bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Should Foreign Missions Go?
Authors: Ryan Finbar
Published: July 2007

The title of this article has been borrowed from one in The Atlantic Monthly for January 1944 by the Reverend Phillips Endecott Osgood, Rector of Emmanuel Church, Boston. In his opening paragraph he records that ‘at a recent conference at Columbia on Science, Philosophy, and Religion two delegates voiced the pungent opinion that “the entire missionary movement should be stopped”. They raised a vigorous demurrer to the axiom that “the post-war world can be built successfully only on the basis of Christianity” and categorically denied that “we are fighting to save Christian civilization”. Granted that only two of the delegates exploded this bombshell, nevertheless there are persons not delegates to this august conference who would second the motion—both at home and, more understandably, among the nationalists in the non-Christian countries’.

The rest of his article is chiefly taken up with an examination of that nationalist attitude in Japan, India, and China, and while he seems to be in general accord with the familiar Catholic thesis that ‘the Church can then only be said to be founded in a region when it is self-governing, with its own churches, its own native clergy, its own resources: in a word, when it depends on nobody but itself’ (S. Cong. Propaganda, May 20th, 1923), it is not clear that he rejects what he styles a ‘steady liberalization of Christian eredalism’, or that he looks upon Christianity as anything more than an ornament to ‘revivified native faiths—a higher Buddhism, a cultured Hinduism, a reborn Mohammedanism, a philosophic Taoism, an assertive Shintoism’.
The Scriptures as Word of God
Authors: Kehoe Richard
Published: July 2007

The Scriptures are God’s Word spoken. They are not simply word about God, or about his Word or about his saving work. They are his Word, and therefore his work: for his Word is creative; what it says it thereby does. (In Hebrew, Dabar means both Word and matter, affair, etc.) The words of Scripture do not point to what God does; they are what he does. And it is necessary not so much to follow their guidance as to participate in their Mystery. So it is, analogously, of a creative work of art. For example, a poem does not refer to something apart from itself which one must apprehend: it is something, into which one must enter.

In the words of Scripture a mystery of creation is contained. They are intrinsically creative. And what is there already created is the mind of the Prophet who utters them. For the prophet is one who conceives the Word of God in his mind (in his ‘heart’), by the power of the Spirit, and brings it forth, utters it. He possesses, that is to say he is really possessed by, the Word of God. The prophetic utterance of the Word of God involves a divine work of creation; it means that the Word of God has in some sense become incarnate.

What happens in the divine history, of which the Scriptures are not just a record but an embodiment or a sacrament, is to be compared to what happened in the very creation of the world. The mystery there displays the chaotic material of life being moved over by the Spirit and so enlivened that it becomes responsive to the Word of God and out of the womb of chaos the cosmos is born.
Some Practical Points on Jung’s Analytical Psychology
Authors: Elkisch F. B.
Published: July 2007

Seeing that Professor C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology has been introduced to the Catholic public by the writings of Fr Victor White, O.P., and by Fr Witcutt’s Catholic Thought and Modem Psychology, it seems appropriate to discuss this subject from the practical point of view of the psychotherapist. It is the purpose of this article to illustrate one or two practical points of Jung’s method by a few examples in the endeavour to dispel the current notion that analytical psychology is an art intelligible only to the initiated. Yet it contains no greater mystery than the familiar phenomena of biology, e.g. the partition of cells. Jung continually stresses the point that his method is empirical, dealing with facts which emerge from the unconscious. Admittedly, these phenomena are often very surprising; however, they should not be disregarded even if they cannot always be explained satisfactorily.

Analytical psychology is not concerned with the soul in the full theological sense of the word but only with its manifestations, with the psyche, which, as Dr Strauss defines it, is the sum total of the experiences made during a person’s lifetime as well as those which have come down as a heritage from his ancestors. Modem man, as he is, separated from his divine origin and unable to balance his experiences in accordance with true values, is conscious of a deep-seated dissatisfaction and sense of frustration. This is the breeding-ground for that modern complaint termed ‘neurosis’. In essence, the neurotic person does not differ from his normal fellow. It is only that the ‘war with himself’ is fought with greater intensity and leads to embarrassing conflicts with the outside world. To deal with the complexities of this situation—often disguised under physical diseases like asthma—Jung’s method has been developed.
An Interpretation of Ireland
Authors: Eden Helen Parry
Published: July 2007

‘The Irish Tangle for English Readers’ (Macdonald; 10s. 6d.) is a mainly political history of Ireland. The historian, Sir Shane Leslie, sees himself under the sod—‘turf’ would have hotter associations in Ireland—and free to speak his detached mind without fear or favour. One cannot imagine a better place for this feat than a country house on the Ulster border guarded by Yankee sentries; with an occasional coffin of butter, followed by pious mourners, proceeding north, and a few gewgaws from Belfast infiltrating in the other direction. Here the book was conceived. It was finished in a military building in London as ‘impartial reading for Englishmen who are weary of Ireland and the Irish’. It is very good reading for anyone.

