; its affirmation of trust in the Providence of God and indemnification hereafter renders suspect, almost, any suggestion of the obligations of justice here below. Yet, in its ‘simplicity,’ it inspires prayer for much more than Daily Bread, the sufficiency for which our Lord taught us to ask: and a host of additional delicacies is said to be the reward of this ‘childish faith.’ A Heavenly intimacy reduces the Saints to the level of contractors; familiarity does not, however, breed contempt.

It has a frugal trend. It is less costly to lavish devotion upon an idealised Christ than upon the Saviour, who (dying for mankind) promised thereafter to disguise himself as suffering humanity.

Now it is Super-Catholicism, and not Catholicism, that has no answer to the charge of individualism brought by communists and others against the Church of God. Would they (my super-Catholics) be as surprised as Communists to learn that the doctrinal conception of the Sacred Heart presents human society with a theory of true Communism?
The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure and of St. Thomas
Authors: Callus Daniel A.
Published: July 2007

The Franciscan Bonaventure of Bagnorea and the Dominican Thomas Aquinas are typical of their respective Orders.

St. Bonaventure has been described as ‘one of the most lovable figures in the whole history of mediaeval thought, the great doctor of mystical contemplation, the most perfect exponent of Franciscan theology, that is of a theology thoroughly imbued with the religious genius of St. Francis of Assisi.’ St. Thomas has been characterized as the architect of the most perfect philosophical synthesis, ‘one of the three greatest metaphysicians who ever existed,’ whose only love was the quest for and the championing of truth, unice veritatis amator, the most eminent personification of St. Dominic’s ideal, that is, to uphold, to spread and to defend the Truth.

If it is true that St. Francis never condemned learning for itself, it is equally true that he had no desire to see it developed in his Order. The pursuit of learning was always considered by St. Francis to be more dangerous than useful, and desired it neither for himself nor the members of his Order. His personal influence, profound as it was, did not, however, and could not prevail against the pressure of facts; and the Franciscans soon realized the necessity of developing theological studies.
Eddington, Physics and Philosophy
Authors: Caldin E. F.
Published: July 2007

Sir Arthur Eddington in his recent book has presented a relatively non-technical account of the theory of the fundamental laws and constants of physics which he developed in his Relativity Theory of Protons and Electrons. But he has also embedded his contributions to science, which are recognised to be of the greatest importance, in a philosophical setting which carries by no means the same authority. It is unfortunate that physical advances, the brilliance of which it would be impertinent to commend, should be obscured, by reason of this embellishment, as seems to have happened in recent controversy. It seems useful, therefore, to discuss what is the real status of Eddington’s results, what points of interest arise from his reflections on the method of physics, and what is true in those parts of the book which deal with genuinely philosophical questions. We shall be mainly concerned with the philosophical setting, and scientific technicalities will be reduced to a minimum.
Christianity and the African
Authors: Synnott Finbar
Published: July 2007

It is sometimes said in travellers’ tales that Christianity does more harm than good among the African peoples. It seems at first to destroy their native virtues without building up new ones, to change external observances without giving real Christian character.

There is a certain amount of truth in this, and apart from the more mysterious causes—that first knowledge of the moral law tends, as St. Paul said, to multiply sin—there are many others not far to seek.

The real Africans, the negroes and the peoples called the Bantu, who are nearly negroes, covering the southern two-thirds of the continent, are essentially gregarious. In the village community, which was more or less uniform from the northern tropics to the Cape before the white man came and brought his individualism, there was a most strict community of life. There is a story of some European philanthropist who wrote to a Bishop in Africa offering to finance an orphanage. The missionaries laughed. There was not, and hardly is, in spite of all changes, an ‘orphan’ among the tribes. The children belonged to the community as much as to the father. Food was virtually pooled in this society; all the communty turned out, freely without payment, to build each other’s house, to hoe each other’s field, to herd each other’s cattle. It went to extremes when, as in some tribes, the chief’s relatives had to be buried with him, whether they happened to be dead or alive.
The Philosophy of St. Bonaventure and of St. Thomas
Authors: Callus Daniel A.
Published: July 2007

St. Bonaventure’s touchstone in philosophy was exemplarism. A philosophy is true or false according to its acceptance or refusal of the ideas. It was then natural that his preference would be given to Plato, who, because of his discovery of the reality of ideas, was in his eyes the most excellent philosopher, to whom the gift of wisdom was fittingly appropriated. Aristotle, on the contrary, a great scholar but a bad philosopher, built up a philosophy of the useless: his philosophy is irrelevant to the real, and hence worthless. Aquinas’s keystone, on the other hand, was that doctrine, so typically Aristotelian, of actuality and potentiality; accordingly, it is no matter of surprise that he should hold Aristotle in such esteem, for the latter’s metaphysics and his whole philosophy are pervaded throughout by the doctrine of actuality and potentiality, built up on this as upon two pillars.

