bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
A Greek on Art
Authors: Durkan John 
Published: July 2007

‘What follows is ho more than some annotations on the very suggestive phrases towards a theory of art, thrown out almost casually by Aristotle in the course of his Poetics. All of these phrases must be taken together, as each may be seen to imply the other at almost every point: and taken together they help to clarify Aristotle’s position with regard to the nature of the aesthetic experience, its nature as an intellectual experience felt as physical or as a physical experience with strong intellectual overtones.For the Platonic school the artist was a creator of myths, a pseudothinker who merely mirrored the mutable world of sense which in turn merely mirrored the world of Ideas, so that the poet’s creation was distant from life by two removes. ‘Aesthetic distance ‘for Plato meant deliberate withdrawal from the pressing and fundamental issues of life, the moral issues. We shall examine later how to put an Aristotelian complexion on the term. Aristotle, however, makes art an affair of language, and language whose adequacy can be tested by the closeness of its approximation to an experience, by its vividness in reproducing the experience for us. That is what he implies when he says that art imitates not merely the world of sense, but the world of man’s mind, his character, his emotions, his actions : and this world it presents with an almost physical vividness. He calls this artistic reproduction mimesis : ideas are suggested through physical things, just as mime (in the bodies of Greek maskers or Balinese dancers) reproduces emotion in the language of gesture. The master of mime proportions his gestures to the directives of the emotion he wants us to feel: and the lack of this proportion is evidence that the work of art is not under full artistic control.
Imagination and Society
Authors: Pepler Conrad 
Published: July 2007

A number of books dealing with the function of imaginaton in humanu life have recently appeared. Is this because external experience is becoming harsher, as the war proceeds, shattering deli cate sensibility, so that we are forced into the internal world of images? Is it escapism? Or is it not, rather, a dawning realisation that in this interior faculty of sensation lies ‘the key to the great puzzle of our mental decay and to future remedies for civilisation? Excluding, therefore, the complications of psychology and aesthetics, of reflexes and poetic experience, we may profitably return to the simple truths about the human imagination which still throw much light on present problems.Of the works here under review, the four-page News-Letter Supplement by Philip Mairet stands high above the rest in importance and value. He shows that the imagination, which is the property not merely of men of genius and ‘vision,’ but of all men, is a faculty of ‘etherialised’ sensations. With the memory it forms a kind of treasury of all one’s external experiences, so that a man can see, hear, touch or taste things which he has experienced in the past almost as strongly as if they were physically present and acting on his nervous system. Miss Ellis-Fermor, although she claims that this faculty ‘exists in most men,’ wrongly identifies it with a poetic faculty in the sense of an essentially active and constructive power, creating new reality from the data of experience. This is only one function of the imagination which, as Mr. Mairet seems to suggest, automatically provides a background to life, so that one can interiorly retain contact with the day-to-day physical experiences even when withdrawn from them, as in sleep.
Church and Stage
Authors: Pepler Hilary 
Published: July 2007

Aladdin’s lamp revealed, to its fortunate possessor, the riches of this world and many would fain have h rub of it; the lamp of Faith which has infinitely greater powers is not so popular. This is odd. The riches of that other world, where one may ‘turn but a stone to start a wing, ‘lie idle; yet we are of that other world in saecula saeculorum.Speaking under correction (for my similes may be as inaccurate as they are inadequate) I would assert that the rays of our lamp not only pick out abstractions, ideas, reasons, and so forth, the apprehension of which adjusts the soul to the Divine Will, but shines upon material things to be seen; and, having an ‘x’ quality, upon things to be heard, felt, and even tasted. The beams of its light not only dispel the immaterial darkness so that we may see the material way, but enlarge the mind so that we enjoy the journey on it; in short, the light enables us to see God in his creation, especially at its fulness within the narrow borders of his Church.The Church, irrespective of specifically spiritual truths, is the most amazing storehouse of material truths, the truths also of sound and sense which, as the ray shines upon them, are seen to be of the very texture of Beauty. The adventurous soul under this illumination feels as though she were inspecting the wardrobes of heaven and at last apprehending the music of the spheres.
Prayer and Politics (I)
Authors: Vann Gerald 
Published: July 2007