The book sets out to tell what Irish and English between them have made of Ireland. It does not saddle the living with the follies, vices and misdemeanours of the dead. Nevertheless, history and the climate have made the country what it is, and neither is particularly helpful. The author insists that Nordic interbreeding has been propitious, and that the climate can always be counted upon to turn immigrants into Irishmen. ‘The only pure blood in Ireland is . . . in the racing-stables.’ There is a climate, too, one notes, of the soul. Cromwell has to expel Spenser’s grandson for becoming a Papist. Nearly all the great Irish leaders have been of mixed stock. The supreme chance for an independent Ireland, without Partition, was lost, the historian insists, with Parnell. Any new opportunity, he says, will be hard and slow to come by; though it is quite possible now that Conservative Ulster may throw in its lot with the farmers of the South, rather than risk entanglement with English Reds.
The Failure of ‘Back to The Land’
Authors: J.F.H.
Published: July 2007

However enthusiastic we may be concerning what is called ‘the back to the land movement,’ it is a fact that most of the attempts made in any organised form, in recent years have ended in failure. However much we may deplore that fact, it still remains a fact, and ‘trying again’ in the same way with the same mistakes, except in regard to some details, is not likely to do more than to convince our unconverted brethren that ‘it can’t be done’. We should surely learn from our past failures some other way of achieving the high task which is literally our only ‘alternative to death’.

The failure of most, if not all, of the well-intentioned ‘movements’ of past years has been due to one or all of three causes : lack of funds, lack of suitable people and lack of education, The last is fundamental and overwhelmingly the real cause of failure. You cannot make a farmer out of a townsman until he becomes, by training and experience, not a townsman settled on the land but a true countryman in every sense of the word. He has to learn more than the technical aspects of his new work. He must before, and above all, begin a new way of living. He must, by patient endeavour and humble obedience, re-orientate his thoughts to a new valuing of almost the whole of his life.

The problem is immense, the suggested solutions innumerable, but we shall not in the future any more than in the past find the true solution without facing the real issue, and the issue is mainly one of education and the re-setting of values. A host of willing helpers, complete with public or secondary school education, may be, and usually are, a great joy to a farmer who has left all things to follow the Divine Wisdom of Nazareth. Their companionship, their conversation, their interests, bring back to him some at least of the good things in the world he has left. But willingness is not effectiveness, nor is the appreciation of the value of work the only requisite for its well-doing. Father McNabb once epitomised life in the words ‘work and the preparation for work.’
How May We Approach the Spiritual Traditions of the East?
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

Philosophy—East and West, the book of the East-West Philosophers’ Conference held at Hawaii in 1939, adds to the growing evidence of a desire for rapprochement in academic circles between America and the Far East. The scope of the book is philosophical and rational, prescinding, that is, from religious questions as such, and seeking to formulate and to organise the common ground of Eastern and Western thought and thus to make more readily accessible to each what one possesses and the other lacks. The project arises from so manifest and natural a tendency—the desire of men to understand one another and so extend their understanding of the world—that any elaborate justification seems uncalled for, and in effect the majority of the Eastern contributors dispense with any such preamble. In the nature of the case the position of the Western philosophers is a more self-conscious one, and the justifications they put forward raise questions more important than the conference itself. It must be added that such a statement intends no disparagement of the book in which the proceedings of the conference are recorded, and is one in which the American contributors themselves would probably agree.

The first question, to which we may defer the answer while using it as a key to unlock others, is this: In what sense can we accept the statement that the traditions neither of the East nor of the West are wholly true or adequate to a full understanding of man? It is a proposition in which the Western and, at least, one of the Eastern contributors explicitly concur, and is in line with the objective of a “planetary philosophy“, in which the same amount of agreement is evident.
Economy is to Employ What One Has
Authors: Riviere Isabelle
Published: July 2007

To set fire to a field of ripe wheat or to leave the ground untilled surely amounts to almost the same result? Everything in this world is made to be of service, and, because there is only what is necessary for all, the bread that is not sown, like that which is thrown away, is taken from someone. It is bad, it is monstrous to pay thousands of francs for a dinner given to Ambassadors, five hundred francs or more for a bottle of champagne at a fashionable dance, when so many people are hungry; but to put the amount in a woollen stocking, is as bad, as monstrous. Even worse sometimes. For, at least, some persons profit by these follies, and if it is a very despicable means of livelihood they have found, it may be that they themselves are not all despicable. Whilst as for this money which men pile up and set by for their hypothetical needs, to which they presently sacrifice even the satisfaction of these needs, what does it serve? There was someone in this world for whom it was indispensable and who is thus deprived of it. If we want a seed to germinate and fructify, we do not, unless we are mad, enclose it in a box. In being used it is undoubtedly destroyed, but it bears fruit a twentyfold.
Towards a Pre-History of Monachism
Authors: Morson John
Published: July 2007

