bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
An Aristocrat of Poverty
Authors: S.C.  
Published: August 2024

At a time when an anthology such as ‘The Pleasures of Poverty’ is published, for one thing perhaps to help stiffen the economic morale of the general public, it may be instructive and even interesting to learn how one of the Church's great women personalities reacted to the problem of material security.Julie (now Saint Marie Madeleine) Postel might never have become so interested in the question of poverty had she not lived in the second half of the eighteenth century, in a France which was rapidly heading for economic disaster. She herself, belonging to good middle-class country stock, had always known a fair measure of security. But that was an exceptional experience in a country, where, for all but a privileged few, misery haointed the land in the form of famine and squalor.
The Englishman's Worship
Authors: Richards Michael 
Published: August 2024

In spite of everything that has been achieved by the liturgical movement in this country, it still seems reasonable to ask whether it has in fact produced greater unity or greater disorder where public worship is concerned. Schools of thought have been formed within denominations, and across denominational barriers. While greater common understanding does exist, it may well confine itself to academic circles; to ordinary worshippers, the variety may appear as great as ever.However that may be, all who are working in the liturgical field would probably at least agree that they are trying to make the public worship of their respective churches as full as possible an expression of the authentic Christian tradition. They would say also that the closer we approach to realizing that aim, the nearer we shall be to restoring the unity which we have lost.
Alter Christus
Authors: Kolb M. B. 
Published: August 2024

The possession of an immortal soul opens up such wonderful possibilities to man that a thinker, over- whelmed by the greatness of life, once exclaimed: ‘However great things a man would say about the meaning of life, he would always say too little.’These marvellous possibilities begin to be realized as soon as a soul is received into the bosom of the Church. ‘O marvel of Baptism', a convert joyfully exclaims. ‘If only we had faith, we should be wrapped in joy whenever we assist at a Baptism, if we remember the spiritual greatness of the neophyte, who becomes the living tabernacle of the Holy Ghost.’All without exception can happily become temples of the Divine Spirit; in everyone the consoling word of Christ can be fulfilled: The Father and I will come and take up our abode in him.’
The Life of Grace : II
Authors: de Riedmatten Henri 
Published: August 2024

While Christianity was claiming to have found true wisdom, secular philosophy was still seeking it with all its might. Since Plato with his amazing intuitions had constructed a system of philosophy directed towards the Possession or contemplation of the Unchanging, a current of philosophy had been trying to take the realities of metaphysics by storm and enjoy them, if only for a moment, at the risk of neglecting the patient labour and slow deduction championed by Aristotle. After painting his splendid picture of the universe, from the One to the lowest degree of being, matter, Plotinus sets up an ideal for the human soul. “There are as many ways of living possible for the soul as there are levels of reality: at the bottom, life in the world of the senses, whether it be the life of pleasure, in which the soul is entirely passive, or the active life, the rule of which is given by the social virtues. Higher up comes reflection, in which the soul gives itself up to its autonomous activity, judging and reasoning.After painting his splendid picture of the universe, from the One to the lowest degree of being, matter, Plotinus sets up an ideal for the human soul. ‘There are as many ways of living possible for the soul as there are levels of reality: at the bottom, life in the world of the senses, whether it be the life of pleasure, in which the soul is entirely passive, or the active life, the rule of which is given by the social virtues.’ Higher up comes reflection, in which the soul gives itself up to its autonomous activity, judging and reasoning.
The Vows Of Religion: II—Religious Obedience
Authors: Ryan Columba 
Published: August 2024

It's very simple, you just have to do what you're told, and because you're told to do it'. But the religious does sometimes meet situations in which he legitimately hesitates whether he ought to obey or not. And then what becomes of'doing what you're told because you're told to do it'? And if hesitation can sometimes occur, how is the religious to know when this crucial moment has arrived?‘Of course, religious obedience is not like what you find in the army. Religious obedience has got to be voluntary and interior, not just a matter of external discipline.’ But there is a sense in which obedience can never extend beyond external behaviour (Sum. Theol. II-II, 104, 5), and if this kind of statement only means that religious obedience must come from the will it is difficult to see that army obedience or any other should do otherwise, at any rate if it is to be dignified by the name of obedience.
The Church Unity Octave
Authors: White Victor 
Published: August 2024

