bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Peace
Authors: Evans Illtud 
Published: August 2024

Peace be upon you.’ Our Lord's greeting to his disciples after his resurrection from the dead is one of peace: for a new life has begun for all who believe in him, a life , peace. The old conflicts are over, the war is won; man is restored to God's friendship, he is reconciled, redeemed. And this is to work of Christ our Lord: he has triumphed over sin and death through his own dying, and the barriers that separated men from God are broken down, the barriers of sin which no merely human power could ever destroy. And peace begins: the peace of Christ himself communicated now to all whom he has redeemed.But the peace that our Lord brings to man is very different from the peace that is so often on men's lips, the peace that is simply the absence of conflict, an interval between wars. His peace, he tells us, is his legacy to those who believe in him—'My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you…. But not as the world gives …'.
Monachorum Norma: A Sketch of St Hugh of Lincoln
Authors: Farmer Hugh 
Published: August 2024

The first Carthusian saint to be formally canonized by the Holy See was not their founder St Bruno but our own St Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln from 1186 till 1200. His achievements as a bishop and the historical importance of his resistance to kings have sometimes led writers to underemphasize the fact that he owed to his monastery the training which made him what he was—a saint whose austere and fearless strength was tempered by a gentleness which is one of the finest fruits of charity. The life written shortly after his death by his chaplain, the Benedictine work Adam of Eynsham, does justice to this fact, and, in spite of its omissions, it is one of the most accurate and detail portraits in existence of a medieval saint.Born in 1140 of a noble family at Avalon near Grenoble, Hugh was neither an Englishman nor a Frenchman by birth, but Empire man. He was brought up from childhood after his mother's death in a neighbouring house of canons at Villarbenoit, where his father had retired to dedicate his last years to Religious Life.
Too Good to be Used
Authors: Gilby Thomas 
Published: August 2024

When at length Job's comforters had done their reasonable best to justify God's ways with man according to their own theological preconceptions, the Lord answered him out of the whirlwind, and said, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Let a scholastic psychologist bear in mind that closure to the debate when he sets out to outline how we should use our faculties in our life with God.Using is what we do with utilities, and these as such are expendable objects which though not valuable in themselves do serve a higher purpose. Hence it is not the same as cherishing, which is what we do with things dear in themselves or as enjoying, which is what we do with things that give us pleasure.
St Pambo
Authors: Felicity  
Published: August 2024

It is a pity we know so little about a holy man with such a quaint name as Pambo, commemorated on July 18. Pambo strikes a frolicsome note among the renowned and dignified names of the Fathers of the Desert with whom he worked: Antony, Palladius, Isidore, Macarius. It may be that the sound reminds us of Jumbo or Sambo and if so the sooner we stop our ears to this skittish euphony the better. Pambo was by no means reminiscent of the nursery.He was born round about the year 315, of whom and why he was called Pambo there is no record, but he became one of the founders of the Nitrian monasteries in the Egyptian desert and in his youth a disciple of St Antony. His life was the same as that of all the monks of the Thebaid, with severe fasts, long hours of prayer and the inevitable mat-making.
Writing about Prayer
Authors: Hibbert Giles 
Published: August 2024

It is generaly admitted that far too many modern books on prayer and The spiritual life are of little value. Such books often enough claim to belong to the tradition of the Church, depending upon and being continuous with the great figures of the past such as St Bernard and St John of the Cross, but in fact this dependence is merely superficial, there being a fundamental break in a process of transmission which must be essentially organic, with its roots in the past and its life in the present—that surely is the significance of tradition.To claim that our thought about the nature of prayer should be up to date is not to claim that it should dissociate itself from the past—far from it. The very nature of Christian speculation is that it must give full value to and appreciate language and thought-form in which the Church has given expression to her consciousness of the life of Christ within her throughout her history and particularly as witnessed to by the great patristic figures and doctors of the Church.
Not Married Yet?
Authors: Attwater Rachel 
Published: August 2024

Two preliminary points: the first can be sufficiently made through a series of quotations.From the Aylesford Priory News Letter;. ‘There was also (at a dinner) a very interesting and lively parish priest from a nearby (French) parish. His work has to do with the “problem” of industrial relationships between employers and employees. He apologized for mentioning the word “problem” to describe his work'.From a private letter of an Oxford history graduate and ex-family case worker, now married with two small children. ‘I was asked with five or six others (to the B.B.C.) to discuss problems of new housewives. I always say I haven't had any problems—of course I burn the chips regularly but I accept this as a part of life!’
Hermits
Authors: Magrath Oswin 
Published: August 2024