The Synoptic Gospels are a fundamental document of ascetic theology. They present a way of life. Their rich dogmatic content is largely implicit. The key-note is struck from the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in words which anticipate the whole: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”. In St. Matthew’s nineteenth chapter is recorded the question of the rich young man, and our Lord’s commendation of those who have left all for his name’s sake. This passage is often claimed as the foundation charter of the religious state. Its great advantage is that it expresses far more clearly than the earlier teaching the distinction between the commandment, obedience to which is necessary for entrance into the kingdom, and the counsel offered to those who would be perfect.

In the account which we have of the infant Church at Jerusalem distinction is not clearly made between the faithful who simply obeyed the commandments and the aspirants after perfection who followed the counsels. We might gather that the converts, as a matter of course and almost without exception, entered upon a way of life not unlike that which our Lord had counselled to the rich young man, and which was to be known as the “religious life” in the centuries to come. Yet St. Peter implied that Ananias was free to give up the price of his estate or not. His sin consisted precisely in lying about it to the Holy Ghost.
Retreat Houses, Religious and Lay
Authors: Fry Barbara
Published: July 2007

In England there is great need for more houses where retreats can be made and quite as urgently for different types of retreat house. There is room for considerable variety, for a network of smaller and larger houses, in towns and out of them, religious and lay. There is a very clear need for a liturgical retreat house, more for women than for men, to whom the existing monasteries are open. There is need for a retreat house sufficiently contemplative and monastic for a genuine spirit of silence to rule; but there is also need for a home for a very free type of retreat where the Christian minority who love the Lord in a neo-pagan age can meet, and such retreats might be the beginning of many genuine friendships and much work for God.

In a retreat we break from our routine life and plunge for a time into another life, so as to turn right way up—if we were previously upside-down—but above all so as to plunge from a more superficial to a deeper and more fully lived Christian life. But if the plunge is not into another and more fully lived life, but into a vacuum with devotional frills, an appendage to a religious life going on behind closed doors, it is apt to lend an air of unreality to the whole, so that the effects fade before the “realities” of everyday life. The grace of God apart, everything then depends on the strength of prayer of the individual and the preacher’s sterling worth.
A Scottish Type of Sanctity
Authors: Monro Margaret T.
Published: July 2007

The great difficulty in discussing a Scottish type of sanctity is the exiguous character of the evidence. In the period of the Celtic Church saints are as thick as blackberries. But at this distance of time one cannot distinguish the incoming Irish Gaels from the native Piets and Britons. We cannot show that the communities deriving from SS Ninian, Drostan and Mungo fostered a type of holiness in any way different from that of Iona. The general impression is of similarity.

And when the great age of the Celts is over, how few names remain even for consideration! Saint Margaret, half-Hungarian, half-Saxon, belong to Scotland only by the geographical accident of her marriage and the warmth with which the people took her to their hearts. Then come two names from the Scottish calendar, unrecognised elsewhere. The first is King David I., Margaret’s son, founder of Holyrood and other abbeys, cannily strung along the Border in the hopes that an invader might respect church property; he was also a defender of the poor. The other, Blessed Gilbert of Moray, was a Bishop of Caithness (d. 1245) who did a valuable piece of civilising work in the North. The people were in a panic before ill-understood royal efforts to unify and consolidate the kingdom. Both his predecessors had been assassinated, and Blessed Gilbert led off by pleading for the lives of the last set of assassins. He won such confidence that he was allowed, io die in his bed after twenty years of devoted work—no mean feat on the outer confines of Christendom at that time.
The Opportunity of the Isles
Authors: Peregrinus
Published: July 2007

The men of the Hebrides smile tolerantly when the stranger from the south, after a week’s visit, decides that the only possible life to-day is one of retirement, the eremitical life lived alone on a croft among these sea-bound strips of land. The natives are used to this type of enthusiasm; it “takes” many people in this way. But when the stranger has returned to his own place on the mainland, he soon decides that electric light and heat, railways and twice-daily posts, are his happy portion and that the life on the isles is a romantic dream. And so the natives out there, battling with their gales, scraping a hard livelihood from the rocky ground or netting it from the petulant sea, are led to laugh at these effervescent dreams.

