bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
‘BY REASON OF THY LAW’
Authors: Thompson Francis 
Published: July 2007

Here I make oath—Although the heart that knows its bitterness Hear loath,And credit less—That he who kens to meet Pain’s kisses fierce Which hiss against his tears,Dread, loss, nor love frustrate,Nor all iniquity of the froward years Shall his inured wing make idly bate,Nor of the appointed quarry his staunch sight To lose observance quite;Seal from half-sad and half-elate Sagacious eyes Ultimate Paradise;Nor shake his certitude of haughty fate.Pacing the burning shares of many dooms,I with stern tread do the clear-witting stars To judgement cite,If I have borne arightThe proving of their pure-willed ordeal.From food of all delightThe heavenly Falconer my heart debars,And tames with fearful glooms The haggard to His call;Yet sometimes comes a hand, sometimes a voice withal,And she sits meek now, and expects the light.In this Avernian sky,This sultry and incumbent canopy Of dull and doomed regret;Where on the unseen verges yet, O yet,At intervals,Trembles, and falls,Faint lightning of remembered transient sweet—Ah, far too sweetBut to be sweet a little, a little sweet, and fleet; Leaving this pallid trace,This loitering and most fitful light, a space,Still some sad space,For Grief to see her own poor face :—Here where I keep my stand With all o’er-anguished feet,And no live comfort near on any hand;Lo, I proclaim the unavoided term,When this morass of tears, then drained and firm, Shall be a land—Unshaken I affirm—Where seven-quired psalterings meet;And all the gods move with calm hand in hand, And eyes that know not trouble and the worm.Francis Thompson.
Propter Legem Tuam
Authors: Cl Geo. Amb. 
Published: July 2007

Etsi is qui curis angi cor sentit amaris Verba mea invitus planeque incredulus audit, Firmus in haec juro : quisquis saeva oscula fati, Oscula prae lacrimis madido stridentia vultu, Fortiter excipiet, non ilium damna, metusve,Non spe lapsus amor, nec iniqui temporis ictus, Cogent, ceu volucrem, validas demittere pennas, Nec sua quaesita deflectent lumina praeda:—Lumina maesta quidem, sed toto acerrima nisu Erecta in metam, caelestia regna, supremam.I Hi non nutat celsi fiducia fati.En humus ardenti strata est mihi vomere multo Qua spatior lente reus; at vestigia figens Fortia, me caelo speculantia, sidera testor Sancti judicii me rite subisse rigorem.En, velut accipitri, gratam mihi denegat escam,Et diris mentem tenebris domat in sua jussa, Vincla recusantem, summi Venator Olympi:At manus interdum palpat delapsa per umbram, Seu vox auditur veluti mulcentis, et ipsa Nunc mansueta sedet, venturae praescia lucis. Etsi igitur, desideriis damnatus acerbis,Hie sub Avernali traducam tempora caelo,Fervet ubi obscuro sub tegmine languidus aer; Quamvis nil videam, nisi cum procul ultima rura Fulgure forte micant, spissis obducta tenebris;— (Haud secus extremas propter caliginis oras Incertam trepidare videt mens excita lucem, Succurrit quoties olim mihi nota voluptas Ilia, voluptatis veniens de fonte perenni;Suavis enim fuerat, sed velocissima fugit;At non quantumvis velox, ita transiit ut me Paulisper tantum, nunquam reditura, juvaret; Pallida cunctantis linquens vestigia lucis,Quae menti tristi sua tristia redderet ora;)—At sic lassatis consistens hie ego plantis,Hie ubi nullum animal vivit, quo cuncta trahantur Vaticinor, rebus quis ineluctabilis ordo.Scilicet adveniet tempus cum squalida tellus,Haec invisa palus, lacrimis mortalibus uda, Praebebit siccata solum (certissima pando),Ilia ubi caelicolum psallent simul agmina septem, Dlque omnes placide, manibus per mutua nexis, Incedent, victis et cura et morte sereni.+ Geo. Amb. Cl.
Japan September, 1923
Authors: Mary Benvenuta Sister 
Published: July 2007