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that this is an octave of prayer for unity. A time, therefore, not so much for talking and listening to each other about our divisions and how we might heal them, but rather for talking and listening to God— trying to see our divisions with his eyes, and asking for his unity.This octave—or eight days—of prayer for unity all began about fifty years ago at a place called Graymoor in the State of New York. A small community of very Catholic-minded clergymen of the American Episcopalian Church lived there, trying to follow the rule and way of life of St Francis. They called themselves— they are still called—Friars of the Atonement. They were not, so far as I know, very distinguished theologians or what we should regard as abnormally saintly men; just sincere, hard-headed and hard-working American pastors living a community life.
Asking Others to Pray for Us
Authors: Georgiadis Helle 
Published: August 2024

The week of prayer for Christian unity culminates with the feast of the conversion of St Paul on January 25th. St Paul is probably the most energetic and tireless worker for unity whom the Church has ever known. Many passages in St Paul's epistles are devoted to the theme of unity and the epistles themselves bear witness to his work for it.But when we read these epistles we are struck immediately by St Paul's tremendous sense of the power of intercession and its importance in the life of Christians. Thus he writes to the Romans:'For God is my witness … that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers’ (Rom. i, 9).
Nearer to God Means Nearer to Each Other
Authors: Sartory Thomas 
Published: August 2024

May I begin by welcoming you to the Haus der Begegnung (meeting house) and to the Abbey of Niedcraltaich. We have come together for a singular enterprise, and as far as I know nothing of the sort has taken place before since Christendom became divided. We, Protestant and Catholic Christians, are to spend these days of spiritual retreat together … .Regarding reunion, nothing could be further from the spirit of Niederaltaich than any expectation of patent solutions. We do not much care for over-simplified and smooth formulae. But we do Know this; it is certainly not contentious thought, nor is it even only strenuous intellectual effort that will heal the wounded Body of Christ. The forces conducive to reunion lie deeper, and must be sought on the level of a spiritual growing towards one another. And this coming nearer together in spirit should surely be well served by these coming days of shared retreat.
Sol Justitiae Et Sanitas In Pennis Ejus
Authors: Keyes L. L. 
Published: August 2024

Pope Leo XIII once called the Heart of Christ ‘a new Labarum, a battle standard in our war not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers, the rulers of the world of this darkness'. It might look like a Mazdean symbol, the winged sun disc that the prophet Malachias sings about: ‘the Sun of Justice shall arise with healing in his wings.'Surely our world is sick; healing is to be found in the Heart of Christ. Nervous breakdowns are all too common. They follow the formula: where P stands for predisposition, S for stress and R for resistance. The predisposition is our character which is an integration of habits on temperament. Now the temperament part of character is inherited. It is physical, or if you prefer, chemical, glandular. Medical science is learning to manage it more and more, but whether any complete cure will ever be found for a difficult temperament, other than getting a new set of grandparents, yet remains to be seen.
Saint Raymund Penafort
Authors: S.M.C.  
Published: August 2024

In the state papers of the Kingdom of Aragon is to be found this record: ‘1275. On the day of the Epiphany Raymund Peniafort of Barcelona departed this life in the convent of the Friars Preachers, than whom in Spain at this time there is no more illustrious example of a perfect religious life and longstanding holiness.'In 1175-76 Raymund was born, probably at Villafranca de Banades, the family estate of the Penafort. His parents came of knightly stock, being descended from the royal family of Aragon.From childhood, Raymund was serious and mature. Like so many saints and great men of the Dominican Order in its early days. he preferred study to amusement. He was a precocious student and by the time he was twenty years old had graduated in the school at Barcelona and had his own class of pupils to whom he taught the liberal arts, accepting no payment.
An English Martyr On The Tubilee Year
Authors: Wright Peter 
Published: August 2024

