bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Mass: Theory and Practice
Authors: Pepler Conrad 
Published: July 2007

When St. Thomas wrote his Summa to embrace the whole of theology, he did not think it necessary to divide his treatise in two independent parts, Dogma and Morals. The division, adopted many years later for pedagogical reasons, was not an improvement on St.Thomas’s method. To treat the truths of faith separately from the virtues and vices was an easier method of teaching the queen of the sciences, yet results have shown that the easy division has been allowed to develop into a fatal dichotomy. It is now generally considered, implicitly at least, that dogmas have little effect on everyday life and that for practical purposes the all-important subject is “Morals.” The sermon in nine cases out of ten is a moral exhortation, while the discussions of the “schoolmen” are considered as far removed from the realities of life.
Unfortunately the latter allegation cannot be wholly disproved. Whether we hold that the beginning of the world can be shown only by faith, or maintain its proof by natural reason to be possible, our lives remain unaffected by the discussion. On the other hand, the great dogmas contained in divine revelation concerning God, the Holy Trinity, Grace or the Incarnation should have an infinitely greater effect upon our behaviour than the clearest notions about contraception or the evils of capitalism. There are, moreover, many discussions in theology which possess the power of altering very profoundly one’s relations with God and one’s personal life in grace.
A very actual and important example, to which the above remarks are intended as a preface, is that of the nature of the Mass.
Parish Priests, Beatified and Canonized
Authors: Gumbley Walter 
Published: July 2007

In Henri Ghéon’s Secret of the Curé d’Ars we read the following statement: “M. Vianney was terrified to learn that in the long roll of the ages not a single parish-priest had been raised to the Church's altars as a saint. Popes had been canonized, cardinals, bishops, religious and laymen; but of parish-priests not one; not the shadow of one. The melancholy inference was that there was no condition in the whole world in which sanctity was more difficult to attain.” (Translated and ed. Sheed & Ward, p. 123.)
This statement is not merely a depressing one, but, if true, a disturbing one to clergy and laity alike. As a matter of historical fact we hope to show that it is an extremely inaccurate one. Who makes the statement? Not Ghéon, he records it. Not the Curé, he learnt it; but whether orally or by reading we are not told.
In the first place, what exactly is meant by the office of parish-priest? Surely nothing else than the charge or, to use the canonical term, the cure of souls in a defined district. In this sense parish-priests have existed since the peace given to the Church by Constantine in the fourth century; possibly as early as the third century in the comparatively long gaps between the persecutions. What is meant by ‘‘being raised to the Church’s altars as a saint”? Does explicit or even tacit approval of a saint’s cult by the Holy See suffice?
Philosophy and the Meaning of History
Authors: Mathew Gervase 
Published: July 2007

It is the nemesis of a cliche-ridden prose that a term may become trite yet stay ambiguous. The phrase philosophy of history covers four distinct approaches to three subjects, and before its relation to a Thomist scheme of thought can be considered it will be necessary to analyze the contrasted senses of the adjective “historical” and to determine the meaning of “Thomist” and of “philosophy.” Thomism may be conveniently defined as the application of the principles of act and potency to the study of the necessary and of the contingent. Philosophy may be restricted to a consummated human study in an ultimate causality: “consummated,” for as a science it implies the achievement of a certitude, not a content with an opinion; “human” since it is achieved through reason, not through the supernatural; “ultimate causality” since it is a search for origin, not for occasion, for undeviating principle rather than for contingent event. Such concepts are relatively simple, the complexity of history has commonly been expressed through a consistent use of analogy.The three primary divisions of modern historical writing, the Chronicle, the Myth, the Culture Study, seem contrasted rather by their perspective than by their object. Each is in intention a form of record of the past; the first in terms of the past, the second as an explanation of the present, the third often primarily as a premature reflection of the future.
An Evangelical Approach to Catholicism
Authors: White Victor 
Published: July 2007

Principal John Oman, invited to explain why he was not a Catholic, began with the following memorable and instructive words:For disbelieving anything there may be three good reasons. The first is that it is incredible; the second that it is not proved; and the third that it is inconsistent with beliefs conceived to be higher and more certain. On all three grounds I disbelieve the Roman claims, but I will deal with the last first, because, though less often dwelt upon, it is what is most decisive, and, what is more, it has a right to be. Nothing proves so much the reality of any faith as the making of contrary views incredible. There is a kind of facile catholicity of accepting all sorts of views, which is due merely to no one of them being sufficiently in the light to show that the others are in darkness. Moreover, by their positive direction our lives should be determined: and when we steadfastly pursue what we believe to be the higher road, the others simply reject themselves. In this way, I am not a Roman Catholic, primarily for the reason that all my conclusions regarding life and history are not only inconsistent with it, but seem to me higher as well as more certain.This, the reason which on analysis will be found to be the one that most powerfully withholds men, especially thinking and religious men, from becoming Catholics, is, curiously, the one of which least account is taken by the zealous apostle and apologist.
Plain Talks on Fundamentals
Authors: O. P.  
Published: July 2007