September, 1923Because we cannot guage the deeps of pain,They are not therefore bottomless. God’s love Is ground thereof; though, drawing sudden rein, Our coward faith is fainTo fall back reeling from the brink above.Since not a stricken sparrow falls to earthBut God stands by for comfort, who shall guess His hidden help to man whose soul is worth God’s life, who span the girth Of His immeasurable tenderness?He laughed, that small boy martyr, long ago,To feel his wounds a-brim with seething oil,— As once to see his sand pits all a-row Filled by the green tide’s flow.So was pain mocked upon this very soil.Who knows what vision cleft the driving flame Or ravenous waves, what angels winged with fire, Luring the tranced soul from shattered frame Even before death came—Kind sponsor for a baptism of desire?Sister Mary Benvenuta, O.P.
The ‘Adeste Fideles’
Authors: Britten James 
Published: July 2007

Every Christmas as it returns brings with it as an inseparable adjunct the Adeste Fideles. To a Catholic, as to an Anglican, Christmas would not be Christmas without it. Yet it can claim no great antiquity: it finds no place in Missal or Breviary, nor has it any liturgical association.Its origin—whether as to words or tune—is ‘wropt in mistery,’ nor has any definite light been thrown upon either. Both have been discussed at intervals for at least fifty years, with little result—I was surprised, on looking up some of the references in Notes and Queries, extending over fifty years, to discover from one of them that in 1879 I knew almost as much about the hymn as I do now. That the mystery as to origin should apply equally to the words and the music is hardly surprising, for both are, and have always been, so inseparably associated that it is difficult to imagine an independent source for either, although, as will be seen, this has been suggested.It will probably come as a surprise to many, considering the various periods to which the hymn has been assigned, that our first definite knowledge of both words and music dates from the middle of the eighteenth century and comes from an English source. This is supplied by John Francis Wade, a church student who did not go on to the priesthood, though he is referred to as a priest: he compiled collections of church music, the words and notes being beautifully written, of which four copies are extant—the earliest at Clongowes Wood College, Co. Kildare, Ireland, dated 17491; the others in the Ewing Library, Glasgow, at Stonyhurst College, and at St. Edmund’s College, Ware, dated respectively, 1750, 1751, and 1760.
St. Paul's Reprehension of St. Peter
Authors: McNabb Vincent 
Published: July 2007

‘But when Cephas was come to Antioch I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed. For before that some came from James he did eat with the Gentiles : but when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them of the circumcision. And to his dissimulation the rest of the Jews consented, so that Barnabas also was led by them into that dissimulation. But when I saw that they walked not uprightly unto the truth of the Gospel, I said to Cephas before them all: If thou being a Jew livest after the manner of the Gentiles and not as the Jews, how dost thou compel the Gentiles to live asi the Jews?’(Galatians II, 11-14.)The circumstances of the Epistle to the Galatians are these :—1. St. Paul had preached to the Galatians. He had taught them that Gentile converts need not be circumcised (Jewish converts would be already circumcised); and that the neo-Christians were not bound to observe the Law. ‘Behold I Paul tell you that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing’ (v. 2).2. A group of Christians, probably quoting the authority of St. James, Bishop of Jerusalem, took advantage of St. Paul’s absence from Galatia to teach that circumcision was necessary for the convert Gentiles. ‘. . . they will have you to be circumcised’ (vi. 13), ‘. . . a little leaven’ (v. 9), ‘. . . some that trouble you would pervert the gospel of Christ’ (i. 7).3. It is therefore a matter of dispute between one apostle (Paul) and at least the followers of another (James).In such a dispute the most important element is the tribunal of appeal, without which no agreement between the parties disagreeing can be found.The appeal—explicit or implicit—seems to have been to the authority or practice of St. Peter.4. But St. Peter was claimed by both sides. The lovScuoi from Jerusalem could claim that St Peter had allowed St. James’s view to determine his own-course of action. ‘Before that some came from James he (Peter) did eat with the Gentiles. But when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself’ (ii. 12).St. Paul does not deny (a) the authority of St. Peter or (b) the alleged fact. He does not say ‘Peter’s action is of no authority.’
The Authorship of the ‘Cloud of Unknowing’
Authors: Noetinger Dom Maurice 
Published: July 2007

