bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Russian Christianity To-day
Authors: Blundell Richard 
Published: July 2007

There are at present two main parties among the Russian Orthodox emigrés. Some of them are in communion with the Patriarch of Moscow and accept his jurisdiction, while the rest stand aloof. The latter are suspicious of the apparently close connection between the Patriarch and the atheistic Soviet Government. The former are impelled by a sort of spiritual patriotism to give their allegiance to the Church of their homeland, no matter what its relations with the Kremlin. Either decision has often been taken only after much prayer and searching of the heart, and may have caused much bitterness.A number of those who have submitted to the authority of the Patriarch of Moscow have been allowed to visit the Soviet Union on business connected with the administration of the emigre churches. After staying for periods varying from a few weeks to several months, they have returned to take up again their normal work in France or Belgium. Some of them are priests, others laymen. Most of them have been born in Russia but have lived since the Revolution in Western European cities, which makes their description of the conditions among Christians in the Soviet Union all the more interesting. Most of them are still much attached to their homeland and are very proud of the victories which Russia won during the war, though this does not entail approval of all that the present Russian Government says and does. They are pleased to be able to demonstrate their solidarity with their people.
Wales and Monasticism
Authors: Michael  
Published: July 2007

Wales, as a separate people of definite historical characteristics, owes its origin under God to the accidental results of an invasion of Britain by pagan peoples from overseas. From statements by Tertullian and Origen, not to mention many other later Christian continental writers, it is safe to say that Christianity had reached Britain before the close of the second century. Its introduction is not to be ascribed to any of the pious personages who figure in the earlier or later fanciful medieval tales of Glastonbury, such as Lucius, but has to be credited in sober fact to innumerable and unknown Christians, travellers and immigrants from the Continent for the most part. These travellers and those religiously influenced by them, gradually, it is clear, formed themselves into Christian communities, each with its own bishop and presbyters and deacons. These communities of simple folk sowed the seeds of the Christian religion in many parts of Britain while Borne was still a power in the land.The members, and still more the founders, of these British Churches were not monks, for the very simple but cogent reason that the day of continental, much less British, monasticism had not yet arrived. Monasticism was a forward movement within an existing church. It originated in Egypt in the third century; it spread westwards through Italy and Spain into Gaul (modern France), and thence through the disciples of St Martin of Tours and the influence of Larins and Marseilles, it came to Britain about A.D. 420 or soon afterwards. (Cf. Introduction to The History of Wales, A. H. Williams, Vol. I.)
A Note on Welsh Education
Authors: Lewis Saunders 
Published: July 2007

There is a general impression that the Welsh Nonconformist tradition is hostile to the introduction of religious instruction into education, hostile to denominational schools, and is the ally of secularist principles in education. This article can be no more than a note on the matter, but it may help to give Catholics working in Wales some clue to the understanding of the Nonconformist position.Most people are aware that the Welsh Nonconformist attitude was developed during the struggle between church and chapel in the 19th century. The ‘church’ was the established Church of England, the Anglican and anglicising church of the land-owning Tory Welsh-despising gentry. The ‘chapel’ was the loose confederation of three or four dissenting bodies to which the mass of the Welsh-speaking peasantry belonged. The Catholic Church hardly came into the picture.Indirectly, it was in it from the beginning of the struggle. It was in 1843 that the Calvinistic Methodist body confirmed its hitherto reluctant ‘dissent’ by a resolution to join the other Nonconformist bodies in the support of British schools, in which no dogmatic religion was taught, as opposed to the National schools of the Church of England. From that date the battle is engaged. The Calvinistic Methodist resolution was directly due to the progress of the Oxford Movement within the Church of England. The ‘Puseyites’ roused alarm in Wales. They seemed to herald the capture of the Church of England by Rome. Protestantism was in danger. The Catechism in the schools could be used to Romanise. The last link between the Church and the Methodists was broken, and the British school campaign was the answer of Welsh Nonconformity to the Oxford Movement.
Words From Wales
Authors: Evans Illtud 
Published: July 2007

Some years ago, during a classical congress which we attended, my wife in conversation with a fellow member, an intelligent woman, well connected, well read and widely travelled, happened to say that I had devoted some of my leisure to translating specimens of Welsh literature, and the reply was: “Is there any Welsh literature to translate?”’The story was told by Sir Idris Bell in the broadcast talk he gave to introduce a series on ‘The Literary Tradition of Wales’ (reprinted in The Welsh Review, Winter, 1947), and the question is, as he says, typical and significant. Welsh is spoken today by close on a million people; its literature has more than a thousand years of unbroken tradition, and can claim poets such as Dafydd ap Gwilym and Tudur Aled who need fear no comparison with any European contemporaries; and the modem revival of Welsh writing has, in such men as T. Gwynn Jones, B. Williams Parry and Saunders Lewis, falsified any idea that Welsh is antique—and useless. Yet these facts are constantly received with incredulity. A summary account of books and periodicals that have appeared in the last few months may, then, help to complete the picture of Wales this number of Blackfriars is designed to give.The silver jubilee in 1947 of Urdd Gobaith Cymru (The Welsh League of Youth, which has today over eighty thousand members) was an important event in Welsh life and was fittingly celebrated by the publication of Y Llinyn Arian (Urdd Office, Aberystwyth, 15s.), an anthology of original work by Welsh writers, painters and musicians, which is evident proof of the vitality of Wesh culture.
Widows of God
Authors: Synnott Finbar 
Published: July 2007

