bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Jung on Job
Authors: White Victor
Published: July 2007

If ever there were grist for the Jungian mill it was, one might suppose, the Book of Job. It can be read almost as a paradigm of the ‘integration process’ as Jung himself has repeatedly described it. For here we have a man ‘perfect and upright, fearing God and eschewing evil’—as well he might, never having experienced it, and abounding in cosy piety and worldly prosperity. He has, as Satan points out, ‘a fence about him, and his house, and his substance’. Anybody can be ‘good’ in such narrow, sheltered confines as these; but he can hardly be a grown-up man let alone a hero, a prototype of the way of salvation through crucifixion and resurrection. Any psychologist should know he is heading for a crash. Any theologian should know that such easy and complacent virtue cannot continue long in this post-lapsarian world. Job’s professed love for God—and God’s for him—must grow up from this agreeable but infantile and unconscious, autoerotic phase. Job’s idol of a merely intelligible and amiable God must be smashed: he must learn the lesson which the New Testament writers were to see it was the function of the Old Testament heroes to teach: that man’s righteousness before God is not wrought by moral works without ‘faith in the Absurd’, the Unseen and the Unknown. So the psychologically and theologically inevitable happens: Job’s fences are down; evils rush in.
Evil and Mrs Knight
Authors: McCabe Herbert
Published: July 2007

The remarkably violent storm which raged around the two talks broadcast last January by Mrs Margaret Knight has now happily subsided and I do not want to start it again. Some of the attacks on Mrs Knight’s views looked like simple manifestations of bad temper, if not of actual hysteria, and very few showed much real understanding of her position. Although there is rather more rhetoric than logic in some of what she says, it seems to me that on the whole her talks present an understandable and moderate non-Christian view.

One who believes that religion is an illusion could do very much worse than follow Mrs Knight’s line of thought and action. She maintains, quite rightly, that it is inconsistent to ask your children to believe what you yourself think to be false. The Christian, of course, thinks it better that a non-Christian should sometimes be inconsistent in practice; just as a liberal humanist prefers a communist or fascist to act inconsistently with his principles, and rejoices to hear that children in Russian schools are brought up to respect ideals of scientific objectivity and intellectual honesty which a true communist might not accept. However one cannot expect a non-Christian to prefer to be inconsistent, one cannot blame Mrs Knight for wanting to be reasonable, and given that religion is an illusion it seems to me that her views are very reasonable. The question on which everything else turns is simply: Is religion an illusion or not?
Catechism for Adults: III.‘And in Jesus Christ’
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

The fall of man is the result of man’s choice—he chooses to live centred on himself. This choice cuts him off from God and plunges him into a morass of unreality, for life apart from the Creator loses all meaning. The only reality that remains is the choice, the first sin that parts man from God. All men are born in disobedience, in a situation created by sin. Man by reason of his history, his origin from Adam, cannot fulfil the purpose of his first creation; fallen from grace, with his natural strength impaired, his state is that of original sin. The world is the system man builds up in self seeking; the flesh is man’s desire, greedy for life, asserting itself against God. Each actual sin he commits is his personal endorsement of the state in which he is born.

Though he is prone to sin, though he is often sinful, man is not evil by nature; he tries to escape, he longs for beauty, for justice, for truth, above all for love. He can pervert these things, for he is free; for the same reason he can choose them, and pursue them when they elude his grasp. He has imagined beings who will bring these things to him, he has followed prophets and elaborated techniques. He has known failure and he has seen himself as failing; sometimes he comes near to a knowledge of sin.
Morality in International Relations
Authors: Morton Desmond
Published: July 2007

Before 1914, the mass of the people in this country took little real interest in international affairs, which were commonly regarded as reserved to statesmen and their expert advisers. In Parliament, foreign affairs were looked on as a nonparty matter, about which, save on rare occasions, basic agreement on policy was reached behind the scenes between the Government of the day and opposition leaders. This attitude was by no means confined to England. Since the end of the first World War, public interest in international affairs has grown steadily in all countries, though it may unfortunately be claimed that growth of the knowledge required to consider and weigh dispassionately the many complicated facts involved has not kept pace with the interest displayed.

This applies to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, but it is distressing to find that even among Catholics—and well-educated persons too—there is little realization that the proper conduct of international relations by Christians should be governed by as definite a code of Christian ethics and morality as that which should guide the private life of the individual Christian, and one which is indeed directly deduced from the same laws of personal morality as have been revealed by God in the Scriptures and are interpreted by his Church. A little thought will show that this must be so. All Catholics recognize the moral principles of the Natural Law, of the ten commandments given to Moses and of the supernatural extension of these laws declared by our Lord, upon which the Church bases her teaching of man’s moral duties and obligations towards God, the family and himself, and towards others who are not of his immediate family.
The Future of Italian Films
Authors: Butcher Maryvonne
Published: July 2007

‘After the Steppe-cat—What?’ It is with the feeling of baffled uncertainty posed by Mr Thurber’s wistfully evocative question of long ago that the English filmgoer may look at the Italian cinema today, or at least so much of it as he is able to see for himself or learn about from the writing of those who have seen more, or other, films than he. For after Umberto D —what? This great film is not only the climax of the neo-realist school in Italy, it is also its full-stop, for after this there is really nothing more to be said in this line without repetition or recession. The Italian cineasts must either drive roads across new country or they must fall back on old ones which have for some time been abandoned.