The Indulgences of the Holy Year are usually extended to the Universal Church after the closing of the Holy Doors. In 1650 there was such an extension till Easter Sunday, 1651, which fell on 30th March in England, but on 9th April in countries that had adopted the reformed calendar. The following sermon was written by Bl. Peter Wright, S.J., and exists in a volume of sermons, all in his own handwriting, at Stonyhurst. I gratefully acknowledge the kindness of Fr H. Chadwick, S.J., the Librarian, in allowing me to transcribe and publish it.Bl. Peter Wright was born at Slipton in Northamptonshire of a Catholic yeoman family, lost his faith as a young man, and went to Holland to fight with the English Protestant regiment against the Spaniards, who then possessed half the Netherlands. He soon, however, deserted, was reconciled to the Church and became a Jesuit. He was appointed chaplain to the English regiment fighting on the side of the Spaniards.
Holy Abandonment
Authors: Dent Barbara 
Published: August 2024

St Alphonsus said, ‘Lord, I am poor, but I give thee as much as I can; having resigned to thee my will, I have nothing more to offer thee.'To give the will unreservedly, in generous love, to God, is to give him all. The wise man said, ‘My son, give me thy heart’, but before the heart can be given, the will must choose to give it, for the will is always the prime mover. In yielding it to God one seeks deliberately to negate the effects of the fall, and ally oneself with the creator's original plan for mankind. One shoots an arrow back into Paradise, with a string attached to it that leads one, as Theseus in the maze, through all the intricacies of life straight to union with God.
The Active Purification of Silence: (The Ancren Riwle, Part III)
Authors: Pepler Conrad 
Published: August 2024

In discussing the purification of the exterior senses the Ancren Riwle naturally goes into the matter of the mortification of hearing. We may well anticipate that silence should play a large part in the life of a recluse, both as a mortification and penance in itself, and as a way to the full flowering of the love of God. For though it be only a means, and a negative one at that, silence does in fact lead the soul forward to contemplation in a very direct way, so direct that it provides a special foundation for the theological virtue of hope:
‘Keep well my tongue, I may well hod on in the way toward heaven. For, as Isaiah saith, “The tillage of righteousness is silence”. Silence tilleth her, and she being tilled bringeth forth eternal food for the soul…. Therefore Isaiah joins together hope and silence… . “In silence and in hope shall be your strength”.’ p. 60).For prayer is the breath of hope, and it is impossible to ask God for anything or to raise the mind to him without this theological virtue.
Sin
Authors: Jarrett Bede 
Published: August 2024

In dealing with our conscience we try to remind ourselves of the fact that it is almost impossible to be sure to what extent we are answerable for the evil of our lives. We never know with what bias or handicap we start life. God only knows. He knows what is beyond our personal control. We can't really tell—we may be worse than we think ourselves, we may be better. We can only make a shrewd guess with no certainty. We don't even know whether we are in a state of grace or not; we can't go by feeling—self-complacency—there are no internal or external signs. We can be pretty sure we are trying, but we don't know for certain.It is best to leave it to our Blessed Lord. When he was asked whether a large proportion of people would be saved he said, ‘Strive thou to enter by the narrow gate'.
The Territories Of Grace
Authors: Evans Illtud 
Published: August 2024

Religious sociology, as an academic study in its own right, is scarcely twenty years old, and as yet its true dimensions have hardly been realized. Indeed Professor Gabriel Le Bras, its virtual founder, can speak with pardonable rhetoric of its ‘limitless horizons', since it ‘embraces all times, all countries, all man's dreams of time and the infinite'. Of course there is a sense in which the material which the religious sociologist considers has always been there. The Church exists among men, in time and place, and even the old testament provides ample evidence of the close connection between men's worship of God and the social setting in which it is to be achieved.The structure of the Church's organized life is a palimpsest of her history. To that extent it is a matter of chance, or perhaps one should say of the providence that ordained her growth in terms of particular cultures and societies.
August Holy Days
Authors: Editor The 
Published: August 2024