And yet the “call of the isles” is real enough, and even though it has resulted only in a few sophisticated settlers bringing their complacent materialism in their industrially-fed cheque books to a well apportioned cottage here and there, why should this call be ridiculed? It may cover a genuine vocation only superficially allied to a romantic taste for islands and sea. At least we must admit the modern need for the eremitical vocation as such and if there are certain places where that vocation manifests itself rather than in others, that is no more than the desert was to the early fathers. Modern industrial city life is as corrupt now as was the decaying urban society of the third century, though it is painted in less lurid colours.
A Sermon for the Feast of Corpus Christi
Authors: Aquinas S. Thomas
Published: July 2007

The glad commemoration of the feast which is kept to-day, Very Reverend Fathers, urges us to continue rejoicing in the praises ofthe most holy Body of Christ. For what is more sweet, what more delightful to the hearts of the elect, than to proclaim the depth ofdivine charity and to praise the fires of abounding love? By the hands of his priests, at the table of the New Covenant, he offers unceasingly his flesh for food and his precious blood for drink, to his sons, the heirs of the kingdom which God has promised to those who love him.

These works are thine, O Christ of immense power and overflowing goodness, who in this most sacred and supersubstantial bread hast devised a truly adorable and wonderful traffic, a memorial of former wonders; so that they who by eating of the forbidden tree fell sick and lost the unfading crown of eternal glory, may find a cure by feeding on the spotless and undefiled Lamb, Jesus Christ.

O ceaseless outpouring of divine goodness and most generous compassion, wonderful in our eyes and worthy of all praise, in which is set forth among us in this sacrament the fulfilment of all sacrifice until the end of time; by which the sons of adoption are refreshed with the bread of angels and made drunk with the charity of the sons of God!

O singular lowliness! pleasing unto God and proclaimed by him, which dreads no one’s dwelling nor fears the shelter offered by any man’s belly.
Bishop Clement of Dunblane, O.P.
Authors: Ross Anthony
Published: July 2007

Matthew Paris, writing of the last expedition of Alexander II, king of Scots, said that it was reported to be due to “the constant urging of a certain indiscreet bishop of Strathearn, a friar, of a truth, of the Order of Preachers’’. (Chron. Maj., V. p. 89; Rolls Ser.) This indiscreet bishop was Clement of Dunblane, with whom the history of the Dominican Order in Scotland begins. Apart from the words of Matthew Paris, there appears to be nothing written about him which is not laudatory, and since the 17th century at least he has commonly been referred to by Scottish writers, whether Catholic or Protestant, as “Saint Clement”, although there has never been any authorisation of cultus. The title is probably due solely to Camerarius, who assigned Bishop Clement a place in his calendar of Scottish saints, under the date March 19th. But before that time warm praise was given to Clement, though not the name of saint, both by mediaeval Scottish writers and by chroniclers of his own order; and it is safe to say that no Scottish Dominican has left so great a memory, and few others are so deserving of remembrance.
Leo X and the Scottish Dominican Province
Authors: Laurent M.H.
Published: July 2007

In the history of the Friars Preachers at the beginning of the 16th century, Dominican Scotland is of very special interest. While the other provinces of the Order were struggling, by the setting up of special congregations, to bring about a rebirth of stricter religious life, Scotland was able to effect, by and in herself, her own reform. Such an achievement was due to the activity of a religious, father John Adamson, whom Dominican chroniclers and Scottish historians have been pleased to describe as a Friar Preacher of great holiness and uncommon learning. It is, therefore, all the more regrettable that the work of fr. John Adamson has been somewhat eclipsed. The religious persecutions which the Scottish Dominicans had to undergo as a result of the introduction of the Reformation into the kingdom of the Stuarts, have led to the loss of many documents. Four briefs of Pope Leo X, preserved in the collection in the Vatican Archives known as Brevi Lateranensi, allow us to supplement the information supplied by various collections of documents in Scotland.
Scottish Presbyterianism
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

The Parliament of 1560 having effectively destroyed the power of the Auld Kirk in Scotland, ratified and approved Knox’s Confession of Faith as “hailsome and sound doctrine groundit upoune the in-fallibill trewth of Godis word’’.

This decision marked a crisis in Scottish history, but revolutionary though it was it must not be thought that Presbyterianism as it now exists in Scotland, was born, like Athene, fully formed and armed. The infant Reformed Church of Scotland was, in 1560, indeed a babe and it was only in the following two centuries that she took shape and developed the persona she now presents to the world.

So difficult and so complex is the history of Scottish Presbyterianism, reflecting as it does the ebb and flow of logic and passion that make up the Scottish character, that a short account of it can only explain its dominant features by pointing to those elements and problems which have conditioned its growth. It would be quite simple to describe the ecclesiastical system of Calvin or the present organization of Church courts in Scotland, but such a description would not suffice to give any idea of historic Presbyterianism in Scotland.
The Art of Catholic Scotland Today
Authors: Lorimer Hew
Published: July 2007