This is not the first time that Italian films have had great importance; in the very early days of the cinema the Italians had an influence quite disproportionate either to their output or to their distribution. That taste for the grandiose and the magniloquent which had so far had to express itself in opera (should we prefer not to go back quite so far as the Imperial Games), seized upon the cinema as the perfect vehicle for the spectacle, seeing here no limit to the scale of decor or caste except the financial; and it produced in Enrico Guazzoni’s Quo Vadis (1912) and Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914), two films which set the pattern for a picture which the Italians seem to have been making, on and off, for some forty years—each one bigger and more lush than its predecessor.
Paul Claudel
Authors: Beaumont Ernest
Published: July 2007

Poetry and diplomacy are so rarely allied that there is the possibility of overlooking the fact that the great poet who has just died was also a distinguished diplomatist, ambassador at one time in Tokyo and at another in Washington, where he negotiated the Kellogg-Briand pact. This leading of a full life in the world of practical affairs and the simultaneous creation of an immense body of poetry, mystical in inspiration, denotes, not a dichotomy, but indeed a rare harmony. Claudel was not a poet who had strayed by chance or mischance into the diplomatic service; neither was he a professional diplomatist who wrote verse as a relaxation from official memoranda. He was at one and the same time a diplomatist by choice, rising through the various grades of consular service to ambassadorial status, and a poet from whose God-centred vision nothing human was alien. What influence his poetic genius may have had on his diplomatic activity one does not know, but it is clear that his poetry was enriched by the fulness of his human experience. It is rare nowadays for a poet to be a man taking full joy in all that is human, for whom the material world is a thing of beauty, yet who recognizes that the loveliness of God’s creation is but a foretaste of the absolute beauty which is in God. As he writes in his poem on St Teresa:

Si ce qui a l’air d’exister est beau, grand Dieu, que sera-ce de ce qui existe en effet?

Si nous nous réjouissons tellement du rossignol une seconde et de la rose,

Que dirons-nous de celui qui en est la provocation et la cause

Et dans le sein de qui la terre odorante tout entière se fond en ces pauvres expressions naïves?
Catechism for Adults
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

The fourth article of the creed, ‘Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried’, summarizes the events in our Lord’s Passion. It is important in considering this article to remember the general interpretation given in the Scriptures to these events. It is this interpretation that directs the awareness in faith of the significance of the events. The dramatic force of the story is so great on its human level that it can sweep us away into a jungle of feeling and emotion which has little theological character, unless it be recalled by a constant reiteration of the dogmatic values involved.

In the accounts given in the Synoptic Gospels of the baptism of Jesus, there is a strong implicit reference to the prophecy of Isaias about the suffering servant of God. This servant is the elect, in whom God delights, the one who is despised, and the most abject of men; who bears their sorrows and infirmities, ‘since he was wounded for our iniquities; he was bruised for our sins’ (Is. 53, 1-7). He, says the prophet, is to be led ‘as a sheep to the slaughter and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer’. St John’s Gospel makes the reference explicit. ‘The next day, John saw Jesus coming to him; and he saith “Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who taketh away the sins of the world.” ‘ (John 1, 24). All the Gospels then introduce Christ, at the beginning of his ministry, not only as the Messias, but also as the suffering servant (pais).
‘People and Freedom’
Authors: Langdale James
Published: July 2007

The words ‘People and Freedom’ did not sound well to Catholic ears when a small group bearing that name was founded in London in 1936 under the inspiration of Don Luigi Sturzo. ‘Sounds to me like Bolshevism’, said an old lady to whom the Group’s news-sheet was offered outside Westminster Cathedral. And the old lady echoed the feelings of the majority of her co-religionists, who found the title slightly provocative and subversive, not knowing that it had once been the proud old Guelf motto of the City of Florence—the battle-cry of Pope and people.

