bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Descartes and Capitalism
Authors: Hamnett Ian 
Published: July 2007

In a pace-setting paper recently published in New Blackfriars, Fergus Kerr argues that Cartesian assumptions and presuppositions have entered so deeply into the thinking of the West that even those who profess to follow other traditions of thought can often be found to be working within the Cartesian paradigm. Here I hope to develop just one of the many lines of inquiry to which Father Kerr has pointed, arguing that there is a convergence between Cartesian anthropology on the one hand and the productive relations of capitalism on the other. Beyond this, I shall try to suggest that this convergence can tentatively be documented so as to form a real part of the “history of ideas” in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rather than left as no more than an abstract, analytical congruence or aptness of fit.The theoretical argument is straightforward and can be concisely stated. Thomist anthropology and psychology propose a unitary conception of man and of the relationship between soul and body. Kerr pertinently reminds us (p. 255) of Aquinas’s commentary on I Corinthians 15, and quotes his memorable reference to the soul as pars corporis humani. This unity is found in all living things, in vegetables, for example, and in “brutes”; the rational soul in man, moreover, is no exception to this unitary principle. A corollary of this is that, as Kenny puts it, “a human being is not something that has a body; it is a body, a living body of a particular kind”.
Looking Back
Authors: Pepler Conrad 
Published: July 2007

Now in his 77th year, the author was editor of “New Blackfriars” 1940—1950, and founder-editor of “Life of the Spirit” 1946—55, was Warden of Spode House 1952—81, and has written many books and articles on the spiritual life.The elderly must often be sad when they look back. There is no escape. In those long-gone days they were fresher and more alive. Today energies are failing and powers of perception lack the briskness and sharpness that were theirs when the experiences they remember first occurred. It is possible to catch the excitement of those earlier times—so exciting, compared with the present—but it is a difficult task. As soon as comparison finds its way into present consciousness sadness tends to make its entry. Yet views of the past change as variously as do the views as one climbs up a hill, some thrilling, some depressing, according to light and angle of vision. Now, for example, the picture of the world of 1908 (the year in which I was born) and onwards looks like a picture of increasing physical violence, of death and hideous human slaughter. And yet, on the other side of the page, we can find another picture, in which intellectual violence seems to be decreasing just as much.In the late 1920s, when studying first philosophy and then theology in preparation for the priesthood, we used to agonize about those passages in the Bible when the Lord seemed to interfere with the workings of the entire material universe in order to procure some victory for a rather unimportant leader of the Israelites.
Ancient History in Chaos—Velikovsky's Chronological Reconstruction
Authors: Meynell Hugo 
Published: July 2007

The promulgation and reception of the late Dr Immanuel Velikovsky’s theories constitute one of the most fascinating episodes in the history of ideas. He made revolutionary proposals about the recent history of the solar system, celestial mechanics, and palaeontology, from 1950 onwards; the immoral and irrational response by leading members of the scientific establishment (whom David Stove described in this connection as a ‘despotic and irresponsible mafia’) has been well documented. But Velikovsky himself set most store by his historical reconstruction. Three volumes have appeared so far, Ages in Chaos, Ramses II and his Time, and Peoples of the Sea. Further material, on the Assyrian Empire and the so-called ‘Dark Age’ of Greece, is still to be published.I would like in what follows to say something about Velikovsky’s historical reconstruction, and why, in my opinion, for all the firmly-established assumptions which it overturns, it ought to be taken seriously.It was the difficulties about dating the Exodus, which are well-known to Old Testament scholars, which provided Velikovsky with his initial hint. It has been generally agreed that this event occurred at some time during the ‘New Kingdom’ of Egypt, dated from 1573 B.C.; the difficulty is in establishing precisely when. Not only is there no reference to the Exodus in any known Egyptian document, but the very state of Egypt, under strong Pharaohs, and with Palestine under its control, seems to render the course of events described by the Bible impossible. The result of all this is that a range of dates from the sixteenth century right down to the twelfth has been suggested for the Exodus by modern scholars.
Deity and Domination: II
Authors: Nicholls David 
Published: July 2007