Catholic doctrine rests on two foundations: the revelation of God in nature, and the historic Revelation given to man which culminates in the coming of Jesus Christ.We have already said something of how God is revealed to us in nature. We have seen that there is not a phenomenon in the world around us or within our own consciousness that does not tell us something of God, which can be so much as explained fully without some reference to a God, a creative, dynamic, supreme Intelligence and Will. The very existence of phenomena postulates the existence of such a One; their varied goodness and beauty tell us something of the goodness and beauty of God.Yet, what nature has to tell us about God is not wholly satisfactory for many reasons. Although it is a fact that all phenomena in some measure reveal God, it is certainly not a fact that all men have found themselves capable of realizing that God is revealed to them in the world around them. The human mind is commonly too weak, too prejudiced, to be able to penetrate all that nature has to tell it; to see in phenomena the reflection of God’s attributes; to reason out patiently and accurately all that nature implies.
Patron and Artist
Authors: Gill Eric 
Published: July 2007

This book consists of two lectures, the first on The Normal View of Art, the second on Liberty and Discipline. We wish it were possible to have them delivered and redelivered in every public place (not specially Art Schools) in the English-speaking world; for the principles they enunciate are precisely those which our civilization most completely flouts and most needs to know. Such a wish is, however, not only “crying for the moon,” it would also be no more than “locking the stable after the horse has gone.” It is much too late now to hope for any widespread and deliberate reform of our world; what we must expect is such a complete breakdown of our palpably inhuman and therefore doomed institutions as will place us again in a state of primitive simplicity and barbarism and thus make possible a new growth, and eventually a new flowering, of the human and humane spirit. Meanwhile the existence of such lectures is all to the good. It is, under divine providence, possible that some memory of them will survive to fructify the new dark age which is obviously upon us. “My words shall not pass away,” and the words printed in this book are so clearly conformable to the Word which was in the beginning that we may hope for a like permanence.To write a “review” of Dr. Coomaraswamy’s lecture is in fact an impudence; the only proper review would be a complete reprint. It has a clarity of vision which amounts to holiness.
Channel Crossing, 1838
Authors: Gilby Thomas 
Published: July 2007

“London was a bumper,” wrote old General Dyott in his diary for 1838, “foreigners in abundance.” Here are some of them. Dr. Mathew starts with Queen Adelaide, 677 tons, a Deptford built schooner-rigged paddle-wheeler with the new feathering floats, riding alongside the stone quay at Calais, and tells of her passengers, most of them crossing to attend Queen Victoria’s coronation. In previous works his treatment has been admired of the little Carthusian world before the Reformation, of the Celtic peoples about Queen Elizabeth, of the English Catholic minority in the seventeenth century. Now he evokes the decade after the Reform Bill: chokers and oysters and muffins and grog, fretwork iron verandahs, the London and Greenwich viaduct railway —“the enginemen are most judicious and the carriages are accompanied by guards in the livery of the company”— steamers so new-fangled that in rough weather it was feared the machinery might break loose.The book is a delicate and allusive study of the different conventions and temperaments displayed when the vessel runs aground in a fog. Serene round the whist table sits privilege, the Austrian Ambassador, the Russian Envoy Extraordinary, the Minister of the brand-new Hellenic kingdom, and Lady Augusta born a Somerset. A shabby Carlist courtier is less assured, though he stands for a polity older than the Holy Alliance and Badminton House, more defined than the bourgeois monarchy of Louis-Philippe represented in the first-class saloon by M. Gratry. For a European order more ancient and secure, Mgr. Beccaria is writing in his cabin, “in an even light he could see his reports and their weaknesses and their passage through the Congregations in Rome, the venerable prelates and the gradual and sometimes retarded victory of balanced argument.”
Meditation on Peace
Authors: McNabb Vincent 
Published: July 2007

