bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
St Teresa of Lisieux and Her 'Truly Excessive Sensitiveness'
Authors: Robo Etienne 
Published: August 2024

In her autobiography, St Teresa of Lisieux has entered accurately, sometimes forcibly, a number of her peculiarities of disposition and character. They are so striking that no attentive reader can miss them. Most of her biographers however explain them away without realizing their true significance or dismiss them as of being of no importance. One well-known Teresian, for instance, speaks of St Teresa's ‘truly excessive sensitiveness’ and leaves it at that. ‘Excessive’ is the right word, ‘sensitiveness’ is not, and we believe that after considering the facts of the case, we shall come to the conclusion that this ‘sensitiveness’ of St Teresa has a medical signification and deserves another name. Why should we be reticent about any element of her personality? Every saint must build up his sanctity with the materials at hand, with, or in spite of, his temperament and constitution, his physical and mental gifts or deficiencies.Taken one by one, the idiosyncrasies of St Teresa may seem obscure. Take them together and you soon perceive a logical link between them all. They are in fact extremely important since her personality is inexplicable unless you give them due consideration.
A Technique of Spiritual Liberation (II)
Authors: Régamey P.-R. 
Published: August 2024

Three admitted facts of our actual times impose themselves on us more imperiously than the rest.First is this need for experience which we touched on towards the beginning of this article. We have said that it needs to be kept within legitimate limits. Then everyone will take care not to be satisfied with notions which have no spiritual value, any more than with observances which are followed because they are prescribed or recommended but which are, in consequence, burdens: they must become the means of liberation. The actions of the clergy and of the faithful, the functioning of institutions should lead to an increasing experience of lucidity, coherence, control and peace. Every spiritual man knows, with an immediate intuitive certainty, that these are normally the criteria of an authentic spiritual experience. Let us put it that in other times one could leave the ‘spiritual senses’ in penance to the extent of opposing the effective and the affective, and imagining a charity which was not affective; today there could no longer be a question of living the Christian life without a certain sense of its success—success in its own order, which is, let us repeat, that of faith and hope, but which must no less, normally, be ‘palpable to the heart'.
The Spirit in the World—II: The Institute of Our Lady of Mount Carmel
Authors: Melia Teresa 
Published: August 2024

‘Don't you think it would be nicer to be a proper nun’? This question, seriously addressed by a priest to a member of a secular institute, reveals the unfortunate lack of understanding of the vocation to a secular institute. Why ‘proper nun?’ Because in his mind was the erroneous idea that members of secular institutes are, since they take vows, some sort of nun, semi-nuns, not quite the right thing.But women in secular institutes are not nuns in the world, not nuns in mufti. They are lay women who keep their lay status, even though consecrated fully to God by the practice of the evangelical counsels, poverty, chastity, and obedience, and dedicated to the apostolate in the world.It was to make this absolutely clear to all who knew us and to all who would come to know us, that we, an institute dedicated to our Lady of Mount Carmel, were led three years ago to take a most decisive step. I say ‘led’ because we believe that our decision was taken under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Sex and the Sacred
Authors: McCabe Herbert 
Published: August 2024

In order to talk theologically about sex, we have to look at the place which sex has in the divine plan, in the revelation of God. It might be imagined that we could explain what God has revealed to us about sex so that we could compare or contrast it with what Freud or D. H. Lawrence or Dr Kinsey has to say about sex. But this would not be quite accurate: what we want to discover is not what God says about sex, but what sex as interpreted by the Old Testament, by Christ and by the sacraments, has to show us about God.We may begin with a poem which has been inserted at the very beginning of the Bible. Its opening lines give us the theme of the poem ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.’ It is to be a poem about what creation means.
The Disciple whom Jesus Loved
Authors: Potter Roland 
Published: August 2024