The absence of hermits as a recognised and esteemed element in the life of the Church for the last century or two is an extraordinary phenomenon, for in other ages hermits have always been numerous and accepted. This is not merely that eremitical vocations are lacking, they possibly exist in numbers; but is in part at least to be attributed to the general attitude of suspicion with which the eremitical life is viewed. In the West there is no legal provision made for hermits in canon law, and the difficulties of a religious or priest embracing the eremitical life ar practically insuperable. Spiritual writers rarely treat of eremiticism as a means or state of perfection, and it tends to be regarded as a thing of the past which has no place in the Church today.There are, however, not lacking signs that this state of affairs may be passing away. The example of Charles de Foucauld and the spiritual personality of St Thérèse of the child Jesus are turning minds to the possibilities of the life of an anchoret, and many writings on the subject are beginning to appear.
The Holy Spirit in the Church
Authors: Farmer Hugh 
Published: August 2024

Although the doctrine of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the soul is perhaps more widely appreciated than formerly, it may be doubted Whether the same can be said of that of the Holy Spirit lying and operating in the Church as a whole. Sometimes we are so preoccupied with human failings in the Church's members that we tend to forget the intimate presence in the Church of the Divine Guest whose gifts show her to be an opus plane divinum, as Pope Leo XIII called her. We tend to forget that the Church is a theophany, that the ‘Trinity in which Unity is apparent in the unity of the Church—the Father, as the principle to which we are united, the Son as the milieu in which we are united, the Holy Spirit as the tie by which we are united: and all is one'. (Bossuet: Lettre sur l'Unité de l'Eglise.)Although the early Church was by no means exclusively composed of holy and perfect members, there was in those days, one may think, a more widespread realisation of God's presence in the Church, specially attributed to the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.
The Modern Vice
Authors: de la Bedoyere Michael 
Published: August 2024

Corruptio Optimi Pessima—yes, but few of us can rise to the best, and consequently few of us descend to the depths. Corruptio melioris pejor Would be a maxim more suited to us, and we could translate rt: The corruption of the rather better produces the rather worse. That is the habitual danger which most Christians and especially most Catholics run. It is that ‘rather worse’ which interests me, and another way of putting it would be that Catholics run their own particular danger of being vulgar.The word ‘vulgar’ is interesting because it carries within itself, as it were, the story of its own corruption. Its true meaning is something to do with the common people, that is, those least in danger of being vulgar in the modern sense, for the common people largely bound in mind and behaviour by God-made conditions of life are in least danger of falling from the rather better to the rather worse.
Head and Heart in Common Catholic Prayer
Authors: Davis H. F. 
Published: August 2024

I Think good Catholics want the common Christian life of prayer as much as ever. They know that Christians should love one another, and live and pray as a body, but they do not know how to set about it. Other Christians would want it, and thereby become better Christians, if they saw before them an example of the Christian common life of prayer.From one point of view the big difficulty seems to be that our Christianity is heart without head; from another it seems to be head without heart.It is heart without head in so far as in this twentieth century of Christianity, hundreds of Catholics seem to be insufficiently instructed in what it means. It is head without heart in so far as Christianity has become for many people a mere matter of creed and catechism without sufficient of the practical common action which bring creed and catechism to life. Religion is worship, common religion and common worship; and it can never be a mere creed.
The Nuptial Mass
Authors: Sire Dominic J. 
Published: August 2024

Tradition has always surrounded marriage with ceremony and feasting even among the most primitive races and countries. Being the climax of human love it is not surprising to find this very natural instinct expressing itself thus. This tradition has almost inevitably found its way into the Christian mode of life and the liturgical spirit of the Church.Mere love of pageantry is not a sufficient explanation of the full ceremonial of Christian marriage. The Nuptial Mass, which should always form part of any full Christian marriage, has a much deeper significance and reason, especially for the parties concerned. It is not just a kind of luxury, something added to fill out and prolong the festivities, still less should it ever be the privilege of the rich. It is more than an adornment or a frill, for it is deeply concerned with the very essence of marriage.
An Ordinary Christian's Reflections after hearing Arguments on War and Peace
Authors: Dawson Clare 
Published: August 2024

Dear Lord, I turn to you after hearing many arguments about war, peace, nuclear weapons, non-violence, pacifism, and the duty of Christian persons to take an active interest in governmental policy, or drift, or incapacity to resist events.Of course it concerns me deeply whether your creation, human and non-human, is destroyed or not; and though to die might be swift as the rending of a curtain that hangs between here and hereafter, I don't want to die with most of the world, my world at any rate, making a funeral pyre.I can accept it if it is part of your plan, something you mean to allow because out of it you can bring greater good. Must I accept also the ghastly possibility of living while others die, m a barren world, the Material expression of spiritual bankruptcy? Yes. I am sure your answer is ‘Yes'.
Prayer for England
Authors: G.A.  
Published: August 2024