In these days greatly troubled by War, we may well speak of Peace. The word itself almost brings refreshment to our minds when the sky above us has been troubled by the sounds of our country’s preparation for war. I feel we are in one of the most critical periods of the world. For the moment, I presume that God alone, and those in the secrets of God, can see the end.The kingdoms of the world must go forth to war if they want to spread; if they wish to be world-wide, they prepare quite consistently for world-war; and it might succeed. The great Pax Romana was essentially a peace based on war— the peace that came from the Strong Man Armed.Peace has so many consoling qualities that it is constantly taken for an end. Peace should never be sought as an end. Disorder always results if we seek as an end what is only an effect.When Our Blessed Lord sent out His apostles, He was commissioning a thing that was world-wide; not Religion, but the Religion; not just for a race, but for mankind as such; world-wide because it is to be One and Holy. Therefore this Kingdom of Christ offers, at once, Peace, and never the sword. Sometimes the sword has been used in defence of the Church. I do not know whether it was ever a very effective defence of the Church. In the Garden of Olives, Peter very naturally used the sword. It was quite a natural defence.
The Ethics of Modern War
Authors: Vann Gerald 
Published: July 2007

“Any nation,” the present Pope has said, “so mad as to contemplate war would be guilty of monstrous homicide and almost certainly of suicide.” There is, it would seem, a tendency to meet any proposal for the prevention of war and the promotion of peace with the argument that there is such a thing as a just war, and to leave it at that. There is a danger here of relapsing into the laissez aller attitude described by M. Maritain as “using the eternal truths as a pillow to go to sleep on.” To restrict discussion to the question of whether there can be a just war in the abstract is to invite unreality.“There is such a thing as a just war.” For this position we have a formidable array of authorities, if we are to pin our faith to authorities; a formidable array of arguments, if we choose to take reason as our guide. “There is such a thing as legitimate self-defence, as legitimately helping the injured even by offensive warfare.” A proper authority, a just cause, a right intention, these are, according to St. Thomas, the three prerequisites of the just war. Can they not often and easily enough be fulfilled? In theory perhaps; in the hypothesis of two isolated States, in an isolated point of time, with clear-cut and indisputable aggression or injury on the one side and the impossibility of any defence or redress other than by war on the other. Such a state of affairs, however, in the world of to-day is, to all intents and purposes, impossible.
International Problems
Authors: Quinn Edward 
Published: July 2007

During the month of July, two conferences on international problems took place in London. Both were held in semi-privacy, but their importance was such that the organizers of the conferences have seen fit to publish the details of the speeches which were given on these occasions. They present an interesting study in comparison.At Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs arranged a series of debates from May 29th to July 7th on the Future of the League, and succeeded in obtaining for this purpose the co-operation of some of the best known and most competent students of international affairs in England. The debates have now been published in book form and are invaluable for the large number of English students who cannot claim to the same competence as the personalities whose views are here expressed, but who seek to gain by their learning.From the 3rd to the 6th of July, the Catholic Council for International Relations held a rather different kind of reunion. The general subject for conference was “The Part of Catholics in the Maintenance of the European Order,” and those who took part were Catholic writers and lecturers from many countries, with an international reputation for their ability in these problems. Their conclusions have already been published in the Catholic press, and a fuller account of the papers will be given in the next issue of the C.C.I.R. organ, A Catholic Survey. The present writer is indebted to the secretary of the C.C.I.R. for the use of notes on the papers before they appeared in print.
The Risks of Peace
Authors: Sturzo Luigi 
Published: July 2007

Peace is not a pause between two wars, like a rather long truce, nor is it a gift passively received and tranquilly kept. Peace must be won, be maintained and strengthened by effort, be defended against those who would disturb it. Peace is a continuous creation in which all share, each through the part he plays in social life.Mr. Wickham Steed, in his recent book Vital Peace, a Study of Risks, has shown how peace has its risks as war has. There can be no life without risk.The problem of the risks of life can be considered from three standpoints: the psychological, for each one of us; the national, for each State; the “communitary,” for a united group of States or for the international community in general. In life these various planes are interwoven.The average upper-class young Englishman at Eton or Harrow cannot envisage a quiet life, made up of study and domestic cares, without the adventure of travel, work in the colonies, the army or politics. Sport is enticing to many, but sport for sport’s sake is worse than art for art’s sake; training in endurance for the sake of bodily agility without a sense of adventure would become a matter of professional exercise, to be despized. All do not feel this urge to adventure. The young working-man, brought up in a Labour environment, becomes a petit bourgeois; the young Communist is or wishes to be a fighter, and does not exclude, at least in theory, civil war. The upper- or middle-class boy tends to adopt a nationalist and conservative ideal.
Mr. Nicholson Abdicates
Authors: Foster Urban 
Published: July 2007