Peter F. Anson, in his article “Modern Catholic Architecture in Scotland” (The Dublin Review, April, 1937), and in his book “The Catholic Church in Modern Scotland”, published in the same year by Burns, Oates & Washbourne, Ltd., has supplied with characteristic clarity and completeness an account of the heritage of ecclesiastical architecture and art upon which the Catholic artist of Scotland has to build. And, as he observes in the closing paragraph of his article, it is not a very inspiring retrospect. For all that, it will one day have—already begins to have—a distinct archaeological value, not unlike that of those early Christian Sarcophagi executed in the late Roman manner. For this nineteenth century art had likewise been designed in a style borrowed from the past, and was executed in a technique long since rendered alien to its origins by adaptation to the servile requirements of the neo-classical style: our good Scottish Freestones, for example, polished to look like marble or stucco, by masons for whom “blind” uncomprehending precision was the best guarantee of a job. Such a combination of archaistic design, largely the work of aliens, and of debased technique, could only give Birth, at best, to quaintness. We look upon these buildings, nevertheless, with gratitude and affection and venerate them as landmarks in the heroic task of bringing back the Faith to our country. Also, they provide a wealth of object lessons in “how not to do it”!
The Path to Ownership
Authors: Walsh R. P.
Published: July 2007

The hundredth birthday of the Co-Operative Movement passed almost unnoticed among Catholics in this country. The only commemoration was a supplement to the Catholic Worker. This is in keeping with the strange aloofness of Catholics in Great Britain from the movement. Yet it contrasts with the interest displayed by Catholics in many other lands.

In the United States the well-known Queen’s Work and the National Catholic Rural Life Conference set up a joint committee to celebrate the Rochdale Centennial. The celebrations were a great success and included a letter from the Papal Secretary of State, two nation-wide rallies, leaflets and folders, special sermons and talks to school children and the publication of a pamphlet. In Quebec, where a Dominican edits an official co-operative journal, in Nova Scotia, where the movement owes much to a Catholic university, and in many other areas the celebrations were on as vast a scale and were supported by leading members of the hierarchy.
The Antigonish Movement
Authors: Laidlaw A. F.
Published: July 2007

Addressing a petition to the Legislature of Nova Scotia in 1866, Bishop MacKinnon described St. Francis Xavier College of Antigonish as having “spacious and commodious buildings’’ and an enrolment which had “reached the high number of fifty-eight.” He pointed out that “the said College is the only institution in Eastern Nova Scotia, inclusive of Cape Breton, in which the sciences of Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, and Moral and Dogmatic Theology are now taught,” and he asked that it “be empowered by charter to confer degrees on such of its pupils as after due examination shall have been. proved worthy of the honour.” The power was granted, and eighty years have passed since the Bishop signed his petition. The two wooden houses which seemed “spacious and commodious” to him have become a campus in brick and stone, and the student body has grown from fifty-eight to over seven hundred.

The institution with this humble beginning has become better known than perhaps any other small university in the world. The good Bishop would be pleased with that, but he would be amazed to find that it has achieved this fame for work which he never thought of as a university function. Eighty years ago—and indeed almost down to our own day—the university concerned itself solely with those attending regular intramural classes.
A Stage in French Thought
Authors: Desroches H. C.
Published: July 2007

All the economic problems of our time are dominated by the debate between property and collectivism. Serious and irrefutable reasons militate in favour of each. Human reason requires the safeguard of personal property: living space for the family, the guarantee of personal freedom, the obligation and sanction of initiative . . . But on the other hand economic reasons involve the introduction of spheres of increasing collectivisation: appearance of process of collective production . . . multiplied returns . . . higher purchase . . . The co-operative solution is the standard one: it has, in fact, been advocated by the Holy Father in his memorable allocution in September, 1944, on the integration of human privileges, of personal or family property and the economic advantages of collectivisation. Hence its future. It is, we think, the most efficacious formula for the adjustment of the tension between capital and labour.

But this tension is not the only one that inflames the great leconomic conflicts of our age. Other tensions have also to be relieved—that between agriculture and industry, between production and distribution—and beyond these properly economic tensions those others between rulers and subjects, between teachers and taught—not to mention those between ideological and spiritual groups . . . All these problems are only distinct on the surface.
Menace of the Money Power
Authors: Chesterton A. K.
Published: July 2007

Money can only be understood in terms of power. In the hands of the consumer it is power over goods. In the hands of the creative capitalist it is power over the means to produce goods. In the hands of the finance-capitalist, or money-lender, it is not only power over producers and consumers, but power as well over nations and their governments. The technique of money-lending on its simplest level is to make an advance against security, draw interest, and at an agreed date receive back the capital sum—other things being equal, a perfectly honest transaction. If the more ambitious money-lenders kept to this even routine, however, they would be a very long time attaining power. What they desire, therefore, is that the money they lend shall either be repaid to them when its buying power has been greatly enhanced, or that it shall not be repaid at all, thus enabling them to foreclose on their mortgage and become possessed of their victim’s capital assets. These two motifs have long determined the course of economic history, explaining slump and boom, and enabling a small band of international lenders and manipulators to become the virtual masters of the world. The method was explained, with almost incredible candour, in an article which appeared in The U.S.A. Bankers’ Magazine on August 26th, 1934: —

’ Bonds and mortgages must be foreclosed as rapidly as possible. When through a process of the law the common people lose their homes they will become more docile and more easily governed through the strong arm of government applied by a central power of wealth under the control of leading financiers.
The Reticence of Joseph Conrad
Authors: Birrell Anthony
Published: July 2007

“He starts as if to make a philosophic statement about the Universe and breaks off with a gruffi disclaimer’’ (E. M. Forster).

