bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Mysticism and Theology
Authors: O'Driscoll Benet 
Published: July 2007

The publication of the collected spiritual letters of the late Abbot Chapman reveals a side of his life and work less well known to the outside world. With the exception of one rather long series, these letters are mainly concerned with those stages of the spiritual life which St. John of the Cross has called the Dark Night of the Soul. In their preoccupation with this time of dryness and painful anxiety when no comfort is found either in God or in creatures, they present a rather gloomy view of Christianity. Dom Chapman had formed the opinion that many reach the mystical state without being aware of it, and that for lack of suitable instruction they make no progress. He tried to help, although always refusing to become a “professional director,” and disclaiming special knowledge. The letters contain much that is helpful, expressed with originality and vigour.He first began to take a serious interest in the subject of mysticism when recalled to Maredsous by Abbot Marmion in 1912—indeed his own state of soul seemed “obviously mystical"—and the first of the letters date from that period. Very soon he had worked out for himself a provisional theory, which he explained at length in a letter of April, 1913 (P-25°)« and in January, 1928, he published in the Downside Review an article “What is Mysticism?” as a theological defence of his ideas. To explain the scattered references in the letters, that article has been reprinted to form the second appendix to the present work. It is exclusively an interpretation of St. Thomas, but it is so novel an interpretation that, put forward with the authority of a great reputation, it requires careful examination. Dom Chapman sets aside the accepted Thomistic doctrine based on the theology of the Gifts of the Holy Ghost ("a harmless doctrine, but unfruitful"—p. 71) and starts again from the beginning.
Kant and the Problem of Peace
Authors: Gigon H. 
Published: July 2007

Between the philosopher who returns thanks “to nature for the incompatibility, for the envious emulating vanity, for the insatiable appetite to acquire, or even to rule, (for) without them all the excellent natural predispositions in mankind would slumber to all eternity without being developed,” and the General who proclaims that “war is not merely a necessary element in the life of nations, but an indispensable factor of culture,"* for “without war, inferior or decaying races would easily choke the growth of healthy budding elements, and a universal decadence would follow,” there is a striking “air de famille.”We may well wonder how the old man of Konigsberg, who saw in human struggles “the direction of a wise Creator,” could write an essay on “Perpetual Peace,” and can easily understand how the controversy as to whether Kant were pacifist or imperialist arose.It can be affirmed without doubt that Kant was at heart a pacifist, his treaty on “Perpetual Peace” being sufficient proof of that. But had he written this essay alone, he would never have gained his present authority among philosophers; he would rapidly have been relegated to the little comer reserved for an Abbé de St. Pierre, a de Tattel, and other utopists.Kant’s works may be divided into two parts:(1) his destructive work, which culminates in the Critique of Pure Reason;(2) his constructive work, with his Critique of Practical Reason, his writings on Morals and Right, and his study on Universal and Perpetual Peace, which “constitutes not merely a part, but whole final purpose and end of the Science of Right.”
Money Free From Usury
Authors: Drinkwater F. H. 
Published: July 2007

Some people seem to be a little alarmed by the phrase “consumer-credit,” as if it involved some vast and dangerous experiment along untried paths.Don't be frightened at a word. “Consumer-credit” simply means “credit which is not producer-credit.”Producer-credit consists of bank-overdrafts allowed to industry for production, or to Governments and Municipalities to carry on their work. Loans bearing interest, loans issued upon securities which will become the property of the lender if the loan is not repaid. That is producer-credit as it exists to-day. There is nothing specially Catholic or traditional about it. On the contrary, it is (or would be, if the lender were lending real money, which he isn’t) precisely what was always called sinful Usury in the old days; it is a modem kind of “money” which bears upon it the guilt and stain of debt from the first moment of its existence.Of course, this producer-credit could be and ought to be controlled in the public welfare and issued free of interest; but even so it would still provide incomes only for those at work, not for the ever-increasing army of the dispossessed unemployed and their dependents, nor for the aged and incapacitated. These would still have to be supported grudgingly out of taxation levied on the working population.Hence the idea of introducing credits into industry from the consumption-end of the process also. We affirm the possibility of “consumer-credit,” which would be nothing but ordinary sane means-of-exchange money, based upon the community’s credit or power of production and put into circulation by the Ruler. As its name indicates, it would be issued direct to consumers as such, and would give them a means of setting the producers as such to work. It might be issued to all consumers (national dividend) or only to some (old age pensions, children’s allowances, etc.).
Sigrid Undset and the Modern Apostolate
Authors: Connolly Kevin 
Published: July 2007

