bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Newman and Politics
Authors: Kenny Terence 
Published: July 2007

Since Newman’s death in 1890 there have always been those who have pictured him as being in some way cut off from his age, so that, although his life traversed the nineteenth century, they think it would be difficult to gather evidence from his writings of the precise period to which he belonged. Now this opinion has been held not only by those out of sympathy with Newman, who have held it as a kind of reproach against him that contemporary secular affairs seemed to interest him so little, but has often been held also by many who were so convinced of the sanctity and otherworldhness of the great Oratorian, that they thought it quite too much to suppose that mundane matters, like a war in the Crimea or a Trust Bill in Parliament, could succeed in gaining his attention. The limit in this direction has been reached, now that a recent writer has portrayed, in a brilliant and informative book, a Newman, saintly indeed, but quite oblivious of the political world about him, or beyond his shores; a man, in fact, who would best be represented, at the time this author was writing, by a churchman of eminence who did not seem aware of the war in Korea. With this judgment what before was a matter of over-emphasis, or misconception, becomes a definite mistake, which as long as it lasts makes an adequate understanding of Newman impossible.Now in trying to arrive at the truth about Newman’s attitude to contemporary events, it is not necessary to take into account the social and political philosophy which can be found in his works, though the value of this would be lessened if it were decided that Newman had simply no interest in social or political matters; but what is essential to bear in mind is the peculiar standpoint from which Newman viewed the social and political world.
Towards Innocence Regained
Authors: Scott‐Moncrieff George 
Published: July 2007

There is such a thing as Progress, even with a capital P. The word has been discredited by those whose concept is superficial; who see plumbing as of the essence of progress, or a higher school-leaving age a gain regardless of what is taught in the schools. Over a short span progress is hard to plot. Fifty years ago people died of starvation in British slums: today no one need starve in Britain. Yet the majority are perhaps less happy in their work. Again, fifty years ago Russians who were sent to Siberia were at least treated as men: today in their slave camps their descendants are treated like beasts, and valued as such. British children are now kept longer at school: yet juvenile delinquency has increased and seems at the moment to become more vicious. In many ways do we see both progress and retrogression active in society, until there appears to be no constant direction, only a heaving flux in men’s affairs. Seeing it, some of us turn cynical or irresponsible, others turn to a brutal materialism, an idealism that condones diabolism as a means to an end that it poisons.‘We are not islands’, we cannot dissociate ourselves completely from our fellow-men. The sons of Adam are one, although individual. That is perhaps why efforts to found ideal communities, cut off from the rest of the world, fail. Men are of their nature missionaries, they must share and pass on what they possess. Only in a very special way, by abnegation and withdrawing from normal social life, can religious communities survive:
St Augustine as a Preacher
Authors: Hill Edmund 
Published: July 2007

There is to my mind little doubt that St Augustine regarded preaching as the most important of a bishop’s duties. It is the pastoral work par excellence, to feed the flock, to break the bread of the Word to the hungry. It is the bishop’s proper mode of almsgiving, of investing the talent which the Lord has given to him. ‘To lead a carefree life of leisure’, says Augustine, ‘little force would be needed to make me do that. There could be nothing more enjoyable than rummaging about in the divine treasure chest, with no one to plague me. While preaching, arguing, rebuking, building God’s house, having to manage for every one, who wouldn’t shrink from such a heavy burden i But the gospel scares me’—namely, the parable of the slothful servant. He also preached on that text, once when ‘the lords my brethren and fellow-bishops have been good enough to visit us and encourage us by their presence; and yet for some reason or other they refuse to give tired me a helping hand, and you a sermon when I ask them’. A short sermon, and very pointed. Poor blushing bishops in the apse!Besides preaching tirelessly himself, he also provided in the De Doctrina Christiana what really seems to be a manual on preaching for the clergy. Most of this work, it is true, is concerned with how to interpret Scripture; but this means, for Augustine, how to acquire the matter for your sermons.
About the Italians
Authors: Foster Kenelm 
Published: July 2007

The Italians are used to visitors. Once over the Alps, as the train runs down to Turin or Milan, you are in a country that is vividly different from every other, but which nothing from outside ever seems to surprise. Italy, after all, has been civilized longer than any land to the north or west of her; and though many centuries have passed since Europe was governed from Rome, she has remained in a sense the continent’s centre of gravity, if only as the common focus of historical memories. Is she the world’s most visited country? At any rate the foreigner has been coming here since Rome was Rome: pilgrims, priests and conquerors, students, soldiers and tourists, marching up and down the peninsula, roaming, ravaging, ridiculing and revering it. If countries can be revered, there is only one more reverend than Italy. Yet politically she had no national existence until less than a hundred years ago, and has not had a very secure one since. She achieved national unity too late (apart from other considerations) seriously to rival other western nations in the political field, and the fall of Fascism only confirmed this situation. Obviously, the greatness of Italy has little to do with political or military power: indeed her historical achievement, her culture, is not national in the sense that English, French, Spanish or even German culture is national. It has never been centred in one capital or one court.In an interesting recent study of Manzoni, Mr Bernard Wall notes this cultural regionalism of Italy, together with another effect of the absence of a strong national focus.
Crime as an Alibi
Authors: Evans Illtud 
Published: July 2007