It would be untrue to describe English Catholics as philo- fascists in the years immediately preceding the war of 1939. There were, of course, the devotees of General Franco and those who—in the words of Professor Brogan—considered Mussolini to be ‘a combination of Augustus, Constantine and Justinian’, but the majority felt that whilst Democracy worked well enough in England, it was not an article for export, especially to Catholic countries, where authoritarianism was the form of government not only best suited to the temperament of the people, but most in keeping with the ‘Catholic tradition’. Those who travelled on the Continent were told by their friends, especially in France, of the existence of a few extremists, best described as ‘Black Marxists’ or ‘Red Christians’, who were fortunately unrepresentative and insignificant. No one seemed aware of the existence of a vigorous Christian-Democratic movement with a tradition extending well over one hundred years—soon destined to play a leading part in saving Europe from Communism.
New Evidence on Gnosticism
Authors: Markus R. A.
Published: July 2007

The first two or three centuries of the Christian era witnessed a luxuriant outcrop of sects which we nowadays group together under the label ‘gnostic’. But ‘gnosticism’, as the name of a religious movement, is a modem invention. True, some of these sects did like to style themselves ‘gnostic’; but the Greek word gnosis only means ‘knowledge’, and that is a thing to which not only heretical sects laid claim. On the contrary, from the very beginning of the Christian Church’s history, it was part and parcel of God’s manifold gifts to his faithful, of which the Christian community believed itself to be the privileged recipient. St Paul himself writes to the Corinthians about the diversity of gifts and ministries in the believing community, under the One Lord: ‘But to each one’, he writes, ‘is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the profit of all: to one it is given to speak the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of gnosis, of knowledge, according to the same Spirit’, and so forth. And yet he, too, knew of ‘profane babblings and paradoxes of the falsely so-called gnosis’, and he warns his disciple Timothy against their seduction. This self-styled gnosis is, in his eyes, the parody of the God-given knowledge enjoyed by the faithful.

From St Paul onwards, gnosis has retained this two-faced character. On the one hand, for a Christian Father like Irenaeus, the ‘gnostic’ could become almost synonymous with the ‘heretic’; on the other, the no less orthodox Clement of Alexandria could write of the ‘true gnostic’ as the ideal of the Christian theologian, the model of the man to whom is vouchsafed a Spirit-given insight into the mystery which penetrates deeper than that of his fellows with a more easy-going faith.
Catechism for Adults
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

The arms of Christ on the Cross are represented on the crucifix as stretched out to their full extent. They not only bear the weight of man’s sin, but they are extended to include all men. There is no limitation to the act of sacrifice—it is offered for all men, and it obtains for all the possibility of eternal life in the presence of God. Christ is for all men the cause, the only possible cause, of salvation in the sense that he alone frees man from the consequences of sin and that no type of man is excluded from the newness of life his sacrifice gains—save only the one who, by the exercise of his freedom, shuts his mind and heart to faith when it is presented, or refuses, in pride, to repent.

The statement in the Creed, ‘He descended into hell’, means that Christ’s redemptive work is not confined to those who lived during or after his life on earth. The Cross of Christ is the central point in history in that it is an eternally decisive point, whose consequences are effective throughout the whole temporal process. Those who lived before Christ, and who tried to do the Will of God in so far as light was given to them, were not untouched by grace. Since they were born in a state of condemnation and death, they were as a people incapable of entering into the presence of God. As individuals who had looked for God, and by grace in hope, they were not condemned, but just.
A Journey to Jerusalem
Authors: James David Lloyd
Published: July 2007

A March afternoon. At Ascalon, five miles from the Gaza Strip, in a hot, windless silence smelling of orange blossom, three of us had picked up fragments of Roman glass and pottery two thousand years old, had looked down from the broken ends of the ruined Crusader walls to the long white beach and the dark Mediterranean. We had forgotten the huge factory and the new settlement to the north. We had forgotten our plan to drive on to Beersheba, thirty miles to the south-east. For the moment we were isolated from the pressure of work against time which makes Israel an invigorating, exhausting, nervous country.

Now there was no time to visit Beersheba. We must drive fast to reach Jerusalem before dark. Our guide, tirelessly informative, drove eastwards. As we approached the Jordan frontier a prospect of wild, hilly, stony, deserted country opened out, the edges of the Negev. We were suddenly aware of tension and anxiety. We stopped to pick up a young soldier who wanted a lift to the next military post. The tension dropped momentarily: we had a revolver aboard. That mound on the left; That was the mound of Gath. Yes, there was heavy fighting here during the war. Which war; The War of Liberation, the most recent of the endless conflicts which have raged across the landscape of Palestine.

A few miles further on, at an army camp which used to be a Palestine Police Station, the soldier got out. Tension mounted and we drove faster into the bare, rocky mountains of Judaea.
Catechism for Adults: VII. ‘He ascended into Heaven’
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

Forty days after the Resurrection Christ was, in the words of St Luke ‘taken up’ or ‘raised up’ (Acts 1, 9-11). He ascended into heaven and was hidden from his disciples. St Mark adds that he now sits at the right hand of God (Mark 16, 14).

These scriptural references speak for themselves. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the same doctrine is taught. Christ, who in his human nature has suffered and made ‘purgation of sins, sitteth on the right hand of the majesty on high’ (Hebrews 1,3). This is the entry of Christ, as the redeeming head of the redeemed people, into the presence of the Father. He is no longer subject to suffering and to the will of the world. He has put on incorruption, and having put it on, goes to the place of incorruption, the presence of the Father. In Christ, the incorruption and purity of the first state of man are restored, but at an infinitely higher level.