Blessed Virgin, Saint Mary, our Blessed Lady, the Mother of God, who with all the saints dost not cease to pray unto Almighty God in general I for succour in all distresses of the whole Catholic ‘Church, I beseech thee most humbly that as it hath both pleased thee of special favour to take upon thee the special protection of this realm of England thy Dower, so thou wilt vouchsafe by thy special prayers to thy sweet Son our Lord Jesus Christ, to prefer the same continually, and at this present, most instantly to deliver it from schism and heresy, and to restore it again to the unity of the holy Catholic Church, that all English people, above all other nations, may worthily from henceforth call thee blessed, and honour thy lame for ever, saying thus:Blessed Virgin, praise to thee, England thy Dowry Was lost, is turned by thee again from schism and heresy. Dos tua Virgo pia Per te est conversa, Maria.
Sanctity in Marriage
Authors: Nicholl Donald 
Published: August 2024

One might suspect a distrust towards marriage in the words of a recent statement in a publisher's blurb advertising a book upon saints who were I married. The blurb declares it the purpose of the book to show that ‘marriage is compatible with sanctity'. The force of the ‘compatible’ needs exact appreciation, and may be more easily gauged if one reads it as ‘a sacrament instituted by God (e.g., marriage, ordination, etc.) is compatible with sanctity'.Yet the misconception lurking in the sentence does not so much arise from a false view of marriage as from a false view of sanctity; clearly it is referring to canonised sanctity and not to being a saint; one hopes that there are more saints than the canonised. And, indeed, the many attempts which have been made in the last few years to rescue the married from the limbo of half-hearted Christianity nearly all labour under the same misconception. In the many Continental reviews which have dealt with the subject one hears an appeal for the canonisation of more married saints.
The Life of Grace: III
Authors: Riedmatten Henri de 
Published: August 2024

St Bonaventure, who sees so clearly that theology has an object of its own—'the things we have to believe, when considered as such, pass into the class of things that can be grasped by the mind, and this because we now look at them from a second point of view’ (I Sent. I proem, q. 1.)—does not for all that think it anything but an instrument or stage in the movement towards Love. He states its aim like this: ‘Revelation turns us towards the affections', (loc. cit. q. 3, a. 1.) Albert the Great holds the same opinion: ‘Knowledge of truth is not sought through the intellect alone but through the affections and substance; hence it is not intellective but effective, for the intellect is directed towards the affections as towards it end'. (I Sent. d. 1, a. 4, ad 2m.)This text lays bare the heart of the matter: the intellect is subordinate to the affectus. Cognitive activity, especially at the supernatural level, does not represent something autonomous, something with value in itself. To use Aristotelian terms, we have in theology not a speculative science but a practical one.
The Wisdom of Saint Dominic
Authors: Evans Illtud 
Published: August 2024

The work of the Church is a work of reconciliation, of restoring men to God, by whom they were made and to whom they must return. It is the work of Christ, ‘for he is our peace, who hath made both one … breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh’ (Eph. 2, 14). He came into the world that he might redeem it; he died for the world that it might live for God.And through the centuries the Church, which is the Body of Christ, continues his work of healing: bringing back the alien to the household of God, forgiving his sins, feeding his soul, teaching him the truth that alone can set him free, and at last preparing him for the destiny of heaven. And of all the evils which pervert that work of healing, heresy, the choice of a lie instead of the redemptive truth of Christ, is the deepest and most dangerous. For it is at last the choice of slavery, the return to the desert of alienation: and its fruits we know.
The Divorce of Mysticism from Theology
Authors: Vandenbroucke F. 
Published: August 2024

Father H. Urs von Balthasar wrote recently in Dieu Vivant (No. 12, 1948): ‘From the dogmatic point of view we no longer take the modern saints seriously because they themselves no longer have to be dogmatic…. They leave dogma to the prosaic work of “the schools” and become lyricists.’ Such a statement is not an isolated one among spiritual writers today. And we need hardly add that as a rule it is made with a view to deploring this separation of ‘sanctity’ from theology.Some readers then begin to wonder whether sanctity in the Church has actually become a kind of lyricism or poetic enthusiasm. Is it a matter of ‘mystical’ intuition, rather exaggerated, a special ‘grace'» Moreover the mentality of many of our contemporaries, sincere Catholics though they may be, echoes these questions. For them the point of view of the ‘mystic’ which they identify with that of the ‘saint', the ‘irrationality’ of his conception of Christian life, of prayer and penance, are all things that should not be discussed. They are accepted or rejected; but in any case such a view of Christian life is not final.
The Spiritual Life: An Historical Approach—II
Authors: Buixough Sebastian 
Published: August 2024