The bus conductor knew where the prison was, of course. ‘I suppose you’ll be a visitor’, he remarked, with the beginning of a smile. ‘I see them every day, lots of them— visitors, I mean. I reckon there’d be a good deal less nonsense in the papers if the reporters had my job. Crime doesn’t just mean blokes behind bars: it’s mothers and brothers and wives. We’re all of us in it one way or another, I reckon.’The bus conductor was right. The frowning walls of a Wandsworth can be society’s final alibi: the publicly condemned, out of sight, out of mind unless there’s a riot or an execution, are hostages to many of our miseries and reflect much more than the crimes they have committed. This is not to deny their responsibility nor to condone the violence that, since the war and especially among young criminals, has become so grievous a social problem. And sentimentality is in this context the worst of counsellors. Yet the isolation of crime, of which the very structure of a prison is the symbol, can mask its further meaning. To arrest the wrongdoer, to demand his exclusion from society, satisfies the natural need of society to be protected from its aggressors. And punishment must remain a sanction to vindicate the claims of law. Yet for a Christian conscience the crimes of the member are the affair of the whole body. ‘All mankind is in Christ one man, and the unity of Christians is one Man’, St Augustine reminds us, and the shared life of the Body does not cease when the members rebel.
An Educational Centenary
Authors: Beales A. C. F. 
Published: July 2007

At long last the educational work of the religious Orders in the modern world is coining into focus. The days are gone when, for example, one still had to depend, for the educational pioneering of St Augustine, upon contemporary and sub-contemporary Lives. With the rise of research-schools in Education in our modern Universities the ‘field-work’ on original documents is being done, for Order after Order. Some of these dissertations, notably that of Dr Mary O’Leary on the Society of the Sacred Heart, have been published. Others, such as the monographs by Mother Mary Philip on Mary Ward, Fr Patrick Walsh on the Society of African Missions, or Mother M. Dominic on the schools of the Assumptionist Nuns, are to be seen only in the libraries of the Orders or of the Universities for which they were written. As time goes on and the field-studies multiply, a coherent picture of modem Catholic education will at last emerge. It is very much to be hoped that the present Lasallian celebrations will stimulate in other fields the trained research students without whom the full picture will never be possible.It is remarkable that, until only a few years ago, the work of so outstanding a pioneer as St John Baptist De La Salle himself, which is being commemorated in London this month, on the occasion of the centenary of his Institute’s arrival in England, was known only through such tributes as the standard historians of education had been able to cull from the pious but undiscriminating early biographies. The life of De La Salle by Blain was for generations the source.
Edith Stein
Authors: Tomlin E. W. F. 
Published: July 2007

No form of biography is more difficult to write than the life of a man or woman credited with sanctity. If the account is to be uniformly honest, the impression of transcendent goodness must inevitably be marred: the smallest fault is enough to invalidate the claim to perfection. If the picture is deliberately edifying, the impression conveyed is too remote to command admiration, still less affection. The conventional Lives of the Saints possess an advantage over modem essays in hagiography in that they are concerned with persons sufficiently long dead for their faults to have sunk into oblivion. If the subject happens to be near-contemporary, however, certain imperfections are bound to loom large. ‘God protect us from living saints’, wrote an ancient ecclesiastic. In the first biography of Edith Stein to appear in English, the author makes a genuine attempt at objectivity. She does not minimize a certain stiffness of character in her subject, while admitting that this gradually mellowed; and there is much criticism of her theological views. If the book suffers from one major fault, it lies in its refusal to allow us sufficient opportunity of judging the woman for ourselves. For every little fact we are given a disproportionate amount of comment. And this liberal comment, however fair in intention, is apt to come between us and the extraordinary woman about whom we feel we can never know enough on the factual plane alone.This stricture apart, Miss Graef’s book is of compelling interest: one hopes that it will-be both widely read and vigorously discussed.
Claudel and Dante on Trial
Authors: Foster Kenelm 
Published: July 2007