His ascension does not mean that he changes so far as his divinity is concerned, for the Son is equal to the Father; it is rather that the full effects of the union of the human nature to the person of the Word are released in that human nature. What was prefigured in the Transfiguration on the Mount is now realized as the body of Jesus, is totally possessed by the divine glory. As man he is so closely united to God, that once the will of the Father has been fulfilled he enters into the place of honour, for he has become much better than the angels (Hebrews 1,3).
The Greene Baize Door
Authors: Gregor Ian
Published: July 2007

Every creative writer worth our consideration, every writer who can be called, in the wide eighteenth-century use of the term, a poet, is a victim: a man given over to an obsession. . . . The obsession is perhaps most easily detected in the symbols a writer uses.’ These words written by Graham Greene in a review of Walter De la Mare’s short stories are illuminating in a study of Mr Greene’s own work, and in this brief paper I want to use them as a central point of reference, in attempting to show what is meant by calling Mr Greene’s work ‘poetic’. In a sense, my purpose is pre-critical since its emphasis falls on description rather than appraisal. Obviously, these are simply terms of convenience, and can never be exclusive of each other, but they serve to indicate an emphasis. Where Mr Greene’s work has been concerned, critical arrows have so easily felt the gravitational pull of moral and theological forces that the intended target has remained strangely untouched. This paper, flighted with a literary observation, tries to maintain direction by continually keeping in sight the idea that Graham Greene is a novelist and therefore the target primarily of the literary critic.
The Crisis and Co‐Partnership
Authors: Derrick Paul
Published: July 2007

During the first three months of 1955 imports exceeded exports by an average of £77 millions. In March the Trade gap was £92 millions. There was a slight improvement in April and May; but in June exports were £128 millions less than imports and in July they were still £107 millions short. And exports in June were £90 millions less than they were in June 1954.

Gold and dollar reserves at the end of July were £48 millions lower than they had been at the end of June. At the end of August they were a further £31 millions lower still. The country’s balance of payments situation was clearly deteriorating in the summer sunshine of 1955. And although Mr Butler said that there was no crisis in a speech at the end of July, a month later Sir Anthony Eden warned the country that the balance of payments situation was getting worse and that rising prices were tending to lead to loss of export markets. He declared that the Government were determined to enforce all necessary measures to ensure the health and stability of the economy.

The balance of payments difficulties with which the country was faced in 1949 were to some extent due to the recession in America in the summer of that year and to excessive dollar spending by Australia. The crisis of 1951 was mainly due to the 16 per cent increase in import prices in that year. But today there is no recession in America: there is a boom.
Lord Acton and the Catholic Reviews
Authors: Hill Roland
Published: July 2007

A Variety of books recently published on Lord Acton’s historical and political ideas testifies to a general Acton revival. His preoccupation with the safeguards of liberty in the modem State and with the problems of power has rightly been found to have a special relevance to our own times; more so than it had to the comparatively tranquil days of Acton’s own generation. But, as so often happens when people set out to discover a prophet, he defies the seekers. Rare are those wise men who follow a star, expecting to find a king, and recognize at once what they really find. In Lord Acton’s case, too, there has been a good deal of shooting at crows and hitting of pigeons, and when the controversial dust stirred up by the Acton revivalists has settled, it may be discovered that his real greatness was not primarily that of the historian or political thinker at all, important and stimulating as his ideas are. It will be found that he was not a Liberal Catholic but a Catholic Liberal, which is a very different thing; that his political and historical ideas are not the expected panacea for our own ills, but need recasting in the contemporary moulds. But Abbot Gasquet’s judgment will then not have been invalidated; it was that Acton’s greatest claim to the attention of a later generation lies in his work as a Catholic journalist and editor, and in the part he played in the mid-nineteenth century, at a critical period in the history of English Catholics.
Catechism for Adults: XI. ‘The Communion of Saints’
Authors: Hislop Ian
Published: July 2007

The worship of the Christian community culminates in the sacrifice of the Mass. At Mass, a priest, assimilated by his ordination to the High Priesthood of Christ, offers, in the name of Christ, a true sacrifice to God. This act of sacrifice is identified with our Lord’s sacrifice on Calvary for though the manner in which the victim is offered is different, the victim is the same. The body given and the blood shed is made present through the signs of the bread and the wine. More than that, Christ who died then and once and for all released the bonds of sin, is now, under the appearance of bread and wine, really present, so that his body and his blood become the heavenly food of the Christian community. This is the sacred passover meal at which the lamb is sacrificed that the people may be delivered. The lamb of God who offered himself, who gave himself upon the Cross as a pure and holy victim, offers himself again, by the ministry of priests, in an act of adoration, love and generosity.