On the feast of Corpus Christi, 1854, a young man, an artist, stood in the streets of Dusseldorf waiting for the procession of the Blessed Sacrament to pass by. He was not there from any religious motive; indeed, he looked with a certain supercilious air upon the people around him, waiting so silently for their Lord to pass by. It was only inspiration for a painting that he sought, attracted by the pageantry, the rich colours, the myriad candles and flowers. Soon, the distant murmur of prayers was audible and the procession appeared round the bend of the road, a splash of colour and light against the sombre background. The men around him pulled off their hats and all fell upon their knees. The artist alone stood, tall and handsome, with his broad-brimmed hat planted firmly upon his fair curling hair. But it did not remain so for long! The next moment a blow from one of the men near him had sent it spinning across the street. . . . With a sudden realisation of his want of courtesy and good breeding the quick blood rushed to the young man’s cheeks and he bowed his head in shame.The name of this young artist was Karl Schilling. He was a Norwegian, nineteen years of age and an atheist, staying in Germany for the sake of his studies; but from that day of June when he had stood in the streets of Dusseldorf waiting for the procession, dated his change of heart. After his conversion (November nth, 1854) he worked untiringly till the day of his death for the return of his beloved Norway to the true faith. Gradually he gave up his painting. More and more of his time was given to prayer and the exercise of charity. With the passage of the years the wish to become a priest was slowly formulating in his mind.
The Volume of Cajetan
Authors: Kelly Bernard 
Published: July 2007

Gale turned the luxurious pages of the tiny treatise with a sense of thrilled satisfaction. It was good to possess at last so capital a work as Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia, competently, exhaustively edited, printed in the best Italian tradition on paper of fine texture. He did not at once begin to read but enjoyed the sense of possession and of authority. So slight in size the corner piece of a now authoritative library. As he rose to find a place for the book on his shelves, a place that must be at once adequate and inevitable, he saw that the light had gone out of the summer evening. He forgot his shelves, leaving the book on the arm of a chair.The rain came suddenly with a crash of thunder and a simultaneous flicker of lightning. The wonder of storms. From the window he could barely see the railings of the park, so fierce the fall of the rain. Immediate the stride of the storm. Here thundering at the door with its guns of water, and as suddenly would be gone and the world changed in a moment's bombardment. Somewhere at the back of his mind an uneasiness Cajetan would not solve. Sustained violence, an unthinkable thing. Natural causes, his mind told him, workaday, but powerful, tremendous.The crash and assault of the rain beat the evergreens before his window, tore petals from the few flowers. Window panes aswim with switchback scenery. An early light wept lucidly, pools of yellow in the window frames. A man was standing, coat caught up to the chin, in the inadequate shelter of the grandiose pillared porch, gusts of rain sweeping his legs like impetuous brooms. Gale watched him slantwise through the blear panes. Trousers sodden: would run water soon. He thought of the bell; Thompson his servant; unfriendly? No, he would go to the door himself.
Talents
Authors: Pepler Hilary 
Published: July 2007

To accept authority is natural to man. Authority is a kind of status given to those who have proved themselves competent to exercise it, usually a confirmation of authority acquired by practice, but it may be accorded to the incompetent, it may be bought with political honours, and all desire its benefits. The “educated” classes have probably the firmest hold on economic authority, parents pay out large sums for the education of their children expecting some return, hence the Government is obliged to maintain a large number of appointments to which no one who has not qualified through these educational channels has access. It is worth while investing some thousands of pounds in a college course if it secure your child in a good job at the end of it. Nevertheless the authority for which there is the greatest respect is that of talent and ability. The student is not only thinking of ultimate securities but preparing himself to serve his neighbours with medicine, legal advice, bread, boots, houses, lessons in astronomy, even to shrive, anoint and decently bury them. Most men hope to be producers of benefits or goods and not receivers only, they consider themselves fortunate when they have a natural love of the work to be done and unhappy when insensitive of any particular affinity with it.Hence, in the order of authority which goes with merit, there are two classes: those who work for the work’s sake and those who labour only for a reward outside the work.It is with the first class with which I am here concerned. Where there is love of the work there is an intuitive power denied to those who acquire proficiency merely by the exercise of the will.
The Recusants' Bede
Authors: Gillett H. M. 
Published: July 2007

Tucked away, among a million other books, there is in the British Museum Library a handsome small volume which must have had quite an eventful history of its own before it reached its present peaceful seclusion, but which must, nevertheless, be wishing that its purport and contents were better known, especially in these days when so much has been said and written on account of the twelfth centenary of the death of Saint Bede the Venerable. Not that there is any secret as to its existence. For many years this particular volume has been there, duly catalogued, for all to find who might chance that way. Yet so few people, apparently, are aware of it, that it seems worth while not only to draw attention to it but to its author and subject besides.The fly-leaf alone is worthy of notice. It is covered with bold writing in several hands, which in themselves betray a little of the romance that can follow a humble book. These inscriptions read thus:
(a) this book belongs to the english convent of St. Dots order at Bruxelles.(b) this book belongs to the English Convent of the Domicnoorder in Br-----order in —(sic)And the third, which supersedes both the others, apparently, is quainter still:
this Books belongs to the Inglish Nuns of St. Dominicks order in Bruxells— for the use of Sister Maiy Catherine with Leave of her Superiour.These three inscriptions leave no doubt about it, that this book did indeed belong at one time to the Dominican Nuns at Brussels, and, from the style of handwriting, it seems at a date soon after its publication, in 1650-1658.
The Ignatian Inspiration of Gerard Hopkins
Authors: Devlin Christopher 
Published: July 2007