Dr Ernest Beaumont in his new book examines the ways in which two major Christian poets relate human love to the salvation of the soul, so that the former appears as a means, under divine grace, to the latter. Of such interrelating Dr Beaumont is rather suspicious; he smells heresy in it. He finds excuses however for Dante, reserving most of his disapproval for Paul Claudel, who is blamed both for misrepresenting (in his Ode Jubilaire for the Dante centenary, 1921) the role of Beatrice in Dante’s work, and for adding, in his own dramas, a series of more or less explicit expressions of a false idea of human love. The falsehood seems to consist chiefly in Claudel’s thinking (a) that if human (erotic) love could be ‘satisfied’ with its object, God would be ‘excluded’; (b) that since it cannot be so satisfied, this love implies a longing which only God can satisfy; and (c) that, this being so, lovers who refrain from carnal satisfaction may become, providentially, grace-bearers to one another and so, in a sense, mutually ‘necessary’ in a process of producing, reciprocally, ‘the child of God in each other’. This last ‘error’ is the more glaring in that the love in question is made to contrast with married love to the disadvantage of the latter.Since I am far less acquainted than Dr Beaumont with the dramatic work of Claudel, my feeling that his critique of the French poet is somewhat partial is not in itself of much interest.
Anglicanism and the Church of South India
Authors: St John Henry 
Published: July 2007

Catholics have been hearing, during recent months, of the prospect of something like a crisis in the Church of England, and even of the possibility of a schism. The trouble has arisen from the anxiety, mainly of Anglo-Catholics, caused by the growing desire amongst Anglicans in general for the acceptance in full communion, as soon as may be, of the newly constituted Church of South India. Most Anglicans, and even many Anglo-Catholics among them, would be ready to extend to this venture the completest possible recognition compatible with maintaining the unity of Anglicanism as a whole. The anxiety of Anglo-Catholics arises from doubts as to how far this may itself be compatible with the integrity of their own particular principles of Faith and Order, which they hold to be an essential element in the Anglican contribution to work for unity.Any understanding of what all this means, in the context of ecumenical ideas, and that of course is its main interest for Catholics, depends first of all upon a knowledge of what the so-called South India scheme involves, and secondly, less easily attained, upon the understanding of what Anglo-Catholics mean by the maintenance of Catholic Faith and Order in the Church of England, and of the fears they entertain of its infringement by too hasty a recognition of the Church of South India, as it now is in its formative stage.
The Authority of Doctrinal Development
Authors: St John Henry 
Published: July 2007

During the past half century, throughout the Christian world both Catholic and Protestant, great progress has been made in the scientific and critical study of the biblical text, more particularly of the New Testament documents, and, in continuation of this, of the history of Christian origins. The Encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu of the present Pope bears witness to the multiple sources of progress in biblical studies and gives directives concerning it which envisage and prepare for still greater progress to come by Catholic scholars in this field. The appearance two years ago of A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, to cite only the most comprehensive instance amongst much other evidence, is witness also to the fact that in England Catholics are taking a share, fuller than hitherto, in this general movement of Christian scholarship, and that in doing so they are able gratefully to acknowledge and make use of the fruits of much of its labours.One of the most striking effects of progress in biblical scholarship and the study of Christian origins has been a deeper realization of the fact and extent of doctrinal development down the centuries, and its bearing upon our conception of the nature and function of that Tradition by which such development has been brought about. The view one takes of the nature and function of Tradition in the development of doctrine is inevitably bound up with one’s view of the nature and function of the Church, as the receptacle, so to say, and guardian and interpreter of God’s revelation concerning his means and method of redeeming mankind.
Two Theologians on Jung's Psychology
Authors: White Victor 
Published: July 2007

Two more theologians have recently responded to Professor Jung’s invitation to collaborate with his work. Both of them are priests. One belongs to the Belgian Province of the Society of Jesus. The other is a German Jewish convert to the Russian Orthodox Church.Their respective books contrast sharply. Father Hostie’s book, despite its restricted (and rather baffling) title, is the more comprehensive and ambitious. It attempts a complete exposition and critique of the whole of Jung’s work, at least to the extent that it impinges on religion and philosophy. Dr Zacharias’s book is more limited in scope, and treats of some particular questions which arise from Jung’s more recent work only; but what it loses in breadth it gains in depth. The contrast however lies mostly in their respective attitudes and manners of approach. Fr Hostie expressly restricts himself to a review of Jung’s published writings. Although he is convinced that ‘repeated personal contact with Professor Jung and his closest collaborators is absolutely necessary to grasp the exact meaning of the texts’, he deliberately confines his study to Jung’s ‘official publications’. This restriction is not without its value: it is, after all, from his writings, and without the benefit of personal contact and vocal interpretations, that Jung must be most widely known and judged. Moreover Fr Hostie has conducted his examination of these official writings, comparing and collating the various editions, with scrupulous care; and has incidentally added the most complete bibliography yet made of them—it includes several early opuscula which even the editors of the Collected Works seem to have missed.
Catechism for Adults: XIII
Authors: Hislop Ian 
Published: July 2007