After a long period of neglect the English Mystics of the fourteenth century are coming again to the light. Patient workers have provided us with accurate texts and greatly helped to show how valuable are the writings of these mystics. One may perhaps apply to their re-birth the words that St. Ambrose used of the birth of St. John the Baptist: ‘Habet sanctorum editio laetitiam plurimorum, quia commune bonum est.’ This is especially the case with the most original writer of the whole school, the anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing and of the Epistles connected with it. It is true that Father Henry Collins, so long ago as 1870, edited the Cloud and the Epistle of Privy Counsel; but his text, though sufficient for devotional use, was not very exact, chiefly as regards the Epistle, and it was not till 1912 that the Cloud was issued for the first time in all its genuineness and originality. We must remain very grateful to Miss Evelyn Underhill for her work.There is room, however, for other editions—as Miss Underhill herself would acknowledge—and Catholics will welcome the news that a new one, containing— I hope—the Cloud and all the Epistles, is now being prepared for the ‘Orchard Books’ by Dom Justin McCann. It will do a great service to contemplative souls, and I believe that there may still be many such among the countrymen of St. Bede, Rolle, Hilton, and Father Baker.Will this new edition throw light on the question of the authorship of the Cloud and its attendant treatises? That is perhaps to hope too much, for the problem is one that has hitherto baffled every investigator.
The Monks of Unity
Authors: McCann Dom Justin 
Published: July 2007

The problem of the Unity of Christendom, and in particular of the reconciliation of the East, has occupied the minds of the Popes, sometimes more sometimes less urgently, since the consummation of the schism under Michael Cerularius in the eleventh century. But hitherto all their efforts have been in vain. The Councils of Lyons and Florence were abortive. The personal efforts of individual Popes have not met with any greater success. In the last century Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII both tried to reopen official relations with the East, but their overtures were rejected. Yet, nothing daunted, the Holy See is now embarked upon another effort after Christian Unity.It would appear that in this new effort the Holy See is approaching the matter, not with any less courage or confidence, not in any spirit of compromise or dissimulation of the truth, but with a special emphasis on what may be called the psychological conditions of the problem. It would have the apostles of unity set forth the Catholic doctrine in its fullness; but it would have them also approach their enterprise in the spirt of charity and sympathy. It would have them endeavour, before all else, to remove prejudice and misunderstanding, to abstain from acute controversy, to create an atmosphere of peace and mutual sympathy.For what is the main obstacle to Christian Unity? There are, of course, dogmatic obstacles, reducible finally, at least in the case of the Eastern Churches, to the one point of the Primacy of the Apostolic See. But it appears to the Holy Father that dogma is not the whole difficulty, nor the most immediate difficulty.
On Reading
Authors: Richings Ronald 
Published: July 2007

Reading may be a disease or a delight; in either case, there are attendant evils and delicious rewards. From a very early age it has been my greatest pleasure, and I remember one or two occasions when, having been sent to the corn-chandler for pigeons’ food, I was coerced into a display of precocity by being made to read aloud some entirely unintelligible section of a newspaper for the edification of another customer. The merchant took a strange pleasure in my accomplishment; I used to think him amiably eccentric in consequence, especially as he gave me a penny for my pains.There is much pleasure in reading aloud : I discovered it while I was at a kindergarten school, and exasperated my family by declaiming what was in my own book while they wished to peruse theirs in silence. It was vanity, I suppose, but I didn’t think of that until a man told me frankly, a few years ago, that his chief satisfaction in reading aloud was to hear the sound of his own voice. I was shocked. Honesty is so shocking.Latterly I have rediscovered the joy of reading aloud : I have been mercifully provided with nephews and nieces who like me to do it, so I have the additional pleasure of renewing very old book-acquaintances in appropriate circumstances.The worst evil that has befallen me, however, is that I have grown to be a miser.
Signals
Authors: Hagreen Philip 
Published: July 2007