In the first of these articles it was explained that the series is being written with the conviction that an historical approach to Christian teaching on the spiritual life, an enquiry into the thought of successive masters on the subjects of prayer and perfection, will be a powerful aid to the deepening of our own understanding of what the knowledge, love and service God means to each one of us today.The roots of Christian thinking on prayer and the spiritual life are to be found with the Greek Fathers of the East, whose teaching sprang in the early centuries from the Gospel itself, forming a great heritage from which grew the medieval development in Western Christian thought (while the East has preserved, and continues to preserve, the treasures of the patristic heritage), and in the West at the close of the middle ages the systems of the devotio moderna in turn grew out of the medieval developments.
Religious Sisters
Authors: Valentine Ferdinand 
Published: August 2024

This book is an important contribution to the literature of the spiritual and religious life; how important we shall discuss presently. The Foreword tells us that it is a translation of papers read at the Journées d'Etudes by a number of priests, secular and regular, which were later arranged by the Editor of La Vie Spirituelle for the benefit of French religious sisters and published in two volumes under the titles Directoire des Superieures and Les Adaptations de la Vie Religieuse. The former was intended for superiors and the latter for religious women in general. The translation is presented in one volume, with certain modifications of the original which are indicated in the text, and the addition of a very helpful chapter by an English doctor, R. E. Havard, M.D.There can be little doubt that a book of this kind, which faces many present-day problems with wisdom and courage, is long overdue.
Inspired Symbolism
Authors: Webb Geoffrey 
Published: August 2024

The proper sphere of a Catholic craftsman who is responsive to the appeal of the liturgical movement is to translate its doctrine into terms of form and colour, and so help in presenting it to his fellow men through the medium of the senses. Let us be quite clear about this. His work is not that of a teacher, but of a translator of others’ teaching. His normal function is to get on with the job without explaining what he is doing or why he is doing it. He may well consider the job important enough in itself, if he accepts the definition of Catholic philosophy that all truth has to pass through the senses before reaching the understanding. Nihil in intellectu nisi prius fuerit in sensu. And of these senses he may well recognise the eye as affording a more direct avenue than the ear, if he agrees with Horace:A thing when heard, remember, strikes less keenOn the spectator's mind than when ‘tis seen.
The Symbol of the Mountain
Authors: Mould D. D. C. Pochin 
Published: August 2024

The collect for the feast of St Catherine of Alexandria, having recalled the legend of the saint's body carried to Mount Sinai by angels, asks that we, by her intercession, may come to the mountain which is Christ. It is a symbol presented with the suddenness of mist clearing from a rocky summit, a dramatic image that brings one back to a consideration of the immense richness of mountain symbolism in liturgy and scripture.It may well be that the mountain is the easiest of the great symbols of the Church for us to understand today, easier than water or fire, for instance. The townsman is too used to think of water in terms of turning on the tap, of heat and light in terms of pressing switches, but with the hills, he returns to reality; in increasing numbers more and more people are discovering the fascination of mountaineering.
The Morality of War
Authors: White Victor 
Published: August 2024

When your chaplain asked me whether I should like to talk to you on the morality of war, I had to tell him that there was nothing I should like to talk about less. I can think of no less cosy subject for a Sunday morning chat in this year of grace 1949.The trouble, of course, is not just that it is such a complex moral issue in the abstract, but rather because war is so real, so imminent, so possible, so probable.
Prayer Without Ceasing
Authors: Baily Dom Theodore 
Published: August 2024

Sine intermissione orate (I Thess, v, 17)The following notes have been suggested to the writer by the reading of Récita sincères d’un pélerin à son père spirituel, a French translation of a MS. found on Mount Athos and published at Kazan in 1882. They are set down here as they may be not without interest to others. Of this book Professor Arseniev writes (Mysticism and the Eastern Church): The experience of the old Oriental Fathers, those guides to the ascetic mystical life, as they are collected in the Philokalia, spring into fresh life in that remarkable monument of Russian folk mysticism of the middle of the nineteenth century… The Candid Narrative of a Pilgrim to his Confessor… is by a man of great capacity for intense inward prayer. This pilgrim is possessed by the sweetness of inward prayer and thereby his life is transfigured.
'As One's Self'
Authors: Riviehe Madame Isabelle 
Published: August 2024

All human misery comes from avarice: corporal misery from the refusal to give one's belongings; spiritual misery from the refusal to give one's time and one's heart.All the sufferings, acute or dull, all the bitterness, the humiliations, all the grievances, the hatred and despair of this world, are an unsatisfied hunger. Hunger for bread, hunger for help, hunger for love.From the little lad who heaves great sobs because his mother slaps him for no other reason than that her nerves are on edge, to the too old grandfather whom his grandchildren now always forget to kiss; from the plain young woman left alone in her corner, to the wife upon whom her husband no longer deigns to cast his eyes, to the abandoned woman who throws herself into the Seine; from the friend whose companion fails on purpose to keep his appointment to the twenty-year-old boy who dies alone at night in his hospital bed whilst the infirmarian is drinking coffee in the kitchen; from the small poor-law child to the man who is going to be executed, all have suffered from a penury, from a stinginess of love.