Many of the simplest phrases in St John's gospel have an arresting character and may powerfully urge us to turn them over and over in mind. ‘The disciple whom Jesus loved’ (Jn 21. 20) is one such which calls for further thought, and which may well help us to pray. This disciple is first explicitly referred to at the last supper‘Now one of the disciples, he whom Jesus loved, was reclining at Jesus’ breast. Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him and said to him, who is it of whom he speaks? He then, leaning back upon the breast of Jesus, said to him, Lord, who is it? Jesus answered, It is he for whom I shall dip the morsel and give it to him’. (Jn 13. 23-26).
Scripture Words—III: Holiness, Justice, Truth and Grace
Authors: Johnston Leonard 
Published: August 2024

‘Holiness’ seems to be the term we would choose in preference to any other to denote moral perfection in its highest and most general form; a holy man is one distinguished by the practice of outstanding virtue.For this reason it is important to note that in the Bible holiness is not used primarily of men at all, but of God; and in God it is not first of all a moral quality so much as a quality of his being. (This is not to say that Israel's idea of God was ever divorced from morality, or that the Bible was ever concerned with a philosophical definition of God like the Greek First Cause. That, I hope, will become clear in what follows. But it does mean that the Bible is not so anxiously concerned with morality, especially human morality, as we are inclined to be).
Bringing up the family—today
Authors: Haughton Rosemary 
Published: August 2024

There is nothing intrinsically virtuous about scrubbing a stone floor— nor about peeling potatoes—nor about doing large quantities of washing by nand. It is not sinful to put down a good plastic floor covering and wipe it over easily with a damp cloth. Using a potato peeler is not one of the seven deadly sins, and the washing machine was not invented by the devil.When one makes such statements baldly, like this, they are so crudely obvious that it seems fatuous to waste one's breath uttering them. Yet there is a school of thought among Catholics in this country that makes it necessary to say such obvious things. Perhaps it would be better to call it a school of feeling, as there doesn't seem to be much real thought behind it. It may be as well to name no names; but there has been, and still is, a tendency among certain high-minded Catholics (male) to regard the scrubbing of floors as practically necessary to the Salvation of females.
The Virgin Mary in Islam and the Apocrypha
Authors: Fakhry Majid 
Published: August 2024

The Virgin enjoys, like her Son, a position of unique pre-eminence in Islamic legend in general and the Koran in particular. Many of the traits with which the story of her life is embellished derive from apocryphal sources, but are nevertheless of the utmost interest in filling in the gaps in the canonical narrative of the Blessed Virgin's life.In the Koranic version of the angel's salutation, the superiority of Mary (Arabic, 'Mariam'), whom God had 'chosen and purified, over all the women of mankind' (3, 42) is proclaimed. She is even made to share with her Son the singular distinction of being a 'divine sign unto the generations' (21, 91). In popular legend, however, this preminent position of the Virgin is sometimes disputed and so she is made to share this honour with four other women, who include the two favourite wives of Muhammad and his dearest daughter, Fatimah, from whom the 'noble House of the Prophet' descends.
Our Freedom to Think
Authors: Lawlor Monica 
Published: August 2024

It soon, emerges from any discussion about freedom of thought, with for example one's university colleagues, that the very idea of Catholics thinking freely still strikes many people as essentially funny. One quickly realises that many non-Christian intellectuals hold the view that Catholics are forbidden to think on pain of sin, heresy, excommunication and the whole apparatus of the Inquisition. But before discussing the peculiar difficulties of Catholics in this matter, I must say something in general about the meaning of freedom to think, asking the reader always to keep in mind its bearing on the particular problem of Catholic thought.In order to consider whether we make the best use of the capacity for thought which we have (to which there are obvious limits set by native endowment both in the individual and in the species) it may be useful to establish the conditions in which thinking can occur at all.
The Feast of the Eucharist
Authors: Hibbert Giles 
Published: August 2024