August brings to many people a period of rest and relaxation, a time for an instinctive worship of the elements—the sun and the sea, the rocks and the rivers, worshipped consciously of old by their forefathers. It is not usually a time for striving very earnestly for Christian perfection save perhaps for the religious who choose this month for their annual retreats. People often feel that in the holiday season they can legitimately let go their efforts towards virtue or to overcome their particular habitual faults. They feel, perhaps, if they ever think about it, that they are—always legitimately of courseleaving our Lord and his ideals a little on one side, a holiday from religion as well as from work.This false sense of the purpose and need of a holiday may even develop a false conscience. For it is in fact an erroneous conception of the rest from work that is usually provided at this season.
Sister Blandine Merten
Authors: Bullough Sebastian 
Published: August 2024

This little book1 makes known for the first time to English readers the noly and hidden life of a German Ursuline nun who died in the odour of sanctity in 1918, at the age of thirty-five.The story is a beautifully simple one. Sister Blandine was born in the saar district in 1883, the daughter of a farmer. She became a qualified teacher and taught in a little village school, until at the age of twentyfive she entered the Ursuline Novitiate at Calvarienberg near Ahrweiler in the Rhineland. In 1911, after taking her first vows, she was sent to Saarbrücken to resume teaching. Within a few weeks, however, illness caused her to be moved to lighter work at the convent at Trier. Here she remained, occupied in the school, until her last illness confined her to her room in 1916. She was bedridden for eighteen months, and died on May 18th, 1918.
Vocal and Mental Prayer
Authors: Valentine Ferdinand 
Published: August 2024

Prayer is the uplifting of the human personality to God. We not only uplift our minds by submission through Faith to his revealed truth, and our wills in acknowledgment of his divine sovreignty, but also our bodies. In prayer the whole man ‘empties himself’ in union with our Saviour to the glory of God. (Phil. 2; 7-11.)‘But also our bodies’. ‘The antithesis of mind is body’, writes Father Vincent McNabb, and therefore the ‘antithesis to mental prayer should be bodily prayer. But by a figure of speech the whole range of non-mental prayer is called after its chief part, vocal prayer. It would be incorrect to think that the other forms of bodily prayer are neither greatly practised in the Church nor greatly valued. The Church, like her divine Spouse, “knows what is in man” too well to neglect any object or function whereby the impact of the world may be deadened and a new force added to the world of unseen realities.
Missionary to the Eskimos
Authors: Harper Thomas 
Published: August 2024

Inuk is from several different points of view a work of remarkable interest. It is in the first place the story of the fifteen years spent by a French priest as a missionary among the Eskimos; it is in addition a commentary of considerable value on the habits and way of life of a remote and little-known people, and it is also a study in the propagation of the Faith under exceptionally unfavourable conditions.Father Buliard, an Oblate of Mary Immaculate, went to work among the ‘copper’ Eskimos (the least developed section of this very primitive race) in 1934 only twenty years after the murder of two of his predecessors in the same territory. In the intervening years the work of evangelising the copper Eskimos had been carried on by seven Oblate Fathers working two or three at a time under conditions of physical hardship which are probably unique even in the annals of the Church's foreign missions.
Christ the Light of the World
Authors: Elwes Columba Cary 
Published: August 2024