To view a problem from the wrong angle leads inevitably to disastrous consequences and utter failure. Aquinas made his own, as a fundamental basis of all his enquiries, the Aristotelian principle, stated also by Boethius, that it is a scholar’s duty to formulate his belief about anything according to its real nature. As each science has its special subject-matter, which constitutes it as a particular science and distinguishes it from any other, so it has to be dealt with according to its proper method, strictly adhered to and used rigorously according to its special nature; consequently nothing adventitious or extraneous ought to be introduced in the process, if utter confusion and gross blunders are to be avoided.
The Supernatural Character of the Church
Authors: Maginty Brendan
Published: July 2007

Belief in the holy Catholic Church is required on precisely the same terms and for the same reasons as is belief in the other mysteries and dogmas of the faith, such as the Blessed Trinity and the Incarnation. A passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel, the Confession of St. Peter, provides a good analogy for focussing the Mystery of the Church. Our Lord asks of His disciples concerning Himself: ‘Whom do men say that the Son of Man is?’ The different answers given: John the Baptist, Elias, Jeremias, one of the prophets, imply agreement in one thing, namely that Jesus Christ is a man, evidently a religious man and seemingly one who comes front God. Those Jews who made these judgments were right in confessing the humanity of Christ; they were wrong in not distinguishing Him from other men. For them He was only a man, though worthy to be compared with the great religious figures of their history. But He was also truly God and the Son of God. It is the recognition of this profound truth by St. Peter that moves our Lord to His eulogy that ends with the prediction of St. Peter’s position in the Church.
The New Order
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

In the enigmatic future that faces us there is one thing becoming more certain with every succeeding day of the war—the old order of civilization is passing and some new order marches swiftly down upon us. But though we know now that this new order will be here soon, we cannot tell what it will be like. It may even turn out to be no order at all, but only chaos. Hitler promises a new order, and while we are confident that he will never achieve it, we must recognize that some cataclysmic change inevitably awaits us, a revolution that will turn the whole system on which we now depend upside down. Every day brings with it death to soldiers and civilians, destruction to property; every hour records the expenditure of incalculable fortunes upon the unproductive works of warfare. As all the material benefits acquired by modern industry are poured out in a vast torrent, the capitalistic and industrial order that set up those material standards is drained of its life’s blood.

The last war produced a new order of insecurity and unrest even though the actual system of capital and industry received artificial respiration and lingered on. The increasing revolt against authority and the desire for individual freedom for the lowest as well as the highest in society made the old order insecure and led to the reaction of authoritarianism. Order demands dependence and cooperation among the ordered, while antagonism and individual independence split it into fragments.
The True Nature of the War
Authors: Strauss E. B.
Published: July 2007

There are many puzzling features about this war. For instance: how is it
that the Germans appear to have accomplished all they wanted so far in
double-quick time? How is it that there is a powerful fifth column not only
in every allied country, but also in every neutral country?

To provide an answer to questions of this kind, one must try and
establish the true nature of the war.

In spite of what the communists say, this is not a war of rival
imperialisms. It is not even a war of Great Britain
versus Germany—a war of rival nations. It is
a religious war—anyhow on the part of Germany. The reason why the Germans
are prepared to sacrifice everything for victory, and were willing to
dispense with most of the amenities and comforts of civilisation for years
before they actually launched their attack on the world, is that they were
buoyed up by great spiritual force and religious fanaticism. Spiritual force
can only be met with spiritual force. Even if we possessed parity in numbers
and equipment and were deficient in spiritual force, we could not beat the
Germans. Islam, in the days when it was a young, militant, missionary
religion, nearly succeeded in conquering the whole of Europe and destroying
its civilization. There were moments when it seemed that nothing short of a
miracle could succeed in holding the invading hordes at bay and preventing
them from capturing the whole Mediterranean basin and most of Central
Europe. But the miracle happened, and like all miracles it was in the first
and last instance a change in the spiritual order of events.
Christian Perfection
Authors: O'Driscoll Benet
Published: July 2007

Because it expresses the ideal at which all must aim, the idea of perfection has always found its place in Christian thought. In the first centuries of vigorous faith strengthened in persecution there was less need for the intellectual systematization that was to come much later. Our Saviour did not present His disciples with a complete and coherent body of abstract truths. His doctrinal discourses and discussions had the practical purpose of teaching the way to salvation, and it was the first preoccupation of the Church to preach Jesus crucified. In the course of the centuries the living Church, faced with controversies and doctrinal extravagances, would find it necessary—relying on the promise of divine assistance—to define the implications of the teaching of Christ, and this in turn would make a fuller synthesis possible and even necessary. In the meantime the different obstacles to the Christian life encountered by men of different ages and cultures inevitably led them to stress different elements in the fullness of the Christian life. The Fathers of the Desert had escaped from a profoundly corrupt society, and as a consequence they emphasized the need for penance, and purity of heart, and avoidance of sin, so that the conception of perfection which can be disengaged from their lives and writings is of a more negative character; the positive side of Christian life is not absent, but it is less in relief.
The Holy Name Society
Authors: Klimeck Esmond L.
Published: July 2007

It often seems to us who view the Church from within that the primitive simplicity of her organisation and life has developed into something quite unnecessarily complex. The mind almost reels before the numerical vastness of the different religious orders, congregations, societies, institutes, companies, etc., especially when considered in conjunction with the yet vaster number of lay associations, sodalities, societies, guilds, confraternities, etc. Yet this is not all, for hardly a week passes that one does not read of some new movement being proposed by someone or other. Very bewildering sometimes even to those of the faith, and certainly incomprehensible to those outside the Church. The explanation, however, is quite simple and natural.
A Third Reformation?
Authors: Cunningham Adrian
Published: July 2007

. . . the old certainties are gone, and so departments of religion are springing up like toadstools throughout our demented Anglo-Saxon world. The less we believe, the more we talk about what other people believed. Are we really interested, or are we just kidding ourselves?’

Thus, forcefully, the Spalding Professor of Eastern Religion and Ethics at Oxford. Certainly the fashionable currency of quasireligious mysticism, the resort to the private and aggressively anti-modern can, along with aestheticism and sexual liberation, remind one of the 1890s. Incense and beads abound; the lush, the exotic and the febrile. And Professor Zaehner reminds us that meditation takes time, and time takes unearned income, and is thus open to the same criticism as psycho-analysis. But it is not difficult to disengage from his testy remarks about washing machines and televisions, and his fine disdain for modern theology, matters which are of a substantial, complex and even hopeful contemporary relevance.