In this antiphon is to be found what is probably one of the most perfect expressions—being both precise and comprehensive—of the nature and function of the mass or eucharist. It comes from the liturgical office of the feast of Corpus Christi and is also used on other occasions connected with the eucharist. It is of the mass as a whole however that it is descriptive, as its opening words show: O sacrum convivium—the sacred feast in which Christ is preached, made present and then eaten.To translate it into English is not easy for each original word contains overtones, depth of meaning and openness to further interpretation, the exact equivalent of which cannot all be captured in translation. Thus as well as translating and considering each phrase in turn it will be well to comment almost word by word, bringing out the meaning of each within its overall context.
The Christian Myth
Authors: Hislop Ian 
Published: August 2024

The word ‘myth’ has fallen on evil days so far at least as common speech goes. We say that something is a mere myth, an old wives’ tale, or else that it is primitive, interesting enough for the anthropologist, but from the sophisticated point of view only a fable. The word carries with it the suggestion that something untrue is being asserted in a specious and attractive way. A lie is clothed with all the charm of a story for children.So far as this sense goes we are all, rightly, children of the Enlightenment. The myth story is no substitute for science. The myth is not, in any of its forms, verifiable in the same manner as is the scientific proposition, but it does not follow that mythological statements are untrue or unimportant. To assert this a priori is simply to restrict one's notion of verification to an admittedly useful technique, which quite clearly fails to test the whole content of experience.
On Doing Nothing in Particular
Authors: Edwards Mary 
Published: August 2024

For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.That is how St Paul speaks of the plan of redemption to his converts at Corinth. And now here is Shakespeare showing man as instrumental in ‘declaring the glory of the Lord'. It is a passage from King Lear where the king, cast out into the storm by his unnatural daughters, sees, for the first time it may be, the close kinship of us all.
The Re-Formation of the Soul
Authors: Pepler Conrad 
Published: August 2024

One of the most fundamental ideas in the understanding of the ascent of the Christian towards God is that of transformation into Christ. But it is a difficult idea to grasp. So easily transformation-the taking on of a new form-slips into an identification which would be a type of pantheism. Otherwise it remains as a mere simile, suggesting that the lover of Christ becomes like Christ, simply because he performs the same sort of actions.Another way of stating the same difficulty is to be found in the discussion concerning the nature of the unity of the Mystical Body. What sort of unity characterises the one Body of Christ on Earth? A formal unity? That would identify all the members with the head and they would lose their own personalities. Or is it simply a final unity arising from the fact that all are aiming at the same final point of beatitude? Such a union would differ in little or nothing from the union of human society.
Mature Christians in the World Today
Authors: Marinoff Irene 
Published: August 2024

A christian is a man who believes that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. In saying this he does not mean that Christ was begotten of ‘a god’ and a human mother, as the Greeks and Romans conceived of their heroes, or that he was a kind of superman as some Christian denominations seem to think. Christ was-is-God himself, in some mysterious way identical with and yet distinct from the God or the old testament who thundered on Sinai.A mature Christian is a man or woman who lives the life Christ brought us as an integrated personality. All his powers, intellect, will and heart, are fully developed, working in harmony to do God's will. By the heart I mean that centre of our being which responds to reality as a whole. It is the seat of our response to physical and moral beauty, to all values.
Spiritual Studies in England
Authors: Greenstock David L. 
Published: August 2024

The circumstances of life in any country, its history and the racial characteristics of its people all influence, to a greater or a lesser degree, that country's literature, including its theology. The last twenty-five years have seen a change in the atmosphere in which English Catholicity in all its branches has to live, work and develop. Religious controversy still exists, but it is less important now than it was, let us say, fifty years ago. Catholic activity is increasing and there is a marked interest in all the problems relating to the spiritual life.However, since the English character is essentially practical in its outlook, the study of spiritual theology—to include under that term both ascetical and mystical theology—tends to be mainly directed towards the practical problems of everyday life. The study of spirituality in England tends to restrict itself to the translation of the works of the great mystics, both at home and abroad, and to the divulgation or popularization of those doctrines which have most application to the Pr actice of religion.
‘Welcome Sister Pain’ (II)
Authors: Parnell Mary-Teresa 
Published: August 2024