By the ‘Widows of God’ I mean those people whose marriages have gone wrong and who cannot marry again because of the validity of their first marriage and the fact that the partner of it is still living. If Newman could call his celibacy widowhood the state of these people, at least of those in good will, doubly deserves the name. It suggests the desolation of their state, both men and women, and it is by an act of God, by the eternal law of one man one woman, that they are condemned, or called, to celibacy.
As Catholics marry non-Catholics who see no wrong in divorce, and as Catholics themselves adopt the standards around them, and as wars and migration increasingly interfere with marital fidelity, there is a growing percentage of Catholics in this position. It would be interesting to get the statistics of parish priests on it. But whether it is ten per cent or twenty it represents a very great pastoral problem in the Church. And one must not forget the growing number of those outside who might become Catholics were it not for this impediment, that they have a broken marriage somewhere in their history and know they could not become Catholics and remain with the partner they now have. Most priests have at one time or another come across such cases where they would be hesitant to encourage a potential convert and think ‘non sunt inquietandi’.
A large number of people in this position were innocent of the family break-up that led to their present state, as far as human judgment can see.
The Prophets' Approach to God
Authors: Ginns Reginald 
Published: July 2007

Every nation worthy of the name produces its prophets, and by prophets I mean men who claim to speak to their fellow countrymen in the divine name and with divine authority. For that is the true essence of the prophetical character: not merely the ability to foretell future events, but the claim to speak as an ambassador of God. Miracles and predictions are chiefly the confirmatory signs of the validity of that claim. Of course there are prophets and prophets, false claimants and true, and there have been many who claimed unjustifiably to speak in God’s name.
But if every nation has had its prophets, no nation has ever produced any that can compare even remotely with the prophets of Israel, of whom Dr Allen writes with so much understanding and sympathy in his Prophet and Nation, a book that deserves to be classed with W. R. Smith’s great Prophets of Israel, published half a century ago. He begins with a chapter on the distinction between those who have come down to us approved as genuine prophets and the now-forgotten throng of their fellow Israelites who belonged to the prophetical caste. Many of the latter were temple officials or hangers-on at the royal court, men who were venal and prepared, like the fortune-tellers of all ages, to adapt their utterances to their income’. The former were outstanding exceptions, few in number, always unpopular in their day, often in prison and generally dying a violent death.
Catholics and Modern Politics
Authors: Graham Aelred 
Published: July 2007

It is said that the onlooker sees most of the game. When, however, what is to be surveyed is the dimly lit and sometimes treacherous field of inter-action between religion and politics, only the most confident of observers would lay claim to any privileged insight. And yet these musings at a monastery window, which is all they can pretend to be, may not wholly lack interest; they are an attempt to glean something of the significance of the contemporary scene in the light of ultimate principles. But the process will demand of us a certain corporate self-scrutiny, and of this a word must be said.The divine constitution of the Catholic Church, indefectible in its essence and hierarchic in its structure, necessarily precludes any criticism by its members of the Church itself. It is not our business— nor, if we are wise, should it be our wish—to call in question what God has ordained. But the mental attitude engendered by this state of things, one of unquestioning acceptance, can sometimes extend beyond its due limits .and so lead us to leave unexamined what in fact has every claim to searching attention. It is important to know, for example, to the extent that the thing can be ascertained, how far the Church in this or that particular country embodies all that is implied in Catholicism, or how far circumstances of time and place, not excluding the personal limitations of its members, seem to hamper the flowering of the full Christian life.
St Thomas in European History
Authors: Foster Paul U. 
Published: July 2007