So much has been written about the effect of Gerard Hopkins’ vocation on his poetry that it may seem tedious to say anything more. Yet when the sum of things said has established a first-class misunderstanding, it is tantalising, if not requisite, to attempt a reconciliation.Assuming, then, that Jesuits are provided with a mould in which each after his own fashion may mould himself (please note italics for subsequent reference), that mould being the Spiritual Exercises, and assuming further that the poet could not change his character without in some way changing his poetry, a double question arises, making room for two misunderstandings. First, as to the importance of the change—was it an inside transformation or merely an outside limitation? Secondly, as to its quality—was it for better or worse not only in Hopkins but in the general development of poetic expression?The answer to both, which avoids alike religious enthusiasm and anti-religious dyspepsia, is that the Exercises were circumstances which channelled the poet's working just as other sets of circumstances, poverty, blindness, war, etc., have done to other poets, so that their importance though considerable is not strictly poetic; they make the critical occasions but are not the intimate origin of poetic thought. Their qualitative effect therefore is indifferent; not bad, because helping perhaps that chastity of mind and spare tautness of diction so much admired to-day; but hardly good because of repressions, etc. So: indifferent. If not tile Jesuit training, some other thread would have assisted results poetically equivalent however widely different in other respects. This answer is balanced, and likely to prove the acceptable one.
The Arbiters of the New Deal
Authors: McKenna Charles H. 
Published: July 2007

“Equal Justice Under Law,” is the inscription carved on the pediment of the new United States Supreme Court building. Recently erected, this legal temple in white marble stands majestically on a hill near the national Capitol, a fixed reminder that the judiciary is a co-ordinate branch of the government.For the past seventy-five years the sessions of the court were held in the small chamber that once housed the United States Senate. Its walls seemed to whisper memories and great names of the past. Here Webster, Clay, Calhoun and other famous statesmen before the Civil War battled with the nation's problems. Around the curved wall are busts of former Chief Justices. It is, no doubt, with a feeling of regret and a spirit of estrangement that the court has moved into its new quarters with its huge Sienna columns, ornate ceiling, heavy crimson hangings, and bas-reliefs.The nine gowned men who sit on the bench of the highest judicial tribunal in the nation are not spectacular: no aura of Olympus surrounds them. Each has a deep appreciation of the dignity and responsibility of his office: and all, despite an external austerity and necessary aloofness, are very human. Their appointment, which is for life, is made by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. They can be removed only by impeachment. During their tenure of office they cannot occupy any other position. All interests, no matter how profitable, which might possibly influence their judgment are severed. No justice sits in a case with which he has been previously connected as counsel, or in which he has any direct personal interest.
Are You a Christian?
Authors: Prince J. F. T. 
Published: July 2007

Some three years ago, in articles and editorial obiter dicta Blackfriars commented upon the menace of Anti-Communism. It was something of a dissentient note; to Catholics who read, as well as buy, our Catholic weeklies, at least a little unfamiliar. To some indeed the slogan “Anti-Communism is not enough” was positively scandalous. Was there ever a surer title to Election than to be the first to detect heresy in the Left, or the loudest to clamour about the latest iniquity at Moscow?There was applause, too, from enlightened quarters where it was not believed that to be a Communist you must first be a monster, where people were awake enough to realize that the U.S.S.R. (terrorist bureaucracy that it may be) is not exclusively representative of every evil under the sun. Since then, we have heard at least three Catholics (who go to Mass every Sunday) laugh about the portentous assurance of a tract-writer that the Sinister Thing modern art is, even too, a manifestation of the Bolshevist Leviathan.Inevitably, however, the Anti's continue to talk most and be the most heard: Anti-Communist, Anti-Anglican, anti-what not. Theirs is a simple school: negative polemic, the disgruntled gibe, the well-worn cliché, the worn-out reference, the same inescapable, infallible authorities, the stock specialists (of whom the most eminent are rarely acquainted with their specialities, first-hand. How many, for instance, of our critics of Russia have been to Russia?). Whence we may be excused for registering relief that Professor Macmurray (the distinguished author of Interpreting the Universe, Freedom in the Modern World, etc.) is one of those who see in Communism by no means unmixed evil— since evil of itself cannot stand—still less, inspire.
Psychology and Medicine
Authors: Elrington G. A. 
Published: July 2007