I Pass on now to Mental pain which is a condition of the soul, and yet I do not wish to put this under the category of actual Spiritual Pain, because I wish to reserve for that category the pain which is entirely due to the actual intervention of God directly, and not due to the ‘growing pains’ of the soul.We are probing deeper now into the mystery of pain, probing deeper, and at the same time, paradoxically, mounting higher. I speak of the condition of the soul caused by the mental pain of aridity, isolation, desolation, and the insatiable hunger of the soul for God.Aridity is dryness in the life of the spirit. It sometimes seems as if the very colour, and music, of prayer were dead and silent. We pray, and our very words seem meaningless and hollow; there seems no response from God. We may be even utterly bored and unable to concentrate; vocal prayer seems meaningless, like speaking to a blank wall; mental prayer is impossible. It is indeed as if all the colour of life had turned grey, and all the music was mute. ‘Surely’, the wretched bodies out, ‘I must have sinned very greatly, have displeased God in some terrible way.’
The ‘De Imitatione’
Authors: Searle John 
Published: August 2024

The Bible excepted, no other book in Christendom has circulated so widely as ‘The Imitation.’ Prepared during one of the darkest hours in European history, between the dead or dying Middle Ages and the alluring dawn of the delusive Renaissance; and as the picturesque Michelet writes: ‘L’Imitation de Jésus Christ, le plus beau livre chrétien après l’Evangile, est sorti, comme lui, du sein de la mort. La mort du monde ancien, la mort du moyen âge, ont porté ces germes de vie.’The most precious of the early manuscripts is the famous Antwerp Codex written by Thomas himself, with the subscription Finitus et completus anno domini MCCCCXLI per manus fratris Thome Kempensis in Monte Agnetis prope Zwolles. Before the war there were still in existence sixty dated manuscripts of the fifteenth century, and about thirty undated ascribed to that century.Although the evidence is overwhelming in favour of Thomas à Kempis as the author, after his death other claimants to that great honour were put forward, the most notable being Jean Gerson, Chancellor of Paris.
The Simple Sight of Sin
Authors: Pepler Conrad 
Published: August 2024

Mother Julian was able to resolve the conflicting paradoxes involved in the relation between the world and God because she had attained to that concrete touch by which the Spirit of God brings all into one. By the ‘touch’ of divinity the Spirit draws all the experience and ideas of a life-time into the immediate orbit of the single and simple reality of his being.And what might this noble Lord do of more worship and joy to me than to shew me that am so simple this marvellous homeliness? (e. 7, p. 16.)
Modern Dislocations in Religious Life: II. Applications
Authors: Pepler Conrad 
Published: August 2024

Many of the problems of modern religious the may be traced back to the over-emphasis of one or other of the two elements already discussed in a previous article: the individualistic asceticism of the solitary, and the collective the of the liturgical servants of God. It is therefore possible that the solution of these problems may be sought in the realisation of a balanced monastic life paying more conscious attention to the two main sources of its natural existence. First, then, the modern difficulties springing from the individuaHstic and ascetical element in religious life. These are multiple, but they may usefully be classed as they refer to three main topics: Penance, Contemplation, and Perfection.In the first place the penitential side of monastic observance has thrived too much upon the neoplatonic suspicion of the body, so that today the rules regarding the giving up of the good things of life have taken on a positive, objective character.
The Medieval Guest
Authors: Edwards Tudor 
Published: August 2024