Of the hero of this story I know little, but as that little is known perhaps only to me, I record it. It must have been some time in 1915 that I first met him. At a dismal ‘depôt’ in the Midlands, I was sharing a leaky tent with a fellow Second Lieutenant known to his friends as ‘Jimbo.’ As we were endeavouring, by means of a Primus stove, to dry some clothes faster than the leakage of the tent wetted them, we were nowise pleased to hear that a newcomer was allotted to our tent, and to have to make room for the baggage that his batman dropped squelching in the entrance. Its owner soon followed, muttering frightful things about the climate and the Kaiser.He would have been tall if he had not stooped. He had thick black eyebrows that almost met, and that gave nim a scowling expression belied by the genial smile of his thick lips. We soon learned that he was our senior as an officer, and that he was some kind of engineer oy profession. It was some hours later that I found he was a Catholic. Though naturally silent, he was by no means unsociable, and he dropped into his place in that tent as though he had known us for years.
Ten Vermeers
Authors: Sedgwick R. L. 
Published: July 2007

All men fall under the spell of Vermeer’s pictures, although the roads leading to the temple of their adoration are many. This man bends the knee because the Delfter has taught him what colour really is; the man yonder loves them for their charming intimacy. To him Vermeer is the Elia of painters because he can introduce a man to his family and relatives without boring him and at the same time make him feel that he is the one and only friend to whom he accords the privilege. Another may be drawn by the intrinsic genre revealed in the interiors. I think I was first attracted to him on hearing that he paid his baker with his pictures instead of with coin; for there was ever a dearth of the latter in the Vermeer home.It doesn’t really matter however why you like Vermeer : reasons are not always essential. We all understand the couplet:‘I do not like thee Dr. Fell.The reason why I cannot tell.’
The Duty of the Voter
Authors: Ginns Reginald 
Published: July 2007

In view of the General Election, promised for the early summer, political organisations of every colour are girding their loins for the contest and striving to stir up enthusiasm in the electorate. So far, however, it would seem that enthusiasm and even bare interest are lacking among the people in general. Even the possibilities of the increased feminine vote—that uncertain factor which may play such a decisive part in turning the political scales—fail to arouse interest. Nobody seems to care very much what will happen.Is it possible that this is due, even here in England, to the growth of that contempt of modern parliamentary government which has led several of our Latin neighbours to throw parliaments aside and to set up temporary dictatorships? A very dangerous experiment, fraught with great risks! For, as St. Thomas says, ‘monarchic government is the best form of government; but on account of the great power entrusted to the monarch (whatever he may be called), monarchy easily degenerates into tyranny, unless the one to whom such power is entrusted be a man of perfect virtue.’ However, this is not to say that it is an unjustifiable experiment. Dangerous diseases, whether in the individual or in the body politic, call for drastic remedies; and it is a Gospel principle that ‘if thine eye scandalise thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee.’ We are of the opinion that, of the two, a military dictatorship is less dangerous than the financial dictatorship with which we are threatened.
Saints, Sinners and Hospitals
Authors: Ward Maisie 
Published: July 2007

In Monsieur Vincent, a book which has been much read of late in France, the author, Henri Lavedan, describing the horrors of the Hotel Dieu or chief hospital of Paris from an eighteenth century document, remarks that conditions were doubtless worse still in the seventeenth century. Why ‘doubtless’? Does he believe, one wonders, in the nineteenth century theory of inevitable progress; is each century really better in every way than the one which preceded it?Many years ago Lecoy de la Marche, in his Guerre aux Erreurs, Historiques, had shown the weakness of this theory when dealing with the very theme of the help given to the poor in the Middle Ages. Both seventeenth and eighteenth centuries far from marking any sort of advance showed a terrible falling off from the standards and the practice of the past.
The Church and Nationalism
Authors: Erskine R. 
Published: July 2007

I suppose that most of us have been reading of late, and reading with keen enjoyment, the excellent translation of M. Maritain’s Three Reformers, which Messrs. Sheed and Ward have published to our common debt. For my part, I have read the book twice already, and I hope to read it again; for good literature resembles fine wine, which no man of sense gulps down in a hurry as does a barbarian, but lingers over lovingly, sipping it contentedly whilst he distinguishes its different merits. I have also read some of the reviews which the remarkable treatise spoken of has occasioned in the press; and it is on one of these—namely, that which appeared recently in The Times Literary Supplement—that the following observations are based. The critique I mention is on the whole a very just one. The writer of it seems well qualified for his task; but there is one remark of his which seems to me highly debatable.Speaking of Luther, he says : ‘He separates faith and reason (which M. Maritain shows that Luther feared and detested), God and man. Imbued with the spirit of Church discipline and authority, in which he had been trained, he produced the immediate effect of an autocratic Erastianism throughout Germany, and was thus one of the ancestors of political nationalism.’
The Emancipation Debt to O'Connell
Authors: Jarrett Bede 
Published: July 2007