The Mass is the memorial of that sacrifice that makes all other sacrifice acceptable, of the sacrifice through which the world is overcome. It is the union of the people of God with their risen Lord; hence it is the sign of victory. The life of the Church which is constituted by the victory of Christ, is one in which we share in the gifts won for us by Christ.
A Thomist Approach to the Vedanta
Authors: Kelly Bernard
Published: July 2007

When I was asked to read a paper to this Society on some aspect of the Eastern religions I was glad to accept, not because I have the kind of scholarship I think would be necessary to speak about so vast a field, but because I have been engaged in what may be called the border- problems, the problems connected with the approach of a Thomist to the truths expressed in, e.g. the Hindu or the Moslem traditions, for some considerable time, and am quite sure that it would be a benefit to myself to discuss these problems in such company as this Society affords.

The plan of this paper has therefore two ends in view: to ventilate the problems connected with our approach to Eastern religions, and to attempt that approach in the case of some essential aspect of an Eastern tradition so that the discussion of the approach problem should not be left floating in the air. That appears to be the requirement of the task and I beg you to be patient with me, for it is nothing if not difficult.

The choice of Hinduism and, in particular, of the approach in the Vedanta to God as the Self, was made because it seems to me that this represents a key difficulty without tackling which one gets nowhere. It has the advantage of being so well known that little or no time need be spent in searching out and imparting information. We can set to work straight away in trying to understand what is known to everybody. From my own point of view I must broach this problem if I am to defend at all die position I am just about to outline in the approach of a Christian to other traditions.
Pax: ‘Progressive’ Catholics in Poland: I
Authors: Delargy Hugh
Published: July 2007

The journey from Warsaw to Wloclawek was depressing: eighty-five miles of uneven road through flat featureless country, through villages poor and dirty beyond description, ankle-deep in mud and manure, the people dressed in layers of assorted garments, standing at the doors of their decrepit shanties, staring intently at our smart British car which belonged to my hosts. They had no other vehicle to stare at except long, narrow, wooden carts drawn by horses.

The journey back was more than depressing; it was frightening. For three-quarters of the way we were in thick fog, and the idea of spending the night in the car on the side of the road in that strange land was less alarming than the prospect of seeking shelter in one of the primitive villages. So we went steadily on, hardly faster than the wooden carts that sometimes trundled through the darkness. I was chilled, tired, hungry and very angry. The journey had been a waste of time and a mockery.

The day before, I was delighted to hear that my request to meet one of the bishops had been granted. The prelate I had named was Mgr Klepacz, Bishop of Lodz. Although the next day was to be my last in Poland and all my careful arrangements had to be altered, I was pleased with the thought of meeting the Chairman of the Conference of Bishops and the close friend of Cardinal Wyszynski. Then, when all these adjustments had been made, I was told that I was being escorted not to Lodz but to Wloclawek, not to see Bishop Klepacz but Bishop Pawlowski, the one bishop in Poland who agrees to, or is allowed to, receive foreigners, the one bishop of them all who is suspected of finding favour with the government.
The Churches We Deserve?
Authors: Rykwert Joseph
Published: July 2007

Five years ago the position of architecture in this country changed radically. The Festival of Britain, the South Bank Exhibition in particular, marked the final victory of the ‘Modem Movement’ within the architectural profession; a change which seemed both popular and officially acceptable.

The Festival Exhibition did not contain any one building which could be called great architecture; there was little, by European standards, that was even very good. But the glamour and the freshness of the various pavilions, the spaciousness and excellent acoustics of the Festival Hall had good publicity value. And the free, ambling layout of the South Bank reminded visitors of those pleasures of town life which we, in this country, had lost and almost entirely forgotten.

The change was radical; but it was not sudden. During the war social conditions had altered a great deal, and after 1945 much of this adjustment became statute, so that building, which for long had been a private perquisite, turned into public business. Hence the abandonment of many quasi-traditional prejudices and increased discussion of architecture at a rational level. It was no longer: ‘I’m paying for it, I’ll have what I like and I know what I like’ but ‘We all have to pay for it, so we had better agree on what is best’. Hence, too, the increased prestige of the architect as a technocrat and—this last with much coyness on the part of some architects—as an artist.

As a result of all that, architecture is the art most in the public eye at the moment and the Arts Council have at long last recognized this state of affairs by organizing a photographic exhibition of Ten Years (1945-1955) of British Architecture. There is also another innovation: this is the first properly designed Arts Council exhibition.
Authority and the Ecumenical Dilemma
Authors: St John Henry
Published: July 2007

The most recent pronouncement of the Holy See on the Ecumenical Movement is the Instruction of the Holy Office to Local Ordinaries of December 20, 1949. By its provisions Catholic ecumenical work, described in it as ‘reunion’ work, is safeguarded by cautionary measures and put under the direct supervision of the bishops, who are urged to give it prudent encouragement and direction, as a work which ‘should daily assume a more significant place within the Church’s pastoral care’. They are to appoint suitable priests, in each diocese, to make a special study of the movement and everything connected with it.