The ruined Parthenon, as it stands in the lucid splendour of the Athenian sky, enshrines for us not the adolescent worship for which it was designed but the philosophy and art of ancient Greece. It stands as their symbol. In the grove of Mambre, four millennia old, is the tomb of Abraham, our father, where obedience to the one high God lies sleeping until we are all gathered to his bosom. The Roman wall, the arch at Trier, the inscription on the Iron Gates of the Danube, the temples at Baalbek and Timgad, the aqueduct at Segovia, are adequate representatives of the militarism, sanitation and civic creed of Rome. Together these three influences built up the background for the Christian revelation; the basilica of St Peter is reared upon these mighty foundations and transcends them. Europe, as we understand it, is the work of the Catholic Church, and we can ask ourselves today . . . where, then, is the abiding memorial of the greatest of the Church’s intellects, St Thomas Aquinas? Where is the temple of the Solomon of the West?As the eye looks eastward from the cliffs of Dover to embrace the territory of Europe, it picks out certain well-defined characteristics. The first is the appropriateness of the Roman boundaries, the Rhine and the Danube, with a possible extension to the Carpathians. Beyond these rivers and mountains stretch the vast plains which run into Asia, where Confucius and Mahomet and the Buddha rule instead of Abraham, Socrates and Justinian.
A Brazilian Conference
Authors: Bigley A. J. 
Published: July 2007

The Third Inter-American Conference of Catholic Social Action was opened at Rio de Janeiro on 22 August by His Eminence the Cardinal Archbishop, Dom Jaime de Barros Camara, in the presence of delegates from twenty-one countries of the western hemisphere, including Canada and British Guiana. Representatives of several national and international organisations in Europe and North America attended the meetings in the quality of observers. Among these were the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, and the International Christian Social Association of Switzerland.After referring briefly to the earlier meetings, held at Washington in 1942 and Havana in 1946, the leader of the American delegation, Bishop D. Karl Alter, of Toledo, Ohio, explained the objects of the present conference. These may be summed up as follows: ‘To study the social problems common to all countries of the American continent, and apply to them in a practical manner the principles of social justice, as set forth in the Encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII, Pius XI and Pius XII’.The first day’s discussions were almost exclusively occupied with the situation in rural districts, where primitive conditions and a low standard of health call for action in the majority of Latin-American countries. Attention was directed especially to the asphyxiating effect of the big estates, relics of colonial times, which stifle initiative, restrict agricultural development and maintain the inhabitants of the countryside in poverty. The Brazilian Constitution of 1946 authorises the expropriation of private properties in the interests of the community, and the authorisation has been invoked in recent schemes for improving conditions in the interior.
Custom in St Thomas's Political Thought
Authors: Nicholl Donald 
Published: July 2007

In the introduction which he wrote to the proceedings of the Malvern Conference the late Dr Temple compared the works of Maritain and Niebuhr upon political subjects, and suggested that despite the skill and rigorous reasoning of the former his scholasticism prevented him from attacking the real, everyday difficulties of our present situation in the way which Niebuhr does. A similar complaint was made by Mr Lewis in a recent number of Philosophy where he spoke of the new scholasticism as having ‘missed the vital creative forces of our age’. If this deficiency is characteristic of the new scholasticism, if it be true that our modern schoolmen are really spinning webs of ratiocination in order to deceive, then the accusation is indeed a serious one; we hope to be able to show by a consideration of a somewhat, neglected aspect of St Thomas that the accusation, if proved, would convict modern schoolmen of treason towards their master.Professor d’Entreves was expressing the conventional view, and the views which Dr Temple and Mr Lewis put into the dock, when he spoke of St Thomas’s theory of law as ‘the highest expression of an “intellectualist” as against a “voluntaristic” theory of law. It is the key to a proper understanding of that “rationalistic” bent which is one of the distinctive features of Thomistic philosophy’.
Catholics and Politics
Authors: Woodruff Douglas 
Published: July 2007

I wonder that the Editor of Blackfriars is not afraid that the formidable figure of St Thomas will appear to disturb his slumbers with reproof, for he set great store by accurate definition and precision of language. What accuracy or precision is there in the March editorial when the Editor writes: ‘French Catholics crossing the Channel are amazed to find that while the numerical majority of Catholics vote Labour and consider themselves as leaning towards the Left, the Catholic voice in journalism, etc., is almost without exception “true blue” Conservative, and, therefore still wholly immersed in the politics of a past age’. Really? ‘Wholly-immersed in the politics of a past age.’ While he was writing that, I and my colleagues were preoccupied with that most immediate contemporary question, whether and how Europe can be saved, and restored, were writing about the Brussels Conference and the Atlantic Pact.We might even claim to have shown a little prescience. In domestic politics, which were presumably more in your mind, so far from being immersed in the past, we are preoccupied with the future, with the later developments implicit in the present changes. Whether people agree with us or not, they must admit that we are preoccupied with the future, with the direction social change is taking and the direction we hold it should take. It would be a more substantial criticism to say that we are too far ahead for the public to follow us, that we have got up very early and we have gone out before the milkman, not that we have stayed out too late and come home with the milk.
The Christian Leader in Politics
Authors: Fitzsimons John 
Published: July 2007