Nobody wants to live in a world that is blind and insane; and if that is what we are heading for, then we had better try to do something about it. Aldous Huxley makes this very plain in his latest book, Grey Eminence. One of the main points he makes there is this : that a world totally without prayer would be a world ‘totally blind and insane.’ His actual phrase is a ‘totally unmystical world ‘; but I am going to keep to the simpler and less misunderstood word ‘prayer,’ because people sometimes think that mysticism means either a tendency to swoon away at odd moments, or else a sort of permanent woolly-headedness. I am going to use the word ‘prayer,’ but I don’t mean just ‘asking for things,’ and as I am going to define it, it wili agree with what Huxley has in mind. A world totally without prayer would be a world totally blind and insane. ‘Where there is no vision the people perish ‘; and Huxley’s judgment of our own world is tjhat we are dangerously far advanced into the darkness.Now, the first thing to notice about this is that it is not an odd or uncommon view. It is not only Huxley’s view; it is the Christian view. It is also the view of all the great religious teachers of the world ; and more than that, learned men of all kinds are telling us that this society of ours, the modern Western world, is the only civilisation in the whole of the “world's history which has not held that view and based its life upon it.
The Catholic Church in The United States of America
Authors: Orchard W. E. 
Published: July 2007

The Catholic Church in the United States of America is a very impressive institution ; especially if one comes to it as a v'isitor from England. For then one usually lands on the eastern seaboard where Catholicism will be found to be at its strongest. Moreover such an one must bring to it the memory of the Church in England, where Catholicism is, by comparison, small, poor, and overshadowed by the much more impressive Establishment. Anyone who undertakes to give his impressions of America must ask for it to be remembered that it is a vast country, with not only many but with extreme diver, sities ; so that what is true enough of certain areas or strata could be off-set by something just as true, but very different, elsewhere. It is in the eastern States, and, with the exception of a few middle State cities such as Chicago, only again in California, that the Church is well represented, not to say dominant; whereas it is hardly visible in such States ‘as the two Carolinas and Georgia, for it. has made very small conquests among the coloured people, while in what is called ‘the Bible belt’ a still existing, though gradually disappearing, open hostility may be apparent.Numbers have some meaning, and the latest census gives the professing Catholics as over twenty-two millions : perhaps nearly ten times as many as we can really count upon. Moreover, what tells even more, this record has within ten years beaten the number counted as Methodists, which was for long the leading denomination, and perhaps the most influential, at least politically, for it had much to do with enforcing Prohibition.
St. John of the Cross
Authors: Graef H. C. 
Published: July 2007

The first monastery of the Carmelite Friars of St. Teresa’s Reform consisted of a small house with a porch for church, one single room for dorrnitory, a kitchen which also served as the refectory, and, a garret for choir. Its roof leaked, and in winter the snow would fall on the coarse habit of Fray Juan, who had changed his name of St. Mathias to John of the Cross, for it was the Cross with which he was in love, and the mystic teaching he gave to the Church is sealed with the sign of our salvation.Mystics, alas, seem to be en vogue again among writers Christian and otherwise — alas, because mysticism by its very name seems to suggest mystery, dark and wonderful experiences, losing oneself in the One or the All (it does not matter which), tempting men to spiritual experiments which can only end in disaster. But mysticism is nothing of the kind, and anyone who longs for mystic experiences or who would understand Christian mystics with such notions in . his head is grievously deceived. ‘Do not seek Christ except on the Cross,’ St. John once said to one of his friars, and the Christian mystic who always seeks God through Christ, will also be found only on the Cross.There is, perhaps, no other Saint whose life as well as whose doctrine bear the imprint of the Cross so openly, so challengingly even, as the life and the writings of St. John, whom the Church calls in the Collect of his Feast ‘Perfectae sui abnegationis et Crucis amatorem.’
The King of Nations
Authors: Pepler Conard 
Published: July 2007