The influence of psychological factors in the genesis of both mental and physical ill-health is to-day a generally accepted fact, although opinions differ widely concerning the nature and medical significance of these factors. The general notion that the mind is of more importance in health than was admitted by the materialism of the previous century, it must be admitted, is in a great measure due to the work of Dr. Sigmund Freud in the special field of the psycho-neuroses.With this change of outlook there has come a demand for the psychological instruction of medical students and practitioners, for as Dr. E. B. Strauss remarks “it is undoubtedly a fact that the average student of medicine leaves his medical school with scanty understanding of the mental side of his future patients.”The question therefore arises as to the form such instruction should take, and its place in the curriculum of medical studies. These two questions are closely connected. Considering the line taken by Dr. Kretschmer in this'text-book, some preliminary training in the elementary details of clinical psychiatry is required, and this is suggested by the author himself. Were it however feasible, some preliminary grounding in general psychology might with advantage precede special medical studies, concurrently, let us say, with biology.
Politics and Eternity
Authors: Zacharias H. C. E. 
Published: July 2007

“If life must come to an end,” says Fritz Strich, “it is not in itself necessary; it is not bound to live. Out of the depths of this dolorous recognition and experience there arises that which alone makes the spirit to be spirit, and man, man: the will to something that is necessary in itself, that necessarily must perdure and never can terminate.”“The will to something necessary”: echoes of the Schopenhauerian world as will and imagination? An eminently “Western” will; a will to action, to movement. A will to change, then? And yet a will to something unchangeable, necessary in itself, solidly static!“Unquiet is the human heart, until it rests in Thee, O God,” confessed St. Augustine. He did not, in the first place, “will” God: before willing Him, He recognized that He was already, and that He is necessary in Himself—not only so, but that He is the only thing that is necessary in itself. Knowing God, he willed to rest in Him and thus to transcend the world of change and death, of becoming and ending, the world of samsâra, as Indian thought would express itself.
A Catholic Interpretation of Religion
Authors: Graham Aelred 
Published: July 2007

The work of the philosopher may be considered fundamentally from two points of view: as an activity directed to an object which is of its nature an end and pointing to nothing outside itself, or as concentrated upon an object to be regarded as a bonum utile, a means to be employed to some further purpose. Accordingly as either of these tendencies predominates will the mind receive, so to say, its determination and character, its philosophical habitus. For those who accept the first point of view philosophy will be an activity formally of the speculative intellect, essentially contemplative; for those who accept the second it will be an exercise of the practical intelligence, a work, in a sense, artistic and creative.It will hardly be questioned that for St. Thomas Aquinas the object of the speculative intellect, truth (or being as known) can never be subjected to any kind of intellectual utilitarianism; for the contemplation of truth is the supreme end of man, an end which alone gives point and meaning to all subordinate activities, itself, in an ultimate and sublime sense, completely useless. Consistently then with this view, if the philosopher engages in the practical work of teaching, his task is not one of rendering the transcendental order acceptable to the tastes of his disciples, but of leading their minds to the contemplation of truth in its essential clarity by subtilizing and strengthening their native powers of apprehension; fortificando virtutem intellectivam; in this way he participates, in his own degree, in the angelic activity of “illumination”: illuminare nihil aliud est quam manifestationem cognitae veritatis alteri tradere (Summa Theol. I, cvi, i).
Catholic Action and Catholic Life
Authors: Quinn Edward 
Published: July 2007

The zeal which has come over some of us to develop Catholic Action in obedience to the Holy Father’s command is altogether admirable and it is unfortunate that there are still so many yet untouched by it. But there is a danger, which has already appeared in a mild degree, of this zeal developing into a mere passion for external works. The inner spirit which gives rise to Catholic Action gradually disappears and those who have not yet acquired the zeal are still less inclined to take part in the new apostolate. The excesses of the fervent and the criticism of the lukewarm are alike due to the error which consists in thinking that unless we are obviously doing something we are not participating in Catholic Action. To many of us Catholic Action still means principally public demonstrations, protests to members of Parliament, anti-Birth-Control agitation, accompanied by the painful futility of numerous committee meetings. Some of these external effects are indeed produced by Catholic Action, but they are quite secondary to the real movement, which is simply the overflowing of the inner life of the Catholic.For Catholic Action is essentially Catholic Life, we are told by the Pope, who has done most to inaugurate this movement of modem times. “Catholic Action is justly identified with the Christian life,” said Pope Pius XI to the students of the Mexican Institute on May 29, 1934. It is the characteristic of life to give rise to external works, to common social activity, but these are not the essence of life, nor are they the essence of Catholic Action.