It is a fair generalization to say that modern novels, that is, novels written during the past twenty-five years, invite the reader to a discussion of the writer’s personality. It is Conrad’s reticence, above all, that places him as the last English traditional novelist, at the end of the line running from Fielding through Dickens.

It is unfortunate that Conrad’s reticence, his effort at impersonality, should lead to a belief that he has no emotions to reveal. For in popular estimation Typhoon ranks as Conrad’s greatest novel, and Conrad himself has come to be considered as a sort of McWhirr—a methodical sea-dog of settled convictions, but unaccountably gifted with a romantic imagination which enabled him to write sea-stories. And although it is good to see Conrad being republished at all, I hope it will not seem ungracious to Messrs Dent if I register my misgivings at their recent republication of Typhoon, and wish that they had chosen one of his novels (say, Heart of Darkness) which invited speculation as to Conrad’s personality and which was more central in his achievement.
Pugin and His Circle
Authors: Edwards Tudor
Published: July 2007

The renascence of Christian art brought about by the Gothic Revival of the last century did not come easily. There were still those who quibbled and spoke of pasticheurs, as though architects who raised Doric town halls and Corinthian façades in the nineteenth century were not pasticheurs.

Earlier, Constable, the painter, had said acidly: ‘A new Gothic building, or a new missal, is in reality little less absurd than a new ruin. The Gothic architecture, sculpture, and painting, belong to peculiar ages. The feelings that guided their inventors are unknown to us.’ Coleridge, however, with a nobler vision, had said: ‘The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity made imaginable. It is, no doubt, a sublimer effort of genius than the Greek style; but then it depends much more on execution for its effect. ‘ The Classicists continued to murmur. Some suggested that Gothic was a mummy exhumed for exhibition in market-places already slowly greying with the first smoke of industrialism; others said that Gothic was an entirely new, a Victorian, product.
‘Faiths’ and the Faith in Wales
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: July 2007

The claims of semantics can be illusory, threatening the innocent answer with unsuspected heredities. There is an ever-present gnosticism, heightened nowadays by the methods and vocabulary of psychology, which sees hidden depths of meaning in very ordinary shallows. Yet there can be no denying that discussion too often ends in futility because it has not been preceded by the definition of the terms to be used. This is one of the most frequent sources of disagreement, for instance, in international conferences: “ democracy”, “free elections”, “minorities”—unless there is an honest attempt at determining what the terms mean, subsequent disputes will derive from the varying interpretation, held doubtless in all good faith, of such concepts.

In the theological sphere, careful definition of dogmatic truths is an essential prerequisite of their discussion. That is why so much zealous work for Christian reunion has achieved disappointing results : good will has been substituted for the often unpleasant task of establishing the basis of discussion. The result in the end is bound to be inconclusive, for the evasion of the primary meanings of the truths of faith must affect even the most neutral attempts at co-operation. It is true that united action on a specific moral issue need not demand an identity of belief in the Blessed Trinity among the participants. Yet in the long run, and inevitably, action can claim no autonomy from the demands of belief.
Menace of the Money Power—II
Authors: Chesterton A. K.
Published: July 2007

Hitler’s revolt was not mild. It challenged the entire concept of international lending, and established as the basis of trade the mutual exchange of goods, without recourse to the usurers. There had been pioneers before Hitler. Kemal Ataturk had carried through the reconstruction of Turkey without borrowing a penny from abroad. Mussolini had safeguarded Italian currency against foreign speculators and striven as far as possible to build up for his people a self-contained economy. He was to have successors in Spain and Portugal. After the emergence of Hitler, however, it became clear that the international financial system was in mortal danger and that only by another war could it ever regain control over its vast empire—the empire built and maintained by debt. As it happened, Hitler was only too happy to oblige, and war came. War would have come in any case. As Josef Stalin has put on record: ‘It would be incorrect to think that the war arose accidentally or as the result of the fault of some of the statesmen. Although those faults did exist, the war arose in reality as the inevitable result of the development of the world economic and political forces on the basis of monopoly capitalism.’
Humanism in Education
Authors: Todd John
Published: July 2007

Some months before the outbreak of the war, an American Jesuit published an educational study of considerable importance, which has been almost entirely neglected in England. It is time that this work was more widely known, for it is a book for Catholics today and especially for all who teach in Catholic schools. It is the product of first-class Catholic historical scholarship, and is a fine example of a proper use of history. The author ends the book with an induction, from the wealth of historical facts which he presents, as to what are the essential factors in any education provided by the Society of Jesus and describes how these factors can be applied to schools today, particularly in the United States.