If any priest is contemplating the task laid upon him as a result of this directive, he cannot do better than make A History of the Ecumenical Movement the basis and starting point of his studies; a massively conceived and well planned volume of some eight hundred pages, written by fifteen experts in their respective subjects. Hardly an idea, event or person of ecumenical importance lacks at least a reference in these pages, and the full bibliography will give sufficient aid in following out a more complete study.

The volume falls into two distinct parts. The first comprises a history, from the Reformation onwards, of efforts by ecumenically minded persons to bring about the healing of schisms within Christendom. The second deals with the Ecumenical Movement proper; an organized movement expressing itself in World Conferences and culminating in the formation of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam in 1948.
Statements in Physics
Authors: Schaefer Erich
Published: July 2007

Statements in physics are statements in physics. They are not statements connecting physical data with nonphysical conclusions.

Statements in physics are usually either true or false. Statements connecting physical entities with non-physical ones are usually neither true nor false but senseless.

Simple examples of such arguments can be taken from a field more limited and less involved than physics: elementary arithmetic.

Here, the statement 2 + 1 = 3 is true; the statement 2 + 1 = 4 is false; the statements 2+1 are green, or virtuous, or a solid body, are senseless.

This distinction is sometimes less obvious if the statement is given in the form of a conclusion. For example: if 1 + 2 = 3, then 2 + 4 = 6 is a true statement; if 1 + 2 = 3, then 2 + 4=7 is a false statement; if 1 + 2 = 3, then space has three dimensions, is a senseless statement, and it is senseless quite independent of the question whether space really has three dimensions or not.

Senseless statements of this type have been made regularly during the last half-century with reference to physical entities; and it is just these statements which have usually made the greatest impression on non-scientists, and even on occasions on scientists themselves. Thirty or forty years ago, when the phenomena of radioactivity were first investigated, it was found that it was not possible to predict whether a single defined particle of a radioactive material would decay within a given period, and that only statistical judgments could be made with precision.
The Religious Orders in England and Wales
Authors: Evans Illtud
Published: July 2007

The varieties of religious life are but variations on a single theme, that of Christian perfection sought in a life lived in common according to rule. But a religious order in its beginnings is always an answer to a contemporary need: the centuries pass and modifications may be necessary. Circumstances change and they have to be met in a new way. But, as was suggested in speaking of the monastic order, what is essential remains—and the idea behind the life of every religious order is written throughout the Gospels: the counsel that those who want to love Christ perfectly will leave all things to follow him.

The end of the twelfth century saw grave threats to the Church’s unchanging mission of presenting the Gospel to the world. The bitter struggle between princes and the Papacy was affecting the primary work of the Church. Prelates were often largely engaged in affairs of state, while the ranks of the lower clergy were often recruited from men too ignorant or too worldly to commend the spiritual backing of the Church. In the new universities the rediscovery of Greek philosophy was making for a materialist scepticism which could attack the very roots of religion. And in France a new and terrible heresy had grown up—that of the Albigenses—in effect a revival of the Mani- chaeism against which St Augustine fought. The Albigenses taught a dualism, that there were two gods, one good and one evil, and in fact attacked the foundations of faith, and through their organization, the foundations of society itself. The spiritual life of Christians who remained faithful had itself grown careless and was grievously affected by worldliness and corruption. It was at this critical moment of the Church’s history that two men rose who were to meet the challenge of religious decline and unbelief. They were Francis and Dominic, founders of the Friars Minor and of the Order of Preachers.
Ignatiana
Authors: Martindale C. C.
Published: July 2007

This word is meant to imply that I cannot write here even a skeleton outline of the Saint’s life or of the history of the Society he founded; still, I must say something of the Saint if we are to judge whether his ‘Company’ has continued to live by his spirit.

The preface to the Saint’s life is medieval—a talented, versatile courtier-soldier, he fences, dances, writes and vividly illuminates love-lyrics but professes himself the devotee of some princesse lointaine . . . possibly as distant as an ideal in the skies? During the siege of Pamplona the garrison is for surrendering: Inigo remembers Aeneas—he was a dastard for abandoning Troy! They stay: but a cannon-ball dislodges a stone which injures Inigo’s left leg and, ricochetting, smashes the right. The courteous French send him home to Loyola: the bone is set, but badly. ‘Break it again!’ Inigo becomes delirious and is anointed, but a dream of St Peter cures him. Alas, a bit of bone still protrudes—how can he now wear silk stockings? ‘Saw it off!’ His brother, aghast, watches, and sees that Inigo must spend weeks racked on an iron frame. He asks for romances to distract him: but the grim castle has only some Lives of Saints. He thinks—‘What they could do, could not you?’ and forthwith dreams of what dress he shall wear when he meets his mistress; of the secret code in which they would correspond. But the Saints have won. Off he goes to Montserrat, makes a three days’ confession, and inspired (says he) by Amadis of Gaul, stands in night-long vigil before our Lady.