The triumph of Christ for St Paul was most clearly shown in the resurrection. Being dead, he was buried and the third day rose again. The risen Christ was seen and St Paul lists the occasions (i Cor. 15). The resurrection is the supreme point of the triumph of God’s grace in the world, for it demonstrates that the flesh is redeemed. This does not merely mean that the corporeal, the quantitative element in man, is redeemed. It means a conquest of all that is alien from God in man’s hfe.It is, of course, true that body, the whole sphere of sensation and imagination, becomes through Christ an instrument of salvation. Each sacrament is an occasion of the redemption of the whole man, and in each sacrament the physical and sensory is the sign of God’s action. Body is, therefore, not something inimical to the action of grace; far from being a poison or the instrument of corruption, it is of its nature made for God. The flesh as alien to God means something more complex. It is the whole man closed to God, feeding on his own resources. Man as independent of God and hence the victim of his illusions. Man the idol maker, cut off from the Creator, yet still creative. The symbol of his creation is no longer marriage: union with the ground of existence, hfe in the garden of controlled fertility: the symbol is adultery, the burning of the child, the jumping and slashing before the altars of Baal—creation and fertility run riot, become malignant because of sin.This is overthrown by Christ: body is no longer evil flesh, but the carrier of resurrection. Because the Son condescends, subjects his body to the powers of evil, he redeems flesh. In the flesh the victory is won by the Word made flesh.
Pax: ‘Progressive’ Catholics in Poland: II
Authors: Delargy Hugh 
Published: July 2007

The members of‘Pax’ begin by accepting the Communist revolution as an accomplished and permanent fact. Nothing is going to alter that fact. The people of Poland, of whom more than 90 per cent profess the Catholic religion, will remain indefinitely under a Communist government. Can all these people so arrange their thoughts and behaviour as to be able to live Christian lives in a Marxist regime? The members of ‘Pax’ believe that such an arrangement is not only possible but eminently desirable. Catholics should do more than give acquiescence to the new society; they should be the willing, joyful, joint- creators of it. They should joyfully co-operate for three excellent reasons: because in such co-operation lies the Church’s best chance of survival; because the Government’s social and economic work is praiseworthy in itself and historically necessary; because co-operation in the new social order could be a sublime manifestation of true Christianity. In the past, Polish Catholicism had been narrow, a matter of personal experience, based on pietistic sentiment and the fear of Hell, without thought for one’s neighbour, without social conscience, without indignation against the evil conditions that were tolerated by the clergy. Here is a glorious opportunity to change all that.To all the obvious objections they have shrewd answers. ‘Without any doubt whatever’, says one of their official documents, ‘there is no room for the conception of God in the intellectual system of materialistic socialism.’ But they make a careful distinction. There is an atheistic humanism which has always been in conflict with Christian humanism, and the conflict will probably endure until the end of time; it is a civilized argument which can be maintained by men who are friendly in every other respect and can agree about one another’s sincerity.
Religious Translation: Four Examples
Authors: Hill Edmund , McCabe Herbert 
Published: July 2007

In our January number we published an article on religious translation. One of our readers, the Rev. J. B. O’Connell, who has himself collaborated in a fairly recent translation of the missal, asked the writer of the article to provide some examples which would embody the principles of translation he had formulated. This seemed a very just request, and so we are printing here four pieces of translation, two from the breviary and two from the missal. The extracts from St Leo and St Augustine were chosen for the contrast of style. These two, and the translation of the prayers from the missal, are by Fr E. Hill, O.P., the writer of the aforementioned article; the translation of the Consecration Prayer is by Fr H. McCabe, O.P. It will be observed that there are some small points on which they differ, for example on the use of ‘thou’ or ‘you’ in formal prayers to God. They would both welcome the comments and criticisms of readers.Pilate’s guilt was certainly surpassed by the wickedness of the Jews, who made use of Caesar’s name to overawe him, and so drove him to carry out their villainy. Yet he did not come out of it guiltless either, since he forsook his own judgment and lent himself to other men’s wrongdoing. But that Pilate allowed Jesus to be ignominiously ridiculed and maltreated, that he had him flogged and crowned with thorns and dressed up in the trappings of mock grandeur, and then paraded him in such state before the gaze of his persecutors; all this he reckoned might soften the animosity of his foes and glut their hatred; it might perhaps make them think that there was no point in persecuting any further a man whom they saw so variously misused.