Mr. Nicholson continues to show, towards the general reading public, that instructive patience which the permanent civil servant must show to his transitory chief. He carries on, in his biography of Dwight Morrow, that implicit instruction in the control of world affairs which he began in the trilogy on Lord Carnock, the Peace Conference, and Lord Curzon.But his subject here is very different and very unexpected. There is no adumbration, in the story of Lord Carnock, the perfect English civil servant and statesman; in the story of that magnificent aristocrat and administrator, Curzon; no adumbration of the story of the American school-master’s son, who became partner in J. P. Morgan’s, Ambassador to Mexico, was close to being Secretary of State to Mr. Hoover, whose prestige, at the time of his premature death, aged 58, clearly foreshadowed the Presidency, and whom Mr. Nicholson feels bound to call “the completely civilized man.”There is just one connecting link between this book and the preceding Trilogy, and it is the reason for Mr. Nicholson’s writing it. All four books praise men who sought to attain to a mastery of the technique of world affairs, who sought, in fact, to know the true state of things, who were determined to discard notions preconceived to the accurate, orderly, sympathetic knowledge of them, and who were confident that their intelligences were capable of mastering the jungle-like complexity that faced them. Otherwise, this book differs—by a world—from its predecessors. The scene swings from European Diplomacy to Transatlantic Commerce, from Petersburg to Pittsburg, from Whitehall to Wall Street.
Christians and The Class-Struggle
Authors: Kelly Bernard 
Published: July 2007

Marxism is not a philosophy. It is a technique of revolution. Hence the critique of those whose minds are fixed in academic ways of thought nearly always misses the point. We are not dealing with a system of thinking which claims its confirmation in the identities of being, but with one which claims its confirmation in action and in practice. Moreover it does not confirm itself by referring back to traditional ways of action or established practice; it claims its verification in the unity of thought with revolutionary practice. And it is not merely catastrophic in its method; far less is it merely Utopian. That type of criticism, therefore, which paints Marxism as a Utopian system in order to ridicule it as such may have some bearing on the various forms of Utopian socialism which Marx and his followers always fiercely attacked, but practically none on Marxism.The basic concept of dialectic materialism is matter in motion, and essentially so. “Motion,” says Engels (Anti-Dühring) “is the mode of existence of matter.” To apply this principle to society, the social situation must be understood in its process if we are to enter at all into the Marxian outlook. For Marxism is a system of social dynamics and it is often rejected at the cost of losing also any grasp of history as a real and living development rather than as a marginal note to an a priori thesis independent of our carnal lives.
Wealthy Childhoods
Authors: Mathew David 
Published: July 2007

The publication of a recent survey of the background of convent education gives rise to an interesting train of thought regarding those diverse generations of the Catholic circles of privilege whose daughters receive their formation in convents of a socially exclusive character. Mother O’Leary in her authoritative study, whose scope is very much wider than that by-path which we are now considering, writes with knowledge and calm and has provided us with a most sympathetic but also objective impression. The first section of her book contains an examination of that background of convent education which had given such religious moulding as the polite world of pre-revolutionary France was willing to accept. As a preparation the author devotes some space to an account of the various curricula in use in the colleges, but it is manifestly impossible to touch on more than the fringe of the intricate subject of the mental background of the privileged boys of the Ancien Régime.In regard to convent education Madame de Genlis has left us a description of the methods of the abbey of Origny-Sainte-Benoîte, where the abbess was ready to entertain a small proportion of the community in her private apartments, and where the social intercourse afforded to the girls trained them early to take their place in that section of French society which was accessible to mild religious ideals when presented palatably.
“Integrationists” of the Middle Ages
Authors: Smalley Beryl 
Published: July 2007

“It is not good for man to be alone: man is ‘alone’ when he is away from the turmoil of the world; thus monks and holy men build for themselves solitudes. It is not good, says the Lord, for such a man, a contemplative, to be alone, without a companion; it is best that he become active; let us make him a help like unto himself, that is, a people subject to him, who will minister to his temporal, as he to their spiritual needs.”The contemplative life resembles Paradise before the creation of Eve! Or, to modernize the thought as well as its phrasing: man is meant to express himself in the art of government.The quotation comes from notes which were taken by students from a lecture on Genesis, delivered in the Paris schools round about the year 1190. The students would apply it to themselves. For the present they were “contemplatives,” if not solitaries; their business, in theory at least, was contemplation which centred in the study of Scripture; and they were all potential bishops. Their lecturer passed dramatically to action from contemplation. From being a master of theology at Paris he was raised to the cardinalate, then to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and “expressed himself” in Magna Carta.