Though the history of Catholic Emancipation in England is a long one, and though the names of those who helped forward its achievement are many, the actual passing of the Bill was due entirely to oiie man, Daniel O’Connell. It was his plan that was accepted by the Catholics, his form of Bill that was accepted by the Government and Parliament, and his personal energy and political sagacity that carried the movement and guided it, till its success was attained. To him more than to any single man these Centenary celebrations should do honour.Born in 1775, he was a humble Catholic lawyer, with a burning enthusiasm and a stirring and inflammatory eloquence; he lived through and watched carefully the events that preceded and followed the troubles of 1798. From his consideration of these, he learnt as his own lesson, a disbelief in physical force, a hatred of the French Revolution, and a distrust of secret conspiracy. Hence, his own methods were founded upon a very different philosophy than that of the heroes of ‘98. His political plan was to concentrate upon every sort of agitation, as violently as possible, but without bloodshed. His eloquence was able to produce the agitation and his personal dominating power was able to keep that agitation perfectly within bounds.
Charles Butler and His Friends
Authors: Gwynn Denis 
Published: July 2007

It will be very regrettable if, in this centenary year of Catholic Emancipation, some one competent does not undertake to write a Life of Charles Butler. The full story of his work for the advancement of the English Catholics should illuminate the whole condition of the Church in England in the last critical years of the penal laws, when an increasing number of Catholic families had abandoned the Faith, and when the prevailing philosophical tendencies brought new dangers to the small remnant that still remained steadfast. In Ireland, the persecution of the Church had been so thorough and vindictive that the Catholic population had been deprived of almost everything, and had practically nothing left to lose. But in England, the fact that the few Catholic families were mostly of the propertied class was a continual source of temptation to surrender.Almost every year, as the second half of the eighteenth century wore on, some new case of apostasy would reduce still further the small number of devoted Catholic families, who still kept the faith alive and had gathered round them groups of dependents and retainers who attended Mass in the private chapels of the great houses. ‘In this year alone,’ wrote the Rev. Charles Berington in 1780, when Charles Butler had just reached his thirtieth year, ‘we have lost more by the defection of the two mentioned gentlemen (the heirs of the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Teynham) than we have gained by Proselytes since the Revolution.’
Democracy and The General Election
Authors: de la Bedoyere Michael 
Published: July 2007

Rousseau once ridiculed the British Constitution by declaring that the Englishman was only really free during a General Election, and that then he used his freedom so badly that he deserved to lose it, A great number of Rousseau’s most cherished ideas have perished long ago, and yet our ‘ridiculous’ Constitution remains, fundamentally the same. Very soon every elector will be asked to exercise that political freedom, which, apparently, is so rare a privilege, and the time may be ripe for a little hard thinking as to what that power really involves. The world now offers a variety of political systems, all claiming to be more genuinely democratic than our own, the old-fashioned mother of them all. How does the power of the British citizen compare with the newer developments in the power of the people in the U.S.A., or even in the U.S.S.R.? What is involved in this declaration by each elector every five years? These are questions which those rare electors who have either the time, leisure, or interest to read the less sensational periodicals may well bother to inquire into during these last few weeks before the Election takes place.This Election is bound to be of historic importance, as it marks the end of that movement for the reform of the franchise, which was started with such excitement and trepidation by the Whigs in 1832. The years 1867, 1884, 1918, and 1928 are so many steps the nation has taken with a slow but unhesitating stride along a road as inevitable as any in her history. ‘We have opened a door which can never again be closed,’ moaned the young Tory, Newman, proving himself a much wiser prophet than the introducer of the bill himself, Lord John Russell, nicknamed ‘Finality Jack,’ because of his belief that the reform of 1832 was to be final.