This work is remarkable for its dissimilarity to the productions of most secular scholarship and to most secular sociology today. In the first place it leads on, from a specialized and detailed historical research concerned with the foundations of the first Jesuit Colleges and the influences and historical processes leading to the Ratio Studiorum of 1599, to a broad outline of Jesuit practice up to the present day, instead of confining itself to a particular department of knowledge or history supposedly self-sufficient. In the second place the educational policy which is suggested by the final chapter is based on detailed practical experience, and long-founded tradition and depends on a Christian philosophy of life, specifically scholastic philosophy: thus it advises for present-day problems without allowing the solution to be dictated by and produced within the very causes of the problems themselves.
The Spiritual Sense of Scripture
Authors: Kehor Richard
Published: July 2007

The current teaching in the Church concerning the relationship of the Spiritual or Mystical to the Literal Sense of the Scriptures is based on a synthesis arrived at by the Scholastics, and in particular on St Thomas’s formulations, which all our text-books merely set out to expound. It would seem a great advantage to possess a satisfactory technical solution of this age-long biblical issue. One might have hoped that it would have led to a general understanding and utilisation of the two Senses as being not only not in rivalry, but as being related together in the way that spiritual and literal are related together in the Scriptures; that is to say, in a union as harmonious and essential as that of the soul to the body. But no such general benefit has in fact resulted. These Senses have continued to be treated as rival claimants for consideration; with favour accorded sometimes to the Spiritual, sometimes to the Literal —but mostly, in these last centuries, to the Literal. At the present time there is a strong general tendency to depreciate the Spiritual Sense; to treat it as an extraneous addition to the Literal Sense, of definitely inferior quality. Frequently in practice it is identified with what is known as the Accommodated Sense, and accordingly denied any strict biblical validity. Or at least it is generally regarded as being of secondary importance; the Literal Sense being taken as capable of supplying all the meaning that is required for the purposes of theology and of sound edification, while the Spiritual is regarded as a luxury at the disposal of those who have a taste for deciphering pious symbols.
Note on Biblical Archealogy
Authors: Potter Ronald
Published: July 2007

It is noteworthy that in 1943, when the whole world was embroiled in war, the Holy See issued an Encyclical letter on Biblical studies and the opportune means of promoting them. Much stress is laid on new efforts, certainly, but also on new preoccupations, new investigations, new orientations, in a word, on the changed conditions of Biblical study, ‘for deeper archaeological research has given rise to new questions offering occasion for a closer investigation of the subject’. Indeed, we are urged to pay close attention to archaeological findings; ‘Archaeology’, or its equivalent, is referred or appealed to some six or seven times and unquestionably holds a high place among the many endowments expected of those whose duty it is to make known the Biblical authors’ meanings.

And so a note on some recent Biblical archaeology will not seem out of place.

Writers on Biblical archaeology like to refer to ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ evidence about Biblical narratives; and it is usually said that very few finds bear directly on the Bible, whereas the indirect contribution is very rich. But this division into ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ seems fruitless and unessential; rather should we say that any little information, from any source whatever, however tenuous, if it throws light on the sacred text, is to be highly prized, and ‘receives an added and nobler dignity, a consecration as it were, when it is used to shed a brighter light on divine things’. It is true no doubt that we must widen the term ‘Archaeology’ and bring in considerations of topography, history, and in fact anything illustrative; possibly ‘sacred antiquities’ would describe better that ensemble of findings which help us to know the mind of the inspired writer and the way in which he expressed it.
The Indus and The Pentateuch
Authors: Crowley J. J.
Published: July 2007

The realisation of the significance of Harappa and the excavation of Mohenjo Daro are events of outstanding importance in the progress of archaeology during the last fifty years. Harappa, a very old town- site in the Montgomery District of the Punjab, has been known for some time and a few small softstone seals and other objects have been found. Only gradually did it become clear that these remains had no relation to any other civilization of India. Harappa had suffered for many years from the inroads of brick-robbers and offered, by itself, little prospect of further significant information. The enthusiasm of Sir John Marshall led to the search for other sites of a similar nature. In 1922 such a site was discovered in the lower valley of the River Indus in the Province of Sind, south of the Baluchistan frontier. Since then other sites have been found and it has been possible to estimate, to some extent, the territorial expansion of an entirely unknown civilization which had attained an exceedingly high degree of development.