The concluding part of a paper presented at the International Symposium on Sociology and Theology, Oxford, January 1984. In the first part of this study of the relationship between the religious use of political images and concepts and their use in political rhetoric (published in January) the author focussed on the political and religious language of early seventeenth-century England.With the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 a kind of stability returned to England; conflicts and controversies there, of course, were in the political sphere, and even a ‘glorious revolution’, but compared with the preceding decades a certain peace and order is evident. There was a strong desire for peace among various sections of the population, and the economic and social foundations were being established upon which was to rise the political stability of the following century. By 1688, writes J. Carswell, ‘Englishmen were becoming used to the idea of reading about their domestic politics rather than fighting about them’. Ideas of arbitrary power were assailed and the notion of a law depending not simply on the dictate of a sovereign once more became predominant. This is particularly evident in the deist and rationalist writers of the period. God is not ‘an arbitrary being’, insisted Matthew Tindal, but the reasonable governor of a regulated universe. The order, stability and rationality of ‘the spacious firmament on high’ provided a model for social and political relationships. It would be little less than horrid and dreadful blasphemy, declared the influential archbishop John Tillotson, ‘to say that God out of his sovereign will and pleasure can do anything that contradicts the nature of God, or the essential perfections of his deity’.
A Disappointing Tale: The Dutch Catholic Church 1970–1985
Authors: Lascaris Andrew 
Published: July 2007

On the 12th of May Pope John Paul II will arrive in Holland for his pastoral visit to the Dutch Church. What kind of Church will he meet? It will be a different Church from the Church that drew the attention of almost the whole western Christian world in the sixties. The bishops are very different, and because the Second Vatican Council changed in many ways the theology but not the organisation, the bishops still largely determine the policy. Changing the bishops still means changing the Church, in spite of all the talk about participation of the laity.We must start with a little chronology. In the seven dioceses in Holland only two bishops may now be considered to be more or less sympathetic with the Church of the sixties, and both of these seem to be afraid to express their sympathy clearly and publicly. Since the restoration of the hierarchy in 1853 the chapter of a diocese where the bishop has died or resigned has had the right to propose, through the nuncio, three names to the Pope. The Pope has never been obliged to appoint any of those proposed, and sometimes he did not. However, since 1979 not one of the names of the appointed bishops has been on any of the lists of the chapters. In December 1970 a young conservative curate, A. Simonis, was made bishop of Rotterdam. Cardinal Alfrink and his colleagues hesitated for some time to ordain him, but after his promise to cooperate with the other bishops they decided to accept him.
When Belief Fails
Authors: Duffy Eamon 
Published: July 2007

Given at Great. St Mary’s Cambridge on 19 February 1985We are supposed to live in an age in which belief is harder than ever before. In fact the Dean of Emmanuel thinks that belief in any traditional form is just not possible for modern men and women. According to him, humanity in the late twentieth century finds itself alone in a disenchanted universe, the age-old props and comforts of religion have fallen away, and we are left with an austere, demanding, individual task of imposing meaning on the inane, of making ourselves and our ideals the heart of a heartless world. If we choose to call these ideals God, well and good; but when we say we ‘believe’ in God we don’t mean, the argument goes, what people in the past have meant by that. Their God was a sort of super-hero, a Dr Who figure, who made the lightning flash and the sun rise and who could be invoked to fend off the horrors of existence. This is superstition, says Don Cupitt, and so is any account of God which does not acknowledge that God is simply the sum of our human values, representing “their ideal unity, their claims upon us and their creative power”. In other words; penetrate to the heart of religion, look closely at the image in the shrine, and what you will find is not the unseen God, but a mirror. The true name of YAHWEH is Narcissus. And we have heard this before.
Documents and Human Hearts: formal and experiential sexual morality
Authors: Stacpoole Alberic 
Published: July 2007

For the true Christian it is axiomatic that the fundamental form of interpretation of the Scriptures is not search for meaning or valid patterns of thought for today, but discipleship: in other words, the enactment of Christian life, the establishment and building up of the Christian community, the singular and corporate worship of God, the completion of Christ’s Church by sharing in his afflictions (cf Col 1.24). The Christian interpretation of the Word of God occurs not in any private ‘religious’ place, but out where the human race speaks and suffers, endeavours and achieves. What Christian theology executes reflectively, Christian discipleship executes practically—mediating that memory and hope which we call the handing-on of the Gospel.Where an opposite view prevails, responsibility for present interpretative mediation of the Gospel experience no longer devolves upon the community of Christian disciples, but far too much upon Church leaders and their theologians (commissioned as if only to explain the utterances of Authority). Christian living, which should always be responsively and responsibly interpretative—my affirmation of Christ’s call—in daily life, consequently tends merely to become the obedient practising of the explained ideas of others. Those ideas are received not in the context of our own mundane experience, cultural and psychological but before it, as the utterance of an ideology from an exterior citadei. Such utterances may appear standard to all societies, tunelessly valid, unaffected by particularity of place or people—in a word, universal and unchangeable (and so undebatable); they may satisfy the minds of those who construct pervasive patterns of thought. But above all what they can do is stifle the spirit of creative participation and joyful assent. The letter is made to prevail and the document rule; but the spirit then becomes joyless.
To the Archbishops and Bishops of England and Wales
Authors: Mills John Orme , Radcliffe Timothy 
Published: July 2007