Bertrand Russell stated the fundamental problem of polities succinctly and in practical form at the beginning of his Reith Lectures with the question: ‘How can we combine that degree of individual initiative which is necessary for progress with the degree of social cohesion that is necessary for survival?’ It may be that the distinction that he makes is too clear cut and that there are circumstances where individual initiative is not anarchic or where the particular form of social cohesion imposed carries in itself the seeds of nihilism. Nonetheless, one cannot but agree with Russell when he suggests that the three primary aims of government are security, justice and conservation.A far too simpliste approach to world polities, of which Russell himself is to some degree guilty, would equate the system in which individual initiative predominates with ‘the American way of life', and the system where social cohesion is created and maintained by unparalleled means of force with the U.S.S.B., and indeed with most of the satellite countries of Eastern Europe. The latter system, almost ex hypothesi, is stable with the monolithic rigidity of fanatical adherence to a doctrine, a messianic doctrine, that must be made to work out in practice. On the other hand, the American system is constantly undergoing changes which bring it nearer to being a balance between the two extremes. (It must not be thought that I am concerned to defend the American way of life—I would merely point out that it is constantly undergoing modifications, and cannot be reckoned static as is the doctrinaire Stalinist position.)
The Genius of Chesterton
Authors: Hamilton Robert 
Published: July 2007

However we define genius, power and originality are inseparable from it. A genius often has more faults than the merely talented or competent. But power of thought and expression, and originality (not to be confused with novelty which can be manufactured) are always there. Now in Shaw’s words ‘Chesterton was a man of colossal genius’. Though he had many faults, in power and originality few writers have surpassed him. In some cases genius grows slowly: in others it develops suddenly late in life: in a few cases, such as Mozart, Keats, and Dickens, it emerges at once. Chesterton’s genius, his thought and style, was born complete in his earliest work. It matured; but there was no great increase of power, and the originality of style was there from the start. Perhaps the upheaval that took place in late adolescence, when he entered a period of doubt and depression and emerged triumphant, was the flame that fired the train of his genius; for his work was intimately bound up with his character—unlike so many men of genius whose characters are in pitiable contrast to their work, Chesterton’s mind and work were all of a piece.The humility and charity and love of life that distinguished him, and impressed all who met him, were integrally one with his work. His humility, his sense of thankfulness for all creation, gave him a clarity of vision that can exist only when the ego is reduced to the fine point needed for sharp focus.
Frustration
Authors: Zacharias H. C. E. 
Published: July 2007

Has there ever been such a general sense of frustration as the world is suffering from today? I think not. In Pagan times this state of mind was certainly unknowm. People had bad luck, no doubt quite often, and keenly regretted it: but they never felt frustrated, for there was no basic, fundamental expectation which had got the bottom knocked out of it. Pagans knew that the gods were jealous and that a run of good luck and success was sure to break sooner or later. Or else, as the Hindu would put it, if he had a rough time, it was just his bad Karma; he was now merely paying in this life for the ill deeds he had committed in a previous’ one. Bad luck or bad Karma in neither case admitted of a sense of frustration.In Christian times obviously there was no room for frustration either. What was this life but a vale of tears, a pilgrimage to one’s true home in another world? And if one did not expect anything better, how could one feel frustrated? Even when Christendom came to pieces and life became more and more secularized and paganized, the concept of frustration was absent. The eighteenth century witnessed the discovery of steam power and the ushering-in of the machine age: soon God was declared to be a hypothesis, which was no longer required, and man, instead of waiting for a better world beyond the grave, now began with his newly discovered powers to construct a better world right here.
The Death of a Wandering Scholar
Authors: Pick J.B. 
Published: July 2007

When a man dies we reflect that he might have lived otherwise and attained to a Times obituary. W. W. Coupe, one of the more reverent of outcasts, would not have been more than mildly amused by a tribute to his spirit in the columns of The Times. But his death should not pass entirely unnoticed. In these days of ‘self-expression’ and gross over-publication we fail to realise just how many unpublished and unpublicised near-geniuses may live and die under the noses of the eminent and accepted arbiters of culture.Coupe’s work was thinking. He was, in his way, a fine scholar and an interesting philosopher, yet when he died a short while ago only a handful of people knew of his work and were therefore able to recognise the extraordinary brilliance of his analysis. There are many reasons for this, the main one: Coupe. He had no talent for self-advertisement and made little effort at publication. Perhaps he would have enjoyed fame and notoriety, and gained a little happiness from academic distinction, for he was, I imagine, a reckless and ambitious fellow in his youth, and retained to the end an acute sense of humour. But he was by nature observer, analyst, commentator, even perhaps a bird of prey. He did not seek praise, he sought the response of understanding and exchanged ideas. He cared little for the mass, whether of scholars or of newspaper-readers, though he cared always, as every religious man must, for the innocent.