After four months’ tendance of the sick, the divine assault begins. He crawls into a cave four foot by nine at Manresa, and his soul is tom to shreds. ‘How shall I stand this life for forty years?... If I had to go to a dog’s whelp to cine me, I would do it.’ Violently tempted to suicide, he vows not to eat or drink till he has conquered: after a week his confessor refuses him absolution if he will not eat. He obeys; peace returns; then for another week he lies, to human eyes, unconscious.
St Joan: A Quincentenary Celebration
Authors: McEwen Sir John
Published: July 2007

There is a passage in Francis Thompson of which Chesterton remarked that it alone proved that Thompson was a great poet because, he said, it contained as many inner meanings as outer ones; that is to say, that not only did it contain meaning after meaning, as in a Chinese box one box opens into another inwards, but at the same time, as from a stone dropped into still water, it gave rise to ever-widening rings of thou ght spreading outwards to infinity. To read the life of St Joan is to be reminded very forcibly of Chesterton’s observation. For never was there life so fraught both with inner significance and with world-wide implications. For the wider sphere it is enough to say that she created a nation; or as Michelet puts it: ‘Elle aima tant la France! Et la France, touchée, se mit à s’aimer elle-même’ The outward-spreading consequences of that single decisive act are still perceptible today. The inner significance of her life is to be found in her unique relationship to God. Flere is a mystery indeed! Not as regards the facts. There is no mystery there. We know them all; from her earliest childhood until her death, no tiling is hidden. Moreover, what is even more remarkable, all this comes down to us in the form, not of hearsay and legend, but of attested statements, for, as one of her biographers has pointed out, hers is the only story of a human life which comes to us under oath. No, it is not the facts which are in question, but rather what lies behind the facts. We know that from the age of twelve she was accompanied by three Saints—St Michael, St Catherine of Alexandria and St Margaret of Antioch; but of the peculiar significance of those particular three we remain ignorant. She referred to them as her ‘Voices’, although in fact they were much more than mere voices. They were presences whom she had frequently seen and touched and to whom on at least one occasion she had made her confession.
Priest‐Workers in France: The Debate Continues
Authors: Fitzsimons John
Published: July 2007

The climax of the affair of the worker-priests in France came on January 19, 1954, when the Bishops sent to each of their worker-priests a circular letter communicating to them the decisions of the Hierarchy. The crucial sentences were the following: ‘You must, on receipt of this letter, and at the latest before March 1, withdraw from your present firm. . . . We ask you ... to resign from all temporal responsibilities to which the trust of your comrades may have called you. By the same token, you will be good enough, as from now, not to renew your membership of the trade union you belong to. . . . The sacrifice we ask of you will, in all truth, prove to be a spiritual liberation. It will at the same time be a source of graces for the labouring masses on whose behalf you offer it. We dare not even consider what would happen if you were to refuse to submit.’ In the event slightly less than half of the ninety priests so addressed did refuse to submit. At the end of February a meeting was held between the ‘submitted’ and the ‘unsubmitted’ and it was agreed to continue with these gatherings for purposes of information. At the first meeting after March 1 it was agreed to publish a book on the work that had been done and a commission was appointed to draw up a plan. When the plan was presented at the following meeting the forty-seven priests who had accepted the Bishops’ decision withdrew their support from the project. Nevertheless the others continued and the book was published in November of the same year. A translation of this has now been published in English.

It is not presented as ‘a book of history, of doctrine, of polemics, of propaganda or of edification’, but as ‘a collection of documents which furnish reliable information and checked material’.
British Diplomatic Representation at the Holy See
Authors: Randall Alec
Published: July 2007

In a book called Vatican Assignment, which is shortly to be published, I give an account, from some years of experience in Rome, of the establishment in 1914 and subsequent development of diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the Holy See. I also deal with several other related topics, social and political, such as American diplomatic relations during the nineteenth century, where I show that the American Government—then aloof from European politics—did not have to contend with the difficulties and prejudices which affected Great Britain during that period. The present article will be limited to giving a brief account of the most interesting attempts that were made, after the Reformation and before 1914, to bring about diplomatic contact, official or not, between Great Britain and the Vatican. In the space available it can be no more than an outline, but there is a mass of fascinating material available, must of it unused, some of it known only to specialist researchers, and I hope to be able to fill in the details in the fairly near future.