Next November the Extraordinary Synod assembles to evaluate how far the Church has succeeded in faithfully implementing the decisions of the Second Vatican Council. It is for this reason that we are here presenting, for the consideration of you, the bishops of England and Wales, a response written by a group of British Catholic theologians to what the Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had to say about contemporary Catholicism in his famous Jesus interview. This is an unusual thing to do. Isn’t it rather an impertinence? A possible affront to the Cardinal Prefect? A possible embarrassment to the bishops?We are convinced it is not. With his wonderful sense of ‘Catholic wholeness’, Cardinal Newman believed that an essential feature of authentic Church life is internal dialogue—in other words, continuous interrelating between three facets of the life of the Christian community: theology, worship and government. (Professor Lash says a little more about this in these pages). The Church only remains properly Catholic, in the truth, in so far as the dialogue continues. Catholics still often often feel that it is disloyal in any way to question what comes from ‘on high’. The Catholic who in any way dissents is identified as not properly ‘orthodox’. But orthodoxy requires us to believe that the Holy Spirit is poured upon the whole Church. And that Church remains Catholic because the conversation between the theologians and the bishops and the laity carries on.
Them Dry Bones
Authors: Duffy Eamon 
Published: July 2007

One of the Brothers at the Irish De La Salle school where I began my education had a brisk warm-up routine for frosty mornings. It consisted of a rapid-fire set of catechism questions round the class. If you faltered or made a mistake you got a ferocious slap on either hand with a whippy three-foot cane, and went to the back of the line to be questioned again. The remembered tingle of swollen finger-ends as the second inquisition drew near is still capable of bringing me out in a sweat. It is some testimony to the effectiveness of this pedagogic technique, however, that while I have now wholly forgotten the Brother’s name, I have almost total recall of any question in the catechism, even at a distance of thirty years, and coasted through the first year of doctrine tutorials in my undergraduate theology degree- course on the strength of it—“I see that Duffy is the only member of the class who has actually read the Chalcedonian decrees”.Indeed, it was as an elaborate mnemonic device that I think I chiefly valued it. Not just the riveting stacatto crispness of the question and answer form, and not just the lapidary elegance and compression of many of the answers, which seemed then, and seem still, admirable—‘What is prayer? Prayer is the raising up of the mind and heart to God’. Best of everything were all those wonderful lists: the three theological virtues and the four cardinal virtues, the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost and the two great precepts of charity, the seven corporal works of mercy and the eight beatitudes, the seven deadly sins and the six sins against the Holy Ghost, the four sins crying to heaven for vengeance, the three eminent good works and the four last things.
The Church of Rome and Reunion
Authors: Griffiths Bede 
Published: July 2007

No one will deny that in the last twenty years since the Second Vatican Council there has been a wonderful growth in the ecumenical movement among Christians. Not only has the whole climate changed in the relation of the Christian churches to one another, but formal agreement has been reached with Anglicans, Lutherans and reformed churches on such formerly controversial subjects as the Eucharist and the Ministry. But there still remains one insuperable obstacle to Christian unity, which no amount of discussion has so far been able to overcome, and that is the claim of the Roman Church to the ‘universal jurisdiction’ and the ‘infallibility’ of the Pope. Is there no way out of this dilemma or is the Ecumenical movement doomed finally to break down at this point?An answer to this problem has been offered in a recent book published in India, which proposes a solution from the Roman point of view on strictly orthodox lines. Its author is a Spanish Jesuit, Luis Bermejo, who is a professor of theology, formerly dean of the faculty of theology, at the Papal Seminary at Poona. His book consists of a series of articles contributed to theological reviews, which make a careful, scholarly survey of the historical grounds for these doctrines. His contention is that only a strictly historical method can answer the question of the validity of these doctrines. In the past it has been only too easy to read into the evidence of the New Testament and the Fathers the developed doctrine of a later age.
The Vatican and the Sisters of Mercy: differing views of the Church
Authors: Ruether Rosemary Radford 
Published: July 2007