Today when the world is shattering into splinters like glass to the blast of a bomb, it seems difficult to assume or profess that Christ has been the Light of the World. So many have never heard of him, so many have been snatched from his loving care—so it seems—by the wilful action of militant anti-Christian people, so many self-styled followers of Jesus seem to be following their own desires and not at all treading the path to Calvary, beyond whose brow is illumination and light.No one will deny that in his teaching and in his life our Blessed Lord and Master has been a shining Light; he taught a way that shines with holiness and love, which could, if followed, lead to peace and joy. Indeed those who truly followed Christ, and follow him today, have been and are at peace and in joy, with a peace and joy beyond all others, and recognisably so even to those who refuse to follow this same light.
Fashion in Saints: St John of the Cross
Authors: Murray Rosalind 
Published: August 2024

No one but a saint should attempt to write about a saint. This is less evidently so in the case of active saints or martyrs, those whose external actions, whose whole lives are in themselves striking or edifying; then a biography can be of interest in the same way as it would be of any other outstanding personality; but of the contemplative saint, the mystic, there is often little to recount in the medium of time and place; very often they are monks or nuns whose entire lives have passed in uneventful routine of religious duties; the drama is interior and hidden.It is true that St Teresa founded convents, that St John of the Cross was for a time in prison, that St Bernard and St Catherine intervened in the political crises of their times. But these are not the important things about them; these actions, however useful and successful, are accidental, and sorry to the true significance of their lives—the union of their souls with God in love, and even in the more specific sense, union through the interior way of contemplation.
St David and Wales
Authors: Evans Illtud 
Published: August 2024

On St David’s Day Welshmen are apt to make speeches. For once in the year the virtue of speaking Welsh is generally conceded. One of the objections to giving much time to Welsh in the schools used to be its lack of ‘commercial value’: Welsh, it was argued reasonably enough, brought no dividends. John Capgrave, in his Legenda Nova Historiæ Angliæ, tells a story which suggests that Welsh may be very useful indeed:‘A certain Welshman coming from the diocese of Menevia was captured by the Saracens, and was put in chains together with a German. The Welshman cried aloud day and night in his own language to St David, “Dewi, wared!”, which is to say, “David, come to my aid!” And, wonderful to relate, he suddenly found himself restored to his own country. Making this known to Gervase, at that time the bishop of those parts, he was taken into the dwelling of the latter on account of so notable a miracle. But his companion the German, considered to be privy to what had happened, was submitted to beatings and placed in even stricter custody.
Retreat and Return
Authors: Sharpe F. A. 
Published: August 2024

A short time after my conversion to Christianity I had a desire to spend an informal retreat at a Trappist abbey some few hundred miles from my home. As my train sped through the natural wonderland that is New England in the springtime, my thoughts were mostly of a religious nature centring about life in an abbey, ideas gathered from several books that I had recently read.As my train travelled along I became aware of a sense of doubleretreating, one physical and the other spiritual. My own city being far behind me, and the strange towns and villages going by my window as though framed in a movie film, gave me a strong sense of world-abandonment. I had a feeling that the world, and all that it means, was receding into the distant past. Not only was it receding physically, but spiritually too. I was en route to another kind of world, a world of peace and contentment within the confines of an abbey.
The Carmelite Third Order: Its Spirit and Apostolate
Authors: Sheppard Lancelot C. 
Published: August 2024

‘Secular Tertiaries’, says Canon Law, ‘are those who in the world under the jurisdiction and the influence of a Religious Order try to tend to Christian perfection according to a rule adapted to their secular state of life and approved by the Apostolic See, It is necessary to bear this definition in mind in reading what follows.The thirteenth century was a period of great expansion for the hermits who had come from Mount Carmel to Europe, but if in the same way as the Dominicans and Franciscans they attracted layfolk to them in an organized Third Order little evidence of it has survived. That some people went to live near Carmelite houses as recluses we know, but this was entirely separate from the Tertiary movement. On the other hand recently discovered documents have shown that there was some sort of fraternity at Venice in existence between the years 1280 and 1208 with regular monthly meetings, the saying of Office in common, the wearing of a habit and the rest. More research is needed to establish whether such a state of things was general.