Most British and American visitors to Rome will be familiar with the church of San Gregorio, from the steps of which the Pope sent St Augustine to England on his mission in 596 A.D. In the forecourt of this church is the memorial tablet to Sir Edward Came, last British diplomatic envoy to the Holy See before relations were severed in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. Thereafter, until James If's unhappy experience, the laws prohibiting foreign jurisdiction in either Church or state and establishing the Royal Supremacy in religion made illegal any link between London and Rome.
The Limits of Law
Authors: Knowles David
Published: July 2007

You will remember that in the final stage of the trial of Sir Thomas More, when, according to William Roper, Sir Thomas had alleged that the law of God overrode the laws of England, and that, in addition, the indictment, which relied on the word ‘maliciously’ to bring More under the Statute, was faulty, the Chancellor, Audley, momentarily shaken by his predecessor’s eloquence and known legal wisdom, turned to his colleague the Chief Justice, Sir John Fitzjames, and asked him what he thought of the indictment. Fitzjames was not to be caught. ‘My lords all, by St Julian’, he replied, ‘I must needs confess that if the acte of parliament be not unlawful, then is not the indictment in my conscience insufficient.’ Thus saying, he threw the case back upon the Act of Supremacy, with the implication that a Statute was beyond the reach of criticism.

As it happens, the latest of all Tudor historians, in a remarkable survey that appeared only a few months ago, gave it as his opinion that in the years 1530-3 a great revolution in legal and political theory and practice was achieved in England: that Parliament—that is, of course, the king in Parliament—became then both in theory and practice what it has ever since remained, the self-sufficient, omnicompetent legislative body. That this was so in foro externo was proclaimed and understood at the time. The legislative competition of the Church, whether in the form of ancient canon law or new decretals, or in the form of conciliar decrees in England, had been for the future eliminated by Henry VIII.
The Chinese Church Under Communism
Authors: Sohler A.
Published: July 2007

The Holy See, ten years ago, re-established the Catholic hierarchy in China, shortly after the creation of the first Chinese cardinal, His Eminence Cardinal Thomas Tien. Three of the nineteen archbishops, including those of the capital, Nanking, and the national cultural centre, Peking, were native Chinese. Twenty-nine of the hundred and forty-five ecclesiastical territories (dioceses and apostolic prefectures) were governed by native Chinese.

A long, exhausting war had just ended; a war from which the nation had emerged morally enhanced but materially handicapped. The native clergy were comparatively numerous (2,500 priests) and able to assume ever-increasing responsibility. The missionaries who had been interned by the Japanese resumed their work with fresh enthusiasm and missionary reinforcements began to arrive. It was easy to imagine that the evangelization of China, whose population represents a quarter of humanity, would continue to receive the fullest support from nearly all missionary congregations and societies. The members of these missionary groups come from all the European countries, except the Orthodox ones, from North America, and even from South America (Colombia). The chances for the increase of Christianity seemed good, in spite of the civil war and the Communist occupation of vast northern and central areas where religious activity was restricted.
Note on the Historical Development of the Montessori Movement
Authors: Standing E. M.
Published: July 2007

It is now upwards of forty years since the Montessori Method came into being. It has in fact existed long enough to have a history; and from a brief study of that history we may glean some important truths about it.

In the first place it can be safely affirmed that the Montessori Method is not just one of those educational fads that come suddenly into prominence, and then as quickly die out. In spite of the double catastrophe of two world wars, and all the confusion and insecurity consequent upon them, the Montessori Movement is stronger today and more widely spread than ever before. In this present year Montessori Training Centres exist in Great Britain, Ireland, Holland, France, Denmark, Italy, Germany and India; and others will be opened up as soon as trained personnel is forthcoming to carry them on.

It is not, however, merely a question of geographical extension. More important still is the question of depth. During all these years—a whole generation and more—the Montessori System has never ceased to develop, probing ever deeper into the mysterious roots of the child’s developing personality, and culminating, during the past ten years, in Montessori’s Doctrine of the ‘Absorbent Mind’.
The Mozart Bicentenary
Authors: Girdlestone C. M.
Published: July 2007

The celebration of Mozart’s bicentenary has brought out one of the chief traits by which his worship differs from other cults for writers and artists of the past, namely, the degree of personal love and devotion which attend it. The centenary celebrations of Beethoven, Schubert, Haydn, Brahms, Chopin, Bach, have fallen within the memory of most of us; great as was the burden of praise cast upon these distinguished figures, none called up such a tribute of affection. Twenty years ago, Eric Blom concluded his excellent work upon the composer with a declaration of love. It is this intimate relation between the man himself and his listener that makes our apprehension of his art so peculiar. This would be all the more astonishing if it were true, as Hyatt King as written in a recent volume of essays and as indeed many others said before him, that Mozart’s music is profoundly impersonal. It would be astonishing even if one modified this by substituting ‘impenetrable’ for ‘impersonal’. The ‘Mozart friend of long standing’, to whom Paul Hamburger refers in The Mozart Companion and for whom in fact this book has been written, feels that when W.A.M.’s music fills the room it is not only the art but the very presence of the Geliebte that he enjoys. Except for Chopin, I doubt whether this can be experienced so keenly with any other composer.