Most of the work has centred round Mohanjo Daro, the site discovered in 1922, and, with the exception of Harappa, a great deal remains to be done before the full significance of the other sites can be made known. Such conclusions as have been reached are based mainly upon the excavations in Mohanjo Daro and to a lesser, though important degree, upon the findings in Harappa. That we have at present only a very unsatisfactory picture, is obvious from the opinion of Marshall that the Monhanjo Daro culture extended from beyond Harappa to the mouth of the Indus ‘in a south-easterly direction at least as far as the Gulf of Cambay. ‘
Preachers of Peace
Authors: Pius
Published: July 2007

It is but fitting that we should receive in a joyful and loving spirit you, the Dominican brethren, who are celebrating at Rome the duly appointed assembly of your religious family, or General Chapter, the proceedings and labours of which we are following with close attention. Nor have we any doubt but that it will bring forth the good results and consequences that are desired of it, so that, with its discipline strengthened and its powers increased, your Order may more and more contribute to the saving triumphs of the Gospel.

That this expectation may indeed be realised the new Master General, chosen by your votes, inspires us to hope. It gives us joy, therefore, to greet him now present here; it gives us joy, also, to recognise publicly the abundant merits which our beloved son Martin Gillet has earned for himself during his long term of office as your supreme moderator.

While we were considering and weighing in our mind what matters we might most fittingly and usefully touch upon in our address to you, our eyes lighted upon certain words, contained in your constitutions, which seemed worthy indeed of meditation: ‘Resolute in peace, assiduous in study, fervent in preaching’ (No. 452). Brief in statement, but big with meaning; a narrow compass of words, but a weighty mass of precept; for therein is emblazoned the form of those special virtues which will be the promise, the goal, the guiding star of the glorious path that lies before the chosen and beloved family of Saint Dominic.
Origen
Authors: Pope Hugh
Published: July 2007

It is regrettable that Dr Inge did not preface his Lecture with the following passage from Origen:

‘After we had come to believe that Christ was the Son of God, and had ceased to look for the truth among those who claimed that their erroneous doctrines were true, we were convinced that we had to learn that truth from Christ himself. For many think that their opinions are those of Christ and yet they differ from their predecessors. But since the teachings of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the Apostles and remaining in the Church to the present day, are still preserved, it is clear that that alone is to be accepted as the truth which in no way differs from Ecclesiastical and Apostolic tradition’.

The Lecture itself is very briefsome twenty-three pages. I have read it four times and each time I have found myself wondering what the audience gathered from it. Personally I was deeply disappointed. For like St Jerome I have read all Origen’s extant works (Ep. lxxxiv. 4), and, like the Hermit of Bethlehem, found them hard to understand.
Dominic, Father of Thomas
Authors: Horn Romuald
Published: July 2007

At first sight St Dominic and St Thomas Aquinas stand in contrast. St Dominic lived the vigorous outdoor life of an apostle, while St Thomas spent his days in the lecture rooms of university cities. St Dominic has left behind him a splendid record of achievement, while St Thomas has contributed a mountain of manuscript. They seem opposed to each other as the great ruler to the noted scholar, as the practical apostle to the contemplative, so that one might be inclined to say that these two men could never have understood one another.

In fact, however, these two saints were not only of one mind but they stand towards each other in the relation of father and son.

The evidence of St Thomas’s mind and character is contained in his writings, which amply cover the latter half of his life. The evidence in the case of St Dominic is more difficult to assess, but two circumstances make the task easier, for during the last twenty years of his life St Dominic was occupied with two main works, both surpassingly difficult. They were the conversion of the Albigenses, from 1203 to 1215, and the founding of his Order, from 1215 to 1221. The greatness of these tasks leaves no doubt that all the wisdom and energy of St Dominic were devoted to their accomplishment.
Aspects of French Dominican Life
Authors: Pepler Conrad
Published: July 2007

A Recent contributor to Orate Fratreg h&s written of Paris that there ‘at present the Dominican world seems to be in its flower’ (H;A.R., April 21, 1946), and the undoubted truth of this makes it difficult to give a whole picture of the Dominican scene, so diverse and powerful are the black and white apostles. They have rightly succeeded to Bl. Jordan and St Thomas Aquinas who first graced the Parisian Priory with their vigorous learning, culture and piety. Now however there are several Dominican centres in the same city, each with its special work.

At the very end of May, 1940, Paris was a highway for refugees. Most of the shops were closed. Cars and lorries of all descriptions and sizes were moving always in a southerly or westerly direction mattresses tied to the roof and carrying every type of small household goods and furnishing. The southerly stations were jammed with refugees struggling for their trains. The Germans were only forty miles away. But at 222 Fauburg de St Honor all was peace, and Dominican life continued normally. The brethren were served with an excellent dinner in the refectory, and the brother server collected the surplus bread at the end of the meal for the poor who would be always with them, German invasion or no. At recreation they spoke of their brethren at the front, serving as ordinary soldiers. Vespers was recited with dignity and tranquillity . . . then they were apparently smothered by the German blanket.