The third requirement for peace laid down by His Holiness Pius XI is “ some juridical institution which shall guarantee the loyal and faithful fulfilment of conditions agreed upon and which shall in case of recognized need revise and correct them.” There can be no guarantee of loyal fulfilment of treaties and contracts without a recognition of the universal laws of right and wrong ; and these laws proceed from Christ the ‘‘Lord of all.” Peace and order therefore demand the rule of Christ the King. The influence of the Incarnate ‘Word must extend over the whole of society.When it comes to concrete realities, does not this seem quite impracticable? Pius XI wrote: ‘‘Not only private individuals but also rulers and princes are bound to give public honour and obedience to Christ.” But can we visualize this “ reign of Christ in the Kingdom of Christ “ in a world where Hitlers and Mussolinis sprout like mushrooms in the night? Is the gentle spirit of the King of Kings a match for the powers of this world, which have seized dominion over society and are rapidly destroying it? How can Christ nde in the twentieth century? He does not enforce his laws with armaments and sanctions. No police force takes its orders from him and patrols the nations to see that they observe the eternal injunctions of their King. It is difficult enough to visualize its working even in a society that was wholly Christian in name, for the downward tendency of fallen nature always plays its part. Indeed many of the worst blackguards are Christian in name—Hitler and Mussolini are Christians, yet there seems to be no superior Christian power to stop their destructive arrogance Since in actual fact all men do not give their allegiance to Christ, and since there are vast tracts of modern society that definitely reject him, his ruling over the hearts of men seems a Utopian dream.
Dafydd AP Gwilym
Authors: Evans Illtud 
Published: July 2007

To get to Wales is a morning’s journey from London. Yet to reach the Welsh that is the language of the poets is one of the rarer English achievements. Returning anthropologists are apt to say that the poetry of the llbangi is unrivalled, but there are few who will be impressed, since Ubangi is not usually found on the English curriculum. There is perhaps a chauvinism of the mind that looks for some connection between great art and national prestige. The lesser breeds may be conceded a memorable folk-tale, but the growth of imperialism has given a quantitative, and therefore false, importance to the artist who uses the imperial language—English, French or German.Ideally, the particularism of the artist who springs from a small nation should be absorbed by the unity of a larger tradition. But poetry is not at its best following!a flag, even a federal one. The conflict between the local language and the wider world of Europe did not in the 14th century relegate the former to a parochialism that has been the lot, for instance, of Welsh poetry since the Reformation. Welsh poetry has indeed survived, and most gloriously, but, as cut off from the fertilising contact with Europe, it has too often seemed moralising, repetitive and trivial—the inevitable results of any sort of isolation.For Dafydd ap Gwilym, an older contemporary of Chaucer, there was no conflict between Wales and the world outside. He wrote in the traditional Welsh metres (though not usually in the strictest) which had become exactly formulated by generations of professional bards, themselves an enclosed body demanding an allegiance to canons of procedure and expression which we associate nowadays with the Law Society rather than with poets.
The Effects of Schism
Authors: White Victor 
Published: July 2007

[The following pages were written in response to a request from a group of Anglican Papalists for some account of the ‘official Roman doctrine’ regarding the practical consequences of separation from visible unity with the Catholic Church. They are here offered in the hope of providing a complement to the writer’s article on ‘Membership of the Church’ (Blackfriars, September, 1941).As membership of the Church is an analogical concept which admits of many manners and degrees, so correspondingly is privation of that membership. In this essay we abstract altogether from such diversities and degrees of privation, and confine ourselves to the consideration of the results of factual loss of external communion with the Catholica. The question is not, therefore, ‘Who is in schism?’, but ‘What is the practical outcome of being in schism?’]
The Prayer of Jesus
Authors: Gorodetzky Nadejda 
Published: July 2007

The liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church is known and appreciated by the Catholic West. Less known are its non-liturgical devotions. One such devotion, ‘the prayer of Jesus,’ has for centuries been encouraged in the Eastern Church, though, leaving the freedom of choice in spiritual ways to her faithful, she never imposed it or ascribed to it any particular merits (a practice unknown to the East). With this proviso the Prayer can be compared with the Rosary in the West; and as its roots go back to the early, undivided Church, it could be claimed by the West no less than by the East.‘Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.’ This invocation has behind it volumes of spiritual writings and centuries of ascetico-mystical tradition. It is known as ‘the art or mental prayer.’Many seem to have built their whole spiritual life on the prayer of Jesus, though it cannot be regarded as detached from the rest of the Christian life: Bible reading, sacramental grace, practice of the Commandments and theological virtues. In monasteries it was combined with special ascetical practices. Beginners in the use of the prayer abstained from devotional reading in order to concentrate, and the prayer replaced private psalmody in the cell, outside the services. Some kept it as a unique rule. It was repeated with beads several thousand times and was accompanied by prostrations. This acted as the first ascetical exercise of the will in obedience to the rule imposed by one’s spiritual father, teaching also control over the body.
Man the Maker
Authors: Vann Gerald 
Published: July 2007

And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein He placed man whom He had formed ... to, dress it and keep it.God the Lover and Creator made us in his own image and likeness, to be lovers and creators in our turn.He made us to know him and love him and serve him; and since we are made in his image it is by knowing and loving and making that we serve. Knowing and loving are not means to making; making is the effect, expression and fulfilment of knowing and loving. Knowing is not the means to loving; knowledge of the right kind begets love and love begets knowledge. These three together form the footprint of the Trinity in the soul : without knowledge and love there is no life, without making there is no fullness of life.
Common Ground
Authors: Walsh R. P. 
Published: July 2007

‘It is not enough to refute errors; one must overcome them by understanding their grounds. To this venerable truth Bolshevism is no exception.’The magnificent struggle the Russians have put up in the defence of their Fatherland has warmed millions of hearts to them. In one stroke Hitler, the self-styled scourge of Communism, has done more for the Soviet Union than years of intensive propaganda. From one end of this country to the other, money is pouring in for aid-to-Russia funds, books and pamphlets on the U.S.S.R. are in great demand, and hundreds of thousands wait for news from the Russian front as if it were the British Isles.As might be expected, the Communist Party of Great Britain has seized the opportunity to interest the masses not so, much in the Russian peoples fighting for their own country as in the class-conscious proletariat fighting for an ideal and for a particular economic theory Anyone who keeps a watch on left-wing booksellers will have noted the flood of pamphlets and books and the rate at which they sell. In comparatively small towns the local communists have the means to hire the main halls frequently and to boost every meeting with plenty of large posters and other publicity matter.
The Apostolate of Christ the Worker
Authors: Spitz C. M. 
Published: July 2007

The Apostolate of Christ the Worker, what does it convey? . . . It is a call going out from our Lord’s sacred humanity to all men, asking them to heed the lesson of the thirty years he spent in the carpenter’s home at Nazareth, supposed to be ‘the son of Joseph.’This call goes out to a world which takes its values mainly from material criteria, forgetful of the interior preparation of the life of the soul, which alone is the safeguard of worth and stability. We are so easily caught by pride, the self-complacency of the ‘practising Catholic,’ self-seeking, and self-pity, or we are downtrodden, worn out through drudgery, forgetful of the divine instinct, by which every man longs for God in his heart.A great number of the faithful continue to practise their devotions, while taking a thoroughly materialist view on all practical issues and clinging openly to a materialist mode of life. One part of their lives is ‘devotionalised,’ the other part ‘materialised,’ whereas the whole of their lives should be ‘spiritualised.’ This is the great lesson of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, that he as Christ the Worker has reconciled matter and spirit in his daily working life. It is this reconciliation of which the world stands in need to-day, and towards which the Apostolate of Christ the Worker strives.
‘Grey Eminénce’
Authors: Vann Gerald 
Published: July 2007