The exhortations and counsel of St Benedict in his Rule on the reception of guests are too well known to be repeated here. Their importance however can never be sufficiently stressed and their wisdom and beauty can never be aufficiently praised. There is in the Luxembourg Museum of Paris a painting by Dauban of a stranger being received by s convent. It is a perfect interpretation of the 53rd chapter of the Rule, with a poignant beauty and a moral for all humanity.Doubtless there were guests even among the primitive communities in the deserts of Nitria and the Thebaid, although such a specu Istion is beyond the scope the present essay. During the earlier history of the monasteries, the hd 12th centuries for example, hospitality was a sine qua non of monastic life. In some cases, in-deed, as of the abbeys of Reading and Battle, the foundation-charters indicated that the providing of such hospitality in the district was the motive of the founder.The relationship between Church and State, between Church and Society, was then very different from what it is today. The Church was closely interwoven with the entire national fabric.
The Bread of Life
Authors: Elwes Columba Cary 
Published: August 2024

One evening in summer on the rocky slopes overlooking the Sea of Galilee from the north, Jesus had fed five thousand people with a few pieces of bread. Next day these same people and Jesus were crowded into the synagogue in Capharnaum. Our Lord was speaking to them: ‘I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the desert and are dead. This is the bread that comes down from heaven that if any man eat of it, he may not die…. I am the living bread which came down from heaven…. If any man eat of this bread he shall live for ever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world’ (John 6, 48-52).Unlike all other great spiritual teachers Christ claimed not only to lead and point to a better life, he made the astonishing claim that he was that life. Further, he put it in the form that he was also the instrument by means of which we acquired this life, he said he was the ‘Bread of Life’. This bread, or food, was in fact to be, as he promised, his flesh.
The Religious Vocation
Authors: Pius  
Published: August 2024

The Holy Year, which, through no merit of Ours but by the mercy of God, has been productive of greater benefits than it was humanly possible to foretell, has, in a wonderful series of public manifestations, given evidence of the great faith and fullness of life in the Church of Christ, our Mother. Among these important events your congress, your brotherly meeting, appearing among them as a shining light, now comes to take its place; it gives Us pleasure to welcome you with words of affection.Church history shows no parallel of a meeting like the one which has recently taken place whereat its members, chosen from among those who are resolved on the goal of evangelical perfection, met in this notable congress to discuss their common interests and take counsel together.
Benedictine Monasticism
Authors: Byrne H. K. 
Published: August 2024

A Simple statement of some elementary notions may fittingly accompany more learned essays on particular aspects of monasticism. A Benedictine's aim is the common aim of all Chris- tians. Only his method is, to some extent, peculiar to him.It may be succinctly described as ‘monastic obedience'. The monastic vow of obedience seems to have been one of St Benedict's inventions. Before his time monks either lived apart and independently (as did St Benedict himself in his Subiaco days) or attached themselves by easily terminable engagements to a teacher or a series of teachers. Doubtless that often worked well, and the monk either persevered in his solitude or passed from teacher to teacher receiving from each some special lesson, some further benefit. But it obviously left the unstable soul without support and opened a fairly comfortable career to the work-shy. Indignant descriptions of some unsatisfactory typen maiven the first chapter of St Bene dict's Rule.
'With Native Honour Clad'
Authors: Bailey Bede 
Published: August 2024

Pope Pius XII, in his Encyclical Letter Fulgens Radiatur written to honour the fourteenth centenary of the death of St Benedict, invites ‘all classes of society’ to turn again to the Holy Rule that there they may find ‘the sacred principles of religion and the standards of life which are the most secure and most stable foundations of human society'.It is clear that the Pope had a special reason for stressing the civilising and unifying effects of St Benedict's work. All men are now searching for a solid foundation on which to rebuild the unity of Europe. It is an appropriate moment, then, to remind us of the way in which Europe was first united in the spirit of Christ. ‘Not only England, Gaul, the Low Countries, Friesland, Denmark, Germany and Scandinavia, but also many Slavonic lands boast of their conversion by those monks, whom they consider their glory and reverence as founders of their civilisation.'