Recent confrontations between the Vatican and the Sisters of Mercy, as well as with other groups of women religious, particularly with Americans, reveal a fundamentally different understanding of the relationship of Church and State, the sacred and the secular, held by the nuns, on the one hand, and the Vatican, on the other. Current Vatican policy assumes a rigid line between Church and State which makes any office-holding, either elected or appointed, in government, by either a priest or a nun, incompatible with the religious vocation. Although the first conflict between the Vatican and Sister Mansour of the Sisters of Mercy appeared to be primarily over differing interpretations of the relationship between personal morality and public policy in the specific case of payments for abortion, subsequent conflicts with the Sisters of Mercy over other nun office-holders went beyond specific differences over Church teachings on moral issues. The holding of any public office was defined as out of bounds for priests or religious: in other words, the Vatican pressed (and continues to press) for a very harsh interpretation of the restriction in the new Code of Canon Law (canon 285, 3) and for its world-wide observation.A similar line has been taken in the case of the four priests who hold public office in the Nicaraguan revolutionary government and, most recently, the Italian priest who has been elected as a socialist to the European Parliament. In each case the resolution of the conflict is to force the person involved either to resign the public office or else be removed from their religious order (or, in the case of a diocesan priest, be suspended from priestly duties).
Which Book of Daniel?
Authors: Robinson Bernard P. 
Published: July 2007

As every schoolboy once knew, the Church of Rome accepts the Longer Old Testament Canon rather than the shorter one read by Protestants and Jews. This means that she can invoke OT authority for the immortality of the soul (Wisd. 3. 1—9) and for the propriety and efficacy of prayers for the dead (2 Macc 12. 43—45). Apart, however, from a few proof texts of this sort, it is doubtful whether the so-called Deuterocanonical books and passages have much influence on Catholics. Take the case of the Book of Daniel. When they set out to expound Daniel Catholic writers tend either to give scant attention to the passages peculiar to the Longer Canon (so, e.g. Delcor, 1971 and Collins, 1981) or, as the present writer did in his brief commentary on Daniel (Robinson, 1971), to ignore them altogether. Should we not, perhaps, take our Canon more seriously?In what follows, I shall first consider some general problems involved in taking one’s Canon, whether the Shorter or the Longer, seriously, without however getting entangled in the ‘canonical criticism’ debate.It is becoming increasingly clear that the early Christian Church did not simply inherit an OT Canon from the Jewish people. The Jews, in fact, did not possess a fixed Canon for the OT as a whole until the late first or early second century of our era: the contents of the Pentateuch and of the Prophets had certainly been settled by the time of the beginning of Christianity, but the extent of the third division, the Writings, remained unclear.
The Likely Price of Peace: René Girard's hypothesis
Authors: Lascaris Andrew 
Published: July 2007

Little Tom is trying to watch the TV, but his even smaller sister Naomi, will not stop walking between him and the screen. Here is a conflict. How is it to be solved? Tom can slap Naomi, but it is very likely that a row will develop that will end up with both of them being packed off to bed. Or he may call in the strong arm of one of his parents, but—though Tom may not realize it—this could be a dangerous course too: his parents may disagree with each other and the conflict could spread. Even end in divorce! Or Tom could find himself having to accept a compromise for which he will have to pay either now or later. In fact he does not hesitate a moment: he knows what to do. He gets up and starts playing with his sister’s doll. Naomi, seeing this, runs to her doll, and Tom can go back to the TV to watch his favourite programme in peace.All of us, children and adults, often make use of the same strategem, especially in our love affairs. We all know how hard it can be to resist desiring what somebody else, or some other group, much desires, and to resist wanting what others have. The Falklands became important for the British people immediately the Argentinians commandeered them; and, because they were British-occupied, the Argentinians had for many decades desired them. In that case the conflict got out of hand and exploded into violence.
By Rather Dim Lights
Authors: Tatham Michael , Hebblethwaite Peter 
Published: July 2007

I don’t see how the rather obnoxious Tory voters can be excommunicated. They are acting according to their rather dim lights (something that most ‘progressive’ Catholics applaud when it is a matter of Humanae Vitae).Peter Hebblethwaite New Blackfriars December 1984 p. 499Perhaps one of the most rewarding things to remember when one is playing with ideas is that nothing remains as it is for very long, and, what is rather more awkward, just as ideas are soon outmoded and superseded, so too the nature of the problems with which we are engaged changes before our very eyes. It is as if the entire process is taking place on a cinema screen where the credits continuously merge into new lines.Even the apparently successful outcome of some process of study or legislation can be seen in the long run to have produced not so much a final answer as a formidable tariff of new problems. Medical science’s ability to reduce infant mortality and prolong the average expectation of life has created a situation in which—were it to be taken seriously—the Church’s traditional pastoral and moral teaching, with its primitive emphasis on fertility, would be a serious threat to the future. Recent matrimonial legislation to improve the position of women has been so successful that further legislation is now urgently required to protect not only husbands, but the unfortunate wives of second alliances. In the early years of this century it would have been impossible for pioneers in the Labour Movement to foresee that within a man’s lifetime the power of the unions mobilised for sectional self-interest under the laissez-faire banner of ‘free collective bargaining’ would play a decisive role in destroying a Labour government.