Where there is no vision, the people perish; ... if those who are the salt of the earth lose their savour, there is nothing to keep’ that earth disinfected, nothing to prevent it from falling into complete decay. The mystics are channels through which a little knowledge of reality filters down into our human universe of ignorance and illusion. A totally unmystical world would be a world totally” blind and insane. From the beginnings of the eighteenth century onwards, the sources of all mystical knowledge have been steadily diminishing in number, all over the planet. We are dangerously advanced into the darkness.For several centuries now, Europe has been the battleground for an attack upon the very existence of the spirit of man, though it was during and after the eighteenth century that the attack reached its height; and it is man who has been more or less consistently the loser till almost the whole of his heritage has been taken from him. The stature of Christian man was infinite—we speak of Christian doctrine and belief not practice quia omnes nos peccavimus : we betray what we believe but that does not invalidate the beliefs—because seeking first the kingdom of heaven he could find oneness with God and be tilled, and all the other things, the knowledge and love of created things and joy in them, and the whole of a happy human life, were added to him.
Angelus Silesius
Authors: Graef H. C. 
Published: July 2007

The religious development of Angelus Silesius (Johannes Scheffler is one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the religious life. Usually coupled with Meister Eckhart, he became a text-book example for the Protestant theory that the Catholic Church kills the inner life—Meister Eckhart she condemned (though, in fact, only a few of his more extreme statements), but Angelus Silesius she broke.The time into which Johannes Scheffler was born was not unlike our own. The greater part of the continent was in a state’of material and spiritual upheaval; the Thirty Years’ War devastated Central Europe, Reformation and Counter-Reformation were fighting for the souls of men; peasants and soldiers sang that awful ballad, ‘There is a reaper called Death, Hath power from the great God’— not knowing whether they should eat and drink for to-morrow they would die, or follow the call to sackcloth and ashes of men like the great popular preacher Abraham a Santa Clara.Outside the Catholic Church the religious life had broken up inttf two main streams : the orthodox Lutheranism (or Calvinism) of the established territorial churches on the one hand, and a number of sfnall groups and sects experimenting in a pseudo-mystic religion on the other. Two provinces of the Holy Roman Empire were especially affected by this revival : Silesia, where Scheffler was born, and Holland, where he spent part of his university years. It was, therefore, almost inevitable that the passionate young man should have made contact with these circles, ‘conventicles ‘as they were usually called, in the hope of finding in them the fulfilment of the yearnings of his deeply religious nature.
The Catholic Church and British Labour
Authors: Pakenham Frank 
Published: July 2007

This is not a subject on which I would dare to dogmatise or attempt to say the last word at this stage. It would, however, be an affectation to pretend to more diffidence than I feel. Soon after I took my degree, I worked for two years in Neville Chamberlain’s Conservative Research Department; later I became a Labour City Councillor and prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Oxford. Brought up a Protestant, I was received not very long ago into the Church. I should indeed be a poor creature if the topic under discussion aroused in me no individual reactions.The Editor of the Catholic Herald has recently computed that out of three million or so Catholics in England, 90 per cent, vote Labour. Be the figure 90 per cent or 75 per cent., as more often suggested, the fact in any case is striking. It is seldom animadverted to by those who exploit the authoritarian tendencies of a small group of gifted Catholic laymen in the service of an argument that the average British Catholic is a British (not too British) version of General Franco.It cannot be pretended, however, that the substantia! Catholic element in the Labour vote exercises a distinctive influence on Labour principles or policy remotely proportionate to their number or to their merits as citizens. They do not vote Labour because of their Catholicism, nor yet in spite of it. For the most part poor men and women living in large towns, many of them of Irish extraction, their natural bias is towards the party of the under-dog. Individual leaders such as the late John Wheatley have done splendid work.